Painful cuts for the sake of tempo-lifegain:
I never thought I would say 'Oracle of Mul Daya isn't doing enough' but here we are. I want Creatures that can turn sideways and get in for Tymna's draw; as I'm slimming my curve the need for Ramp isn't as needed. Evasive life gain tempo aggro, you said? That's Serra Ascendant written all over it so he's back.
Since I'm going to be putting down early pressure, I won't be doing the traditional G/X strategy of flooding the table with lands. Wood Elves looks a lot less impressive in that case while Knight of the White Orchid looks solid. At least, I hope.
I am not a fan of Kataki. I find that he can be unfun but considering I'm going with a terrible strategy, I need Creatures that will get pump the breaks on midgame mana rock-a-thons. He'll also put a stop to the
Smothering Tithe shenanigans that happens in the meta, either as people clone, copy or steal one of the best Ramp spells in the game. With Kataki taking a cut out of my opponent's Ramp, I figured I could do without the relatively basic Ramp.
Pir's Whim and
Hour of Promise fetch me important lands I need, such as a
Emeria, the Sky Ruin,
Shizo, Death's Storehouse or any other colour fixing.
Twilight Prophet does draw me cards, gains me life and lowers my opponent's life totals but she was feeling a bit lacklustre. I think the reason why is that she only does this once, during my upkeep. My lessons from Marchesa is that to make Aggro work you need to avoid linear paths, exponential is the name of the game. It also didn't help that as I made the deck more Lifegain Aggro Tempo, the average CMC plummeted which then kept making the Twilight Prophet look worse and worse. Looking at the Prophet is what inspired me to put Serra Ascendant back, though he doesn't bring card draw and that's what the deck needs. With that in mind, I scoured for ways to add draw to an aggro deck and slapped my forehead when I saw Ohran Frostfang. He turns my little men into dangerous Deathtouch or draw, I really like that.
With my deck going more diffuse in its application, I've decided to bring back two lands that did work for me before. Gavony Township and Vault of the Archangel; Township for the permanent pump to the team, Vault for Deathtouch and I won't scoff at the lifegain either. Looking for cuts was easier than I originally suspected, With the push for a diffuse Aggro strategy, I no longer needed to make sure a particular Creature got in and so Rogue's Passage was axed. I didn't need to abuse Ramp, so Blighted Woodland got the axe.
With the cut of Blighted Woodland, I realized that mana ramp lands aren't that important. I was also light on wincons or other cards that wear 'Deal with It' sunglasses. I combined those two missing pieces with Westvale Abbey. There are times when I'm baiting for a Wrath to play
Heroic Intervention or another way to ruin my opponents lives forever;
Ormendahl, Profane Prince is another way to do so and fits the bill of a Wincon. He's also relatively mana efficient at 'six mana', it's just the bodies that are the costly requirement and this deck has moved towards the 'spew bodies from every orifice' so I think I'll be safe in that regard.
