Dark Decks: No Blue Vengeance

Hello Everyone!

As Dark Ascension comes closer and closer to its official release, I have been thinking a lot about where Burning Vengeance can go from here. Clearly the deck can be good, however it struggled to keep up with the high impact tempo-oriented metgame. I don't know how Dark Ascension will change the metagame overall, although cards like Grafdiggers cage are going to be a thorn in our sides.

Regardless, I don't know where, but I was thinking about doing something drastic and not play blue in this deck that so many people want to just make straight UR. The theory is that instead of drawing infinite cards, we will be able to play a ton of cards that effect the board that gain incremental value. My new line of thinking was absolutely influenced by seeing this amazing deck. Basically you dredge/discard a Haakon into your graveyard, and then cast it, which allows you to cast nameless inversion from your graveyard. Just those 2 cards together is a killing machine, but when you add a Burning Vengeance or 2, you also have a blisteringly fast win condition.

By not playing blue, we lose Snapcaster Mage, counterspells, think twice, and a couple flashbacks (though we may play Desperate Ravings still). Frankly, we only ever wanted Snapcaster for the counterspells, which aren't too good right now anyways, so it's perfectly fine in my book. Also, think twice literally does nothing. It's just a mana-specific cycling that you can flash back. Here's my initial thoughts at the deck:

4x Liliana of the Veil
4x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2x Gideon Jura
1x Wurmcoil Engine
4x Burning Vengeance

2x Burning Oil
3x Geistflame
1x Devil's Play
4x Faithless Looting
4x Lingering Souls
1x Sever the Bloodline
1x Shattered Perception
1x Increasing Devotion

2x Whipflare
2x Day of Judgement

4x Blackcleave Cliffs
4x Isolated Chapel
4x Clifftop Retreat
4x Evolving Wilds
3x Mountain
3x Swamp
2x Plains

Sideboard options:
Ratchet Bomb
Ray of Revelation (will need adjusted manabase)
Ancient Grudge (will need adjusted manabase)
Timely Reinforcements
Elesh Norn
Sun Titan
Grave Titan
Doom Blade/GffT
Nihil Spellbomb
Oblivion Ring

This deck is still fairly raw, but I like the direction it's headed in. Having 10 planeswalkers makes this deck very interesting in that it gains significant advantages every single turn that passes in addition to the shenanegans that BV causes. While I did initially dismiss it, Lingering Souls is SWEET in this deck. First off, it only costs 2 to flashback, so it makes it easier to flashback a ton of cards in 1 turn to burn a player/creature out with BV. Also, it affects the board, so it really helps buy us more time to develop our plan and get our 'walkers online. One card that seems especially sweet as a cute 1-of in this deck is Shattered Perception. Another card I initially dismissed, this seems like it can lead to some amazing games where you can keep a hand of something like 3x land, Shattered Perception, Burning Vengeance, 2 flashback spells. and set up some amazing plays with the turn 4 perception drawing basically anything because you discarded gas in addition to drawing several other cards.

One thing that is important to note is that we are *tears up* not getting any more flashback spells in Avacyn Restored. I conveniently can't find the article, but I believe Mark Rosewater was all like "flashback don't make sense flavor-wise, so we don't need it in Avacyn Restored!" And now we get no more fun toys. Honestly, I really don't know why they need a large set to finish off innistrad block. How is Avacyn returning (speculations on that later) worth a large set, while Phyrexia winning the war over Mirrodin and changing the face of the plane, in addition to how mana works, not?

Regardless, with some tuning I can see some merit to this deck going forwards! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack
ThingsILack on mtgo