Introduction

In the wake of SCG: Charlotte, everyone was talking about Kenny Mayer’s match against Show and Tell. I won’t spoil too much about it if you haven’t seen it, but I highly suggest watching the video. I’m normally not one to be swayed by something as silly as a Battle of Wits deck, but seeing Ken Adams and Kenny Mayer play it in a large event made me think, bringing back some fond memories of playing Battle of Wits in a tournament just a couple years prior. When I played the deck in a small event back then, I ended up splitting the Top 4 without losing a single match; it was a pretty good day filled with laughs and counting my library. After some reflection, I figured that if these guys took Battle of Wits to a huge event, I could probably bring myself to play the deck again as well. Thus, I set out to build a new Battle of Wits deck.

Here you can see much of the Ann Arbor crew and me counting the cards of my Battle of Wits deck (there were 203 cards in my library; it was close and I was dead next turn). Everyone had a good time this day. Thanks to Jay Semerad for the picture. Check out his blog.

Finding the Theme

This isn’t widely advertised, but Battle of Wits is the most customizable shell of any deck in the format. Since the shell is just a set of Battle of Wits, you can include any creatures or combos around it and still have a coherent Battle of Wits deck. For my take on this, I really wanted the challenge of playing a control deck in the shell because, well, I’m a control player, and that’s what I like. Knowing that this was certainly going to be a control deck, I was able to set the theme for the rest of the building process.

I’d like to tell you that I did a lot of mathematical and scientific studies into how I was going to build this deck, making sure that everything flowed and was optimized, but in reality I approached this deck the same way I approach most other decks—I set aside all the cards I wanted to play, put them in one pile, and put the rest in another. Normally, I get to a breaking point and am forced to stop putting cards in the pile and look at making reasonable cuts so I’m around sixty cards. However, this time I knew I wanted to stop when I had about 120 spells. Even with 120 spells, one of the sad realizations I’m inevitably forced to confront when building Battle of Wits is that I’m never really going to be able to play all the cards I’d like to. 120 spells works out to only about thirty different cards, which is a good deal fewer than even a Commander deck gets to play. It seems there’s just never enough room for me to squeeze in all the cards I’d like.

I knew from previous experience and a bit of common sense that the best way to build a Battle of Wits deck is to do as much as possible to circumvent the fact that the deck is the size of four decks. Kenny Mayer did this by taking the traditional Zoo plan of “All of my guys attack for about the same amount of damage.” Most decks will need to go a different, more-Blue route to ensure that the deck performs at a reasonable consistency, and mine was no exception to this rule. I was going to need loads of cantrips and other tricks to see as many cards as possible. The suite of Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain is a perfect place to start, but that wasn’t going to cut it this time, so this meant I was going to be digging through cardboard boxes of cards in places best forgotten to try to find some of the older, mostly unplayable Blue spells that have long since been outdated. Along the way, I found some interesting cards that really hadn’t seen the light of day in Legacy, like See Beyond and Ancestral Vision, and I became excited about finally giving these cards a home in a deck.

With my stack of Blue cards in hand, the first thing I did was try to cram all of them into a deck and see how well it flowed—and, of course, the results were a disaster. After the first few games I goldfished, I realized I wasn’t building a control deck, but a very strange tempo deck with a combo finish. I was acutely aware of the curve of the deck in a way I’d never been before. Everything needed to be an instant, efficient and fast. This moment of realization was a terrible time in the development of the deck. However, soldiering on, the first cuts came early: any draw spell that cost more than and wasn’t an instant (so See Beyond and Ancestral Vision were relegated back to the box of unplayables).

This was the point at which I realized I needed to revise how I was going about this, so taking my giant stack of cards and some paper, I rated how highly I valued each card for this deck in order to gather my thoughts on the matter and build the most coherent deck I possibly could. Now I’d like to share that list with you.

Rating the Cards

I divided the cards up into non-Blue cards and Blue cards, then subdivided the Blue cards into counters, 1- or 2-cost cantrips, and then the more expensive spells. I then gave each card a rating from 2 to 10 of how likely I felt I would be to play it, where cards with a rating of 1 or 0 don’t make the list. From the starting stages, I imagined that any card I rated at 7 or above was going to be an auto-include, whereas any card that was ranked lower was going to need some consideration. I’ve presented these cards divided by rating to save on cluttered space.

Blue Cards

Cantrips

These spells are going to need to pull a lot of weight in this deck, so I’m going to try to play as many as reasonably possible.

10 – Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain – As far as card-filtering goes, these are the most efficient for the cost, and they’re all in any conceivable build of the deck I’m playing.

9 – Fire // Ice – Ice is a fine cantrip that can sometimes Time Walk an opponent by tapping a land or attacker. Fire is a useful alternative that can help in a pinch.

8 – Predict – About the cheapest way to draw two cards. I knew I was going to be playing a lot of cards that looked for more cards, so the value of Predict goes way up. In all the games I played, I only ever cast Predict once without knowing the top card of my own library.

7 – Impulse, Opt – Impulse made the cut because it’s fairly effective at digging; it even gave the bonus of being comical when my opponents groaned about the “then shuffle your library” line. I didn’t feel as though Opt did enough; Sleight of Hand was really the worst cantrip I wanted to play, and while Opt is an instant, it really only lets me choose between one known quantity and a mystery card.

6 – Telling Time, Serum Visions – Telling Time is always just a little worse than Impulse, but I really like playing more copies of Impulse. I knew Serum Visions was going to make the cut regardless of how bad it was because I needed more cards that looked at cards, and when you’re digging for the long game, Serum Visions is perhaps even a little better than Preordain.

5 – Sleight of Hand, Portent – These spells are about as bad a 1-mana spell as I wanted to play. Portent last saw competitive play as recently as a year ago, before Preordain was printed, but even at that point it wasn’t great—however, being a bad Ponder is better than nothing. Sleight of Hand let me choose between two cards at sorcery speed; that’s good enough, but I wish there were something better.

4 – Treasure Hunt, Peek – The attractive feature of Treasure Hunt is that it could hit a huge string of lands, but the issues are that it probably won’t and requires me to tap out on turn two to roll the dice, nullifying most of my counterspells in the early game. Peek will only replace itself, meaning it doesn’t filter any cards, and even if I know what my opponent’s hand is, there is still the problem of getting cards to handle them in a reasonable amount of time. These cards didn’t make the cut.

3 – Ancestral Vision, Standstill – Both of these are conditional spells that require me to be ahead to get anything out of them. Considering this deck has no way to apply pressure or even defend itself under Standstill, it’s out. Ancestral Vision is never going to happen in a timely manner unless it starts in my opening hand, and even then suspending it on turn one means I’m not digging with other cards until at least turn three if I want to represent a counterspell, putting me in a difficult position.

2 – Gitaxian Probe, Merfolk Looter, Mental Note, See Beyond, Lat-Nam's Legacy – I’ll admit that I nearly played Lat-Nam's Legacy because it’s better than See Beyond, but I thought about it and there were never any cards I wanted to shuffle back, meaning that neither was desirable. If I were playing a build with Natural Order, all bets are off with Legacy and See Beyond, but as for now, no thanks. Gitaxian Probe is worse than Peek in this deck, so that’s not making it. Merfolk Looter seems fine, but being a creature is a huge liability, and I’d like to nullify as many of my opponent’s removal spells as possible. Mental Note is out just on principle of milling myself, but it doesn’t actually filter any cards unless I’ve used something else to set it up..

With the exception of Opt, I played every card I initially rated at 5 or above, but this is a section of cards I knew I wanted to be playing.

Counters

10 – Force of Will, Counterspell, Counterbalance – Force and Counterspell are all-stars for what I want, and I can’t imagine not playing them. I rated Counterbalance a bit high, but it was still quite good and I would probably play it regardless of a lower rating.

9 – Spell Snare, Prohibit, Remand – Prohibit has been in my playable box for quite some time, but I could never seem to find a deck where I wanted it until now; as additional copies of Spell Snare or Counterspell, this card is excellent, and I was always happy with it. Spell Snare is amazing, of course, and Remand is exactly what this deck needs to establish or keep a lead in tempo.

8 – Spell Pierce, Mana Leak, Disrupt – Disrupt can range from great to a blank, but I have enough space in the deck to include it in hopes of it working out. Spell Pierce doesn’t stop everything I’m concerned about, but is a great utility card and will often stop incoming disruption. Mana Leak is relevant as a counter for a long time, and I was only unhappy to see it once throughout all of my games.

7 – Delay – A generally overlooked card, Delay functions much like Remand in this deck and allows the deck to buy some much-needed time.

6 – Cryptic Command, Force Spike, Mental Misstep, Negate, Forbid, Condescend – Cryptic Command is a powerful spell that we may start seeing more in Legacy. The concern with Cryptic is that not only does it cost 4, but nearly every one of your lands needs to tap for , which is generally the case in the format, but cuts down on the ability to use cards like Wasteland. I was hesitant to use Cryptic Command because, while the ratio of lands was about right, I never wanted to be stuck with a card in my hand that I couldn’t cast due to mana restrictions. Negate is good against about half the decks and dead against the other half, unlike Disrupt, which is more of a gamble since it isn’t a hard counter. Forbid is amazing if you’re ahead and is at least a Cancel if you’re behind; likewise, Condescend is really strong if you’re ahead, but can scry whenever. Because so much of my deck is trying to establish a lead, I didn’t want to use cards that were only going to be good when I was ahead. Mental Misstep is amazing for most tempo decks, but most tempo decks are only sixty cards, meaning that I can’t hope to have an opening hand more than 10% of the time; it ends up being lackluster considering I’m not often going to have an advantage to press, but the card is still powerful, so I included the copies I had. I really wanted to play Force Spike, but was unable to find more than one copy, which is essentially useless.

4 – Dispel, Muddle the Mixture – Dispel counters very few of the cards I need to handle. Muddle the Mixture can at least transmute to get Isochron Scepter, which is a card that I intend to play in a deck so chock full of instants.

2 – Daze, Stifle, Trickbind – The Stifle effects are wildly inconsistent for a deck this size, and it seems silly to use a highly inconsistent deck to try to disrupt the consistency of a much stabler deck. Daze’s normal cost is too high for the effect, and I can’t afford to set myself back with its alternate cost.

Other Blue Cards

10 – Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Intuition – Jace is primarily included as additional copies of Brainstorm, but all of his abilities are relevant, making it a powerful inclusion. Intuition is an instant-speed, on-color Demonic Tutor, which I couldn’t possibly refuse.

9 – Tezzeret the Seeker, Trinket Mage – While I wanted to avoid having creatures, Mage’s ability to get a Top, land, or Chrome Mox is invaluable, even if he isn’t relevant once on the battlefield. Tezzeret the Seeker was initially a card I included as a one-of and didn’t expect much from. The card ended up saving me in a number of games, even as a singleton, and I quickly understood that Tezzeret fulfills a lot of the roles that I want cards to in this deck. I’d like to play it as a four-of since he gets Thopter-Sword combo, Ensnaring Bridge, Top, artifact lands, and many other goodies you’d want to include.

8 – Cunning Wish, Repeal – Repeal is a catchall that gives a nice tempo shift that the deck thrives on, so I’m excited to play it. Including Cunning Wish makes it so I don’t need to think so much about any sideboard plans while giving me additional copies of some pretty key spells such as Enlightened Tutor and Orim's Chant.

7 – Gifts Ungiven – I personally own no copies of Gifts Ungiven, and as it turns out, nor does anyone else I know. The card is a bit expensive and would require me to change the deck to accommodate, but it should win the game shortly after resolving. On the other hand, it never has in Legacy before, so the idea of casting Gifts may be a lot better than the reality of casting it.

6 – Fact or Fiction – Fact or Fiction is my favorite draw spell; it’s very difficult for an opponent to get a read on what you need versus what you want, and any time I have the ability to play a card that allows your opponent to misplay, I like doing it.

5 – Jace Beleren, Merchant Scroll – If I were using Gifts, I’d play Merchant Scroll to tutor for Gifts to see if I can set up a win, but as it stands, I didn’t. Little Jace did end up making the cut because I wanted more Jaces to kill opposing Jaces, and if it happened to be a Divination, that’s fine too.

3 – Thirst for Knowledge – I’ve never been a fan of this card. I don’t play a high density of artifacts to support it, so it was seldom going to be able to net me a card.

There are likely a ton of cards that fall into this category that are playable that I overlooked, This was mostly from the stack of cards I had sitting in my Landstill box, but it seems like I got the best ones covered.

Non-Blue Cards

At a very early point, I had to decide what the splash color was going to be for this deck, I knew I was probably going to play with White, but I wanted to figure out if there was going to be much Black, Green, or Red happening as well. I had a big stack of Black and White ready to size up next to each other

White

10 – Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Sun Titan, Enlightened Tutor, Moat – The Plow effects are the best removal in the format, so they were obvious inclusions. Enlightened Tutor seems like an auto-include, and Moat is probably my favorite card that’s Legacy-legal. Sun Titan was going to be in this deck because I love that card, also.

9 – Elspeth, Knight-Errant – As absurd as it may seem in a world where Jace, the Mind Sculptor gets a song written about him, I feel that Elspeth is likely the best planeswalker. Elspeth is a one-card army on its own that can either get offensive and take out opposing planeswalkers, such as Jace or even the opponent, or play defensive, keeping opposing hordes at bay. Since this isn’t the control deck I’m accustomed to, I cut down on the Elspeths I played, but it seemed to play the role of anti-Jace planeswalker a lot more effectively than Jace Beleren.

8 – Ethersworn Canonist – I decided early in the deck’s development that I needed to have some silver bullets I’d be able to use Tutor for to stop me from losing the game before Battle of Wits could come on line. Canonist fulfills this role better than just about any other card.

7 – Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Hallowed Burial, Peacekeeper, Orim's Chant, Academy Rector – Academy Rector is functionally additional copies of Moat while alive and a Battle of Wits if she hits the graveyard. What I really want from a removal spell is a single card that kills all the opposing threats, and it doesn’t get any better than Wrath of God. Day of Judgment is available as back-up copies of Wrath and is functionally the same except when it comes to Thrun, the Last Troll. Hallowed Burial was going to make the cut if I played Brainspoil, as a tutorable Wrath, but since I didn’t end up playing Brainspoil, I overlooked Hallowed Burial. Peacekeeper is fragile, but will win against a lot more decks than you may expect if resolves; having such a powerful haymaker was just what I wanted for the deck. Orim's Chant is included mostly to combo with Isochron Scepter as a secondary win condition.

6 – Oblivion Ring, Humility, Eternal Dragon, Serenity – Serenity is the next in the line of cards Enlightened Tutor can get that saves me from losing before Battle of Wits is active; in this case, we’re looking at answering Affinity and MUD. Oblivion Ring is interesting as a cute Vindicate that was easier on my mana and could possibly answer a Jace. Humility is an incredibly powerful control tool but it turned off too many creatures in my own deck that I felt were pivotal to the game’s overall plan. Eternal Dragon is functionally a land in the early game and win condition in the late game, which is a small price to pay for such versatility.

5 – Journey to Nowhere – I really like that Journey is able to work around Mental Misstep and still be rather effective. If I were looking for more ways to one-for-one creatures, this would have made the cut.

4 – Argivian Find, Wing Shards, Wall of Omens – Wall of Omens was a consideration because I was going to be much heavier in White than Green, and like Wall of Blossoms, it replaces itself while buying me time. If I were playing with creatures that I wanted to have stick around, this wouldn’t be as bad, but I opted out of playing it because my creature density was going to be so low that it was simply going to enable creature removal from my opponent’s deck. Argivian Find is great if I am playing Gifts Ungiven, but since I don’t own the card, Find was relegated to the sideboard in hopes of using it to Wish for a fallen Battle of Wits. Wing Shards is a really powerful card and probably should be rated a bit higher; I didn’t find the space for it in my deck, but I’ve been thinking about the card quite seriously in a world with Mental Misstep.

3 – Decree of Justice – Being among my favorite cards, I initially assumed that Decree of Justice was going to automatically be in the deck. The issue was that it was relatively slow in a deck that I was actively trying to speed up. In the midgame, Decree can buy a ton of time, and in the late game, it’s an excellent win condition, but in the early game, where I needed to be playing cards, the best it could do is act as Restrain.

The White was looking pretty strong for me; there were a lot of cards I knew I wanted to play, and they weren’t going to have comparable replacements from Blue or in another splash color, but I still wanted to evaluate the other cards I had access to.

Black

Black still lacks the really strong pinpoint removal that you want in a deck, and its only Wrath effect is Damnation, which is only desirable if you’re playing heavy Black and light White. This is how I rated the black cards.

9 – Smother – I’m going to depart from this train of thought for a moment to make a statement that’s highly relevant to Legacy. When Go for the Throat came out, a lot of people were saying that this is the card Black was waiting for—finally, Black removal that can kill anything (except artifact creatures)! This was going to change how Black decks operated, they said. At the time, I thought, “Really? How is this better than Smother?” As time went on, I felt that people would likely catch on that Smother is better most of the time, but for the most part, that hasn’t happened. When going through Black removal for this exercise, I decided to make a chart that shows the shortcomings of all the Black removal spells in Legacy at the moment:

In this image, the failures of the card to (consistently) destroy some of the more commonly played creatures in question is highlighted with a red rectangle. Creatures that are too difficult to destroy with any targeted removal, such as Emrakul or Thrun, aren’t taken into consideration.

The breakdown of this is a point that most people intrinsically knew anyway—Go for the Throat is poor against Affinity and MUD. However, what people don’t seem to be considering is that Smother not only covers most of those creatures, but hits a lot of things that Snuff Out or Ghastly Demise won’t hit either. Smother struggles against Tombstalker and some Goblins creatures, but no one is really paying attention to Goblins right now, so that isn’t a huge drawback. I charted the strength of Dismember against these spells for contrast, but Dismember has failings against two of the most common creatures in the format, Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary.

Chris VanMeter played a pair of Smothers along with a Go for the Throat in his list in Orlando, so he beat me to the punch in pointing out the relative strengths of the card, but I’m glad to see the trickle effect of more players again realizing the strength of Smother.

And now, back to . . .

9 – Dark Confidant – Originally not considered, I totally blanked on playing it, but it would probably be a great inclusion, as this deck is really happy to see extra cards.

8 – Tainted Pact, Innocent Blood – I was really attracted to Innocent Blood because in the early game, it’s the closest thing that Black gets to a Swords to Plowshares, but I didn’t end up playing it due to the absurdity of the chances of drawing Innocent Blood in the main deck. In a deck like this, Tainted Pact can essentially be an instant-speed Demonic Tutor, where the tradeoff is that I need to split all of my basics between Snow-Covered and their thawed counterparts to help work around the drawback. But with so many high-value cards, it’s unlikely I’ll ever be unhappy with casting it

7 – Thoughtseize, Consuming Vapors – If I owned Consuming Vapors, that would be a sweet inclusion, but alas! Thoughtseize is a great inclusion for most decks; it can take a threat, and it can take a piece of countermagic or disruption, but being hyperconscious of my life total, I decided to keep it out of the deck.

6 – Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Grim Tutor – The difference between Go for the Throat and Doom Blade is minuscule for this deck, but since I didn’t play Smother, which I feel is a better card, I decided to pass on each of these as well. The last time I built this deck, the format was much slower and Grim Tutor was an all-star, on par with Intuition in power level, but the format has sped up considerably since then, and the 3 life seemed like far too high of a liability this time around.

5 – Consume the Meek, Damnation, Inquisition of Kozilek – Inquisition was a card I likely should have valued higher and would have liked to play, but I’d already decided to keep my Black count low to stabilize the mana—which is the same reason I skipped Damnation, although I did play a copy of Consume the Meek in my Wishboard, since it’s a super-Smother that can get me out of a tight situation.

4 – Duress, Engineered Plague – Duress is only able to handle cards that disrupt me, which not every opponent is trying to do; if I’m going to play any discard, I want it to be able to handle incoming threats as well. Engineered Plague was close to making it as a way to save me from Elves, but I decided that not playing it was an acceptable risk since it’s terrible against anything other than Elves and it isn’t a true silver bullet against Goblins or Merfolk.

The Black cards I was evaluating just weren’t where I wanted to be—at least not too heavily—so I picked what I felt were the best ones and moved on to see the rest of what I had:

Red

9 – Burning Wish, Lightning Bolt – If I weren’t already committed to a Cunning Wish board, Burning Wish would be an option. Bolt is a fine card, but I wasn’t ever looking to hit someone with it, and my White options for removal are a bit stronger.

8 – Firespout – Firespout is a great Wrath effect, but the liability of generating Red mana is one I really want to avoid unless there is a great reason. Firespout is close, but I’d really need more.

4 – Gamble – Conditional tutors are a great asset to this deck, but this Gamble’s a bit risky for my taste.

That was about all I could find for Red.

Green

9 – Tarmogoyf – Since I’m not on the aggro plan, Tarmogoyf is going to act a lot like Wall of Blossoms for this deck, with the downside of never replacing itself unless my opponent misplays. If I had a stronger aggro-control subtheme, I’d be inclined to try it out.

7 – Life from the Loam – If I were playing a Gifts package, this could open up some great piles, but as it stands, any casting of Life from the Loam would essentially be to get more lands to play in the midgame, which I consider to be a fairly weak choice for this deck.

4 – Eternal Witness – If it weren’t , I’d look a lot more closely at playing it—and it would likely be an auto-include as at least a one-of if Gifts were in the mix.

3 – Wall of Blossoms – In some veins, I’d rather play this than Tarmogoyf, but at the same time, I didn’t play the on-color version of the card, so I couldn’t see splashing for this one.

Another fairly light color for me; Regrowth would be considered with Gifts, but not at all without.

Artifacts

10 – Sensei's Divining Top, Engineered Explosives – EE is going to allow the deck to generate some much-needed card advantage on the battlefield, or at least one-for-one problematic cards. Sensei's Divining Top is excellent at fixing draws, even when you’re playing more cards than you should.

9 – Scroll Rack, Relic of Progenitus – Scroll Rack is situational and can be far better (and worse) than Top, and since I needed as much of that sort of filtering as possible, I played every copy I own. Relic of Progenitus is a silver bullet that both Enlightened Tutor and Trinket Mage can fetch, and it even cycles when drawn.

8 – Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, Isochron Scepter – The Thopter-Sword combo is tutorable via Enlightened Tutor and can easily lock up a game and eventually win the game; the difficulty in disrupting it made it an obvious inclusion. Isochron Scepter wasn’t going to have any trouble finding a great card to imprint on it, and it gives the deck a way to gain strong incremental advantage.

7 – Pithing Needle – Like Relic, this can be fetched via Trinket Mage or Enlightened Tutor, and it can save me from several problematic cards for minimal investment.

6 – Ensnaring Bridge, Painter's Servant/Grindstone – Ensnaring Bridge seemed like it was going to be a great card to include in the silver-bullet package, and once I got it on the table, it was obvious that the card is an auto-include, since it either bought several turns or outright won games. I considered the Painter's Servant/Grindstone combo as an alternate, tutorable win, but ultimately didn’t include it because I was frightened of fizzling due to removal—but the strength of the combo is hard to overlook, and could probably be fit into a future build.

The artifacts were too easy to include, and all of these made the cut except Painter's Servant/Grindstone.

Gold

10 – Absorb – Absorb is a great effect that I definitely want; negating a problematic card and keeping me alive is all you can ask for from a card. The only thing that’s stopped me from playing it in several decks is the fact that I don’t own the card and can never seem to find it when I’m thinking about it.

8 – Lightning Helix – I nearly played Lightning Helix despite its atrocious mana cost because it both kills a threat and keeps me in the game longer, but requiring two splash colors is simply too hard on the mana.

7 – Mortify, Putrefy, Ajani Vengeant – These are all great removal spells with a lot of versatility, but all require mana I don’t always plan on having on the table, so I had to go in a different direction.

6 – Esper Charm– This has seen some play in Legacy and is an interesting and versatile card, but the mana seemed far too difficult to generate in this deck.

5 – Undermine, Knight of the Reliquary – Since I don’t have any great lands to get with Knight of the Reliquary, the card is basically going to act like Tarmogoyf in this deck. Undermine has more difficult mana for the deck I’m intending to build, and I’m also never counting on dealing damage to win the game, so the life loss is irrelevant.

4 – Lim-Dul's Vault – Assuming I did no fetching, I could see one hundred cards of my library, and that’s pretty good, but considering I generally need two turns after casting it to win, that sucks.

Every multicolored spell is hard on the mana, so there isn’t anything I had to play, but I really wanted Absorb; I need to remember to get those someday.

Finalizing the Deck

After I rated all of the cards, I tried to stick to it and get a coherent deck together sticking to the cuts I identified. The list I came up with isn’t perfect, but it looked a lot like this:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Sun Titan

3 Peacekeeper

4 Academy Rector

4 Eternal Dragon

4 Trinket Mage

1 Sen Triplets

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

1 Tezzeret the Seeker

2 Jace Beleren

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

4 Battle of Wits

2 Cryptic Command

2 Mental Misstep

3 Delay

3 Enlightened Tutor

3 Orim's Chant

3 Telling Time

4 Brainstorm

4 Counterspell

4 Cunning Wish

4 Disrupt

4 Fact or Fiction

4 Force of Will

4 Impulse

4 Intuition

4 Mana Leak

4 Path to Exile

4 Predict

4 Prohibit

4 Remand

4 Repeal

4 Spell Pierce

4 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Tainted Pact

4 Fire // Ice

3 Wrath of God

4 Ponder

4 Portent

4 Preordain

4 Serum Visions

4 Sleight of Hand

1 Future Sight

1 Moat

1 Serenity

4 Counterbalance

1 Ensnaring Bridge

1 Pithing Needle

1 Relic of Progenitus

3 Scroll Rack

4 Isochron Scepter

4 Sensei's Divining Top

4 Sword of the Meek

4 Thopter Foundry

[/Spells]

[Lands]

14 Island

2 Plains

1 Hallowed Fountain

2 Tolaria West

3 Tropical Island

4 Adarkar Wastes

4 Arid Mesa

4 Flooded Strand

4 Glacial Fortress

4 Marsh Flats

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Polluted Delta

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Tundra

4 Underground Sea

4 Volcanic Island

4 Windswept Heath

1 Snow-Covered Swamp

14 Snow-Covered Island

3 Snow-Covered Plains

1 Ancient Den

1 Seat of the Synod

1 Vault of Whispers

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

The deck is 260 cards, about twenty cards more than it really needs to be, and in that regard, I wish there weren’t so many cards I wanted to play in the deck. Instead of making difficult cuts, I went with my greedy nature and just decided to play everything I wanted and a Sen Triplets, too. Some of the numbers here are odd due to card availability, which normally doesn’t impact me, but a deck like Battle of Wits has some very taxing demands on resources. The card I’d want to play more of is Tezzeret the Seeker; I severely underestimated the power of the card. Even as a one-of, Tezzeret won several games and proved that it should be played as a four-of. The card I was most disappointed with was likely Jace Beleren; I never killed or stopped an opposing Jace with the card, and the effect was always remarkably minimal.

The decision trees for this deck are absolutely massive, certainly the biggest of any deck I’ve ever played, which isn’t too strange considering it’s the largest deck I’ve ever played in a tournament. After two of the three times I played the deck, I walked away from the tournament with headaches the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since I was first starting to learn Landstill, years ago.

The first story was a match against Infect Stax. I cast an Intuition on my opponent’s end step. He has lethal poison for the next turn, and I’m pretty sure there’s a way for me to win, if only I can figure it out while thumbing through my massive library. Notably, I have Thopter Foundry and an extra artifact sitting on the table, and my opponent has a Chalice of the Void at 1. I identify that I really want a Sword of the Meek but blank on two other cards. Because I’ve never played a deck with more than a single copy of Sword of the Meek, I fail to register that if I get two Swords with Intuition, one goes to my graveyard and I soon have a plethora of Thopters to block with. Instead I grab a Seat of the Synod, Sword of the Meek, and another artifact; the opponent puts the Sword in my hand, and since I lack the lands to play Sword of the Meek and produce ample blockers, I get hit with his envenomed creatures and die.

In a story of success, I’m in a Game 1 against Zoo; the previous turn, I played Tezzeret and used him to get Ensnaring Bridge. My opponent is able to answer it with a Qasali Pridemage and attacks me rather than Tezzeret, leaving me at a very low life total. My board is Tezzeret the Seeker (1 Loyalty), two Blue sources, and five non-Blue sources. I draw for my turn; it’s Academy Ruins. My hand is now Jace Beleren, Academy Ruins. I think for a long time and figure it out. I use Tezzeret to search my massive library for a singleton Seat of the Synod and put myself up to three Blue sources, play my ninth land, Academy Ruins, and use it and a Blue source to put Ensnaring Bridge on top of my library. I then play Jace Beleren off my last 2 Blue mana and draw the Bridge. With my final 3 mana (none of which is Blue) and the final card in my hand, I play Ensnaring Bridge and pass the turn. Phew! This play buys me several turns that I’m able to use to rebuild my forces.

Those were just two examples of the incredible number of decisions there were to make with this deck in order to win games, and I’m sad to say I didn’t always make them properly. There were some games that just went smoothly, such as the game where I’m left with nothing but two lands and proceed to draw into (in order) my second Blue source, Ancient Tomb, and Battle of Wits, all while my opponent is hitting endless blanks off Dark Confidant. There was also the game against Goblins where I need to Enlightened Tutor for Moat so I don’t lose, but realize that I don’t have the mana to do it in time, so I simply top-deck the Moat and play it on turn four. I draw my fifth mana source the following turn, which means I won’t have to be concerned about him grinding me out with Siege-Gang Commander, because I also started this game with a Battle of Wits in my hand.

Both times that I’ve built this deck and every time I’ve played it, I really enjoyed it; that is because the deck so completely fulfills an aspect of the game that I love so dearly: The deck mandates that I keep track of multiple variables and make decisions based on what my opponent has presented, what my hand is, and how quickly pressure is being applied. In short, Battle of Wits is a very engaging deck, and that’s exactly what I want out of a deck. I want to make decisions and have plenty of things to think about. That isn’t just the case with Magic; it carries over into some of my favorite board games like Arkham Horror and Android. The most attractive quality of Android was the review I read of it stating that “No complication had been spared.” The first time I sat down to play Android, I looked over the rules with some friends; they were dense and convoluted, and required us to reference them again and again to discern what was supposed to be happening in this game. That’s a big part of why we loved it. Battle of Wits, much like an overly complicated game, encourages massive problem-solving skills from the point you start building the deck to the end result of playing it. The deck can be engaging to a level that is unparalleled in Magic, and that’s what makes it so much fun.

If you have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of cards laying around that you’d like to use again, Battle of Wits is one of the best avenues to play them again. If you’re a person who likes to overcomplicate things and you own a ton of cards, give a build of Battle of Wits like this a try. My record with the deck was far from stellar (7–4–2), but I did have a lot of fun with the deck, and that was the real reason why I built it.

Conclusion

For me, even with the byes, the Grand Prix is going to be a bit too much of a stretch for me, but I am intending to play at SCG Open: Indy this upcoming weekend. I’m pretty excited about the idea of there being so many control mirrors in the wake of the Grand Prix and recent SCG Opens, and I believe the list of Landstill I have has consistently been premier among control strategies in the metagame, so it should be interesting to do battle with it. Next week, I’ll discuss the implications of the Grand Prix on the Legacy metagame and examine some of the most interesting decks that made Day 2. Until that point, I’m testing a build of a deck with Swans of Bryn Argoll, and I’m hoping to get a friend to play it at the next SCG Open. I’ll be sure to let you know how it went, and if it’s any good.

Thanks for reading, and have a good whatever-time-of-day-it-is.

~ Christopher Walton in the real world

im00pi at gmail dot com

Master Shake on The Source

@EmperorTopDeck on Twitter