Submitted! Ultimately decided to just punt on the ramp matchup (I'm so, so, so sorry if that's where you end up in play-testing, it's painful) - I like where it plays vs. aggro, and the control or superfriends matchups are surprisingly close (I didn't find one in play-test, but somewhere
is waiting to ruin someone's day though). I expected mill to be bad, but I won vs. the only mill deck I found in playtest (lots of ways to interact with tutelage turns out to be nice).
How it breaks desert - basically the damage sources in the deck are so limited and the shell enables you to bounce and replay them / cycle through fast enough such that your deserts end up being a very relevant element to actually closing out the game. Technically you could amass 22 (25 if we ran all the bounce) damage just from deserts and bouncing and then recycling your pickups which is where I started initially...that was the list I abandoned early on. Vortex supplements the plan and makes the game actually end, but keeps it landy along with playing very nice with the other elements (land pickup, emptying the hand, deck churn).
Sorry for the
Wall of Text. The deck is a little unusual to play so there are a lot of little tips I wanted to include to help folks enjoy the experience (not to mislead - at its best, it is full on seven assed jank).
The basic gameplan is to use all our cheap, flexible interaction to slow them down until we can sniff out an orrery or memory and from there eventually ping them to death with vortex and desert - usually with the last 10ish coming between their last end-step and our upkeep (obviously you typically will want to play your deserts and fling your islands/taps once you've got 3-4 of each color). The key characteristic of the cards in the list is they need to have some impact on most any board since we're going to be churning through the deck very rapidly and don't especially want to be holding particular cards. Vortex and Key are to help empty out our hand as needed, and vortex ultimately is the most common finisher after softening them up with deserts and maybe a swing into tapped mana with fumarole. The data suggests they're just itching to push *something*...if you gamble, be prepared to lose.
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Do not hose up your orrery draw with a key activation. Repeat: Do Not Pay until after orrery has triggered. If you end up with extra bounce later (or with tradewinds maybe) you can bounce and replay key to re-order the triggers.
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Memory is actually pretty good here and probably what kept commit in the deck. It's typically fairly lopsided if you're just whiffing on combo pieces / tutor effects or they've managed to put a couple of your pieces in the bin, it's got a decent chance to snag a piece or two. Against ramp it's probably a death sentence, but the other decks it tends to actually work out fairly nicely (since you likely bounced anything dangerous the end of their turn).
-Don't be terribly worried about keeping a mono-blue if everything else looks OK - the
red really isn't especially critical early on. Mostly make sure you're going to have some early interaction and hit early land drops with bonus points for having access to an orrery/key. Fetch to hand otherwise. Note with the land pickups you can force an extra colored source by pre-tapping and picking up if needed.
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If you don't have a discard outlet, but do have an orrery, remember to play tradewinds at sorcery speed or you're going to be stuck with a permanent in hand. Otherwise, just take a beat after your upkeep to figure out how you're best going to empty your hand and usually try to do what can be done at instant speed on their turn.
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If you see blue mana across from you, your unsubs are at a premium. This is because you'll probably need them to fight over your win-cons. Often if you can stick them they don't have great answers to them (if you can afford it, bounce your spell and then replay so you don't have to fight through the counter again later). The other nifty thing is often they'll pass back with something like 3 mana and 2 blue, solvent or tradewinds can both hose those up and give you a window to stick your key elements. Of note, if you're still looking for your combo pieces, maybe just leave
fevered visions on the board as long as you're able to manage your hand so it's not killing you. It's annoying once you find orrery which is why it didn't end up here, but it's pretty nice before.
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It's absolutely worth missing a draw step with orrery to keep one of your combo pieces - those are about it though.
-Keep in mind that
with enough instants/discard pieces you can actually pretty frequently take advantage of both orreries (this tends to end the game pretty quickly) - make sure to give it a quick pause and check during the trigger for the 2nd.
-You'll want to
prioritize killing any sources of lifegain, the deck can burst pretty well with the combo assembled, but if you let them hang around it makes it disproportionately harder.
-YMMV, I find around
10-12ish lands in play is where I'll shift to shocking pretty actively with them (enough to use a solvent / memory, + a card or three). Obviously early on if there's an opportunity to solve something permanently with them, take that. It sounds like a lot, but once you've got orrery online it happens pretty quickly. When they get into the mid/low teens keep an eye out for lethal (or near). Land pickups, maps, shock, + orrery triggers can add up for pretty big spikes.
-Generally speaking
islands are for shocking, mountains and deserts are for playing, we're just skewed way blue to bring whir online and make sure we can multi-bounce/cycle early.
-Aggro seemed to be pretty straightforward and probably a good matchup for this list on the play, and probably close to 50/50 on the draw.
-Against ramp, I'm really and truly sorry. I fiddled around trying to fix the matchup but ultimately I think everything I tried was too much downside in other matches (I was on the fence with a 1-of
aligned hedron network and just to be able to readily empty the hand I think it has to swap with either the 2nd whir or commit and both of those are key in the other matchups). The best option seems to be to do your best to slow down their acceleration with tradewinds and unsub and hope to draw like a champ and race (it won't end well most of the time).
-A lot of plainswalkers are less threatening here than perhaps normal and I'm not actually sure superfriends is much worse than a slight disadvantage for this deck- you don't care about creature removal, and for the most part draw isn't terrible for you (since mostly the game is how much they'll be able to stick). Just something to keep in mind as your prioritizing your answers.
Aligned Hedron Network - covered above, may still tweak around long term because I actually enjoy this deck a lot, but ultimately commit and whir seemed too important, and keeping the curve low is key.
Fall of the Titans - this one I started messing with late (in place of
Shock), and I think it has potential. Ultimately though of the ones I tested with most, I kept coming back to shock since it does a lot of the things I needed from that slot (cheap and flexible mostly).
Displacement Wave - either a one or a two of this guy was probably my last cut. Tokens *can* get a little out of hand, but where we're emptying our hand each turn, it's important that cards have a variety of applications, and I think it was just too narrow for what we're trying to do here (
kozilek's return being much better and probably a 2 of if we could, in that its instant and doesn't interact with our cheap permanents).
Renegade Maps - whir enablers, also cheap bounce targets for tradewinds if we're still hitting land drops, and then they become shocks on demand later. Also helpful to keep the land count low, since early on with orrery (before you have a discard outlet online) getting 3 lands is a pretty huge bummer.
Inventor's Fair - it's borderline with the number of artifacts. I did try a one-of and it was nice in the control matchup, but otherwise it was pretty slow coming online. Inserting some implements for things like shock and censor along with the 4th solvent *probably* works, but I think it weakens the early game a bit too much. The other thing is we're a touch light on blue for whir in the first place (ultimately fair became island), but even so whir tended to just be the better (and quicker) tutor effect.
Insult // Injury - this is another one I kept meaning to try, but never got around to. I think it's a little expensive for what the deck wants and kinda "win more" in that it's not all that useful till we've got there with orrery/vortex (which tends to work out pretty well on its own), but it might speed us up.
3x
Aether Tradewinds & 3x
Devour in Flames vs. 4xtradewinds & 2x devour - once I was running whir and return the 7th land-return was a little too much clunk (since you really don't want to use them all that much until you're out of land drops). I went back and forth because I love tradewinds here, but ultimately opted for the more permanent solution since we've got a lot of things approximating what tradewinds can do.