DirkGently wrote: ↑1 year ago
When I said that my build was more focused than yours, I meant that my build is designed more towards establishing corpse dance loops in particular - mainly insofar as having a ton of tutors to find it, plus a good sac outlet (usually one of the lands). Yours might have a few more counterspells than mine, which is fair enough (the meta has certainly changed a lot since I built mine in 2011 or so) but there's a lot of cards that I think are either inefficient or that I don't see a strong purpose for in the deck. In particular:
-I would cut every creature from the deck except nimble obstructionist (maaaaybe kefnet but he's really slow). A lot of them die to CoA and none of them are very good imo. If you want to use the monarch for card draw, I'd use
Fall from Favor and
Court of Cunning, as they're the two cheapest, and the shape of the thing that gives you monarch is irrelevant. If you're worried about consult oracle wins and need to keep mana up, running a 6-drop that does almost the same thing as a 3-drop seems like a mistake.
-Not sure what
Planar Chaos does here.
-
Teferi's Response seems excessively niche.
-what is
Read the Runes doing?
-I don't like
Red Elemental Blast but I can understand it, especially within cEDH.
Blue Elemental Blast I can't understand. Seems like a frequently dead card, and even more frequently unimportant, since the commander invalidates a ton of spells.
-I think you're running way too many single-use sac outlets. Just run
Sylvan Scrying for
Phyrexian Tower instead of
Village Rites,
A Little Chat,
Greater Good, etc. Kinda surprised you're not running it already since it also tutors for your wincon.
Wargate is another good one that often goes missed among land tutors.
-
Green Sun's Zenith doesn't really search for anything good. needs more
Vampiric Tutor,
Mystical Tutor,
Grim Tutor, etc.
-has your group house-ruled
Nearby Planet?
-
Restore seems like a way better version of
Cavalier of Thorns that can actually ramp you. cavalier is one-use anyway. Alternately,
Life from the Loam is the multi-use version that doesn't ramp.
Mine is still untested so I can't really stand behind it much and I don't normally play with alt wincons but I have to play against them quite frequently so lets walk through some of my thoughts:
Corpse Dance - it does seem good but given the power level of the decks I plan to play against there is a lot more liability in putting my commander in the graveyard as resolving Corpse Dance is going to be harder. I could back it up with my own counter magic but if I am being honest..... I don't expect to back up my own plays with counter magic so much as make myself not lose with them. Its risky to put the commander to grave at all which is part of why I cut my grave recursion package back. Since you played commanders can also die and then go to command zone so being that I am a ramp focused deck I plan to most of the time not put child in the bin. I have like..... two rez effects in my list offhand because how you have to play child has changed with the fact that you can put your commander from grave to command zone on death and pair that with the plan to play this against a bunch of combo decks I didn't really want to go deep on the dance or other recursion because it can be a liability. I wanted to at least put some of the better ones in to try it out but until I get to test things I am a little concerned with counter magic on a go to bin situation.
Creatures - I like the gods because they are cheap, mana sinks, and don't die to CoA's death. They increase the complexity it takes to attack me and give me a bit more threat to my board for relatively cheap. I also felt like
Baldur's Gate paired decently with both of the gods as mana sinks. Uro is mostly just better than
Savor the Moment which is also in my list so I don't plan to cut him before Savor goes which I don't really see a need to cut. Shefet Monitor is instant speed gate ramp with card advantage attached so I like it given a lot of my deck plays draw / go control.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite cuts a lot of utility and combo pieces off which I like. Its true it might be a little redundant with CoA as my commander but it also makes it impossible to go infinite with a bunch of things like aristocrats and a number of spellslinger payoffs. Its possible that Elesh is redundant with CoA as my commander but I liked how many things it solves enough that I thought I would try it out. I am not against cutting it but I thought I would see how it plays first.
Cavalier of Thorns /
Ulvenwald Hydra You could be correct they aren't a ton of value but I felt they were ok on defense and they gave me some value. I am likely to keep
Cavalier of Thorns at least for now because its my only
Regrowth effect in the deck for if someone hits me with a
Strip Mine. I like that it has more roles for the deck than a simple
Regrowth /
Eternal Witness and honestly I feel like people forget about its on death trigger to do the recovery which is part of why it made the list for me. Ulvenwald is just big defensive dude that gets me a land but I probably don't need that for this list. I could see cutting him.
Archon of Coronation /
Protector of the Crown - I like that they also defend monarch which makes it awkward to take it from me with CoA as a commander. You are correct that I could get monarch for cheaper and I might consider that as an option too. I will admit I am fond of these two cards with monarch and monarch seems like something Child would do well with given that she can't blow it up and it will keep paying off for me. I could also go for a third monarch card as just two sources is a bit light as a whole. I will try to give my monarch selection some more consideration but I am not convinced that just going as cheap as possible is always the best option. Casting these cards on curve likely will make it hard to hold monarch if you were to spin it up on three mana.
Planar Chaos - This card slows games down. People still cast things but it puts a lot of risk on playing anything too important and some infinite combos literally can't be cast into it. Its a stalling measure that plays the best for the person who just wants to play their lands and pass. I haven't played it in some time but it can be very chaotic to play into it and it usually hurts the player who played it the least as you do it as the last thing in your turn. I can't really stand behind my choice in including it but it can be a little like
Standstill in that it makes it awkward to play spells right afterwards without the whole paying off the other players part. Its possible I could go instead with something like
Rule of Law though also as disruption given how this deck plays but I like how the Planar Chaos feels strong and temporary where as
Rule of Law feels like a slow down that will just get swept in the inevitable CoA death. Planar Chaos felt stronger stall / hate card even if its meant to self destruct on itself.
Teferi's Response - Yea it is. My wincons are also lands though. It probably is too niche but I think the card is sweet and amazing and I have always wanted a reason to include it. Is it optimal? Probably not. Is it sweet and I have always wanted to gotcha someone? Hell yes. It maybe shouldn't make the list but I think I will at least let it ride until I see it in a game. Its weakness is if opponents just go for a racing strat rather than try to stop you.
Read the Runes - lol ghetto sac outlet filter effect. I came across it recently for another deck and I want to test it out a bit. I think it has some flexability in what it does but I think as a 2-4 mana sac and filter its not terrible. I like how later in the game you can spin it up at a higher count and do some bigger filtering but even early on it can help fix your hand to find land drops. I think it has more versatility than people give credit for in decks where sacrificing and ramping are both happening.
Red Elemental Blast /
Blue Elemental Blast - They can both destroy CoA in a pinch as a weird sac outlet sort of thing. You wouldn't believe the amount of red combo I have been seeing lately mostly due to
Dockside Extortionist and people copying the absolute crap out of him. I have also been seeing a lot of
Dualcaster Mage copy spell combos for some reason. The amount of red combo is a lot higher than I really expected and these can also serve as CoA sac effects in a pinch. I thought it was cute enough that I wanted to include them. It is true that CoA can destroy and stop a lot of these but I have lost games very quickly to some of these combo decks meaning that I can't just rely on getting child out and having the sac for it.
Sac Outlets - There is a downside in the tutor for sac lands though too. Look at my lands.... a lot of them are a little weird. My fixing might not be perfect every game and tutoring a colorless land on top of my lands being a bunch of weird non deterministic stuff might backfire on me. It is possible that some of my sac effects could turn into land searches I want to try a few things out and see how they feel first though. Lots of the games I have had in the combo based metas I am thinking of can end very very quickly. I think the fastest I had was someone killing me on T3 with
Thassa's Oracle and when you add in having weird lands that start coming in tapped and needing to fix adding colorless sac outlet plays in while I think its right to run them can get really hard. I do expect that I will need to adjust my sac effects but I really want to see the deck in action and feel how things feel before I pivot and decide where I am going with it.
Wargate is a good suggestion though I will keep that in mind. My only concern I guess is getting all three colors on curve could be a pain given that I do assume I will have some pain in my landbase.
GSZ / Vamp Tutor / Mystical Tutor - I have a suspicion that I don't have enough card draw to offset for card disadvantage tutors right now. Most of my deck is single target answers and I don't actually draw that much. GSZ might need to go but I am not convinced that I can support the other card disadvantage tutors nor am I sure that they would really help offhand. Maybe tutoring for card advantage makes sense? I don't know.
Nearby Planet - Is there something that makes this card not work that I am unaware of? It is black boardered. Am I missing something? I thought they made this set to be commander legal.
EDIT: wow....... really acorn stickers for legality. Why......... why would they make this system? Good lord Wizards just make cards legal or illegal don't do weird stamping bull crap. Also why make illegal commons. I just don't see why the hell they do this crap. My dislike for this product just grew which is impressive as I already disliked it quite a lot.
Restore - Its better if putting a land back to play was the only thing I was going for. I am running 4 fetches which is why I avoided
Sun Titan /
Life from the Loam kind of things. I just don't have enough lands going to graveyard on my own to feel like I can proactively play on lands so it feels like regrowth effects are really going to sit in my hand waiting which is part of why I passed on them. I included
Green Sun's Zenith in part because I was using
Cavalier of Thorns as one of my only recovery tools.
I suspect that there is a lot to what you are saying and I think you probably are right on some of the creatures / tutors / sac outlet stuff but some of it I also want to get a baseline before jumping around.
