Oversoul
The Tentacled One
So I've been trying to perfect Rectal Agony on and off for a while.
It is a fast and hard hitting combo deck for Vintage, but often inconsistent and vulnerable to sideboard hate.
I have tested the archetype quite a bit, but have been doing too many of the wrong things. For one thing, I never really ran enough lands. The temptation to run as many broken cards as possible is kinda strong for this format. My land count was only too low by 1-3 usually, but that makes a huge difference. I also kept fighting to squeeze Force of Will into the deck. It never worked.
One card that I really like that I've never seen in other Rectal Agony decklists is Abeyance. It acts like a white Time Walk in some situations and is is an excellent tool for hosing disruption when you want to go off.
My current decklist is...
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
3 Abeyance
1 Frantic Search
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
3 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
4 Academy Rector
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Scrubland
2 Tundra
For those who are not familiar with it, this deck ruins the opponent's gameplan early on with Duress and Cabal Therapy, then goes to play Academy Rector as early as possible. It uses Cabal Therapy/Academy Rector (an awesome combo if ever there was one) to fetch Yawgmoth's Bargain, draw 15 or so cards and play Tendrils of Agony for the win. In order to kill an opponent at 20, the Tendrils needs to have 9 spells played before it on the same turn. This deck has 14 nonland mana sources and plenty of cheap spells, making that relatively easy.
Some explanations of the card choices...
The artifact mana (Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Moxes, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring): This deck needs to be fast (it's a combo deck) and it needs to play several spells all in the same turn. These cards are all standard fare for Tendrils of Agony decks.
The draw power (Ancestral Recall, Timetwister, Time Walk, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Frantic Search, Brainstorm): These should be pretty self-explanatory. The P9 blue spells are pretty much automatic inclusions in this sort of deck. Bargain, the most broken enchantment in Magic is either fetched with Rector or hard-cast almost every game in which the deck wins (Extract would really hurt this deck, but no one uses Extract). Frantic Search is free card drawing, which is reason enough to use it (also it can generate mana with Academy). Brainstorm is a utility spell to help the deck find what it needs. Its drawback can be circumvented with a little help from Polluted Delta or Flooded Strand.
The disruption (Abeyance, Durress, Cabal Therapy): A well played Abeyance can slow down the opponent to avoid losing control in a game. Duress is a very typical first turn play. It eats Force of Will and other annoyances, as well as revealing the opponent's hand for Cabal Therapy. Cabal Therapy is even better than Duress if you know what is in the opponent's hand. It can also be used twice and is the perfect way to kill your own creature.
Academy Rector: Yawgmoth's Bargain is an "I win" card if it resolves. All that is needed is a reasonably large life total. Of course, being among the most broken cards ever, it is restricted in Vintage. Academy Rector is not restricted. Each one of these can put Yawgmoth's Bargain directly into play as long as you can get Cabal Therapy into your graveyard somehow.
Dark Ritual: If you are reading this, you probably understand why running anything less than four copies of Dark Ritual would be stupid.
Yawgmoth's Will: Another "I win" card. This one needs a big graveyard to do it's job. Yawgmoth's Win is perfect for reusing Tendrils of Agony, Dark Ritual, Black Lotus, etc. It has allowed me to go off in situations where I would normally have "fizzled." Besides, everyone loves Yawgmoth's Will.
The tutors (Demonic and Vampiric): They help you find stuff because you don't always get perfect draws. I hate using Vampiric Tutor in this deck but has saved me on a couple of occasions.
The bouncy stuff (Chain of Vapor, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild): Sometimes your opponents will want to win for some reason and will play cards like Trinisphere or Null Rod. These help to counteract those sorts of situations. They are also great for bouncing your own artifacts in order to increase the storm count.
Tendrils of Agony: The kill card. Right now it's the ONLY kill card in the deck. Running less than two is a very bad idea. Running more than two means you draw them instead of cards you need in order to go off. Two shall be the number of Tendrils and the number of Tendrils shall be two.
Tolarian Academy: Tolarian makes blue mana for each of your artifacts. This deck has lots of artifacts. Tolarian Academy makes lots of mana. Mana can be used to cast spells...
The other lands: This is a three-color deck. The dual lands make a nice mana base for ensuring you don't get manascrewed. The Gemstone Mines back them up when necessary. The Onslaught fetchlands thin your deck, find ANY of your dual lands, and help Brainstorm. These are good things.
I am considering several changes to this decklist. I recently overhauled parts of it, so there may be some things to iron out. Yesterday, I threw another deck together on Apprentice. I was trying to think of ways to alter Rectal Agony.
What came to mind was Draw7. Draw7 is a bad storm deck. After Burning Desire was killed by the restrictions of Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond, the storm decks that were being used were TPS, Rectal Agony, and Draw7. TPS is the only one of these that is still being used in tournaments (that I know of) because it is like the best deck ever and it is the one I should be working on...
Anyway, Rectal Agony never really saw much success because of the things I already mentioned. Draw7 had other problems. The idea was that instead of trying to use any controllish elements at all, the deck would use the most broken mana-producing and card-drawing cards in any color to fuel multiple "draw7" spells and then win with Tendrils of Agony. I don't have a decklist for it because it sucks, but it typically used the following...
Mind's Desire
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
Timetwister
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Memory Jar
Tinker
Diminishing Returns
Elvish Spirit Guide
Fastbond
Time Spiral
The deck had multiple ways of comboing into Tendrils of Agony and was cool when it worked. But it was easily disrupted and would crap out a lot (like you think you can go off and then through no fault of your own the deck fails to give you something you need). Also it used the horrible, horrible Diminishing Returns.
Eventually, most of the cards in this deck made their way into a deck that most people call "DeathLong" (but that name sounds pathetic and the deck doesn't have anything to do with Mike Long, not to mention the fact that it would make perfect sense to call it "Deathstorm" which is just about the coolest name for a deck I've ever heard of) that used Death Wish and a cool sideboard.
But I was not thinking of Deathstorm, I was thinking of Draw7. And so it led me to this. I'm still fiddling with it since I only made it yesterday. I am not sure whether it could replace the traditional 3-color Rectal Agony or not. Here's what I've got right now...
Oversoul's Ultimate Five-Colored Rectal Agony Deck of Doom! or "Ultimate Agony"
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Windfall
1 Fastbond
1 Mind's Desire
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Frantic Search
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
4 Academy Rector
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Glimmervoid
4 City of Brass
2 Reflecting Pool
Most of the cards are the same, so I won't bother explaining everything again. The mana base is different. The lands aren't as simple and friendly as dual lands, and there can be no fetchlands. But now any of the non-Academy lands can produce any color of mana, effectively eliminating any "color-screw" scenarios, as well as opening up the maindeck (Wheel of Fortune) and sideboard (Xantid Swarm perhaps?) for any card in the game, not just the on-color ones.
This deck loses the cool disruptive tech of Abeyance and the bouncy stuff, but uses more "draw7" spells, which enable it to better draw into either Rector and Therapy, Bargain itself, Mind's Desire, or just combo off without any of them.
One choice I'm unsure about is Fastbond. With Bargain, Mind's Desire, or "draw7" spells, a certain amount of the cards you get are bound to be lands. These do nothing ordinarily, but a single-mana enchantment can change all of that. However, in practice it has not been necessary for the deck, and there are other cards like Memory Jar or Time Spiral that might better occupy the slot.
Anyway, I am not sure which route to go with. Also I have no sideboard for either deck. Any suggestions for either deck or a sideboard would be appreciated.
It is a fast and hard hitting combo deck for Vintage, but often inconsistent and vulnerable to sideboard hate.
I have tested the archetype quite a bit, but have been doing too many of the wrong things. For one thing, I never really ran enough lands. The temptation to run as many broken cards as possible is kinda strong for this format. My land count was only too low by 1-3 usually, but that makes a huge difference. I also kept fighting to squeeze Force of Will into the deck. It never worked.
One card that I really like that I've never seen in other Rectal Agony decklists is Abeyance. It acts like a white Time Walk in some situations and is is an excellent tool for hosing disruption when you want to go off.
My current decklist is...
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
3 Abeyance
1 Frantic Search
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
3 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
4 Academy Rector
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Scrubland
2 Tundra
For those who are not familiar with it, this deck ruins the opponent's gameplan early on with Duress and Cabal Therapy, then goes to play Academy Rector as early as possible. It uses Cabal Therapy/Academy Rector (an awesome combo if ever there was one) to fetch Yawgmoth's Bargain, draw 15 or so cards and play Tendrils of Agony for the win. In order to kill an opponent at 20, the Tendrils needs to have 9 spells played before it on the same turn. This deck has 14 nonland mana sources and plenty of cheap spells, making that relatively easy.
Some explanations of the card choices...
The artifact mana (Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Moxes, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring): This deck needs to be fast (it's a combo deck) and it needs to play several spells all in the same turn. These cards are all standard fare for Tendrils of Agony decks.
The draw power (Ancestral Recall, Timetwister, Time Walk, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Frantic Search, Brainstorm): These should be pretty self-explanatory. The P9 blue spells are pretty much automatic inclusions in this sort of deck. Bargain, the most broken enchantment in Magic is either fetched with Rector or hard-cast almost every game in which the deck wins (Extract would really hurt this deck, but no one uses Extract). Frantic Search is free card drawing, which is reason enough to use it (also it can generate mana with Academy). Brainstorm is a utility spell to help the deck find what it needs. Its drawback can be circumvented with a little help from Polluted Delta or Flooded Strand.
The disruption (Abeyance, Durress, Cabal Therapy): A well played Abeyance can slow down the opponent to avoid losing control in a game. Duress is a very typical first turn play. It eats Force of Will and other annoyances, as well as revealing the opponent's hand for Cabal Therapy. Cabal Therapy is even better than Duress if you know what is in the opponent's hand. It can also be used twice and is the perfect way to kill your own creature.
Academy Rector: Yawgmoth's Bargain is an "I win" card if it resolves. All that is needed is a reasonably large life total. Of course, being among the most broken cards ever, it is restricted in Vintage. Academy Rector is not restricted. Each one of these can put Yawgmoth's Bargain directly into play as long as you can get Cabal Therapy into your graveyard somehow.
Dark Ritual: If you are reading this, you probably understand why running anything less than four copies of Dark Ritual would be stupid.
Yawgmoth's Will: Another "I win" card. This one needs a big graveyard to do it's job. Yawgmoth's Win is perfect for reusing Tendrils of Agony, Dark Ritual, Black Lotus, etc. It has allowed me to go off in situations where I would normally have "fizzled." Besides, everyone loves Yawgmoth's Will.
The tutors (Demonic and Vampiric): They help you find stuff because you don't always get perfect draws. I hate using Vampiric Tutor in this deck but has saved me on a couple of occasions.
The bouncy stuff (Chain of Vapor, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild): Sometimes your opponents will want to win for some reason and will play cards like Trinisphere or Null Rod. These help to counteract those sorts of situations. They are also great for bouncing your own artifacts in order to increase the storm count.
Tendrils of Agony: The kill card. Right now it's the ONLY kill card in the deck. Running less than two is a very bad idea. Running more than two means you draw them instead of cards you need in order to go off. Two shall be the number of Tendrils and the number of Tendrils shall be two.
Tolarian Academy: Tolarian makes blue mana for each of your artifacts. This deck has lots of artifacts. Tolarian Academy makes lots of mana. Mana can be used to cast spells...
The other lands: This is a three-color deck. The dual lands make a nice mana base for ensuring you don't get manascrewed. The Gemstone Mines back them up when necessary. The Onslaught fetchlands thin your deck, find ANY of your dual lands, and help Brainstorm. These are good things.
I am considering several changes to this decklist. I recently overhauled parts of it, so there may be some things to iron out. Yesterday, I threw another deck together on Apprentice. I was trying to think of ways to alter Rectal Agony.
What came to mind was Draw7. Draw7 is a bad storm deck. After Burning Desire was killed by the restrictions of Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond, the storm decks that were being used were TPS, Rectal Agony, and Draw7. TPS is the only one of these that is still being used in tournaments (that I know of) because it is like the best deck ever and it is the one I should be working on...
Anyway, Rectal Agony never really saw much success because of the things I already mentioned. Draw7 had other problems. The idea was that instead of trying to use any controllish elements at all, the deck would use the most broken mana-producing and card-drawing cards in any color to fuel multiple "draw7" spells and then win with Tendrils of Agony. I don't have a decklist for it because it sucks, but it typically used the following...
Mind's Desire
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
Timetwister
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Memory Jar
Tinker
Diminishing Returns
Elvish Spirit Guide
Fastbond
Time Spiral
The deck had multiple ways of comboing into Tendrils of Agony and was cool when it worked. But it was easily disrupted and would crap out a lot (like you think you can go off and then through no fault of your own the deck fails to give you something you need). Also it used the horrible, horrible Diminishing Returns.
Eventually, most of the cards in this deck made their way into a deck that most people call "DeathLong" (but that name sounds pathetic and the deck doesn't have anything to do with Mike Long, not to mention the fact that it would make perfect sense to call it "Deathstorm" which is just about the coolest name for a deck I've ever heard of) that used Death Wish and a cool sideboard.
But I was not thinking of Deathstorm, I was thinking of Draw7. And so it led me to this. I'm still fiddling with it since I only made it yesterday. I am not sure whether it could replace the traditional 3-color Rectal Agony or not. Here's what I've got right now...
Oversoul's Ultimate Five-Colored Rectal Agony Deck of Doom! or "Ultimate Agony"
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Windfall
1 Fastbond
1 Mind's Desire
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Frantic Search
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
4 Academy Rector
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Glimmervoid
4 City of Brass
2 Reflecting Pool
Most of the cards are the same, so I won't bother explaining everything again. The mana base is different. The lands aren't as simple and friendly as dual lands, and there can be no fetchlands. But now any of the non-Academy lands can produce any color of mana, effectively eliminating any "color-screw" scenarios, as well as opening up the maindeck (Wheel of Fortune) and sideboard (Xantid Swarm perhaps?) for any card in the game, not just the on-color ones.
This deck loses the cool disruptive tech of Abeyance and the bouncy stuff, but uses more "draw7" spells, which enable it to better draw into either Rector and Therapy, Bargain itself, Mind's Desire, or just combo off without any of them.
One choice I'm unsure about is Fastbond. With Bargain, Mind's Desire, or "draw7" spells, a certain amount of the cards you get are bound to be lands. These do nothing ordinarily, but a single-mana enchantment can change all of that. However, in practice it has not been necessary for the deck, and there are other cards like Memory Jar or Time Spiral that might better occupy the slot.
Anyway, I am not sure which route to go with. Also I have no sideboard for either deck. Any suggestions for either deck or a sideboard would be appreciated.
