Land Locked: Spicy Brew
Thirty lands, one creature, no burn and no combo. This deck wins because the opponent's hand never empties, and it starts by making sure its own never does either. Horn of Greed draws a card whenever anyone plays a land, and the list is built to play more lands than anyone: Exploration adds a second land drop, Undiscovered Paradise returns itself to hand during every untap step so it can be replayed for another card, and Treva's Ruins bounces a land on arrival for the same reason. Even Gemstone Mine stops running out of counters once it keeps going back to hand and coming down fresh.
Mana Breach is the card that turns the engine into a prison. It is perfectly symmetrical: whenever a player casts a spell, that player returns a land to hand. For you that is a free land drop and a Horn draw. For the opponent it is a tax on every spell, stacked on top of Sphere of Resistance, Tangle Wire, Rishadan Port, Wasteland and Dust Bowl, so they cast one spell a turn and never finish building a mana base. The Horn draws them cards too, which is the point: their hand fills with bounced lands and extra draws they cannot spend, and four Black Vise turn every card above four into a point of damage at the start of each of their upkeeps. Swords to Plowshares and Ray of Revelation handle the few things that slip through, and Enlightened Tutor finds whichever piece the matchup wants: Vise against control, Sphere against combo, a Horn against anything slow.
The single Words of Wind is what the Tutor fetches once the board is stable. For one mana the next card you would draw this turn becomes each player returning a permanent to hand instead, and with the Horn triggering on every land drop that is a bounce engine: you return a land and replay it, they return something real. Enough mana and enough land drops clear their side of the table and reset your own Tangle Wire in the same loop. The clock is eight creature-lands, Treetop Village and Mishra's Factory, which no sweeper touches, plus Karn, Silver Golem, a 4/4 that turns a Horn or a Tangle Wire into a 3/3 attacker for one mana. Karn is also the deck's only creature card, and that matters after sideboarding.
Four Oath of Druids and three Phantom Nishoba come in against creature decks, where the Vise clock is too slow: with a single creature card in the sixty, every Oath trigger finds a 7/7 trampler that gains life for the damage it deals. Crumble kills Phyrexian Dreadnought and the Stax artifacts, Phyrexian Furnace checks the graveyard decks, Gaea's Blessing insures a deck that draws this many cards against decking itself, and Orim's Chant buys the turn combo needs. This exact 75 made the Top 16 of the 122-player Premodern Online Monthly in February 2023, piloted by Brandon Econ.
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
