Feather: Instants of Arcane Control

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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 4 years ago

This is my take on a Feather, the Redeemed deck. As with most Feather decks, as well as Zada, Hedron Grinder decks, the key card for this deck setting up is the humble cantrip; Expedite for example. Drawing many cards by casting the same spell for 1 mana each turn to generate value is a powerful engine.

Feather gives all of the spells a delayed buyback 0, allowing cards such as Shelter or Blacksmith's Skill to protect key creatures each turn. Add Zada, Hedron Grinder effects to protect all creatures and multiply those draw triggers. These protection spells make Feather a very resilient deck against most non-blue forms of stack interaction. Unfortunately, until a colorshifted Suffocating Blast is printing in wr this deck will continue to lack a counterspell effect.

A common Feather build is "blink" centric, and I do include some, although their primary inclusion is to dodge removal spells while being absolutely ridiculous with the only EtB creature in my deck; Dockside Extortionist. I try to keep my decks mechanically distinct, and already have enough EtB/blink in my other decks that I'd like to skip that strategy as a focus here. This deck instead which wants to control the battlefield and combat with the use of cards such as Intimidation Bolt, Orim's Thunder and Ethereal haze. This deck can cast Path to Exile twice a turn to remove a threat, then use Mavinda, Students' Advocate and a source of tokens to ramp myself and have it back in my hand for the next turn. It can Ethereal Haze every turn by splicing on Hundred-Talon Strike for nearly free. It can target Heliod, God of the Sun with Heliod's Intervention every turn to repeatedly destroy noncreature problems.

This decks primary win conditions are either by buffing Feather and killing in combat (or a lot of combats with Zada, Hedron Grinder, Seize the Day and Show of Confidence), Alternatively, Arcbond either copied via Zada or with Martyrdom and a source of indestructible sets up a damage loop which will kill our opponents. Finally, Guttersnipe is a protect-able creature which will grind your opponent's life total down for simply conducting the deck's plan.
Decklist

Commander

Turning tokens into mana

Repeated Damage output

Tutoring wincons

Approximate Total Cost:

Items of note:
  • divergent transformations is primarily a polymorph effect for tokens, which can be removal on opponents as well.
  • arcbond with indestructible effects can heavily punish combats by your opponents. Add lifelink for massive lifegain and Zada to just end the game. If each creature has an arcbond effect and lifelink, the damage triggers will never end and you gain massive amounts of life while you opponents die. Similarly, lifelink on Guttersnipe works very well.
  • arcbond with Martyrdom on an indestructible creature ends the game as soon as damage is dealt. Redirect the damage from you to the arcbond target and put another trigger on the stack.
  • The inclusion of X spells and cost reduction effects such as Pearl Medallion more easily let key control spells such as Aurelia's Fury be cast every turn. With enough mana or cost reduction, you can lock your opponents out of casting non-creature spells every upkeep.
Last edited by Crazy Monkey 2 years ago, edited 16 times in total.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 3 years ago

changelog:
I dropped the least effective arcane spell, keeping only the most effective ones and a single enabler in Into the Fray. The ability to recur fogs with Ethereal Haze or blink an attacking creature with Otherworldly Journey adds enough value for the third enable to be workwhile.

I dropped the curve somewhat after revisting cantrip and protection options, and added more draw. Also added land tax for deck thinning and improved early game, and added Underworld Breach for better rebuilding.

Added Heliod, God of the Sun and Hero of the Nyxborn as targets for Heliod's Intervention as repeatable removal. Added Seize the Day to extend the range of voltron kills and have the potential for combats equal to my creature count with Zada, Hedron Grinder and Heliod.

Plans:
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 3 years ago

changelog:
Changes
Approximate Total Cost:

  • Amulet of VigorDockside Extortionist: I finally gave up on the dream of Path to Exile hitting a token every turn and Amulet of Vigor letting me ramp all my lands out. I didn't have any tutors for the Amulet and it didn't have any other reason for inclusion. Dockside is generically good, and in most games enables a turn 3 Feather, the Redeemed with untapped mana for protection. I'd already added more 2 CMC mana rocks that tap for colors and Dockside was the last to include. I want my list to be focused on instants, so I'm not to the point of considering more mana rocks and Unwinding Clock.
  • Backdraft HellkiteCloudshift: I wanted to add Cloudshift for dodging removal while also sending Dockside Extortionist to the moon on ramp. With the inclusion of the more cast-able Underworld Breach, Dreadhorde Arcanist and Past in Flames backup, I believe there is enough recursion for my spells. Backdraft was rarely a card that I was happy to get off of Divergent Transformations-ing my tokens. I still don't want this to be a dedicated EtB blink deck to keep it mechanically distinct, but this pulls enough double-duty that I'm willing to drop the most frequent under-performer.
  • Cloud KeyPearl Medallion: Reducing CMC and dropping a card which competes with Feather at 3 for a cost reducer that I'm more able to play early or squeeze in mid-game. This does lose effectiveness on 5 instants, most notably Fists of Flame and Psychotic Fury are now more expensive cantrips. However, reducing both Heliods, commander tax, and several other creatures likely balance out the downside. It's also 3x more likely to be in play in a given game because Cloud Key usually only came out late game, turn 6+.
I made a previous round of changes as deck edits without posting a changelog. I believe that this added Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Guttersnipe, Orim's Thunder, and Arcane Signet at a minimum.
Last edited by Crazy Monkey 3 years ago, edited 2 times in total.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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MeowZeDung
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Post by MeowZeDung » 3 years ago

It might be worth finding room for Precursor Golem. Another Radiate with legs is always nice in these kind of decks. Granted, there's risk of blowout to spot removal, but as long as you have a protection spell in hand you should be good. Even better if you ever include Twinflame or Heat Shimmer.
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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 3 years ago

I don't anticipate including Heat Shimmer and Twinflame here because I want the deck to stay distinct to my Zada, Hedron Grinder deck.

Precursor Golem is an interesting option to improve the cantrips, and make key spells harder to counter via Radiate effects. It does require additional protection to be kept up because I can't throw a spell at the golem and protect Feather, but it's an interesting option. I also like that it would allow me to use Divergent Transformations without losing the original golem. I may try dropping Gather the Townsfolk to test this.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 3 years ago

Out:

Approximate Total Cost:

Goldspan Dragon is a great mana engine in Feather decks. Dropping my last token source that ramped directly via Path to Exile after I gave up on it as a primary source of ramp.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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Rumpy5897
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

Why yes Goldspan good who knew :P

This insightful post brought to you so that the thread shows up in my means of monitoring the forum going forward.
 
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shermanido37
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Post by shermanido37 » 2 years ago

Don't forget that Arcbond also ends the game if you have Indestructible + Zada/Mirrorwing, since you have two indestructible creatures that deal damage to each other endlessly. Except that you can lose if you don't have 5 more life than your opponents at that moment.
Ways to win through this are:
- Give your creatures lifelink (which you already have)
- Give yourself pro red or pro creatures
- Martyrdom (as you obviously know)

More cards that I think Feather players should consider:
- Impact Resonance feels underrated to me. While you won't be running big creatures, your opponents surely will. So each time your opponents' Sun Titan goes into combat with ANYTHING you can deal 5 damage to any amount of creatures you want, and target one of your creatures for 1 damage so your spell will go back to your hand. A repeatable Pyrokinesis for 2 is nothing to scoff at.
- Academic Dispute: does your playgroup allow lessons in the sideboard? If they do, this feels pretty strong. Even if they don't repeatable rummage might be what you're looking for.
- Angelic Ascension: you seem to like having tokens. This card turns them into 4/4 fliers permanently. I can see this card putting some serious P/T on the table.

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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 2 years ago

The timing of this discussion is interesting, because I played the deck last week and used Arcbond, Valorous Stance, and Zada for my win. The main enabler in this case was Guttersnipe, which made sure that I had more life than my opponents. The real enabler was 2 turn cycles of Vanguard of Brimaz, followed the next turn with Phyrexian Altar and Young Pyromancer with enough protection for all of it.

The arcbond synergies described are mostly in the deck, so I'm going to focus on the option of giving myself protection from a color. This is surprisingly difficult to do, specifically because unless all my creatures are the same color, two of this effect would be needed. This is because the creatures deal the damage. Faith's Shield gets me halfway there after I nearly kill myself and get faithful hour, but that's not enough. I could run Teferi's Protection, but for better or worse it does not target, so I can't recur it. (Can you imagine Feather recurring that every turn?). Honesty, I think that I'd add Gideon's Sacrifice first as another matrydom that's slightly more on theme, although I've waffled on that idea before.

A quick aside on Zada based arcbond wins. All it takes is 1 player being unable to die (Angel's Grace) for the manditory triggers to turn the game into a draw. I'm perfectly fine with that but it should be noted.

I think that before I add Impact Resonance that I need to add some more ways to enable it. Specifically: due to my playstyle with this deck, if an opponent has a good attack towards me when I have available mana they often second-guess it. This makes it difficult to use arcbond in a defensive manner, as a board wipe in most cases. This also means that I often need to supply my own damage to trigger arcbond based wins because I am not often blocked except on critical creatures (eg. young pyromancer) if my opponents are worried about arcbond. In summary, an enabler for the deck might just be Lightning Bolt or chandra's pyrohelix. I think if I added resonance first, it would make the example situation given of an attacking 6/6 even more uncommon.

Regarding Lesson, we are not allowing lesson-boards at this time. The rummaging alone might be worth it, but I've only added those effects in my standalone Zada and not here. That could be something to test, but frankly my current cantrips outperform it by either not requiring discard or by providing extra effect; such as Shelter or Guided Strike. I do get extremely greedy with keeping cards in my hand in this deck, and somewhat often I'll spend some extra mana during my end step to have those extra cards in exile to come back after my cleanup step. Feather specifically benefits from this, because every card in hand is a repeatable piece of interaction or value. This may change once I resolve Mavinda, Students' Advocate and have easier access to those discards.

The tokens in this deck are primarily there for two reasons; filling up the battlefield and making combat difficult, but more often being sacrificial for value via Phyrexian Altar, Divergent Transformations, and Path to Exile. Angelic Ascension as a token upgrade isn't quite what I often want to do here.

This has reminded me that I didn't document the swaps made recently. I'll try to do that when I have a chance.

EDIT:
EDIT 2:
I realized that I was not certain the Mavinda, Students' Advocate's increased cost might apply to arcane spells such as Ethereal Haze before I append a target to it via splice. Based on my reading of rule 601.2b, I am nearly certain that the splice appended text must be present before the additional costs are payed and therefore the additional cost of 8 should not apply.

I wanted to note that, but it's not enough information added to be worth the double post.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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Crazy Monkey
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Posts: 571
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Location: New Mexico, US

Post by Crazy Monkey » 2 years ago

changelog
Approximate Total Cost:

Some discussion in other deck threads made me realize that including Mavinda, Students' Advocate can ley me use Pyroblast as a once per turn counter-counterspell, then recur it. I want to include this because my main issue has been countering of my win conditions on the stack.

I needed to find a cut, and dropping the two non-triggered ability token sources eventually made sense. It was similar to the cut of Amulet of Vigor representing an acceptance that setting up Path to Exile ramp every turn is difficult to assemble; specifically that most of my spells for repeatable interaction don't require sacrificial tokens. The primary intention had been to have targets for Divergent Transformations, but outside that circumstance those tokens represent a lackluster start. I may need to consider other repeated sources of tokens to enable feather recurring those spells. I might test Cemetery Protector or Clarion Spirit.

I'd missed Heliod for a source of counters and a target to Heliod's Intervention, but I was considering Hopeful Initiate as a counter and removal source. I was also looking for a way to recur creatures, and Savior of Ollenbock is likely the most efficient. I was just hoping to find an in-color Soulless Revival or something more thematically appropriate.
Commander Decks


Kemba | Kytheon | Talrand | Unesh | Teferi | Geth | primer Zada | Krenko | Torbran | Patron Orochi | Ghalta | Gargos | Medomai | The Count | Xenagos | Nikya | Jaheira, Artisan | Trostani | Athreos | Jarad | Ivy | Nin | Krark & Sakashima | Feather | Osgir | Gisela | Roon | Chulane | Sydri | Ertai | Mairsil | Vial & Malcolm | Prossh | Marath | Marisi | Syr Gwyn | Riku | Riku | Animar | Ghave | Tasigur | Muldrotha | Rayami | Zedruu | Yidris | Kynaios & Tiro | Saskia | Tymna & Kydele | Atraxa | Akiri & Silas | Sisay | Ur Dragon | Bridge | Horde | Najeela | Genju | Traxos



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