Inspired by Ben Botts’s deck list, I decided to try some Deny Reality action in the Cascade Control. Here’s the updated deck list:

Black Baneslayer Cascade Control

4 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Captured Sunlight
4 Deny Reality
1 Enigma Sphinx
4 Enlisted Wurm
4 Esper Charm

4 Baneslayer Angel

4 Exotic Orchard
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
2 Plains
4 Reflecting Pool
1 Swamp
4 Vivid Crag
2 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
2 Vivid Marsh
4 Vivid Meadow

sb:
3 Ajani Vengeant
4 Hallowed Burial
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Primal Command

As should be medium obvious I have become a super devotee of the mono-Cascade Cascade strategy over the last few weeks. It is literally all I am interested in playing. This version literally has 21 Cascade cards, 4 Baneslayer Angels, and 8 discard spells to finish Cascade chains. In case you haven’t been paying attention, every Cascade chain ends either with a Baneslayer Angle (Enlisted Wurm or Enigma Sphinx), or your discarding two cards.

This kind of deck requires a greater amount of discipline to play than most decks of any stripe. As Thomas Dodd pointed out in his guest blog post last week, this style of deck requires a lot more racing and resource management than decks with more conventional removal suites. Your “defense” a lot of the time is just putting down one or two guys, or going nutso with Bloodbraid Elf in the Red Zone, or hoping to win the Cascade lottery. That’s okay… The deck was literally designed to win the Cascade lottery.

The main difference from the last version is the inclusion of Deny Reality, per Benjamin’s take on the deck list. Instead of cutting a Cascade spell, I decided to approximate Primal Command and cut the one Obelisk of Alara that Thomas didn’t like anyway. I cut a land in recognition of the additional Cascade spell (Cascade spells tend to facilitate mana flood in long games), and the fact that I had just lowered the curve. Vivid lands had to be shuffled a mite bit as well.

So far the deck has been very nice, including in tournament play. Tonight I won a couple of nail biter queues, including over Mono-Black Rogues (!) and Fae… Both LWW wins. In the case of the Fae deck, I didn’t even sideboard (I was planning to lose)… But when you design your deck to get lucky and always flip over Cascade spells (especially when they are Bloodbraid Elf into Blighting), miracles can happen.

I am planning to play a variation on this deck in the upcoming Star City tournament in Philadelphia (we’re going, right Josh?) … I figure there is no way I am going to have four Lotus Cobras in time, so might as well get lucky with Cascade instead of with Landfall

The challenge for the ’09-10 version is going to be the mana base. We can’t count on Vivids any more, and filters are going the way of The Dojo as well. So that leaves us with tri-lands and sac duals. I am leaning back towards 28 just because sac duals, you know, eat up all your lands along the way. Does 12 tri-lands, 7 sac duals, and 9 basics sound about right?

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Wonder Woman: Circle