I made a green version with this deck type and added in Doubling Seasons and Craterhoof. Unfortunately, the creatures do not resolve well with Craterhoof so they don't gain haste. I'm still perfecting it.

Edit: I'm so dumb. Took out Craterhoof and added Inferno Titan.

After some more testing, I do not think the heavy white mana investment required for cartographers and captain is worth it.

What colors do we really need? 3 red for WW, 2 black for RSD, and a reasonable amount of blue to hold the deck together. A tiny splash of white is needed for warden of the eye, but he is generally a card advantage engine pre warp, not a board stabilizer.

Captains have been performing OK but it is just too hard to get the mana for them, plus I miss my inferno titan that is completely and utterly easy to cast.

Arrest is OK because it generally isn't a turn 3 play, I try to save it for fatties.

Kor cartographers suffers severely from mana issues. Having a ramp spell that relies on other ramp spells to be castable turns his reliability down and makes the 2/2 body less useful.

So:
-2 captain of the watch
+1 inferno titan
+1 shadowborn demon

-2 kor cartographer
+1 armillary sphere
+1 brain maggot

-2 plains
+2 swamp

This build is focused on consistency instead of the hoping and praying that you have access to all 4 colors. Armillary sphere isn't exciting but not having it can be lethal.

Brain maggot isn't working, I want more control so I am swapping it for an arrest and going 2 plains 3 swamps.

I was curious about the Warp World deck but this is making it much clearer. If I understand correctly maximising your number of permanents before warping is key and you want more than your opponents. Because of the mana cost the mana ramp is important. Also it's key to have cards that help you stall to get to warp but also fetch so you can get WW if you have not drawn.

I used to follow the Magic community until it collapsed after the Magic 2015 fallout but in a very fundamental way Magic 2015 provided the true deck building good magic players wanted. I have also recently discovered Hakeem's you tube channel.

I play via both iPad which of course is 1v1 only in multiplayer but also via Steam on PC where 4 player match ups can happen.

I have been interested in MtG for years going back to 4th Edition but stopped playing as there was no club. I got involved again when DOTP came out and have played since first version on XBOX and later XBOX360 until iPad version hit with Magic 2013.

NGA is a great forum with a lot of good players and deck builders so thanks all!

SquiderDragon

I swapped out the Obelisk for a Battledriver to test it out and the first time I hit it it was in my second main phase. I'm firmly in the camp that Battledriver isn't necessary to win because once you've Warped, your permanent advantage should carry you the rest of the way. So just like that Battledriver is out and I will be testing Inferno Titan in the Obelisk slot.

If you're running battledrivers, you should obviously only warp pre-combat; it might take getting used to, but it's pretty much an instant win if it hits. It's far better than Inferno Titan in this context, which is worth 3 damage, and won't be attacking if your opponent has removal.

The reason I think it's necessary is much of the time when I warp, it's one and done - either it doesn't hit enough red mana, or I can't get it out of the graveyard. Whether a single warp gives you a permanent advantage depends greatly on the deck you are playing against - it frequently will not be a significant advantage. Monk's original version of Warp World that ran Cultivate and Dinrova Horrors was far more reliable about generating a permanent advantage than this version, in my experience.

If you can go infinite 100% of the time when warping, then the battledrivers are unnecessary. But my rate of going infinite with the initial posted list for this deck is probably below 50%, and the battledrivers had a direct effect on my win percentage once I included them.

The other reason for the battledrivers is they serve as a non-warp wincon when combined with cards like the captains. I upped the white mana, added Attended Knights, and now the deck is capable of performing well regardless of WW. The only downside is that post-warp triggers involving battledrivers take forever to resolve.

Well for the purposes of build a "Warp World Deck", especially one that I'm uploading to a gameplay channel, my goal is always to win through WW and maximize the efficiency of that specific win condition. So while I believe you're correct in terms of the "best" version of this deck, I don't think I want to just play Battledriver into Captain of the Watch on my channel. I will either Warp or die trying and Inferno Titan helps me thin out opposing permanents in conjunction with Meteorites to build up that advantage and grind them out. He's also a hard cast that has immediate impact on the board and really help to stabilize.

Fair enough, although I think Monk's green/red/blue/black version of this is the most efficient Warp World-only wincon there is. It has better ramp and warping into Dinrova Horror is the best overall way to maximize Warp efficiency.

I have been having a good deal of success with the mill version I put together, and I personally think THAT is honestly the way to make WW the most efficient in terms of a win-con by itself.

I know mill is generally bad in this meta, but that is often because of how slow and ineffectual it is in most shells. Mill actually works here, because we often aren't milling for like 3 at a time each turn. When we mill, we mill entire libraries in a single turn.

I feel like the mill plan allows us to forgo certain cards we would otherwise run to compensate for permanent count.

Cards like Inferno Titan, Cunning Sparkmage, and Dinrova Horror, which most WW decks use as a means of lowering their opponents permanent count with each cycle of WW.

Which I think is the real strength of the mill plan in regards to making WW a win-con by itself.

Going the mill route, it doesn't really matter how many permanents your opponent has on the table, either pre or post WW. Your opponent can have more permanents than you do when you cast WW and it still doesn't matter because you don't have to worry about bodies on the table being an issue in regards to winning, you don't have to worry about being able to attack through anything to still be able to win right there on the spot.

It also allows you to ignore many of the "bad" hits off of WW. You know what I am talking about, where you WW and your opponent gets lucky and hits like 2 Pelakka Wurms, an Inferno Titan, and everything else huge in the game and you are left boned unless you can manage to chain into another WW to shuffle them all away. The mill plan doesn't care what the opponent hits off WW, it doesn't care how MUCH the opponent hits off WW.

This is part of the reason I ended up dropping certain cards from my mill version like Inferno Titan. Running the mill plan, we don't really care about lowering our opponents permanent count. This allows us to focus more on things which increase our own permanent count, which make WW more consistent both in terms of hitting the mana to chain WW, but also the consistency in which we can mill an opponent out with 1-2 casts of WW.

I normally don't defend trying to make mill work in this format, but this is the one instance where it has actually managed to work quite well in my testing. Mostly because it isn't quite as slow or vulnerable as the more traditional mill decks. There really isn't a whole lot you can do to stop the mill here. In most cases, by the time you start getting milled, it is already too late and there is nothing you can do to stop it. We flip WW once or twice and the game is just over, even if Crabs eat removal they still get their triggers from WW land ETBs (although sometimes it means missing extra triggers from Cartographer).

Even Kozi and Colossus don't seem like they pose much of an issue to the mill plan here. Although Laboratory Maniac + Instant speed draw has lost me a few games. To be completely honest, I haven't run into many people running Elixir, but I doubt the reshuffle will be THAT much more difficult to work around than Kozi is, and the deck honestly deals with him rather well because of how much it is able to mill for all at once.

I still feel like the biggest limiting factor with these decks is the available mana. Having to run all basics with multiple colors can often lead to games where you just lose because of stupid mana issues (herp derp Rune-Scarred sitting in my hand doing nothing).

*Insert rant about how I hate Rune-Scarred Demon and wish wish wish I could drop it but cant because it is a necessary evil in a WW shell because of what we have available*

2 copies of WW with Rune-Scarred as our only tutor makes me a sad panda.

I hear you about RSD Eon. It is the main reason I stick with 3x sphere.

As far as the comparison to the green version, I am going to take Monk at his word that he has playtested both versions and finds greenless to be superior. This is a deck with a lot of combo pieces and I think it is easy when you are theorycrafting to imagine how the deck operates when you have all the right pieces in place. Courier's capsule + warden of the eye is a key combo of this deck and gives it the power to dig for and locate WW or simply create card advantage. Master of waves isn't as good in any other version and it singlehandedly can create as many extra permanents as the entire green deck, if you get a good flip. And a huge advantage is being at 58/60 permanents rather than 54/60. The green version ran out of gas far too quickly in my opinion, you would ramp ramp and cast a fatty or an expensive spell, if it was removed you have no board position.

And let me reiterate that you can build your WW deck however you want to, but for me I look at how cards perform in terms of stabilizing the board and helping me survive until 8 mana, not just what they do after you cast warp. Inferno titan isn't just about lowering an opponent's permanent count, although it is very good at that too.

We have already generated 5 pages of discussion (on my computer with my viewing settings). The deck I am currently testing has no permanent boosters and I think that is a bad idea. Shadowborn is not a good fit. I am missing coral barrier although I think 4 copies is excessive. Captain of the watch would be great but I would want even more mana fixing if I were to include that card.

I think part of the reason we are split about 2 vs 3 copies of sphere is that it is so damn expensive to use. I want to test running 4 traveller's amulets instead, so that I can more reliably hit the correct mana for the third turn. It is possible that 4 amulets and 1 sphere is correct - although it is very hard to find the cuts. The manabase for this deck is big hurdle and we have not been paying much attention to it.

Kor Cartographer allows you to cast Captain of the Watch ahead of curve and is two permanents on a single card. They go together.

My earlier post about cutting white from the deck may have been too drastic. But I do feel like the early manabase is an issue.

Cartographer and captain are fine cards but far too frequently I have been stumbling to cast them. You may technically have 11-12 ways of getting white mana, but waiting until you can cast meteor to then cast kor cartographer to then cast captain blows.

I want to make the mana more reliable in the early turns, and we have very few options other than traveller's amulet and sphere. Sphere does more, but it also interferes too much with the 3 drop slot in the early game, which is critical for early board presence. Deciding what cuts to make are critical at this point.

I've tested both versions pretty extensively as well. I prefer the yore-tiller version because I like the tokens + battledriver effects, but if WW consistency is the main goal, the green version has performed substantially better for me. In my experience it's not really even a close call, but perhaps I've had too many games with mana issues with the yore-tiller version.

Advantages of green:
--better, and faster mana fixing w/4 cultivate; also makes so that WW can be recast more easily. This is its greatest advantage by far, given the yore-tiller version will have many more games that are lost before getting to WW mana
--4x Archaeomancer creates a greater chance of taking WW from the graveyard for infinite casts than 3x Warden of the Eye
--4x Archaeomancer is more reliable in generating Master of Waves tokens early (3 vs 2 usually for me). Post WW, the Master of Waves tokens are roughly the same
--vastly superior permanent removal with 3x Dinrova Horror

Disadvantages of green:
--can't cast and reuse Courier's Capsule. But it can reuse Cultivate to thin the deck, and has 6 elves to draw cards. Still, not being able to find a WW is the deck's greatest weakness (which is why I prefer a more token-centric one that has an alternate win condition)
--6 non-permanents vs. 2. In my experience this isn't much of a disadvantage and will typically only reduce your permanent count from casting WW by one or 2
--lower board presence. Definitely true, although the build could be easily modified to include 3x Guard Gamazoa. The main thing yore-tiller has going for it in my opinion are Attended Knights and Captain of the Watch, and that can't be replicated
--no real removal before 5 drops. Arrest is a huge benefit to yore-tiller

Regarding Inferno Titan, it's a great card and I run it in the green version, but to me there's no real comparison between it and a battledriver with Captains and Attended Knights. It's a must-remove threat that if you play it on turn 4 and they don't respond, you'll likely win before you cast WW. To me, the best reason to include it is a pre-WW wincon for a deck that otherwise relies on drawing 1 of 4 cards to even have a chance of winning. The second-best reason to include it is that it will win the game post WW more effectively than any other card. If casting WW guaranteed a win without it, great, but too often it doesn't in my experience.

DH I agree with much of what you posted, except the part about master of waves working better in the green version(?)

Figuring out the correct manabase for this deck is tricky. There are really two different manabases:

- The manabase you get before warp, which will include things like extra lands fetched via sphere;
- the manabase you get after warp, all of the spheres etc. will not be cracked. Ingots and meteorites are helpful here.

This is a uniquely complicated situation, normally if I had a deck with 4 traveller's amulets and 1 sphere I would be comfortable going down to 22 lands, since these cards are basically fulfilling a similar function to non-basic fetch lands. But would 22 lands be too little for after warp resolves? Do the ingots/ meteorites count here to give the deck an effective mana count of 28 post wark?

I think someone with better maths skills might be able to make sense out of this; barring that I am going to just experiment with the manabase and see if I can achieve higher consistency.

If you don't mind, could you post your mill version of WW deck list? It seems interesting.

For me, the Master of Waves with yore tiller usually generates 1-2 tokens, depending on whether there's a Guard Gomazoa or Courier's Capsule in play. Master of Waves with Monk's build (which was pre-Master of Waves I think, but I added it) usually generates 1-3 tokens pre-warp, depending on whether there's an Archaeomancer in play. It's rarer to have an Archaeomancer than a Guard Gomazoa, but it happened often enough when I played it.

Having said that, I still prefer the yore-tiller build I'm using overall, but it's been less reliable in hitting Warp World in a timely manner in my experience. I'm definitely interested in any tweaks you make to the mana base.

I was going to write a post re: **** RNG, but I just had a few nice flips and it washed away the bitterness. I can't say I have ever had so much fun in 2015.

Anyway I think that testing manabase changes is notoriously difficult. If you change one creature to another, it is easy to see in game what difference it makes. Adjusting your manabase normally results in a plus or minus 10% change to the likelihood you draw a certain land.

With that said, here is what I am testing:



I feel like I have been hammering on this same point, but let me say again: A deck is like a cake. The inside of the cake is sorta like sweet bread, you don't normally look at it and it isn't the first thing you taste. The frosting is more colorful, flashier, sweeter. It is what you see and taste first and often makes a bigger impression than the inside of the cake.

For our glorious WW deck, the inside of the cake is the support, boring stuff like mana fixing / the mana base that no one cares about. It is really important to figure this out since we can't run trilands to solve our mana woes. Instead most of the discussion has been devoted to the win conditions/ big mana fun stuff cards. But the cake is really important.

Have I figured out how to fix the mana base? Maybe, maybe not. The RNG still punishes me from time to time despite my 11 slots devoted to color fixing. I had to make some sacrifices in order to fit in 4 amulets and 1 sphere... arguably the smoother mana base would make cartographers more reliable, but I ended up cutting them due to limited slots. The emphasis is mostly on color fixing rather than straight up ramp.

One way of looking at it is categories:
Does the card fix your mana? Does it ramp you? Does it work post warp?
Basic land doesn't fix or ramp, but it works post warp and costs nothing
Amulet / sphere fixes cheaply, but doesn't ramp or work post warp
Ingot/ meteorite fixes, ramps, and works post warp - but its expensive
Cartographer doesn't fix, does ramp, and doesn't work post warp, but it comes with a 2/2 body

tl:dr - lets fix the mana
DH I would love to see your list.

I'd rather just hit a land drop than spend two mana to hit a land drop. I'm running 25 land and mana has really been a non-issue for me so far; I'd rather see the Amulets go away in favor of more basics. I also think the full suite of Arrest and Guard Gomazoa is necessary to navigate the pre-Warp turns.

this is my current list. It was a direct copy of one of the earlier lists here and the main changes I made were altering the mana base, and adding battledrivers and attended knights instead of Obelisks and Sculptors and changing the counts of some cards to make room. It seems to run pretty well, but it still faces a lot of the same inconsistency issues the other versions I've tried have. It's been a blast to play, though. I should probably add the fourth Attended Knight and remove a Cartographer, just because the Attended Knights contribute greatly to early game survivability.

DH that looks nice, pardon me while I resume my rant.

Manabase comes first. The general, all purpose manabase is 24 lands, but the needs vary according to your deck. If you have a normal curve and go down to 20 lands because you "need" to run a certain card, you have got it backwards. If you have a very high curve green deck and you go to 24 lands and no cultivates because you "need" to fit in all three pellaka wurms, you have got it backwards. 3+ color aggro builds generally suck, because they need to run a lot of taplands which slows them down too much. If you cut the taplands and replace them with basics, the deck will play much better under the best case scenario, but generally much worse since you won't be able to cast all of the cards in your hand.

Warp world generally has extremely demanding mana requirements. By turn 8, you ideally want WWBBURRR, moreover you cannot play taplands.
A normal deck that plays trilands can devote very few slots to mana fixing. Total control needs at least UURRWWWGB, and I normally like to have even more U. Monk's build uses 13/25 trilands and 3 traumatic visions, I prefer 15 trilands in my 5 color control list.

In actuality I think the mana needs of WW are even tougher than in a multi color control list because BBRRR is so important for RSD/ warp, you often need to go off ASAP and your control elements are much weaker, so you cannot stall the game until you find your mana. Total control also has more slots devoted to card draw which generally helps to find land drops.

So in this comparison total control devotes 16 cards to mana fixing. What do most of the WW builds I have seen run? 8. Just from the standpoint of being able to draw your fixers with a reasonable frequency, you want more. You don't "need" any card so badly as to shoot your manabase in the foot.

Re: Traveller's amulet - it is not so far off from a triland. A triland costs 1 since it comes into play tapped. Amulet has a variable cost: 2 normally, 1 if you would miss your land drop and it gives you an untapped land, 1 if you have etherium sculptor, and 0 net if you have etherium sculptor and would otherwise miss your land drop.

4 traveller's amulets vs. 2 spheres - they both cost a total of 8 (worst case scenario). The amulets will show up more consistently and lower the probability of not having any mana fixing. The cost of amulets is cut in half (or more) by etherium sculptor, while sculptor just makes spheres slightly cheaper.

The beautiful thing about amulet is that it does not interfere with your turn 3 drops. It isn't arrest, but it will allow you to cast arrest reliably by turn 3. Two mana paid in installments is really easy to fit into your curve. Smooth as butter. Amulet turn one, capsule turn 2, ingot turn 3, crack the amulet with the untapped ingot mana.

End rant.