Table of Contents
Hello everybody! Today, I want to show you a little piece of art that my friend Onyuka_ and I created together. I had, for the first time, the honor of trying out M21 at the preview streamer event with a fully stocked account provided for the occasion by Wizards, and I immediately knew that I wanted to try to abuse Discontinuity. So I called over my friend and we started messing around. After a few brews, we found out what the best cards were and, to make room for them, we began to cut all the weak magic cards like T3feri and Azusa!
Here’s our current version:
[sd_deck deck=”WhjEusnhv”]
At this point, you may be wondering what this pile of bad mythic cards is, so here comes the fun part!
Let’s explain the combos:
Discontinuity: This is the key card of the deck. We should consider it as a 2 mana end our own turn effect most of the time, but it can be useful in many additional scenarios e.g. we can use it as a 6 mana instant at the beginning of opponent’s upkeep to make them skip their turn, or we can use it as a counterspell since it exiles all spells and abilities on the stack – this means that we can also counter an opponent’s Shark Typhoon or Hydroid Krasis, denying both the creature and the draw. The upside of ‘forcing’ the end of our turn, we’ll explain case by case.
Tale’s End: Similar to Discontinuity, the main purpose of this card is to deny bad triggered abilities for us, but it can be flexible because it can also counter other spells like legendaries or planeswalkers. Note that Tale’s End can only counter 1 trigger at time, while one single copy of Discontinuity will counter all the triggers on the stack, including end of turn triggers.
Chance for Glory: One of the coolest cards in the deck, Chance for Glory is a powerful instant that allows us to take an extra turn for only 3 mana. The drawback is that we will lose the game after that extra turn, but that’s where our spells comes into help: we can deny the ‘lose the game’ trigger either with Tale’s End with the trigger on the stack or just by ending the turn with Discontinuity, at any point during the extra turn.
Besides casting a Nexus of Fate for just 3 mana(!), remember that our creatures will become indestructible for the rest of the game, which will make Uro and Arboreal Grazer even more powerful!
Not everyone knows that if we cast Chance for Glory during our opponent’s turn, we will have the extra turn first, then our regular turn, so we must use Discontinuity during the first turn we take, not the second one.
With the Arena Client, these interactions are not great, so I recommend that you hold full control (shift+ctrl) when you want to counter Chance for Glory’s trigger, as for some reason just putting a stop is not enough. Also note that if we play Discontinuity on the extra turn, we will not lose the game for sure, but visually the ‘lose game’ delayed triggered ability on the left will keep showing since it never happened, even if it never will.
Song of Creation: Another really fun card to play with! This is one of the draw engines of the deck and also our actual win condition for most games. We should pair it along with Discontinuity or Tale’s end if we don’t want discard our hand (and also to draw 2 in the process!), but if we are short on mana or just we don’t have the combo, we can afford to discard our entire hand anyway. Note that since we don’t want to rely on topdecks, we need something set-up, like having a castable Uro in the graveyard, a Fae of Wishes on adventure, or just scrying any spell to the top.
If our opponent let us untap with Song on the battlefield, the hard part is over and we can start having fun! Each spell draws 2 cards, so we basically dig through our entire deck and we should be able to take the necessary extra turns to win the game.
The easiest way to win is essentially by drawing our deck with one or two Songs of Creation, then picking up a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries with Granted and then drawing from our empty library for the win! Another important tip: if we cast Discontinuity with Song of Creation in play, we should put a stop, because we will draw 2 cards before actually ending the turn, so we have a small window to cast any freshly-drawn instant before Discontinuity resolves!
Lotus Field: Wait, is Black Lotus Standard legal, and can we use it every turn?! Well, not quite, but with this deck, we get somehow close to it. One of the best synergies with Lotus Field is having it paired with Tale’s End or Discontinuity, best case scenario on turn 2, so we don’t sacrifice anything and get to untap with five mana on the following turn, having effectively ramped by two mana.
Even without the combo, Field is a decent card, since sacrificing lands can help us to fill the graveyard for an early Uro.
Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath: I won’t explain why Uro is the most powerful card of the meta right now, since enough people have gone over that, but this deck is even better at exploiting his power. We can cast Uro from hand and, if we order the stack properly, (first draw and ramp, and then sacrifice), we will be able to prevent the sacrifice effect with Discontinuity in order to put an extremely early Uro onto the battlefield (best case scenario: if we ramped with either Growth Spiral or Grazer on turns 1-2, we can have a turn 3 Uro with untapped land and discontinuity effect!), which will often just win the game against aggro.
Keep/Mulligan and early game:
If you’ve noticed already that we’re playing 31 lands and 29 spells, you’ve probably guessed that we are essentially a ramp-based combo deck. Since most of our powerful plays will take place in later turns, we focus on ramp in the early stages. Given that, any hand with either Arboreal Grazer, Growth Spiral, Uro, or Lotus Field plus a way to Stifle a trigger, or Cultivate, all alongside a good number of lands, is a keep.
Mastering the Combos:
Now that we’ve been over all the combos, like a jutsu student learned all the moves, it is time for us to put them all together to become the deadliest ninja on earth (or magic player if you don’t like the karate kid metaphor). Now that we know how the deck works, playing it perfectly is the real challenge:
- Note that while Tale’s End only allows us to deny one bad trigger, Discontinuity will stop them all! There are various ways to exploit this: for example, if we played Chance for Glory last turn, we will need to cast Discontinuity anyway, so we should try to get as much as we can from it. For example, it’s the perfect spot to land a song of creation and deny both the lose game trigger and the discard effect. We can even add more spice with both Uro and Lotus Field, by making all our land drops first, then Uro, put Lotus Field into play with it, and then cast Discontinuity with all the triggers on the stack, so nothing sacrifices! Feel free to mix up all these triggers and find a way to eke the most value out of every situation, for maximum satisfaction and fun!
- Fae of Wishes is a card that adds even more challenge to the deck, with a sideboard fully stocked with 1-ofs that are either proactive or reactive, so the deck plays in a similar way to Temur Adventures in some games, where you need to predict what your opponents’ best cards will be and preempt them.
- The deck is currently designed for best of 1, since it will have a hard time against counterspells and/or opposing Narsets. It seems really hard to adapt the deck for best of 3 and probably finding a build without Fae of Wishes will be the best way to do so, because we really need a full sideboard to adjust our game plan against hate cards.
If you want to see some gameplay, be sure to follow both Onyuka_ and Loxodont on Twitch. We wrote this article together and will keep trying to improve upon the deck!
