PrimevalCommander wrote: ↑2 months ago
The land base has too many tapped lands. And having several tap lands + bounce lands leads to painfully slow mana development. Look into Check Lands (cheap) like
Glacial Fortress and
Rootbound Crag, throw in the 4-6 green Triomes
Jetmir's Garden Spara's Headquarters,
Ziatora's Proving Ground ,
Ketria Triome ,
Indatha Triome ,
Zagoth Triome. Pump up your forest searchers
Skyshroud Claim,
Nature's Lore, and
Three Visits and you have Excellent fixing on a budget. The Battlebond Duals are also very useful in place of check lands depending on budget.
You might think about throwing in a couple pieces of board protection, since going wide will draw the board wipes regularly. I know you said you recover well, but why recover when you can turn your opponent's wipes into wincons with a
Clever Concealment or
Galadriel's Dismissal, maybe a
Heroic Intervention or
Flawless Maneuver or
Grand Crescendo which makes tokens!
My opinion is there are too many one-shot token makers and not enough recurring token makers. Drop some of the less efficient sorcery token makers and search for some enchantments, and other permanents that make tokens, survive creature wipes to reduce your investment on the rebuild.
Felidar Retreat,
Elspeth, Sun's Champion,
Assemble the Legion,
Scepter of Celebration maybe,
Sliver Queen is 7/7. I don't see a
Scute Swarm, arguably one of the best stand-alone token makers available today.
Avenger of Zendikar should windmill slam into this deck.
Phabine, Boss's Confidant is my commander of the Cabaretti precon and actually pulls a lot of weight with draw, token making, and haste.
What is Exanguinate and Torment of Hailfire doing for your theme? These just seem out of place when another overrun may be more on-theme and a more enjoyable finish. I know these rely on having tokens, but dropping a big drain spell seems anticlimactic in a token deck.
Akroma's Will is a good combat-based wincon.
Moonshaker Cavalry for "White-hoof".
Champion of Lambholt is cheap and effective.
On theme board wipes that are asymmetrical
Martial Coup and
Hour of Reckoning
Lastly, more card draw. perhaps some
Shamanic Revelation,
Rishkar's Expertise,
Vivien's Stampede (pump too),
Camaraderie ,
Tocasia's Welcome Bennie Bracks, Zoologist,
Welcoming Vampire,
Rumor Gatherer does well for me,
Collective Unconscious and more...
Well, that's certainly a pretty big list of stuff. First off, thank you for responding. I appreciate the time you took. As to the suggestions, yes you have touched on some things I internally debate all the time, and some I hadn't thought. As to lands, I just paid like stupid amounts of money for Jetmir's Garden for a different deck. You touched on some great suggestions I recently put into play for another deck, and you just beat me to the analysis on this deck's mana. 100% agree on the conclusions, but I need to look at the budget-budget suggestions and go from there!
I have personally wondered about sorceries versus slow payoffs like Assemble the Legion. I've seen it slowly get significant from a friend playing it, but it was painfully slow to watch even as the enemy, and if the tokens ever get large enough from that to be effective, then the game already took many turns too long. I have a Boros deck, and rather than that or
Rise of the Hobgoblins, I went with
Wildfire Awakener for the reason of pure tempo. The idea from one-shots goes something like this. I have some search to get the Cradle, and some smaller stuff to power it up quickly. From there, the x-spells drop tokens far faster in tempo than something like Elspeth or Assemble the Legion. The idea being that by the time I get a finisher in hand, I have enough critters to kill someone post-haste. Adding more draw as you suggest gets me closer to finishers and more sources of tokens. Where the debate lies is that I don't always get the Cradle or Xenagos, sweepers happen, and I don't always have normal mana. I'll think about that, but windmill slamming Avenger, plus probably also
Verdant Force makes sense, as does Ezuri's Predation to kill and create all at one time. I do like critters being sources of tokens because then I have beefy bodies to anchor the token hordes. And yeah, I haven't adjusted this deck in a while other than adding more critters that create tokens. The x-spells like Torment of Hailfire are solely in there to take full-advantage of the Cradle, but they aren't demanded to remain by any means, I get where you're coming from there. Those slots can easily go toward some of these improvements.
And, as an aside, I own a Scute Swarm, and my friend's son uses it in his land matters Azusa deck. He has to break out a dry erase board or calculator every game. Neat kid, annoying deck..lol. Yeah, it will go in, as well. I cede the point on that one.
As another aside, great call on Martial Coup, I recently added that into my Dune-themed edh. I had a thought of adding that recently, myself, into this one. Never seen the
Hour of Reckoning, but my friends will rue the day you pointed it out to me.
I quite like the Dryad and Wanderglyph. I also like Elesh Norn, as the critter kills and boosts all at once. Maybe I'll take all three. Heh... Also, the Cryptolith Rite and Song make for much-needed additional mana backup plans that quite increase my ability to "go off" with x-token effects or getting bigger creatures like the Avenger or Craterhoof or "white-hoof" noted above. That's actually why I added
Wildfire Awakener, his convoke lets me cheat the lack of a Cradle to double the tokens, which is just silly. So, these are all bombad suggestions. Both you and Primeval Commander rocked the feedback. Salute!
