Thassa’s Oracle and the Case for Flash
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 7:41 pm
Hi,
I've reached out to quite a few members of the RC/CAG about the situation so I'm going to compile a post that generally contained the knowledge I tried to give them.
So Flash+Hulk is a pretty popular combo in cEDH. Before Thassa's Oracle, there were several archetypes that used this combo, but I'll list some of the most popular.
Sacred Hulk: Sacred Guide+Hapless Researcher+Sylvan Safekeeper+Laboratory Maniac. Exile your deck with Sacred Guide, Draw a card with Hapless Researcher, and protect labman with Sylvan Safekeeper. It plays Jace, Wielder of Mysteries plus Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact as a backup win condition. It like to hold up mana the entire game and then cast Flash on top of a counter spell battle to win the game out of nowhere.
Shuffle Hulk: Pretty complicated, but basically it shuffle a narcomoeba into your deck and mills it back into play over and over until you die to a blood artist. It can win through 2-3 pieces of removal thanks to the fact it can just sac narcomoeba and restart the combo on top of a removal spell. It tries to go for flash hulk ASAP but can also hold up flash and try to win on top of a combo. It also has the back up plan of playing Academy Rector + Pattern of Rebirth + Sac Outlet to win the game eventually by getting your protean hulk and sacrificing it. Its definite faster and relies on flash less.
Breakfast Hulk: Cephalid Illusionist + Nomads Encor mills your entire deck, followed up by a pretty lengthy combo which ends with a Laboratory Manic and Hapless Researcher to end the game. Its pretty much the only flash hulk deck that wins at sorcery speed and is pretty fair.
Sigil Hulk: Sigil Tracer + Spell Seeker (which grabs Dramatic Reversal). Its basically Isochron scepter + dramatic reversal but also a hulk pile! It can win at sorcery speed or instant speed with a Thrasios in play. It wins by drawing your deck, noxious revival'ing your Flash and then casting Flash to play your lab maniac at instant speed.
Spellseeker Pile: Spell seeker (getting demonic consultation) + Lab Maniac. This pile is usually a backup pile for most hulk decks (especially sigil and sacred hulk). It wins through most hate and is effectively free since you run the cards already. You do need an additional draw trigger though. This pile has been MUCH improved thanks to Thassa's Oracle.
Something you may notice is that a lot of these decks do a few similar things:
* Win at instant speed
* Use laboratory maniac
* Have you use slots in their combo to protect lab man or to draw a card
Oracle does a few things that are relevent to that:
* Oracle doesn't need you to draw a card
* Oracle doesn't need protection, since if your devotion is 0 with 0 cards in library you still win
* Oracle can easily be used to win at instant speed
These three things combined means that these hulk piles which took years to discover as the format has matured have been immediately outclassed.
Sacred Hulk, Sigil Hulk, Shuffle Hulk, and other hulk piles I didn't mention are now completely invalidated and outclassed.
Here is how Oracle is used in a hulk pile to win the game:
Hulk Pile 1:
Spell seeker (getting consultation)
Oracle
1 mana left to get Curse Catcher, a creature that returns oracle to hand, or a creature that bounces another creature, or a Blood Pet which will pay for consultation so its a free pile
This combo can win at instant speed, for free once hulk has resolved, and any removal spells in your opponents hands is absolutely dead because now instead of a creature, you win with a trigger on the stack.
Hulk Pile 2:
Cephalid Illusionist + Nomad's Encor + Oracle
Mill your whole deck, win with the trigger. Removal spells, opponent's shuffling cards back in won't work. You can just mill in response to trigger again.
Hulk Pile 3:
Nomad's En cor, Cephalid Illusionist, and Spellseeker (getting Pact of Negation or Veil of Summer or Silence etc)
Mill your deck, sac 3 creatures to dread return to reanimate the oracle from your graveyard. This is actually weak to graveyard hate, but it just shows that oracle has further redundancy beyond those first two incredibly strong piles. You also can tutor for a pact of negation to protect your combo, which is very very powerful.
Now with these three piles you have completely outclassed anything else that has existed prior in the format. You can now win consistently at instant speed for 1U through almost all hate in the format and without needing to draw a card. You now can win through a narset or notion thief, and you can now win through a creature removal spell. Additionally, saving 2-3 mana on a hulk pile is an incredibly powerful effect, as it allows you to use those slots to protect the combo. But the power level of this new pile may be incredibly high, but its not exactly the reason that this is so problematic.
This new card allows a single deck to emerge that combines the two most powerful archetypes in the format to the point where there really isn't a good argument for playing a deck besides this. It would be like playing seedborn muse instead of prophet of kruphix in a Simic deck, it just doesn't make sense.
BUT AGAIN, thats not really the real problem that people have right now.
The real problem is that the Flash Hulk deck creates extremely toxic play patterns that have been getting more and more problematic as the format has evolved. The fact that the best deck in the format and the fastest deck in the format has 0 incentive to try to win as soon as possible creates incredibly boring play patterns, and the more people that play Hulk the worse it gets. Flash Hulk can hold onto Flash+Hulk for several turns and forces every player at the table to never over extend at risk of possibly losing to Flash and it extends games into hours because of this battle of chicken.
Flash seems like a fast combo, but in reality it's actually the opposite. Because you can win at instant speed, and winning on turn 3 and turn 15 are the same thing in terms of trying to win, it's often advantageous for the flash player to wait until the very last moment.
Consult is such an excellent pair to flash because:
* it requires you to usually have a certain amount of resources on the battlefield that can be answered (Jace, Lab Man)
* it's generally more mana restrictive (Oracle is UUB, Jace is 1UUUB, and Lab Man is 2UB)
* the card quality is very high. Consult and Tainted pact (the deck exilers) often double as tutors unlike Hulk, Flash, and the cards you typically get with protean hulk
* consult can win through all the stax pieces that stop hulk
* all the stax pieces that stop/hurt consult help Flash Hulk
* it often wants to hold up mana, so it is prepared to play against flash
That last point is especially important, and let me explain it in even greater detail.
Some of the best stax cards against consult decks are:
* rule of law effects (these stop the deck from playing as many cards and make their protective counter spells dead, it also turns off the Oracle+Consult win)
* Blood Moon + Back to Basics (their combos are very color intensive)
Rule of Law helps flash decks a lot! It means that they can cast flash at instant speed once all other 3 players have cast a spell and now there is 0 ways to stop them
Flash costs only 1U so once they have a birds of paradise or mox diamond or basic island they can easily win through Back to basics or blood moon
If you play the hate that is good against flash hulk, this new Thassa's Oracle Hulk deck just goes for the consult plan instead, which is super easy for them to pivot to since their hulk pile is just Spellseeker + Oracle, so...
The thing that Oracle changes is that it makes flash hulk better at the thing that Consultation decks were already maybe a little too good at, and further homogenizes the format towards an extremely unfun way to play.
The reason it takes so much to explain this and I felt the need to say so much is that on first glance this looks like a card that would look really good in the Consultation decks. You would think this would help them, but in reality Flash+Hulk is such a strong effect that it just swallows up any power boost that another archetype gets and becomes even more powerful because it can do it at instant speed. Even more shocking, the best deck against this new Hulk Deck, is actually the same exact deck, as the best consult deck is usually the best deck against hulk.
I hope this turned out as something that make sense and was easy to read. It's several cut out bits from many conversations I've had where I've tried to explain these concepts in detail. I wanted this all in one place for people to check out. Thanks for reading!
I've reached out to quite a few members of the RC/CAG about the situation so I'm going to compile a post that generally contained the knowledge I tried to give them.
So Flash+Hulk is a pretty popular combo in cEDH. Before Thassa's Oracle, there were several archetypes that used this combo, but I'll list some of the most popular.
Sacred Hulk: Sacred Guide+Hapless Researcher+Sylvan Safekeeper+Laboratory Maniac. Exile your deck with Sacred Guide, Draw a card with Hapless Researcher, and protect labman with Sylvan Safekeeper. It plays Jace, Wielder of Mysteries plus Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact as a backup win condition. It like to hold up mana the entire game and then cast Flash on top of a counter spell battle to win the game out of nowhere.
Shuffle Hulk: Pretty complicated, but basically it shuffle a narcomoeba into your deck and mills it back into play over and over until you die to a blood artist. It can win through 2-3 pieces of removal thanks to the fact it can just sac narcomoeba and restart the combo on top of a removal spell. It tries to go for flash hulk ASAP but can also hold up flash and try to win on top of a combo. It also has the back up plan of playing Academy Rector + Pattern of Rebirth + Sac Outlet to win the game eventually by getting your protean hulk and sacrificing it. Its definite faster and relies on flash less.
Breakfast Hulk: Cephalid Illusionist + Nomads Encor mills your entire deck, followed up by a pretty lengthy combo which ends with a Laboratory Manic and Hapless Researcher to end the game. Its pretty much the only flash hulk deck that wins at sorcery speed and is pretty fair.
Sigil Hulk: Sigil Tracer + Spell Seeker (which grabs Dramatic Reversal). Its basically Isochron scepter + dramatic reversal but also a hulk pile! It can win at sorcery speed or instant speed with a Thrasios in play. It wins by drawing your deck, noxious revival'ing your Flash and then casting Flash to play your lab maniac at instant speed.
Spellseeker Pile: Spell seeker (getting demonic consultation) + Lab Maniac. This pile is usually a backup pile for most hulk decks (especially sigil and sacred hulk). It wins through most hate and is effectively free since you run the cards already. You do need an additional draw trigger though. This pile has been MUCH improved thanks to Thassa's Oracle.
Something you may notice is that a lot of these decks do a few similar things:
* Win at instant speed
* Use laboratory maniac
* Have you use slots in their combo to protect lab man or to draw a card
Oracle does a few things that are relevent to that:
* Oracle doesn't need you to draw a card
* Oracle doesn't need protection, since if your devotion is 0 with 0 cards in library you still win
* Oracle can easily be used to win at instant speed
These three things combined means that these hulk piles which took years to discover as the format has matured have been immediately outclassed.
Sacred Hulk, Sigil Hulk, Shuffle Hulk, and other hulk piles I didn't mention are now completely invalidated and outclassed.
Here is how Oracle is used in a hulk pile to win the game:
Hulk Pile 1:
Spell seeker (getting consultation)
Oracle
1 mana left to get Curse Catcher, a creature that returns oracle to hand, or a creature that bounces another creature, or a Blood Pet which will pay for consultation so its a free pile
This combo can win at instant speed, for free once hulk has resolved, and any removal spells in your opponents hands is absolutely dead because now instead of a creature, you win with a trigger on the stack.
Hulk Pile 2:
Cephalid Illusionist + Nomad's Encor + Oracle
Mill your whole deck, win with the trigger. Removal spells, opponent's shuffling cards back in won't work. You can just mill in response to trigger again.
Hulk Pile 3:
Nomad's En cor, Cephalid Illusionist, and Spellseeker (getting Pact of Negation or Veil of Summer or Silence etc)
Mill your deck, sac 3 creatures to dread return to reanimate the oracle from your graveyard. This is actually weak to graveyard hate, but it just shows that oracle has further redundancy beyond those first two incredibly strong piles. You also can tutor for a pact of negation to protect your combo, which is very very powerful.
Now with these three piles you have completely outclassed anything else that has existed prior in the format. You can now win consistently at instant speed for 1U through almost all hate in the format and without needing to draw a card. You now can win through a narset or notion thief, and you can now win through a creature removal spell. Additionally, saving 2-3 mana on a hulk pile is an incredibly powerful effect, as it allows you to use those slots to protect the combo. But the power level of this new pile may be incredibly high, but its not exactly the reason that this is so problematic.
This new card allows a single deck to emerge that combines the two most powerful archetypes in the format to the point where there really isn't a good argument for playing a deck besides this. It would be like playing seedborn muse instead of prophet of kruphix in a Simic deck, it just doesn't make sense.
BUT AGAIN, thats not really the real problem that people have right now.
The real problem is that the Flash Hulk deck creates extremely toxic play patterns that have been getting more and more problematic as the format has evolved. The fact that the best deck in the format and the fastest deck in the format has 0 incentive to try to win as soon as possible creates incredibly boring play patterns, and the more people that play Hulk the worse it gets. Flash Hulk can hold onto Flash+Hulk for several turns and forces every player at the table to never over extend at risk of possibly losing to Flash and it extends games into hours because of this battle of chicken.
Flash seems like a fast combo, but in reality it's actually the opposite. Because you can win at instant speed, and winning on turn 3 and turn 15 are the same thing in terms of trying to win, it's often advantageous for the flash player to wait until the very last moment.
Consult is such an excellent pair to flash because:
* it requires you to usually have a certain amount of resources on the battlefield that can be answered (Jace, Lab Man)
* it's generally more mana restrictive (Oracle is UUB, Jace is 1UUUB, and Lab Man is 2UB)
* the card quality is very high. Consult and Tainted pact (the deck exilers) often double as tutors unlike Hulk, Flash, and the cards you typically get with protean hulk
* consult can win through all the stax pieces that stop hulk
* all the stax pieces that stop/hurt consult help Flash Hulk
* it often wants to hold up mana, so it is prepared to play against flash
That last point is especially important, and let me explain it in even greater detail.
Some of the best stax cards against consult decks are:
* rule of law effects (these stop the deck from playing as many cards and make their protective counter spells dead, it also turns off the Oracle+Consult win)
* Blood Moon + Back to Basics (their combos are very color intensive)
Rule of Law helps flash decks a lot! It means that they can cast flash at instant speed once all other 3 players have cast a spell and now there is 0 ways to stop them
Flash costs only 1U so once they have a birds of paradise or mox diamond or basic island they can easily win through Back to basics or blood moon
If you play the hate that is good against flash hulk, this new Thassa's Oracle Hulk deck just goes for the consult plan instead, which is super easy for them to pivot to since their hulk pile is just Spellseeker + Oracle, so...
The thing that Oracle changes is that it makes flash hulk better at the thing that Consultation decks were already maybe a little too good at, and further homogenizes the format towards an extremely unfun way to play.
The reason it takes so much to explain this and I felt the need to say so much is that on first glance this looks like a card that would look really good in the Consultation decks. You would think this would help them, but in reality Flash+Hulk is such a strong effect that it just swallows up any power boost that another archetype gets and becomes even more powerful because it can do it at instant speed. Even more shocking, the best deck against this new Hulk Deck, is actually the same exact deck, as the best consult deck is usually the best deck against hulk.
I hope this turned out as something that make sense and was easy to read. It's several cut out bits from many conversations I've had where I've tried to explain these concepts in detail. I wanted this all in one place for people to check out. Thanks for reading!