Breaching Modern WORK IN PROGRESS
How the deck wins
This deck is able to win as early as turn 3 by creating a loop with
Tome Scour
,
Lotus Field
,
Underworld Breach
, and either
Dream's Grip
or
Twiddle
. Using twiddle to repeatedly untap lotus field for mana and tome scour to fuel the graveyard for escape costs you can mill your entire deck while netting extra mana with each loop, to eventually cast
Thassa's Oracle
for the win. We are able to use cheap cantrips and the graveyard as a resource to assemble our combo as well as having some incredibly flexible cards to have many options of play at any point in the game.
Why play this deck
*You enjoy storm-style decks
*You have no friends and want to just play solitaire magic
*You want a fast combo deck that is able to invalidate creature removal
*You miss playing Lotus Breach in Pioneer (RIP)
*You think Underworld Breach is actually stronger than Yawgmoth's Will and needs to be banned.
*You love having spells in your deck with lots of "secret modes"
Why Not to play this deck
*You want to keep the friends you have even though they have no sense of humor
*You like turning creatures sideways
*There is a large amount of graveyard hate or storm hate in your meta game
*There is a large amount of discard-based decks in your meta with pilots that are familiar with the deck
*You enjoy highly interactive decks
Tips and Tricks
If your opponent is not familiar with this type of deck, they might choose to discard your untap effect or your tome scour. This doesn't actually hurt that much, since you can replay them with underworld breach. It does usually require a few more cards in grave to get things rolling and an extra land so you're probably going off on turn 4
Double wishclaw
*You can activate wishclaw talisman, hold priority, untap it with twiddle, and activate it again before passing it to your opponent. this can be a great move to set up a turn 4 kill if you have multiple untappers and not many other pieces, but be wary that your opponent can also go get their stubborn denial/ blood moon / rest in peace/ thoughtsieze etc. Sometimes It might be better to go get one combo piece and a remand or pact of negation to protect the combo.
How to go off with wishclaw talisman without a combo piece in hand. all of these assume wishclaw is already in play from a previous turn.
*Underworld breach- turn 3 float 2 blue mana and play your lotus field. use twiddle to untap lotus field and tap it for RRR. you should have URRR in your pool. spend R to activate wishclaw and go get your breach. Cast breach with RR. you should have U left to re-cast your untapper from grave, using the two lands and one addition spell from turn 1 or a fetch. tap lotus field for UUU this time, cast tome scour from hand and start looping. If you dont have enough spells in grave when you start you will need an additional land in play to cast the tome scour first.
*twiddle/dream's grip- We will need an extra mana for this one so turn 4 is the earliest. Float UU and play lotus field . spend U to activate wishclaw and go get dream's grip (because it's slightly faster to click through on mtgo) spend the other U to untap lotus field with dream's grip. if you have a red land float R with it if not tap lotus field for RRR and tap your other land for U. Cast breach then cast dream's grip from grave and start looping with tome scour
*tome scour- Float UU and play lotus field. cast dream's grip and untap lotus field. tap for RRR. spend R to activate wishclaw to go get tome scour. cast breach with RR. spend the last U to cast dream's grip from grave, untapping lotus field. tap lotus field for UUU and start looping with tome scour and dream's grip.
"Secret modes"
*In this deck
Twiddle
is interaction and a ritual all rolled into one. When you have extras you can tap down threatening creatures pre-combat, tap down lands in your opponent's upkeep to cut them off of a color or keep them from casting a critical big spell. you can also use it to tap down annoying activated abilities such as relic of progenitus or even double up your own activated ability from wishclaw
*
Noxious Revival
is also another super flexible card that can be used to beat targeted graveyard removal in addition to improving the consistancy of the deck, or interact with other graveyard based decks such as dredge or UR storm
*
Cling to Dust
- it slices! it dices! it grinds! This card is great in matches such as death's shadow or jund, where we can tax their graveyard to shrink a goyf while drawing cards at the same time. In long matches, escaping this card can give you another draw when you have been land flooded and need that extra bit of gas. you can also use it to gain life against something like burn, although we almost always want to draw a card.
How to beat this deck
Blood Moon
/
Alpine Moon
/
Damping Sphere
/
Chalice of the Void
These shut down our ability to gain mana by repeatedly untapping
Lotus Field
, stopping us from going off while it is in play until we can bounce it with something like brazen borrower or repeal. we will usually have to go off in the same turn to avoid them replaying it, so the cheaper the answer the better.
Blood Moon
is the harder of the two to beat because of it's higher cmc for repeal and also cutting off our colors for answers if we haven't played around it
Rest in Peace
/
Leyline of the Void
/
Ashiok, Dream Render
Shutting off the graveyard until these are removed prevents us from looping the combo and also stops us from using our mill cards to help assemble the combo. counter or bounce these at the first opportunity
Relic of Progenitus
/
Tormod's Crypt
The best bet here is to try to wipe our graveyard when we cast
Underworld Breach
, making it somewhat useless. If they have the resources it is possible the lotus breach player can rebuild and still go off. one- off graveyard wipes are a little easier to play around than permanent hate. you can try to juke out your opponent into using it too early if you have extra copies of combo pieces, or like most of the rest of this list try to counter or bounce it asap.
Surgical Extraction
/
Scavenging Ooze
Targeted graveyard removal is both a little easier and harder to play around. we have
Noxious Revival
and
Cling to Dust
to make these spells whiff, but if they go through and remove a critical piece such as
Thassa's Oracle
or
Underworld Breach
from the deck there is no recovering from it.
Ranger-Captain of Eos
/
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Hate bears such as these are a pain. not only do they make it harder to go off, they contribute to pressuring our life total. Since we're in black try to pack some serious creature removal to deal with these types of cards such as
Fatal Push
or
Eliminate
.
Thoughtseize
/
Inquisition of Kozilek
/
Liliana of the Veil
Discard spells can be pretty tough to play through. cheap interaction such as
Spell Pierce
or
Veil of Summer
(if you are willing to splash a 4th color) can help to push through these and protect your combo pieces. Sometimes your opponent will pick the wrong cards since this is a lesser played deck but
Underworld Breach
or
Wishclaw Talisman
are the most damaging to lose.
Sideboarding
When sideboarding with this deck, the first decision I try to make is whether I am the "beatdown" or the "control" deck in the matchup. If the way I usually win the match is by comboing off faster and getting under their interaction or lock pieces then I am the beatdown and I will only sideboard sparingly, trying to keep the probability of a fast kill as high as I can. Usually this is vs decks like tron, combo decks that are slower than us, or decks that don't have good ways to interact until after turn 3. In matchups where my opponent is more interactive, then we have to take on a more controlling game plan, defending ourselves against their interaction and slowly assembling a plan to combo off. Usually this is against the faster aggro or combo decks, or decks that are packed with relevant interaction like death's shadow or uro control piles. The other main consideration for me when sideboarding is what type of hate cards my opponent is likely to bring in, and what my plan is for playing around them or removing them. In some cases against these very interactive decks it is better to try to bring in a different win condition to try and make their more narrow hate cards weaker.
When choosing what to side out and what to keep I am generally looking at how many of that effect I have in the deck, how important or relevant it is to the matchup, and how vital it is to actually winning the game. For example
Wishclaw Talisman
is a card I almost never side out because it is almost always relevant and can function as an extra copy of basically anything in the deck. On the other hand
Twiddle
is usually one of the first cards I side out because it is the least useful of our untappers and we have lots of copies of it as well as ways to rebuy or tutor for it. Another example that is a little more conditional is
Noxious Revival
. When the opponent is bringing in cards like
Rest in Peace
, our graveyard is much harder to use so Revival might be one of the first cards cut.
Here are a few samples of how I might sideboard in certain matches, but please take these as a guide not a rule. You will need to adapt to your individual opponent's deck and the cards that they are most likely to bring in against you. Knowing the metagame and which cards you need to play around will help you tremendously.
VS Tron
OUT
-2
Cling to Dust
-1
Repeal
-1
Pact of Negation
IN
+2
Brazen Borrower
+2
Force of Negation
/
Spell Pierce
This is a match where speed matters, so we're not changing much here. Cling comes out because we're not worried about their graveyard and we're not looking to grind, and repeal doesn't really pull its weight with all of their high-cost permenants. Borrower can bounce hate cards like
Trinisphere
or buy us a turn against a
Wurmcoil Engine
. Force and spell pierce are pretty close to even here, I would be more likely to bring in force if they are on a version playing chalice but either can catch a turn 3
Karn Liberated
which is basically the worst case scenario for us. We can also use our twiddle effects to tap down their towers in upkeep and buy ourselves some time, or tap down an oblivion stone to prevent them blowing up our underworld breach.
VS Uro-pile
OUT
-2
Twiddle
-4
Tome Scour
-1
Thassa's Oracle
-1
Pact of Negation
-4
Wishclaw Talisman
IN
4
Veil of Summer
2
Young Pyromancer
2
Brazen Borrower
1
Eliminate
2
Force of Negation
2
Spell Pierce
This is an example of a game where our opponent has tons of countermagic as well as powerful hate cards, so we're very unlikely to actually get to combo off. So we're siding out the least useful of our combo pieces and bringing in the backup plan with pyromancer and brazen borrower beats. All the interactive cards come in and we're playing protect the queen, playing on the fact that they (hopefully) sided out all of their creature removal. In game 3 you could bring wishclaw and a bare minimum of combo pieces back in if you think they will cut back on some of the hate pieces to answer your young pyromancers. Read your opponent and try to make the best decision for your situation.
VS RW Burn
OUT
-2
Twiddle
-2
Noxious Revival
-1
Pact of Negation
-2
Force of Negation
IN
2
Fatal Push
1
Eliminate
2
Brazen Borrower
2
Spell Pierce
Against burn and most other aggro decks, we're generally just trying to buy a turn or two of breathing room to have time to assemble the combo. So we're slimming down on the combo pieces, and we're cutting pact since they aren't bringing any ways to interact with us on the stack and noxious revival because we dont want to pay the life. Against burn we especially want to get rid of eidolon of the great revel pretty early since we can't combo off with it in play but dont sit on your removal for too long waiting on one, all of their threats are pretty lethal combined with a few lightning bolts.
Jund
OUT
-1
Pact of Negation
-2
Twiddle
-2
Force of Negation
-2
Opt
IN
4
Veil of Summer
1
Eliminate
2
Brazen Borrower
This is an example of a match where our opponent has some powerful answers and hate cards but not quite as many as Uro-pile. Veil does a lot of the heavy lifting to protect us against hate hate as well as spells like
Lost Legacy
. Borrower and eliminate can remove ashiok or liliana, and borrower also lets us deal with leyline of the void. Against surgical extraction we have noxious revival and cling to dust to help prevent blowouts.
CONTENT
Here's a Link to my Youtube channel, I've got some highlights from my practice sessions posted there. If you end up playing the deck and want to share your videos here, post a comment with the link below and let me know!
Bryant Cook from The Epic Storm compares gifts storm and twiddle storm. While it's a slightly different gameplay, the majority of his points apply to this deck as well
https://youtu.be/F4PJDWSSTn4
CHANGELOG
13-Sep-20 The deck got it's first run on magic online as well as several practice matches. Didn't get there but we identified a lot of weaknesses. Major overhaul of the manabase and sideboard to add green to include Veil of summer, and drop the discard spells entirely.
15-sep-20 Changed the fetches to be technically correct, max number of different names to play around pithing needle and surgical, and possibly fake someone out on the first few turns. This is totally not necessary, if you are building this deck you can use any blue fetchlands you happen to have. Also cut 1 darkslick shores for 1 steam vents to have a red source. During testing I found a few situations where I needed to cast breach without red mana from lotus field.
18-sep-20 after a bad run in with several surgical extractions I am trying a side-step plan again using young pyromancer. I also updated the mana base to improve our color consistancy without lotus field.
15-Feb-21 With the ban announcement I have decided to take another look at the deck, I've started working on a grixis version again, you can find the link in the variations section
Variations
Other versions I have played with include a straight grixis version without veil and a sultai version that relied on lotus field to cast breach. Currently I feel 4c is the best version but this may not always be the case
Future tests
Opt instead of serum visions. Frequently in the early turns we're not able to fully take advantage of the scry 2 from serum visions because of the amount of fetches we run. In addition it may also be better in sideboard games where we are bringing in more countermagic especially at the 1 Mana slot.
Drown in the loch
More flexible than eliminate or push in some ways but harder on the Mana and also sometimes harder to turn on. Unsure which is actually better.
murderous rider
adventure gives us an extra auxillary threat and can kill bigger walkers like karn. would require playing the 4th gemstone mine
