Just played with this deck list, and I must say, it's very consistent as far as mana ramp goes. I might take out that sphere for something else though. Maybe Inferno Titan.

There is a efficiency difference between the amulet and the sphere as for 1 card in deck the sphere does the same job as 2 cards in form of amulets. Unless you are looking for a first turn drop which would be highly unusual if you need decent reliability for WW sphere seems a better option. Amulets are useful in decks where you may want to splash a colour and need some insurance or need to rely on multiple cost colours for key spells. The high reliance on the WW and RSD requirements in WW decks. Although cultivate is mainly for ramp I'd hate to rely on G plus 2 more to cast so greenless WW with maximising permanents and surviving to warp seems best but of course still many builds using these principles.

This is what I have been mucking with, and it seems to work pretty well.

Still not sure on Goblin Electromancer yet. It has been useful here and there, but I am not sure if the slots wouldn't just be better served as Couriers Capsules.

Honestly, the deck doesn't have many issues getting up to 8 mana and hitting all its colors, it also doesn't have too many problems surviving until it can hit 8 mana, and it closes most games out off of 1-2 WW casts and can chain them pretty consistently. If there is any real downfall here, it is that the deck can have some issues drawing into WW, which can lead to some slow and painful deaths. Hence the earlier suggestion of trying out Couriers Capsules, to give the deck a little more draw power to grab up WW as often as possible.


On a somewhat unrelated note.

My new goal is to live the dream and cast a WW off of Counterlash, mostly for no other reason than because I can.

Eon combining WW with counterlash sounds like the ultimate deckbuilding challenge. That's too rich for my blood. Your goal is to hold 6 untapped mana open in the hopes that your opponent plays a sorcery... most of the time you should hit 8 mana before this happens anyway. I think rather than the focus of current lists on infinite warps you would be better served with a focus on cheating mega fatties into play. Kozilek, darksteel titan, griselbrand etc. supported by WW, Jalira and counterlash.

As far as your current list, I tested it mostly vs the AI. Milling someone in one warp is certainly fun. You have a good "A" game - if you draw into warp / demon and your opponent isn't able to kill you in the first 8 turns, you have enough permanent boosters to get a good first warp and then it usually only takes between 3 and 4 total warps to mill someone completely.

The mill element makes certain other parts of deckbuilding easier. You will generally kill people fast enough that reshuffling your deck isn't an issue. Wall of omens is very bad for a deck that hopes to warp 5+ times but it works well enough here.

Unfortunately no deck is always on its "A" game. I have been complimentary about some of your other lists, even when the forum reaction was skepticism. Here I have to note all the ways that this deck performs poorly:
- Your ability to answer threats is limited. You can put a lot of bodies on the table but those bodies will end up chump blocking pretty rapidly against any decent size threat. Three gomozoa sometimes works but they are a significant removal target. Before you can cast warp you have to survive until you have enough mana.
- Limited answers forces you to warp early. Warp is the only board interaction other than meteorite. This can mean a warp for 8-14 permanents, which is decent but has a high chance of failure. With my build I usually don't expect to go infinite the first time. Usually my opponent ends up with a worse board position, giving me an opportunity to focus on building up permanents the next time I warp.
- You can end up stuck with really bad warp results. You are not guaranteed to hit RSD or warden after your first warp, and there is a chance your opponent puts nasty threat(s) in play. If you are lucky you will have a few chump blocks to survive
- You can run out of steam really quickly. You have a low curve which means you can generally dump your hand on the board before you warp... unfortunately if you eat a board wipe (which kills every creature in the deck except RSD and wall of omens). Card draw isn't the only answer to this, more control gives you the opportunity to survive longer without turning your precious tokens into chump block fodder.

As far as the mana I was able to play 6 games, not a representative sample. I had very good luck and hit sphere in about 2/3s of my games, which allowed me to get 1 island, 1 plains, 1 swamp, 1 mountain by turn 4-5 about half the time. So far so good. But I had one game where I was stuck on 2 red mana for like 10 turns after I hit 8 mana. I was playing against a **** AI deck and won that game anyway.

So surprise surprise I like my version, although you do have a few advantages. The ramp matchup is very, very hard for me because they have so many threats and I cannot go infinite very quickly. I think you may have the advantage in that matchup or in most mirror matches (I have Kozi so mill doesn't matter). My one concrete suggestion would be to cut electromancer, almost anything else would perform better in that slot, he isn't easily castable as a 2 drop and his body loses value pretty rapidly. Saving mana on warp isn't as important as fixing mana in the correct amounts. Out of 6 games his mana saving ability wasn't relevant once. If you REALLY want to focus on your A game, put myrsmith in. She can pump out 1/1 tokens like no one's business and has a 2 power body if that is important to ya.

As an aside, I just realized I am on 19(!) artifacts without even trying. I want more permanent boosters in my deck but the +1 permanent from coral barrier / cartographer isn't enough to justify the slot.

Is myrsmith worth another shot? She is a card I want early but too expensive in multiples, I will test -1 sphere -1 horror to see if she works.

You make a lot of fair points. What you said basically boils down to what I mentioned earlier.

The decks biggest downfall is that it relies so heavily on WW but lacks a good number of ways in which to draw into it.

Most of the flaws you have mentioned are ones that come directly from the fact that we just don't have a good way of GETTING WW.

The deck actually does a pretty decent job in my testing in regards to staying alive until we hit 8 mana, and even doing so without having to chump away all of our permanents.

The deck is actually rather forgiving in regards to bad warps as well, even if we don't hit RSD or Warden to continue the WW chain, there is a good chance we hit Hedron Crab still, which can often either mill them out completely, or at least mill them enough that Crab can finish the job itself without WW over the next couple of turns.

Casting WW early often isn't an issue for the deck either because of the overall lower curve. Even if we are casting WW on T5-6 there is a good chance we are going to have more permanents on the table than the opponent. The only decks that generally outpace us are token decks, and to be honest, after a WW, most token decks cant do a whole lot because they cards they manage to WW into aren't exactly hugely threatening and get blocked all day long by stuff like Crab/Wall/Barrier/Gomazoa, etc.

Most of these problems would be completely non-issues if we had access to some relatively cheap method of tutoring WW. In my testing, in most cases, if we draw into WW, we just win. Most of the games the deck loses, are a direct result of sitting around with our thumb up our bum waiting to draw WW for a bunch of turns, in most cases with more than enough mana to cast it.

Note that I don't believe that this is anywhere near the best WW list that we could potentially come up with.

That said, I DO in fact believe that the mill plan IS in fact the best method of making WW into a direct win-con by itself, which doesn't necessarily mean it is the best in regards to winning without the use of WW.

What this deck wouldn't give for Mystical Tutor!

So after two weeks of playing almost nothing but WW I can say that Monk got it right. I have been playing a long time without coral barrier and I miss it dearly. The only cards in his 56 I am not sure about are Elixir (vs. Kozilek) and Inferno Titan.

I want to narrow things down to two final lists for testing purposes. Here is how I see the main alternatives to the 56 cards listed above at this point-

The white package-
2+ arrests
2+ cartographers
2 captain of the watch
All three cards are undoubtedly strong, the problem is they make the manabase more complicated. I think 4x traveller's amulet may make early arrests / cartographers more practical, amulet works especially well with cartographer since you can fix your mana on turns 2-3, then drop cartographer turn 4 and immediately go for a 6 drop on turn 5. If you use a sphere for fixing it will use up all your mana on turns 2 and 3 giving you no board presence until the 4th turn. I think Kozilek is better with more cartographers too.

The grixis package (obviously we still include warden)
I am less certain what the ideal package that de-emphasized white would be. The major bonus is that I think you can get away with using fewer slots for mana fixing, and generally have a more consistent manabase overall. Warden is almost never a high priority play, he is there to refill your hand after you empty it.
One alternative is the 4x sculptor 2x obelisk package, it will sometimes save you a turn but this is not nearly as consistent as cartographer giving you an actual mana source.
Grixis offers fewer bodies, so I think something like cunning sparkmage would be pretty cool. Cunning sparkmage + elder mastery would be cute, although I think you would have some consistency issues. A 3/4 that can force discard at instant speed would be a force to be reckoned with.

I will come up with my final list that includes white later, generally cutting white hasn't worked too well but I think freeing up mana fixing deck slots for action cards could make a Grixis list a contender.

I have posted a lot of speculation and tried a number of different transformative builds, but I am ready to post what I consider a finished list.



Let me start with the manabase:
This deck devotes 35(!) cards to putting lands into play or producing mana. The manafixing cards are the most important in this deck, if you try to play a 4 color deck using basics without mana fixing you will fail every time. Ingot and meteorite are obvious, they are a 3 drop and 5 drop respectively. They work reasonably well, but that is only 6 copies, and meteorite is very slow. Taking turn 5 off because you NEED to fix your mana can really suck. However, if you can get some mana fixing done earlier, you can delay ingot/meteorite and make good use of the untapped mana they provide (e.g. cast ingot on turn 4 and crack open courier's capsule). The 4 copies of amulet are intended to provide redundant mana fixing that does not interfere with board development. For example lets say you have a hand with either amulet or sphere, kor cartographer and a 6 drop. If you need white mana you would have to cast the sphere turn 2, crack it turn 3, then cast cartographer, giving you 0 board presence until you resolve your 6 drop. With amulet you can finish fixing on turn 2, cast a defensive 3 drop on turn 3, then play cartographer on turn 4.

The curve is kind of an outgrowth of the manabase. If you are devoting so many deck slots to mana then you need to run more expensive, higher impact cards if you want to be able to survive without an immediate turn 7/8 warp world. At 5 mana and below, the deck runs 7 cards with a strong board impact (coral barrier, gomozoa, arrest, master of waves) and another 8 cards with a weaker board impact (cartographer, meteorite, warden). At 6 mana and above there are a whopping 11 cards with a high board impact. Keep in mind that the draw from capsule/warden will make it pretty easy to hit land drops, I make it to 8 mana without missing a land drop about 3/4 of the time and usually only miss one or two drops before hitting Kozilek.

There is a lot of agreement re: most of the cards in a yore-tiller decklist, so let me note a few choices I made:

3 mana and below: Arrest vs Etherium Sculptor vs Coral barrier

I typically want to spend half of my early turns (and mana) ramping, drawing cards etc. all of which have minimal board impact. Etherium sculptor isn't reliable enough ramp to justify as a turn 2 play, and it is too weak against aggro. Coral barrier is quite good vs aggro. Barrier, arrest and gomozoa are six three drops that are intended to stabilize early. I did not want more because I do not want to slow down my ramping / fixing. Arrest is pretty good but I couldn't find the card slots for more than 1 copy - I will note that a singleton arrest is a good target for RSD.

Bombs:

Captain is super efficient both at providing board presence and at boosting WW. I could run another bomb in this slot, but that would require adding at least two more coral barriers in order to offset the loss of board presence and WW goodness.

Horror is an all star in this deck. Its EtB ability is quite simply the most flexible in the game, nothing else really comes close. Horror destroys aura decks, sets aggro back, and provides a decent 4/4 body. Later in the game it can at least delay the abilities of cards like charmbreaker devils which simply wrecks this deck. Bouncing opponents' lands can set them back on board development and prevent them from casting spells like planar cleansing. Warp tends to lower opponents' land counts, a fatty bounced to your opponent's hand may stay there for several turns post warp. Horror can also bounce your own permanents, under rare circumstances it may be worthwhile to bounce captain, warden or RSD. Horror bouncing Kozilek is this deck's way of preventing self mill, or to recycle key combo pieces.

Obelisk is very versatile, this deck is designed to stall the board rather than break through, so the small amounts of card advantage obelisk generates over time can really add up. It is pretty common for me to play a 6 drop at 6 mana, another 6 drop at 7 mana, and then cast and use obelisk at 8 mana.

I am not the type to throw Kozilek into every deck, the control elements in this deck are not the strongest and a 3rd or 4th copy of WW would be better. Nonetheless we are stuck with 2 copies of WW and 2 RSD, and they commonly hide in the bottom half of my deck. Kozilek is a 5th finisher, even if he is answered he draws you a ton of cards. If you warp him into play you won't get the draw, but 12/12 annihilator 4 is nothing to sneeze at. His reshuffle ability is much more relevant here than in most decks, you can ditch him via horror or obelisk blue mode (be sure to have at least 1 card left in library).

I took a crack at this deck. Lot's of fun.



Haven't read through the whole thread, but I was surprised no one was including Roil Elemental. It's fragile, but brutal, especially if you also flip Ogre Battledriver. It's also something you don't want to see revealed in your opponent's hand when you warp without a Meteorite.

I played around with Coral Barrier, but there's only so much room, and Guard Gomazoa is much more useful than the extra permanent. Not sure about the mana base. I find myself flooded with blue too often.

What they used to say about expensive creatures with powerful abilities was "dies to lightning bolt." Lightning bolt is no longer a thing, but shock is. WW decks lack removal targets ala mentor or young pyromancer, and do not apply much pressure, so it is pretty easy for an opponent to hold back on playing shock. Roil elemental dies to shock. It is pretty common for me to ramp up straight to a six drop with little or no board presence, I guess an early roil elemental can wreck certain decks but I think most opponents can answer it too easily.

Roil elemental is better if it is flipped via warp, since you should be able to steal your opponent's entire team. My problem with this is that the WW shell is fragile and already filled with combo/ramp pieces that accomplish too little on their own. Infinite warping is IMO the most reliable win condition in the game but it requires a lot of permanents to start with (15-20), building up that many permanents requires the ability to slow your opponent down and stabilize the board. Obelisk does not directly improve your permanent count but in practice a resolved obelisk makes it easy to stall the game out (at the least) while you continue to build up for an infinite warp.

I just wanted to point out your black mana - as it stands you need ingot / meteorite to cast RSD. You have essentially 11 black mana sources, but only 6 of those can count as your second source. Going up one swamp would help your reliability significantly. It will make it slightly harder to cast roil elemental, but going from 20 > 19 blue sources hurts much less than requiring at least one of your artifact sources for RSD. Roil elemental is usually a bad play as soon as you get 6 mana, you want your opponent to cast their big creatures and spend their removal first.

Roil Elemental isn't really there to hard cast. In fact I hate seeing it in my hand. But with 2 in the deck and 2 Battledrivers, the odds of a instant win on a warp is pretty high. By the time I cast warp, my permanent count is usually good enough to see 1 and often 2, which would mean they'd need 2 shocks. And it's pretty common to see a Roil Elemental and a Battledriver at once, which is just awesome. If not, there's a good chance you can just warp again for another shot. It's fragile, but it really doesn't need to live very long. It also synergizes well with Master of Waves for another 3 tokens.

I've played about 15 games or so with this build and have yet to see someone take out an elemental. I've actually been playing conservatively and usually arresting or nuking half the targets that the elemental steals for nothing. With the Titan, Elemental, Meteorite, and Arrests I don't believe I've warped even once and not taken out his entire side. It's just surviving to the warp that's the battle.

I'm also not so sure the infinite warp is the most reliable, in this game at least. How many times did Hakeem run out of turn time in his videos?

I'm back and forth on the 2nd swamp. I haven't found myself wanting for black yet. It's been the 3rd red source that's had me waiting a few times.