I am going to start off with saying a few things. I posted the list up at the end of last week and essentially from the point that I posted the list I already knew I needed to make some adjustments. My bigges worry and issue with +/+ counters tends to be the complexity of the setup vs the payoff. Its really fun the theorycraft these crazy huge plays with
Doubling Season but my issue is that a lot of times they involve too many cards, are too hard to setup, and get just slammed by sweepers.
Then we add in partners, its a cool mechanic yea but I have often viewed it as also a slow value added (you get an extra body) at the cost of tempo (most of them aren't amazing for their mana and recasting two commanders after being swept tends to be slow).
So.... we are adding two concepts that have issues with being swept together. I think it is a little bit unavoidable that this concept is going to have some issues with being swept. Due to this I have been looking real hard at how much each card does on its own and how viable they seem to be on their own or with very little assistance. Right now, I am looking at two commanders in play, a sac outlet, and some means of getting a bunch of counters. This is already very steep on requirements to get this stuff working. I did look at the whole
Doubling Season and friends and I see that there are clearly like 4-5 of them I am not running. I ended up adding
The Ozolith given its cost to cast as well as storing counters post wrath. Its not as good at rolling counters up on one target but I think I am willing to try it for now.
So, I looked at my list, the responses, and made a bunch of changes. Lets get to suggestions for now.
Indestructible Creatures - I considered it as well. In the end I decided not to do it for a few reasons though but the primary reason was that most of the creature options were terrible. Beyond that though, I think the diversity of sweepers has gone up a lot and indestructible isn't what it used to be. I see far more
Cyclonic Rifts than any other sweeper for whatever reason. Beyond this though I did go into several sac outlet creatures that
regenerate or go
indestructible and I felt like they were a better compromise than adding questionable creatures to the list for the sake of post sweeper recovery when I don't actually see that many traditional
Wrath of God effects in my meta.
Soulflayer - That is amusing but I think that probably still isn't that impressive. It doesn't inherit mennace and I just don't think the card is really impressive. A 4/4 for 6 that inherits trample and first strike isn't going to cut it.
Rishkar, Peema Renegade - Its a cool effect but I felt that it got back to a go wide token approach which is part of what I was trying to avoid. The value added of adding a single counter as creatures enter felt like it wouldn't add up enough with how I was hoping for this list to work primarily. I still have three token producers in the list but I felt that each of those three had fairly good standalone use and positive synergy with the commanders without much additional work. For a card like this to work well I would need to go a lot wider than I am currently and probably look into the
Doubling Season concept as well which I scratched due to complexity of setup.
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Yea that could work, but I scratched the
Doubling Seasons off. I think its a reasonable card but given that I have a good landbase and am not running Doubling Season effects I would prefer to run other ramp.
98 cards - I got lazy on the lands. I intended to have 38 and only had 36 at the time. I filled with two more basics for now but I might have some adjustments to the land in the future. I am not sold on the utility lands that I have are correct but I just tried getting set up with what made sense. I included
Hanweir Battlements for instance and I don't know if that really makes sense as I think about it more. This list is going to have enough complexity to set up that giving haste likely seems less useful than maybe having
Kessig Wolf Run. I always fight a bit with the lands / utility lands when it comes to three color decks especially having commanders that curve in so early can make my color mana demands a lot higher. I will mess with things later likely but giving my landbase another look over is on my list of things that I probably need to do.
Stapler wrote: ↑3 years ago
darrenhabib wrote: ↑3 years ago
It looks like the deck is only 98 cards at the moment.
Look pal, Rograkh may be smol, but you don't gotta disrespect him by not counting him as part of the 100!
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Corpsejack Menace seems like a oversight to not include - for one more mana than
Branching Evolution you get a 4/4 body that can also be much more easily tutored for and recurred.
Speaking of that, and building on what darren said, my favourite thing to do with Reyhan is to use counter doublers to bounce around counters from creature to creature using sac outlets to make a giant monster, and your deck already has enough sac outlets to make than plan viable, so including more cheap creatures that help the deck out on a separate axis while also enabling that gameplan seems ideal.
Birds of Paradise having flying might let you sneak a kill off on someone not expecting the jund deck to come at them with a flier, and
Loam Dryad and
Saruli Caretaker take advantage of Rograkh costing 0 to make their drawback more negligible while being better manafixers than
Llanowar Elves. With a 3-drop commander and multiple creatures that get stronger the earlier they're played (
Managorger Hydra,
Taurean Mauler,
Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin) playing as many good 1-mana dorks you can get your hands on is probably a good plan.
Deathrite Shaman too I suppose.
Dreadhorde Butcher gets counters, is another outlet for counters from Reyhan, and is both removal and a way to end the game outside of combat.
Flesh // Blood is a little more of the same.
Evolutionary Escalation with a 0 mana commander means you can start growing right away, and you should be able to use the counters better than most opponents with Reyhan as your commander.
EDIT: Oh, to add on to darren's point about indestructible creatures, another decent one is
Underrealm Lich: card filters, fills the graveyard for
Living Death and such, and a good target for +1 counters. Also randomly stops you from getting milled out I guess.
With a 0 mana commander AND having 2 commanders, all the cards that care about having commanders are really powerful. If you do move into a more token route,
Loyal Apprentice can start making evasive tokens on turn 2, and
Loyal Guardian pumps up those tokens (and itself, and your 2 commanders) with counters Reyhan can move around.
Myth Unbound makes recasting Rograkh ridiculously cheap and you get to draw cards off of him dying to boot, and considering how much stronger your deck is with Reyhan in play, making her cost less when she dies less would be ideal.
Genesis Storm cheats 3 random nonland permanents into play for 6 mana just for casting your commanders on curve and gets better once you start recasting Rograkh on the cheap. The fact that Rograkh costs 0 and is such a non-threat on its own means that all the various other cards that care about controlling commanders (
Thunderfoot Baloth,
Tyrant's Familiar etc.) are a lot more reliably good because no one is going to spend premium removal just to get your 0-drop off the table to turn those cards off, though you likely don't have room for most of them with how dedicated you are to the +1 counter theme.
Corpsejack Menace - I get the idea and hopes of this card. I am not saying it can't or won't work but
Doubling Season effects add a lot more overhead to this list. It isn't as if just getting a doubler in play suddenly makes this concept work. Most of the ideas involving a token doubler need:
- Both commanders as Reyhan lacks evasion. Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh needs haste or to have been played before.
- A repeatable free sac outlet
- A Doubling Season effect
- Multiple bodies to sac probably token based
- Some counters on some creature to get things started
That is a hell of a list of needs to make a doubling season effect work. I opted to not go into this and due to it, I think that the sac outlet can be simplified to a land that can sac which makes it more robust. The two commanders, and a single source of tokens on a body. It is true that I won't be as explosive but I have simplified the complexity of it a lot meaning even though I maybe get swept I won't have as much time to set up nor will my board require as many cards to get setup which ties into less card disadvantage.
Cheap Drops - it sort of goes back to me going away from
Doubling Season rather than towards it. I think it is possible to try to curve in and get setup and not disrupted but I instead am aiming more to simplify my board rather than see how wide I can make it.
Dreadhorde Butcher - I had it in my list of potentials but I ended up cutting it as I viewed it as something that felt like I needed to build towards
Doubling Season tactics to make it work. I felt like it wasn't going to really carry its own weight more often than not and if it worked it was probably more so that the deck worked than the butcher doing impressive things.
Evolutionary Escalation - I think that is the type of card that probably gets less impressive the later you draw it. I don't really expect this deck to be super fast so I will probably pass. I tend to like to see cards retain their value when drawn later or even get stronger rather than getting weaker when not playing a fast deck that is going to close things out quickly. I think this deck when it gets good draws could get some fast kills but the likelihood of going through everyone at a table quickly doesn't seem that likely.
Underrealm Lich - Its a reasonable creature. If I was going a lot deeper on reanimation it might be something I would like more. I actually did look into a number of recursion ideas and concepts but in the end I just didn't feel like that many of them other than Living Death made sense. I think I would need to bring up my mass recursion plan more as a first before I could really delve into if I want the Litch or not. Its not a bad card but I think it can be a bit slow to perform in my experience. I usually want to have a lot more graveyard interaction before I would entertain the idea.
Loyal Apprentice /
Loyal Guardian - It gets back into the going wide
Doubling Season tactics which I decided to go away from.
Myth Unbound - Part of my issue is that this card doesn't do much immediately. Its like, if it sticks around ok value. I have never opted to run the card before though to be honest. If you have it in your opening hand though I just don't see it doing that much. Maybe you then have incentive to turn Reyhan over for counters.... it seems not really like something I am that interested in. Why not just ramp or draw cards instead?
Genesis Storm - Hummmm maybe. That is an interesting thought given how most of my permanents could just be thrown into play at whatever time. It might also get towards me questioning if I shouldn't be also or instead running
Lurking Predators which can have a similar idea. Food for thought. I don't know for sure either way but I will keep it in mind.
Thunderfoot Baloth /
Tyrant's Familiar - I get what you are saying with these cards its more of just how much they cost and my reluctance to run a bunch of six or more mana cards. I think partners does play towards their strength but I also think that the bar is fairly high for any six plus drop these days. Thunderfoot might be good if I was going wide but with having sort of abandoned that it makes less sense. The dragon is cool but I think there is so much competition for big expensive removal creatures these days that I don't really see this one standing out that much for me.
I am actually cutting back and or away from
Doubling Season effects. That said it only costing one mana I think it will probably make my list for now at least. It has the downside that you can't repeatedly move counters in one turn to turn them from a few to massive but with not focusing much on going wide it probably makes a bit more sense for me.
Ok, now that I have typed up quite the list of responses lets get into deck changes.
DECK CHANGES:
- Bloodghast → Scute Mob I was originally trying to push for a little more value from sac outlets with some recurrable creatures. I think I am cutting some more of my sac outlets as well as the value from them. I think Scute Mob getting 4 counters a turn for one mana is a decent return on investment and as I go a bit deeper on some of the Greater Good tactics I think its something I am ok with booting to a sac for some cards after very little time in play. 4-8 counters is in my mind a plenty good enough return from this card given its low mana to cast.
- Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager → Polukranos, Unchained I originally thought that Grakmaw was going to get counters more often than it actually will. I didn't read the card close enough is all. Polukranos can serve as some control but I also think that six counters for four mana is reasonable especially given it can be recast from graveyard later. Its a good mix of what I would like access to I think.
- Pir, Imaginative Rascal → Rakdos Charm after having posted the list I realized that Hardened Scale effects are definitely not good enough. I like the flexible options of Rakdos Charm and thought I could use a little more grave hate.
- Woe Strider → Life's Legacy This retains the sac outlets sort of but I think sacing a big creature with counters and drawing a bunch of cards sounds kind of great. It does move me a bit more towards maybe being a deck with some tempo so I might need to adjust some cards to allow for more ramp.
- Kresh the Bloodbraided → Nightshade Harvester I felt like Kresh was probably towards the idea of a go wide Doubling Season idea. Nightshade Harvester should get fairly good sized on its own and while its probably a little weaker than Taurean Mauler as far as getting counters I think its still probably good enough that I want to try it out.
- Embercleave → Chaos Warp I still kind of love Embercleave but realistically..... it doesn't do much unless my commanders are already doing their thing and while it makes it easier, I would rather simplify the list by removing it. I needed a bit more spot removal so I think this is a swap I am good with.
- Hardened Scales → The Ozolith I realized that Hardened Scale effects weren't really going to work with this concept. I did overlook The Ozolith originally so I guess we can give that a shot and see if it helps.
- Wake the Dead → Azusa, Lost but Seeking Originally speaking I was thinking of having more creatures with death triggers and or counters on them by default. I ended up moving more towards things that build counters over time and it started looking like the percentage of good hits with Wake the Dead was becoming a little spotty. I have been adding a bit more for good draw so it felt like making some tempo ramp would pay off with some of those adjustments.
- Inspiring Call → Exploration I gave it more thought and while I think Inspiring Call is a cool card, its not good protection or good draw. Lets just shift instead to have some tempo ramp.
- Branching Evolution → Momentous Fall going away from doubling effects. Momentous Fall is kind of expensive to cast which is my only real hang up with it but other than that, I think the effect is desirable. I guess we can see how it goes for now.
So, the big push with these changes was to:
1) Simplify the complexity of my setup
2) Add more draw
3) Tempo ramp better
Zacama
