We usually win with
Underworld Breach or
Ad Nauseam as a powerful engine into casting
Thassa's Oracle with no cards in library, this can be achieved via a number of different effects.
The most common are
Demonic Consultation,
Tainted Pact,
Brain Freeze.
While this section focuses on how to win the game once you have the cards assembled. Let's talk about how you REALLY win the game. In this deck the real MVP is
Underworld Breach AND
Ad Nauseam. Opposed to traditional turbo naus decks we may or may not mulligan into a fast
Ad Nauseam. Not having
Kraum, Ludevic's Opus in the command zone means mulliganning to 4&5 is riskier. The ideal game plan is to mull into mana + engine/win con/tutor + counter(s). Examples of engines include
Teferi, Master of Time,
Rhystic Study,
Necropotence, or wheels + mana rocks. Examples of win cons are
Underworld Breach,
Ad Nauseam,
Thassa's Oracle +
Demonic Consultation or
Tainted Pact any of the wheel except
Wheel of Misfortune +
Hullbreacher or
Notion Thief.
Ad Nauseam can be a card that takes 'getting use to'. A turn 2
Ad Nauseam is usually very safe, especially if people were greedy and have a low number of cards in hand and/or little open mana. In blind metas decks are running a balance of stack interaction and permenant interaction which helps us. After turn 2 you have to start being more careful. Between turns 4-6 onwards require typically having 2-3 counters. Other scenarios arise during the mid to late game, in real game play, usually one of the three:
- You assemble a win manually via draws and engines with enough counters to just manually win without Naus
- Someone tried to win and got stopped (almost no counters needed now depending on the size of the counter war)
- Someone is trying to win and you can Naus on top of their win since Naus is instant speed. You won't be able to win on top of them but stop them and then win on your turn.
Another thing to keep in mind while playing Ad Naus decks is that they are designed to win with 0 floating mana and mainphase. This works due to the three pillars above. If you have to use a significant amount of your fast mana for turbo-ing out Ad Naus and if Dockside count is lower than 3-4 you may have trouble mainphasing, but if you are crafty, and take your time you can usually find a line.
So you have the pieces what now:
Breach Lines
Main Breach Line
Play Underworld Breach
Play Lion's Eye Diamond Lion's Eye Diamond
Crack Lion's Eye Diamond for UUU
Escape and crack Lion's Eye Diamond as many times as reasonable given GY size
Technically only 1/3 escaped of Lion's Eye Diamonds need be cracked for non UUU and still pay for Brain Freeze but usually you just get the mana you need after Brain Freezing yourself
Escape Brain Freeze
Repeat step 3 What this does is save about 20 cards from needing to be escaped when you are trying/need to mill everyone. This isn't massively important but can be if you need to win through an angel's grace and have a lot of cards exiled from a necro or forbidden tutor.
Underworld Breach + Lotus Petal
Possible, requires around 66 cards to be exiled to escape, see Breach Math
Breach + to hand tutor
Cast to hand tutor for Lion's Eye Diamond
Cast or escape Lion's Eye Diamond
Using mana or Lion's Eye Diamond, escape the tutor getting Brain Freeze, you are now in the main breach line
Cast Underworld Breach
Cast Hullbreacher
Cast Wheel of Fortune or Windfall This will fill your GY with cards and give you treasures to recast the Wheel of Fortune or Windfall
eventually you'll find one of the other Breach lines
Cast Underworld Breach
Cast Lion's Eye Diamond
Cast Praetor's Grasp
Use Lion's Eye Diamond and PGrasp to find an opponents win con and cast using mana from Lion's Eye Diamond
Special Notes:
This line is typically used when too many things have been exiled from a consult as tutor
PGrasp can often be used to grab breach from an opponent and start this chain
Breach Modularity
Famjii does an excellent job of describing the modularity of Breach, I have copied and pasted his post with a few personal additions and removals not as relevant for this deck list:
Underworld Breach is not a A + B + C combo. Breach itself isn't that replaceable in the combo. Lion's Eye Diamond and Brain Freeze aren't as absolutely necessary and you can go for different lines if either is exiled or you haven't yet found them.
Lotus Petal instead of Lion's Eye Diamond: You can utilize Lotus Petal instead of Lion's Eye Diamond in the main line. However, this will require more cards initially in the graveyard because you will have to escape lotus petal twice to cast a Brain Freeze. Once storm count gets large enough though, Lotus Petal can be used as a pretty good substitute until you hit Lion's Eye Diamond or until you find a more efficent mana source. You can win with just a Lotus Petal but it is considerably more inefficent than Lion's Eye Diamond.
Using Dockside Extortionist and a bounce spell instead of Lion's Eye Diamond: Easiest to achieve with Snap but doable with other bounce spells. Requires your opponents to have at the very least 3 artifacts or enchantments on the battlefield and for you to have 2 lands in play in the case of Snap.
Wheel instead of Brain Freeze: You can utilize Wheel of Fortune or Windfall instead of Brain Freeze with Breach. Although this seems functionally the same, the combo with wheels is much more vulnerable because you are filling up your opponents hands each time with potential interaction (the scariest being Force of Negation). Note that with Lion's Eye Diamond and Wheel, you are only netting one additional card from your graveyard making it hard to escape mana positive rocks and/ or counterspells to protect your combo.
Using Intuition after Breach to assemble a protected win: Depending on which parts of the combo you have you can use Intuition to find the rest and protection to finish out the game safely. Best interaction you have when storming off is Pact of Negation (counter target spell for exiling 3 cards from your graveyard) and Flusterstorm for opposing Flusterstorms.
Intuition is incredibly powerful more discussed in ###Single Card Discussion
Going off with Breach and Lion's Eye Diamond with Necropotence on the Field*
Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond and Necropotence in play. Brain Freeze in hand or graveyard
Crack Lion's Eye Diamond adding 3 Blue and discarding your hand
Necropotence exile triggers go on the stack
Respond to exile triggers by escaping Brain Freeze
You are now in the main breach line.
Consultation
Thassa's Oracle + Consultation effect
Cast Thoracle
Maintain priority in response to ETB cast consult effect -> exile library
ETB resolves win the game
Consultation effect + GY recursion
Cast consult effect getting Thassa's Oracle
Cast recusion effect (Underworld Breach, Kess, Dissident Mage, Yawgmoth's Will)
Cast Thoracle
With GY recursion recast consultation effect in response to ETB
Cast Tainted pact get Thassa's Oracle
Cast Thoracle
In response to the ETB maintain priority and cast Demonic Consultation
There is a 'cold' start Intuition pile.
With a GY recursion card such as Kess, yawgs will, or Breach the combination of Thoracle, Reanimate, and Demonic Consultation / Tainted Pact will give you a win in hand regardless of what they pick.
Thief Lines
A: Windfall/Timetwister/Wheel of Fortune + B: Notion Thief/Hullbreacher
Cast your A side
Hold priority and flash in your B side
Winning off the cards with notion thief or the fewer cards + mana is almost promised that turn if not next turn.
Someone casts an Angel's Grace. Well you shouldn't have binned your whole deck because with Brain Freeze + tutors you only needed to bin ~40 cards + some for tutors etc. What you can do now is bounce everyone's meaningful perms, mill their libraries and cast Wheel of Fortune / Windfall. Now they have no hand, no deck, and nothing meaningful on the battlefield. They will lose when they go to draw a card.
