yeti1069 wrote: ↑1 week ago
Knollspine Dragon requires some setup, with "some" being: "hit someone, then have 7 mana to spend"
Garruk's Uprising is almost an auto-include in green decks running a fair number of 4+ power creatures. Giving your big boys trample is also going to be very relevant.
It's not ramp or draw, but
Nature's Will is an infinite combo with Aggravated Assault, provides the equivalent of a Seedborn Muse effect, but on your turn (can be abused if you have any flash or activated abilities to use between triggers from hitting multiple opponents), and locks down resources for big post-combat plays (if any).
Jeska's Will is going to be decent as both psuedo-ramp and psuedo-draw, and with how difficult it is to remove your commander, you should basically always be getting both modes, unless you're just using it as a ritual early.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma ramps out almost every creature in the deck, adds trample and a further buff on attacks.
Ohran Frostfang turns all of your creatures into Oakhame Adversary.
Cathartic Reunion doesn't look great when you don't have chaff creatures to pitch later, and generally want to be making land drops always to power out your top end.
Depending on how often you have 3+ creatures out, extra combats are probably better than damage doublers/triplers here. You already have a few creatures that do that. I don't that running 3 damage enhancers fits with your goals of having cards stand on their own. For example, one of those doublers could be
Angrath's Marauders or
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus.
Cultivator Colossus is high on the curve (so a little late for ramp), but seems like a good fit here.
Garruk's Uprising - so the probelm with cards like that is the most likely *ceiling* is worse than
Harmonize and the floor is
Circle of Protection: Shadow. Most of my creatures have evasion already and like 50% have trample.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma seems reasonable since he attacks for 9 trampling on his own and also ramps; might try that.
Jeska's Will - seems really good, I was concerned about the fact that I don't really have that many red cards I want to power out before Xenagos, so on curve it doesn't really work well--it's a virtual 4 drop, since I'd need a green for it to power out most things. But maybe it's just good enough to try. The thing I don't like about it as compared to something like
Harmonize is that I don't get to keep the cards forever and if they aren't read I can't cast them now. But...it is a very solid topdeck. I'll see if I have a spare one I can jam to try out.
Cathartic Reunion -- you would be really amazed how often this and
Faithless Looting are just absolute gold. This deck really needs glue that helps it hit land drops that is also good at finding wincons in the end game. That said, it is very possible that reunion would be better as something that is card positive, I am just not exactly sure what it is. We *really* want some 2 and 3 cmc draw spells that see enough cards to hit land drops or fix, because there are only so many copies of
Cultivate we can run.
The kinda awkward part about my deck design here is that, because I am not playing very many enabling creatures, the deck doesn't really work with stuff like
Oath of Nissa -- I have a ton of instants and sorceries and enchantments that I want really badly, and the red dig cards get to them.
Ohran Frostfang is one I thought about, but here's the issue with it: it costs 5 mana, and the floor is dies immediately to removal. As a post-sweeper topdeck, it domes someone for 8 and draws a card, which is..fine, but significantly worse than something like
Vorinclex // The Grand Evolution. The typical number of creatures I have on the board when everyone is dead is like...3. So anything that depends on other creatures on the board is really suspect.
The mantra of card draw in this build is:
Give me cards in my pre-combat mainphase so I can obliterate someone with them (or to a lesser extent on combat damage so next turn everyone dies, or i hit an extra combat step effect).
re: extra combats
I 100% agree the damage doublers are probably worse than extra combats; I will likely add any extra combats I can get on permanents. The nicest part about
City on Fire is you can hit it off
Genesis Wave but you can't hit
Seize the Day. I think the
Godo, Bandit Warlord package with
Embercleave is one of the best I didn't add...that's nuts.
The only spell based extra combat I kept is
Savage Beating because the power is so high in one card --
Savage Beating with a single 6/6 winds up doing something like 72 damage ( (6+6) * 2 + (12+12)*2), or 24+48 I wanna say
so usally killing two people.
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus seems potentially pretty good. A problem it suffers from is not having evasion on its own though. Need to noodle on that.
Angrath's Marauders is *strong* but double is a lot less than triple. Maybe replaces
Gratuitous Violence? But GV costs 5, so worth considering the difference. will think bout that.
Cultivator Colossus is one worth thinking on; it rates to be a 10/10 trampler or so, which is a lot of pressure, and it *could* draw a bunch of cards. The problem with it is it's a horrible topdeck, and mostly only good when I have a few lands in hand to draw cards off of. And nothing in the deck puts lands in hand at a reasonable rate. Where is my red old gnawbone that exiles X cards from your deck or something and lets you play them til next turn
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Very much appreciate the thoughts. If you have good ideas on cheap draw effects early in the game or fatties that draw tons of cards, I'm all ears, those are the two biggest gaps I think.
The damage *triplers* are something really worth thinking on in any build I think; exponents are nuts. A 6/6 with
City on Fire hits for 36. That's bananas.
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I just want to reiterate the fundamental philosophy of this deck because it's starting to become more coherent to me:
Ramp hard, cast Xenagos, apply pressure, topdeck extremely well and almost always apply renewed pressure in response to removal
The ramp package is probably the weakest link in the topdeck olympics, and some of the lands could maybe be better topdecks?
I feel like this deck doesn't have the slots for an
Exploration based ramp package, though, so the slot parsimony of stuff like
Escape to the Wilds and
Cultivate that generate both card advantage and ramp are very nice (even
Explore which generates velocity if not card advantage).
It might be nice to explore (haha) ways to generate velocity/card advantage and ramp on the same cards.
It's also pretty powerful for the domes because the cmc's are high and there're damage doublers. But it's probably magical christmas land for the most part 
