Doom Basics

If you are reading this chances are that you are a vivid fan of doom foretold – just like most of my opponents roping me when facing this deck on Arena.

Should you be oblivious to the Doom archetype though do not worry for I am going to provide a short summary of it here. Doom decks – not much unlike any classic control deck – control the board with cheap removal until they can win the game with overwhelming card advantage. Unlike most control lists the interaction is mostly tied to the board and operates almost entirely at sorcery speed. Furthermore the deck has to resolve permanents that replace themselves to enable doom foretold and rite of oblivion in addition to ideally providing some other proactive advantage. Accordingly counterspells or any other means to interact with the stack are difficult to use and therefore rarely see play in this type of control deck.

Removal: Incidentally our two big payoff cards (Doom foretold and rite of oblivion) also represent our main way of removal – although we can ambush the opponent with fatal push and white wanderer occasionally. Doom foretold continuously takes away permanents from the opponent's board as long as we can sacrifice enough useless permanents ourselves. Usually in order to get rid of the doom many opponent opt to forfeit their turn, essentially giving us a free time walk. Rite of oblivion is an incredible efficient 2 use exile everything (but lands) removal effect as long as we can provide fodder. In fact this removal is so good, that it easily has to be described as our main wincon.

Notably the deck runs a couple of rather situational removal cards namely trial of ambition and oath of kaya. Both are here mainly because they leave a permanent on the board. On curve those cards play out fine most of the time. Sometimes they can even be better than regular removal (sacrificing a graveyard trespasser/bonecrusher giant or helixing any smal target). But obviously they can struggle if the opponent goes super wide (trial) or super big (kaya).

Some interesting removal cards are fatal push and supreme verdict. Here I decided to go with power over synergy. Obviously meathook massaker is a board wipe that leaves behind a permanent. But the meathook can sometimes be super expensive. Supreme verdict kills no questions asked. It also requires WWU instead of BB which is slightly easier to achieve.

While being a black staple everywhere else fatal push is still notable in this deck because many doom players likely are going to play portable hole instead. For anyone unfamiliar with the subject this might seem odd. Portable hole in fact is not a permanent you can sacrifice for free. The idea is that you sometimes want to give your opponent a small creature back when you have placed doom foretold so you can keep the doom foretold around longer. By doing this you can continuously take away productive turns from your opponent who might not want to place permanents onto the board for he tries to get rid of the doom foretold. But I just cannot ignore the power of fatal push and how easy it is in this deck to enable revolt to kill even bigger creatures. Furthermore the deck can buy back doom foretold with manse anyways.

Card Draw: The best ways for card draw and selection are omen of the sea and treacherous blessing. The later provides a whopping 2 cards card advantage while the former provides important card selection. Obviously they also leave behind a convenient permanent ready to be sacked or flickered at a latter point in time. In fact playing treacherous blessing into rite of oblivion feels absolutely insane as this is going to cost no life at all. Easily the best card to sacrifice and the best card draw spell we can play.

Thraben Inspector: possibly the best 1 drop we can play in this deck with implement of improvement as the only card that comes close. Obviously there are 2 drops that have bigger effects like the selfless samuari or lithoform blight. Thraben inspector necessitates a further mana investment to give you a card back and is therefore cost inefficient. It also synergizes less well with yorion, eiganjo or dance of the manse. To make up for these disadvantages the inspector has a great inital mana cost and some flexibility as it puts 2 permanents onto the board for a variety of uses. Playing this on turn 1 enables rite of oblivion on turn 2. Same can be said about implement of improvement – a card that buys you back a card when sacrificed. The inspector though does not require you to have a sacrifice piece and might therefore be a better top deck in the late game. Ultimately I think the deck needs some 1 drop and either one of these two can fit in with their respective disadvantages – Thraben inspector being the better card individually and implement being a stronger synergy piece.

Birth of meletis: I run 2 of those. It is a nice card providing a land and a wall. Its biggest disadvantage being that it sacrifices itself which means that it rarely cant be used as a sacrifice fodder for doom foretold. The 2 chapter also triggers after the upkeep which makes it generally difficult to use with doom. Besides omen of the sea there are no individually more powerful cards though. The wall is good against aggro, the land smooths out your land drops and it can be sacrificed for the turns it sticks around.

Restoration of Eiganjo: I feel like this is the strongest card in the deck, even though you rarely want to sacrifice it. It gives you a Plains and then it provides 2 mana worth of card placement most of the time in addition to being a sizeable creature later on. Having to place cantrips onto the board is mana intensive and Restoration helps eliviate that deck building cost. As a result of playing 4 restorations suddenly every 2 drop permanent becomes a lot more appealing to be played – as the placement becomes a lot easier. It can also recur cheap sacrifice fodder from your graveyard. Since this card essentially provides card advantage, tempo and a threat I think this might be the best thing to have against other control decks.

Danse of the manse: This is a big finisher style card. Honestly in my games so far the card has not come up too much. It requires a lot of the current game to have happened so far. You having played and sacrificed permanents and not already being in a overwhelming winning position. The deck does not mill itself so this is the only plausible scenario your graveyard is going to fill up. In explorer graveyard hate and hand disruption is quite common. Still I stick around with this card over some of the best alternatives (teferi, ECD, cavalier of dawn) because it is flexible and because it actually fills your board. In short: its a high impact card, likely helping you on board worth whatever mana you put into it.

Malevolent Hermit: In an effort to keep the permanent count high (especially 2 mana for restoration of eiganjo) I found hermit as a possible card. While you cannot flicker the hermit for card advantage he essentially draws you a card when he dies via disturb (similarly to flashback on rite of oblivion). And both sides of the hermit are somewhat useful. The front side makes it easier to keep up a counterspell should you need to and the backside helps you resolve your own spells. Restoration also helps you deploy the hermit onto the board which is nice. Sadly supreme verdict is pretty powerful against the hermit. As is graveyard hate. Although neither really answers the hermit cleanly (the deck plays creatures and uses the graveyard incidentally. The cards already provided value before they got destroyed or hated on).

As you can see I mostly play the full set of 4 of every card. I am convinced that those are the best you can play of their respective types (with the current explorer bann list) so I aim for consistency. I want them together and in multiples.

Lands: The land base is fairly simple. Skewed towards our primary color which is white. I personally like check lands and accordingly play a high basic land type count. This makes sense since both birth of meletis and eiganjo each fetch a plains and the deck generally has a high density of proactive 2 drop plays that reward having untapped lands on curve.

If you want you can replace the lands with pathways and some combination of slow or fast lands. Neither black nor blue require double pips so make sure to favour white pathways (as you can see I play the white check lands since I have the easiest access to the plains land type). Playing pathways can make double spelling more difficult though, but it might occasionally save some life.

Sideboard:

Obviously this is a Yorion deck. Almost every permanent in our deck has an etb effect. The deck has to run 80 cards in order to fit yorion as a commander but most 60 card control decks do not run 4 ofs. The card quality is super high (since I in some instances favored it over synergy) therefore 80 cards is alright.

Thoughtseize: Predominantly against Combo and Control. Efficient discard for a deck that cannot play too many counterspells. It can also snack away some hard to answer control staples like shark typhoon, dovins veto, thought distortion, supreme verdict etc. It is also useful against Collected Company and Greasefang. Close to a main deck option, maybe split with fatal push.

Narset: Another permanent that gives card advantage and sometimes shuts down an opponent. Probably good against opponents that cannot pressure it (like control). Difficult on the mana. Can be replaced. Not really needed.

Dovin's veto: Powerful effect. But holding multiples might be painful if you do not have an instant play alongside it. Up to the endgame the mana is going to be tightly used. Still I would not want to leave the control matchup to hermit and thoughtseize alone.

Mystical dispute: Great against control. Absolutely necessary against mono blue. Efficient and nice. Good against opponents that think they just need to kill the hermit on board.

Unlicensed hearse: Repeatable graveyard hate that can also be placed with restoration of eiganjo. Perfect. Sadly the deck cannot play weathered runestone (which might be a consideration against collected company and greasefang – they always draw another one) but the gravedigger's cage might be a consideration if you face a lot of CC (only shuts down thraben inspector and hermit in the graveyard, the latter can be boarded out anyways).

Vanishing verse: Having so little instant speed removal can hurt. Particularly against combo decks like greasefang (parhelion II). 1 vanishing verse is probably not going to help much. But the deck plays so much removal in the main board that I cannot dedicate a lot of space in the side board to it. Vanishing verse is the best instant removal spell in the current meta for sure. So if you add more removal then add this one first.

Notable omissions:

Aether gust. If you face a lot of CC and Chandra and so forth you might want to go for aether gust . But I found that I did not use it as a counter very often. And as a removal spell it was not all that helpful.

Noxious grasp: Can deal with greasefang. Only temporarily though since it does not exile. Ultimately playing graveyard hate is going to be better unless they can deal with that (portable hole).

Field of ruin: Some people like that card. Having colorless mana can be akward though in a three color deck. A one of should be fine. Might make it necessary to add a swamp and an island as well.

Thought distortion: The ultimate hate card. The control matchup is hard. This might help if your opponent actually sandbacks his cards (and you do not play into his counterspells). As long as your opponent does not run black either this might be a good consideration. As all discard spells this one might be completely useless on some occasions. In a control match sandbagging can happen though quite frequently. Getting to 6 mana is not entirely easy though.

Shark typhoon: In a similar vein you might want this card. It helps pressuring planeswalker. It is pretty slow and it has no synergy with the deck though.

Farewell: a 6 mana board wipe is not really necessary. The deck essentially board wipes with doom foretold and can deal with every nonland permanent type already. If this hit planeswalkers instead of enchantments then I would run it.

Dream Trawler and 5eferi of some other 5 mana control finisher: I would argue that you should not play them in a doom deck. You want to operate slight more to the ground with a lower mana curve by omitting those. They are different wincons entirely. Dance of the manse is way more flexible and adds to the game plan. I also think the effect should be more powerful. But if you want to diversify your threats some of those cards are good options. I would go with 5eferi over dream Trawler, because at least this deck has blockers to protect him, the doom can clean up on board threats thwarting him and he is less susceptible to common board wipes (why would one want to add a creature to the board that does not provide instant value?). So 5eferi should play reasonably well in the deck even lacking instant speed interaction.

Matchups:

Rakdos Midrange, Mono Black Vampires and most similar creature based midrange value piles.

Basically unloseable. Their best cards against you are going to be chandra planeswalkers or invoke despair. Your best cards are

Mono Blue: Tough. They are good against normal control already and we play less instants. The esper removal is pretty good though and you can add even more vanishing verse if you like. Your best cards are fatal push and supreme verdict. But they can recover quickly.

Control: Control is a rare matchup currently. Most decks I face are creature based. I think the match is hard unless you draw well. The best cards you can draw are eiganjo, treacherous blessing, hermit and dovins veto. Their best cards are 5feri, supreme verdict and shark typhoon. If you are facing of against control a lot you might want to add thought distortion or shark typhoon to pressure 5eferi.

Greasefang: Probably the worst matchup. That deck essentially does not care about doom foretold in the slightest. They can principally even wait it out. Basically unwinnable. Having enough graveyard hate or instant speed removal against it is not feasible for the Doom archetype.

Izzet Creativity: This one is winnable I think depending on the version. Disrupting the combo is not easy sure. But it does not kill you usually the turn it happens. I had an opponent play multiple gearhulks, magma opus and sublime epiphany and I could still just supreme verdict everything. Maybe the creativity archetype is dead because of supreme verdict anyways? The version of the deck that runs agent of treachery can steal the doom foretold, although they cannot make effective use of it. Every other permanent we play is almost useless to them, except for the white wanderer maybe. Your best cards are going to be supreme verdict and thoughtseize.

Mono Green: They can have explosive games and then it is over. Doom decks need some time to setup. Ideally you wipe them on turn 4 and they cannot follow up with a Collected Company. Thoughtseize might be good enough for that reason.

Mono red: This matchup feels alright. Obviously they can have explosive games like all aggro decks. The biggest problem with mono red is that they can finish you of from a board wipe with haste creatures and its difficult to respond to embercleave. Still almost all cards in our deck are good against creatures and its realistic to stay healthy enough. Doom foretold on a somewhat stable board can be absolutely amazing.