Challenge 2-2 : What Hand?

[Salbei]

What Hand?
Challenge: 2-2
Unlocks: (Brain Freeze)
Description: skip your draw step
NavigationChallenge Index - Archive for Set 2


Please discuss this Challenge here!

[Salbei]

Found at the Archive, might be outdated.

Just finished 'What hand?', where you skip your draw phases in the game.

After moderate success with both Elves and Affinity (two decks that can produce explosive opening hands (even off a mulligan), including a round 10 where I had to go all in on a 6/8 Ornithopter when the AI cast Harmonize into Naturalise the turn before I would kill him, I decided to change tactics, and zoomed through it quickly and easily with an all-in Oath deck:

.1902 4 Oath of Druids
.333 1 Vampiric Tutor
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.331 1 Imperial Seal
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.499 1 Brainstorm
.312 1 Ponder
.1510 4 Night's Whisper
.349 4 Enlightened Tutor
.1686 4 Chromatic Sphere
.1685 4 Chromatic Star
.402 4 Sensei's Divining Top
.379 4 Bogardan Hellkite
.1198 1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
.378 4 Hellkite Overlord*
.1675 1 Progenitus
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.166 1 Mox Jet
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.17 1 Black Lotus
.1718 2 Chrome Mox
.1893 4 Forbidden Orchard
.403 4 City of Brass
.1206 4 Arcane Sanctum

Easy enough to play, simply tutor for Oath and use a Top / Sphere / Star to draw it if it's on top of your library, then smash face with giant Dragons! The AI doesn't seem scared enough of Oath to counter or destroy it, which helps...

What Hand... (unlocks Brain Freeze)
-your draw phase is skipped for all 10 matches

.1902 4 Oath of Druids
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.711 4 Serum Powder
.1893 4 Forbidden Orchard
.17 1 Black Lotus
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.1897 4 Land Grant
.12 4 Bayou
.327 4 Grim Tutor
.55 4 Dark Ritual
.390 4 Crop Rotation
.1424 1 Lotus Petal
.328 4 Idyllic Tutor
.212 4 Savannah
.1308 4 Platinum Angel
.1890 1 Demonic Consultation
.1708 4 Gamble
.241 3 Taiga

The strategies I tried here were 1) tons of card drawing, 2) landless Goblin Charbelcher, 3) Oath. Belcher was funny when it worked (black lotus + channel + belcher + no land = lol); it plays similar to this deck, only Oath costs far less mana and needs far fewer cards to put together the combo, so it was more reliable.

My original oath deck had Progenitus instead of Platinum Angel, but funny enough a turn 2 progenitus was too slow in some games! Anyway, basic idea is drop an Oath asap, mulligan when needed, and start oathing your angels into play. It only loses sometimes against the burn deck or if it mulligans itself away. Turbofog will lose because it cannot possibly win, ever, in this challenge, and it is possible to beat turbofog even if you mull to 0 and let it try to goldfish you.

This deck is simple to play; the only thinking required is when you stare at your opening hand and count whether you've got the mana and oath/ways to get an oath or not.

*Be warned* that serum powder sometimes causes an autoloss during the next upkeep; I think it happens when you mix serum mulligans with regular ones, but I'm not sure. It also sometimes causes the AI to play its first turn with some other random deck's opening hand.

I used to have duress and thoughtseize, but I tossed them for gamble/taiga (which I never used). Also note that enlightened tutor and other topdecking tutors will fail, because you never draw the card, unless you were to also include card draw for that. That's why Idyllic Tutor, Grim Tutor, etc, are used instead, even though they cost 3.

Defeated; what hand? and epic with the same dredge deck!

.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 4 Golgari Thug
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.700 4 Dread Return*
.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
.1967 4 Life from the Loam
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.1531 1 Angel of Despair
.691 4 Ichorid
.675 3 Flame-Kin Zealot
.390 4 Crop Rotation
.91 8 Forest
.1913 4 Dryad Arbor

Just added Dryad Arbor, crop rotation, forests. the dryad turns out to be very handy. Can be used for crop rotation and a flashbackcost. It also increases the chance of a good starting hand!

[HornofAmmon]

Beat this with surprising ease using, of course, an Oath deck:


.1902 4 Oath of Druids
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.1893 4 Forbidden Orchard
.17 1 Black Lotus
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.1897 4 Land Grant
.12 4 Bayou
.327 4 Grim Tutor
.55 4 Dark Ritual
.390 4 Crop Rotation
.1424 1 Lotus Petal
.328 4 Idyllic Tutor
.212 4 Savannah
.1308 2 Platinum Angel
.1890 1 Demonic Consultation
.403 4 City of Brass
.1110 3 Phyrexian Arena
.200 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn*
.1625 4 Marsh Flats
.782 1 Blightsteel Colossus

[RanDomino]

Just beat it with this Solitary Confinement deck.

2 Solitary Confinement
4 Phyrexian Arena
1 Honden of Seeing Winds
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Idyllic Tutor
4 Academy Rector
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Land Tax
1 Luminarch Ascension
4 Baleful Strix
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Balance
3 Journey to Nowhere
1 Honden of Cleansing Fire
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
4 Plains
4 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
4 Scrubland
4 Swamp
3 Island
1 Mountain

Just keep on a hand that has at least one of Phyrexian Arena, Academy Rector, either Tutor, or Timetwister, and mana to play it. That gives you 14 things of which only one needs to be in your opening hand, so the odds of you whiffing are astronomically low. Make sure you have some way to keep going after playing Solitary Confinement (squee, arena, honden, twister, tutors, etc).
Iffy choices are Baleful Strix and Journey to Nowhere since you usually become invincible after turn 4. There should probably be a full grip of Land Tax because it lets you keep on a single land. Only two Solitary Confinements is iffy, but it worked so whatever. YMMV
Games are slow but autopilot once Confinement is in play as long as you don't do something boneheaded. Wins are pretty much solely dependent on keeping an opening hand that functions.

[Emphyrio]

Tried with solitary confinement but a bit too slow sometimes, or unreliable (path of exile on Academy Rector when it's your only tutor, tried versions with more tutors/card draw instead of creature control, splashing more blue, but too slow).

Beat it very easily with HornofAmmon's Oath list after replacing the 3 Phyrexian Arena with a second Emrakul and 2 Pelakka Wurm. 2 kills not enough with demonic consultation and one of them that can be dealt with by the AI. Also could replace the 2 angels with Platinum Empirion, slightly more solid.

[discoransom]

Tired of Dredge and Oath, and after Flash Hulk failed miserably, I went for a Show and Tell build. It started with Sneak Attack, but that didn't work, so I threw in a bunch of cantrips and mana fixing with 4 copies of Intuition. It's a lot more consistent than it looks, though it took a while to tweak the build and learn to play the deck. The deck's weakness is mulligans, and once in a while the AI casts Force of Will on Show and Tell (but will usually let it resolve). And as always, Progenitus is sometimes too slow.

The mulligan decisions are painful and the endless cantrips digging for a combo piece are good action. Took about 20 runs to complete the challenge, with many ending in play errors, but most ending in mulligans. It doesn't fizzle very often.


.10920 4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
.10187 3 Progenitus
.3177 4 Intuition
.17 1 Black Lotus
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.230 1 Sol Ring
.894 1 Mana Crypt
.157 1 Mana Vault
.4962 4 Chromatic Sphere
.8501 4 Chromatic Star
.3900 4 Show and Tell
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.11606 4 Gitaxian Probe
.9595 4 Manamorphose
.9033 4 Street Wraith
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.3471 2 City of Traitors
.3078 4 Ancient Tomb
.10654 4 Scalding Tarn
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.1084 1 Merchant Scroll