Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Five Colour Cascade Control

// Lands
4 Rupture Spire
3 Jungle Shrine
2 Seaside Citadel
2 Arcane Sanctum
2 Savage Lands
3 Exotic Orchard
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Island

// Creatures
3 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Baneslayer Angel
4 Enlisted Wurm

// Spells
4 Esper Charm
3 Grixis Charm
4 Captured Sunlight
3 Day of Judgement
4 Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Maelstrom Pulse
SB: 4 Blightning
SB: 4 Ajani Vengeant
SB: 3 Jund Charm

I didn't set out to make my own deck; I actually started with a direct netdeck of Chase Lamm's 2nd Place List at the Starcitygames 5k. I played five matches with it on Magic Workstation (the only testing program I have) and kept losing at the very end of each game when I should have the match locked up. I also got mana screwed a bit even with 27 lands, just because of how high the curve is.

I also noticed that as far as I could tell, Deny Reality did absolutely nothing. It bounced a CIPT land against control, but if you wanted to do that, there were better cards to accomplish that goal, and you could lower your curve.

I also noticed that before you board, if you lost the roll, you lose to aggro.

So enter the 3 Grixis Charm / 3 Sprouting Thrinax / 4 Esper Charm package for cascading into. All three cards work well against both aggro and control.

Grixis Charm bounces a CIPT land against control, and can do really well if you snag a Rupture Spire. Against aggro, it's a 3cmc removal spell.

Sprouting Thrinax is a chump blocker against aggro that blocks four times, and a "wrath-proof" 3/3 attacker against control.

Esper Charm makes your opponent discard cards, or draw you out of ruts.

Moving up the list, the 4 Bloodbraid / 4 Captured Sunlight is the same as in all commonly accepted cascade decks. However, I added Day of Judgements for added stay-in-the-game against aggro. They're swappable with Ajani Vengeants against control.

In the 5cmc, I still have the Baneslayers and Bituminous Blasts, but I dropped the Deny Reality because it doesn't really do anything besides cascade.

At the top is 4 awesome Enlisted Wurm. Enigma Sphinx was pushing the curve a bit too upward for me. It's great when you get up there, but getting up there and staying in control can be hard.

For the sideboard, Pulse kills the Planeswalkers of Nissa Aggro, Blightning does what Blightning does (good against control and Nissa), Ajani Vengeant does what is already described, and Jund Charm sweeps the boards of Boros / Token-y things while also removing the graveyards of any Open the Vaults or Unearth-Crypt of Agadeem deck.

I'll be developing this list until I give it up for something better.

1 comment:

  1. The thing about Deny Reality is that you bounce your cascade guy for cascade shenanigans ;)

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