Traditional Explorer - Esper Doom BRO Meta Update

36 12 24
7 39 4 30
Midrange Control

Update 25. January 2023

A couple of minor shuffles. I did cut 2 birth of meletis and added a third thoughtseize and an oath of kaya back in. Might reduce the amount of keepable hands with 2 lands though. 

I also cut a Supreme verdict since mono blue cooled down a little and added the 4th restoration back in. 

 

In the sideboard I cut the 2 noxious grasp again and play another vanishing verse and temporary Lockdown instead.

I cut 1 mystical dispute and 1 thoughtseize (into the main deck) for 2 copies of disdainful Stroke. Useful against devotion decks and any deck that is super greedy. 

 

Obviously all those decisions are just sidegrades. 

 

Disclaimer:

Most of what has to be said about the Doom Archetype I already wrote in my previous decklist post. You can find my thoughts on most decklist choices there. Here I am going to describe some new cards and also how the archetype is situated in the new Explorer metagame.

When I last build the doom deck around 40% of the Meta consisted of grindy Rakdos based Midrange deck. The Doom Foretold deck had an incredibly good matchup against anyone who tried to win a fair game of magic and trade ressources. It is with sadness I have to say that those times are over. This short add-on to my previous build and write-up is meant as an inspiration for everyone who still tries to make the Doom Archetype work even in the current hostile Meta.

 

Mono-Green Devotion: The madman at wizards brought back the Shrine Land and with it a bunch of Mono Colored Devotion decks. Mono-Green Devotion essentially function as a Combo deck and therefore joins the Greasefang decks in terms of unfair board state acceleration. It is obviously difficult to control this explosion with cards like trial of ambition and doom foretold, especially since a lot of card advantage can be gained by the kiora and karn planeswalkers every single turn. Mono Greens Power makes me truly said, because Devotion is the most brain-dead strategy I have seen in a long time - and one would assume it could be exploited in some way. But it can't.

Mono-Blue: On the other side of the spectrum a super fast tempo deck has caught steam after Worlds. Blue has it all. Tempo. Counterspells. This matchup is far from unwinnable, but the truth of the matter is, that they always hit. And a Yorion deck probably does not find answers at the same rate.

Control and Ramp decks however seem to be essentially non-existent in the meta. Therefore it makes sense to build a deck that focuses on Mono-Green and Mono-Blue for the most part.

But lets start off with the new cards first.

 

Dominaria United and Brother's War has brought a bunch of new cards, some of which are interesting for the archetype. While Liliana of the Veil and Sheoldred are obviously playable for example, I happen to be mostly interested in a couple of outlier cards that are specifically interesting for the archetype.

Fallaji Archeologist. This card is a pretty good cantrip effect leaving a permanent on the board. You have a 91% chance to hit a non-creature spell in the current build of the deck. The important part is, that it cuts three cards deep, which helps a 80 card deck to hit their stuff. Archeologist is obviously not as good as omen of the sea but better than spirited companion for example. As a creature it still can be hit by our own boardwipes. Also we cannot dig for lands with the card (otherwise we could play less lands probably). Still I found the card to be fairly good overall.

Temporary Lockdown. In my previous build I mentioned that some players use portable hole, so that they can sack it to the doom foretold in order to keep the sacking going on. Temporary Lockdown can do exactly that (albeit at a higher mana cost). Lockdown can (theoretically) wipe some decks like mono blue though (unless they hit their 1-off Brazen Borrower to bounce it). Especially on the play Lockdown can seriously make some decks stumble hard.

Now obviously you also hit all your small permanents with this. The nice sacrifice fodder that you took great effort in placing on the board. Gone! Forever! Not quite. As the name suggests the lockdown is temporary only. The moment you sacrifice (or bounce) the lockdown all the omens come back onto the board and trigger a second time. If you bounced the card it then will fall back and eat all your opponents stuff again. I could see running even more copies in the main deck for these reasons alone.

 

Card changes

I finally decided to cut dance of the manse, which hurts me a lot. You can of course add it back into the deck. But the card has a big problem. Doom Foretold either wins against mono-green devotion or it is way to slow to be able to eat through the army of 1/1 mana dorks and continuous storms. I do not think that we are somehow able to fill our graveyard well enough for a dance to be worthwhile. Now obviously you could play the Manse in other matchups. But don't forget. Mono-Green-Devotion is a brainless deck. So obviously everyone is going to play it.

I also cut Oath of Kaya, because Mono-Green Devotion doesnt provide any good targets. You might play it for the life-gain though if you want to.

Lastly the Malevolent Hermit is gone. With no control in the Meta we simply don't need the card anymore.

The main deck now runs 2 copies of Thoughtseize and 2 copies of Vanishing Verse. Both cards are good against Mono-Green Devotion and also hit Greasefang players somewhat. To target these two combo decks further I also added 2 copies of Go Blank and 2 copies of noxious grasp into the sideboard. The idea is that you drain their hand (and graveyard) so that they are forced to top deck eventually. Ideally Mono-Green ends up with a bunch of mana but nothing to do with it and Greasefang loses its access to the combo. One disadvantage of being a combo deck is that you have bad topdecks a lot of the times (12 mana dorks for mono green for example). Vanishing Verse and Noxious Grasp are instant speed ways to interact with parts of the Greasefang combo and they also hit a lot of cards in the mono-green deck favorably. Exile removal is particulary important against the old-growth troll and the cavalier of thorns. Because these two cards make Supreme verdict somewhat awkward I am also considering adding extinction event at some point. That card is a lot better against mono green, maybe the single best thing to have in the matchup. Just keep an eye out on mono greens meta share and maybe you want to add some extinction event somewhere (and maybe cut some verdicts or trial of ambition main deck). 

 

I hope these changes can help you finding a place in the Meta and good luck to all.

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Lisna
Last Updated: 03 Mar 2023
Created: 27 Dec 2022
265 66 0

Mainboard - 80 cards (25 distinct)

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$0.29€0.240.03
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Planeswalker (4)

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Maybeboard - 20 cards (13 distinct)

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$0.40€0.270.02
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$0.25€0.190.03
$18.68€22.270.17
$6.26€5.640.11
$1.06€0.730.10
$12.92€14.046.06

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