The Ideal 75.
Welcome to Grind Town.
More than anything else, I love to brew. I also love to grind. Control has been one of my favorite archetypes since the beginning of my magic career (2013). One of my favorite magic cards is Life from the Loam and I was a huge fan of the jund
Seismic Assault
deck piloted by Bronson Magnon to win Grand Prix Lincoln while Birthing Pod was still legal. As cool as his deck was, Tarmogoyf, and Dark Confidant felt very out of place in the deck, and this is one of the things I hate when I see them in decks. As Todd Anderson has talked about many times; without synergy, your deck is not a deck, it is just a collection of cards. I love synergy. I search for crazy combinations of cards to brew decks from and I found quite a sweet combination for this one. So now, welcome to the brew house.
The Vision
One day while scrolling through the Combo decks on here I found quite the deck. Every Land Counts, check it out if you want, part of the credit for this deck goes out to Creepy_guy32. I cut a lot of the top end because this deck is far too greedy for even me and played with it for a little while. A couple days later I was brewing Gifts Ungiven decks and I realized that it fits perfectly into this deck. One of the most grindy cards ever printed, Gifts Ungiven, becomes even more absurd when played in a graveyard deck. So thats exactly what I did. Only one problem, this was the fifth color. But fetchlands had my back.
Manabase
Land Count:
After looking through tens, probably hundreds of decklists from both Gifts Ungiven and
Seismic Assault
archetypes I found the average number of lands in the Gifts decks is about 25 and the average number of lands in the Assualt decks is about 26-27.
Fetches:
I also found that the number of fetchlands in these decks was almost always 7-8. Aggressive decks are no joke and as much as I always say Life is a resource, the life does matter but the Life from the Loam + fetchland interaction is just so powerful. I made sure to include plenty of basics even in this five color manabase so I didnt have to take quite as much damage.
Shock Lands:
Having a deck with this many colors needs to play a lot of shock lands to consistently have the right colors of mana. In 2-3 color decks, fetchlands get all of your shocks which makes it quite easy. But fetch lands only find two basic land types each, and there are all five basic land types in this deck. When analyzing Gifts decklists I found the average number of shocklands to be 6-8 nearly always.
Brilliance:
After hours and hours of testing, I have come to 25 lands, enough for Life from the Loam + Seismic Assault
but not too many that you will be light on action without said combination. I have also come to 7 fetchlands, enough to keep your mana consistent but not too many as a concession to the aggressive decks in the format. As for shocklands, I have tried versions that skimped on these shocklands (only 5) but I think at least 6 is nessesary.
More coming soon
