What would Flores Say?

I spend a lot of time in the Casual room of MtGO, testing various decks. I also spend a lot of time on twitter (@wrongwaygoback if you want to follow me). Recently I posted a challenge on twitter – can you come up with a deck in which every card draws you another card. There were a few good attempts and replies, but nothing really stacked up. Then today I came up against the following deck in the Casual room.

Cantrip Lightning
A Standard Deck by: kujo

4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wall of Omens
4 Sea Gate Oracle
2 Pelakka Wurm
2 Ondu Giant

1 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Negate
4 Bant Charm

4 Ponder
1 Fireball

1 Jungle Shrine
2 Sejiri Refuge
4 Greypelt Refuge
6 Plains
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Forest
4 Terramorphic Expanse

Ok, so there are so few cards here that don’t (effectively) draw cards. They are:

4 Negate
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fireball
4 Bant Charm

And the lands. Sure, I’m cheating a little by including the Ondu Giant and Path to Exile in the list of ‘draw cards’, but what’s life without a cheat or two?

The tempting thing here is to turn it into Mythic by adding 4 x Jace, or turn it into some sort of Eldrazi Monument mashup. Or… both? If we’re prepared for a manabase that always comes into play tapped, we could have the following:

Was A Time When Flores Would Of Played This
A concept standard deck by Neale Talbot

4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wall of Omens
4 Sea Gate Oracle
3 Ondu Giant
2 Sages of the Anima
3 Pelakka Wurm

4 Ponder

4 Path to Exile
1 Esper Charm
1 Naya Charm
1 Momentous Fall

1 Eldrazi Monument

2 Sarkhan the Mad
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

2 Swamp
2 Plains
2 Forest
2 Island

1 Marsh Flats
3 Misty Rainforest

4 Seaside Citadel
4 Jungle Shrine
4 Arcane Sanctum

Okay, so it’s no Mythic; but not everyone can afford a thousand Jaces and Baneslayers and Lotus Cobras. But if you could afford just two Jaces, maybe you could play this deck.

The manabase is greedy, and accepts the fact your lands will be coming into play tapped. But if your opponent ever suffers a slightly slow start then it simply ramps, dumps its hand and draws another hand, then dumps that too. The Sages allows some pretty broken things to happen in this deck, and the miser’s Charms and Fall allow for some amazing recovery off the back of a Pelakka Wurm.

I’m not saying it’s fit for human consumption; I’m definitely not saying it’s at Tier 1 power level. But it’s as close as meeting the Twitter Challenge’s requirements and still be a competitive deck. Kudos to Kujo on MtGO.