Ichorid is one of the most exciting decks to find a home in Vintage in the last year. When Future Sight hits the streets, it’ll possibly be the best deck in Vintage. Read on.
Since Time Spiral, the entire archetype has been transformed by Dread Return. Where the deck once relied on Ichorid beatdown, Dread Return on Sutured Ghoul (hasted by Dragon’s Breath) permitted a genuine combo finish. Dread Return sped up the goldfish by several turns and made possible a number of other design changes, such as adding Serum Powder to the deck. All you need to do is start the game with a Bazaar of Baghdad and you have a guaranteed four-turn goldfish.
With the printing of Narcomoeba, Bridge From Below, and Street Wraith, the deck can now operate at a much faster clip than was possible before. This means, once again, the deck needs a complete makeover.
The most innovative and radical departure from pre-FS Ichorid was advanced by none other than Eric Becker. Where my instinct was to simply tweak our old list, making room for Narcomoeba and Street Wraith, he proposed a complete overall to the deck.
Guys, I think I found a card that could enable a fairly consistent turn 2 kill.
3U – Cephalid Sage
Creature – Cephalid 2/3
Threshold – When Cephalid Sage comes into play, draw three cards, then discard two cards from your hand. (You have threshold if seven or more cards are in your graveyard.)
Basically, you Dread Return this guy into play and dredge fifteen (or so) more cards, hopefully into other Dread Returns. I think I’d play three or four of this in place of Fields, since they both give you lots of game versus Wasteland.
If you were to run this guy, I’d be tempted to go with a super combo build, something like:
The Engine (8):
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
Dredgers (14):
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
2 Shambling Shell
Men (12):
4 Narcomoeba
4 Bridge from Below
4 Ichorid
Disruption (8):
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Cabal Therapy
Extra Draw to speed up the kill (9):
4 Street Wraith
4 Mishra’s Bauble
1 Urza’s Bauble
Combo kill (9):
4 Dread Return
3 Cephalid Sage
2 Flame Kin Zealot
The board would probably look like Bert’s.
The idea behind this build is simply to kill turn 2. You don’t need Unmask anymore because you are so freaking fast. Maybe this build doesn’t need all the extra draw, and Leylines could get back into the deck.
I applaud Eric for his ingenuity. The reason for the Sage and Zealot kill is that Sage enables you to combo out when you have only seen a small part of your deck. So if you have only dredged around twenty cards, you can Dread Return the Sage and then suddenly you’ll have most of your deck in your graveyard. When you flashback the Dread Return on the Zealot, you should have most of your Bridges in your graveyard, giving you plenty of men to attack in with the Zealot. Dread Return on Sage to unload your deck and then Dread Return on Flame Kin Zealot for a lethal swing on turn 2 is a pretty unique way to run the kill.
In testing, the Zealot actually didn’t work as intended. If your Bazaar gets hit by Wasteland, or your Zealot’s comes into play ability is Stifled, then you are pretty much forced to just beat in with small men. The theoretical speed that Zealot provides rarely functioned in practice. Alternatively, if you are successful at getting Sage to work, at that point Sutured Ghoul is almost as good. The reason for Zealot over Ghoul is that you save two maindeck spots. You only need two Zealots, instead of four slots for Sutured Ghoul and Dragon’s Breath.
Here’s what it comes down to: if you can consistently win on turn 2, Zealot is better, but only because of the two card spots saved by the changes. Sutured Ghoul will get the job done as well. But if you face the slightest amount of disruption, Sutured Ghoul is generally better. Also, although you save two maindeck card spots, there may be situations where Zealot is short of being lethal, whereas with Ghoul there is no doubt. I’ve had situations where I was a point or two shy with Zealot.
In any case, I think Eric got a lot right with his list.
I think the key unresolved element he got right were the component he labeled “extra draw to speed up the kill.” In addition to the four Street Wraiths, he added five Baubles. Albert Kyle and others have been experimenting with Baubles. Until now, I don’t think that there was a really compelling reason to run them over anything else. However, with Bridge and Narcomoeba in the deck, dredging immediately produces a much greater reward. Instead of not having enough creatures to feed to Cabal Therapies, you can’t dig up the Cabal Therapies fast enough to throw them at your opponent.
Let me just provide a rundown of the deck.
The Combo
Everyone acknowledges that the decklist begins with four Serum Powder and four Bazaar of Baghdad.
Dredgers
There seems to be a universal consensus that fourteen dredgers is the right number. Because of Street Wraith, there is no pressure to include Shambling Shell over Thug, since you’ll have plenty of fat (i.e. power) to Stitch into your Sutured Ghoul. In short, the universal consensus seems to be: four Goglari Grave-Troll, four Stinkweed Imp, four Golgari Thug, and 2 Shambling Shell. Any fewer dredgers and you risk not being able to dredge immediately. If you can’t discard a dredger on turn 1, you are basically giving your opponent free turns, since your goldfish will be at least one turn slower. If there are more dredgers than necessary, this is by design. Remember, there will be games where you start with a 3-5 card hand and need to Bazaar into the dredger.
Importantly, there is a premium on being able to dredge into other dredgers. If your Bazaar gets Wastelanded, you will want to be able to use your draw step, Baubles, and Street Wraiths to dredge into other dredgers. You won’t have an easy or obvious way to discard dredgers in your hand, so you will need to rely on a steady flow of dredgers from your library to your graveyard.
Men
Everyone agrees that the list should begin with four Ichorid and four Narcomoeba. After that, the disagreement emerges. Eric list omitted Nether Shadow entirely. Other lists run only a few Bridges. Here are my thoughts on both: Nether Shadow is the weakest link. However, I think the deck should have at least two. With cards like Street Wraith and Bauble, you now have a decent shot of being able to return a Nether Shadow that has been discarded on turn 1. This used to be an impossibility. Discarding turn 1 Nether Shadow meant a turn 3 Shadow in play, at the earliest. But discarding a Nether Shadow to turn 1 Bazaar and then cycling a Street Wraith means that you can dredge and you will probably be able to return the Shadow on turn 2. There should be either two or three Shadows in the maindeck.
As for Bridge, Bridge is actually a card that gets more powerful in multiples. I have seen arguments for three Bridges, but that doesn’t make sense to me. The advocate suggested that the fourth bridge is unnecessary because it produces “too many” men. To me, you can’t have too many men. You can always use these extra men to get damage in or feed your flashback spells. Bridge is most powerful in multiples. If you sacrifice a turn 2 Narcomoeba with two Bridges in your graveyard, you get two free tokens. If you do the same with three Bridges in your graveyard, you get three free tokens.
Previous options such as Myr Servitor, Basking Rootwalla, and Mishra’s Factory seem hopelessly outdated.
After testing, I think the right breakdown is four Ichorid, four Narcomoeba, four Bridge from Below, and two to three Nether Shadow.
Disruption
The Cabal Therapies are automatic inclusions. They arrive onto the stack by virtue of being in your deck. They are even better than they were before. Before Future Sight, you had to sacrifice a creature to use this card. Now, the sacrifice has the potential to actually net you creatures. This is because of Bridge.
Leyline of the Void was a card that a lot of people, of which I was but one, included in Ichorid lists last year. With the advent of Manaless Ichorid, made possible by Dread Return, I felt that this card was somewhat slow. Yawgmoth’s Will just isn’t as threatening when you have a goldfish that clocks faster than combo-control decks execute their Will plan.
Chalice of the Void is one of the best tempo plays in Vintage. It is free and actually impedes the development of virtually every Vintage deck. More than that, it inhibits Tinker (since they need an artifact to sacrifice), obstructs Yawgmoth’s Will (since they can’t recur Lotus to fuel it or drop other artifacts to propel it), stops Tormod’s Crypt (a nuisance for this deck, to be sure), and sometimes shuts an opponent out of the game (every kept an explosive hand with no land?). Every Mox an opponent drops is something of a Time Walk. Chalice for zero stops all that nonsense.
Unmask was a card I long advocated. Unmask synergized with Cabal Therapy, giving you information that makes subsequent Therapies more effective. This is the card that is now on the bubble of utility. The importance of Unmask was this: I discovered that in order to beat combo and fight even most combo control decks, you needed to interact in some way in the first two turns. Unmask and Chalice gave you a decent amount of turn 1 disruption.
Take a look at the disruption chart at the end of my matchup analysis of Gifts versus Ichorid.
Turn 2 Therapy was only possible under one circumstance (in the old list): discarding an Ichorid on turn 2. That was the only creature you could reanimate. Part of the motivation for later including Mishra’s Factory was to have a way to flashback Cabal Therapy on turn 2 without Ichorid.
In other words, the Ichorid lists I wrote about in January often had a game plan that looked like this:
Turn 1: Bazaar, discard, disruption spell.
Turn 2: Dredge.
Turn 3: Therapy you twice, Dread Return Sutured Ghoul, and kill you.
In other words, it often did nothing on turn 2.
Nacromoeba provides a way to get a creature into play simply by dredging, something this deck does naturally! Not only does this deck now have many consistent turn 2 Therapies, but it also can Therapy on turn 1! Watch:
Turn 1: Bazaar, activate, discarding Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, and Cabal Therapy. Cycle Street Wraith, dredging Golgari Grave-Troll. Revealing Nacromoeba and Bridge from Below. Flashback Therapy sacrificing Nacromoeba. Put a token into play. If you have another Therapy you can use it now too.
The limitation used to be creatures to sacrifice to Therapy. Now the constraint is the number of Therapies you can dig up. Because of the speed of Therapy, Unmask is now far less necessary. That doesn’t mean that Unmask is still not good, but it isn’t as important as it was. Take another look at the Ichorid versus Gifts article. The average game length for Ichorid’s kill was turn 3.5. Post Future Sight Ichorid should have a game length at least one turn faster than that. Its actual average game plan should be about two and half turns. One more constraint on Unmask is pitching a card. Would you rather cycle Street Wraith or pitch it to Unmask? It’s a tough decision. I can’t say for certainty what the right call is, but right now I think that omitting Unmask is the way to go.
Strip Mine is the hardest cut for me. Strip Mine is a pure Time Walk in this deck. Turn 1 Bazaar and turn 2 Strip Mine is one of the best starts you can get. You’ll be winning as your opponent watches helplessly. On the other hand, the fact that this deck now has a realistic chance of winning on turn 2 suggests that perhaps running Strip Mine is just unnecessary. Why Strip Mine your opponent on turn 2 when you can just kill them? It’s a good point.
Extra Draw
Street Wraith is an automatic inclusion. I discussed its synergies at length last week. I also think that four Baubles should be included (although I’ll express no preference as to whether Mishra’s Bauble or Urza’s Bauble are better). Note, however, that you can stack the draw from these Baubles on your upkeep so that you can use the Bazaar first to ensure that you have dredgers in your graveyard when your Bauble’s draw resolves. In lieu of the fifth bauble, I think my teammates Jacob Orlove and Patrick Chapin are absolutely correct in suggesting Lion’s Eye Diamond instead.
Think about it:
Turn 1: Bazaar of Baghdad. Lion’s Eye Diamond. Activate Lion’s Eye Diamond to discard your hand. Activate Bazaar of Baghdad to dredge a ton.
Notice that you can still use Street Wraith and Mishra’s Bauble. Watch:
Turn 1: Bazaar of Baghdad. Lion’s Eye Diamond. Cycle Street Wraith. In response, sacrifice Lion’s Eye Diamond. With the cycling on the stack, activate Bazaar. Dredge the cards you discarded and then discard the dredgers again. Now the Street Wraith’s cycle resolves. Dredge again! You’ll have a turn 2 kill for sure!
In a sense, Lion’s Eye Diamond is super Urza’s Bauble. The only downside is that you’ll burn three mana. Boo hoo. (That is, until they change the mana burn rule).
The Kill
I still prefer the two Ghoul, two Dragon’s Breath, two Dread Return suite. It doesn’t make sense to up the count on any one of these cards without doing the same for the other two. Right now, I’m not willing to cut three other cards just to increase by a very small margin the chances that I’ll be able to combo out when I want to. I haven’t yet faced difficulty comboing out when the opportunity arises, so I don’t think this is likely to change.
It’s time for me to throw my hat in the ring. We’ve had about a week to see what others have come up with. While I think others have made some strides (in particular Eric Becker), here is where I see Ichorid post Future Sight:
Creatures (31)
- 3 Nether Shadow
- 2 Sutured Ghoul
- 4 Ichorid
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 4 Golgari Thug
- 2 Shambling Shell
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Narcomoeba
- 4 Street Wraith
Lands (4)
Spells (25)
I know that many of you have your own Ichorid lists – and I know that many of you have put some hard work into Ichorid. But I’ve tested this extensively, and I swear by this decklist. I think I managed to hone in on the right Future Sight elements and come up with the best list.
Let me say a few more words:
This deck is utterly broken. In January I wrote about Manaless Ichorid, bringing Albert Kyle’s invention into public view, but I also made tweaks and hopefully improvements. Albert thought that I was making some good progress. As of this writing, Albert hasn’t weighed in on the direction to go with this deck. Perhaps he’s holding his tech to himself, or perhaps he has more testing to do.
Here’s the thing: this deck is really, really broken. To illustrate: the Petrified Field can be entirely omitted because you win now even if your Bazaar is Wastelanded. You only need Bazaar on turn 1 now, and you only need to use it once. That’s how robust Ichorid has become. I sincerely believe that this deck is automatically a Tier 1 deck. In the next few weeks, I will show you how badly this deck smashes everything in the format. I’ll throw it up against what should be the hardest matchup in the format: combo. I could be wrong, but I think you are going to see Ichorid having a nice and favorable match.
I played a series of games through Extirpate. In my first match against Extirpate, I got Extirpated twice and still won on turn 4. That’s how insane this deck is. This is one of the best decks in Vintage, if not the best deck. And that’s a good thing for Vintage, in my opinion.
Next week I will throw this deck up against Pitch Long and we’ll see what happens!