Zero Nonland Permanents Biorhythm

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Psarketos

Guest
EDIT by Spiderman: Split the posts and moved to Decks and added the link below

Referencing Casual Card Hall of Fame Discussion thread:

I loved the Hall of Fame and I hated it, all depending on how I reacted to the cards chosen...

Biorhythm: "That's dumb. You're dumb. Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done."

Not sure if we have enough people anymore, but I'd be for bringing this back...
I heard Oversoul <3s Biorhythm, so I built this deck on MtGO amd loved it so much I am going to troll my local environment with it:

Zero Nonland Permanents Biorhythm (AKA Temur Experiment) - Modern legal

Edited 3/12/18 - slight modifications to spell list

12 Island
12 Mountain

4 Anger of the Gods
3 Biorhythm
4 Epic Experiment
3 Hour of Devastation
4 Inner Fire
4 Learn from the Past
4 Manamorphose
3 Rude Awakening
4 See Beyond
3 Thoughtflare
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I heard Oversoul <3s Biorhythm,
Well, this takes me back. I had to dig deep into my reservoir of fuzzy memories to figure out what I was thinking of when I wrote the statement you quoted. Basically, I wasn't especially impressed with Biorhythm because I thought of it as a kind of casual "newb trap." An inexperienced player who liked green decks might have thought, "I can build a deck with a bunch of mana dorks and token-generators and gain life while almost killing my opponent. Such a big spell and so exciting!" But in reality any opponent playing a creatureless or creature-light deck has some way to deal with an eight-drop, and in lots of games it's just dead if you get hit by board-wipe or if your opponent also makes lots of creatures. So it's eight mana for a massively situational spell. I'm OK with niche cards and I'm OK with big, expensive spells. But I want my big, expensive spells to be reliable. To be fair to Biorhythm, most experienced players would probably think of it as more of a fun, splashy card that they know isn't necessarily reliable and might need lots of support to work. But I thought it looked a bit too much like something that players were supposed to ramp into with elves or whatever, when it's actually not good for that purpose. Now, I didn't hate the card. In general, I have soft spot for alternative kill conditions and one-shot spell setups and things along those lines.

It looks like for Onslaught, I nominated Future Sight. That might still be my choice these days. Other nominations included Grand Melee, Goblin Sharpshooter, and Kaboom! Those all seem like pretty strong cards that brought new and interesting things to casual decks around the world. I didn't care for a newb trap getting in instead of cards I actually liked. Also, I maintain that for what most casual players were trying to do with Biorhythm, Epic Struggle was a far superior card for practical purposes and more fun anyway.

Anyway, what amuses me about all this is that I've kind of gone to bat for Biorhythm in the years since. Not by building decks around it, but by arguing that it's a fundamentally stupid choice to ban in EDH. I know that they have it in mind as something that players will think looks fun but that would actually "ruin" games. I say if some kid wants to try to win with Biorhythm, go for it. If the rest of the table couldn't stop an eight-mana sorcery that is automatically negated by opponents controlling creatures, then they deserved to lose anyway. Let the Biorhythm fans have their fun. I'll stick with Epic Struggle.

so I built this deck on MtGO amd loved it so much I am going to troll my local environment with it:

Zero Nonland Permanents Biorhythm (AKA Temur Experiment) - Modern legal

12 Island
12 Mountain

3 Anger of the Gods
3 Biorhythm
4 Enhanced Awareness
4 Epic Experiment
3 Hour of Devastation
4 Inner Fire
4 Learn from the Past
4 Manamorphose
3 Rude Awakening
4 See Beyond
OK, that deck actually looks really cool. :)
 
P

Psarketos

Guest
It loses horribly to the tournament decks, but is crazy fun to play against non-tier stuff and can end up recursing its library with Learn from the Past with 50 mana available to cast an Epic Experiment for the entire library, which just makes me laugh.

I played an amazing game against a Sigil of the Empty Throne deck yesterday that used enchantments to make a dozen or so 5/5 angels, which I board wiped on my turn using a first Experiment, then a legion of Eldrazi Spawn entered the field with another host of angels, which a second Experiment also wiped yet improbably failed to find a Rude Awakening, so I conceded rather than drawing with Biorhythm out of respect for a fun deck in the Just for Fun section :)
 
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Psarketos

Guest
I just discovered this card, which is replacing Enhanced (better dig, better shuffling):
 
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Psarketos

Guest
Spider-man says, "No thread necromancy on my watch, mister! Not even to tease Oversoul!" :)
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Weeelll... if it was to revive actual Casual Hall of Fame considerations, it would have been okay. But it just seemed your deck was the main focus :)
 
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Psarketos

Guest
Teasing Oversoul was the primary, but regaling him with a tale of amusing deck was secondary, so fair ;)
 
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Psarketos

Guest
For anyone that was following the changes to deck, Thoughflare turned out to be the best fit for card draw, and 3 of for everything CMC 5 or higher was the best spell ratio, so 4x Anger, 3x Thoughflare in place of Enhanced Awareness as modifications to original list.
 
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