Since ‘Forbidden Loot’ is not a real deck in PreModern, I should probably start by explaining what this deck is a bit and how I got to the current list.

Once upon a time about a month ago I was thinking about how I love Eternal Dragon and have my judge promo version from way back when judge promos first started (when I “quit” magic after high school I sold everything except this card and my 9-land green deck, which I kept in the trunk of my car for almost a decade before getting back into the game). I was trying to think of ways to abuse the recursive nature of Eternal Dragon and I landed on another awesome card – Forbid. 

Then I realized that if I really wanted to discard Dragon to Forbid and get it back I’d be stuck paying 13 mana just to get a counterspell every turn. But there is another much easier way to get free discard fodder: Squee, Goblin Nabob. So I filled my UW deck with this card and ways to abuse it like discarding it to Merfolk Looter and Waterfront Bouncer. I’m pretty sure Squee might be good with Survival of the Fittest too but let’s be honest, I’m not really that fit. 

So after throwing together a list, I went and tried this deck out on MTGO. It took a few tweaks (and to be honest I was learning the format itself at the same time), but I was starting to have reasonable success. Early iterations of the list leaned hard on Arcane Lab to prison people out under Forbid. I was able to squeak out a 3-3 record on the Magic Online Society league with that list but it had some fundamental flaws. For one thing, it had no closing speed because the deck was all 1/1s + 4 Meddling Mage, and Lab makes it hard to advance your board state without going shields down. So I started trimming Lab and experimented with cards to close games out like Psychatog, Quirion Dryad, or Call of the Herd.

I also found that I couldn’t beat any of the control decks or even the Rock because they’d just play bigger creatures than I had or cycle a Decree of Justice under Forbid. So I began running Armageddon, which more or less turned those matchups around completely. Though of course now I had to run Gush in the deck in order to make ‘geddon as powerful as possible. 

This left me with a strange deck full of 1/1s that could set up some decent engines in Looter + Squee or arrange a reasonable lock in Forbid + Squee. I could also just play Mage + Call of the Herd alongside Mom to get some beats in. But overall the deck was sort of disjointed and the mana was pretty bad. Mox Diamond can paper over a lot of problems but supporting 5 colors alongside Gush is just a tall order. 

Then I came across this taxonomy of UW dork decks and was inspired. UW Flippi was almost exactly the kind of deck I wanted to play; it was just missing a true engine/prison toolset. Exalted Angel seemed like the finisher I had been looking for in other cards like Psychatog, but this time in my actual base colors. 

So I cut the Gushes and Call of the Herd and went back to my original plan of playing lots of value-generating dorks. I added back the Wayfarers and replaced my City of Brasses with Mishra’s Factories. I also snuck in the Enlightened Tutor package I had dropped before when I was making room for threats, though this time it was Winter Orb that I added instead of Arcane Lab. 

The result was a deck that is spiritually pretty close to Flippi but uses the Squee engine instead of the generically good cards like Prohibit that Flippi plays. Having this engine to recoup card advantage lets us outvalue a lot of other decks while also getting to play accelerants like Mox Diamond. 

Here is the final list:

The sideboard is mostly a mishmash of stuff I had on hand. I wanted to play some hammers that I could tutor up as well as have various solid cards to shore up matchups without really changing the main plan. In retrospect Cursed Totem is pretty bad in this deck since it turns off my entire deck (probably should just be another Ray of Revelation).

Ok that’s enough rambling, let’s just talk about some matches!

Match 1 – Pit Rack

Game 1: I start the game with Diamond into Bouncer and they quickly establish a Rack. Diamond makes my hand small fast so I am already taking damage. Eventually, with a Bouncer and a Factory in play against their Scroll, Rack, and Factory, I tutor for Standstill and play it.

The next turn I attack my Factory into theirs and activate Bouncer before they can block, discarding Squee. My opponent realizes that they do have to break the Standstill so I draw up a few cards and get out of Rack range. Unfortunately, however, they have Withered Wretch for my Squee. 

Swords and Bouncer still keep the board clear and eventually I play Winter Orb to freeze their lands. I’m a bit frozen too of course, but I figure that’s fine since I have a Mox Diamond, I’m going up cards out of Rack range, and have their Factory tapped down. 

But they land Bottomless Pit and I’m back in the red. They had to tap out though so I go to race them and foolishly attack with all my creatures, forgetting that their Factory can attack as well as block. They untap their Factory, play another land, and get in for 2. That plus Rack in my upkeep is enough to do me in.

Game 2: I bring in some artifact and enchantment removal, but it doesn’t end up mattering much. They land two Engineered Plagues both naming ‘human’ so my Meddling Mages and Moms are useless, and I can’t draw an answer to their Plague Spitter before it attacks 6 or so times and I die.

0-1 is not a promising start but my wife sent me some photos of the cat we are soon to adopt. Sometimes that’s all it takes to rally and get back in it!

Match 2 – Dream Halls Combo

Game 1: I have an early Mother of Runes into Merfolk Looter on the draw. In the meantime my opponent is just playing islands and cantripping. So on my third turn I play Meddling Mage on Dreadnought, assuming they’re on mono-blue Dread. 

When they cast Meditate a few turns later I realize that they definitely are not on 12/12s and put them on something like Storm. So on the first of my two turns I play out Solitary Confinement (I already have Squee) figuring it would more or less stop them from Brain Freezing me. 

They have a Counterspell for this, but that puts them tapped out. I attack, untap into my second turn, and play Winter Orb. I start attacking with my 1/1s to speed up the clock and we manage to get there.

Game 2: This game looks a lot like the first – Mom into Meddling Mage. I have to make the name good because they have a Defense Grid out that is blanking my Forbid. So I name Dream Halls with Mage, in part because they showed me Ancient Tomb. 

But my Mage’s meddling isn’t that effective, it turns out, because they still manage to get a Dream Halls into play using Show and Tell. I use the opportunity to show an Exalted Angel. I get a bit lucky though and they don’t draw enough action and have to pass the turn. 

At this point Ancient Tomb and incidental beats have put them to 10 life. With Exalted Angel adding 4 power to my board I take them swiftly down to 2, blanking their Tomb. Their next draw step doesn’t get them what they need and that’s the game. 

1-1 – back in it maybe?

Match 3 – Mono-Black Clerics

Game 1: This game opens with Mom into Weathered Wayfarer and what seems to be a pretty land-heavy draw from my opponent. They play some discard and flash back a Therapy until they have just Dark Supplicant. In the meantime I’m digging up Factories and starting to attack a bit. 

Soon however they have 3 clerics and Dark Supplicant turns the three into a huge 6/6 trampler Scion of Darkness. I do the math and by casting Squee and blocking with all my creatures I’m able to get the full 6 points. Mom saves herself and we’re back to square one.

Over the next few turns I draw Meddling Mage (naming Rotlung Reanimator) as well as Forbid, while they land a Cabal Archon. This lets me start attacking in with a protected Mage. Forbid + Squee is a bit of a lock so over the next few turns I counter a couple spells with Forbid while building out my board until we cross the finish line.

Game 2: We trade a few resources until I topdeck Light of Day and play it. That lets me start attacking into their board for a few turns but they have Plaguebearer to help stabilize. I even make the dumb mistake of activating Mishra’s Factory in the face of Plaguebearer – turns out double zero is still zero and my Assembly Workers die fast.

Plaguebearer can’t, however kill Exalted Angel. A few combat phases later she closes out the game for me.

Match 4 – Burn

Game 1: They keep a 1 land hand with Urza’s Bauble but miss on drawing lands. I draw a lot of Meddling Mages and name a lot of one mana burn spells. Together with Factory they take it home before my opponent can get their mana under them.

Game 2: My opponent doesn’t have any creatures to open with but they do have Sulfuric Vortex. I have Seal of Cleansing but I let Vortex ride for a few turns while attacking with Factory. They do have a bunch of burn spells but some have to kill my robot so when the dust settles we’re both at around 9 life, my Factory is dead, and so is their Vortex. 

I play one of the least mysterious morphs ever cast (they even saw it earlier with Bauble) and they have to Fireblast it to stop me from pulling out of reach with Exalted Angel. That means that my Meddling Mage sticks and carries us over the finish line as my opponent is stuck drawing basic mountains.

Conclusion

Ended up 3-1 overall, good for 3rd out of our 12 players. Which means basically nothing in the scheme of things but for a fresh brew’s first paper outing it’s a promising start. 

Some observations::

• I did get to do the Looter + Squee thing a few times but none of my matchups were the kind where that would really shine
• Mishra’s Factory way overperformed and helped a lot with the closing speed problem that the deck had before
• Solitary Confinement seemed good on paper but I never had a setup where I felt it would be safe to deploy. You need (A) to have the Confinement, (B) to have Squee, and (C) be in a matchup that can’t beat this. But most decks have some enchantment removal or graveyard interaction, at least post-board.
• I need more answers to artifacts and enchantments, probably in the form of a second Disenchant or Ray of Revelation, and I need to bring them in more often because people will play cards like Engineered Plague against me.

Changes I want to try out:

• Mana Maze. This seems like it’s just a cheaper Arcane Lab that lets me develop my own white cards while still holding up Forbid
• Standstill. Flippi played three and I think this deck could also support Standstill pretty reasonably, especially with Mox Diamond in the mix
• More Wasteland. Wasteland is great and I’d prefer to run 3, just didn’t feel I had room to play that many colorless lands.
• Cutting the tutor package for more countermagic/interaction. Tutor packages always feel kind of clunky to me. They seem good on paper, especially in a deck that can tutor and draw the card with Looter all in one turn, but in practice it’s probably better to just play some more Mana Leaks, maybe a couple Disenchant, even a Fact or Fiction. Or lean harder into a prison plan by playing 2-3 Mana Maze in those slots.

And that’s it! Thanks for reading this ramble and do let me know if you have any suggestions for the deck. Overall I think it has some legs but still needs some more thought so that it has a plan for every matchup and can execute those plans consistently.