Hello everybody and welcome to a different version of Against the Odds! Recently, I wished to play some Premodern, and I discovered the completely good deck: Distorting Lens / Dystopia combo! The deck is principally Against the Odds Distorting Lens, however for Premodern. Why would you construct a complete deck round an artifact that does not do something aside from change the colour of a everlasting? There are literally some actually cool methods, like utilizing Distorting Lens to make the opponent’s greatest everlasting (together with lands!) white or inexperienced so Dystopia will make our opponent sacrifice it on their maintenance. Not to say playing cards like Red Elemental Blast or Hydroblast, which get a lot stronger once they can blow up actually any everlasting! What are the percentages of profitable by altering the colours of our opponents’ permanents in Premodern? Let’s leap right into a league and discover out!
Against the Odds: Distorting Lens
The Deck
Today our deck is all in on…Distorting Lens. The outdated two-drop artifact faucets to vary the colour of a everlasting to any colour we wish till finish of flip, which by itself is simply as ineffective because it sounds. But when you begin including different playing cards to the combo, it may possibly truly do some fairly wild issues! Backing up Distorting Lens, we even have a few copies of Vodalian Mystic, which primarily does the identical factor as Distorting Lens, however for instants or sorceries on the stack fairly than permanents on the battlefield. This makes it particularly highly effective with playing cards like Hydroblast and Red Elemental Blast towards management or combo decks.
So why would we probably need to change the colour of permanents? The greatest reply right here is Dystopia, this bizarre outdated enchantment from Alliances that makes every participant sacrifice a white or inexperienced everlasting on their maintenance. While Dystopia is fairly busted in case you occur to run right into a inexperienced or white deck, the concept of our deck is to make it good towards anybody by utilizing Distorting Lens to show our opponent’s permanents into inexperienced or white permanents so they’re pressured to sacrifice them. While sniping creatures is ok, the true energy of the plan is disrupting the opponent’s mana base. The strongest factor our deck can do is use Dark Ritual to play Dystopia on flip one after which play Distorting Lens on flip two, which permits us to vary the colour of our opponent’s land to inexperienced or white on their maintenance and pressure them to sacrifice it, which may be very near a tough lock!
Why is not Dystopia a tough lock with Distorting Lens? The difficulty is cumulative maintenance, which makes us pay an growing quantity of life on every of our upkeeps to maintain Dystopia round. In normal, we will solely afford to maintain Dystopia for 3 turns (whole price six life) or possibly 4 turns (whole price of 10 life) earlier than we cease paying the maintenance and let it go. So even with our nut draw, we do not simply lock our opponent out of the sport altogether (though if we draw a number of Dystopias, it may possibly play out this fashion). But that is fantastic as a result of we have now much more color-swapping shenanigans to help it!
Our different plan for profiting from Distorting Lens is numerous “blast” playing cards: Hydroblast, Pyroblast, Red Elemental Blast, and Blue Elemental Blast. For one mana, these playing cards both counter or blow up a everlasting, however provided that it is the right colour. Distorting Lens makes these playing cards extremely damaged since we will use it to show any everlasting into the colour we wish after which for a single mana destroy that everlasting with a blast! This can be the place Vodalian Mystic is available in, letting us change the colours of spells on the stack so we will counter them with a blast, which is particularly useful towards spell-based combo decks that do not care all that a lot about us blowing up their permanents.
We even have a few distinctive methods to dig for our combo items. Ancestral Knowledge has a ton of bizarre textual content, but it surely lets us take a look at the highest 10 playing cards of our deck, exile any variety of them, and stack the remainder in any order on the highest of our deck. But we have now to pay a cumulative maintenance of 1 every flip or else we sacrifice it and must shuffle our deck. The method it performs in follow, not less than most frequently, is we play it, select no matter card we wish from our prime 10, put it on the highest of our deck, pay the maintenance price as soon as the next flip, after which let it go, which principally makes it like a bizarre tutor that typically whiffs. Speaking of bizarre tutors, Lim-Dul’s Vault is sort of a actually bizarre two-mana Vampiric Tutor. We look by means of our deck in chunks of 5 and select to both stack these 5 playing cards on the highest of our deck in any order or put these 5 playing cards to the underside by paying a life and take a look at once more. Assuming we have now sufficient life to pay, this does make sure that we’ll draw no matter combo piece we’re lacking, which is fairly essential as a result of our deck would not have a lot card draw or some ways to seek out our combo items.
While blowing up your whole opponent’s lands is sweet, this does not truly win the sport. Much like Blood Moon in Modern, the disruption that Distorting Lens and Dystopia supply is normally momentary, which suggests we additionally must discover a risk to stress our opponent earlier than they rebuild. We have two choices right here. First, we have now Hypnotic Specter, which is barely a 2/2 flier, making it a reasonably gradual clock, however forcing our opponent to discard at random every time it hits for fight harm could make it laborious for our opponent to rebuild after a Dystopia. Since a method folks attempt to mess around it’s by stopping taking part in lands till we’re pressured to surrender the Dystopia to its cumulative maintenance price. If we have now a Hippie, this plan is fairly dangerous as a result of we’d simply make them discard the land they had been making an attempt to sandbag!
Phyrexian Negator, then again, the unique, inverted model of Phyrexian Obliterator, is among the quickest clocks in Premodern as a 5/5 trampler for 3, which was extremely far above the curve again within the late ’90s. The drawback is that if it takes harm, we must sacrifice that many permanents. This makes Phyrexian Negator tremendous dangerous as a result of one thing so simple as a Lightning Bolt or a blocker could make us sacrifice our board. This stated, if we will truly disrupt our opponent’s assets sufficient that they cannot work together with Negator, it is truly an effective way to shut out the sport since it may possibly kill the opponent in simply 4 assaults. Oh yeah, and each of our finishers price three mana, which suggests if we need to get actually frisky, we will probably play them on flip one with Dark Ritual mana, cross our fingers, and hope for the perfect!
Wrap Up
Honestly, I’m nonetheless undecided what to make of this deck. We began our league off 0-2, and I used to be satisfied it was one of many worst decks I’d ever performed, however then we recovered to win our final three matches and end our league with a profitable report! The color-changing plan is hilarious, and the pseudo-lock with Dystopia is highly effective, though as we discovered in our video games, it is rather removed from a assured win because the cumulative maintenance is definitely tremendous punishing. Speaking of punishing, taking part in with Phyrexian Negator is extremely scary as a result of it is really easy for one thing to go incorrect. It confirmed up in plenty of our video games, and I used to be holding my breath every time anticipating a Lightning Bolt to spoil our deck, however the clock is so quick that plenty of the time it was sufficient to win the sport earlier than our opponent discovered a method to make us sacrifice our board. If you want absurdly unusual synergies with archaic outdated playing cards that nobody remembers anymore, the deck is hilarious. Is it good? I’m nonetheless undecided, however you actually solely want to tug off the Dystopia + Distorting Lens line as soon as to make all of it worthwhile!
Conclusion
Anyway, that is all for in the present day. As at all times, depart your ideas, concepts, opinions, and solutions, and you’ll attain me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at [email protected].