Bruna, the Fading Light - Mono-W Moat Control

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Sinis
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
Tithe - it always gets 1 for 1 and sometimes gets you a 2 for 1. Its good enough I often justify it in place of a land drop in the list. Its not great when its only getting you one land but I think the chance to get two is good enough to run it.

Marshal's Anthem - I think when it is at its best is when an anthem effect is more reasonable. Given that we already have graveyard reliance with our commander I prefer not to go too deep on graveyard reliance in this deck. Things like Emeria Shepherd, Emeria, the Sky Ruin, and Sun Titan all together and I mostly avoid going graveyards beyond the obvious mono white includes and angel synergy effects.
Fair points. I don't think I'll ever cut Tithe. It is you say; on it's very worst day, it's just a one-mana plains, unless someone tables something like Ashiok, Dream Render.

For Marshal's Anthem, I'm torn. Many of my games have had me staring at Sun Titan in the 'yard and pining for Emeria Shepherd/Karmic Guide/Marshal's Anthem. I definitely run all the rezzes you listed, so, it's not impossible to get it back... it just feels underwhelming when I use Bruna to dig up some 2 or 3 mana human with marginal abilities. Maybe I'm just not drawing my bigger angels/humans, them getting killed, so they can be rezzed by Bruna? The other thing is that it's tutorable with Enlightened Tutor. I wanted ET to be as toolbox-y as possible, and this kind of helps with that.

I do see where you're coming from, though. Every other rez you've listed has redeeming qualities if someone stuck some hate; Emeria is just a land, Sun Titan has a good body, and Emeria Shephered at least flies. Marshal's Anthem, comparatively, is kind of junk. Marshal's Anthem, when it works, feels like it does huge work, but I wonder if it's much different than casting Bruna on significant targets.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

Great to have some feedback, it's been a week or so since I could find the time to play.
What worked:
Our new suite of lands. Lotus Field was about as awesome as I'd want, and I can't really complain about performance. I never recouped the lands from the graveyard, despite getting Sun Titan (I had to discard a lot from Land Tax, and Titan dug up a lot of those; I never really reached the bottom). Ruins of Trokair also replaced itself in an Ulamog attack. I'm not about to sleeve up Crucible of Worlds for this deck, but, part of me wonders if we should give it a try.
Batterskull: It's a new inclusion for me; the lifegain was phenomenal (I was over 90 life at one point), and the bounce ability was relevant once.
Great to hear this, I've ordered Field/Flagstones for the deck and should pick them up over the next few days. Batterskull is pretty nuts. The only thing I struggle with is the equip cost, purely because I don't have a Stoneforge Mystic to contribute to the list. If I did, I would though.
What did not work:
Worship: This card failed hard. Despite generating resilient boards, there is always a crack in the foundation that can be exploited. It also generated a disproportionate amount of hate; one player, once they saw Worship, was adamant that the table should somehow set me to 1, and then they could use the 'very rare' lose-life effects to put me out of the game. Only, like, that didn't matter. I died with no creatures while Worship was out. It's possible that the single player who dictated those terms had it out for me, but... I don't see it surviving a concerted effort from a player who wants you out. I had kept it in with the inclusion of Enlightened Tutor to handle some exceptions, but, I can see it will do less than I'd ever want it to.
If you're looking for data, there's a thumbs down for it here.
I'm not overly surprised, to be honest. People tend to take these sort of cards as a challenge, like 'Oh yeah, you think you can shut up shop?' Get 'im, boys'. That whole attitude. It's stupid, but there's a lot of people out there who can't assess threats for peanuts. The fact is, our deck is pretty resilient without things like Worship or Platinum Angel. They just make that fact more overt and push it to the forefront of people's attention, so we're best to just....keep the knowledge of our resilience to ourselves and let our actions speak for themselves.
What was kind of meh:
Bishop of Wings: Got me 8 life after a living death, and then my angels got exiled denying me the spirit tokens. This was the 'Worship game', so it's not clear that Bishop would have been better or worse for me. I died with no creatures left (if only the Angels had left spirits behind!)
Gift of Estates, Knight of the White Orchid, Tithe: I have consistently found these cards to not work well. Despite drawing and playing Lotus Field one game, I was only able to get a Knight Trigger once, post-annihilator trigger from Ulamog. For whatever reason, I find we just hit our land drops, over and over. If I were to cut one, it would be Gift of Estates; Tithe Plainscycles (and, in fact, takes a Plains slot in my deck), and Knight can at least carry a Sword of the Animist around. I think further testing is required before I axe Gift of Estates; it's no Land Tax, where when it works, it works spectacularly well.
Marshal's Anthem: I rezzed three with it. Nothing spectacular, and it prevented me from losing the game. The two damage over two turns from the anthem effect actually helped me push a player out, but, the card felt pretty bleh in the end. It may have been that I had eaten a Bojuka Bog and my juiciest reanimation targets were unavailable, but just having bodies was helpful against Liliana, Dreadhorde General. It was less of a rockstar tonight than in previous games, and I can't help but feel there is something better for this slot, but I can't seem to find it. We always seem to have the mana for it, but there are going to be games where we don't, and it'll suck in those. Is it just an overcosted Resurrection with a higher buy-in and multikicker? Should we just play Reya Dawnbringer?
I still haven't got around to properly testing Bishop of Wings. I'd totally replace it with a 2 drop control human, but I had thought it could be ok value. I don't expect amazing things from it, but I'm still gonna give it a proper whirl before I make the cut myself - unless Eldraine gives us some stunning hatebear that must have a spot.
Knight of the White Orchid, Gift of Estates - I find the same thing, and honestly, I can't really explain why we never have problems with land drops, but...yeah, we don't. It's hilarious how often I have more floatable mana in play than any other player at the board (and they say mono white can't ramp :cool: ) Knight can carry a Sword of the Animist, so that's why he stays for me. Gift of Estates has dug me out of shaky starts in the past, but it is a bit surplus to requirements at present for me. That being said, given that Tithe is reserved list, I'll never grab a cheap copy, so it's unlikely to see a place in my list anytime soon.
Marshal's Anthem is a bit mana intensive, and the anthem is a little redundant to me. Our angels are already hefty enough, so we're really just running it for the reanimation, and we have better options. I don't feel like we need to overly replace it with subpar reanimation (I definitely consider Reya Dawnbringer to be in this boat) either. Reya is far too expensive, and taps to reanimate, I'd just rather not myself.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Great to hear this, I've ordered Field/Flagstones for the deck and should pick them up over the next few days. Batterskull is pretty nuts. The only thing I struggle with is the equip cost, purely because I don't have a Stoneforge Mystic to contribute to the list. If I did, I would though.
You won't be disappointed. I can see myself searching for Lotus Field and Ruins of Trokair if I tabled a turn 1 Weathered Wayfarer. I am going to include my Stoneforge Mystic, but it doesn't really help with the equip cost. Just the casting cost. I'm not sure I'd tutor Batterskull most games; I suspect my first choices would be Sword of the Animist or Mask of Memory.

Honestly, Stoneforge Mystic occupies the space of having an early body for Sword of the Animist as well.
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
<Worship sucks, no one is surprised>
That's exactly how it played out. It's getting cut, but I'm not sure what for. I have a fairly long list of single cards I want to include.
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
I still haven't got around to properly testing Bishop of Wings. I'd totally replace it with a 2 drop control human, but I had thought it could be ok value. I don't expect amazing things from it, but I'm still gonna give it a proper whirl before I make the cut myself - unless Eldraine gives us some stunning hatebear that must have a spot.
It's not too late for that to happen! We've only seen a few cards from ELD so far.

I don't think Bishop is a bad card per se, but it falls short in a few ways; they don't provide enough lifegain to trigger Resplendent Angel, and they don't have any immediate impact. There's a couple of places I think Bishop probably shines; when we're facing gravepact and edict effects, each angel will do double duty on being a casualty. The second place is if we decided to try using Spirit Bonds, which was on my long list (along with Geist-honored Monk, Vessel of Ephemera, Requiem Angel, and maybe Ugin, the Ineffable). I don't currently run Sephara, Sky's Blade, but I would with a pile of spirit tokens. I felt that it wasn't a subtheme I wanted to explore just yet, but I might circle around back to it.

I think the main problem with the spirit token subtheme is that there's no payout for it (aside from Spirit Bonds, and Sephara if you count that).
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Knight of the White Orchid, Gift of Estates - I find the same thing, and honestly, I can't really explain why we never have problems with land drops, but...yeah, we don't. It's hilarious how often I have more floatable mana in play than any other player at the board (and they say mono white can't ramp :cool: ) Knight can carry a Sword of the Animist, so that's why he stays for me. Gift of Estates has dug me out of shaky starts in the past, but it is a bit surplus to requirements at present for me. That being said, given that Tithe is reserved list, I'll never grab a cheap copy, so it's unlikely to see a place in my list anytime soon.
I'm keeping Gift of Estates in currently; it's redundant with Land Tax, but, I'm not ready to take the plunge into less land reliability. My list also runs Endless Horizons.
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Marshal's Anthem is a bit mana intensive, and the anthem is a little redundant to me. Our angels are already hefty enough, so we're really just running it for the reanimation, and we have better options. I don't feel like we need to overly replace it with subpar reanimation (I definitely consider Reya Dawnbringer to be in this boat) either. Reya is far too expensive, and taps to reanimate, I'd just rather not myself.
I have not found mana to be an issue with it. In most of my games, I've easily had 10+ mana to throw around, and have even held mana up for complicated and costly Emergence Zone plays, as well as Faith's Reward. I think my main disagreement with Marshal's Anthem is that it only linearly adds to our resilience. When casting Bruna, I often find myself in these 'rez chains'; I get Emeria Shepherd or Karmic Guide, which finds Sun Titan, which finds some smaller dork. You can engage these rez chains as long as you can cast Bruna (which in my experience has been nearly forever).

Marshal's Anthem is a one-shot, but it'll rez anything and everything. But it is a one-shot, and that's a stroke against it.

Sidenote: Reya does not tap, though, it is an upkeep trigger. I'll buy that 9 (!!!) mana is maybe too much for the effect, though.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

I don't think Bishop is a bad card per se, but it falls short in a few ways; they don't provide enough lifegain to trigger Resplendent Angel, and they don't have any immediate impact. There's a couple of places I think Bishop probably shines; when we're facing gravepact and edict effects, each angel will do double duty on being a casualty. The second place is if we decided to try using Spirit Bonds, which was on my long list (along with Geist-honored Monk, Vessel of Ephemera, Requiem Angel, and maybe Ugin, the Ineffable). I don't currently run Sephara, Sky's Blade, but I would with a pile of spirit tokens. I felt that it wasn't a subtheme I wanted to explore just yet, but I might circle around back to it.

I think the main problem with the spirit token subtheme is that there's no payout for it (aside from Spirit Bonds, and Sephara if you count that).
I do have Sephara in the list now, so there's that. That being said, I am actively more interested in a control element than Bishop of Wings, so my eyes are peeled for Eldraine. It's looking cool and flavourful so far.
I have not found mana to be an issue with it. In most of my games, I've easily had 10+ mana to throw around, and have even held mana up for complicated and costly Emergence Zone plays, as well as Faith's Reward. I think my main disagreement with Marshal's Anthem is that it only linearly adds to our resilience. When casting Bruna, I often find myself in these 'rez chains'; I get Emeria Shepherd or Karmic Guide, which finds Sun Titan, which finds some smaller dork. You can engage these rez chains as long as you can cast Bruna (which in my experience has been nearly forever).

Marshal's Anthem is a one-shot, but it'll rez anything and everything. But it is a one-shot, and that's a stroke against it.

Sidenote: Reya does not tap, though, it is an upkeep trigger. I'll buy that 9 (!!!) mana is maybe too much for the effect, though.
My bad with Reya - to be fair, once a turn cycle is slow anyway, especially when you're paying 9 for her. And you're right, the rez chains are nuts - they are generally the reason I cast Bruna. I still remember popping a Wayfarer's Bauble with Emeria Shepherd out, pulling back a Solemn Simulacrum then a Karmic Guide then a Sun Titan bringing back the bauble, which I popped again for Avacyn, Angel of Hope. That sort of value is just stupendous, and Reya doesn't really add to that.

Anthem is ok. although yeah, being one shot is not ideal. The buff I could leave, but the res is ok. Being a one time affair just puts it well down the list from something like Emeria Shepherd, and often the chains are a lot less costly than . It still could have a place, I guess, I just can't bring myself to be excited about adding it.
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

What do you guys think of Silverwing Squadron? We really aren't a swarm deck but it gets to good size quickly and seems like a very reasonable Bruna rez target. It also helps against being swarmed. I am a big fan of things that Bruna + one rezable target will create a sizable board state that threaten to control the game.
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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
What do you guys think of Silverwing Squadron? We really aren't a swarm deck but it gets to good size quickly and seems like a very reasonable Bruna rez target. It also helps against being swarmed. I am a big fan of things that Bruna + one rezable target will create a sizable board state that threaten to control the game.
Predictably I didn't read it too closely the first run through. On the second, it's not bad. is a lot to play, but I like the keywords it has, and being a multiple token generator is nice. Could be worth it. I also like that the tokens have vigilance.
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
What do you guys think of Silverwing Squadron? We really aren't a swarm deck but it gets to good size quickly and seems like a very reasonable Bruna rez target. It also helps against being swarmed. I am a big fan of things that Bruna + one rezable target will create a sizable board state that threaten to control the game.
Predictably I didn't read it too closely the first run through. On the second, it's not bad. is a lot to play, but I like the keywords it has, and being a multiple token generator is nice. Could be worth it. I also like that the tokens have vigilance.
Yea, I was thinking about testing it in place of Angel of Serenity myself. I haven't been all that happy with that angel and it costs more than this new guy. Angel of Serenity is better when using sac outlets and recursion loops in my opinion which I don't find myself getting into all that often with this list. If I do have Emerai (either one) online then Angel of Serenity is usually not a top priority for me anyways.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
Yea, I was thinking about testing it in place of Angel of Serenity myself. I haven't been all that happy with that angel and it costs more than this new guy. Angel of Serenity is better when using sac outlets and recursion loops in my opinion which I don't find myself getting into all that often with this list. If I do have Emerai (either one) online then Angel of Serenity is usually not a top priority for me anyways.
I'm not super-sold on Silverwing Squadron. I like the ability and the keywords, but I'm not super-fond of the initial power/toughness. I find I rarely have more than a few creatures on the table, and I'm finding bodies need to be around 5/5 or stronger to matter much. The vigilance/flying helps, but, I frequently see Dragonmaster Outcast tokens or similar beefy fliers in my environment. I like that it's a flying human that wants to do good work, but, I have my doubts. Definitely deserves testing, though; even after one attack, maybe it's big enough to matter.

I'm surprised to hear you haven't had much luck with Angel of Serenity. I've found it to be invaluable to maintain recursion loops (if you exile your own Karmic Guide, you can play Karmic Guide to rez Angel of Serenity, who can exile...), or to just push problematic creatures out of the way. I would venture that it's one of the critical Angels in my deck.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
Yea, I was thinking about testing it in place of Angel of Serenity myself. I haven't been all that happy with that angel and it costs more than this new guy. Angel of Serenity is better when using sac outlets and recursion loops in my opinion which I don't find myself getting into all that often with this list. If I do have Emerai (either one) online then Angel of Serenity is usually not a top priority for me anyways.
I'm not super-sold on Silverwing Squadron. I like the ability and the keywords, but I'm not super-fond of the initial power/toughness. I find I rarely have more than a few creatures on the table, and I'm finding bodies need to be around 5/5 or stronger to matter much. The vigilance/flying helps, but, I frequently see Dragonmaster Outcast tokens or similar beefy fliers in my environment. I like that it's a flying human that wants to do good work, but, I have my doubts. Definitely deserves testing, though; even after one attack, maybe it's big enough to matter.

I'm surprised to hear you haven't had much luck with Angel of Serenity. I've found it to be invaluable to maintain recursion loops (if you exile your own Karmic Guide, you can play Karmic Guide to rez Angel of Serenity, who can exile...), or to just push problematic creatures out of the way. I would venture that it's one of the critical Angels in my deck.
I have a number of issues with Angel of Serenity:
  • We have very few sac outlets (or at least I do). When using it against opponents creatures the best way to do that is often to sac it with its ability on the stack.
  • It relies on having targets in the graveyard. I can't even tell you how many games I have had where I don't draw creatures or I just find like one or two. This isn't taking into consideration that graveyard hate also is a pain.
  • I really don't have many recursion loops in my own list. Its often not what I end up casting or rezing (assuming I have other options).
  • If you target your own cards in graveyard it becomes a liability with spot removal in response.
When I find this card to be at its best, its when using it with sac outlets and recursion loops. I just don't find that I have the support I really want for it. I actually find that in a lot of cases its not actually helpful for me at all. In a lot of cases my own list does worst against tokens and combo decks which I don't find that this card really contributes much of anything to either of those type of games.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
When I find this card to be at its best, its when using it with sac outlets and recursion loops. I just don't find that I have the support I really want for it. I actually find that in a lot of cases its not actually helpful for me at all. In a lot of cases my own list does worst against tokens and combo decks which I don't find that this card really contributes much of anything to either of those type of games.
That's definitely where it operates best. I don't have many sac outlets either (just High Market, I think).

I find that it functions as targeted hate pretty frequently; blasting three flying blockers out of the way usually makes enough room for beats, and if they answer AoS, I just rez her once they table their blockers again.

Most of the combo that exists in my environment is creature-based. Reanimator strategies involving Vilis, that sort of thing. AoS works for me here (it might give them card advantage to exile a creature from a graveyard, but, at least they don't get to reanimate it, and realistically I try to out-tempo them).

I guess my main objection to Silverwing Squadron is that it just brings stats to the table, and zero utility. I tried playing other 'piles of stats' cards like Baneslayer Angel, and it just didn't work out (I still play Lyra, because that amount of lifegain is silly). Is Silverwing Squadron realistically much better than Herald of the Host? It's worth testing, though. Stats is ultimately how we win this game, so, maybe 'just stats' is good enough if the numbers are big enough (and, in its favour, Silverwing Squadron scales nicely with the number of players in the game).

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

Angel of Serenity has been reasonable, although it probably hasn't hit it's absolute zenith of value here. Is Silverwing Squadron a reasonable replacement? I guess time will tell, although I think (hope) we'll see more convincing replacements in the rest of spoiler season.


Made some land changes over the weekend:

In:
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Lotus Field
Flagstones of Trokair

Out:
Mystifying Maze
Opal Palace
Plains 2

Maze was pretty laborious to hold up mana for, and I think if I really miss the effect I could probably add Thaumatic Compass and kill 2 birds with one stone with some pseudo-ramp. Palace was cute, but ultimately pretty underwhelming. I couldn't see anything else I definitively wanted to cut from the lands list, so 2 basics it was.

Had a wee bit of playtesting over the weekend, although I didn't see more or less any of the above. It was a tough match up, went 1 v 1 against my wife's super friends list. Not gonna lie, I got stomped. It made me think about whether there's enough in the way of wipes in my version of the deck - the walkers are tough to manage, but ultimately I lost to giant critters and an Elspeth, Sun's Champion emblem. I'd previously looked at Single Combat, which could be cool, or I guess there's Coercive Portal or Planar Cleansing. In terms of cuts, I've been a little disappointed with Mind's Eye recently - it's just a bit mana intensive.

Thoughts?
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Post by weltkrieg » 4 years ago

My list also had troubles with copious amounts of walkers, which is why I added cataclysm in addition to planar cleansing and hour of revelation. I won't deny it being especially mean, but I figure if they are going to play superfriends then having some wraths in the wrath-tribal list capable of blowing them all up made a lot of sense.

That said, I get the lotus field. Why are you running the terramorphic expanse package? I understand that it has good synergy with sun titan, but how often do you see him? It's hard to tutor for the giant in a mono white list isn't it? I also don't think you're running rings of brighthearth, though I could be wrong.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

Cataclysm is nasty. It'd be a cool idea if I thought I could manage mass land recursion, but I doubt it. I see it the same way, fight fire with fire.

The cheap fetches...I dunno, I thought it would be worth giving them a look in, but I guess any time I draw them I'm always going to prefer seeing a plains. It's not a given I have Sun Titan, as you say.

And yeah, no Brighthearth. My copy is in my Grixis walkers build (I built it to retaliate against my wife's Atraxa - it turned out to be pretty fun).
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Post by weltkrieg » 4 years ago

Cataclysm is the only MLD spell I run, though there are several others I could run. I run it because it fits my "fair" theme, which is to say I blow up everything quite fairly. I also run magus of the balance which is a bit in tune with it. I do run crucible of worlds and sun titan and quite literally every extra plains searcher there is, so I figure I will quite quickly recover from MLD the one time in a blue moon I might need to.

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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

weltkrieg wrote:
4 years ago
That said, I get the lotus field. Why are you running the terramorphic expanse package?
For me, it's:

1. that you can cast Tithe with the ability on the stack to 'cheat' your land count.
2. Sun Titan can bring it back, over and over.
3. Emeria Shepherd trigger at instant speed (also, get one permanent to hand when you play it, and one permanent to the battlefield when you crack it).

Obviously, it'd be better if we could use expensive fetches. For my part, I have the two allied fetches as well, but the enemy fetches are in other decks for mana fixing.

-----
toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Cataclysm is nasty. It'd be a cool idea if I thought I could manage mass land recursion, but I doubt it. I see it the same way, fight fire with fire.
Edit: I just remembered Planar Birth is symmetric, and kind of a nonbo with any MLD. Derp. Catastrophe is still an okay card for it, though.

My group has a pretty hard stance against MLD (at least, I think they do; I haven't checked in with them), but if I were going to play it, I would include Cataclysm, Catastrophe and Planar Birth.

Planar Birth has been on my long list, because of all the land-to-hand search we run (along with our new pet, Lotus Field). It's a bit magic christmasland-y for my taste; outside of MLD scenarios, I think it probably only really shines with Land Tax, and staying behind your opponents for a few turns.


As for dealing with planeswalkers, one of the wipes I was strongly considering was Fated Retribution. I wanted to run it as Rout #2 (I do like instant speed wipes), but, that it handles walkers is nice collateral damage.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

toctheyounger wrote:
4 years ago
Angel of Serenity has been reasonable, although it probably hasn't hit it's absolute zenith of value here. Is Silverwing Squadron a reasonable replacement? I guess time will tell, although I think (hope) we'll see more convincing replacements in the rest of spoiler season.


Made some land changes over the weekend:

In:
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Lotus Field
Flagstones of Trokair

Out:
Mystifying Maze
Opal Palace
Plains 2

Maze was pretty laborious to hold up mana for, and I think if I really miss the effect I could probably add Thaumatic Compass and kill 2 birds with one stone with some pseudo-ramp. Palace was cute, but ultimately pretty underwhelming. I couldn't see anything else I definitively wanted to cut from the lands list, so 2 basics it was.

Had a wee bit of playtesting over the weekend, although I didn't see more or less any of the above. It was a tough match up, went 1 v 1 against my wife's super friends list. Not gonna lie, I got stomped. It made me think about whether there's enough in the way of wipes in my version of the deck - the walkers are tough to manage, but ultimately I lost to giant critters and an Elspeth, Sun's Champion emblem. I'd previously looked at Single Combat, which could be cool, or I guess there's Coercive Portal or Planar Cleansing. In terms of cuts, I've been a little disappointed with Mind's Eye recently - it's just a bit mana intensive.

Thoughts?
I am a bit lost looking at your OP I don't see like any of those lands in there. Based on your OP though I would cut Emergence Zone to keep the Palace. The fact that the zone is a one shot effect really doesn't seem great in my mind. I don't know how things tend to play out for you but I tend to be more reactive with bruna which tends to mean that I do have the extra mana to activate Opal Palace. About the only reason I would want the zone would be for an emergency wrath but if I am keeping up the mana to wrath and zone then what the heck am I doing with my turn if I don't need to wrath?

Mono white doesn't 1v1 all that great in my opinion. Lots of control type decks are bad to 1v1 especially ones that just mash ramp / draw. I don't think I would take a lot away from doing a 1v1 vs a walkers deck for a deck built to play multiplayer. In multiplayer you would have others also trying to kill the walkers were as 1v1 its just you and walker decks are sort of notorious for being extremely defensive in nature.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
Based on your OP though I would cut Emergence Zone to keep the Palace.
Data note: I've had tremendous success with Emergence Zone, so much so that I've been considering adding it to my other decks that have a lot of mana available. I've been finding that, since we generally lack stack interaction, being able to threaten Flashed answers/blockers/etc. has been very helpful.

I find even the one-time use of it pretty potent; being able to flash in a rez chain EOT to swing on my turn has been very good, or to have marginal commitment to a board and then flash in more when the wipes don't land in a turn cycle. Or, to interrupt removal with Bastion Protector, etc. Maybe it's my group, but one-shot powerful effects have been instrumental (i.e. Marshal's Anthem, Angel of Serenity) in a lot of my games.

As always, YMMV, but, for me Emergence Zone has been among our most powerful lands.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
Based on your OP though I would cut Emergence Zone to keep the Palace.
Data note: I've had tremendous success with Emergence Zone, so much so that I've been considering adding it to my other decks that have a lot of mana available. I've been finding that, since we generally lack stack interaction, being able to threaten Flashed answers/blockers/etc. has been very helpful.

I find even the one-time use of it pretty potent; being able to flash in a rez chain EOT to swing on my turn has been very good, or to have marginal commitment to a board and then flash in more when the wipes don't land in a turn cycle. Or, to interrupt removal with Bastion Protector, etc. Maybe it's my group, but one-shot powerful effects have been instrumental (i.e. Marshal's Anthem, Angel of Serenity) in a lot of my games.

As always, YMMV, but, for me Emergence Zone has been among our most powerful lands.
What if you just had Winding Canyons instead? Emergence Zone is a one use effect and if you don't use it, you don't do anything most of the time. My issue is that its a one shot effect and it tends to be stronger when you have a mana dump if you don't need to use it. I have a Heliod deck for instance I could see some valid reasons to run Emergence Zone in for instance because it tends to dump mana into token generation if it doesn't need to do anything else. My issue in this deck is that I tend to want to take actions that I know I will want to do and given the zone is one use it becomes harder to use the mana if I don't need to flash that wrath or whatever.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
What if you just had Winding Canyons instead? Emergence Zone is a one use effect and if you don't use it, you don't do anything most of the time. My issue is that its a one shot effect and it tends to be stronger when you have a mana dump if you don't need to use it. I have a Heliod deck for instance I could see some valid reasons to run Emergence Zone in for instance because it tends to dump mana into token generation if it doesn't need to do anything else. My issue in this deck is that I tend to want to take actions that I know I will want to do and given the zone is one use it becomes harder to use the mana if I don't need to flash that wrath or whatever.
Primarily, I play Emergence Zone over Winding Canyons because the latter is creatures only. With Emergence Zone, I've flashed boardwipes and Marshal's Anthem as well as creatures. Further, Winding Canyons' value lowers as we cut creatures like Angel of Serenity in favour of more stat block creatures without board effects.

The way I see it, Winding Canyons basically changes how you play the game from proactive threats to draw-go. There are a few cards that do this (Leyline of Anticipation/Vedalken Orrery, etc.). Emergence Zone fills a different role for me; it's to fill in the gaps where we're a little weak, and that's when we have to react to something that's typically once-per-game for our opponents (like a big alpha strike with Craterhoof, etc.). I cited some proactive EOT plays, yes, but I mostly use it reactively. It's less that I want to switch to draw-go and deny my opponents information (because, it's not like we're holding counterspells, for the most part), and more that I want the capacity to react with anything at my disposal, even on my opponent's turn.

Basically, I continue to play proactively, but it's like an Ace up your sleeve when you need it, or when you might be able to table lethal damage.

I play some reactive cards like Dawn Charm, but, I find Emergence Zone really fills in the gaps with its flexibility. Also, I think, given that we play Sun Titan and a reanimation theme, Emergence Zone is sometimes more than 'once per game'.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
Primarily, I play Emergence Zone over Winding Canyons because the latter is creatures only. With Emergence Zone, I've flashed boardwipes and Marshal's Anthem as well as creatures. Further, Winding Canyons' value lowers as we cut creatures like Angel of Serenity in favour of more stat block creatures without board effects.

The way I see it, Winding Canyons basically changes how you play the game from proactive threats to draw-go. There are a few cards that do this (Leyline of Anticipation/Vedalken Orrery, etc.). Emergence Zone fills a different role for me; it's to fill in the gaps where we're a little weak, and that's when we have to react to something that's typically once-per-game for our opponents (like a big alpha strike with Craterhoof, etc.). I cited some proactive EOT plays, yes, but I mostly use it reactively. It's less that I want to switch to draw-go and deny my opponents information (because, it's not like we're holding counterspells, for the most part), and more that I want the capacity to react with anything at my disposal, even on my opponent's turn.

Basically, I continue to play proactively, but it's like an Ace up your sleeve when you need it, or when you might be able to table lethal damage.

I play some reactive cards like Dawn Charm, but, I find Emergence Zone really fills in the gaps with its flexibility. Also, I think, given that we play Sun Titan and a reanimation theme, Emergence Zone is sometimes more than 'once per game'.
I still think it has a lot of issues in that we don't have a mana sink to keep the lands up to "maybe" use the zone. If you are trying to keep a wrath up it means you aren't doing anything until you do use that wrath so either you are doing nothing or you already know you are wrathing and trying to get slightly more value out of timing it later.

The card seems more optimal with a list that has mana sinks and things to do outside of this card.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
The card seems more optimal with a list that has mana sinks and things to do outside of this card.
You're not wrong that it would be better in a list where we always have something to do at instant speed. That said, I don't think it's bad in this deck; since we recover so well, I have few compunctions about blasting my own creatures off the table.

My experiences have been that I just try and deliver chip damage until an alpha strike with Emergence Zone becomes available. Most of the time, I find that it doesn't happen.

That said, maybe we should put in a mana sink or two, especially given how our experiences with having lots of mana have gone. Other than Heliod, God of the Sun, what else would we play? Oketra the True? We could give Dawn of Hope another try, also.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
The card seems more optimal with a list that has mana sinks and things to do outside of this card.
You're not wrong that it would be better in a list where we always have something to do at instant speed. That said, I don't think it's bad in this deck; since we recover so well, I have few compunctions about blasting my own creatures off the table.

My experiences have been that I just try and deliver chip damage until an alpha strike with Emergence Zone becomes available. Most of the time, I find that it doesn't happen.

That said, maybe we should put in a mana sink or two, especially given how our experiences with having lots of mana have gone. Other than Heliod, God of the Sun, what else would we play? Oketra the True? We could give Dawn of Hope another try, also.
In white, most of the mana sinks tend to be token production. Luminarch Ascension, Sacred Mesa, Mobilization, maybe some X mana token generation. Outside of that though you could look into things like Staff of Domination potentially. There are some more expensive things as well like Planar Bridge, Loreseeker's Stone, and Tower of Fortunes which all "could" be examined as well but generally speaking they are VERY expensive to use and I am not fond of trying to stagger casting them and getting value from them over multiple turns.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
In white, most of the mana sinks tend to be token production. Luminarch Ascension, Sacred Mesa, Mobilization, maybe some X mana token generation. Outside of that though you could look into things like Staff of Domination potentially. There are some more expensive things as well like Planar Bridge, Loreseeker's Stone, Tower of Fortunes, and Walking Ballista which all "could" be examined as well but I suspect that most of them are a bit too intensive and off synergy.
Yeah, I think the big-mana cards you cited are probably not worthwhile. Sacred Mesa could be good, simply because it provides a very favourable mana-to-creature ratio.

I think I'm going to try Dawn of Hope again. I think we have enough lifegain that the draw could be nice, and the mana-sinkyness of it might be good enough anyway. I can't help but feel we're steering towards draw-go, which is not how this deck operates the vast majority of the time (i.e. will we cast Bruna, or generate two tokens on their end step if they didn't justify a board wipe).

Maybe we just don't need mana sinks after all, even though we have lots and lots of mana each game. It's worth testing (I certainly will), but I recall others in this thread not getting much out of Dawn of Hope, and I suspect Heliod or other mana sinks will have the same kinds of results.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Sinis wrote:
4 years ago
Yeah, I think the big-mana cards you cited are probably not worthwhile. Sacred Mesa could be good, simply because it provides a very favourable mana-to-creature ratio.

I think I'm going to try Dawn of Hope again. I think we have enough lifegain that the draw could be nice, and the mana-sinkyness of it might be good enough anyway. I can't help but feel we're steering towards draw-go, which is not how this deck operates the vast majority of the time (i.e. will we cast Bruna, or generate two tokens on their end step if they didn't justify a board wipe).

Maybe we just don't need mana sinks after all, even though we have lots and lots of mana each game. It's worth testing (I certainly will), but I recall others in this thread not getting much out of Dawn of Hope, and I suspect Heliod or other mana sinks will have the same kinds of results.
Being that we are not a token based deck its a lot harder to get good value out of the mana sinks white has access to. I do still think that Dawn of Hope is decent but I am not sold that it has to be in or out of the list.

I agree that a lot of the token generation probably won't be huge for this list. We don't really plan to pump them up and some of our cards specifically have bad interactions with them. This being said, I still think I will probably test Silverwing Squadron. Sure, we probably won't do much with those tokens but even just having them can make it harder to swarm at us so it gives some amount of token defense by having that sort of token generation. Its different to me than Herald of the Host in that it grows over time, and generates an over time increasing defensive position as well as offensive position.
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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
I do still think that Dawn of Hope is decent but I am not sold that it has to be in or out of the list.

This being said, I still think I will probably test Silverwing Squadron.
Dawn of Hope appeals to me because we have a significant lifegain subtheme. Drawing cards is always going to be a consideration. The token part of it is kinda meh, but once you package the two together, it seems pretty great.

Honestly, I saw "6-cost flying human" and immediately thought it'd probably be worth reanimating in this deck. I like a lot of what's going on with the card; it can be giant, it and everything it does has Vigilance. It lets us just dump on people. I'm a huge fan of Vigilance in general for EDH (one of the reasons I like Heliod), so this card definitely appeals to me. I will probably give it a shot.

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