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A Battle of Wits

Modern* Combo Competitive Control Domain Elementals Goodstuff Primer RGWU Toolbox

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Land (100)

Removal (52)

Toolbox (12)

Mana Fixing (20)

Protection (12)

Madcap (5)

Wishboard (8)

Card Advantage (36)

Elementals (36)

Domain (20)

Battle of Wits (8)

Other (8)

Sideboard

Both (6)

Glittering (6)

Fae (2)

Mill (1)

"Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man" — Winston Churchill

Battle of Wits is a card usually only played by the meme-lords, and mostly with good reason. To have 200 cards in our deck by the time it triggers, we probably need to play 240+ cards in our starting deck. If ~40% of the deck is lands (~96-100 lands), then that leaves 140-144 cards, or 35-36 unique playsets. In addition, since there can be at a most 4 copies of a card, each card has about a 4/240 (1.66%) chance of being drawn.

The odds are not in our favor. So how do we mitigate this massive drawback? Lets look to Yorion.

Yorion decks revolved around a simple concept. Even though we were increasing our deck size (thus lowering consistency), we gained an increase of good cards. So lets take that principle and apply it to a deck that's only four times the size.

Normally, I like to go through each card, and note upsides and downsides. That'll be a lot of text in a deck this big though, so I'll go through subsections instead.

Battle of Wits

This is the pile that inspired this deck. 3 BoW in the main, plus one in the side as a Granted target. One Moon-Blessed Cleric acts as an Eladamri's Call tutor for the Bow. I'm not running 4 because it's a fairly dead card otherwise and I don't want to see it naturally.

Card Advantage

This section pretty much consists of everything that draws a card.

  • Abundant Growth replaces itself while fixing mana
  • Bloodbraid is a hasty threat that digs for another card; most likely to be removal
  • Bonecrusher is two cards in one (Why did WotC let this mechanic through?)
  • EI looks at three cards
  • Ice taps something down while replacing itself
  • Manamorphose replaces itself while fixing mana
  • Omnath draws a card on etb, replacing itself. Also turns lands into life. And mana. And free damage.
  • Ragavan steals cards from the opponent and lets us cast it, effectively drawing us a card from the opponent's deck.
  • Risen Reef 'draws' upon entering the battlefield, and replaces any other elementals we happen to cast
  • Spreading Seas replaces itself and neutralizes an opposing land
  • T3feri draws cards while returning opponent's cards to hand, and prevents their instant interaction

Domain

These cards reward a greedy mana base. Leyline Binding and Prismatic Ending are prime removal, Tribal Flames and Kavu deal large chunks of damage, and Bring to Light enables a small toolbox plan.

I know not all of these are technically 'Domain'. However, since Ending and Bring to Light care about colors, in this list they basically have Domain.

Elementals

Elementals have gained a reputation with MH2 for being quite strong, and with good reason. Free removal is always nice. Risen Reef provides mountains of card advantage, and Ephemerate and Cloudshift provide let us double up on evoke triggers while saving the creatures. Omnath does some beastly (elementally?) things if not removed quickly.

Lands

Consists of lands ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Madcap

This was a fairly standard package across dozens of BoW decks I looked at. We lose cards like Esper Sentinel and Scion of Draco, but this drops a massive threat that the opponent must answer quickly. This is probably the most flexible package though, as some metas will want Esper Sentinels and Scions over a clunky artifact creature.

Mana Fixing

These make our mana smoother and thus the quality of life better. I'm running Ignoble over Noble because Ignoble makes , which is the most important colors, and are our least important.

Protection

These mostly hate out specific strategies while proving us with powerful cards. Force is the only counterspell in the list, so probably worth hanging on to for the more powerful cards

Removal

52 of some of the best removal spells modern has to offer. There's no such thing as overkill. For reference I'll sort them by speed and effect.

Spreading Seas is interesting. It is removal in the sense that it removes something, but it just removes type and text. Most relevant against Urza's Saga, Inkmoth Nexus, Den of the Bugbear, Hall of Storm Giants, and Celestial Colonnade. However as it makes lands Islands it can shut out non blue strategies, and will incidentally make Utopia Sprawl fall off.

Toolbox

This is another highly customizable subsection. I included Supreme Verdict for creature heavy decks and Scapeshift + Valakuts as an alt win con. For Eladamri's Call toolboxers I have Collector Ouphe for artifacts and Cleric to tutor Battle of Wits. However, both can grab powerful cards from other sections as needed (ie Madcap Experiment or Solitude respectively).

Wishboard

As we are running a 250 card deck, we can sideboard in four copies of a card and easily never see them. So instead we have a wishboard plan.

The wishboard consists of

Also have Battle of Wits to wish as a game win and Emrakul as an anti mill card (this is a flex slot, Emmy will probably actually never be relevant)

Tarmogoyf

Goyf doesn't really fit in with any of the other sections, but it can be a massive creature early in the game. If WotC prints something new and broken Goyf (or Bloodbraid Elf) probably gets cut.

One of the big issues with Battle of Wits in paper is the slow play rule, mostly in conjunction with making the deck randomized. I asked a local (certified) judge for some tips, and he noted there are a couple things that'll help:

  1. You can split the deck into pieces, shuffle the pieces, then sort of thread them back together and that'd be enough to randomize the deck. He also said "If your opponent wants it truly shuffled, they can do it themselves".
  2. You can have a judge check your list beforehand and certify the number of cards you're running. Then when Battle of Wits triggers you count how many cards are out of the deck to see if you win rather than counting then number of cards in the deck.

I'm still working on the primer. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to let me know!

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Casual

92% Competitive

Date added 1 year
Last updated 1 year
Legality

This deck is not Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)

36 - 4 Mythic Rares

147 - 6 Rares

33 - 5 Uncommons

24 - 0 Commons
Cards 248
Avg. CMC 2.68
Tokens Angel 4/4 W, On an Adventure, Treasure
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