Battle of Wits: Spicy Brew
Every other deck in Premodern plays 60 cards. This one plays 232, and the deck size is not the handicap: it is the win condition. Battle of Wits checks your upkeep and hands you the game outright if 200 or more cards are still in your library. Draw seven and 225 remain, which is the whole reason the list runs 232 and not 200 exactly. That 25-card cushion is the budget for every card the deck draws or tutors before it wins.
Nobody casts a five-mana enchantment in a deck this size, so it never gets cast. Academy Rector dies, exiles itself and puts Battle of Wits straight onto the battlefield, and the list carries four ways to kill its own Rector: Carrion Feeder, Phyrexian Tower, High Market and Altar of Dementia, plus Cabal Therapy's flashback and Diabolic Intent. Sterling Grove then gives every other enchantment shroud, so the thing survives the one turn it has to. Squee, Goblin Nabob keeps coming back from the graveyard to feed Survival of the Fittest, a free tutor every upkeep.
There is a second kill, and it runs on the drawback of its own centrepiece. Phyrexian Devourer exiles the top card of your library for +1/+1 counters equal to that card's mana value, and a state trigger orders you to sacrifice it the moment its power reaches seven. That trigger is the window, not the end: while it sits on the stack it cannot trigger again, so you keep exiling for free and then sacrifice the Devourer to Altar of Dementia in response. The Altar mills for the power the creature last had on the battlefield, so the pending sacrifice costs nothing. Counters are cheap here, because 41 per cent of the deck is land and the average mana value is 1.26: about four exiles buy five points of power, and fifty cards empty most libraries. Note what that means, though. Plan B eats Plan A, since every card exiled is one fewer for Battle of Wits. And a milled opponent does not lose on the spot, only on their next draw. Pere Lloret won a 33-player Alicante league event with this in March 2025.
Mainboard
- 4× Birds of Paradise
- 4× Elvish Spirit Guide
- 4× Fyndhorn Elves
- 4× Llanowar Elves
- 4× Mesmeric Fiend
- 4× Quirion Elves
- 4× Tinder Wall
- 4× Utopia Tree
- 4× Veteran Explorer
- 4× Wall of Roots
- 3× Academy Rector
- 1× Akroma, Angel of Wrath
- 1× Carrion Feeder
- 1× Gilded Drake
- 1× Meddling Mage
- 1× Phantom Nishoba
- 1× Phyrexian Devourer
- 1× Squee, Goblin Nabob
- 1× Triskelion
- 1× Volrath's Shapeshifter
- 4× Crop Rotation
- 4× Cunning Wish
- 4× Eladamri's Call
- 4× Intuition
- 3× Enlightened Tutor
- 3× Worldly Tutor
- 2× Ray of Revelation
- 1× Mask of the Mimic
- 1× Rushing River
- 4× Cabal Therapy
- 4× Diabolic Intent
- 4× Duress
- 4× Living Wish
- 4× Merchant Scroll
- 4× Quiet Speculation
- 2× Altar of Bone
- 1× Deep Analysis
- 1× Roar of the Wurm
- 4× Battle of Wits
- 4× Pattern of Rebirth
- 4× Sterling Grove
- 4× Survival of the Fittest
- 1× Engineered Plague
- 1× Pandemonium
- 1× Saproling Burst
- 1× Seal of Cleansing
- 4× Altar of Dementia
- 4× Lotus Petal
- 4× Mox Diamond
- 5× Forest
- 4× Ancient Tomb
- 4× Brushland
- 4× City of Brass
- 4× Elfhame Palace
- 4× Gemstone Mine
- 4× Grand Coliseum
- 4× Hickory Woodlot
- 4× High Market
- 4× Llanowar Wastes
- 4× Polluted Delta
- 4× Reflecting Pool
- 4× Saprazzan Skerry
- 4× Thran Quarry
- 4× Underground River
- 4× Windswept Heath
- 4× Yavimaya Coast
- 3× Phyrexian Tower
- 3× Skyshroud Forest
- 3× Treva's Ruins
- 3× Undiscovered Paradise
- 2× Caves of Koilos
- 2× City of Traitors
- 2× Flooded Strand
- 2× Island
- 2× Pine Barrens
- 1× Gaea's Cradle
- 1× Plains
- 1× Swamp
