Welcome to Probability the Gathering!
The core of this deck is relatively simple. While holding priority (full control on arena or announcing holding priority in paper), you cast one of your 8 zero mana spells (Tormod or Stonecoil) and then immediately counter that spell with Tibalt's trickery. That then allows you to reveal cards to hopefully you hit a big enough threat on turn 2-3 that allows you to take over the game or outright force a concede.
The most important part of playing a list like this is understanding the math behind the deck and knowing what hands you need to mulligan. First off, this deck has a heavy mulligan strategy. If you are not aggressively mulliganing you are playing this list wrong (or are amazing and have the combo in your opening every time). You really want to have Tibalt's trickery in your opening hand. If you are willing to mulligan down to as low as 2 cards, you have a 92% probability to hit a tibalt's trickery in one of your mulligans. 92% IS VERY GOOD ODDS. somegames you will mull yourself into oblivion, if you can't handle that then this deck is not for you.
Second, what are the odd's that Tibalt's Trickery is in our opening hand along with a combo piece? It's surprisingly about 60%.
Third, Let's say we have tibalt in our opening 7 with a few lands and a few huge pay offs, what are the odds we hit 1 of the 8 zero cost spells by turn 4? That is about a 50% chance (not even including all the scry lands we play). (If my hand has a lot of scry lands in my opening 7 with no mulligans yet and a Tibalt's Trickery, I usually keep. If their are no scry lands I usually aggressively mulligan for a better chance of finding the combo.
Fizzle rate: Even if you are on the play and successfully cast the combo, you have a failure rate that you need to be aware of. Tibalt's trickery can still hit Tibalt's trickery (result in a fizzle because their is nothing to counter) or the other 0 cost spell. essentially 7 bad hits for the combo vs 26 big hits. 7/26=26-27% failure rate. That is assuming their are no hits in your hand and no bad hits in your hand.
Best card to hit is almost always Genesis Ultimatum. Even if it hits you 5 lands, that is a turn 2 ramp to 7 lands and you are now casting all your big spells (world tree fixes mana amazingly in our deck, do not underestimate this card). Obviously you can also just go banana's and hit Kjora, Ugin, and Koma off Genesis as well but the point being no matter what this hits (besides 5 zero mana spells in your deck) it is insane. Emergent ultimatum is the same concept getting 2 big threats is amazing.
Kjora bests the sea gods is an absolute beater in this because it is hex proof, taps all their stuff down for a few turns and can steal their land! If you are on the play, you can turn 4 steal their land and put them back on 3 mana at most for their turn 4.
Esika- you can cast the backside of a tibalt's trickery hit which is very powerful if it sticks around (You can also get blown out by brazzen borrower or banishing light).
Dream trawler is an all star as hex proof is relevant in this meta game and it is constantly drawing you cards and gaining you life. If your opponent is smart he will only try to kill it on your turn thus not allowing you to gain any real value from it but that is a slow plan by the opponent.
Ugin is actually one of the worst hits in the deck because it has to up tick twice to ult but still its a powerhouse and very useful in a lot of situations.
Things to remember about this list. You are the aggressive combo deck shining against mono red and mono white linear strategy's that have very few answers to a big threat. 2. You also are the late game deck if you can get to the point where you are casting your spells outright from your hand (grindy games like this are gonna happen when you fizzle against control but they are not clocking you).
This deck is only going to be successful for you if you understand the math and accept what you sign up. If your opponent has hand disruption or a early counter spell, you just probably outright lose. Luckily Rouges (our worst match up by far) has adjusted their lists for better odds against aggro decks. Which means what was originally a bad match up is very easy because they lack early counter magic.
