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It's Friday and that means the weekend is here along with my article! What else could be more exciting? Nothing, that's what. As some of you may know, I've been working on a Lich's Mastery deck while also streaming said deck. When Guilds of Ravnica came out I decided to combine my 
The Mirari Conjecture deck with Lich's Mastery. Why? Because I wanted to take extra turns with Chance for Glory and not lose the game. Like most brews, the initial list had a ton of rough edges and we lost a good amount of games, but we kept with the deck and adapted it to combat the metagame. After playing the deck last weekend at SCG Columbus I can confidently recommend the deck. It's a blast to play and it's very good once you learn it. The deck has a combo that will allow you to take literal infinite turns. I'll get to that in a minute though. First let's looking at the list I am running as of right now.
Rainbow Lich | Guilds Standard | Ali Aintrazi
- Instants (14)
- 2 Assassin's Trophy
- 2 Root Snare
- 3 Revitalize
- 3 Settle the Wreckage
- 4 Chance for Glory
- Sorceries (8)
- 2 Cleansing Nova
- 2 Mastermind's Acquisition
- 4 Discovery // Dispersal
- Enchantments (12)
- 2 Search for Azcanta
- 3 Lich's Mastery
- 3 The Mirari Conjecture
- 4 Gift of Paradise
If you are just seeing the deck for the first time, it is a lot to take in. Don't worry though, I'll be breaking it down. The goal of the deck is to land a Lich's Mastery and start taking extra turns with Chance for Glory. Since Chance for Glory is an instant, there are multiple different ways to do this. My favorite way is to cast a Chance for Glory or two at my opponent's end step to stack turns and then on the first extra turn play Lich's Mastery. That way I can untap with Lich's Mastery in play and really start taking advantage of it. All the cards in the deck are used to stall or combo. Gift of Paradise is an excellent way to fix our mana, ramp up, and draw three cards with Lich's Mastery in play late game. Revitalize is an excellent tool against the aggressive decks to counter a Lightning Strike / Wizard's Lightning while also drawing you a card. Then late game it has the advantage of drawing you four cards with Lich's Mastery in play. You will win most of your games with Banefire. The basics are simple, but the infinite turns combo can be a little confusing so let me explain that.
Infinite Turns Combo
Now, main deck you have no way to take infinite turns. When you are ready, you Mastermind's Acquisition for Nature's Spiral to begin the infinite turn loop. You can go about the infinite turns combo two different ways. They both obviously require Lich's Mastery to be in play.
Two The Mirari Conjectures + One Chance for Glory + One Nature's Spiral
This is the hardest way. You will need eight mana to start this combo and need to have Masterminded for a Nature's Spiral (it can be in your hand or graveyard.) You play The Mirari Conjecture re-buying and casting Chance for Glory. On your next turn, you play the other Mirari Conjecture and re-buy Chance for Glory again. On that final turn you need to play Nature's Spiral (from hand or bought back from one of the Conjectures.) Then you just repeat the loop of playing The Mirari Conjecture and casting Chance for Glory.
Another way to do this is to start the loop when one of your Mirari Conjectures gets to the third chapter. Then you cast and copy Chance for Glory and play another Mirari Conjecture to buyback Chance for Glory. You then take your two extra turns and hold on to Chance for Glory until your new Mirari gets to the third chapter (all without giving your opponent a turn.) When your new Mirari gets to the third chapter you can then cast Chance for Glory again and copy it. This gives you a total of four extra turns to draw and dig into your deck and set up the infinite turns combo. I've always killed my opponent or managed to set up infinite turns and eventually Banefire my opponent for a million within those four extra turns.
Sometimes your opponents just get greedy with shocklands, Notion Rain, Doom Whisperer, or Arguel's Blood Fast and get low on health. You can cast and/or buyback Mastermind's Acquisition during the second chapter of The Mirari Conjecture and then on double spells turn, you can Banefire their greedy little faces off.
Sideboard
The deck is currently setup to beat the aggro / midrange strategies. The only thing I would bring in against a deck like Mono Red is Lyra Dawnbringer and Assassin's Trophy for Search for Azcanta. The other cards are mostly for control decks or bullets to get with Mastermind's Acquisition. If you are going to tutor for The Mirari Conjecture, make sure to always get the one from your Sideboard first so you'll have more in your deck.
Against control decks with Cleansing Nova, you will want to combo off right away Game 1. So, try to set up double Chance for Glory at their end step and then play Lich's Mastery and never give them a turn again. Games two and three, I like to transform.
- -4Chance for Glory
- -3 Lich's Mastery
- -3 Settle the Wreckage
- -2 Root Snare
- -1 Revitalize
- -1 Cleansing Nova
- +1 The Mirari Conjecture
- +1 Assassin's Trophy
- +3 Duress
- +1 Nature's Spiral
- +2 Carnage Tyrant
- +3 Negate
- +1 Banefire
- +1 Nezahal, Primal Tide
- +1 Chromium, the Mutable
I will even bring in Lyra Dawnbringer (cut another Revitalize) if they are not playing Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. This allows you to pressure the control opponent from multiple angles, you'll be able to attack their hand with Duress and stop key spells with Negate while playing haymakers. Late game, The Mirari Conjecture becomes game over when you are buying back Negates and Duress. The reason for the split on Nezahal and Chromium is so, if you want, you can have both out at the same time to just end the game. You will also have access to Banefire main deck. Banefire is fine mid game to kill a Teferi and late game you can end the game with Banefire.
If you have a Game 3, don't be afraid to board back into Lich's Mastery combo, especially if you think your opponent is boarding in board wipes for your big dinosaurs and dragons.
Wrap Up
This deck is a toolbox deck, this means you will have to constantly adapt to the metagame. If control is on the rise, you'll want to play two Thought Erasure main deck. If aggressive decks are all you expect, then you may not want to play Search for Azcanta but instead Deafening Clarion or Moment of Craving. Just keep in mind that the deck is all five colors but the Red is a splash for Chance for Glory and Banefire out of the Sideboard so be weary of adding too many Red cards main deck.
This deck is powerful and one I plan to keep on playing and tuning as time goes on, especially since this deck only gets better the more cards are released into Standard. The mana base will get better once we get the other five shocklands and I'm sure we'll gain some new tools from Ravnica Allegiance. If you enjoyed playing The Mirari Conjecture or 
Lich's Mastery, you must give this deck a shot. It is great!
That's all I have for you today folks. Make sure to follow my Twitch channel if you want to see some of my brews in action. This deck was literally created on stream one day and we just kept tuning it to combat the metagame until we got here. I hope you've enjoyed this article and if you do decide to play the deck, please let me know how it does for you. Feel free to message me and/or tweet at me. I love seeing and hearing people do well with my brews.
If you have any questions about the deck leave a comment below and I will get back to you.
As always, thank you for reading.
Ali Aintrazi
Follow me @AliEldrazi
