Hope of Ghirapur - I really like this card but the fact that its a single use effect makes it a really hard sale for me without some excessive recursion intended. I could see it if I went with Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle as my commander or if I planned to do something with
Auriok Salvagers in the deck but I think without a strong attempt at recursion its going to be a bit of a hard sell for me. Its effect can be strong but timing its ability is hard and without setting up some sort of recursive lock with it I just don't see it as being good enough.
Phyrexian Negator - I am going to go out on a limb and assume you intended another card here?
Phyrexian Revoker perhaps? I will just assume you meant revoker. I had it in my list to start but felt that it being a creature was mostly a liability making it worse in most cases than
Sorcerous Spyglass. Given that I am a toolbox deck I felt that given that spyglass and revoker were the same mana cost I just couldn't see a situation that revoker really felt like an improvement to me over the spyglass as its down to just positive creature interactions on my side which while I have a few were a bit few and far between. I think you want to avoid too much redundancy at the same mana cost so it comes down to how much redundancy you feel you need. Its possible that Revoker could be included over
Pithing Needle given that its going to be a bit tricky to tutor pithing but I do have
Urza's Saga and a few artifact tokens that I could pod off to get one drops. The question I guess comes down to how much redundancy you want but I think its better to have a more tools rather than redundancy unless you are responding to local meta issues. I considered having as little as a single card of this effect which for me would likely be
Sorcerous Spyglass but I felt like I might want a second. I don't really have anything behind my choice to include two other than I felt like I wanted more one drops and I think Pithing is very strong when its good and a good chain starter when it isn't.
So, I needed to cut four cards and as I was cutting cards I came up with a few things I wanted to make room for so cuts went a bit deeper to make room for some swaps.
CUTS:
- Lithoform Engine - I went back and forth several times on cutting this card because it is cool and powerful. My issue is with how much it costs to use and it can only be used once a turn in most cases. I mostly want to use its first ability but playing and using it on my commander's ability in one turn costs SEVEN MANA. It also takes a setup of my commander and something I intend to sacrifice to start it off so I felt like it was kind of clunky and demanding on my situation to happen.
- Prototype Portal - Its card disadvantage to set up and it also looks very expensive to get going. There was a time where I considered going deeper on the untap concept where this felt interesting to me but I felt like I kept getting further and further from having more mana and untaps and it was making the portal less appealing to me. So, cutting some expensive and clunky things and trying to keep it a bit more streamlined to get started.
- Clock of Omens - With cutting the above two artifacts I felt like my impactful targets to untap was getting a bit iffy. I also don't really deal in artifact tokens all that much with this list so my chaff things to untap while I am sure will still be there they didn't feel as plentiful as in my Sai deck where I have Thoptors everywhere.
- Eye of Vecna - I like how I can draw more cards from it but the cost at upkeep seems a bit rough.
- Platinum Emperion - I was trying REALLY hard to include an 8 drop because I have a number of seven drops that are begging to be sacrificed but I think in the end, I am just going to have to be happy capping out at 7 for my artifact curve. Emperion is cool and there are times it can work. Its just hard to set him up right when you need it and not have him be removed.
- Steel Hellkite - This guy is a classic throwback for me. I remember drafting with him and such but he has always been a little lacking for this format. He isn't a great thing to pod into or out of and its slow given I have like two haste options in the deck.
ADDS:
- Cosmos Elixir - I realized my four drops were feeling a bit light with cutting three of them. I like that you should know if you will draw a card the turn you play it and even if you get beat up its an option for some lifegain or you can pod off it with the commander if that isn't a good idea.
- Sun Titan - I probably went a little hard on the theme to overlook the fact that I am sacrificing cheap things. Sun Titan seems like he should fit well here.
