Mana Tax: How to annoy anyone.

you'll love playing this deck. you'll hate playing against it.

psychic venom is on the sideboard. contaminated ground and pooling venom are better, but you can use psychic venom instead of creature lockdown cards when fighting decks that have no creatures.

added some sideboard stuff that can be used in a situation where you battle a deck that has little to no creatures.

nice choices. I really like psychic venom and power taint.

i'd have no way to cast it other than bringing it directly into play with zur, and i dont like that it hurts me as well as my opponent, as there is nothing in this deck to counteract the damage i'd do to myself.

mana short pretty much accomplishes the same thing, but also forces them to tap out, which is what you want.

you can if you want to, but my personal preference i'd rather not take any of the cards out of the deck to put land tax in.

propaganda is the same as ghostly prison, except blue, which i have more mana of. sphere of safety would be excellent, but the mana cost is a little high for my taste. propaganda only costs 3, and can be brought straight into play with zur's ability.

when i play this deck i like to act as smug as possible, for that extra irritation factor.

the price of the deck can be brought down by using less dual lands, however I prefer the flexibility at the cost of speed with the dual lands

thank you! this is by far my favorite deck that I've ever made. I enjoy thinking outside the box when creating decks, so most of my creations operate a little strangely.

There is one Propaganda in this deck. additional Propagandas come in the form of Copy Enchantments if needed. Typically however, Propaganda is not needed, as most of the time the rest of your enchantments is sufficient enough to provide your defense.

Magus of the Tabernacle won't work because you don't want to give your opponent the option to kill off his creatures. You want to maintain control of the field as much as you can.

Mana Web is a great card to go with this deck, and earlier versions of this deck did include one.

All in all, this deck of course is subject to your interpretation everyone, you can swap cards in and out as you see fit, this is just a list of what I use personally as a guideline for you.

there isn't enough white mana in this deck to reliably get a white spell out that requires 2 white, and creatures aren't needed to kill off your opponent the way this deck is built.

BigSean has deleted this comment.

im not against it, he fits well. if i had to choose one card to take out to put him in, i'd exchange 1 copy enchantment for him.

id probably put one or two of those on the sideboard for non-creature decks. because slow motion goes back to your hand after it kills the target, and mind whip simply stays in play so they dont have the option to just chuck the monster.

i played my brother's friends recently, they had heard about my deck and wanted to battle. after a couple games they refused to play me anymore :(

erosion is not needed, contaminated ground and pooling venom are better because you actually want their lands to stay in play, but poisoned.

sphere of safety is like a more expensive version of propaganda, making it unable to be brought directly into play by Zur's effect and would be redundant. if you really need more mass creature defense, copy enchant propaganda.

rhystic circle is not needed, defense from creatures and spells is taken care of by debilitators and mana locking. also there is not enough white mana to reliably cast a white spell that requires 2 white mana.

ok then

using less dual lands or cheaper ones can help lower the cost. only arcane sanctums are essential to the deck. also mundungu can be substituted for something else in the interest of cost.

particularly Sunken Ruins, which runs about 10 dollars a piece, you can just use an island and swamp instead, but i prefer the flexibility.

Replaced the ruins with dimir guildgates and used a different card service. Lowered the cost to $30, bought it yesterday. Can't wait for it to arrive!

let me know how you like it and if you need help with the strat

it all started years ago when my cousin and i were talking about the worst ways to die, and he mentioned that dying from psychic venom would be the most embarrassing and horrible way to die because the card was so stupid and awful. and so i became driven to create a deck that would be able to kill someone with psychic venom.

it does 2 damage to its controller. your opponent gains control of it when it comes into play.

id probably roll with chronic flooding in a more mill focused deck. discarding is not a focus of this deck, more just locking them out of their mana sources from casting more useful things.

as for psychic venom, i used to use them, but dropped them in favor of contaminated ground and pooling venom because they are better. however they remain on the sideboard for when you need them if you find yourself fighting a deck that has no creatures.

ok sure. i see ya

propaganda can be brought into play with Zur's ability. Norn's Annex cannot. also, there isn't enough white mana to reliably cast a double white spell, and so you would find yourself paying with life.

That is true that you may have to pay with life due to not having the white mana, but it also forces you opponant to pay with life if they are not playing white. I took down a tournemant quality dredge deck with 2 norn's annex in a casual deck just because he was having to pay 4 life to attack me with 2/2 creatures

if there was more white in this deck it would be more feasible, but the casting cost is too high and the wrong color. once you have enough enchantments in play, you can take all the time you want to kill your opponent. speed isnt a factor. and if he was taking double damage to swing at you then his downfall would be imminent anyway.

What would he take out anyway?

Speaking of enchantments, shouldn't Mystic Remora at least be in the sideboard for playing against noncreature decks? The cumulative upkeep is nasty to deal with, but with consistent land drops (which you'll get from drawing cards) it shouldn't be a problem.

Speaking of enchantments, shouldn't Mystic Remora at least be in the sideboard for playing against noncreature decks? The cumulative upkeep is nasty to deal with, but with consistent land drops (which you'll get from drawing cards) it shouldn't be a problem.

i feel like it would do better with defenses and a couple sleeper agents instead of the land venom cards.

he might be a good addition if it fits your playstyle. im generally pretty wary of my opponent drawing cards early on before i get a solid lock on him though, which is primarily when you'd use his ability.

with 2 icy manipulators in play and the rest of your debilitators, you're pretty safe from creatures for the most part, unless you're fighting weenies, in which case thats what propaganda's for. hidden strings is great but im just really not sure what i'd take out to put it in. mana web is more of a luxury item in this deck than a key component because it can't be brought directly into play with Zur (which consequently is why nearly everything in this deck is an enchantment that costs 3 or less).

you can, but bear in mind you don't have much white mana to work with. personally i wouldn't, i haven't really found myself in a position where i need to fish things out of the grave. it really only takes a few enchantments to begin the lockdown cycle, and then from there you can take all the time in the world.

fair point

winter orb could work, but i think you'd have to return this and add some mana producing artifacts or scale up the mana, because you would loose speed since winter orb also affects you.

I'm very glad you like it. this deck took years to get right. and I'm pretty sure it now ranks as the most hated deck that any and all of my opponents have ever encountered >:)

I hope you liked this deck :)

the point of the deck is to either force him to pay mana or give him the option to pay mana for things, in order to lock his mana out to play other things. stab wound is excellent for bleeding out but for the purposes of the deck its actually a weaker card than any other of the cards in the deck.

no room for gigadrowse, i wouldn't take any of the cards out for that.

this deck is my baby. it's seen a decade worth of development and evolution. its a great deck for beginners as well as experienced players because it doesn't have a learning curve due to the fact that it doesn't matter what order your cards come out, so long as you keep playing them. my only regret is that its not exactly cheap to make.

Yeah, the price is really high.

Same goes here with my wife!!! Great deck!

I liked it. :)

There, it has my like too :)

Aaagh, I HATE this kind of deck. +1!

isn't this great?

i guess but why be the target of everyone

Now don't get me wrong here, I do like the deck, but why on earth play with taplands???
It will get steamrolled by affinity, infect and other fast aggro...
It's not claiming to be a budget deck in the tags, so why stall yourself???

2 words. Kitchen Table. :)
casual is pretty much the only place a deck like this can shine I think, but when it works... what a sight to behold. :)

also mana web helps with that a bit, slows down opponents mana usage to almost nothing.

this is not the point

use any kinds of lands you want. those are just the ones i happen to have. this list is literally what my deck looks like. feel free to substitute whatever cards you want. just know that in it's present form it works and works well.

And now I got to my post number 1200! More yayness :D

sweet. :)

i find that early on you want mana flexibility to lock your opponent down, you will be spending a lot of it early, and typically wont be able to afford allowing your opponent to prevent you from spending mana, even at expense to himself. but its not a bad idea as a sideboard option if you find yourself coming up against creatureless decks.

capsize is pretty good but a little mana heavy for the buyback. if you're going to swap something out for it i would definitely recommend swapping with mark of eviction

Most of the spells are to heavy for the decks number of lands, if you wanted to go real competitive :D

what do you mean? 1/3rd of the deck is land, 2/3 of that land is dual color, and there are no spells that cost more than 4 mana, the bulk of your spells cost 1-3 mana only.

It's a very old myth that "any" deck can work with 1/3 lands :D It is however a VERY persistent myth...

Working from the view that you want to lock down your opponent's deck as fast as posible, you need to cast your locks as fast as possible or the opponent will slip away, simple as that.

Such a speed demands 24 lands...

Why?

Let's say you want to draw a land each turn, and cast a spell with an equal cost.

At turn 1 you need 1 land, and a 1cc spell. (sleeper agent or paralyze)
At turn 2 you need 2 lands and a 2cc spell. (containment ground)
At turn 3 you need 3 lands and a 3cc spell. (mana web)
At turn 4 you need 4 lands and a 4cc spell. (zur, the enchanter)

Since this takes 4 turns and you start with 7 cards you will have only 10 cards to perform this.
Since 4 of the 10 cards needs to be lands, the rate of lands is certainly not 1/3, but larger 1/2.5

I've had computersimulations running to generate mana, and one of the better "curves"
(Mana really does not curve in general when looking at evolutionary generated solutions)

I can recommend one "curve"
12 cards costing 1 mana
12 cards costing 2 mana
8 cards costing 3 mana
4 cards costing 4 mana

Though it would be very hard to fit this deck into those frames :D

i rarely have a problem with mana when i play this deck. try drawing a few sample hands, you'll find that you will almost always start with at 2 lands, with a 3rd one within your first 3 draws. remember that speed isn't that important to this deck because every card you play slows your opponent down. typically i offload a bunch of 1 and 2 mana spells my first few turns to keep them slow, and then roll out the 3-4 mana spells after i get a decent grip.

I seriously find the above hard to believe unless you mulligan a lot.

I play 22 lands and occasionally only draw 1 land on the opening hand.
And I've experimented with 20 and 18 land curves a hell of a lot of times.

In total I've been keeping an eye on mana for more than 15 years (I started to use computersimulations at ice age)

When I test my mana, it isn't unusual for me to run several tests, running up to 200 games in some tests to look at certain aspects of the design, and while doing this I adjust the mana using a personal method which tells me a lot about the mana that I've got.

I think you play in a relaxed environment, which allows you to play with stuff like 12 lands that tap, while I allways go competitive rogue (which demands that you do stuff at turn 1 or often die soon, so I use a maximum of 2 taplands total!)

The 1/3 must be mana solution is for casual play :D, so if you want to be competitive you should go other ways.

i almost never have a problem with mana in the many years ive been playing it. if you scroll up there and hit the "draw sample hand" tab and click it a bunch of times you can see how often you draw less than 2 land. in 25 redraws i just clicked through, there was only 1 draw that i had less than 2 lands.

statistically speaking, drawing less than 2 lands is rather unlikely in any case since 1/3rd of the deck is land, and you get 7 cards to start with. and since nothing costs more than 4 mana, and the majority of your mana is multi-color, you should experience very few instances of having significant mana shortages.

My experiences with your mana tells me that you perhaps percieve your landrate differently than it actually behaves, which is
quite normal human behaviour.

I "redrew" 100 times, and here is the breakdown:

0 lands = 4%
1 lands = 21%
2 lands = 26%
3 lands = 30%
4 lands =14%
5 lands = 3%
6 lands = 2%
7 lands = 0%

0 lands + 1 lands is a total of 25%, meaning that every fourth game (statistically) you get the bad hand.
I have the patience to redraw a lot more times if you want to get a clearer picture of it all.

I've got nothing against the theme of the deck and have actually supported it several times, but when it comes to the discussion of mana I will go through hell to tell people how wrong they are...

The 1/3 advice actually have a source, which I have traced back to the computer version of mtg, produced by microprose, which set up some general advice on how to build a deck, and I have the bloody manual at home because I bought the game. The 1/3 advice is an advice from the very beginning of magic which annoyingly persists despite many updates made by wotc, which itself have refined their own advice a lot.

i still have to respectfully disagree, as someone who still regularly plays this deck. i rarely have a bad hand.

out of 100 test draws, i got 0 land 3 times, and 1 land 18 times, which comes out to 21% chance for a "bad hand"

however of those 18 single mana hands, 9 of them had a land card as the first draw off the top of the deck. which effectively means that theres only a 11% chance for a "bad hand" in a vacuum (which is i would argue 10% chance at a bad hand is an acceptable rate of failure for any deck), which is further reduced by the fact that you dont necessarily need 3 lands by your third turn because of the abundance of cards that cost 2 or less mana to play.

Part of my side of the argument was that you were probably not playing competitive, and I was interested in making it better.

Stuff like playing 6 4-cost in a 20 land deck just isn't that, unless it's in a more relaxed environment.

I guess part of my curiosity back then came from the number of likes the deck had earned.
The 100 like days are basically over, because only trolls get that many points these days.

It's been a while since you were active, at first I thought someone had necroed your post, but then I saw you had put it in unloved mode, so I decided to rekindle "the fire" welcome back.

You will find a number of oldies still active, including me, but we also got trolls who've clung on for just as long.

At some point you migh wonder if there might be a correlation in that fact, but that's a road best not to be walked.

im not playing competitively at all. this is more for casual table matches, i even wrote it in the deck description. im old and theres too many new cards for me to keep up with lol

i pop in once in a while when someone talks to me about mtg and i get that itch to try to come up with something new. stay tuned, im working on something ridiculous ;)

i remember this deck from a long time ago i proxied this up like 8-9 years ago and used it on my brother it is fun

i thought about making an updated version of this and my idea brought me to this
https://www.mtgvault.com/vaan104/decks/urzas-power/
none of the same cards but same idea of not allowing your opponent mana

how do you win with it? theres a lot of things to control your opponents mana but im not seeing anything that would help you trigger a win?

He simply taps the lands that are enchanted with the damage dealing enchantments.

@wickeddarkman, no i mean the deck that he posted the link for. if you look at it the only things he has that deals any sort of damage or can trigger a win is 1 morphling and 3 zur the enchanters, which he could only play one at a time anyway. so unless it's only purpose is to play in 2v2 or 3v3 etc, i dont see how to win with it

Then I'd say morphling.
Sometimes beatdown is all it takes.
I'm old enough to have seen the era where morphing decks were the ultimate and only wincon.
Then dredge came along.

hes only got one in the whole deck tho. seems like a really unreliable way to win, unless you want all your games to last 30 minutes

That was the old way of doing things :)
The theory behind it is called the weissman principle, and the first example used was that of 1 mesa pegasus as the only kill card.

Then people invented stall.

A nasty trick is to have a deck that makes the opponent panic and think they can't win the first game, then your sideboard contains some extreme stalling cards making sure that if they conceded, they can't get a win during the rest of the game.
It's not exactly a friendly approach, but it works.

Here it is...