Ein'Sof's deck is complete

Another update! 

Ein'sof is likely the most powerful of the Nephilim in the abstract. The deck also feels a bit more scattered than Hesed's deck. I like it but hopefully play testing will grind the rough edges down a bit more. 

Imgur album - http://imgur.com/a/cHI6T

Tapped out link to the decklist as it stands - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/einsof/

Ein is very proactively powerful. The token creation can make a ton of tokens repeatedly. I might want to change it later, but I like the way it helps the abilities feel connected. It'd probably be fine to make it a static number if it ends up being broken.

Raziel hasn't gotten any changes and likely won't. Up until recently I wouldn't have thought of this as very red, but with Tormenting Voices and Magmatic Insight, red has been getting powerful rummaging effects and will likely continue to do so. 

Again, likely to get cut.The mandates are really not doing the job I want since the wording is not intuitive enough for the average player to understand. Also, the card count needs to come down a bit.

I'm debating the wording on this one. Most cards are structured as "Keyword. Other creatures you control have Keyword." The exception appears to be haste as evidenced by Urabrask and Maelstrom Wanderer. The card itself is a riff on Edric/Maelstrom Wanderer, just less bullshit since it has a real mana cost and makes you pay for the other creatures.

The size and type of the token aren't definite. I was just looking for a size of token that hadn't been used by landfall yet.

This card is extremely powerful. I think it has enough knobs to be developed though. It could go to XX or X2WUG. It could be backed down to a sorcery. Any number of tweaks will likely put this is a good place.

I'm not sure about this card. Its hard for me to judge. I want to play with it though and see what happens.

Unfortunately, the reminder text sapped this one of anything else it might have done. I think its fine though. I am not positive that putting Graft on a card sans the Simic watermark is ascetically correct, but the art and name worked really well so I don't think I want to change it.

Overall I think this card balances its color well since its a white ability, a red ability, and a R/W ability. 4 Mana is a bit low considering True Conviction is 6 and triple white. This will probably get bumped to 3RW or 4RW during testing.

This was initially flavored as Knowledge armor. I think that fantasy fits better than Faith since Faith is decidedly nonblue. However I couldn't find a single piece of art that did this justice. 

Considering changing the creature type here. Giant doesn't fit the art. Maybe elemental or something else unique to Theros. The card itself was debated hotly. The closest comparison was to Craterhoof, but there are several factors that I think were not considered that make Radiant not only printable, but much worse than Craterhoof. 

1. Killing Radiant has meaning. Crafterhoof is a trigger, and while you save a nontrival amount of damage by killing Hoof, its trigger is still going to happen. If you have Radiant and attack and it gets Murdered, that's going to stop the p/t boost completely and likely get a lot of your creatures killed.

2. Radiant lets you block. Hoof gives trample. Trample is an enormous bonus for something like Overrun. Trample removes blocking from the equation. Something like Rhys will just never take damage from Radiant.

3. Radiant scales from lands. Scaling from lands is more persistent since lands die less than creatures, but it is harder to get there than creatures. In something like Rhys, Hoof would always be chosen over Radiant. Lands take much more time to accumulate and they are harder to get to large numbers while simultaneously making creatures to attack with. Radiant can be cheating into play the same way as Hoof, but while Hoof would give something like +8/+8 and trample as early as turn 4-5, Radiant would give +5/+5 and not give evasion, and would likely not have 8 creatures to attack with.

4. Haste. Hoof's haste is large part of why the card is broken. The haste means its an extra attacker for the effect. Radiant gets to attack with its bonus, the next turn. So the turn you drop Radiant you give them time to deal with it before you attack.

For all those trade-offs that go in Hoof's favor, Radiant gets to have a persistent bonus and an easier mana cost. The Enchantment supertype will come up more than you think, giving opponents more removal options and also giving you other ways to interact with it, a la Starfield of Nyx and Sterling Grove.

This art is already on a card, so its cheating a bit. Hopefully I'll find something that fits the concept soon. The card itself seems pretty neat.

This card can do a lot of damage. That's a very Timmy type effect altogether. I think the cost will drive people away from this one, but I don't want this to be 9 mana. 

Hesed''s deck is complete

Hesed's deck is complete.

Imgur album of the cards here: http://imgur.com/a/bBnFj

Tappedout link to the rest of the deck here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/hesed/

Making Hesed was challenging. She had a unique way of pushing against boundaries and wanted to care about specific things that are potentially nonfun. The key was to use the discard and sacrifice in a proactive way. Yes there was some splash to the opponent, but most of it is using cards in hand or lands as a way to fuel your own effects. The deck is untuned and probably needs to be de-powered after play testing. One of my goals for building the decks is to not overlap nonland cards. The lands are going to need to overlap to support 4 color.

I also decided while working on Hesed that there should be a structure to the cards that made sense. I hit upon:

3 4 color cards
4 3 color cards
6 2 color cards

Then there'll be 2 cards that are shared between all the decks to help fixing. This brings the total number of new cards up to 67, which is quite high for this type of product. My current thinking to reduce the overall number of cards in the product is to cut the Mandate cycle and replace it with another mana fixing card. That would reduce the number of overall new card to 63. While still a bit high, its much closer to reality.

Onto the cards themselves:

Hesed's current form was born out of a desire to retain the anti-draw technology without having to break the ascetic similarities of the cycle. All of the Nephilim have a trigger and an active that play into each other. Hesed's trigger is padded by her active. Her active also makes her into a Loam type deck which plays into the direction of the card that I wanted, which is an Earthmother vibe. The number of lands might be adjusted since three is a high number, but I like three mana for three lands.

Krometh was made as a way to reward the high land count of the deck. I'm still trying to reconcile the two Xes in his text box. The rest of the card feels like a way to make many large threats with one card. The other thing I'm somewhat reticent about is the heavy cost. 5 mana for a 1/1 is not the best rate. I'm considering restructuring him to be more like Mana-gorger hydra and start as a 1/1 and scale while in play. Of course he wants to be scaling with mana. This is all speculation and the card could be fine as is; this is a situation where play testing is important.

Earthmother's Mandate is likely getting cut. I can't find a wording for the mandates that I like.

I like the way Netzach's abilities all tie in together. More than once I've gotten feedback that people didn't understand him having lifelink, only to put the pieces together. I like that people have that, 'ohhhhhh I get it' moment. As a general he would be interesting to build around, and as a member of Hesed's deck he is a solid support card.

Suphlatus is very aggressive. It was changed to make more sense on the ability and the trigger was changed to be 'your graveyard' as opposed to 'a graveyard'. While I don't think the power of getting counters from any yard was too high, it incentivized mass land destruction a bit more than I would like. While that's still fine with her, not benefiting off of the opponents' lands means that you can probably convert all of your lands to counters with her first ability if you want and is less likely to lead to abusive deck building. I do like that she's low cost aggro in Jund though, which has so many cards in this style that never get played in EDH.

Might of Naya came under fire for not being white. While I don't think the card is overly white, the Butcher Orgg ability could appear in white, and the Terravore ability is pretty close to Knight of the Reliquary. I think I'm happy having the card be a bit undercosted and not pushing the color issue by adding something like first strike.

Oasis Drinker was the most well received card by miles. I agreed that it should have trample, and the tokens it would work best with are a bit of a minor theme in the deck. The deck will get some more token making cards on the second pass, I was mostly saving them for Ein'Sof since I'm trying not to repeat cards. Honestly though, the deck doesn't even need tokens for this monster to be very scary.

Sylvan Monk exists because turning lands into creatures feels like token making a lot of the time, it was an effect that I hadn't used elsewhere, and it fit the idea of lands being significantly more expendable than usual. The cost and suspend number need to be ironed out since they play off each other significantly.

Spiritual Retribution is a token maker that fits the rest of the deck. Its possible it'll need a mana cost on the trigger since its pretty damn strong as is.

Nether Demon requires no comment.

Loam-Tiller is a very strong card, but giving everyone an extra land play is a powerful drawback. I also like that he functions as a mana dork. I think maybe the second ability should target so its easier to mess with. 2 mana is low, but I think it works out for your opponents enough where you still have to be careful with it.

Emissary of Nature might become limited to once a turn, but I think the mana cost is a sufficient limiter and stops you from just immediately killing all the artifacts. The card is quite strong though and might have to cost 5 overall.

Essence Blast is a weird one. I like it, but I also think that making a card cost more on its madness works in the opposite direction than usual. Perhaps this one gets changed to Flashback.


The deck itself wants to shift into having more token support. That will probably happen after the first round of play testing points out which cards are too strong for a preconstructed deck. I'll be putting up Ein'Sof's deck shortly.

Cheers!