DDFT 2022: Year in Review

2022 has been something of a banner year for DDFT. We've seen more published results of Doomsday x Storm variants than any year in recent memory, and the deck has not felt this playable since the banning of Sensei's Divining Top five years ago. There were also multiple successful variants under the umbrella of DDFT, and it was this fracturing and the development of the broader archetype in two substantially different directions that convinced me to write an article. So to begin this retrospective journey through the year, lets take you, dear reader, back to... 2021?

2021

2021, and 2020 before it, had not been a great year for DDFT. We'd gotten Echo of Eons and Thassa's Oracle a year or two before and the new tools had provided some fun and interesting decklists but not a ton of results. I'd been having fun tweaking and playing Mindkiller Doomsday, and had cashed many a league but fallen short of 5-0s. Near the beginning of the year, BluStalker had a 5-0 with an interesting Echo DDFT list. It had some, in my opinion, questionable card choices and was low on protection spells but it was a result in the vein of Traditional DDFT. Unfortunately it seemed nobody else had managed anything. In the twilight hours of 2021, I secured a 5-0 with a new idea I had been testing, a DDFT list without Burning Wish.

Wishclaw Talisman plays the role of tutor, and we still had access to a copy of Echo of Eons. Bolas's Citadel was a new tool, expensive but powerful. It functioned similarly to Experimetal Frenzy, which saw its own share of Doomsday-related success, enabling piles and serving as a Storm engine in its own right. The manabase in this list was much more stable than in the 4c builds with Burning Wish that I had been testing. It could play basics, and still play Orim's Chant to help protect Echo turns. Trying to build a 15-land manabase that frequently wanted 4 colors on its combo turn and was trying to go off on turn 3 was causing me problems. Removing a color solved the issue.

However, despite a solid result quickly after putting the list together, I ended up not developing the list much more. But keep it in the back of your mind. We'll come back to some ideas from it later.

Entering 2022

As we moved into 2022, I was primarily playing and brewing Mindkiller variants. The metagame was (and still is, really) in such a state that I felt combo decks needed to be extremely fast to compete. There wasn't much room for a midrange combo deck that wasn't playing Force of Will. Traditional DDFT, as well as decks like ANT, fall into this space and ANT was similarly on a downswing. I think this is in part because there is nothing inherent about the way the deck is constructed that beats any portion of the metagame. They aren't fast enough to ignore decks without Force of Will, and they aren't resilient enough to reliably beat multiple counterspells without playing a bunch of their own protection. Combine this with the fact that blue decks had become more inherently constructed to beat typical Storm decks with cards like Narset, and you have a recipe for pushing out the midrange combo decks. It's much easier to construct a fast combo deck than one that inherently beats countermagic, and Mindkiller fits the bill. It even had the tools to play through hateful permanents when on the draw, though it lacked a bit of the ability to battle through the blue decks. But I was working on that.

I finally had what I felt was a strong list, and published an article where I tracked and analyzed my results over 10 leagues. My winrate was over 60% and felt strong, especially considering I was playing a combo brew with Spoils of the Vault. I didn't manage to get any published results in that set of leagues but I was very happy with the list overall, and it felt much stronger than previous iterations. The big change that improved the performance was fitting a playset of Thoughtseize into the deck. Between it and maindeck Empty the Warrens, I felt comfortable against blue decks in game 1, and there was no loss of speed so I could still beat the non-blue decks simply by virtue of deck construction, while slower hands could simply Thoughtseize them first.

I continued to tweak the list, though changes were minimal, and in the spring I had something of a hot streak. I had 3 published 5-0s with essentially the above list, aside from some minor sideboard tweaks. A fourth 5-0 using a fetchland manabase went unpublished. In between I also had numerous 4-1s, as well as the occasional stinker league of course, and my winrate was hanging around 75%. The deck was exactly where I wanted it at the time, and if anyone reading this has interest in giving it a shot I think that list is a solid starting point.

I wouldn't say I got tired of success or anything, but brewing and playing interesting decks is one of the primary drivers of me playing Magic, and as the list settled and I didn't have anything new I wanted to try, I slowed down playing it. I had a lot of other things going on in life at this point as well; I was just finishing up a Masters degree, my son was approaching his first birthday, and it was starting to become grass-touching season anyway. I played a lot less MTGO during the summer.

You Said There Were Other DDFT Variants, Stop Talking About Your Spoils Kink

Oh right, sorry.

So around the same time I was on my hot streak, Legacy combo afficionado and accomplished Doomsday player Fuz65 had a small flurry of results with a radical take on the archetype.

This list is much more akin structurally to the more common Doomsday variant with a mere 2 colors for a rock solid manabase. Two copies of Bolas's Citadel provide an alternate engine, and the somewhat disparate halves of the deck are tied together by a boatload of cantrips. There are some parallels between my list from the end of 2021, in that the manabase is built for improved stability, and Citadel provides a powerful engine that is hard for most decks to interact with.

However, I would say my list was trying harder to be a Storm deck, with the tutors and multiple tutorable Storm engines. Fuz's list is clearly more focused on Doomsday, and the Citadels provide a backup plan that incidentally plays well with the primary plan. There are some aspects of this list that I don't personally like, such as the distinct lack of tutors. Playing more cantrips improves your Doomsdays and provides consistency, but I would be inclined to replace a couple Preordains with Wishclaw Talismans, which can also let you draw into a Doomsday pile and help find Bolas's Citadel, or find a win-con off Citadel.

That said, the list clearly works, which is interesting because I looks like it lies firmly in the realm of midrange combo. But lets compare it to decks like ANT or Traditional DDFT. The biggest difference from Traditional DDFT is the manabase. Going from 4 to 2 colors and playing lots of basics gives it more stability against decks like Delver and many of the fair non-blue decks. Good mana is one of combo's best tools against Delver. Furthermore, Doomsday is one of the best combo cards against decks that play Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Chalice of the Void, but it has to be backed up by solid mana (or Force of Will). Storm decks, on the other hand, struggle to beat these kinds of cards once resolved. And to cap it all off, Citadel can be tough to interact with. Tradtional anti-Storm cards like Flusterstorm can't stop it from resolving, and Prismatic Ending or other commonly played options can't remove it. Endurance does nothing to stop a Tendrils powered by Citadel, where it can be disruptive to a Past in Flames deck or a Doomsday pile.

Citadel still functions as a Storm and card-advantage engine under Narset, and it can't be Pyro- or Hydroblasted. Finally, not playing Burning Wish means a lot more room in the sideboard for a variety tools against the metagame. I think these aspects are what allow it to succeed.

The Rest of the Year, or How I Didn’t Learn to Not Talk About My Spoils Kink

As autumn rolled in I'd mostly had my fill of grass-touching and started to more frequently play Magic. I was still primarily focused on working on Mindkiller Doomsday, and I was especially interested in trying to adapt the deck around Mox Opal and Galvanic Relay. I had seen their effectiveness in TES and was interested to see if they could do the same for my deck. You'll note that Relay was already in the sideboard of my 5-0 lists, but I was not altogether impressed with its power. TES was better optimized to use Relay than that incarnation of Mindkiller, in large part because of the number of mana rocks. Opals help increase Storm count for a Relay, and then help you cast the spells you exiled for the next turn. TES is playing around 23 artifacts to help reach Metalcraft, and Mindkiller was running a mere 12. Conventional wisdom says that you need a minimum of 18 blue cards to be able to reliably have one to pitch to Force of Will, and Opal requires you to have 2 more artifacts to use it. Clearly, simply adding a playset of Opals would leave me far short of the number of artifacts needed to reliably turn on Metalcraft. Looking at the artifacts that TES plays that Mindkiller does not, we see Mishra's Bauble and Wishclaw Talisman. Both are the kind of cards that are strong if you want to play multiple turns, which isn't really something Mindkiller was trying to do. So I had to figure out what additional artifacts to slot in, as well as what to cut to fit them.

My first attempts swapped the Thoughtseizes for Defense Grids, and I trimmed on lands and Cabal Ritual to fit the Moxen. This made sense on paper, since you're not cutting any protection spells, and Grid is arguably better than Thoughtseize at protecting Echo turns. Part of the draw of Opal in the first place was making Echoes better by helping to generate mana from the new hand, so it seemed like Grid was a natural fit to this plan. But there were some issues: Defense Grid costs 2 mana, and Opal can't help cast it if you're relying on it to hit Metalcraft. This made it actaully quite awkward and the deck felt slower as a result, and it still only left me with 20 artifacts which is a little lower than I wanted.

It took me a little while but I realized the artifact lands were the most natural solution to my problem. I wouldn't need to cut any actual spells, and the Opals would hopefully mitigate any color issues stemming from my lands only making one color. I snagged a few 4-1s with a list that looked like this:

It felt strong against most decks, and Echoes felt like they led more consistently to kills due to additional free mana sources. The Relays were definitely more powerful than they were without Opal. Still, there were some aspects that I wasn't a fan of. The list felt more susceptible to Chalice of the Void, Force of Vigor became a much bigger problem, and Collector Ouphe was quite literally unbeatable. The deck was still fast enough to go under those cards some of the time, but matchups that previously felt favorable now felt much more even. There also were some issues with mulligans, primarily due to the manabase. The Opals were dead if the hand couldn't achieve Metalcraft, and more commonly lands would make the wrong color. The Thoughtseizes also felt a bit out of place now, as there was less excess black mana being created. Futhermore, it somehow felt like the deck was constructed such that casting Thoughtseize on turn 1 and going off turn 2 was less desirable as a gameplan. I think it was a result of the lands not making all colors. A hand that could play land into Thoughtseize on turn 1 might no be able to make red mana for turn 2. In spite off all this, I felt like Opals could still be a net gain (and my results without Opal were uninspiring), so I continued testing.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This is the Mindkiller list I am currently testing and I like it quite a bit.

The biggest change to the list is moving the Relays to the main, and discard to the board. This maximizes the business spells and the power of Opal in game 1. We're leaning into the speed axis. It doesn't noticeably impact gameplay against blue decks, because Storm spells from hand have always been the best weapon against them, and Relay helps overpower them. Relay can be a liability against prison-style decks but this is an acceptable loss; there are only 3 copies of Relay maindeck, and in the blind you'd rather Spoils or Wish for Empty or Echo, so it doesn't materially change the matchup. Collector Ouphe is still clearly a major issue, but I came to realize that speed is the best weapon against it anyway. It rarely lands on turn 1, so on the play a big Relay can be sufficient to get under it. Postboard against most decks that would play it, Relay comes out.

You'll notice that I swapped Thoughtseize for Duress as my discard of choice. I'm not 100% convinced this is correct but most of what you want to discard is non-creature, and against the decks with creatures you'd care to discard, like Thalia, you'd rather just go fast and not spend time with discard spells. Not losing life to your manabase or other spells means you can see the most possible cards with Spoils, which is a minor, but cetainly non-zero, advantage. Finally, I also removed Street Wraith. It was really only in the deck to enable a very specific pile. Imagine a hand like this:

This is a keepable 4-card hand with Street Wraith in the deck, since you can put Wraith at the top of the pile and use LED mana to cast Manamorphoses into Oracle. But it's an extremely specific situation, I couldn't remember the last time it came up, and Wraith mostly was just 2 life for a random card. With the new focus on powering up Relay, it makes sense to remove the worst relay hit from the deck when it wasn't a great card to begin with.

The last thing to mention is that this list is missing a few sideboard cards. I simply couldn't decide what I wanted to put in there. The boarding maps well as is, and all the reasonable win-cons and utility cards are already present. Perhaps Slaughter Pact would be a reasonable inclusion as a way to kill Collector Ouphe and other hatebears.

Coming into 2023, I would also really like to work on the Fuz65-style list some more as well. It's been a while since I've seriously played a deck with blue cantrips, and I'd hate to leave a viable DDFT list untested. I'd also really like to play more paper Magic, especially larger tournaments. Haven't had a good MTG road trip with the homies in far too long.

Finally, to wrap this up, I wanted to shout out a couple people from the Doomsday discord that are active in the DDFT channel. Jens has been continuing to work on Traditional DDFT lists, and while they've expressed that it hasn't been all that successful, it's still good to see people developing and testing in the DDFT space. Prosokken is a real sicko and Mindkiller enjoyer, who has listened to a lot of outlandish crap ideas from me and was very helpful in converging on the Mindkiller list I'm currently testing. And of course Fuz65; innovation is always appreciated.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and hopefully 2023 will bring some new toys to play with.

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