I salute you on the effort that is going in to this deck, but I can see one other problem, you don't have any way to replenish the deck mid-game. Of course it is entirely possible for you to win turn 6, but you might want to consider running Elixir of Immortality or maybe even Psychic Spiral to get your deck back to 200 cards

Thanks. In playtesting it rarely gets below 200 cards and if it ever does, ive got a few alternate win conditions, however Psychic Spiral could be fun anyway because of the potential for milling the opponent. Perhaps as a 1 of.

Why don't you play some game changing bombs like Drogskol Reaver ?

I was considering Stormtide Leviathan as a bomb and practically a constant Fog ...

Ah, Battle of Wits. Congrats on making a strong deck using this shell. However, I think there is some room for improvement. To start, you need to have a playset of Elixir of Immortality . I saw a guy who played BoW at FNM play a milling deck first round. The deck was able to drop him below 200 cards, which resulted in the most horrifying game of attrition ever to grace Magic. This deck also could desperately use Lingering Souls . It can serve as stalling and aggression as well. I would also revamp your mana base, either adding more red mana to gain access to cards like Mizzium Mortars , Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius , Faithless Looting , and Mercurial Chemister or adding green mana instead, to add cards like Thragtusk + Restoration Angel , Vraska the Unseen , the Garruks, and Farseek . Actually, I would run all five colors. You do have the space :).

I would also play a host of other win conditions like Entreat the Angels and other X mana spells. I also would drop all the subpar counterspells and draw spells (e.g. Inspiration, Lost in the Mist) for better cards of that variety. Snapcasters and Sugurs of Bolas are never bad in this sort of a deck either.

In conclusion, I think you should up your creatures and lower your reliance on BoW by adding other powerful cards to win with (Entreat the Angels should be top of the list). Making a 5-Color deck gives you access to plenty of strong spells. Add more planesawlkers that garner card advantage like Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Jace, Architect of Thought . You should add more creatures like Snappy and Augur as well.

I hope this helps! Good luck with BoW!

Kaires

Thanks, it has been a long journey and yes needs heaps of work lol ;-)

Yeah, im still not sure about Elixir of Immortality /Psychic Spiral although maybe as a 1 of or a sideboard. The thing is that 1 there are no mill decks in my meta and 2 I have a few alternate win conditions anyway. I could picture how hilarious the game you described would be though.

So my philosophy with these kind of decks is that although it would be a better deck if I took some of the tutor out and put in some bombs in, (niv/angels/reaver...) the point is the challenge of using the Battle of Wits win condition. Obviously it would be a more competitive as a 60 card control deck with bombs but the whole fun is in trying to win with the Battle of Wits . Hence the alternate win conditions are things that double as removal.

I was originally running green and red and the deck focused more on ramp and fog effects. It didnt work too well so I tried cutting the red and concentrating on the fogs it was still sloppy (it was trying to do too much) so I tried to cut the green and add the red and it worked a little better but was still inconsistent. Now the only reason the red was in there was because of the valuable red board wipes. So I looked for all the more obscure mass control and cut the red and it is more consistent than ever. I still have one mountain in there (which I can tutor) only so I can keep Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker because he is a boss. The lands are still a little inconsistent with 3 colours but that will get a little better when gatecrash gets released.

I will have a look at alternatives to Inspiration and Lost in the Mist , I kind of lined up all the counterspells in standard atm and chose my 5 favorites (and the same with draw spells, board wipes etc). I will go back though and double check that they are as good as they can be.

Thanks again for the thoughts, Ill keep trying to sharpen it up, keep letting me know what you think :-)

How do you win? The time it takes to get out Battle of Wits seems too much. Its a 1 in 50 pulll....

Tutors all day lol

but wouldn't you have to put back cards into your deck?

Yeah, I can see what you are saying. I think you should add Jace 4.0 and Tamiyo in place of Inspiration and Divination. They will generate much more card advantage for you. In terms of counterspells, I would just suggest Syncopate. It's not a hard counterspell, but it does some good work. Also, good choice keeping red for Bolas. He is absolutely hilarious.

@ TrumpetsforKings, not quite sure what your asking. To start with, there is a 1/60 chance of drawing a Battle of Wits hence by the time turn 4 comes along (when you can pay its mana cost) you have drawn 10-11 cards (assuming you havnt used a draw spell). Therefore 11/60 = 18.3% and the odds get a little higher than that because you have drawn a few cards ( I wont go into that here). So you have about a 1/5 or 20% chance of having it in your opening hand or drawing it by the time you could theoretically play it (obviously the deck will try to tutor it out if you dont have it as strateupjee said). Then, since Battle of Wits requires 200 cards in your deck and the deck has 240, odds are you will not have drawn 40 cards by the time you are trying to win with BOW. Hope that answers it :-)

@ Kaires, yeah I love bolas, such a fun win con and a ridiculous 240 card deck calls for ridiculous win conditions lol. I like Tamyo better than new jace, I might see how she goes. I have been skeptical about Syncopate but one of my friends likes it and he is a much more experienced control player than myself, so I guess the two of you have talked me into it, Ill give it a playest ;-), thanks.

You can't play BOW turn 4...

sorry, turn 5 therefore 12/60= 20% ;-)

I would still run one Psychic Spiral and one card:Memory's Journey with just a tiny splash of green for the flashback. Just in case. Awesome deck, btw.

Thanks, Elixir of Immortality & Psychic Spiral will be sideboard.

I am playing this on friday so wish me luck. Ill let you all know how it did.

Forgot to update, the deck kinda worked! I was playing 23 cards down ie 217 card deck I was missing 3 of the tutors which hurt a fair bit, but the deck still kinda worked.

I lost 2-0 against Naya Aggro, 2-1 in a close game against BG Aggro, I won 0-2 against a mill deck (lol), and lost 2-1 in a very close game against Esper control.

I have made a change or two, mostly on account of Sphinx's Revelation being way to expensive, other than that the rest of the deck should be arriving in the next couple of days and I should be able to give it a test soon after.

How you going to run 6xMurder?

Self-mill and Mystic Retrieval?

...I thought I answered essiga9, it musnt have posted correctly. Yeah, I made a mistake somwhere. Ill pull it apart and figure out what it was when I get my order of the cards Im missing. Its probably 2x some common/ uncommon spot removal.

Feldon's Cane would be a good addition to replenish your deck too.

This is a standard deck ;-)

...Just for future reference as it has come up once or twice, the deck very rarely needs to be replenished. The only time that happens is against mill decks (of which there are very few in my meta). But mill decks are my best possible matchup and I never have trouble beating them with alternate win conditions.

As a matter of fact, this deck has never lost to a mill deck (although its only versed a few).

Sry. Forgot about it being standart.

Good deck. Like it. +1

Hey, just wanted to quickly say that I absolutely love Battle of Wits and commend anyone taking a shot at creating it, so good job and good luck with getting it to where you want it. I have a Wits deck myself and have had an absolute blast creating it and tweaking it until it has felt usable.

My attempt at BoW has stuck strictly within Esper colours, and I see you've done the same for the most part, but I see you have one red mana in your deck to help you get Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker out. I understand that you have Transguild Promenade and Evolving Wilds, but how often do you find yourself with Bolas in hand and no red mana source or way to locate one? I see what you've tried to do, but it just seems to me that with only 9 cards in the deck able to get you what you need to play him, he might sometimes feel like a dead draw. I haven't experimented, of course, so I'm just curious what your experience has been.

I see in your comments that your attempts at winning at FNM were less than favourable (although I bet the attempts were entertaining at the very least?), with the exception of the mill deck -- which by the way, lol at that matchup -- and I was wondering if you felt that taking your deck down a nearly creature-less avenue hindered its performance at all. I'm having trouble seeing many alternative win conditions in your decklist and can see that it's very defense-minded, so I wondered how you feel that's working for you. My deck doesn't have many creatures either so I understand not wanting to flood the deck with them, but I find that oftentimes having a blocker or two can really make a big difference, even with something simple like Midnight Haunting or Talrand's Invocation.

Don't take any of this message as being preachy, I love that people are finding different ways to make Battle of Wits work for them, and I like to know what their reasoning and perspective is in building a deck in case there's something that I've missed that might work better for me going forward.

Once again, good job, and I look forward to hearing of more successes!

Thanks sugimura, so starting with Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker . I have taken him out and put him back in a few times now. His primary function is simply to be fun and ridiculous in a deck that is all about being over the top. He is not however just a gimmick he is also an alternate win condition, in that he is something I can hard cast late game and turn the game around with a single card. I actually won a game down at the shop today with him, a mill deck had me down to just under 200 cards and had a few creatures out so I flashbacked Increasing Ambition and found bolas and mountain, next turn cast bolas and it was over. He will probably come out again though once I find something better, the current list is also precisely the cards I have in the deck based on what I can get my hands on so bolas is kind of filling a spot (Sphinx's Revelation has been hard to find).

Lol yeah, at the first FNM I was expecting to completely flop and not win a game (as I was playing 20ish cards down, the 20 most expensive ones lol). But the deck surprised me and actually won a few and made some other close games. I just got back from a few games at the shop against some of the more competitive players and this time the deck held its own (this time with a complete list) and won about half the games, once again destroying a mill deck lol.

The lack of creatures can be a little daunting at times but to be honest the would just get in the way due to constant board wipes. Hence the keyrunes are handy and actually claim about 1/10 of my wins. My other win conditions mainly involve controlling the game until I am in an extremely strong position and then using planeswalkers which probably gets me about a quarter of my wins. I have been considering a few other little things as alternate win conditions but havent found anything that I really love in esper colours. Perhaps Stormtide Leviathan but there is a lot of flying going around atm :-/

I appreciate the comment, any help is good help with a deck that is this difficult to build. Let me know if you ever find something that works well for you or if you think of some ideas :-)