Countdown to Regionals: Replenish
**Replenish has come out of nowhere to become the most important deck in Standard. What makes Replenish so good? It's a combination of factors. First, at least three cards in the deck are undercosted: Replenish, Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide. Then the deck uses these cards to their maximum effect, turns Opalescence and Attunement into amazing cards, and can afford to run an Enlightened Tutor base. Normally, if cards that cost a lot of mana have effects that are a little too good, it's not a problem. But here you can actually pack your deck full of them. Why? Because of the way the Parallax tradeoff works.
Parallax cards use Fading to let you get a huge effect for a small amount of time. If you use Tide to take out three lands, it will deny your opponent nine mana. Wave will normally stop your opponent's creatures for about three turns. During the period from turns four to six, the right Parallax card will let you have board advantage on its own, giving you the time you need to back it up. This makes it all right that the deck does nothing during the first three turns except maybe use a counter or tutor and play Attunement. You mostly skip the first three turns, get a temporary triple play on turn four, then use the next few turns to take total control of the game.
That's assuming you don't just pull off Attunement and Replenish on turns three and four for the autowin, which you often do. So what does this make the deck? It can win games on turn four, or turn three if you run the new depletion lands in the deck. Your opponent isn't dead but he might as well be. In addition to that, it uses more four casting cost spells than any competitive deck has a right to, and they all work together in almost every possible combination, with Enlightened Tutor and Attunement to assure the right draw and Replenish being amazing.
So in short, I don't consider Replenish to really be a combination deck. You can play it as one if you want, with Frantic Search and depletion lands, possibly even with virtually uncastable enchantments like Confiscate, and it's a good deck. But that's not where the deck really shines. Replenish is closer to a frustrated control deck for me. You let your opponent play out cards for a few turns and then use your more powerful control cards to blow his permanents out of the water for the win. Looked at another way, you want to adapt and assume the deck type you need to beat your opponent: Against control you want to lay out an endless series of huge threats. Against an aggressive deck you want to go into combination mode, keeping them at bay with Attunement/Replenish and with Parallax Wave or sometimes Tide. Against Bargain you use your spells to prevent him from winning while you win with Attunement.
I don't claim to have the 'best' Replenish decklist yet. I have some different ideas, and in general I've molded the base into a much more controlling deck. I think a lot comes down to individual style, and this is the way I feel comfortable with the deck. So this is my decklist:
This sideboard tries to walk the line between being based on Enlightened Tutor and covering your other weaknesses. Wrath of God, Mana Short and Erase are all great against certain strategies, while the rest of these cards are a combination of silver bullets and flexibility. When the time comes I'll cover it and your other sideboard options in more detail.
So now I'll do a card by card breakdown of the core cards in the maindeck:
Replenish. The deck runs on the eventual Replenish, and sometimes a quick one. Having four of these in the deck takes away the disadvantage of the Parallax cards, that eventually the effects run out and you get overwhelmed. The best part is when you play an individual game you don't need this card at all. If you know that it's going to give you enough stuff to win the game, go for it. There's no need to wait until it's totally devastating. Also, don't burn all your resources setting one of these up if it's already worth countering and they might counter it. If you can, of course, test spell them first. The flip side comes if you have extras. As long as you still have one, you can burn the others on something as easy as two Attunements without blinking. If you have to, don't worry about using it on almost nothing, especially to get Attunement back or to not die. One strategy you can try against Replenish is to Quash Replenish or target the graveyard, and that only works if they force you to rely on it. Even that's not easy.
Attunement. This is the reason you can play four Enlightened Tutors without blinking: Attunement is amazing in this deck. Normally, your first job is to get a third turn Attunement, since your deck will make up for the lost time in the next few turns. The key is knowing when to let it sit on the table and when to start using it every turn. My rule is to look for a way not to Attune first. If you can cast a threat, it's better to do that instead of Attuning unless you have a secure Replenish coming. This counts double if that's Opalescence and Attunement becomes a creature. Card count is something you're willing to sacrifice if you have to, but if you don't have to then don't. If there's one thing I hate, it's throwing away too many good enchantments with Attunement and running out of spells. Also, make sure to hold cards in your hand, so that if you draw into a lot of good cards you can keep more of them. Like Replenish, this both got better with the Parallax cards and became easier to live without. If your opponent lets you have Attunement, your deck will work, and probably sooner rather than later. If you have a good hand, especially another Attunement, use this as a test spell to draw a counter out of their hands. Sometimes, if your opponent is going to counter it, you'll need to protect it when it happens to be vital. Knowing whether they'll stop Attunement is often the key to an easy win, so try to know your opponent.
Parallax Wave. This lets you get away with your lack of other creature defense. A Wave by itself will normally buy you about three turns as noted above. I haven't played many games against decks where you'd tutor for it, but such matchups aren't uncommon. Even when this shouldn't be problematic for your opponent, it often is. Accelerated Blue has to put you on a clock, and often this is a 4/4. Bargain needs to keep its Skirges in play; a Wave normally keeps them from going off. Parallax Tide helps a lot, but I think the Wave is what put the deck over the top. It's great on its own and gets even better with the rest of the deck. One thing to be careful of is relying on Wave, especially tutoring for it, when you have no backup. If you don't follow up, the creatures will return and they will bring friends over time. This effect also lets your opponent walk into Wrath of God if you have it, but you shouldn't need it.
Parallax Tide. I was reluctant to use this card, and then I played with it. Wow. If you get to turn four without a major problem then you can just drop this and win. While Tide remains in play, they normally have three turns being more or less helpless. Comparing this to other mana denial cards shows how good it is. It takes out three lands for three turns for four mana. They don't come back in time very often. Certainly that's a great deal compared with mana acceleration. Then it becomes a creature and/or comes back. If the game lasts long enough for this not to be important, and against blue it never becomes unimportant, then you probably won the game anyway either with a huge Replenish or with a lot of Opalescence beatdown. Once Opalescence comes out, of course, it can't be bad. Another note is that this can be used to draw counters out of their hand even if it doesn't happen to do that much. All blue players assume that Tide is going to wreck them, and normally they're right. With strange hands, you'll often just be praying they still see it as a threat. Don't worry, they will.
Opalescence. This used to be needed for the deck to work. Now you only need it to kill. Many times people will let it through, because they can't counter everything and this is harmless on its own. Well, now they'll have to counter everything else, and that makes it one of my favorite spells to lead with against blue. Against other colors it stays back and then starts up the beatdown once your other enchantments are in place, unless you have nothing better to do on turn four. Tutor for it if you need to or if having it will wrap up the game, or if you just have a lot of enchantments and no Opalescence. If you're Attuning already for a Replenish and can use a Tutor to get one enchantment, this is the most common first one I go for to make sure I have it. The second one can be even better than the first. Be careful if you don't have a Wave for protection, in case they can blow up or steal your new creatures. There are situations where this is counterproductive for a short period. Because this makes all your other cards so powerful, it's often better to hold this when stacking your graveyard and cast it later, in case something goes wrong.
Enlightened Tutor. Drawing Attunement is normally vital and worth far more than a card. If you have Attunement drawing too many Tutors is no big deal. In other situations, this can get any other important card in this deck except Replenish itself, as well as letting you have a much better sideboard. I think not running four of these is insane. If you don't have Attunement or a hand with enough spells to cast and enough lands, not getting Attunement is scary. If you already have it or one extra tutor means you have everything you need, especially when you don't have a Replenish, you can go get the missing piece with more confidence. Normally there's a card in the deck in case you need more land; I chose Sky Diamond and I'll talk about that later. It would be nice to have even more cards to go search for, but in practice you almost always want one of the core cards.
Lands. The deck wants at least 24 lands, since it has to have three in the first three turns and four in four if Attunement is countered. It's often key to get the third mana on turn two or even turn one so you can use an Enlightened Tutor, since Tutoring prevents you from possibly drawing land. It would like to have more, which is where Brainstorm comes in later. The key balancing act is nonbasics vs. basics, assuming you don't run depletion lands. Right now I have 2 Painlands, since I needed a little more colored mana and two seems not to do too much damage to the Back to Basics strategy or hurt too much against Dust Bowl. I can see any number of them, from zero to four. The depletion lands I'll consider as an option later on.
I consider those to be the core of the deck. The rest of the cards in the maindeck - Brainstorm, Seal of Cleansing, Back to Basics, Counterspell and Sky Diamond - finish the deck off, as do alternative cards like Miscalculation, Lilting Refrain, Frantic Search, Saprazzan Skerry, Remote Farm, Seal of Removal, Trade Routes and others. It's hard to tell what the best way to finish the deck is. The deck runs off the core cards, and most games work more or less the same way with any reasonable finish to the deck. The deck's matchups are generally great, so you also win most of them too.
So in part two I'll move on to ways to finish off the deck, and consider them the way I considered variants to Accelerated Blue, with advantages and disadvantages. And don't worry, I won't stop without dealing with matchups and sideboarding as well.
-Zvi Mowshowitz
All questions, comments, and responses welcomed at
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