I’m early posting this, the Historic Chimil Midweek Magic event isn’t until next week (July 9 - 11), but I’m already thinking about it.
About
Name Historic Chimil Life Lock
Deck
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Sanguine Bond
4 Spinewoods Armadillo
4 Herd Migration
4 Colossal Skyturtle
4 Cease // Desist
11 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Thornwood Falls
4 Lush Oasis
4 Brokers Hideout
4 Cabaretti Courtyard
4 Riveteers Overlook
Am I missing anything? Does this deck seem like it should work? Anyone have a deck that can win faster, or more reliably?
The plan is: mulligan any hand that has Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, and hope really hard not to draw them. Discover one at the end of your first turn and the other at the end of your second. Then use one of your two-mana life-gaining effects, or if you don’t have one, wait until turn 3 and play a land that either gains you life or damages your opponent. As soon as either of those things happen, the two enchantments will trigger each other infinitely.
32 of the deck’s cards are able to start the combo (once you have both enchantments), and 22 of the 42 lands enter untapped, so having two mana at the end of turn 2 should also happen pretty reliably.
The WotC page says you’ll “discover a spell with cost 6 or lower” each turn. I assume it actually means 5, like Chimil itself, but if not then we’ll have to cut Spinewoods Armadillo.
Weaknesses:
- Anything that gives the opponent hexproof will block the combo. Colossal Skyturtle can help with creatures and Boseiju with Leyline of Sanctity, but Teyo, the Shieldmage probably ruins our day.
- “Can’t gain life” effects block the combo. Most of them are creatures and again, Colossal Skyturtle gives us some hope, but we have no way to deal with Tibalt, Rakish Instigator.
- Cheap counterspells like Annul or Spell Pierce will be good against us if Chimil’s uncounterable effect isn’t part of the emblem.
- Enchantment destruction will obviously be effective.
- Can’t lose/can’t win effects are a problem. Gideon of the Trials is the most likely, and our only hope of answering it is that they’ll turn it into a creature and we’ll have a Skyturtle. Phyrexian Unlife will cause a draw.
- “Can’t cast spells” effects like Teferi, Time Raveler will stop us, and a lot of other decks too.
Between the two Swamps and Colossal Skyturtle’s 2G ability, it’s theoretically possible to recover from disruption and cast our enchantments fairly, but I doubt most opponents will twiddle their thumbs while you do it.
Even though the deck isn’t bulletproof, I think it should be able to win reliably when not disrupted, and maybe occasionally even through a bit of disruption.
You might think I’m crazy for working so hard to break a casual format that will only exist for two days, and I wouldn’t disagree with you…
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Additional thoughts:
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If we’re losing our enchantments too often, we could build in some redundancy by going up to two copies of each. The problem with that is there’s a 33% chance you’ll get a duplicate on turn 2, in which case you’d have to wait until turn 3 or 4 to win. So I guess it’s worth it if our enchantments are getting killed in more than 33% of games.
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I was wrong about Teferi in particular, the Historic-legal version is the “fixed” Alchemy card and that doesn’t get in Chimil’s way. Other can’t-cast effects, such as Drannith Magistrate, are still a concern.
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Looking at the list of weaknesses I laid out starts me thinking about how I’d build a white prison deck for this format. Unfortunately, it would need a lot of rares and I don’t have quite that many wildcards.
As I keep thinking about this… if it turns out that a lot of people are bringing landless decks that just rely on discovering bombs, I think you could probably build a pretty cheap prison deck if you’re willing to spring for a copy or two of Drannith Magistrate. You’d just have to make sure you can clean up anything that slips through the net if you end up playing second. But there are some commons and uncommons that can help: Guardian Naga, Stormkeld Vanguard, Sword Coast Serpent, and Colossal Skyturtle are all undiscoverable, provide cheap ways to answer various permanents, and double as finishers. Round the deck out with Bant lands and whatever 6+ MV control spells you already have in your collection.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that a landless deck isn’t the right approach for this format. Aside from being vulnerable to the Magistrate, it just seems like all those cards in your hand are a potential resource that you shouldn’t waste.
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Report
I played this deck for a couple of hours this evening, and my recordkeeping may not be exact, but I’ve gone something like 57 - 9.
At the last minute I cut the Cabaretti Courtyards and four Forests to make room for playsets of Stormkeld Vanguard and Sword Coast Serpent. I don’t know if it was worth it or not – I rarely cast either, but I also never had trouble getting the mana I needed, so it’s probably fine either way.
Losses
- Opponent went second and discovered Vanishing Verse, exiling my first enchantment. If it had been in the graveyard there would have been some hope, but there’s no getting it back from exile.
- Opponent went first and discovered Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. Tucked my first enchantment on their turn 2. No problem, I’ll just rediscover it, right? I did, and they cast March of Otherworldly Light on it. (A few games later another opponent also discovered Teferi on their first turn, but I had gone first, so I just untapped and won.)
- I drew Sanguine Bond on turn 2 (and didn’t feel like I had a reasonable chance of surviving to turn 5).
- Opponent’s first discovery was Archive Trap, and it milled one of my enchantments. I didn’t have a Skyturtle, but stuck it out to see if I could draw one. Once they’d milled all four, I had no outs.
- Opponent went first and discovered Gilded Lotus, then Goblin Charbelcher. I actually drew Exquisite Blood on turn 2, but it didn’t even matter; they had the win and were just slow-rolling it. (I did beat some Charbelcher decks – the match-up mostly depends on who goes first.)
- Lost to another turn-2 combo deck: Quintorius Kand plus Spark Double.
- Drew Sanguine Bond. Survived long enough to cast it, but lost to Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God’s ultimate right afterwards.
- Another Charbelcher deck, and I drew Sanguine Bond on turn 2. Wrecked their first Charbelcher but they just got a second.
- And yet another Charbelcher deck. I’ve been lucky to go first against them more often than not.
Other notes
- The deck is very reliable. Accidentally drawing one of your own enchantments so you can’t discover it is the biggest risk.
- The Colossal Skyturtle backup plan has worked a couple of times. The most interesting was one where my opponent went first and discovered Weave the Nightmare. They didn’t heist either of my enchantments, but they did get a Stormkeld Vanguard and used it to destroy my first enchantment. I chose patience, and worked on thinning my library and gaining life to stay alive. By a stroke of luck, I drew a Skyturtle just in time. I was able to re-cast my enchantment and play a Thornwood Falls with lethal damage on the other side of the table.
- The second-most exciting win was against an opponent who went first and discovered Railway Brawler, then Gigantosaurus to make a 20/20.
- Very few people were playing landless decks, so I didn’t explore the Drannith Magistrate prison idea I talked about previously. Most of the landless strategies that I did see were Charbelcher decks. Magistrate might be good against them, but no better than the Life Lock plan I was already playing – both match-ups go to whomever wins the die roll.
- I’d estimate that a third or more of players just grabbed a Historic deck and didn’t specifically build for the format (nothing wrong with that, I’ve done it for plenty of Midweek Magic events myself).
- Apologies to anyone who lost to this ridiculous nonsense. At least it was quick?
I finally encountered a turn-one combo deck; it works like this:
- Mulligan to find Mutavault and activate it.
- Discover Transmogrify.
- Transmogrify your Mutavault into Cultivator Colossus. It’ll die instantly.
- The rest of your deck is all lands, and most importantly, features all of the OTJ crime deserts. Draw them all, put them all into play, deal lethal damage and then some.