Painters: Spicy Brew
The name is a nod to Painter's Servant, which isn't legal in Premodern, and the deck builds the same idea out of two cards that are. Distorting Lens taps to make any permanent the color of your choice until end of turn, and Vodalian Mystic does the same to an instant or sorcery on the stack. Around those two sit eight one-mana Blasts. Pyroblast and Hydroblast only check the color when they resolve, so you can target anything and change its color in response. Red Elemental Blast and Blue Elemental Blast need a blue or red target when you cast them, so with those you change the color first. Either way, one mana destroys a Phyrexian Dreadnought, an Exalted Angel, a Survival of the Fittest or a Mishra's Factory, and with the Mystic the same mana counters a Cabal Therapy, an Armageddon or a Replenish. Against actual blue and red decks the Blasts are just good cards, and the Lens and the Mystic can do something else.
Under the current Oracle text, Dystopia makes each player sacrifice a green or white permanent of their choice at the beginning of their upkeep, and this deck has no green or white permanents, so only the opponent loses anything. Against Enchantress, Elves, The Rock or Terrageddon that's a one-sided sacrifice in every upkeep for three mana. Against everyone else, use the Lens in their upkeep with the trigger on the stack and make their best permanent green: if it's the only green or white permanent they control, it's the one they sacrifice. Dystopia's cumulative upkeep costs a life per age counter, which only you pay and which adds up, so the deck tries to win before that matters.
Everything else is a suicide-black shell: Dark Ritual gets a turn-one Hypnotic Specter or Phyrexian Negator out, four Duress clear the way, and the 5/5 trampling Negator wins in four attacks while the Blasts deal with blockers. The Lens and the Mystic only need to tap, so they work even when all your mana went into the Blasts. Ancestral Knowledge looks at the top ten cards, exiles the ones you don't need against this opponent and puts the rest back in any order, so your next draws are the Blasts or Lenses the game calls for. That only lasts while you keep paying its cumulative upkeep, because your library is shuffled when it leaves the battlefield. Lim-Dûl's Vault does something similar at instant speed, for 1 life per extra set of five cards. Underground River, Shivan Reef, City of Brass, Reflecting Pool, the fetch lands and one Crosis's Catacombs give the black base its blue and red.
The sideboard is mostly hate cards: Chill and Gloom slow down red and white decks, Engineered Plague, naming Goblin or Elf, kills their X/1s, Perish is for green, Tormod's Crypt for Reanimator and Cephalid Breakfast, and Plaguebearer kills a nonblack creature over and over, with the Lens ready to make a black creature another color first. DB_romariovidal went 5-0 with this 75 in the MTGO Premodern League on 26 August 2026.
Mainboard
- 4× Hypnotic Specter
- 4× Phyrexian Negator
- 2× Vodalian Mystic
- 4× Dark Ritual
- 2× Pyroblast
- 2× Red Elemental Blast
- 2× Hydroblast
- 2× Blue Elemental Blast
- 2× Lim-Dûl's Vault
- 4× Duress
- 4× Dystopia
- 2× Ancestral Knowledge
- 4× Distorting Lens
- 4× Swamp
- 3× Polluted Delta
- 3× Underground River
- 2× Bloodstained Mire
- 2× City of Brass
- 2× Island
- 2× Reflecting Pool
- 2× Shivan Reef
- 1× Crosis's Catacombs
- 1× Mountain
Sideboard
- 4× Chill
- 3× Gloom
- 3× Engineered Plague
- 2× Tormod's Crypt
- 2× Perish
- 1× Plaguebearer
