Omnath

The new Omnath has garnered the most attention for Commander of the Battle For Zendikar legends. This is unsurprising. The original Omnath is a favorite among mono-green players and the new version is objectively quite strong. Its an expensive card, but expensive cards that reward you for playing large amounts of ramp are some of the best Commanders. Omnath v2.0 is fantastic at creating an obscene amount of threat quickly. Play him with a land drop still up and it can be 15 power instantly. He also has built in wrath protection with his death trigger. The Bolt trigger doesn't care how the elementals die either, giving you proactive Aristocrats style options for the deck as well. There isn't quite enough room for a deck to maximize both triggers.  Having enough land after getting to 7 mana implies at least 40 land in the deck. So for this week, I did something I've never done before and made two lists, one for lands and one for elementals. They share a significant number of cards that I can talk about together, then I'll go into their differences.

The basis of both deck's is to get Omnath into play. However, they have different timings for when Omnath needs to be in play. For the Landfall version, its imperative to get Omnath into play as fast as possible. The deck is built to maximize his landfall trigger and needs to have him in play to function. Because of this, the Landfall deck runs more land. Importantly, it runs more basic lands as a hedge to ensure it can still be fetching lands after you get to seven mana. While the Elemental version runs 38 land, it doesn't mind waiting a bit longer to put Omnath onto the battlefield. The Elemental version is attempting to take advantage of his second trigger and get tons of free lightning bolts. If you play Omnath and have no elementals in play already, that plan isn't as solid. The Elemental version shifted costs down a bit and doesn't race for seven mana quite as hard. It's still a ramp deck, but not as much of one.

Landfall  - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/25-10-15-omnath/

Elementals - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-10-15-omnath-elementals/


These cards form the core of both decks.

The Mana:

The Payoffs:

Support:

This is the core of both decks. It gives a picture of ramping into huge threats and drawing tons of cards. Making tokens is a core part of both decks. Doubling Season effects give you so much additional value from Omnath that you can't help but be excited to draw them. This is a deck that plans to win through regular old damage, and thus needs to be able to deal 120+ damage of the course of the game. For any deck that wants to end the game with attacking, Craterhoof is your best pal. Craterhoof's cohorts, Avenger of Zendikar and Regal Force, are both elementals that work well with the deck's plan.  Titania is of particular note since she also produces 5 power elemental tokens and works well with fetchlands.

Now that we've seen the similarities, where do the two decks diverge?

The Landfall version:

The Landfall version goes all in on the trigger including running Thieves' Auction. While the printed text on it doesn't indicate this, the oracle wording of Thieve's Auction exiles all  This version is similar in nature to Borborygmos Enraged lists, though it has a much greater focus on the board than on lands to hand. Cards like Storm Cauldron and Scryb Ranger give you the ability to continually proc Omnath, even if you run out of lands in your deck. That's obviously unlikely, but the possibility exists. I have omitted Horn of Greed largely because this deck needs to play out over many turns. I'm leaning on rampant growth effects for most of the Landfall shenanigans instead of Exploration type ramp. Horn is one of the best ways to keep Exploration active, but Horn is much less useful if you aren't pushing extra land plays, and can give your opponents more cards than you. If you are Exploring, then you usually get 2 cards per turn off the Horn, so you are behind by a card against three opponents. That's acceptable. Being behind by 2 cards a turn over 4-5 turns is not acceptable. I also omitted off color fetchlands from the mana base purely for cost reasons. Fetchlands are obviously bonkers with Omnath and if you have some extra cash I would spring for them.

The Elemental version:

The Elemental version focuses on sacrifice outlets and on-death triggers. Of particular note is Hostility, which makes Elemental tokens. There are relatively few ways to take advantage of Hostility's ability in the deck, and that aspect might want to be explored further in later iterations. Hostility + Vigor make an excellent pairing. Even if you don't have Vigor, the Earthquake effects can act as additional sacrifice outlets. Also, another bit of errata, Firecat Blitz makes Elemental Cat tokens. You have to manually eat them, but its a significant amount of bang for your buck.

Though the decks are only 20 cards apart, they're going to play very differently. The Landfall deck is going to play like most default EDH decks, ramp into large threats. The Elemental deck is going to play like Ghave or Prossh. Lots of little value dudes that you eat to generate even more value till you snowball your advantage.


I might finish up the BFZ legends next week with Ulamog, or I might go straight into the Commander 2015 legends. It depends on how complete their spoiler is.

Cheers!

Zada Storm

     

   
         I was a bit trepidatious about Zada. While her ability is obviously powerful, there seemed like there would be one deck for her. Play her with lots of token makers and targeted buffs. A curious thing happened though. The deck took on a new direction while I was doing my research. The lists I was combing looked to me like Storm. Storm is a pretty ambitious endeavor in EDH even though Red has been a part of Storm in Modern/Legacy for a while now. Monored Storm hasn't really been viable due to the lack of card flow. Zada solves this problem while amplifying the damage of various cards to convert your hand into a kill.

Decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zada-storm-3/
Bullshit Scale: 4

        This is perhaps the most volatile list I've ever put forth. Doing some testing with tappedout's goldfish mode, the deck is capable of some explosive draws, but will fail mid-combo about 25% of the time. There are better card choices that I haven't thought of yet, so that could probably be improved with time. I put the deck at a 4 purely because its a dedicated combo deck. It has a linchpin that targeted removal will kill, so its far more open to interaction than most combo decks, but its perceived nature will earn it significant rancor at random tables.

       There are a number of things going on here so I'm going to go through them piece by piece stating with Mana.

The Mana

        Getting to a critical mass of mana is vitally important in Storm. You need fuel and you need it all for one turn. EDH is traditionally about building up over a couple of turns with Rampant Growths or artifact mana. While artifact mana is welcome in Storm, in this sort of deck the artifact does need to make more mana than it costs. A significant fraction of the deck is mana since you need to achieve a threshold for the combo turn. Ruby Medallion and Helm of Awakening are both extremely useful, acting as multiple mana during a turn. Spawning Breath pulls semi-double duty. Unfortunately, the 1 damage is going to kill most of the tokens in the deck provided there hasn't already been a buff thrown down. As just a colorless ritual for the number of creatures in play it seems solid, and at its worst doesn't decrease the number of bodies you have. The tribal synergies are important, though, so only use it when you need some amount of mana and having Goblins doesn't matter as much.

The Velocity

        The other important aspect of Storm is that it needs to be going though the deck at an accelerated pace. This is traditionally why monored Storm has been difficult.With such a limited selection of cantrips and card velocity spells, achieving the density required for something like a Storm combo turn has been virtually impossible. This is where Zada comes in. Zada's ability turns your single card cantrips into net positive draw spells as long as you can control more than one creature. Her ability also functions as a way to win the game in a single turn since Crimson Wisps into Blazing Shoal and other pump spells is lethal. Wheel of Fate is included because its a free spell for Storm count and it lets us play out our whole hand before getting a new one. It is not ideal. Wheel is telegraphed and it can't be flashed back by Recoup or Past In Flames. However, its still one of the best options for a massive draw effect.

       Gamble is of particular importance. Red has virtually no tutors, which is one of the reasons that this deck has way more variance than any Storm list with Black or Blue. Its normally safe to Gamble, since generally you'll be Gambling in the early turns from whatever you are missing, and Gambling mid-combo almost always involves Past In Flames in some capacity. Past In Flames is absurdly good. It essentially doubles the number of spells that you have access to, which makes recasting things like Battle Hymn much more effective after the first Empty has gone off.

The Bodies

        Unlike other storm decks, Zada wants to have lots of bodies. The more creatures you have, the better your card draw and pump spells scale. However, since Brightstone Ritual, Krenko, and Empty the Warrens exist, I focused on Goblins as a tribal sub-theme. Its also important for Mana Echoes that the creatures share a tribe as much as possible. Young Pyromancer is great on his own and grows his elementals without any real support required. I am unconvinced about Rapacious One and Ogre Battledriver. Ogre Battledriver is a four mana creature that needs to be in play before the combo starts, which makes him compete directly with Zada. Zada wins that fight. Rapacious One has a similar issue in that six mana is so much for this deck. He also needs to attack and connect to get the juicy Spawn mana/bodies. He has a much greater upside than Battledriver, but odds are the deck will just never get to cast him. I'm not sure what I'd replace them with, probably more cheap creatures. I think the deck needs a density of bodies that hasn't quite been reached yet.

The Kill

        I like building Storm lists because they push you in abnormal directions. Your intuition is off since Storm plays such a different game. One thing that remains constant though, you have to make your opponent dead. In EDH that's a tall order since there's 80-120 life to deal with. For a deck that wants to attack to kill everyone, and do it in one turn, that's ludicrous. Zada can pull it off though. Any pump spell gets multiplied by the number of creatures you can attack with, which makes damage pile up fast. Of course, Ignite Memories can be devastating as well since people routinely play 7-10 mana spells in the format, but relying on that is dubious. Much better to just attack for insane amounts of damage. Haze of Rage shines here. It also scales with the number of creatures, and the number of spells, and has buyback. It can be a one card victory condition. Grapeshot makes an appearance, but its mostly for clearing creatures out of the way. The rest are just efficient pump spells, getting the most damage per mana spent. Reckless Charge and Uncanny Speed are fantastic. That they give Haste is notable, given that the deck really needs to kill in one turn. I think it might be worthwhile to include some additional mass evasion cards to ensure the team makes it through for the same reason. I'm currently unsure what that would be, but the forerunner in my mind is Eldrazi Monument. Akroma's Memorial might be better overall, but it does cost 7 versus monument's 5. It also doesn't protect versus as much. Monument is also better in the event you have to pass the turn without everyone dead.

        Its worth noting that you can pull off a percentage of the combo at instant speed, surprising people after blocks with tons of damage.  Most of the time though, the deck operates at sorcery speed. Temur Battle Rage can kill at instant speed, but the real heavy lifters are Final Fortune and Seize the Day. Each gives additional attack steps, though Final Fortune has ways more applications than just additional attacks. Frequently it can be used to have an extra combo turn without interruption. If you can sculpt a hand and board so that the next turn is a sure thing, it essentially wins the game. Seize the Day is a fantastic way to multiply your pump spells an additional time or two. The math for each pump spell becomes +N power x Number of creatures x Number of attack steps. Plugging in 3 for each variable makes it 27 damage. Its actually not that hard to kill people, if you can get to that point.

Lands

        The land count is low. A paltry 30 lands. While good EDH decks with lots of ramp tend to run fewer lands and lean on artifact mana and Rampant Growth effects, Zada has a different reason to run as few lands as possible. Simply, drawing lands mid-combo severely hampers your ability to win the game. Every land is a dud. So the fewer the lands, the more hits from the card drawing spells. The mana base takes some risks, Dwarven Ruins and Sandstone Needle are going to be sacrificed usually before you can be certain that the combo is going to work. That's just part of the game though. This is a deck that has to go for it big. About the only land I didn't include that I maybe should have was Crystal Vein. I do think that its worth considering, but colorless mana has a lot less value to it than Red mana. The other option is to run more cycling lands, but their cost in enters the battlefield tapped lands is not worth paying since there are already an number of them above.

Powering Up

       There's actually not that much that I can suggest here. I do like the idea of having more ways to get the attackers through to ensure the kill turn actually kills people. I rejected the various mana doublers like Gauntlet of Might since there are so few lands in the deck, and I think you get more upside by including nonbasics than getting to play the doublers. If the deck was built the other way, with 32ish mountains and zero nonbasics, the doublers and Koth would be included. The various other Red Planeswalkers are of middling value. I could see them, but their mana cost is 4+ on all of them, which makes them much harder to play mid-combo. Of them, Daretti and this Chandra are the most likely to get played.

Conclusion

This deck was a blast to build. Zada exceeded my expectations. If you like explosive high variance Red decks then I would seriously give Zada a look. The deck is also much cheaper than anticipated. Though the few expensive cards, Gamble, Chrome Mox, Mana Crypt, etc, are important. Once you get past the first few though, the average cost drops like a rock.

I'll be back next week with more Battle for Zendikar legends. Only two left, and they're both Giant Monsters!

Cheers!

Drana

In pondering what to do with Drana, I started looking around edhrec.com and mtgsalvation.com. I was pretty stuck. All of the decks that I saw on edhrec were vampire tribal...and there's no lists in the database at all on mtgsalvation. So, I decided to focus on the ability rather than Drana being an ally or a vampire. There are not that many monoblack creatures that care about +1/+1 counters except as a stat boost. While I liked the idea of build a Suicide Black style deck, it didn't seem as interesting as actually using the ability in a relevant way. There are piles of artifact creatures that use +1/+1 counters as a resource. That looked like a way to use Drana's ability profitably. As such, the core of the deck is artifact creatures with abilities like Modular.

Decklist - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/12-10-15-EGK-drana/
Bullshit rating - 3

The core of the deck:

The modular creatures necessitate that the deck is mostly constructed of artifact creatures, but the pay offs of Triskelion, Hanagerback Walker, Pentavus, and Triskelivus are more than worthwhile when also used in combination with Drana's ability. Adding proliferate is another way to continue the counter action if Drana is incapacitated. One of Drana's strengths is her low cost, so I don't anticipate her being out of the action for long. Still, its good to have back ups.

These creatures are rather good at gumming up the ground and generating incremental advantage. The card draw suite I chose reflects how the deck wants to play.

I do think the deck could use something like Damnable Pact. However, there's a lot here to love. Mind Stone is with the card draw since that's more its function than acceleration. In combination with Junk Diver and Myr Retriever, it can generate significant velocity.While not technically drawing cards, the Diver and the Myr can do some pretty spectacular plays with Ashnod's Altar and Krark-Clan Ironworks. I omitted Necropotence for several reasons. Since the removal suite includes All Is Dust and Ugin, having colored permanents makes those effects less one sided. The deck doesn't have significant life gain to offset Necro's draw back, and the triple black is surprisingly annoying in a deck that wants to get away with as much utility in its mana base as possible.

There's some specific ramp options that this deck can take advantage of, like Workhorse, Metalworker, and Krark-Clan Ironworks. The other options are pretty generically good, though Everflowing Chalice does extra work with the proliferate that's in the deck. The vast majority of the cards in the deck are colorless so paying extra to generate black mana is largely pointless. As such, the deck just plays the best cost to mana produced ratio.

These are just some great utility cards. Exsanguinate can be a game winner, and frequently will help replenish the health paid in other effects. Eldrazi Monument and Soul of New Phyrexia are both solid ways of protecting the board. The other option is Darksteel Forge, though I somewhat dislike it since I'd have to pay retail for it. Mikaeus is obviously a combo outlet and lets the deck steal games it would otherwise definitely lose. The same goes for Mephidross Vampire. 

Like any deck, removal is important. Black is however, terrible at dealing with artifacts and enchantments. So much so that I'm essentially ignoring them. Ugin and All Is Dust do a great job of clearing up the board of permanents, and the rest deal with problem creatures. 

It wouldn't be black without tutors. I tried to keep them minimal so as to reduce the consistency. The deck is going to be consistent with a 3 mana general already. No need to add to that too much. These are classic black tutors, well maybe not Increasing Ambition. However, that card is only a mana more than Diabolic Tutor and the colorless to black conversion might actually make Ambition easier to cast in a deck loaded with colorless acceleration. 

The lands are pretty straightforward. I do think there's room for more utility, however, wanting to have BB on turn three every game is going to hamper the number of colorless lands the deck can realistically play. I think upon reflection that the Crypt isn't correct and going forward would replace it with a Mortuary Mire.

Powering Up:

Mana Crypt/Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith/Voltaic Key - Powerhouses of acceleration, the first two are a bit too pricey to just throw into a deck willy-nilly. If you have them they are perfect. Key has powerful utility with the theme. Key works with the artifact acceleration to power out threats early. However, it wasn't included in the main deck since Key needs a mass of the cheaper acceleration and electing not to play Crypt and the Monoliths would have left it feeling anemic. 

Army of the Damned/Endrek Sahr/Spawning Pit/Tombstone Stairwell - There was some thought to including these types of token makers. They feel somewhat out of place. The various artifacts that replenish themselves to make tokens forever with Drana feel significantly more powerful. If you find that you want more token action, these are all solid options, and the threat of having an army in a can is a good one to have in the face of decks with lots of sweepers. 

Smothering Abomination/Dark Prophecy - With the number of tokens that can be cycled through or sacrificed to Ashnod's Altar/Krark-Clan Ironworks, these could be used to draw an absurd number of cards. Dark Prophecy had the problem I had with Necropotence of being triple black and a colored permanent, but on the other side doesn't lock you out of your draw step. Smothering Abomination is the best of both worlds. It has no life cost, is a creature itself for Drana pumps, and its colorless for All Is Dust/Ugin. Abomination is more narrow since it only works on sacrifice, but there's plenty of that in the deck. Include if you want to make the deck more consistently combo.

Kozilek/Ulamog 1/Ulamog 2/It That Betrays - These large colorless threats could be used to push away from a combo finish, but I had a couple problems with the colorless Eldrazi. First, they don't actually absorb too much of the artifact synergies. Second, they are a bit too high on the mana curve. This deck can generate a lot of mana through Cabal Coffers and the artifact mana, but its aiming for 7-8, not 10-12. That makes it unlikely for the Eldrazi to show up early. I do think that having one of the original titans, specifically Koziliek, would be great to go long with as anti-milling tech and a constant threat of being able to refill your hand. 

The deck turned out much better than I expected. I might try to play this one in real life. 

Thank you all for reading the article and look for Zada coming next Monday! Cheers!

Build of the Week: Noyan Dar, Roiling with the punches.

Noyan Dar has received quite a bit of attention since his spoiling, and for good reason. He's a strong choice of general with fun quirks and an unusual play style. He's been compared to Talrand, but honestly that seems to be a bit off the mark to me. There are many important places they diverge. Talrand only builds horizontally, whereas Noyan can build horizontally or vertically. You can stack Noyan's trigger to make a single land enormous. Importantly, this means that the land you are animating can have special properties, targeting an Inkmoth Nexus has a different texture than animating an island. Talrand asks only that you play instants and sorceries and there is no contextual difference between triggers. They each provide the same amount of value. Talrand provides additional material at no cost. Noyan Dar asks for more, he needs instants/sorceries and he needs lands. He doesn't generate additional material, but converts lands into threats. His value only exists in the specific scenario where you care about being able to attack and block with your lands. Of course the biggest difference is that Noyan adds White to the color identity, which opens up a huge number of additional possibilities. These factors make Noyan the prime candidate for a W/U lands deck.

The deck I'll be building for him takes a lot of inspiration from Landstill shells, which not only care about the unique properties of lands you play, Inkmoth Nexus/Darksteel Citadel, but about the number of lands you play. The unique lands help add power to Noyan's effect and the bulk helps protect you from getting your lands killed. Make no mistake, you need to play smart when playing Noyan. Don't turn all your lands into creatures all at once. Take some time and make sure you don't get blown out. There are some things you can do to help yourself here, like Crucible of Worlds or Terra Eternal. This will be a heavy control deck with lots of nonland board wipes such as Planar Cleansing and Oblivion Stone.

Most decks in EDH fall into one of two categories: Good Stuff or Engine. Good Stuff decks tend to include minimal synergies and just play the most powerful cards possible. My go-to example of a Good Stuff deck is Karrthus. You play some mild Dragon themed cards, but for the most part you play Karrthus to have a general that closes out the game in three hits. Last week's Ruric Thar deck had a strong central engine that the deck was built around. It was R/G lands that had to devote most of its card slots to the theme. Noyan takes a similar approach with separate components that mesh together to form a cohesive whole. However, there isn't one central thing that propels this deck forward like cycling lands + Life From the Loam or Aggressive Mining plus Burgeoning. So while Noyan has a central theme, manlands, its straddles the line between general Good Stuff and Engine synergy.

Tappedout deck list: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/roil-with-the-punches/

Starting the construction off, lets look at the nonbasic lands we want to support attacking with:

Inkmoth is clearly absurd with Noyan's ability. Its worth pointing out that Noyan's ability doesn't flicker the land you target by turning it into a "new" creature. While this means that you can't dodge removal or block then cast a spell to evade damage, it does mean that you can turn all the spells in your hand into Giant Growth right before damage happens. The ability to do 3-6 extra damage while just casting spells you want to cast anyway is strong. The nonmanland, Darksteel Citadel, has attributes that make it attractive as a target for Noyan's ability.These are going to be the primary targets of Noyan's ability. There's going to be a cornucopia of nonbasic lands in the deck, but these are the ones we actively want to be animating.

 The next question is how to protect our lands when they're creatures. Obviously, using instants/sorceries to protect them would be best since it plays into the overall strategy. However, there are a lot of great options for permanents that are too strong to ignore.

Normally, I try to keep the price point of individual cards reasonable. Crucible has become a decently expensive card in recent times, but I'm including it since I feel it is strongly what the deck wants. Since they're going to protect the manlands primarily from destroy effects, the nonpermanent spells should be focused on stopping exile or shuffle effects. W/U is good at stopping targeted spells specifically.

I don't, as a rule, play many counterspells in EDH. Trading 1 for 1 in a format where your "opponent" has three times as many cards as you is not an efficient plan. They're best for pushing through a combo or protecting you during a key turn. However, since this deck is going to get additional value out of the counterspells, and also has a narrower band of potential problems, this seems like a time to break my rule. By a narrower band, I essentially mean cards like Hallowed Burial that would make life awkward.

These are pretty much the best of the bunch.for the purposes of the deck. However, there's a lot of counterspells so customize at your discretion. I am intentionally omitting Force of Will and Pact of Negation for monetary reasons. They would be excellent here since mana free ways of both protecting Noyan and triggering him are at a premium.

One of the stronger aspects of the deck is its ability to play board wipes. Quite a number of them say nonland. This plays into animating lands quite well. Pursuing this axis is what made me want to lean away from permanents to protect the animated lands. It would hinder the ability to play as many Planar Cleansing effects as possible.

While having lots of strong boardwipes is a step in the right direction, single target removal is continuously undervalued in EDH. Having to blow up the world to answer single permanents is inefficient at best. This selection can defend against anything in combination with the sweepers and counterspells.

There is a principle in deck building that is important and often overlooked. Its called velocity. It is colloquially called card flow or just referred to as draw. Its why decks that run cantrips can play as many or fewer lands as other decks and still make more land drops than their opponents. Unless I want to play some insane number of lands to overcome the potential of having the lands killed, the deck needs significant velocity. This is not a bad thing though, as loading up on instants and sorceries gives a huge return in this shell.

This many cantrips ensures we can chain them together nicely, allowing us to set up lethal with Noyan's ability. They have a strong property of finding either more of themselves, or more lands to animate. However, what they don't do is add a significant number of cards to hand. They don't generate card advantage.

One of the weaknesses of the deck is its lack of nonland permanents. Traditionally, EDH is a game of permanent accrual. That's why green is so strong. It provides an obscene number of permanents at a great rate. The 7 full wipes this deck is playing make it awkward to play with the traditional Sol Ring, Signet, Thran Dynamo style. That doesn't mean the deck can't play acceleration, just that it has to be more specialized.

Lands

I made the decision to go creature-less. I don't think that's necessary, but with a half dozen sweepers it seemed prudent to limit the permanents. There are several creatures that would support the strategy of the deck though. Talrand, Monastery Mentor, and Snapcaster Mage are the most obvious. The creatures that are most like spells themselves are also strong here, e.g. Venser and Vendilion Clique. Flash is a strong keyword since the deck wants to operate at instant speed as much as possible, only playing sorceries when its sweeping the board.

I'm not sure where I'd put this deck on the bullshit scale exactly, but its definitely higher than average. It depends on your opponents tolerance for counterspells and wraths. Personally I think it would be a 3.5, but your mileage may vary.

Powering up:
This section is going to become regular. Its what I didn't include either for budget or power reasons.
Its a list of cards that you could include if you own them, are willing to purchase them, are willing to play with more bullshit.
Force of Will, Pact of Negation Cryptic Command. As mentioned above these are completely for monetary reasons. Their power is really high, but so is their price tag.

Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Personal Tutor. Making your deck more consistent definitely increases its power. While there isn't any game winning combo to snag, getting to spam wraths from the tutors will certainly make enemies at the table.

Land Tax + Scroll Rack, Jace's Sanctum. I do think this would be a powerful engine for a deck that can easily be behind in land drops by getting a land or two killed. There's also a solid number of basics to fetch. My worry is that Scroll Rack is 20$+. Jace's Sanctum seemed like a shoe-in. I do think there's room and reason for it, but given that these cards are permanents which are harder to justify I just left all three of them out.

Leyline of Anticipation, Vedalken Orrery, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. Though they're permanents, these cards enable casting Noyan Dar during the end step, right before you can untap and defend him virtually forever. None of these cards are particularly expensive, but I think the flexibility they offer would remove one of the key inbuilt weaknesses of W/U control, tapping on your own turn. As such, I decided not to use them.

More artifact mana, Mindslaver, Academy Ruins. This would push the deck over the edge in a different direction. Ruins is such a good insurance policy that it would make the sweepers less of an antisynergy. It would also draw significant extra hate from the table, which we don't have the resources to handle until later in the game. It would be a nice inclusion, but Academy Ruins is also 15 dollars, which is more than I was willing to include for the main construction.

Sensei's Divining Top. Top is great. It would be great here, but its about 30$ now, which is higher than I wanted to include. If you have one, play it!

Oboro, Palace in the Clouds. Speaking of inordinately expensive, Oboro is about 16 dollars. I wanted it as a receptical for Awaken triggers that could bounce itself if things got dicey. I would include it if you have one or are willing to spend 16 dollars or essentially an island.

Wrath of God, Supreme Verdict. There's plenty more wraths to go around. The deck is playing the ones that dodge getting its creatures lands killed by default, but if you want to have more kill-alls, there's plenty to choose from.

Creatures. I spoke a little bit above about creatures that could find a home in Noyan without trouble. I do think its probably correct to run some number or creatures with flash, a la Teferi or Venser. I don't think there should be more than 5 or 6 though since the lands/spells package takes so much room to make it work correctly.

Well this was a blast to make. I've gotten the process of making the images down to a reasonable amount of time, so I'm going to be doing one of these every Monday from now on. Cheers!