materpillar wrote: ↑3 years agoI'd be very curious to know your opinions on different decks that you've played. Maybe less on the side of specific deck critiques (since many authors didn't recommend them as you stated) or other things that could be viewed negatively and more your view on things like how did the deck's play style mesh with your preferred play-style. How many games you played with it. How well did it match up against your home's metagame. Did you learn anything piloting it or were you surprised by any cool interactions you didn't think of. More that kind of stuff.
I've posted more specific criticism in those decklist threads since that seemed more appropriate. I like the idea of focusing on how the deck was received by my meta here.ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑3 years agoInteresting project. I likewise would love to hear back from you on the lists you have tested thus far. How the games went and possibly what you didn't like in the list. I guess from my own lists my suggestions would be:
Norin - almost always well received, and even when it went off and crushed people weren't particularly annoyed or upset. Overall this is probably the one I'd recommend the most.
Jaya - Also generally well-received although people often fixated on the blue hate part of her ability and she tended to die a lot more often than her actual relevance to the game would justify. Besides the commander itself, which the deck isn't very focused on, it was fun, often revolving around equipment or big mana to win.
Grenzo - Too combo-heavy for my meta, and too time-hoggy for me to feel good playing. Presumably this might become lessened with more experience but I think the nature of the commander (ability that activates EOT, random hits dramatically change the course of your turn preventing you from planning ahead) makes it difficult to avoid.
Nissa - Felt less like a control deck and more like a general ramp deck to me, my wins were largely through huge mana overruns. I did spruce it up with a gaea's cradle admittedly - smoke 'em if you got 'em. Ultimately felt a bit too strong for the people I was playing with, though it wasn't irksome in it's general strategy.
I like the idea of changeling tribal in general, although it does test the limits of my collection (I'm missing four of the changelings in your list). Philosophically, though, I'm not too much for theme - committing to a concept just for the sake of doing it. If I'm focusing on a particular synergy, I want it to do something that couldn't be done without that synergy. So for example, Thunderherd Migration is not a card I plan to run in my list (I'm also not sure I have one). Haven't decided on the tribal lands yet, since they are pretty cute and most of them have been rotting in my collection since I got them...but most likely I'll be cutting them since they don't really hold up to stronger duals.I'd also personally be very curious to know how you feel about the changeling deck from a more critical viewpoint before and after you give it a couple of games. I'm also curious to know how you're tweaking the mana base.
I will still be running a ton of tribal stuff to get maximum benefits off the changelings, though. Not sure if I'll run non-tribal cards to smooth the deck out, like ramp. But I will likely be running at least cards like sol ring - sol ring replaces a land, which doesn't detract from the tribal synergy anyway imo.
I'm pretty much building the tribal elements from the ground up to see what's available, since I've got so many I've never used. So despite stealing the idea, I'll probably actually post a decklist for this one (I haven't for the other ones since they're basically the same as the original lists with a few cards tweaked).
One thing I've toyed with is building it as Sliver Overlord with Zirda, the Dawnwaker, since Zirda precludes nearly every sliver from being run (I think there are 3, plus overlord itself, that can legally be run). Though that does dramatically cut down the number of changelings that can be run, they can all be tutored for just 1 mana each with both "commanders" on the field. My main concern is that the tutor ability would make games pretty repetitive, but on the other hand the changelings seem more like the interchangeable ammo while the tribal cards shape the direction of the game more strongly.
