I’m early posting this, the Historic Chimil Midweek Magic event isn’t until next week (July 9 - 11), but I’m already thinking about it.

About
Name Historic Chimil Life Lock

Deck
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Sanguine Bond
4 Spinewoods Armadillo
4 Herd Migration
4 Colossal Skyturtle
4 Cease // Desist
11 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Thornwood Falls
4 Lush Oasis
4 Brokers Hideout
4 Cabaretti Courtyard
4 Riveteers Overlook

Am I missing anything? Does this deck seem like it should work? Anyone have a deck that can win faster, or more reliably?

The plan is: mulligan any hand that has Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, and hope really hard not to draw them. Discover one at the end of your first turn and the other at the end of your second. Then use one of your two-mana life-gaining effects, or if you don’t have one, wait until turn 3 and play a land that either gains you life or damages your opponent. As soon as either of those things happen, the two enchantments will trigger each other infinitely.

32 of the deck’s cards are able to start the combo (once you have both enchantments), and 22 of the 42 lands enter untapped, so having two mana at the end of turn 2 should also happen pretty reliably.

The WotC page says you’ll “discover a spell with cost 6 or lower” each turn. I assume it actually means 5, like Chimil itself, but if not then we’ll have to cut Spinewoods Armadillo.

Weaknesses:

  • Anything that gives the opponent hexproof will block the combo. Colossal Skyturtle can help with creatures and Boseiju with Leyline of Sanctity, but Teyo, the Shieldmage probably ruins our day.
  • “Can’t gain life” effects block the combo. Most of them are creatures and again, Colossal Skyturtle gives us some hope, but we have no way to deal with Tibalt, Rakish Instigator.
  • Cheap counterspells like Annul or Spell Pierce will be good against us if Chimil’s uncounterable effect isn’t part of the emblem.
  • Enchantment destruction will obviously be effective.
  • Can’t lose/can’t win effects are a problem. Gideon of the Trials is the most likely, and our only hope of answering it is that they’ll turn it into a creature and we’ll have a Skyturtle. Phyrexian Unlife will cause a draw.
  • “Can’t cast spells” effects like Teferi, Time Raveler will stop us, and a lot of other decks too.

Between the two Swamps and Colossal Skyturtle’s 2G ability, it’s theoretically possible to recover from disruption and cast our enchantments fairly, but I doubt most opponents will twiddle their thumbs while you do it.

Even though the deck isn’t bulletproof, I think it should be able to win reliably when not disrupted, and maybe occasionally even through a bit of disruption.

You might think I’m crazy for working so hard to break a casual format that will only exist for two days, and I wouldn’t disagree with you…

  • Evu@mtgzone.comOPEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Additional thoughts:

    • If we’re losing our enchantments too often, we could build in some redundancy by going up to two copies of each. The problem with that is there’s a 33% chance you’ll get a duplicate on turn 2, in which case you’d have to wait until turn 3 or 4 to win. So I guess it’s worth it if our enchantments are getting killed in more than 33% of games.

    • I was wrong about Teferi in particular, the Historic-legal version is the “fixed” Alchemy card and that doesn’t get in Chimil’s way. Other can’t-cast effects, such as Drannith Magistrate, are still a concern.

    • Looking at the list of weaknesses I laid out starts me thinking about how I’d build a white prison deck for this format. Unfortunately, it would need a lot of rares and I don’t have quite that many wildcards.