ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑1 month ago
I actually still have this deck together and play it a little less frequently. My own build I would put as generally strong for non cEDH decks as far as power levels go. It does struggle having enough interaction or speed to go up against dedicated and tuned combo decks but its somewhat mean when you step it back and play against decks not on that tier. It has a hell of a lot of inevitability in the strategy and I win quite frequently when I play it. That said, I feel like I probably need to tune it up a bit I really haven't done that much tuning in part just because its power level already puts itself fairly high up among my decks. I probably have a few too many save from death effects in the list and I could use more actual card draw. Sometimes my interaction feels heavy and other times it feels non existent which probably mostly goes back to the draw thing not being that high and often relying on the question of how many times I have triggered my commander.
I haven't actually updated this list since before the last wave of vamps came out. I was briefly last week looking at ordering a copy of
Dusk Legion Sergeant and
Preacher of the Schism. I do think
Glass-Cast Heart looks fairly good too after you pointed it out but I am less keen on some of those slower and bigger token makers just given the amount of time and mana they take to get going.
This deck is usually a bit slow to get going as I probably need more card draw but the commander's effect I sort of treat like draw and it really does most of the time get me there but I often get 3v1ed with this deck because people remember dying to it and so getting going can sometimes be tough especially when you are trying to land a first clone. If you can get a clone going you are probably already sort of halfway there on killing everyone. The clones that are actual cards are a lot better than the token clones right now in my build just because of the fact that you can save them with some of the spot rez stuff. I haven't updated this list to include any of the doctor who clones though which was something I was thinking about doing.
This deck is very viable and my lack of updates has more so been because its already so solid I am hesitant to improve it all that much. I don't think it really goes cEDH but it can already be somewhat brutal for normal decks to compete against being its really a controlling deck at its core. My win condition is ultimately just generating me more and more resources to utilize and snowball with.
Hey - thanks so much for the reply. That's great to hear, that's very much where my playgroup sits, so knowing it can throw hands with the stronger side of casual is good to know! Think it's such a hard deck to evaluate on paper, that I was just never sure if it wouldn't end up working.
I ended up translating quite a lot of your list into the first iteration of mine, big fan.
I did decide on a few changes, whether they're for the better I'll have to see. Sadly I was so sure they'd ban
A-The One Ring that i never ended up picking a copy, silly me!
I included
Black Market Connections as a vamp generator, card draw engine and ramp piece and doubled down on
Panharmonicon effects with
Roaming Throne and
Molten Echoes .
Like you I'm not sure whether the list needs more card draw, Evelyn's effect is excellent for advantage but it does seem a bit light.
Considerations I had were
Kindred Discovery , which pumps the draw and has fantastic synergy with all the flickery/etb nonsense, but also doesn't include a "may" clause, which genuinely seems like it might end up killing you some games with the nature of Evelyn's mill.
Was also thinking about cards like
Fact or Fiction and
Stinging Study , just strong one-shot draw effects that are instant so can be used on other people's turns if they get Evelyn'd, or held up with interaction.
Last one was
Vampiric Rites , it's on theme, has some nice incidental life gain to offset fetches/black market and doubles as a sac outlet, but the effect is a little expensive for what it is.
The second thing I was wondering was if you feel there are enough sac outlets in the deck? There's a ton of ways to get great value from them, but I was curious if you feel like you usually had one when you needed it? I've added
Phyrexian Tower as a sac outlet that can be fetched with Map/Tolaria, and also considering
Altar of Dementia currently.
Would love to hear your thoughts from your experience on the above, really appreciate you taking the time to chat about the deck!