Deck Parfait is the hot new deck of Beyond Dominia’s Type I Mill, developed by Raphaël Caron aka K-Run. It is an interesting, yet relatively inexpensive, Type I deck that placed second in the first Beyond Dominia Type I Tournament of Champions. Raphaël’s comments were featured by Darren di Battista, also known as Azhrei, in his regular column, Dragon Gold – and I thought to add my own thoughts.
For those who did not read Darren’s article, Deck Parfait is a mono-white control deck built around white’s powerful control cards and the Land Tax/Scroll Rack engine. After establishing control, it wins by overruning the opponent with Pegasus tokens, or can wait for library death with Soldevi Digger or a recurring Jester’s Cap. Here is Raphaël’s latest version:
Drawing Engine:
3x Land Tax
2x Scroll Rack
2x Zuran Orb
Survival Spells/Silver Bullets:
1x Balance
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Moat
1x Wrath of God
3x Aura of Silence
1x Story Circle
1x Ivory Mask
1x Ivory Tower
Utility Spells:
1x Enlightened Tutor
4x Abeyance
1x Planar Birth
4x Argivian Find
1x Replenish
The Kill
3x Sacred Mesa
1x Jester’s Cap
1x Tormod’s Crypt
1x Soldevi Digger
Mana Sources & Lands
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Serra’s Sanctum
13x Plains
1x Strip Mine
3x Wasteland
1x Lotus Petal
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Diamond
1x Sol Ring
Sideboard (which changes every day)
1x Powder Keg
2x Replenish
2x Spirit Link
2x Abolish
1x Wrath of God
1x Story Circle
1x Swords to Plowshares
2x Tormod’s Crypt
1x Cursed Totem
1x Ivory Mask
1x Sacred Ground)
Deck Parfait thoroughly confused me the first time I saw it. My first question was whether it would simply lose to any deck with Counterspells, which could simply wait and counter the Sacred Mesas regardless of how many cards Parfait drew. K-Run had to explain several times how one could overwhelm counters with the key cards: The Abeyances, the Argivian Finds, and the Tax/Rack card drawing engine.
I eventually broke down and built my own casual version, and the deck defeated every Draw-Go deck that happened to be in the university cafeteria that day, even when I swapped decks with my opponent!
Rakso’s First Parfait
Engine (9)
4x Land Tax
3x Scroll Rack
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Zuran Orb
Win options (5)
2x Sacred Mesa
1x Jester’s Cap
1x Tormod’s Crypt
1x Soldevi Digger
Defense (18)
4x Abeyance
1x Balance
4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Moat
1x Wrath of God
1x Story Circle
3x Seal of Cleansing
1x Ivory Mask
1x Ivory Tower
Others (6)
3x Argivian Find
1x Skull of Orm (cuteness counts when you can’t find your fourth Argivian Find)
1x Emmessi Tome
1x Planar Birth
Mana (22)
1x Sol Ring
1x Mox Diamond
2x Marble Diamond
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
12x Plains
Playing the deck eventually allowed me to appreciate it, and recognize its underlying philosophy. Setting aside the Tax/Rack engine, the deck reminded me of Ice Age-era Prison – the deck that ran you out of cards one by one, using the Winter Orb / Icy Manipulator combo. This was the grandfather of all mono white Type II decks, and a rough version is:
Combo (9)
4x Icy Manipulator
3x Winter Orb
1x Black Vise
1x Feldon’s Cane
Removal (20)
1x Balance
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Serrated Arrows
4x Wrath of God
4x Disenchant
4x Armageddon
Utility (3)
1x Land Tax
1x Zuran Orb
1x Ivory Tower
Mana (28)
4x Fellwar Stone
4x Thawing Glaciers
1x Strip Mine
3x Kjeldoran Outpost
16x Plains
This unmetagamed deck seeks to establish control with white’s formidable array of removal spells. Moat was never Type II legal, but the rest of the cast does nicely, with even Icy Manipulator tying up early creatures and setting up the opponent for a big Wrath. A Winter Orb and two Icies eventually prevent the opponent from doing anything but cast one- mana instants, effectively neutralizing him until he was killed by Black Vise, Kjeldoran Outpost tokens, or library death.
Familiar?
Many Parfait cards, such as Sacred Mesa, Scroll Rack, Ivory Mask, Story Circle, Abeyance and even Marble Diamond, were not in print then – but one sees how Parfait mirrors the early mono white control decks. One may say that Parfait is built on the Tax/Rack card advantage engine, but Prison had its own form of card advantage. By tying up an opponent’s mana, it turned every card an opponent had into a dead card, essentially.
Later, mono-white control decks such as Monastery (Orim’s Prayer/Humility lock) and even Tempest-era creations based on Staunch Defenders used the same recipe: strong removal, strong defense, and a buildup towards an impregnable position using various permanents. The recipe remained good all the way to Deck Parfait.
However, is Deck Parfait essentially a modernized version of the old Prison deck, with Tax/Rack replacing Icy/Orb, and with the card advantage allowing one to run one or two of certain cards instead of four copies of powerful cards, such as Wrath of God and Armageddon?
Prison had to deal with two broad categories of decks: Control and aggro.
It generally held its own against the control decks of its day, especially with Winter Orb, and blue did not yet have enough counterspells to spawn Draw-Go. Aggro decks died to the creature-hostile environment created by four copies of Swords, Wrath, and Icy. Combo decks, of course, did not yet exist.
Unlike Extended, combo is weak in Type I due to its restricted list (and especially due to the restriction of Necropotence, which removed the consistency from Type I Trix). As mentioned, Parfait also holds its own against control decks, with Abeyance-led assaults capable of tearing down counter walls. Topdecking a Moat shuts down many weenie strategies single-handedly.
So yes? Yes.
And no.
While Deck Parfait follows the general structure of the venerable mono-white control deck, the decklist has radically changed due to the printing of newer cards. The opposition has radically changed as well. Looking at aggro decks after the Ice Age block, for example, one sees that the aggro-decks Prison faced were Draw-Go decks compared to their Type II equivalents. After Ice Age, red gained Jackal Pup and Fireblast. Green gained Rancor and the devastating Urza Block-era Stompy weenies. Black gained Duress, Phyrexian Negator, and everything in between.
Yes, you can topdeck a Moat. But if you don’t, you’re toast. Even filtering into the Moat or Wrath may not be fast enough in the face of today’s Type I weenie-based decks. Even a Type II Fires deck could conceivably give Parfait a run for its money.
Now, the question is, why?
Mon- white control has always had one large flaw, and that is a complete lack of flexibility and library manipulation. To date, white has no shortage of devastating removal and global effects. However, to date, its only search card is Enlightened Tutor, which is restricted in Type I. This "tutor problem" weakness is now obvious due to the speed of today’s decks. Several years ago, it was not as big a problem – but today, once cannot use multiple Swords, Wraths and Icies, because str