MF Cerebral Assassin 2009

clayparson · Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 54

So this is a deck my playgroup and I started testing this weekend. The idea started out as a sort of a joke ("Man, Sharuum would be nuts with welder and broken T1 stuff!"), then it was stuck for a day or two as one of many decks we thought would be fun but weren't competitive. But now that it has been tested and tweaked a bit, it is unclear whether it should remain in the Casual file, or if it should be considered for real play. Here's the list:

Mana
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
4 City of Brass
1 Shivan Reef
1 Underground River
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus

Dudes
2 Sharuum the Hegemon
2 Sundering Titan
2 Magister Sphinx

Reanimators
2 Animate Dead
4 Goblin Welder
2 Reanimate

Bazaar Engine + Card Drawing, etc.
2 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
3 Intuition

Broken Cards/Janky Utility
1 Mindslaver
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Possessed Portal
4 Force of Will

For those who are not familiar with Cerebral Assassin, the deck was born of the idea that it is good to have a Sundering Titan come into play on your side as early in the game as possible. The easiest way to do this is with bazaar+Welder/Animate Dead/Reanimate. Many versions of the deck also feature some variant of the Worldgorger Dragon loop (clearly, our version does not) and/or Possessed Portal (which can be used with Squee to lock down the game.) My groups key innovations are the inclusion of Mindslaver, Force of Will (something we had never seen, but I refuse to believe we are the first to think of it) and the use of the two Sphinx guys from Alara, especially Sharuum.

The first day of playtesting went OK for the deck, nothing to get excited about; posting near-even record against MUD (match comes down to flip and who gets the God-hand) and a Goyf-Gro deck, a losing record to Tez, and completely destroying Suicide Virus (why we tested against that, i will never know.)
Day two (today) was much more interesting. Whether because of luck or superior piloting or the power of the deck, Cerebral destroyed everything. TPS, another Gro-ish deck, two Tez builds, 5c Stax, Aggro Shop, random GW deck everyone plays because Menendian built it, Oath, more MUD; we tossed it in front of everything and it did well (I, for one, is taking this with a grain of salt, refuse to believe we stumbled across anything this good.)

So tell me, what does the M-L community think? Is this a pile? Does it have potential? What do you think of the Force of Wills? Would we be better served with Duress/Thoughtseize? Or should we squeeze the Dragon combo in there in either MD or SB? What would you SB?

Discuss, test, consider, whatever. Thanks.

IkeReilly · Joined: 11 Dec 2007 Posts: 34

Why not inkwell leviathan over magister sphinx or titan? And seems like a resolved pithing needle on bazaar or welder could be pretty harsh. Null Rod seems bad for you. Force looks a little weak in this build from the lack of blue cards to throw away but this is a no test assessment.