Land Locked: Spicy Brew
Land Locked plays 30 lands, one creature and no burn or combo. It wins because the opponent's hand never empties, and first it makes sure its own hand doesn't either. Horn of Greed draws a card for whoever plays a land, and this list plays more lands than almost any other Premodern deck: Exploration gives you a second land drop each turn, Undiscovered Paradise goes back to your hand in your untap step after you tap it, so you can play it again for another card, and Treva's Ruins returns a land when it enters for the same reason. Even Gemstone Mine stops running out of counters when it keeps going back to your hand and coming down fresh.
Mana Breach turns all this into a prison. It works the same for both players: whenever someone casts a spell, they return a land to their hand. For you that's a land to replay and another Horn draw. For the opponent it's a tax on every spell, on top of Sphere of Resistance, Tangle Wire, Rishadan Port, Wasteland and Dust Bowl, so they rarely cast more than one spell a turn and never finish building their mana. The Horn draws them cards too, and that's intended: their hand fills up with bounced lands and extra cards they can't use, and four Black Vise deal damage for every card above four at the start of each of their upkeeps. Swords to Plowshares and Ray of Revelation handle what gets through, and Enlightened Tutor finds the piece the matchup needs: Vise against control, Sphere against combo, a Horn against anything slow.
The single Words of Wind is what you fetch once the board is under control. For one mana, the next card you'd draw this turn is replaced by each player returning a permanent to hand, and with the Horn drawing on every land drop that becomes a bounce engine: you return a land and play it again, while they have to return one of their own permanents, which starts to hurt once their spare lands are gone. With enough mana and land drops you can make them return several permanents in one turn and reset your own Tangle Wire. The damage comes from eight creature-lands, Treetop Village and Mishra's Factory, which sweepers don't touch, plus Karn, Silver Golem, a 4/4 that can turn a Horn or a Tangle Wire into a 3/3 attacker for one mana. Karn is also the only creature card in the deck, and that matters after sideboarding.
Against creature decks, where the Vise is too slow, four Oath of Druids and three Phantom Nishoba come in. Then three of the deck's four creature cards are Nishobas, so most Oath triggers find a 7/7 trampler that gains you life for the damage it deals. Crumble destroys Phyrexian Dreadnought and Stax artifacts, Phyrexian Furnace is for graveyard decks, Gaea's Blessing sends your whole graveyard back into your library when an Oath trigger reveals it, and Orim's Chant buys the turn you need against combo. Brandon Econ took this 75 to the top 16 of the 122-player Premodern Online Monthly in February 2023.
Mainboard
- 1× Karn, Silver Golem
- 3× Swords to Plowshares
- 2× Enlightened Tutor
- 2× Ray of Revelation
- 4× Exploration
- 3× Mana Breach
- 1× Words of Wind
- 4× Black Vise
- 4× Horn of Greed
- 4× Sphere of Resistance
- 2× Tangle Wire
- 4× Gemstone Mine
- 4× Mishra's Factory
- 4× Rishadan Port
- 4× Treetop Village
- 4× Undiscovered Paradise
- 4× Wasteland
- 3× City of Brass
- 2× Treva's Ruins
- 1× Dust Bowl
