Bruna, the Fading Light - Mono-W Moat Control

[ISBPathfinder]

Thoughts on Shatter the Sky? I like it, personally. Could have a place for me here above one of my other wipes, Rout maybe?

I just don't see it as really standing out. I would rather have so many other wraths over a draw one effect. Its rare that the efficiency between a 4 and 5 mana wrath really stands out in this format. I would rather have versatility over a draw one effect that might get shared out. If there is a reason to run this wrath, it would in my mind be because what you need is to wrath the board by four mana not because it maybe draws one card.

In the scope of when I would play this card in mono white, I would say it would be around the 10th wrath included or later unless again you see yourself needing to wrath the board on turn 4 or sooner. In my mind, Rout is like, instead of losing the game, you don't or possibly staple "take an extra turn" onto the end of a wrath of god effect because I rarely ever cast it on my turn. Sure, it costs 7 to do that but you can still cast it as a 5 mana wrath if you need. Being the first one back on your feet post wrath is a big deal and you can wait to see where threats are going before you commit to your wrath. Sometimes you can get someone to commit to answering some of your board in order to attack you and as they attack into you pop that wrath which has then committed their answers, mana, and board to the wrath. Thats worth a lot more than drawing one card and probably giving others the same.

[toctheyounger]

That's a pretty reasonable take on the card. I guess it's that the upside of Shatter the Sky is a much lower ceiling than that of something like Rout which has a huge upside if needed.

[Sinis]

I think Heliod's Intervention is the only card worth talking about playing. I will probably run it because my environment has a few aggro strategies, and the lifegain could be relevant, but the other mode is basically Crush Contraband or Return to Dust the vast majority of the time (again, in my environment).

Shadowspear I'm not too keen on. Indestructible is circumvented by exile-removal or irrelevance in combat. Hexproof I'm not really that worried about, but if we needed it, we had access to Arcane Lighthouse this entire time (also, spear doesn't beat Greaves, which I find is played more commonly than Swiftfoot Boots).

I think Shatter the Sky is total garbage. I would not want to give away draws. I think, also, we're at saturation for wraths-with-relevant-abilities in white. There are instant wraths, and exile wraths, tuck wraths, non-white wraths, modal wraths, all-but-one wraths, a pitch wrath, a wrath that make a lots of little tokens, a wrath that make one big token, an adventure wrath, a wrath for nontokens, while-attacking wraths, tribal wrath, only tapped creatures wraths, destroy all big creatures wraths, all-but-legends wrath, and all-but-enchanted creatures wrath...

Cantrip wrath? It kind of pales compared to the other options, and sheer variety we could be playing with. There are so many variants of Wrath of God that, I think, Shatter the Sky could be relegated to non-consideration. Surely there is *some* wrath worthy of consideration whose asymmetry would be worth more than symmetric maybe-draw.

[toctheyounger]

I think Heliod's Intervention is the only card worth talking about playing. I will probably run it because my environment has a few aggro strategies, and the lifegain could be relevant, but the other mode is basically Crush Contraband or Return to Dust the vast majority of the time (again, in my environment).

Personally, I'm fairly hesitant myself. It's ok, but nothing stellar. Maybe it's the decks I come up against, but I generally find myself needing one or two artifacts/enchantments gone at any given time, and no more. Perhaps that's the control in me too; I prefer leaving enough restriction on the board so that I can still play my game but others feel the pinch, if that's at all possible. At any rate, I just don't generally see that depth of targets for an spell of this sort. I could be wrong, so I think what I'll do is over the next few games keep an eye as to when my Return to Dust et al drop, and assess whether Intervention could have left me in a more favourable position.

Part of what makes me really hesitant about it, too, is how entirely redundant that second mode is likely to be. Unless I'm playing against Heartless Hidetsugu or similar, the amount of life gain already present in the deck renders it entirely redundant, except maybe for incidental lifegain triggers such as Archangel of Thune and Resplendent Angel, but that's not exactly crucial.

Shadowspear I'm not too keen on. Indestructible is circumvented by exile-removal or irrelevance in combat. Hexproof I'm not really that worried about, but if we needed it, we had access to Arcane Lighthouse this entire time (also, spear doesn't beat Greaves, which I find is played more commonly than Swiftfoot Boots).

I'm in agreement here. Bruna flies, as does most of the creatures we'll be attacking with, so trample achieves little. Removal of protection is ok, but probably more relevant in a deck with a LOT of target spells, and we don't have that. Not only that, those keywords don't protect against the bevy of mass creature destruction most of our iterations of this commander run. I guess if you were in a meta with things like Uril, the Miststalker and Narset, Enlightened Master you'd maybe consider it, but yes, Arcane Lighthouse and such probably occupy a better space for this build.

I think Shatter the Sky is total garbage. I would not want to give away draws. I think, also, we're at saturation for wraths-with-relevant-abilities in white. There are instant wraths, and exile wraths, tuck wraths, non-white wraths, modal wraths, all-but-one wraths, a pitch wrath, a wrath that make a lots of little tokens, a wrath that make one big token, an adventure wrath, a wrath for nontokens, while-attacking wraths, tribal wrath, only tapped creatures wraths, destroy all big creatures wraths, all-but-legends wrath, and all-but-enchanted creatures wrath...

Cantrip wrath? It kind of pales compared to the other options, and sheer variety we could be playing with. There are so many variants of Wrath of God that, I think, Shatter the Sky could be relegated to non-consideration. Surely there is *some* wrath worthy of consideration whose asymmetry would be worth more than symmetric maybe-draw.

Yeah, this seems like the dev team trying to push the boundaries for white while still going for a tried and tested mono-white trope. On another glance, potentially global draw isn't something I'm interested overly in, even if I can take advantage. There's mostly no way it's going to get me ahead in the long run, especially not over and above anything else we're currently running for wipes, so a definite no here. Ultimately if I want draw I have Akroma's Vengeance and there's enough other modes of wipe that leave us in a far more favourable position than Shatter the Sky does.

[ISBPathfinder]

Heliod's Intervention - Often one or two things NEED to die but if I could hit things beyond that I would pick up things like mana rocks and value generators. I agree that in a lot of cases you don't NEED to answer 4+ things at once because at that point you probably needed this effect like two to three turns ago but its nice to put opponents behind further. This isn't exactly the sort of deck where I love this effect though, I tend to like it more for a draw go control deck or a deck that values its artifacts / enchantments but needs removal still. I think this card looks really good and my Bruna deck is like, the place I am least excited for it.

[toctheyounger]

Heliod's Intervention - Often one or two things NEED to die but if I could hit things beyond that I would pick up things like mana rocks and value generators. I agree that in a lot of cases you don't NEED to answer 4+ things at once because at that point you probably needed this effect like two to three turns ago but its nice to put opponents behind further. This isn't exactly the sort of deck where I love this effect though, I tend to like it more for a draw go control deck or a deck that values its artifacts / enchantments but needs removal still. I think this card looks really good and my Bruna deck is like, the place I am least excited for it.

Yeah, I get that. Generally, like I say, I can work around on field restrictions, so being able to cherry pick a couple of problem pieces that impact me and leaving tough restrictions for everyone else is fine by me.

That being said, I gave it some more thought. I think on reflection there's ways in which it's preferable to Return to Dust. Instant speed is strong, insofar as I can pop it end of turn cycle to get rid of what needs to go, and enter my turn with my full mana pool dedicated to positive advantage for myself, rather than holding up Return to Dust to maximise value, which is usually the way to use it. It's a trade off that sometimes doesn't pay off. Obviously going up against say a Daretti, Scrap Savant deck, RTD is preferable to stop any nefarious resurrections, but Intervention does kind of keep our momentum ticking along better than RTD does; especially considering there's parts of our curve where it's a toss up between dropping a creature or removing some rocks, Intervention can potentially allow us to do both at some points.

[ISBPathfinder]

Heliod's Intervention - Often one or two things NEED to die but if I could hit things beyond that I would pick up things like mana rocks and value generators. I agree that in a lot of cases you don't NEED to answer 4+ things at once because at that point you probably needed this effect like two to three turns ago but its nice to put opponents behind further. This isn't exactly the sort of deck where I love this effect though, I tend to like it more for a draw go control deck or a deck that values its artifacts / enchantments but needs removal still. I think this card looks really good and my Bruna deck is like, the place I am least excited for it.

Yeah, I get that. Generally, like I say, I can work around on field restrictions, so being able to cherry pick a couple of problem pieces that impact me and leaving tough restrictions for everyone else is fine by me.

That being said, I gave it some more thought. I think on reflection there's ways in which it's preferable to Return to Dust. Instant speed is strong, insofar as I can pop it end of turn cycle to get rid of what needs to go, and enter my turn with my full mana pool dedicated to positive advantage for myself, rather than holding up Return to Dust to maximise value, which is usually the way to use it. It's a trade off that sometimes doesn't pay off. Obviously going up against say a Daretti, Scrap Savant deck, RTD is preferable to stop any nefarious resurrections, but Intervention does kind of keep our momentum ticking along better than RTD does; especially considering there's parts of our curve where it's a toss up between dropping a creature or removing some rocks, Intervention can potentially allow us to do both at some points.

If you are playing against Daretti though, isn't what you actually need grave hate? Even beyond that though taking more than two things off the board can often be more important than exiling a few things unless they are building super deep around one thing or using something like Ensnaring Bridge to defend themselves from you.

My thought process is that unless the exile part matters, Heliod's Intervention always hits just as many targets for the mana, but it can hit more targets. That isn't to say that Return to Dust's exile is irrelivant, but in a lot of cases and times when I am using it, it isn't. I often play Return to Dust just because there didn't exist a super good scaling disenchant that gets 2+ targets before now.

[toctheyounger]

Heliod's Intervention - Often one or two things NEED to die but if I could hit things beyond that I would pick up things like mana rocks and value generators. I agree that in a lot of cases you don't NEED to answer 4+ things at once because at that point you probably needed this effect like two to three turns ago but its nice to put opponents behind further. This isn't exactly the sort of deck where I love this effect though, I tend to like it more for a draw go control deck or a deck that values its artifacts / enchantments but needs removal still. I think this card looks really good and my Bruna deck is like, the place I am least excited for it.

Yeah, I get that. Generally, like I say, I can work around on field restrictions, so being able to cherry pick a couple of problem pieces that impact me and leaving tough restrictions for everyone else is fine by me.

That being said, I gave it some more thought. I think on reflection there's ways in which it's preferable to Return to Dust. Instant speed is strong, insofar as I can pop it end of turn cycle to get rid of what needs to go, and enter my turn with my full mana pool dedicated to positive advantage for myself, rather than holding up Return to Dust to maximise value, which is usually the way to use it. It's a trade off that sometimes doesn't pay off. Obviously going up against say a Daretti, Scrap Savant deck, RTD is preferable to stop any nefarious resurrections, but Intervention does kind of keep our momentum ticking along better than RTD does; especially considering there's parts of our curve where it's a toss up between dropping a creature or removing some rocks, Intervention can potentially allow us to do both at some points.

If you are playing against Daretti though, isn't what you actually need grave hate? Even beyond that though taking more than two things off the board can often be more important than exiling a few things unless they are building super deep around one thing or using something like Ensnaring Bridge to defend themselves from you.

My thought process is that unless the exile part matters, Heliod's Intervention always hits just as many targets for the mana, but it can hit more targets. That isn't to say that Return to Dust's exile is irrelivant, but in a lot of cases and times when I am using it, it isn't. I often play Return to Dust just because there didn't exist a super good scaling disenchant that gets 2+ targets before now.

This is a good point. In those cases you might even just need a window with a bulk of rocks off the field to make your board count. At any rate, yeah, there's some good advantage to be had with Intervention. I think it'll be a good add. My next consideration is to whether it replaces something like Return to Dust or supplements that suite or removal. I've got a fairly full suite of removal and wipes in general, and I'm otherwise fairly happy with the deck.

[toctheyounger]

So I made a small change to the list over the weekend. Nothing new per se, but I feel like it's probably somewhat of an improvement in consistency:

In

• Open the Armory

Out

• Scroll Rack

A minor change, but in all likelihood a probable improvement, which I guess is a little surprising. Rack obviously does amazing things with Land Tax, but otherwise hasn't been super stunning. I'd prefer the ability to grab Sword of the Animist or Mask of Memory early to get some momentum going, or Batterskull later in the game.

[Sinis]

Rack obviously does amazing things with Land Tax, but otherwise hasn't been super stunning.

I used to have this line of thinking, but, part of it I find is holding back a lot of resources, and digging for answers or better parity when it comes up.

It helps that I play a bunch of fetch lands and tutors, and that's probably a deciding factor to it being more effective in my deck.

[toctheyounger]

Rack obviously does amazing things with Land Tax, but otherwise hasn't been super stunning.

I used to have this line of thinking, but, part of it I find is holding back a lot of resources, and digging for answers or better parity when it comes up.

It helps that I play a bunch of fetch lands and tutors, and that's probably a deciding factor to it being more effective in my deck.

Yeah, I can see how that would be the case. When you're trading grips full of cards that all have a degree of utility instead of just being land drop for the turn it likely becomes pretty great; it probably scales in versatility to the number of tutors you run too, purely for the shuffle effect and being able to see a ton of your deck. In my current state I think the equipment search just does more for me really. Which is, I have to admit, a little strange in that it's a once off with no way to recur it barring Mistveil Plains.

[ISBPathfinder]

I like that change. I haven't been playing scroll rack in many decks for a good while now. You don't need to make Land Tax better. There is also those times where you draw Land Tax and its not a card and you don't have shuffles in your deck to push it back in with scroll rack that can be awkward. It might be strange but I much prefer Weathered Wayfarer in this deck to Land Tax given he is easier to tutor for and can be recurred. I also value hitting all of my land drops with all my sweet value lands instead of just getting basics.

[toctheyounger]

I like Wayfarer too. For whatever reason this deck runs fine for normal land drops, what's more crucial is making sure when you drop Emeria, the Sky Ruin it's able to be used to it's fullest, or you have Kor Haven when you need it.

Ideally I'd prefer this were Steelshaper's Gift or Stoneforge Mystic, but you know. There's only so much money about and we got a kid on the way in just over 2 months.

[Sinis]

Yeah, I can see how that would be the case. When you're trading grips full of cards that all have a degree of utility instead of just being land drop for the turn it likely becomes pretty great; it probably scales in versatility to the number of tutors you run too, purely for the shuffle effect and being able to see a ton of your deck.

Well, that's it. Tutors do double duty of refreshing the top X, and also are versatile enough when you manage to dig for them. An Enlightened Tutor in hand either flushes the top, and an Enlightened Tutor that you manage to dig for is how you find stuff like Eye of Singularity.

I also find that because people commonly play full-graveyard-exile (like Bog or Tormod's Crypt), we actually really want to hold back, and that usually entails having 4-7 cards in hand, where Scroll Rack really shines.

I'm not saying your choice is wrong, or anything; I think our decks have diverged at this point where Scroll Rack makes the cut in mine, but perhaps not in yours (I am, after all, still willing to run Terrapmorphic/Evolving, along with Khans fetches for instant speed uses of Emeria Shepherd, Brought Back, Faith's Reward, etc.).

Ideally I'd prefer this were Steelshaper's Gift or Stoneforge Mystic, but you know. There's only so much money about and we got a kid on the way in just over 2 months.

Congratulations my dude! I'm a parent of an 11 and an 8 year old, and it's pretty wild. My older one and I sometimes mash planeswalker decks against each other.

I like that change. I haven't been playing scroll rack in many decks for a good while now. You don't need to make Land Tax better. There is also those times where you draw Land Tax and its not a card and you don't have shuffles in your deck to push it back in with scroll rack that can be awkward.

This is probably an insight a lot of mono-white players miss. I often don't try and glue them together for this kind of deck, because that kind of card advantage is often not helpful, and it draws unwanted attention. I have not comboed them together for quite some time.

It might be strange but I much prefer Weathered Wayfarer in this deck to Land Tax given he is easier to tutor for and can be recurred. I also value hitting all of my land drops with all my sweet value lands instead of just getting basics.

I'm still running the saturation of Weathered Wayfarer/Land Tax/Gift of Estates/Tithe/Endless Horizons. I always end up with a ton of lands, but don't seem to get a lot of dead draws... It happens, but, if I had to guess, mass-land-search probably improves draw parity more than the addition of dead draws worsens it (especially with Endless Horizons).

[toctheyounger]

I'm not saying your choice is wrong, or anything; I think our decks have diverged at this point where Scroll Rack makes the cut in mine, but perhaps not in yours (I am, after all, still willing to run Terrapmorphic/Evolving, along with Khans fetches for instant speed uses of Emeria Shepherd, Brought Back, Faith's Reward, etc.).

Yeah, I mean these are what really make Rack hum along. If you're seeing the same 6-7 cards over and again you're probably doing it wrong. On a good day it would still do fine for me, but there's no way fetches are gonna hit any of my decks anytime soon, so it's probably a little unreliable.

But yeah, as you say, the choice is reasonable to my mind considering what I have available to me at present.

Congratulations my dude! I'm a parent of an 11 and an 8 year old, and it's pretty wild. My older one and I sometimes mash planeswalker decks against each other.

Ha, thanks exciting, scary times. I'm sure I don't really need as much sleep as I get. The hope is that someday we'll sling spells together, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm still running the saturation of Weathered Wayfarer/Land Tax/Gift of Estates/Tithe/Endless Horizons. I always end up with a ton of lands, but don't seem to get a lot of dead draws... It happens, but, if I had to guess, mass-land-search probably improves draw parity more than the addition of dead draws worsens it (especially with Endless Horizons).

Personally I haven't missed Gift of Estates, or the Knight of the White Orchid I pulled either. It feels like all three of us are in the same boat, that we often outramp the rest of the table, and quite easily.

It's kind of irking me recently on social media seeing a whole lot of memes about how mono white sucks for ramp and draw. I.....can't not bite. It's just only true if you build poorly.

[Sinis]

Personally I haven't missed Gift of Estates, or the Knight of the White Orchid I pulled either. It feels like all three of us are in the same boat, that we often outramp the rest of the table, and quite easily.

My philosophy on them is that after the first two of the effects, they're probably dead draws. I've had a lot of Knight of the White Orchid failures lately, but, it's only because I drew Land Tax or Weathered Wayfarer. And, he can still carry a Sword of the Animist. Also, Endless Horizons is never a dead draw; if you have enough lands, it does an okay impression of Mana Severance.

Anyway, they're not individually bad cards; they just get bad together. But, I think the reliability of getting one early makes the future sub-par ones better. I've had some dead Land Taxes as well, but I'm not going to up and not run Land Tax. I'll just send it away with Scroll Rack.

I acknowledge the possibility that I'm running one too many of these effects, but I've been pretty reticent to cut any of them. I don't want to have games where I don't get one (still... considering it).

It's kind of irking me recently on social media seeing a whole lot of memes about how mono white sucks for ramp and draw. I.....can't not bite. It's just only true if you build poorly.

Ehhhhhhh. It's apples to oranges. My Radha deck puts out a lot of mana, more than Bruna could in short order. My findings with white ramp is that it's probably just as good as any other colour, just slower.

As for card draw, I wonder if we get by on card parity a lot. One of our cards is worth a lot; something like Lyra can hold back people for a very long time. Also, I sometimes wonder if we go too far in the other direction; since white is 'bad' at draw, we are running A LOT of draw. My own Bruna deck probably has more draw than most of my other decks.

[toctheyounger]

Personally I haven't missed Gift of Estates, or the Knight of the White Orchid I pulled either. It feels like all three of us are in the same boat, that we often outramp the rest of the table, and quite easily.

My philosophy on them is that after the first two of the effects, they're probably dead draws. I've had a lot of Knight of the White Orchid failures lately, but, it's only because I drew Land Tax or Weathered Wayfarer. And, he can still carry a Sword of the Animist. Also, Endless Horizons is never a dead draw; if you have enough lands, it does an okay impression of Mana Severance.

Anyway, they're not individually bad cards; they just get bad together. But, I think the reliability of getting one early makes the future sub-par ones better. I've had some dead Land Taxes as well, but I'm not going to up and not run Land Tax. I'll just send it away with Scroll Rack.

I acknowledge the possibility that I'm running one too many of these effects, but I've been pretty reticent to cut any of them. I don't want to have games where I don't get one (still... considering it).

It's kind of irking me recently on social media seeing a whole lot of memes about how mono white sucks for ramp and draw. I.....can't not bite. It's just only true if you build poorly.

Ehhhhhhh. It's apples to oranges. My Radha deck puts out a lot of mana, more than Bruna could in short order. My findings with white ramp is that it's probably just as good as any other colour, just slower.

As for card draw, I wonder if we get by on card parity a lot. One of our cards is worth a lot; something like Lyra can hold back people for a very long time. Also, I sometimes wonder if we go too far in the other direction; since white is 'bad' at draw, we are running A LOT of draw. My own Bruna deck probably has more draw than most of my other decks.

You're not wrong. Because they mostly rely on having less land than opponents they get significantly worse when they double up. But the risk of NOT hitting at least one is much worse than hitting two or more so it's worth having some degree of redundancy.

White ramp is slower. I personally don't think it's even the worst of the colours, it just gets a bad rap. Personally I think you just have to make it work for you. My classic trick is using Emeria Shepherd to spam triggers for Solemn Simulacrum or Wayfarer's Bauble. It works quite well, I think it's just that, by comparison to how high White's curve can be the ramp isn't seen as proportional. You'll never hit exponential figures like you can in green/x, and you do need your land drops where other colours can be more forgiving. That being said, every color except for green compensates with rocks. Blue and black to a massive degree, red fairly significantly too. White doesn't need to as much, so it's kind of misleading that white does poorly for ramp.

I think I overcompensate, for sure. I sort of have to. Again, it's purely because drawing full grips worth of cards isn't easy in white, so we have to make do with multiple iterations of draw triggers. I definitely try to make the value of my draws count too. It's not enough to have any body on the field, having the right body on the field just gives such better mileage. It's an adjustment in the way one plays the game, to my mind. This colour does force you to move a little more carefully and consider your plays more. It's not a bad thing to my mind. I've learned more about control and survival playing this deck than any other I've made, more or less.

[ISBPathfinder]

I have a full setup of equipment tutors too which goes a long ways given that if I draw any of them early its usually to get either draw or ramp depending on what my hand looks like. Having as much equipment and equipment tutors also gives me incentive to run a lower curve so I have something to equip.

[toctheyounger]

I have a full setup of equipment tutors too which goes a long ways given that if I draw any of them early its usually to get either draw or ramp depending on what my hand looks like. Having as much equipment and equipment tutors also gives me incentive to run a lower curve so I have something to equip.

Yeah, Sword of the Animist early is a great setup. I think there's at least a couple of equipment tutors I'd like to add, at some point somewhere down the line.

In terms of a lower curve for creatures I try to still be picky as to what gets the nod; I'd still really like some more control at the lower end of the curve. More things like Thalia, Heretic Cathar would be great.

[toctheyounger]

Got in my first game in a while this afternoon. It's probably been damn near months now, which is a bummer. I talk about playing more than I play now. Ah well.

I won, but it was a pretty gritty game. Went up against Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Varina, Lich Queen and Jenara, Asura of War. Jenara folded early due to mana screw, so it was ultimately a three way battle.

Torbran managed to get out Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle as well as a few other damage pieces, and got me down to like 17 before I got any sort of board presence. I had great ramp, just nothing to play with it, aside from Weathered Wayfarer and that was redundant. By this point Varina has a reasonable board and takes a bit of the heat from the dwarf, and I land Sun Titan and start spamming Fabled Passage with it, as well as a Mask of Memory that draws me into Gisela, the Broken Blade which I hardcast. They bite Blasphemous Act a turn or so later. Around this time Varina lands Rooftop Storm and gets herself well set up, complete with Archfiend of Ifnir - the only non-zombie I run and with good reason, it's nasty af. I cast Bruna again, reanimating her smaller half and meld to try and stem the tide with Varina. It's short lived as she doesn't need to attack me to kill my stuff. Torbran has an uncracked Myriad Landscape in play, casts Akoum Hellkite and his commander to drop the Archfiend. She's pissed, and takes him out of the game. I take things apart a little more for Varina by using Crush Contraband to knacker her Rooftop Storm. At this point late in the game while my life total is low I'm more or less in control as I have Mind's Eye in play, almost all of my basic lands from a variety of Wayfarer's Bauble, Fabled Passage and land drops, as well as Emeria, the Sky Ruin. I cast Bruna again, meld again, Open the Armory for Batterskull, equip it to the Linvala, Keeper of Silence Emeria reanimated, and Varina scoops.

My beautiful flowing crystal clear game commentary aside it was a bit of a frustrating game in that the land drops were great, but the curve was weird. I'd really like to add something akin to Open the Armory that isn't remarkably expensive, but the only real options I have are Enlightened Tutor, Stoneforge Mystic and Steelshaper's Gift. It'd be nice to have just a touch more draw, too, as Mind's Eye is expensive to cast. And as usual, I'm really quite keen on more to fill out the lower end of the curve for creatures.

I'm going to try and get a touch more game play in and mull things over while I do so before I make any major changes. To be fair at this point most of the big changes I could make are sort of outside of my budget, but there might be some cute things I can throw in to make the deck a bit smoother.

[ISBPathfinder]

I didn't notice that you run Batterskull before now. I am a bit curious to hear more about it. Its normally a card I love in a slower running controlish deck but with the synergy of angels and how many angels are stat sticks with lifelink I think it might be worth talking about.

I guess maybe it gives a little diversification to your equipment toolbox but I saw like 4 other targets already with a smaller pool of equipment tutors.

[Sinis]

Torbran managed to get out Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle as well as a few other damage pieces, and got me down to like 17 before I got any sort of board presence.

I hope Torbran didn't add 2 damage to his Valakut triggers, because Valakut is a colourless source (and definitely not red, despite the implication in the art and card concept).

Also, the whole time you were saying "and I was at low life", I was thinking Heliod's Intervention could save you at instant speed if someone were to ever try to push you out of the game.

[toctheyounger]

I didn't notice that you run Batterskull before now. I am a bit curious to hear more about it. Its normally a card I love in a slower running controlish deck but with the synergy of angels and how many angels are stat sticks with lifelink I think it might be worth talking about.

I guess maybe it gives a little diversification to your equipment toolbox but I saw like 4 other targets already with a smaller pool of equipment tutors.

I don't have a Baneslayer or Skirmisher (much as I really ought to track down the latter). I probably won't track down Baneslayer either, considering its cost. A reprint would drop it and maybe I'd think twice, but for what it is at present it's pretty over costed.

That being said I do still have Lyra, Thune, Resplendent and Gisela, so it may be somewhat redundant, but nonetheless it's been relatively good at keeping my life in a decent range. It'd be an easy swap out for Skirmisher in all fairness (frustratingly I had a play set of them which I obviously got rid of, because they're not in my folder now).

@Sinis i can't remember tbh. It was dangerous enough without the extra 2 anyway, so it had to go.

Heliod's Intervention could definitely have done good things, especially because I drew into Serra Ascendant at point where it was nothing but a chump blocker. I really ought to pick up a copy shortly.

[Sinis]

I managed to sneak in a few games before the plague hit last week, and Bruna featured!

I have to say my fondness for Weathered Wayfarer (which was already pretty great) is increasing. I managed to get him out turn 1, and searched up Flagstones of Trokair and Lotus Field. Lotus Field is now a little bit more risky with Shadowspear in existence, but it hasn't bit me yet.

This particular game was decided somewhat early; I used Weathered Wayfarer to tutor lands every turn while my opponents were developing non-land boards while Thalia's Lancers found me Immortal Sun and held off chumpy attackers. When the time came, I played Lotus Field (sacrificing Flagstones), Hour of Revelation, and Faith's Reward, effectively ramping me another two (lands from Lotus Field), as well as getting me another Thalia's Lancers tutor (for Gisela, this time). I didn't get to meld thanks to someone's removal plus Bog, but, everyone was eventually buried under Immortal Sun, Avacyn, and Lyra, coupled with with the destruction of infrastructure from Hour.

My question is what lines of tutor do you go for with Weathered Wayfarer? Obviously if you can activate him if you topdeck him late game, it will be more dependent on what the board is like, but the early game is a vacuum of context and likely has a singular good tutor order if left unchecked. I've gotten him in my opening hand twice in recent memory, and both times, I've tutored for Flagstones and Lotus Field. Lotus Field seems like a good pick regardless; it will keep you "behind" for longer, and happens to be good. Is there an order to your tutors because of the priority of plays? Lotus Field → Flagstones → Thespian's? Have you experimented with lines that are not Lotus Field-centric?

[ISBPathfinder]

@Sinis If its early in the game, ramp is usually my priority. Later on though, Emeria, the Sky Ruin or Bazaar of Baghdad are where I go to. Winding Canyons is also really nice later in the game. Early on though its definitely going to be ramp priorities though.

I probably need to reassess some of my lands in my list though. I bought a bunch of Blast Zone for example and I don't know if I have ever actually cracked that card.