Rebuilding Death & Taxes

Okay, in no particular order, here's the weaknesses of Death & Taxes

1) Having more than one extort out makes it hard to play more than one card at a time. Kind of a 'duh' statement, but the hilarity of cycling seems a lot less useful when you are still only casting one spell at a time
2) Extraordinarily vulnerable to being picked off. Extort decks don't work terribly well without any extorters out there. It might have only been bad luck to have faced two red/blue burn decks, but the degree of helplessness I felt was pretty much total.
3) Ciphers, even my middling ones, were such targets that they either not long for this world or died in an exchange. Something ciphered really needs evasion.
4) Too damn slow. Lengthening the game might be a viable strategy in sealed but it gives constructed decks too long to draw their outs.


I remain more-or-less committed to the idea of a W/B/U deck playing with extort and ciphers. Let's break it into its constituent parts

A) Staying Alive. Somehow, it needs to stay alive in the early game, either useful blockers or clearers.
B) A time to kill. Where does death come from? Something big? Something small? Milling?
C) Control/disrupt. How does it knock the opponent off her game plan long enough to achieve its own? Related to the first point but can be different.

What if instead of small ciphers trying to trigger large extorts, what if we went for much larger ciphers on stronger creatures? Something like these fine fellows:

 

A cipher on those guys is probably going to stick around for a while and probably land. Might actually be worth a 4 mana sorcery investment. If I have an extort or two to plink off, so much the better. I don't have a formal deck written up yet, but here are some loose categories and thoughts.

Staying Alive
Basilica Guards
Augur of Bolas
Tithe Drinker

Cipher Targets
Invisible Stalker
Ascended Lawmage
Lone Revenant
AEtherling

Control/Disrupt
Dimir Charm
Far // Away
Restore the Peace
Negate

Controlling Ciphers
Last Thoughts
Mental Vapors

Kill Cards
Drogskol Reaper
Undercity Plague



I still worry that this deck is trying to do too much, too unpredictably. But this is the direct I'm puttering.