Hello! This week I'll be looking to build a big mana blue deck with Teferi. He lends himself well to big mana with his -1 ability. There are quite a few blue cards that interact with large amounts of mana, and Blue is the color with the most interaction with Artifacts. That makes colorless mana have more impact, and colorless mana is easier to generate. That means we are going to want all the high cost hits.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Karn
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
To get to this level of mana we are going to need to play tons of artifact mana. Normally I include the perfunctory amount at the end, but this is going to be a major component of our deck so we are going to put them up front.
IN:12
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Since Teferi can target lands and we are mono color We want to include Caged Sun and Extraplanar Lens. The common trick Lens is to play only Snow Covered Islands to reduce helpping out your opponents. We'll do this but honestly its not that big a deal unless you are playing against another mono blue deck, who's likely doing the same thing.
IN:2
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
As an overall direction, ramp is ok but we want something meaty. Teferi likes other planeswalkers because of his ultimate. Two of the primary things we want to ramp into are planeswalkers. So building into the best mono-blue walkers seems like a cool direction.
IN: 5
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
There are other blue walkers, but these are clearly the best for us. Tezzeret is like a back up Teferi, and we can build around is -x for maximum value. Jace is of course great, and the colorless walkers were discussed in the opening paragraph. Tamiyo is included both to increase our walker count and because her + gives us really solid control of troublesome permanents. Sleep in EDH is back breaking because of how much happens between your untap steps. Her - can also net quite a few cards, and her ult is game winning.
Now that we have our walkers, how are we going to get value out of them? Walkers are notoriously hard to keep alive in EDH since they give people easy targets to attack.
IN:16
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Those are some good tricks and ways to extract value from our Walkers. We play a lot of board resets to buy us the time to use our massive mana lead. The Contagion artifacts do double duty of controlling the board and pumping up our walkers. We have a number of counter spells to try and force through our big plays and some single target bounce to protect ourselves but obviously there is no substitute for good old fashioned blockers.
IN:12
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
And for good measure
IN:2
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
And the rest are utility artifacts and library maniuplation
IN:10
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Treasure Cruise
Intellectual Offering
Intuition(Crucible of Worlds, Petrified Field, Academy Ruins is our default)
Voltaic Key
There's definitely some things I'm missing, but that seems like a workable first draft. Onto the lands!
One of the primary benefits of being mono-color is that we get to run all sorts of utility lands for maximum value. We are going to start with 38and see if we need more or less.
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
This gives a huge number of things to be doing with our lands if we start to flood out. I have a feeling that Nykthos isn't going to do enough in this incarnation of the deck, but its a really solid way to get a lot of mana going. We are focused on colorless permanents so we might want to look at including some color dense stuff in the future to power up our Shrine to Nix. Things like Future Sight or, hilariously, Mind Over Matter.
Dudes:
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
Memnarch
Value:
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Intellectual Offering
Intuition
Voltaic Key
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
Protection:
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Planewalkers:
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
Artifact Mana:
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
Sculpting Steel
Land:
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
Immediately stuff jumps out at me to add. Future Sight is probably number one on the list since its simultaneously a color dense permanent for Nykthos and infinite with Top/Sculptor. With Top its 1 draw a card. I also think we could use more things to ramp into, or more to do with our colored mana. More clones would be great. Also, to address the obvious, Teferi is amazing with Stasis effects. He can keep your mana up or build to his ult since his fellow walkers are protected by the Stasis effect. I don't think that's particularly fun even though its very strong. I might include Frozen Aether at some later date as a way to stave off Haste dudes, but honestly Teferi should pay for himself immediately and let you hold up Evacuation or some other non-sense. Sunder would be cheeky, but might be exactly what we want. I did not intentionally leave out Mindslaver, and it might be the right call. I did intentionally leave out Time Twister. It would be very good, but as much as I don't care over much about listing expensive cards I'll draw the line at a card from the power nine, weakest of the bunch though it is.
Updates* -
These are some changes to make based on initial reception.
OUT:
Pentavus
Triskellion
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Aether Sputs
Fellwar Stone
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Into the Roil
The reasoning behind the majority of these changes is that we had started to split between a big mana deck and a proliferate deck. Pentavus, Triskellion, Tide and Clasp are really only worth it if we go full bore. Engine is still fine because it functions as a board wipe. Rewind gives us mana at the wrong time, and Pact of Negation is cool but not worth the risk unless you are going to win immediately. Aether Spouts would be a sweet instant but at sorcery speed is going just be worse than Wash Out or Evacuation most of the time. Into the Roil is competitive with Repeal and Cyclonic Rift. Rift is obviously insane, so the choice was between ItR and Repeal. I sided with Repeal since its easier to cantrip with it and the primary advantage of ItR, its fixed cost, is meaningless here since we are in the business of out mana-ing our opponents.
IN:
Blightsteel Colossus
Mana Drain
Trechery
Tower of Fortunes
Future Sight
Expedition Map
Myojin of Seeing Winds
Gauntlet of Power
Invoke Prejudice
We make room for more big mans with Blightsteel and Myojin each being game ending threats, though in different ways. We get to make more mana with Drain and Gauntlet leading the charge. Treachery should have been in the first draft, I just forgot it. Tower of Fortunes gives us a colorless way to draw cards. The last three cards, Invoke Prejudice, Future Sight, and Expedition Map, are all about powering up Nykthos. Invoke Prejudice is uniquely hilarious since normally we won't control a colored creature. Our general is a planeswalker and thus will leave even other mono-blue players out in the cold.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Dawngate Post-mortem
For those that hadn't heard of it, Dawngate was a moba made by Waystone Studios. They were a new studio put together by EA games. They created a masterpiece of a game that never caught on due to the initial reluctance people have of moving into a new moba. Moba's take time and effort to build up a player base since it takes time and effort to acquire characters and learn the various champions (in Dawngate they are called Shapers). DG did some many things right that its sad to say that the servers close on February 5th and the game will disappear from the face of the earth. As my own tribute I'm going to talk about the game I fell madly in love with and all the things I adored about it.
(Disclaimer for those that played DG, I'm going to call vim gold for simplicity)
Resources seamshorces.
The first thing you notice when entering DG was the lack of any resource bar on most of the characters. In DG all characters were Garen. If a character would have mana in another game, instead they don't. Everything worked off of cooldowns only. This sounds utterly insane to anyone who has played other mobas, but it worked beautifully. What's been the primary issue with League for so long? They were adamant that there should be a lanning phase and that it should matter, but the mana system makes lanes stagnate. They have tried so many things to shake up lanes and make them more action oriented. It turns out that when you don't have to worry about going out of mana you can harass and use abilities far more. That was the whole reason people find League more playable than Dota. Abilities are able to be used more frequently and are less punishing to miss. DG took it one step forward and because of that there are characters that can only exists in that world. That isn't to say that no one had resources in DG. They still had Shapers with Rage and Energy. They even have one shaper that has a mana-like system, but its only to balance out her passive that reduces your ability cooldowns when you deal damage. The other reason there was far more interaction was...
Role Play
In DG you are faced with two distinct and important choices on the character select screen, Shaper and Role. Picking your role was independent of picking your Shaper. The roles were Hunter, Tactician, Gladiator, and Predator. Hunter was the jungling role. It gave you health back for killing neutral monsters and bonus gold for the same. Tactician was the support role. It doubled the gold you got from nearby lane minion deaths and proc'ed bonus gold for hitting an enemy Shaper. This made lanes far more active as Tacticians jockeyed for position and bonus gold. In lane, when minions die if you didn't last hit them you got 1/4 of the gold value of the minion passively. It made it a bit more forgiving for missing last hits, and for supports meant they were completely free to focus on getting their tact bonus gold. Gladiator was what people would consider the carry role. It gave double the value for last hitting a minion. Predator gave bonuses for kills/assists and killing spirit well workers(we'll get there). The beauty of the role system was that it divorced Shapers from positions. One of the worst aspects of League over the years has been that they push certain champions to be played in certain positions. This happened initially with Riven. Its why she had more health regen at level 1 than some characters had at level 18. Its inelegant. They have improved somewhat with the Hunter's Machete and Sightstone and support items, but the Role system is a far better execution since it costs no in game currency. Your options of items are not artificially limited by the design of the jungle specific items. You can do what ever you want. The roles defined how you many money, not who got money. Your Gladiators generally wound up with gold but it wasn't until late game that they really pulled ahead since Hunters and Tacticians were pulled away from their revenue streams. Shapers were not pinned to a role either. I played Basko primarily as a Hunter but in spots could play him as a Gladiator or a Tactician. Ashabelle was another favorite and she could Mage Hunter really effectively. She was also a premier Gladiator and solid tactician. Positions were interchangeable to a much greater degree than in other mobas due to the role system. Sure there were Shapers that you expected to see played one way, but doing things outside the box wasn't unusual, especially since...
Two to Tango
There were no solo lanes in DG. The center lane was removed and the two lanes were brought closer together. This is a huge change to the structure of the map we've all agreed on. The center of the map had the primary objective of the game planted smack dab in the middle of everything. It was called Parasite and it was like Baron + Inhibitor rolled into one. This is perhaps the most radical departure from the standard moba, but its the one that was the most impactful. The center of the map became the most contested area, which also meant it was equidistant from both lanes and both jungles. Fights naturally involved more of both teams since its was easier to get there in time to do something. The removal of the center lane also meant that the remaining lanes were duo lanes. There were no solo lanes in the game. This to me was the heart of the game. Even when bad match ups existed they were covered by lane partners to an extent. People could get away with a bit more since they didn't have to play Malzahar into Mordekaiser or Garen into Teemo. Sure, people could still botch it, but it wasn't nearly as harsh an experience. And speaking of experience, because the lanes were even, the only people that pulled ahead on levels were the junglers, and then only for the first clear or so since they had to become more and more involved in the game as time went on. They did have to pick up the equivalent of Smite but....
Spells to go around
The spellbook was a completely different animal to Summoner Spells. Summoner spells are chosen before the game and basically you only get to choose one since the game is built around flash existing. Dota has no spell system but their myriad activated items accomplish a similar purpose. The Spellbook was a selection of Summoner Spell like abilities that were available to each Shaper and were learned inside the game. Also, you ended up with three of them, there were more to choose from, and you could sell them back for a decently steep cost. There was Vanquish which is a neutral monster nuke, but you could eventually sell it back if so inclined. This meant that you could shift your spells to a more appropriate setup on the fly if needed. You learned the new spell at 10 and 20. You go to level 20 in the game, which isn't a big shift, but it does satisfy a certain part of my brain that likes increments of five. Speaking of being...
Statisfied
The game homogenized a whole mess of stats. Attack Damage and Ability Power were consolidated into Power, which scaled the damage of your abilities and auto-attacks. Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction were all compressed into a stat called Haste. Lifesteal applied to all damage done by your Shaper. This was another huge shift, and played really well. It let them make great items since they didn't have to worry about stats being unusable for half their characters. They didn't need to make a Frozen Mallet + Rylei's Crystal Scepter. With less redundant items and more homogenized stats, each item felt different. There were also no disparate parts. Items upgraded linearly from tier 1 to 2 to 3, and all tier three items cost about 3k gold. The items were named after various vitality's. The Shaper were connected to a Spirit, such as the Spirit of Rage. So their items were named things like Rage, Corruption, Valor, etc. There were six base items, one for each primary stat. The six base items branched into several tier 2 items, which then branched into tier three items. This gave you a significant amount of flexibility in your build order. Of particular note is the Haste stat which allows you to be permanently faster than other characters. In other games, they use boots to increase your movement speed, but all of the boots give essentially the same movement speed boost, so a character with a higher base move speed will always be faster than a character with a lower base movement speed. Everything evens out with a boots movement system, the only thing that matters is the timing of the purchase. With the Haste stat you could change the speed dynamic between two Shapers permanently. Speaking of dynamic relationships...
Lore is Core
Dawngate is unique among mobas in having a dynamic, integrated lore system. The characters received their powers by bonding with Spirits and getting the ability to Shape the world around them. There was a three day a week webcomic that showed you the Shapers living their lives in the world. It spawned unique voice lines and periodically had votes on the direction the community wanted the lore to go. Do we want Zeri to turn Kahgen in or help him sneak out of the city? The choice resulted in a Bandit skin for Zeri, and would likely have gotten her a Virtuoso skin if she had turned Kahgen into Renzo. It was truly alive and vibrant in a way that LoL has never gotten, and other mobas don't even try. It involved the community, and it connected everyone because it hooked lore into the gameplay without needing to do anything obnoxious to accomplish its goal.
That's about all I have to say on the topic other than Waystone Games went to great efforts to connect with its community. The game was growing, with a progression patch that would do wonders to alleviate some peoples issues with the game, which wasn't perfect. DG was just better than everything else.
(Disclaimer for those that played DG, I'm going to call vim gold for simplicity)
Resources seamshorces.
The first thing you notice when entering DG was the lack of any resource bar on most of the characters. In DG all characters were Garen. If a character would have mana in another game, instead they don't. Everything worked off of cooldowns only. This sounds utterly insane to anyone who has played other mobas, but it worked beautifully. What's been the primary issue with League for so long? They were adamant that there should be a lanning phase and that it should matter, but the mana system makes lanes stagnate. They have tried so many things to shake up lanes and make them more action oriented. It turns out that when you don't have to worry about going out of mana you can harass and use abilities far more. That was the whole reason people find League more playable than Dota. Abilities are able to be used more frequently and are less punishing to miss. DG took it one step forward and because of that there are characters that can only exists in that world. That isn't to say that no one had resources in DG. They still had Shapers with Rage and Energy. They even have one shaper that has a mana-like system, but its only to balance out her passive that reduces your ability cooldowns when you deal damage. The other reason there was far more interaction was...
Role Play
In DG you are faced with two distinct and important choices on the character select screen, Shaper and Role. Picking your role was independent of picking your Shaper. The roles were Hunter, Tactician, Gladiator, and Predator. Hunter was the jungling role. It gave you health back for killing neutral monsters and bonus gold for the same. Tactician was the support role. It doubled the gold you got from nearby lane minion deaths and proc'ed bonus gold for hitting an enemy Shaper. This made lanes far more active as Tacticians jockeyed for position and bonus gold. In lane, when minions die if you didn't last hit them you got 1/4 of the gold value of the minion passively. It made it a bit more forgiving for missing last hits, and for supports meant they were completely free to focus on getting their tact bonus gold. Gladiator was what people would consider the carry role. It gave double the value for last hitting a minion. Predator gave bonuses for kills/assists and killing spirit well workers(we'll get there). The beauty of the role system was that it divorced Shapers from positions. One of the worst aspects of League over the years has been that they push certain champions to be played in certain positions. This happened initially with Riven. Its why she had more health regen at level 1 than some characters had at level 18. Its inelegant. They have improved somewhat with the Hunter's Machete and Sightstone and support items, but the Role system is a far better execution since it costs no in game currency. Your options of items are not artificially limited by the design of the jungle specific items. You can do what ever you want. The roles defined how you many money, not who got money. Your Gladiators generally wound up with gold but it wasn't until late game that they really pulled ahead since Hunters and Tacticians were pulled away from their revenue streams. Shapers were not pinned to a role either. I played Basko primarily as a Hunter but in spots could play him as a Gladiator or a Tactician. Ashabelle was another favorite and she could Mage Hunter really effectively. She was also a premier Gladiator and solid tactician. Positions were interchangeable to a much greater degree than in other mobas due to the role system. Sure there were Shapers that you expected to see played one way, but doing things outside the box wasn't unusual, especially since...
Two to Tango
There were no solo lanes in DG. The center lane was removed and the two lanes were brought closer together. This is a huge change to the structure of the map we've all agreed on. The center of the map had the primary objective of the game planted smack dab in the middle of everything. It was called Parasite and it was like Baron + Inhibitor rolled into one. This is perhaps the most radical departure from the standard moba, but its the one that was the most impactful. The center of the map became the most contested area, which also meant it was equidistant from both lanes and both jungles. Fights naturally involved more of both teams since its was easier to get there in time to do something. The removal of the center lane also meant that the remaining lanes were duo lanes. There were no solo lanes in the game. This to me was the heart of the game. Even when bad match ups existed they were covered by lane partners to an extent. People could get away with a bit more since they didn't have to play Malzahar into Mordekaiser or Garen into Teemo. Sure, people could still botch it, but it wasn't nearly as harsh an experience. And speaking of experience, because the lanes were even, the only people that pulled ahead on levels were the junglers, and then only for the first clear or so since they had to become more and more involved in the game as time went on. They did have to pick up the equivalent of Smite but....
Spells to go around
The spellbook was a completely different animal to Summoner Spells. Summoner spells are chosen before the game and basically you only get to choose one since the game is built around flash existing. Dota has no spell system but their myriad activated items accomplish a similar purpose. The Spellbook was a selection of Summoner Spell like abilities that were available to each Shaper and were learned inside the game. Also, you ended up with three of them, there were more to choose from, and you could sell them back for a decently steep cost. There was Vanquish which is a neutral monster nuke, but you could eventually sell it back if so inclined. This meant that you could shift your spells to a more appropriate setup on the fly if needed. You learned the new spell at 10 and 20. You go to level 20 in the game, which isn't a big shift, but it does satisfy a certain part of my brain that likes increments of five. Speaking of being...
Statisfied
The game homogenized a whole mess of stats. Attack Damage and Ability Power were consolidated into Power, which scaled the damage of your abilities and auto-attacks. Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction were all compressed into a stat called Haste. Lifesteal applied to all damage done by your Shaper. This was another huge shift, and played really well. It let them make great items since they didn't have to worry about stats being unusable for half their characters. They didn't need to make a Frozen Mallet + Rylei's Crystal Scepter. With less redundant items and more homogenized stats, each item felt different. There were also no disparate parts. Items upgraded linearly from tier 1 to 2 to 3, and all tier three items cost about 3k gold. The items were named after various vitality's. The Shaper were connected to a Spirit, such as the Spirit of Rage. So their items were named things like Rage, Corruption, Valor, etc. There were six base items, one for each primary stat. The six base items branched into several tier 2 items, which then branched into tier three items. This gave you a significant amount of flexibility in your build order. Of particular note is the Haste stat which allows you to be permanently faster than other characters. In other games, they use boots to increase your movement speed, but all of the boots give essentially the same movement speed boost, so a character with a higher base move speed will always be faster than a character with a lower base movement speed. Everything evens out with a boots movement system, the only thing that matters is the timing of the purchase. With the Haste stat you could change the speed dynamic between two Shapers permanently. Speaking of dynamic relationships...
Lore is Core
Dawngate is unique among mobas in having a dynamic, integrated lore system. The characters received their powers by bonding with Spirits and getting the ability to Shape the world around them. There was a three day a week webcomic that showed you the Shapers living their lives in the world. It spawned unique voice lines and periodically had votes on the direction the community wanted the lore to go. Do we want Zeri to turn Kahgen in or help him sneak out of the city? The choice resulted in a Bandit skin for Zeri, and would likely have gotten her a Virtuoso skin if she had turned Kahgen into Renzo. It was truly alive and vibrant in a way that LoL has never gotten, and other mobas don't even try. It involved the community, and it connected everyone because it hooked lore into the gameplay without needing to do anything obnoxious to accomplish its goal.
That's about all I have to say on the topic other than Waystone Games went to great efforts to connect with its community. The game was growing, with a progression patch that would do wonders to alleviate some peoples issues with the game, which wasn't perfect. DG was just better than everything else.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Simplicity
A few days ago I was watching the daily when someone brought up Heroes of the Storm. In the course of the discussion, the topic of simplicity arose. I contended that Chess is not a simple game and got a significant amount of backlash. I didn't understand why people thought Chess was simple when to me it clearly isn't. It relates back to a saying that Blizzard loves to design around, "Easy to learn, difficult to master." Does easy to learn constitute simple? Obviously not for that saying to hold true. So how do we separate games like Chess from games like Checkers? I believe both games have a property I'm going to call intuitive. With only some small explanation you can play both games. However, there is a cap to how good you can get at Checkers. There is a dominate strategy and the game is solvable. Chess has no dominate strategy and is not solvable for a human being. Chess and Checkers are both intuitive, but Checkers breaks down and becomes simple while Chess does not. Indeed Chess has a pretty enormous place in upper academia and institutions of higher learning. No simple game could accomplish that feat.
So really the contention was over the definition of the word Simple in relationship to games. I don't think a game that is intuitive and easy to learn is simple. Nor is a game that is difficult to learn necessarily Complex. Its about the number and impact of the decision you make.
So really the contention was over the definition of the word Simple in relationship to games. I don't think a game that is intuitive and easy to learn is simple. Nor is a game that is difficult to learn necessarily Complex. Its about the number and impact of the decision you make.
First Foray into Tiny Leaders
So at my new LGS, Tiny Leaders has taken off. I decided to get into the format, and am looking into building something neat. My first thought was something with Courser of Kruphix. Maybe Junk with Courser and Knight of the Reliquary for crazy value? Then I remembered my Shu Yun build. I really liked the idea of doing a Prowess-Storm deck where Shu Yun is the Storm combo kill condition. After a quick look through the ban list, it seems like the only card I would want to play that's banned, besides the obvious, is Balance.
An introduction to the format can be found here:
http://tinyleaders.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html
Things to keep in mind:
Each spell is essentially worth two damage since Shu Yun has Prowess and double strike. Counting his base power, that means we are trying to play seven spells and pay for the trigger. Also, because Shu Yun is a creature and not a spell, a la Tendrils of Agony, we can spread our damage over two turns if needed. We can do something like Distortion Strike swing for five. That sets us up to swing the next turn with a rebound spell, our opponent at 15, and already at 5 power. We would only need five spells and paying for the trigger at that point, and every attempt by our opponents to stop Shu Yun only makes him bigger.
The first step when building Storm is to look for where our mana comes from, where our cards come from, and what our kill condition is. We know that our kill condition is likely going to be our Commander, so our first priority is determining where our mana comes from.
Red is second only to black when it comes to ritual effects.
A search of Gatherer reveals these:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
That's a decent start but the meat is going to come from the artifacts.
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Lion's Eye Diamond
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Tiny Leaders decks are 49 cards, and we have 15 mana cards here. That's a pretty solid number when we figure that we're going to have 15-20 land.
The next important point is figuring out how to set up for the kill.
The classic cantrips go in first:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Gitaxian Probe
Opt
Serum Visions
Sensei's Divining Top
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Think Twice
Frantic Search
Jeskai Ascendancy
This will smooth out our early turns and the low cost nature of the spells with up our storm count, but we do need to go net positive on cards for bulk to go off.
Wheel of Fortune
Meditate
Thirst for Knowledge
Ancestral Visions
Compulsive Research
Monastery Siege
Oona's Grace
Sphinx's Revelation
Invoke the Firemind
That's another 23 cards. Bringing us to 38 aready! Clearly some cuts are going to have to be made, but we'll par down later. That's our mana and draw packages, but how do we get to attack? How do we protect our general? What are our backup plans?
Well, there are a variety of ways to protect our general and push through damage.
Shadow Rift
Emerge Unscathed
Distortion Strike
Remand
Pact of Negation
Mental Misstep
Daze
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Silence
Snap
Snapback
God's Willing
Burn:
Lighting Blot
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Forked Bolt
Other Removal:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
The Kill:
Hurkyl's Recall
Recall
Retract
I am trying to minimize other creatures since they don't trigger prowess, but three jump out as unskippable:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Young Pyromancer
Mentor is better than Pyromancer here as we are built with lots of artifacts to trigger Prowess.
We are waaaaay over the card limit, so lets start paring down to a usable framework.
Mana:
We are keeping all of the rituals. They only generate Red mana, but they are all plus mana spells.
IN:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Some of the artifact mana needed to go, but its difficult to decide what. Ultimately our desire to recall means that we want to keep the artifacts that can be replayed. I decided against Mox Diamond due to our low land count, and Lion's Eye Diamond since we can't play Past In Flames. Lotus Bloom is basically only useful if its in our opening hand, but the upside of a free spell that generates three mana is enormous. Chrome Mox needs to eat a spell to generate mana, but we are much more likely to have spells we can't cast than extra lands. Chrome Mox also has the upside of being able to hang out in play to wait for a recall if you just want the prowess trigger but don't want to eat a card. Mox Diamond will die if you don't pitch a land.
IN:
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
That's 13/49, onto Cantrips and Draw
We want to favor red mana since all of our rituals are red. Wild Guess being double red does make casting it pre-ritual awkward, so we are going to drop it.
IN:
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
The strongest of the cantrips need to be included, especially the 0-1 mana variety.
IN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Compulsive Research gets passed over because its too slow, same thing with Oona's Grace. Sphinx's Revelation and Invoke the Firemind were too cute. Since we can generate a ton of mana, the X spells were another outlet for that mana. We have plenty to do with Shu Yun's trigger though, so having sinks probably won't be needed. Ancestral Visions is iffy, but a free spell that draws three cards is huge upside. If its in our opening hand than it unsuspends the turn after we play Shu Yun, which is perfect. Monastery Siege and Jeskai Ascendancy are permanents that give us huge upside. They both have a filter mode, and Siege can even be used to protect ourselves from removal. Meditate's drawback is pretty steep even though it draws so many cards. I'm going to cut it and Thirst due to their high cost relative to our mana generation.
IN:
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
That's another 12 cards, which brings us to 25 cards.
Here is where we have to make a call on how many lands we are going to run. Normally I'd start with 20, which is about 40%. I think we are running so much additional storm mana, and have so many cantrips, that we can safely run 15.
That gives us nine slots to play with. The back up win conditions we are going to run with are Monastery Mentor and Grapeshot. Young Pyromancer is great but we have very little space. We need to keep a Recall effect, Rebuild cycles and Retract costs one, but Hurkyl's Recall is the most flexible so we are going to run it. We can keep four cards for removal, and burn is likely our best bet, so in go Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Path to Exile. I choose Path since we are trying to kill people with regular damage. The bolts can all go to the dome, reducing our effective storm count. A bolt is 3 + 2, so we get a huge reduction in the resources we need to kill our opponent. We want to protect Shu Yun with spells for prowess instead of permanents. The Swords are great and they will probably find their way into the deck somewhere down the line, but right now they seem too mana intensive to be worth it. The last three slots are very hard to decide between. Distortion Strike is amazing and needs to be included. Mystical Tutor is non-negotiable. That basically makes it a fight between Mental Misstep and Daze. Daze can be cast on my own spells more readily so it gets the nod. This category really should be larger, but until the concept proves itself I'm not willing to run less mana or draw.
IN:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Onto the lands!
We needs lots of red and blue, and comparatively little white. With the speed of the format a land that comes into play tapped is going to be a very real cost, so we need to play untapped lands at all costs.
Lets start where we always do for a three color deck
IN:
Plateu
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
That's nine of our lands. Slots fill up in this format so fast.
Running all non-basics opens us up to hate, but we really don't have the luxury of running basics.
IN:
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
To increase our artifact count we are going to include the set of artifact lands
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
First Draft:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Land
Plateau
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
We might want to find something to get our Commander haste since right now he has to hang out in play for a turn before going in for lethal. The next step is fabrication then testing. There will be many updates to follow.
Update #1, 2/7/2015
Got to play with the deck a bit over the last couple days. There were some good games but I made some mistakes while preparing for the format. First of all, the starting life total is 25 instead of 20. That five extra damage is hard to push through. Second, Mana Vault is banned and I missed it. Whoops! Third, the format is waaaaaaaaay more removal heavy than I anticipated. We do need our general to hang out in play for a turn to do anything, so we have to play more protection for him. We have some easy cuts so we'll start there.
OUT:
Mana Vault
Clifftop Retreat
Azorius Signet
Izzet Signet
We are going to need to be more consistent and rely less on speed. Boros Signet stays for density and because its the only Signet that can pay for Shu Yun's trigger. That's four slots that we get access to. We need more protection. It would be most helpful if it could be cast without needing to target an enemy spell. We definitely want one more counterspell, and one protection spell.
IN:
Izzet Charm
Emerge Unscathed
Izzet Charm is both a counterspell and a dig spell. It can even clear blockers out of the way!
Emerge Unscathed has rebound, which is a very good mechanic for us. It lets us protect our dude for a turn, then get a free trigger and evade blockers on the rebound.
I did find I wanted more burn with the life total so high. We have to be able to push through a lot more damage. We need to be able to use our burn for other reasons though, so we can't just shove Lava Spike into the list. We aren't go that deep quite yet.
IN:
Boros Charm
Another Charm makes its way into the list. This one will likely have only two modes, 4 to the noggin or Indestructible my stuff. Indestructible my stuff not only protects Shu Yun, but can help protect Mentor tokens from sweepers. That isn't super valuable since most sweepers in the the format are toughness based, and we can already protect them just by casting spells. Four damage is more than most spells can live up to in this environment unless we want to play Flame Rift.
IN:
Apostle's Blessing
This one is more iffy, but I like that it can be cast for a colorless mana while going off.
Other suspect cards,
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendency
Sensei's Divining Top
but we'll see where these changes land us.
An introduction to the format can be found here:
http://tinyleaders.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html
Things to keep in mind:
Each spell is essentially worth two damage since Shu Yun has Prowess and double strike. Counting his base power, that means we are trying to play seven spells and pay for the trigger. Also, because Shu Yun is a creature and not a spell, a la Tendrils of Agony, we can spread our damage over two turns if needed. We can do something like Distortion Strike swing for five. That sets us up to swing the next turn with a rebound spell, our opponent at 15, and already at 5 power. We would only need five spells and paying for the trigger at that point, and every attempt by our opponents to stop Shu Yun only makes him bigger.
The first step when building Storm is to look for where our mana comes from, where our cards come from, and what our kill condition is. We know that our kill condition is likely going to be our Commander, so our first priority is determining where our mana comes from.
Red is second only to black when it comes to ritual effects.
A search of Gatherer reveals these:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
That's a decent start but the meat is going to come from the artifacts.
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Lion's Eye Diamond
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Tiny Leaders decks are 49 cards, and we have 15 mana cards here. That's a pretty solid number when we figure that we're going to have 15-20 land.
The next important point is figuring out how to set up for the kill.
The classic cantrips go in first:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Gitaxian Probe
Opt
Serum Visions
Sensei's Divining Top
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Think Twice
Frantic Search
Jeskai Ascendancy
This will smooth out our early turns and the low cost nature of the spells with up our storm count, but we do need to go net positive on cards for bulk to go off.
Wheel of Fortune
Meditate
Thirst for Knowledge
Ancestral Visions
Compulsive Research
Monastery Siege
Oona's Grace
Sphinx's Revelation
Invoke the Firemind
That's another 23 cards. Bringing us to 38 aready! Clearly some cuts are going to have to be made, but we'll par down later. That's our mana and draw packages, but how do we get to attack? How do we protect our general? What are our backup plans?
Well, there are a variety of ways to protect our general and push through damage.
Shadow Rift
Emerge Unscathed
Distortion Strike
Remand
Pact of Negation
Mental Misstep
Daze
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Silence
Snap
Snapback
God's Willing
Burn:
Lighting Blot
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Forked Bolt
Other Removal:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
The Kill:
Hurkyl's Recall
Recall
Retract
I am trying to minimize other creatures since they don't trigger prowess, but three jump out as unskippable:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Young Pyromancer
Mentor is better than Pyromancer here as we are built with lots of artifacts to trigger Prowess.
We are waaaaay over the card limit, so lets start paring down to a usable framework.
Mana:
We are keeping all of the rituals. They only generate Red mana, but they are all plus mana spells.
IN:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Some of the artifact mana needed to go, but its difficult to decide what. Ultimately our desire to recall means that we want to keep the artifacts that can be replayed. I decided against Mox Diamond due to our low land count, and Lion's Eye Diamond since we can't play Past In Flames. Lotus Bloom is basically only useful if its in our opening hand, but the upside of a free spell that generates three mana is enormous. Chrome Mox needs to eat a spell to generate mana, but we are much more likely to have spells we can't cast than extra lands. Chrome Mox also has the upside of being able to hang out in play to wait for a recall if you just want the prowess trigger but don't want to eat a card. Mox Diamond will die if you don't pitch a land.
IN:
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
That's 13/49, onto Cantrips and Draw
We want to favor red mana since all of our rituals are red. Wild Guess being double red does make casting it pre-ritual awkward, so we are going to drop it.
IN:
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
The strongest of the cantrips need to be included, especially the 0-1 mana variety.
IN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Compulsive Research gets passed over because its too slow, same thing with Oona's Grace. Sphinx's Revelation and Invoke the Firemind were too cute. Since we can generate a ton of mana, the X spells were another outlet for that mana. We have plenty to do with Shu Yun's trigger though, so having sinks probably won't be needed. Ancestral Visions is iffy, but a free spell that draws three cards is huge upside. If its in our opening hand than it unsuspends the turn after we play Shu Yun, which is perfect. Monastery Siege and Jeskai Ascendancy are permanents that give us huge upside. They both have a filter mode, and Siege can even be used to protect ourselves from removal. Meditate's drawback is pretty steep even though it draws so many cards. I'm going to cut it and Thirst due to their high cost relative to our mana generation.
IN:
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
That's another 12 cards, which brings us to 25 cards.
Here is where we have to make a call on how many lands we are going to run. Normally I'd start with 20, which is about 40%. I think we are running so much additional storm mana, and have so many cantrips, that we can safely run 15.
That gives us nine slots to play with. The back up win conditions we are going to run with are Monastery Mentor and Grapeshot. Young Pyromancer is great but we have very little space. We need to keep a Recall effect, Rebuild cycles and Retract costs one, but Hurkyl's Recall is the most flexible so we are going to run it. We can keep four cards for removal, and burn is likely our best bet, so in go Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Path to Exile. I choose Path since we are trying to kill people with regular damage. The bolts can all go to the dome, reducing our effective storm count. A bolt is 3 + 2, so we get a huge reduction in the resources we need to kill our opponent. We want to protect Shu Yun with spells for prowess instead of permanents. The Swords are great and they will probably find their way into the deck somewhere down the line, but right now they seem too mana intensive to be worth it. The last three slots are very hard to decide between. Distortion Strike is amazing and needs to be included. Mystical Tutor is non-negotiable. That basically makes it a fight between Mental Misstep and Daze. Daze can be cast on my own spells more readily so it gets the nod. This category really should be larger, but until the concept proves itself I'm not willing to run less mana or draw.
IN:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Onto the lands!
We needs lots of red and blue, and comparatively little white. With the speed of the format a land that comes into play tapped is going to be a very real cost, so we need to play untapped lands at all costs.
Lets start where we always do for a three color deck
IN:
Plateu
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
That's nine of our lands. Slots fill up in this format so fast.
Running all non-basics opens us up to hate, but we really don't have the luxury of running basics.
IN:
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
To increase our artifact count we are going to include the set of artifact lands
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
First Draft:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Land
Plateau
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
We might want to find something to get our Commander haste since right now he has to hang out in play for a turn before going in for lethal. The next step is fabrication then testing. There will be many updates to follow.
Update #1, 2/7/2015
Got to play with the deck a bit over the last couple days. There were some good games but I made some mistakes while preparing for the format. First of all, the starting life total is 25 instead of 20. That five extra damage is hard to push through. Second, Mana Vault is banned and I missed it. Whoops! Third, the format is waaaaaaaaay more removal heavy than I anticipated. We do need our general to hang out in play for a turn to do anything, so we have to play more protection for him. We have some easy cuts so we'll start there.
OUT:
Mana Vault
Clifftop Retreat
Azorius Signet
Izzet Signet
We are going to need to be more consistent and rely less on speed. Boros Signet stays for density and because its the only Signet that can pay for Shu Yun's trigger. That's four slots that we get access to. We need more protection. It would be most helpful if it could be cast without needing to target an enemy spell. We definitely want one more counterspell, and one protection spell.
IN:
Izzet Charm
Emerge Unscathed
Izzet Charm is both a counterspell and a dig spell. It can even clear blockers out of the way!
Emerge Unscathed has rebound, which is a very good mechanic for us. It lets us protect our dude for a turn, then get a free trigger and evade blockers on the rebound.
I did find I wanted more burn with the life total so high. We have to be able to push through a lot more damage. We need to be able to use our burn for other reasons though, so we can't just shove Lava Spike into the list. We aren't go that deep quite yet.
IN:
Boros Charm
Another Charm makes its way into the list. This one will likely have only two modes, 4 to the noggin or Indestructible my stuff. Indestructible my stuff not only protects Shu Yun, but can help protect Mentor tokens from sweepers. That isn't super valuable since most sweepers in the the format are toughness based, and we can already protect them just by casting spells. Four damage is more than most spells can live up to in this environment unless we want to play Flame Rift.
IN:
Apostle's Blessing
This one is more iffy, but I like that it can be cast for a colorless mana while going off.
Other suspect cards,
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendency
Sensei's Divining Top
but we'll see where these changes land us.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Build of the Week: Shu Yun
So its Friday, time for another build of the week.
I have wanted to make a deck based around Sunforger for quite some time. I even shoehorned it into Kaalia for a while till I realized that really wasn't what I wanted that deck to be about. I also realized that I really wanted it to include blue mana. I almost put together a Narset deck with that general theme. It would work out fine but Narset has disincentives for playing other creatures and voltroning a 6 mana non-green creature is not the easiest thing in the world. Imagine my delight when they printed a Jeskai colored general that only costs three mana, made excellent use of instants and sorceries and further rewarded a voltron strategy.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is a tight package of awesome. He gives us a reliable source of Prowess, making the deck kind of have a storm flavor to it. He also combines well with other creatures, something that Narset doesn't do. He also lets us do quite a bit with extra mana that lying around and is totally fine with playing reactive cards as opposed to Narset wanting to play primarily with proactive cards for her trigger.
So where do we start? Well like I said in the first paragraph, Sunforger!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
That's 19 cards, and not even all the spells we want! Sunforger has a very deep pool and finding the right set of cards is going to be difficult. We'll leave this where it is for now and cull from it later. I suppose the question is what other spells do we have to make room for?
Can trips:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Sorceries:
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Honestly these sections are a bit more anemic than they will be in the finished product. We could pack this list full of spells, but then we would miss out on the the side of Shu Yun that we want to capitalize on...being buffed up.
Enchantments:
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
Those are some of the premium buffs. There are tons more available but these are a solid starting place for us. Quite a few of them are protection for us but there are some spells we can through in the mix for protection as well.
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
These are a good starting place, and even add to our Sunforger options.
That puts us up to 46 cards. Assuming 34 land, a bit light but we have lots of low cost options and cantrips, that leaves us with 20 cards. We definitely want to have other dudes to play, so what are some good creature options?
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
That's 10 slots left so lets put together some artifact acceleration:
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
That leaves us with a couple of unused slots. Since Prowess also functions on artifacts, I want to try Hurkyl's Recall. Also in goes another two Rebound cards, Distortion Strike and Recurring Insight. Rebound seems like a strong way to get free Prowess and Jeskai Ascendancy triggers.
We are already full and there are so many cards yet to add!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
This actually manages to be 4 cards over already.
OUT
Azorius Charm
Orim's Thunder
Return to Dust
Reiterate
I will miss Reiterate the most since buyback is pretty solid with Prowess, but its also crazy mana intensive. Azorius Charm is basically just a worse version of Jeskai Charm excepting the cantrip portion, but if you have a Sunforger going using it to just draw a card seems weak. That brings us to par for our cards. We could do more optimizing now, but lets get out mana together first.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade
That gives us a solid base of colored sources. We definitely want to cant toward blue mana since a lot of our cantrips need blue mana early and can be used to find our other colors.
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
And now for some cool utility lands!
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
So the full initial list is:
Oblation
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Mystical Tutor
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade 3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
There are a couple directions we could take based on performance. We could put in more Free spells and build more for a Prowess Storm deck which feels unique and cool. That would likely involve less equipment and more spells, including putting in more low cost artifacts. The other way that I can see the deck evolving is to cut some of the spells and play up the enlightened tutor package for some sweet hate cards. Note about the final decklist, I realized I hadn't put Mystical Tutor in the deck when its obviously awesome so I cut Memory Lapse for it. Overall the deck could use more tutors, but again I like to sus out what I'm tutoring for before putting them in the deck, and tutors kinda spoil the feel of EDH by making your unwieldy 100 card deck more repetitive.
I feel like this would be a fun deck to put together and hopefully I'll be back in a couple days to suggest changes.
I have wanted to make a deck based around Sunforger for quite some time. I even shoehorned it into Kaalia for a while till I realized that really wasn't what I wanted that deck to be about. I also realized that I really wanted it to include blue mana. I almost put together a Narset deck with that general theme. It would work out fine but Narset has disincentives for playing other creatures and voltroning a 6 mana non-green creature is not the easiest thing in the world. Imagine my delight when they printed a Jeskai colored general that only costs three mana, made excellent use of instants and sorceries and further rewarded a voltron strategy.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is a tight package of awesome. He gives us a reliable source of Prowess, making the deck kind of have a storm flavor to it. He also combines well with other creatures, something that Narset doesn't do. He also lets us do quite a bit with extra mana that lying around and is totally fine with playing reactive cards as opposed to Narset wanting to play primarily with proactive cards for her trigger.
So where do we start? Well like I said in the first paragraph, Sunforger!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
That's 19 cards, and not even all the spells we want! Sunforger has a very deep pool and finding the right set of cards is going to be difficult. We'll leave this where it is for now and cull from it later. I suppose the question is what other spells do we have to make room for?
Can trips:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Sorceries:
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Honestly these sections are a bit more anemic than they will be in the finished product. We could pack this list full of spells, but then we would miss out on the the side of Shu Yun that we want to capitalize on...being buffed up.
Enchantments:
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
Those are some of the premium buffs. There are tons more available but these are a solid starting place for us. Quite a few of them are protection for us but there are some spells we can through in the mix for protection as well.
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
These are a good starting place, and even add to our Sunforger options.
That puts us up to 46 cards. Assuming 34 land, a bit light but we have lots of low cost options and cantrips, that leaves us with 20 cards. We definitely want to have other dudes to play, so what are some good creature options?
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
That's 10 slots left so lets put together some artifact acceleration:
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
That leaves us with a couple of unused slots. Since Prowess also functions on artifacts, I want to try Hurkyl's Recall. Also in goes another two Rebound cards, Distortion Strike and Recurring Insight. Rebound seems like a strong way to get free Prowess and Jeskai Ascendancy triggers.
We are already full and there are so many cards yet to add!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
This actually manages to be 4 cards over already.
OUT
Azorius Charm
Orim's Thunder
Return to Dust
Reiterate
I will miss Reiterate the most since buyback is pretty solid with Prowess, but its also crazy mana intensive. Azorius Charm is basically just a worse version of Jeskai Charm excepting the cantrip portion, but if you have a Sunforger going using it to just draw a card seems weak. That brings us to par for our cards. We could do more optimizing now, but lets get out mana together first.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade
That gives us a solid base of colored sources. We definitely want to cant toward blue mana since a lot of our cantrips need blue mana early and can be used to find our other colors.
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
And now for some cool utility lands!
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
So the full initial list is:
Oblation
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Mystical Tutor
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade 3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
There are a couple directions we could take based on performance. We could put in more Free spells and build more for a Prowess Storm deck which feels unique and cool. That would likely involve less equipment and more spells, including putting in more low cost artifacts. The other way that I can see the deck evolving is to cut some of the spells and play up the enlightened tutor package for some sweet hate cards. Note about the final decklist, I realized I hadn't put Mystical Tutor in the deck when its obviously awesome so I cut Memory Lapse for it. Overall the deck could use more tutors, but again I like to sus out what I'm tutoring for before putting them in the deck, and tutors kinda spoil the feel of EDH by making your unwieldy 100 card deck more repetitive.
I feel like this would be a fun deck to put together and hopefully I'll be back in a couple days to suggest changes.
Bans, the hows and whys
The recent bannings of Birthing Pod, Dig Through Time, and Treasure Cruise have upended the magic world. There are lots of opinions and while people debate the validity of the bans, the method of WotC's bans is definitely becoming much different than it has been in the past.
The specific bans that we just got for modern seem fairly legitimate. Treasure Cruise was totally busted and Dig Through Time and Birthing Pod had the ability to piece together combo decks. Pod has had a really solid run throughout Modern's existence. I don't think there's a deck with a better pedigree. LSV, arguably Pod's best player, agreed that Pod has had it coming. My argument is not with these cards but rather the way that the banned list is being used to shape Modern.
Its come up many times how ridiculous the Modern banned list is, but to understand it we have to look into the goals that Wizards has for the format. Aaron Forsythe talked about the order they want new players to get into the various formats of Magic. It went Duels of the Planeswalkers > Sealed > Draft > Standard > Modern > Legacy. Vintage basically doesn't exist in paper form in any meaningful way. We can see that they have Modern somewhere between Legacy and Standard. Legacy and Standard are completely different formats, and trying to find a middle ground is difficult. Modern was created with the best of intentions, but it has several challenges that WotC did not anticipate. Specifically, having a large non-rotating format lends itself to stagnation for long periods of time. Legacy is a great example. You would think with such a huge number of available cards that people would be innovating whole new archetypes all the time. That just doesn't happen, even with there being something worth winning, Legacy doesn't turn over constantly. People establish solid decks and attempt to master them rather than constantly shifting around. There are new archetypes that show up in Legacy or radical reinventions of existing decks, but that isn't the norm. Standard, more than any other format, rewards experimentation and innovation. You have much smaller card pools, so finding something that attacks the status quo is more meaningful, and easier since Standard gets a significant number of new cards with each set that's printed. The same number of cards is almost meaningless in Eternal formats since so many of them can't compete with the best of the best.
That is the essential problem with Modern. Modern is an Eternal format. Its card pool doesn't reach back all the way to the game's start, but it doesn't rotate. Established decks are much easier to pick up and master rather than to constantly be on the look out for the "next thing." Innovation is certainly possible but many options are going to be crowded out by their superior cousins. Modern is much closer to Legacy than it is to Standard, except there is no Force of Will to hold the combo decks down. This means that WotC has had to take a much larger hand in the format than it has in formats in the past.
They have stated that they don't want combo to be consistently faster than turn four. They also have stated that they want to promote diversity. Their bans have become less about stopping mistakes like Skullclamp from running wild and more about trying to shape the format into a version that is more like Standard. They want to encourage diversity to the point where they are banning cards to disable decks. They did the same thing with Deathrite Shaman and Bloodbraid Elf. There are cards that they have never allowed to be legal like Jace the Mind Sculptor or Ancestral Visions. They are over banning cards to try to promote diversity rather than unbanning cards that would be great checks on the format. Even from the cards above Deathrite Shaman would have been an outstanding unban in the face of Delve and Pod. Both of those strategies rely on the Graveyard, but its like they are so afraid of admitting that any card that goes on the banned list was a mistake to put there that they can't take it off. They have to make up their minds. Either the banned list is a living document where cards come off and on based on the needs of the format, or the cards placed on the list are mistakes that only get banned under the direst of circumstances.
Using the banned list for Modern the way they are also undermines people's desire to commit to the format. Birthing Pod in particular feels pretty egregious for this reason. Pod has been near the top of the Modern food chain for a long time. Years in fact. Its won the most tournaments and a copy of it is almost always in the top eight. Banning it now, when so many people have committed their limited Magic budgets to playing it just feels like a slap in the face. It might have been a necessity, I don't have as much information as they do, but the fact that they are banning cards so frequently in Modern is testing people's patience. It would be like practicing Ryu for a Street Fighter tournament. Pouring your 4-6 hours a week that you have free, learning him and his match ups, and then a month or so out from the event that you've been practicing for Capcom says that Ryu is too ubiquitous and can't be played in tournaments anymore. You might just quit playing Street Fighter altogether than invest another 40-50 hours into learning another character. Take into account that Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were only legal for three months, a pittance of time in Eternal Formats, and people's anger over the bannings become even more understandable.
The question is, why are they going through so many hoops to try and promote diversity? I think the answer is because of the increase in the importance of coverage. Wizards has realized that the Pro Tour and Grand Prix coverage is great advertising in addition to the pinnacle of play. If the coverage is just going to be the same three decks for the Pro Tour they feel the need to take action. It should be noted that this philosophy basically only applies to Modern as the influx of new cards has a good chance of shaking up Standard. The issue here is that you aren't letting people figure things out for themselves. Non-rotating formats are great at rewarding deep knowledge of a singe deck and maneuvering specific card choices to beat what you are expecting. Three months is not enough time for those formats to have explored their large card pool for answers. The most recent Top 8 of a Modern Event had tons of different decks. People landed on a decent sideboard option to combat Treasure Cruise decks. It was a bonkers card and it might have needed banning in the end, but more time with it would have been worthwhile.
More problematic is the banning of Treasure Cruise in Legacy and its restriction in Vintage. This feels like they just wanted to end the debate about the card. The blurb in the ban announcement was barely two sentences on Treasure Cruise in Legacy and Vintage. Its essentially splash damage from the banning in Modern. Three months was barely enough to justify the banning in Modern, and nowhere close to long enough to make a correct decision for the true Eternal formats. The meta-game just doesn't move fast enough to make that kind of judgement. If talking about the magic online meta-game, than of course U/R Delver is going to swamp the queues, its super cheap to build compared to other options and it has a good game plan. It showed up in SCG opens for the same reasons but it didn't feel like it was dominating those tournaments either. Treasure Cruise was the first real shake up Vintage had seen in years, and it drove a lot of interest in Legacy. Maybe it was too good, but it certainly hadn't been through the ringer it needed to go through for a format with 20 years of history behind it.
I suppose the point I'm making is that it seems like Wizards of the Coast have stopped asking "How good is too good?" in relation to the ban list and have begun asking "How popular is too popular?" This sounds basically the same but there is a pretty big gulf between the two. How good something is not a question of how much of the field it makes up but how much a given deck wins based on how many people show up with it. Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod had good win percentages but the larger problem was how much of the field was playing those decks. The were ubiquitous, and its that more than anything that got them axed. Large non-rotating formats are going to have ubiquitous decks though. People want to play something that they know will do well and not invest their money on an experimental deck. Without the threat of rotation the format will have moments of stagnation. Rather than letting the player base push through this issue on their own, WotC feels the need to shake the format up artificially through bans. This method, while effective, is going to cause rising feelings of frustration and uncertainty from players that are afraid of pricing themselves into a format that is almost guaranteed to have its best decks banned out to promote diversity in the name of a more exciting tournament to watch.
The specific bans that we just got for modern seem fairly legitimate. Treasure Cruise was totally busted and Dig Through Time and Birthing Pod had the ability to piece together combo decks. Pod has had a really solid run throughout Modern's existence. I don't think there's a deck with a better pedigree. LSV, arguably Pod's best player, agreed that Pod has had it coming. My argument is not with these cards but rather the way that the banned list is being used to shape Modern.
Its come up many times how ridiculous the Modern banned list is, but to understand it we have to look into the goals that Wizards has for the format. Aaron Forsythe talked about the order they want new players to get into the various formats of Magic. It went Duels of the Planeswalkers > Sealed > Draft > Standard > Modern > Legacy. Vintage basically doesn't exist in paper form in any meaningful way. We can see that they have Modern somewhere between Legacy and Standard. Legacy and Standard are completely different formats, and trying to find a middle ground is difficult. Modern was created with the best of intentions, but it has several challenges that WotC did not anticipate. Specifically, having a large non-rotating format lends itself to stagnation for long periods of time. Legacy is a great example. You would think with such a huge number of available cards that people would be innovating whole new archetypes all the time. That just doesn't happen, even with there being something worth winning, Legacy doesn't turn over constantly. People establish solid decks and attempt to master them rather than constantly shifting around. There are new archetypes that show up in Legacy or radical reinventions of existing decks, but that isn't the norm. Standard, more than any other format, rewards experimentation and innovation. You have much smaller card pools, so finding something that attacks the status quo is more meaningful, and easier since Standard gets a significant number of new cards with each set that's printed. The same number of cards is almost meaningless in Eternal formats since so many of them can't compete with the best of the best.
That is the essential problem with Modern. Modern is an Eternal format. Its card pool doesn't reach back all the way to the game's start, but it doesn't rotate. Established decks are much easier to pick up and master rather than to constantly be on the look out for the "next thing." Innovation is certainly possible but many options are going to be crowded out by their superior cousins. Modern is much closer to Legacy than it is to Standard, except there is no Force of Will to hold the combo decks down. This means that WotC has had to take a much larger hand in the format than it has in formats in the past.
They have stated that they don't want combo to be consistently faster than turn four. They also have stated that they want to promote diversity. Their bans have become less about stopping mistakes like Skullclamp from running wild and more about trying to shape the format into a version that is more like Standard. They want to encourage diversity to the point where they are banning cards to disable decks. They did the same thing with Deathrite Shaman and Bloodbraid Elf. There are cards that they have never allowed to be legal like Jace the Mind Sculptor or Ancestral Visions. They are over banning cards to try to promote diversity rather than unbanning cards that would be great checks on the format. Even from the cards above Deathrite Shaman would have been an outstanding unban in the face of Delve and Pod. Both of those strategies rely on the Graveyard, but its like they are so afraid of admitting that any card that goes on the banned list was a mistake to put there that they can't take it off. They have to make up their minds. Either the banned list is a living document where cards come off and on based on the needs of the format, or the cards placed on the list are mistakes that only get banned under the direst of circumstances.
Using the banned list for Modern the way they are also undermines people's desire to commit to the format. Birthing Pod in particular feels pretty egregious for this reason. Pod has been near the top of the Modern food chain for a long time. Years in fact. Its won the most tournaments and a copy of it is almost always in the top eight. Banning it now, when so many people have committed their limited Magic budgets to playing it just feels like a slap in the face. It might have been a necessity, I don't have as much information as they do, but the fact that they are banning cards so frequently in Modern is testing people's patience. It would be like practicing Ryu for a Street Fighter tournament. Pouring your 4-6 hours a week that you have free, learning him and his match ups, and then a month or so out from the event that you've been practicing for Capcom says that Ryu is too ubiquitous and can't be played in tournaments anymore. You might just quit playing Street Fighter altogether than invest another 40-50 hours into learning another character. Take into account that Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were only legal for three months, a pittance of time in Eternal Formats, and people's anger over the bannings become even more understandable.
The question is, why are they going through so many hoops to try and promote diversity? I think the answer is because of the increase in the importance of coverage. Wizards has realized that the Pro Tour and Grand Prix coverage is great advertising in addition to the pinnacle of play. If the coverage is just going to be the same three decks for the Pro Tour they feel the need to take action. It should be noted that this philosophy basically only applies to Modern as the influx of new cards has a good chance of shaking up Standard. The issue here is that you aren't letting people figure things out for themselves. Non-rotating formats are great at rewarding deep knowledge of a singe deck and maneuvering specific card choices to beat what you are expecting. Three months is not enough time for those formats to have explored their large card pool for answers. The most recent Top 8 of a Modern Event had tons of different decks. People landed on a decent sideboard option to combat Treasure Cruise decks. It was a bonkers card and it might have needed banning in the end, but more time with it would have been worthwhile.
More problematic is the banning of Treasure Cruise in Legacy and its restriction in Vintage. This feels like they just wanted to end the debate about the card. The blurb in the ban announcement was barely two sentences on Treasure Cruise in Legacy and Vintage. Its essentially splash damage from the banning in Modern. Three months was barely enough to justify the banning in Modern, and nowhere close to long enough to make a correct decision for the true Eternal formats. The meta-game just doesn't move fast enough to make that kind of judgement. If talking about the magic online meta-game, than of course U/R Delver is going to swamp the queues, its super cheap to build compared to other options and it has a good game plan. It showed up in SCG opens for the same reasons but it didn't feel like it was dominating those tournaments either. Treasure Cruise was the first real shake up Vintage had seen in years, and it drove a lot of interest in Legacy. Maybe it was too good, but it certainly hadn't been through the ringer it needed to go through for a format with 20 years of history behind it.
I suppose the point I'm making is that it seems like Wizards of the Coast have stopped asking "How good is too good?" in relation to the ban list and have begun asking "How popular is too popular?" This sounds basically the same but there is a pretty big gulf between the two. How good something is not a question of how much of the field it makes up but how much a given deck wins based on how many people show up with it. Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod had good win percentages but the larger problem was how much of the field was playing those decks. The were ubiquitous, and its that more than anything that got them axed. Large non-rotating formats are going to have ubiquitous decks though. People want to play something that they know will do well and not invest their money on an experimental deck. Without the threat of rotation the format will have moments of stagnation. Rather than letting the player base push through this issue on their own, WotC feels the need to shake the format up artificially through bans. This method, while effective, is going to cause rising feelings of frustration and uncertainty from players that are afraid of pricing themselves into a format that is almost guaranteed to have its best decks banned out to promote diversity in the name of a more exciting tournament to watch.
Friday, January 16, 2015
First Build of the Week: Atarka
In case it wasn't obvious by now, I have an enduring love for the EDH format. One of my favorite things to do is to build a deck. So, I'm going to do that once a week. There are plenty of people out there showing how to build EDH on a budget, so I'm going to do the opposite and assume that budget isn't a concern for the deck. If budget is a concern for you, just swap out the pieces that are too expensive for something of similar function and you'll likely be fine.
We have a new set coming out with 10 new legends. There's some good room to explore them, but I was immediately drawn to Atarka, World Render. The art of this card is so cool. She looks like a Kaiju ready to rumble. While she doesn't do anything to defend herself, she ends the game really fast. Atarka screams to be played as a giant monster deck. That gives us some pretty clear direction off the bat, tons of ramp, lots of big dragons. Red has the highest concentration of dragons so we have plenty to choose from. We certainly will have some subtlety to the deck by the end, but R/G are really good mana colors as green loves land and red loves artifact mana. My initial brush of mana ramp always includes:
-Ancient Tomb
-Sol Ring
-Mana Crypt
-Grim Monolith
-Gilded Lotus
-Thran Dynamo
-Mana Vault
-Worn Powerstone
Those are good all rounded accelerators. We might want to change things up depending on how the deck shapes up. On to the land based ramp:
-Kodama's Reach
-Cultivate
-Explosive Vegetation
-Skyshroud Claim
-Hunting Wilds
-Nature's Lore
-Sakura-Tribe Elder
That gives us a solid base of acceleration and we can alter it later as we flush out the deck. Its certainly telling us that green is going to be more important early than red mana. I also want bulk land fetch, hence the three four mana doubles that jump from 4 to 6.
An important principle in deck building is that you never want to be a worse version of something else. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is basically the same deck as what we are talking about here. How do we differentiate ourselves from the Tyrant? Well the answer lies in the mana. Since we are only two colors, that means that we can focus on colorless ramp, which makes us likely to cast our general a turn or maybe two turns before a Karrthus player would be able to cast theirs. Combine this with the fact that Atarka naturally kills in two hits instead of three and our advantage over Karrthus becomes clear. Atarka is both faster and more consistent, but we lose out on some of the powerful black cards.
What dragons mesh with the plan of lots of mana?
At a glance:
-Balefire Dragon 8
-Bogardan Hellkite 7
-Flameblast Dragon 6
-Hellkite Charger 7
-Hellkite Igniter 7
-Hellkite Tyrant 6
-Hoardsmelter Dragon 6
-Dragon Mage 7
-Knollspine Dragon 7
-Mana Charged Dragon 6
-Moltensteel Dragon 6/4
-Mordant Dragon 6
-Preyseizer Dragon 6
-Ryusei, the Falling Star 6
-Scourge of Kher Ridges 8
-Scourge of the Throne 6
-Scourge of Valkas 5
-Spawn of Thraxes 7
-Thundermaw Hellkite 5
-Tyrant's Familiar 7
- Utvara Hellkite 8
That's quite a list! We should be weighing the 6 mana dragons higher than the 7+ mana dragons since our 7 mana play is already decided, and assuming a linear mana progression, a six mana play is going to attack the turn we play Atarka. Of specific notice are Mana-Charged Dragon and Scourge of the Throne, who don't need you to pay more mana into them, but who get crazy gains from Double Strike.
Ok, so now we have a selection of crazy beaters, lots of acceleration but nothing to do between one and six mana. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is making our Dragons better since we plan on investing so much mana into them. Haste is such a good keyword for large mana creatures. As are hexproof and shroud. In goes both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. Baking haste into our mana base sounds great so in go Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village. Tapped lands slow us down a bit, but we should have the time to play these, and they speed us up by a turn, particularly Hall which is one of the best lands in the format. Fires of Yavimaya is old but gold, and its new counterpart Hammer of Purphorous gives us some amazing longevity. Generator Servant can give us some hasty beats much earlier than expected. Xenagos, God of Revels fits perfectly into the 5 slot before we cast one of our marquee dragons, and its not impossible for him to turn into a creature with the number of mana symbols that tend to be in a dragon's mana cost.
A word about planeswalkers. This seems like a deck that would want some of the walkers available to it, but really you have to judge walkers by the 1 activation rule. You have to assume that your walker only gets to activate one time. Not a lot of the walkers mesh with the deck's purpose and are useful in one activation. The ones that might be viable are Garrurk Wildspeaker, Garruk Caller of Beasts, Garruk Primal Hunter, and Domri Rade. The Garruks all have various uses from ramp to card draw and Domri functions as removal as well as potentially drawing cards. Primal Hunter is triple green, which could be annoying and one use puts him as a five mana sorcery that probably over-draws your hand. Caller of Beasts basically exists purely for his first ability, which while great isn't worth six mana. I like Domri and Wildspeaker though, so in they go. I'd be ready to cut both of them based on performance though.
We have several ways to accelerate out our dragons, but what about ways that cheat dragons into play? Especially if they get haste out of the deal. So, Sneak Attack goes in. Quicksilver Amulet is a close cousin to Sneak Attack and gets a slot as well.
Dragons don't need a lot of help to be lethal, but they also won't object to it. One of my favorite equipment for this sort of thing is Mage Slayer. You get to skip the whole blocking thing altogether! Other powerful buffs include Loxodon Warhammer, Berzerk, Fatal Frenzy, Surge of Strength, Stonewood Invocation, Seize the Day, Grafted Exoskeleton, Basilisk Collar, and Kessig Wolf Run. Each of these range from huge damage buffs to gaining useful abilities. Lifelink in particular is crazy when attached to Balefire Dragon or the like.
Lets take stock so far:
Ancient Tomb
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Mana Vault
Worn Powerstone
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Hunting Wilds
Nature's Lore
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Balefire Dragon
Bogardan Hellkite
Flameblast Dragon
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Hoardsmelter Dragon
Dragon Mage
Knollspine Dragon
Mana Charged Dragon
Moltensteel Dragon
Mordant Dragon
Preyseizer Dragon
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Thundermaw Hellkite
Tyrant's Familiar
Utvara Hellkite
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Flamekin Village
Fires of Yavimaya
Hammer of Purphorous
Generator Servant
Xenagos
Domri Rade
Garrurk Wildspeaker
Sneak Attack
Quicksilver Amulet
Mage Slayer
Loxodon Warhammer
Berzerk
Fatal Frenzy
Surge of Strength
Stonewood Invocation
Seize the Day
Grafted Exoskeleton
Basilisk Collar
Kessig Wolf Run
That's 58 cards, of which 4 are lands. We are going to want more than the average number of lands for this deck. Normal land count is 37. Given that our general costs seven and our average threat costs about the same, and we are going to want significantly more land than usual. I want to try 41. That gives us 54 plus 41 = 95 out of our 99. EDH decks fill up quickly. To make room for some utility, removal, and draw effects we are going to have to make some cuts. That's a lot of dragons and they are responsible for making our curve so high. Scourge of Valkas is really color dense in the wrong color at the wrong time. I also don't anticipate having that many dragons at any given time. Preyseizer Dragon is cool, but I don't expect to have that much food for him. Dragon Mage, wheeling isn't great when you have so many high cost cards since you can likely only play 1-2 of them in a turn. Spawn of Thraxes isn't likely to get the job done as I am not a base red deck. Hellkite Igniter can be a nasty surprise, but we likely would rather be investing mana elsewhere by the time we get to that point in the game. I could be wrong and another dragon can under-perform, and Igniter is first in line as a back up. That frees up five slots. I think removing some redundancy from the pump spells also does us some good, so out come Fatal Frenzy and Basilisk Collar. That gives us 95-7=88 cards, or 11 free slots.
This number of lands wants some support in and of itself. So we go to the landfall cards to make use of the bulk of lands. While looking through the landfall cards, it strikes me that Khalni Heart Expedition is just better than Nature's Lore for us. We don't particularly care about fixing, we really just need bulk. The other landfall cards we can use are Lotus Cobra and Seer's Sundial. Other cards that support our minor lands theme are Titania, Protector of Argoth, Crucible of Worlds, and Scapeshift. Scapeshift works well in conjunction with Titania, Crucible, and the landfall cards, as does Life From The Loam. Aggressive Mining is scary since we do want our mana to stay in play, but it does offer more potential cards. I'd like to start with it but its pretty specific, so we'll wait. That's 88 + 6 = 94. The other five slots are swings, but for me I never run this sort of deck without Sylvan Library and Greater Good, 96. I want to include Chromatic Lantern for the late game since Firebreathing is so potent with double strike, 97. We haven't included really anyway to deal with permanents since removing players does such a good job of that already, but including two of the best answers will do us some good. In go Beast Within and Chaos Warp, 99.
Our lands are going to be a big weird since we need green early, and then transition into basically all red mana. I ripped the ratio straight out of R/G Titan decks of the past. So of our 41 lands, 20 should produce green, 25 should produce red and whatever is left over can be utility.
So the duels make easy includes
Wooded Foothills
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Rootbound Crag
Grove of the Burn Willows
City of Brass
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Fire-lit Thicket
Gruul Turf
Karplusion Forest
Mana Confluence
Mossfire Valley
Raging Ravine
Reflecting Pool
Temple of Abandon
This gives us 16 red and 16 green sources. Some of the mana is slow, but it gives us some great consisency. We are going to want a significant number of fetches given our Cradle, Loam, and Titania.
In go:
Teramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Going to leave it at that for now, but I can see more off-color fetches in the future.
So that's 20 of our 41. Next go in colored utility lands and basics to fill out our color requirements.
Green:
Tranquil Thicket
Mosswort Bridge
Centaur Garden
Okina
2 Forest
Red:
Flamekin Village
Spinerock Knoll
Forgotten Cave
Shinka
3 Mountains
That's 33/41
Now we put in our colorless lands
Ancient Tomb
Crystal Vein
Kessig Wolf Run
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Homeward Path
Inkmoth Nexus
Rogue's Passage
Petrified Field
That gives us an initial decklist of :
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-03-15-bHS-atarka/
This list isn't perfect but I think its a decent first draft. There's probably too many dragons and I think too many of the lands enter tapped to be as fast as I really want to be. We also don't have any tutors for consistency. That is helped by how often we want to cast our general. There are plenty of directions to go from here. If you want to go for more of a R/G Tron feel, you could add in Eldrazi, Karn, Ugin, and more colorless mana. If you wanted to shift more into a 1v1 mode you could cut a bunch of dragons, add in more haste and planeswalkers and tighten up the lands. If you like the lands theme you could switch to Borborygmos Enraged. Kidding, Atarka likely does fine in that shell since she kills so fast. My first revision would probably be to cut some dragons for answers and tutors. I don't know which dragons aren't going to work, and I don't know what answers I'll need or what cards I want to tutor for. I always start more threat dense and peel back as I find out the things that really need to be stopped.
I hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back next week with another build!
Edit:
After some conversing, there are some pretty easy switches that don't alter the direction of the deck that we can make. Even though we want to play lots of dragons, 16 dragons is a lot. So we can shave three without too much of an issue.
OUT:
Hoardsmelter Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Utvara Hellkite.
Hoardsmelter is a good man, and I debated between him and Moltensteel Dragon, but ultimately Moltensteel can swing for more damage with his Phyrexian mana firebreathing. Mordant is redundant with other dragons effects, and Utvara Hellkite just feels so win more.
What else might not work out the way we want to?
Well even with the land subtheme, 41 is quite a lot of land. I agreeded that Copperline Gorge isn't worth the trouble at this point so
OUT:
Copperline Gorge
That gives us four slots.
IN:
Urabrask, Blazing Shoal, Outpost Siege, and Gamble
Urabrask is a great haste enabler that removes a lot of tricks people can use to make blockers.
Blazing Shoal is a free spell that can instantly kill people with a 6+ pitch.
Outpost Siege gives us a free card every turn. We won't often choose the ping ability so maybe Chandra would be a better option, but Siege is harder to get rid of.
Gamble is great when in a deck with Life from the Loam. It gives us a decent tutor.
We have a new set coming out with 10 new legends. There's some good room to explore them, but I was immediately drawn to Atarka, World Render. The art of this card is so cool. She looks like a Kaiju ready to rumble. While she doesn't do anything to defend herself, she ends the game really fast. Atarka screams to be played as a giant monster deck. That gives us some pretty clear direction off the bat, tons of ramp, lots of big dragons. Red has the highest concentration of dragons so we have plenty to choose from. We certainly will have some subtlety to the deck by the end, but R/G are really good mana colors as green loves land and red loves artifact mana. My initial brush of mana ramp always includes:
-Ancient Tomb
-Sol Ring
-Mana Crypt
-Grim Monolith
-Gilded Lotus
-Thran Dynamo
-Mana Vault
-Worn Powerstone
Those are good all rounded accelerators. We might want to change things up depending on how the deck shapes up. On to the land based ramp:
-Kodama's Reach
-Cultivate
-Explosive Vegetation
-Skyshroud Claim
-Hunting Wilds
-Nature's Lore
-Sakura-Tribe Elder
That gives us a solid base of acceleration and we can alter it later as we flush out the deck. Its certainly telling us that green is going to be more important early than red mana. I also want bulk land fetch, hence the three four mana doubles that jump from 4 to 6.
An important principle in deck building is that you never want to be a worse version of something else. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is basically the same deck as what we are talking about here. How do we differentiate ourselves from the Tyrant? Well the answer lies in the mana. Since we are only two colors, that means that we can focus on colorless ramp, which makes us likely to cast our general a turn or maybe two turns before a Karrthus player would be able to cast theirs. Combine this with the fact that Atarka naturally kills in two hits instead of three and our advantage over Karrthus becomes clear. Atarka is both faster and more consistent, but we lose out on some of the powerful black cards.
What dragons mesh with the plan of lots of mana?
At a glance:
-Balefire Dragon 8
-Bogardan Hellkite 7
-Flameblast Dragon 6
-Hellkite Charger 7
-Hellkite Igniter 7
-Hellkite Tyrant 6
-Hoardsmelter Dragon 6
-Dragon Mage 7
-Knollspine Dragon 7
-Mana Charged Dragon 6
-Moltensteel Dragon 6/4
-Mordant Dragon 6
-Preyseizer Dragon 6
-Ryusei, the Falling Star 6
-Scourge of Kher Ridges 8
-Scourge of the Throne 6
-Scourge of Valkas 5
-Spawn of Thraxes 7
-Thundermaw Hellkite 5
-Tyrant's Familiar 7
- Utvara Hellkite 8
That's quite a list! We should be weighing the 6 mana dragons higher than the 7+ mana dragons since our 7 mana play is already decided, and assuming a linear mana progression, a six mana play is going to attack the turn we play Atarka. Of specific notice are Mana-Charged Dragon and Scourge of the Throne, who don't need you to pay more mana into them, but who get crazy gains from Double Strike.
Ok, so now we have a selection of crazy beaters, lots of acceleration but nothing to do between one and six mana. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is making our Dragons better since we plan on investing so much mana into them. Haste is such a good keyword for large mana creatures. As are hexproof and shroud. In goes both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. Baking haste into our mana base sounds great so in go Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village. Tapped lands slow us down a bit, but we should have the time to play these, and they speed us up by a turn, particularly Hall which is one of the best lands in the format. Fires of Yavimaya is old but gold, and its new counterpart Hammer of Purphorous gives us some amazing longevity. Generator Servant can give us some hasty beats much earlier than expected. Xenagos, God of Revels fits perfectly into the 5 slot before we cast one of our marquee dragons, and its not impossible for him to turn into a creature with the number of mana symbols that tend to be in a dragon's mana cost.
A word about planeswalkers. This seems like a deck that would want some of the walkers available to it, but really you have to judge walkers by the 1 activation rule. You have to assume that your walker only gets to activate one time. Not a lot of the walkers mesh with the deck's purpose and are useful in one activation. The ones that might be viable are Garrurk Wildspeaker, Garruk Caller of Beasts, Garruk Primal Hunter, and Domri Rade. The Garruks all have various uses from ramp to card draw and Domri functions as removal as well as potentially drawing cards. Primal Hunter is triple green, which could be annoying and one use puts him as a five mana sorcery that probably over-draws your hand. Caller of Beasts basically exists purely for his first ability, which while great isn't worth six mana. I like Domri and Wildspeaker though, so in they go. I'd be ready to cut both of them based on performance though.
We have several ways to accelerate out our dragons, but what about ways that cheat dragons into play? Especially if they get haste out of the deal. So, Sneak Attack goes in. Quicksilver Amulet is a close cousin to Sneak Attack and gets a slot as well.
Dragons don't need a lot of help to be lethal, but they also won't object to it. One of my favorite equipment for this sort of thing is Mage Slayer. You get to skip the whole blocking thing altogether! Other powerful buffs include Loxodon Warhammer, Berzerk, Fatal Frenzy, Surge of Strength, Stonewood Invocation, Seize the Day, Grafted Exoskeleton, Basilisk Collar, and Kessig Wolf Run. Each of these range from huge damage buffs to gaining useful abilities. Lifelink in particular is crazy when attached to Balefire Dragon or the like.
Lets take stock so far:
Ancient Tomb
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Mana Vault
Worn Powerstone
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Hunting Wilds
Nature's Lore
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Balefire Dragon
Bogardan Hellkite
Flameblast Dragon
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Hoardsmelter Dragon
Dragon Mage
Knollspine Dragon
Mana Charged Dragon
Moltensteel Dragon
Mordant Dragon
Preyseizer Dragon
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Thundermaw Hellkite
Tyrant's Familiar
Utvara Hellkite
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Flamekin Village
Fires of Yavimaya
Hammer of Purphorous
Generator Servant
Xenagos
Domri Rade
Garrurk Wildspeaker
Sneak Attack
Quicksilver Amulet
Mage Slayer
Loxodon Warhammer
Berzerk
Fatal Frenzy
Surge of Strength
Stonewood Invocation
Seize the Day
Grafted Exoskeleton
Basilisk Collar
Kessig Wolf Run
That's 58 cards, of which 4 are lands. We are going to want more than the average number of lands for this deck. Normal land count is 37. Given that our general costs seven and our average threat costs about the same, and we are going to want significantly more land than usual. I want to try 41. That gives us 54 plus 41 = 95 out of our 99. EDH decks fill up quickly. To make room for some utility, removal, and draw effects we are going to have to make some cuts. That's a lot of dragons and they are responsible for making our curve so high. Scourge of Valkas is really color dense in the wrong color at the wrong time. I also don't anticipate having that many dragons at any given time. Preyseizer Dragon is cool, but I don't expect to have that much food for him. Dragon Mage, wheeling isn't great when you have so many high cost cards since you can likely only play 1-2 of them in a turn. Spawn of Thraxes isn't likely to get the job done as I am not a base red deck. Hellkite Igniter can be a nasty surprise, but we likely would rather be investing mana elsewhere by the time we get to that point in the game. I could be wrong and another dragon can under-perform, and Igniter is first in line as a back up. That frees up five slots. I think removing some redundancy from the pump spells also does us some good, so out come Fatal Frenzy and Basilisk Collar. That gives us 95-7=88 cards, or 11 free slots.
This number of lands wants some support in and of itself. So we go to the landfall cards to make use of the bulk of lands. While looking through the landfall cards, it strikes me that Khalni Heart Expedition is just better than Nature's Lore for us. We don't particularly care about fixing, we really just need bulk. The other landfall cards we can use are Lotus Cobra and Seer's Sundial. Other cards that support our minor lands theme are Titania, Protector of Argoth, Crucible of Worlds, and Scapeshift. Scapeshift works well in conjunction with Titania, Crucible, and the landfall cards, as does Life From The Loam. Aggressive Mining is scary since we do want our mana to stay in play, but it does offer more potential cards. I'd like to start with it but its pretty specific, so we'll wait. That's 88 + 6 = 94. The other five slots are swings, but for me I never run this sort of deck without Sylvan Library and Greater Good, 96. I want to include Chromatic Lantern for the late game since Firebreathing is so potent with double strike, 97. We haven't included really anyway to deal with permanents since removing players does such a good job of that already, but including two of the best answers will do us some good. In go Beast Within and Chaos Warp, 99.
Our lands are going to be a big weird since we need green early, and then transition into basically all red mana. I ripped the ratio straight out of R/G Titan decks of the past. So of our 41 lands, 20 should produce green, 25 should produce red and whatever is left over can be utility.
So the duels make easy includes
Wooded Foothills
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Rootbound Crag
Grove of the Burn Willows
City of Brass
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Fire-lit Thicket
Gruul Turf
Karplusion Forest
Mana Confluence
Mossfire Valley
Raging Ravine
Reflecting Pool
Temple of Abandon
This gives us 16 red and 16 green sources. Some of the mana is slow, but it gives us some great consisency. We are going to want a significant number of fetches given our Cradle, Loam, and Titania.
In go:
Teramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Going to leave it at that for now, but I can see more off-color fetches in the future.
So that's 20 of our 41. Next go in colored utility lands and basics to fill out our color requirements.
Green:
Tranquil Thicket
Mosswort Bridge
Centaur Garden
Okina
2 Forest
Red:
Flamekin Village
Spinerock Knoll
Forgotten Cave
Shinka
3 Mountains
That's 33/41
Now we put in our colorless lands
Ancient Tomb
Crystal Vein
Kessig Wolf Run
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Homeward Path
Inkmoth Nexus
Rogue's Passage
Petrified Field
That gives us an initial decklist of :
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-03-15-bHS-atarka/
This list isn't perfect but I think its a decent first draft. There's probably too many dragons and I think too many of the lands enter tapped to be as fast as I really want to be. We also don't have any tutors for consistency. That is helped by how often we want to cast our general. There are plenty of directions to go from here. If you want to go for more of a R/G Tron feel, you could add in Eldrazi, Karn, Ugin, and more colorless mana. If you wanted to shift more into a 1v1 mode you could cut a bunch of dragons, add in more haste and planeswalkers and tighten up the lands. If you like the lands theme you could switch to Borborygmos Enraged. Kidding, Atarka likely does fine in that shell since she kills so fast. My first revision would probably be to cut some dragons for answers and tutors. I don't know which dragons aren't going to work, and I don't know what answers I'll need or what cards I want to tutor for. I always start more threat dense and peel back as I find out the things that really need to be stopped.
I hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back next week with another build!
Edit:
After some conversing, there are some pretty easy switches that don't alter the direction of the deck that we can make. Even though we want to play lots of dragons, 16 dragons is a lot. So we can shave three without too much of an issue.
OUT:
Hoardsmelter Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Utvara Hellkite.
Hoardsmelter is a good man, and I debated between him and Moltensteel Dragon, but ultimately Moltensteel can swing for more damage with his Phyrexian mana firebreathing. Mordant is redundant with other dragons effects, and Utvara Hellkite just feels so win more.
What else might not work out the way we want to?
Well even with the land subtheme, 41 is quite a lot of land. I agreeded that Copperline Gorge isn't worth the trouble at this point so
OUT:
Copperline Gorge
That gives us four slots.
IN:
Urabrask, Blazing Shoal, Outpost Siege, and Gamble
Urabrask is a great haste enabler that removes a lot of tricks people can use to make blockers.
Blazing Shoal is a free spell that can instantly kill people with a 6+ pitch.
Outpost Siege gives us a free card every turn. We won't often choose the ping ability so maybe Chandra would be a better option, but Siege is harder to get rid of.
Gamble is great when in a deck with Life from the Loam. It gives us a decent tutor.
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