The World's End: An Experimental Frenzy

Well it has been awhile. Apologies for the silence however unlike d8dk32, the eternal and strongwilled champion of BBB Sorcery Spells everywhere I admit the Probe ban broke me. I had always said that if they took Probe that would be done on the deck and well, they did it.

Gits.

Since then I did some soul searching, I have played ANT and numerous variations thereof, I have played UB Omnitell, Bant Bomberman, BUG Lands, Greedy Mentor Tempo, UWr Standstill. All of it has been fun but nothing has yet "clicked" with me the same way and my wallet is screaming in pain as I keep wanting to try new things. I did try running an older style Rev 614 list (Doomsday x Show and Tell featuring Emrakul and Shelldock Isle) going 3-3 in an event which had one of the best games of magic I have ever played in.

Bonus Mini Report

I am against UB Shadow, Game 1. We both know what each other are on. He has a threat-light hand with disruption and burns himself down to 13 stripping my hand. I play a Cloud of Faeries and start bashing in, holding countermagic up. He ignores them for a bit, even shuffling away a Fatal Push with a BS when suddenly his life is low enough to be in danger. We of course have both been joking the whole time that I was now playing the Delver deck and would get there with it. He finally finds his own Delver to drop and lo' it does not flip (there is a long running joke that his Delvers never flip). Through his digging he looks for and finds 3 Delver of Secrets but lo' none of them flip and he dies to a 1/1 Faerie Cloud... Wow.

For anyone mad enough to try the very untuned and fun list I dub it Spaghetti and Meatballs.

Anyways I digress. Jumping to ahead a bit, when Experimental Frenzy was spoiled everyone had a think about it but most people just went "hmm, probs not great tbh". One person however saw the real potential. Reversemermaid on the DDFT Discord (first as some drunken fun started throwing out fun attempts at using the card and then suddenly...

Reversemermaid on 01/26/2019:

It should probably have a maindeck ToA and a draw 4 to make non-frenzy piles more viable anyhow with frenzy in play the easiest pile is so darn stupid lol, [LED, LED, LED, LED, BW] makes enough mana to BW for ToA and sac Frenzy

waiiiiiiiit damn lol these piles have trouble generating enough storm lol just did that pile and storm count was like 7 man im doing some embarassing misplays with this

shieet you can pull double doomsday piles out of your ass to generate storm with frenzy this is so cool

at 4 mana sources you can ptt pile with [EF, LED, LED, DD, ToA] Throw Healing Salve in the 75 and you can actually go infinite lol Wait ToA gains life so [LED, LED, LED, ToA, DD] is infinite

Did this guy just say infinite storm with Frenzy out? Suddenly, people were interested. Myself included!

Looking into the card and decklist more there were some key things identified.

1. Frenzy plus Doomsday is an instant win.
2. Frenzy plus Doomsday is infinite Storm instant win.
3. Frenzy plus Doomsday assuming you have B post DD is an instant win even with Surgical on LED
4. You can even sub out Tendrils for Collective Brutality and it would still work
5. Frenzy is a weird card

Deep diving into point five further. With Frenzy out suddenly deck construction considerations and card sequencing become very different. LED becomes literal Lotus. Lands become huge liabilities and Cantrips reverse themselves. Take Preordain for instance. Normally if you see two bad cards you bottom both and draw a fresh one. With frenzy out you should instead bottom one, draw one and then have the fresh one on the top of your library. Things like fetchlands and Conjurer's Bauble can now help clear dud cards off the top of the library and your hand becomes a weird part graveyard part Brainstorm access pool resource. Ponder becomes interesting as you can clear a dead card by drawing it and then keep two desirables but all this means thinking in a way very unlike how you would normally.

Now the nice thing about this card is the default Frenzy pile is very easy.

So Assume Frenzy is out and you cast Doomsday, stack the above.

1. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
2. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
3. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
4. Cast Tendrils from the top of your deck for 5 storm and have left in pool
5. Cast Doomsday stack [LED, LED, LED, ToA, DD]
6. Repeat as required

The nice thing is the repeat stacks can use the Doomsday in the yard to form the new piles. The life gain from Tendrils helps mitigate the lifeloss from Doomsday allowing you to go infinite. As per point 4 above, Collextive Brutalitiy can also be used as eventually your Doomsday life total will go down to 1 or 2, you cast Collective Brutality back up to 3/4 and thus can repeat ad infinium.
Hell, you could even consider running Aetherflux Reservoir!

As per the example above:

1. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
2. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
3. Cast LED, from the top of your deck, crack for
4. Cast AR from the top of your deck for left in pool
5. Cast Doomsday, gaining 6 life stack [LED, LED, LED, DD, ?]
6. Repeat as required

Eventually the life gain will ramp up so that you go about 50 life and you can dome your opponent as required! This is of course just an amusing idea and in no way should be considered competetive!

Decklist

Meme cards aside, the actual deck construction currently under consideration isn't too far removed from pre-ban lists. As Frenzy and Burning Wish do not pair well Wish has been cut and obviously Probe is now gone too. Tendrils come back into the main and some extra cantrip effects and discard are added.
Some tricks remain from pre-ban era. Conjurer's Bauble remains at least a one-of alongside Act on Impulse to enable an easy non-Frenzy pile.

Some other cards come in to help with combo and consistency. Lim Dul's Vault is a classic UB card that has been used as a Vampiric Tutor for a while and is often dismissed due to the card disadvantage it provides. However consider with Frenzy out. Suddenly you get to either tutor what you need to play immediately or even create a Frenzy Stack to chain off the top of your deck.

Lands wise, you want as low a count as possible to avoid hitting them with Frenzy however you still need enough to cast your cards. 14-15 seem to be the commonly preferred count and these are supplemented by 4 Petals, 4 LED, 4 DR and 3-4 CR.

Protection comes in the form of 4 Tsz, 2-4 Duress and 0-1 Collective Brutality.

Taking this into account lists are starting to look similar to the following:

This has a lot of flex still available and, even as I type this, people are offering to fight me over running only three Frenzy and not four. I like three as Frenzy is a dead card usually in a Frenzy chain however you do generally want to find one often. Currently there is no definitive correct list but feel free to use the above as a guideline for now.

First Run

So I was persuaded and took the above list to a local FNM, 4 rounds.
Somehow I went 3-1, not bad for a first run at all however I felt somewhat like a fraud. The deck was really fun however every win I got I felt like I 100% cheesed it. Maybe this is something akin to imposter syndrome but I had gone in to the night expecting to get a 2-2 finish at best with stars aligning.

The breakdown of what I played against was as such:

vs ANT (2-0)
vs UR Delver (1-2)
vs Grixis Control (2-1)
vs Burn (2-0)

Hopefully this shows I wasn't just playing against Tier 13 jank but instead a decent mix of proven archetypes, all with experienced pilots. Despite this I still feel odd about this strange new coffee filled brew.

Maybe it's because I am a tea drinker? :think:

Do I lack faith in the deck? Most certainly.
Did I do well despite minimal practice and having a 75 full of really silly cards? Well, yes... seems I did...

One run of 4 rounds however does not statistically significant data make however, as people who have read the old Wiki stuff will know, I like numbers! As soon as this new brew was announced and tried we at the cabal of Doomsdayers decided to get our rites on and ressurrect an old friend. The result spreadsheet. At the time of writing we now have 164 matches recorded as a community with the following statistical breakdown:

Even for a skeptic like myself, this seems pretty good already. The data obviously has all the issues that community derived data has and is collected from a mixture of pilots of differing lists, both online and in paper. Take from it what you will.

Final Thoughts

What will be will be
Every river flows into the sea, but it's never enough
And when the night gives way
It's like a brand new Doomsday

Lyrics from the song "Doomsday" by Architects from the Album "Holy Hell" (2017) on Epitaph Records

So welcome to a potential new world of degenerate combo. It might not be lean. It might not be pretty. It might not even be good. But whilst the Experimental Frenzy buzz is on a high, I will be enjoying trying to cast Doomsday once more and maybe, just maybe, DDFT can evolve into DDEFT (still pronounced the same).

For more content, please check out our resources page which includes a list of community streamers. If you would like to submit content to the Wiki, feel free to reach to us in the Doomsday Discord.