Zero Quest
Ok I’ve played the original version of this deck ( quest for the holy relic ) and I have to confess I hate it. If it works and annoyingly, when I play it, it seems to work all the time, its brutal quick and there’s no coming back from the brink. So in age old ‘Vader’ style I thought, if you can’t beat them... Eat them...
Ladies and gentlemen this is Zero Quest and it has the fastest potential win of ANY Standard deck (that I know of..)
Its combo based and about as stable as the Euro, but I’ll give you the skeleton and I’ll leave it you to sculpt a T-REX out of it.
You will need
4 Memnite
4 Mox Opal
14 Mountains
So... what does it do?
Well it can swing for 12 damage on turn ONE.
Yep, you read that right not turn two... turn one... You’ll need the god hand, but the deck is designed to generate that relatively easily ... So 12 damage on the first turn how? Well you elect to get second if you win the flip, or if your opponent wins you’ll probably be going second anyway.
What you need in an opening hand is any combination of the following... 0 mana artifacts, mox opal, rebirth and most importantly the leyline... As long as you have the leyline you opponent is going to have a bad day, just how bad is dependent on your luck...
Here’s the trick... Let’s say you have the god hand, and I cannot stress enough you don’t need it.
Leyline, ornithopter, mox opal, kuldotha rebirth, 2 x memnite, goblin bushwacker... Keep the hand and immediately as the game begins lay the Leyline. Now during your opponent’s upkeep step flash in the menites , the ornithopter and the mox opal, then use the opal for one red and sac the ornithopter to play the rebirth. This will give you 5 x 1/1’s before your opponent has even laid a land.
In your FIRST turn, draw and play a land and tap the opal and the land to play the Goblin bushwhacker making everything a 2/1 and allowing you to swing for !2 damage on Turn one in turn 2 lay a Goblin chieftain and that ain’t game, you ain’t playing right.
Of course these are god hands, but think about the deck, even if you can’t pull of the ultimate in turn one you could have a any number of battle ready 1/1’s ...
No islands for leyline? Nope, it’s there for one reason and one reason only, mulligan till you find it. Like I said this is the skeleton and we at Adventures in the Meta encourage you to make your own decks.
Sideboard, we’re going to leave this to you to and I suggest that you completely change strategy on game two because a smart opponent will elect to play 2nd in game two if you beat them game one.
Here are some other ideas to play around the leyline...
Add Beastmaster’s Ascension and Birds of Paradise... and in your opponents first turn you can flash in the birds off the opal and then in your first turn you can lay a land and play Beastmaster’s Ascension, and swing for 3... In your 2nd turn that’s game...
There’s even a horrific Extended Combo which is potentially a one turn kill.... again during your opponent’s turn flash in the memnites/ornithopters and then use the opal to play Amulet of Vigor.
In your first turn, play Windbrisk Heights and stick an Emrakul under it... As it comes in un-tapped, thanks to the Amulet you can then swing with 3 memnites and use the opal to activate it, thus ‘casting’ Emrakul and getting the extra turn... Swing in on the next turn (which is really still your first turn) and that’s 21 damage including the memnites)
So there you have it the fastest kills in Standard and extended, that don’t require any help from your opponent.(You can do nasty things with Summoning Trap, but this will require your opponent to cancel your spells for you.)
Update for Christmas (you can abuse this build further by the addition of Shared Discoveries ) of course you can now add islands too which will make the leylines work
update Dec 25th... I've been thinking about this concept over and over and I've come to a startling conclussion... If Wizards do introduce an Artifact Land in Mirrodin Besieged then I think we've just invented the new Archetype.
Why? Well for one thing the Mox opal will finally be playable anyway and with both llanowar Elves and Birds of paradise being 1 drop mana producers with leyline ofanticipation in play it could be easy to drop 3 mana on turn 1 - or 2 if that doesn't happen (which let's be fair, is a good plan b)... and that would give you access to a staggering choice of options including tutors, culitvates, turn one ratchet bombs with mana to spare ... the list is endless and you could easily replenish your hand...
Turn one cultivate - turn two jace's inginuity... anyone?
