Ephara, God of the Polis

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WizardMN
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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

I played this deck tonight against Thraximundar and Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire.

Before I get into the game summary, I want to note that I made a number of changes to the deck prior to this game. I will go over them at them end (I only saw one of the new cards anyway, but wanted to mention that the decklist did change).

Game Summary

I was able to land Ephara turn 3 thanks to a Talisman. I then cast a Leonin Relic-Warder to get rid of a Gilded Lotus from Vaevictus to slow him down. I ended up getting Eldrazi Displacer on the field here too. I then cast a Spellseeker to get my Mana Drain which ended up countering Archfiend of Despair.

This gave me 8 colorless mana and I used it to blink Relic-Warder a couple times to permanently exile Mogis, God of the Slaughter, and Gilded Lotus and then temporarily exiling another Gilded Lotus from Thrax.

I was able to land a Faerie Artisans which did a lot to keep me in the game. Both by triggering Ephara and getting me copies of things like Thrax and Sheoldred. While this was all happening, I was trying to take pot-shots at players with Ephara to keep their life totals down but I would say Artisans was the most important card I had for this game. Spellseeker was also key as it got me Mana Drain and Path to Exile. Archaeomancer got me back Mana Drain but I did have to give him up to Thrax attacking into me as they were getting an extra token of him thanks to Helm of the Host.

At one point, Vaevictus cast a Nyxbloom Ancient followed by some other creature (it is basically irrelevant as this is where they game ended). I got my copy from Artisans and they expected their next creature to get rid of the copy. "Not so!", said Displacer :)

In response to them casting their next creature, I blinked Artisans with Displacer. This allowed me to get another token but, most importantly, did not get rid of the Nyxbloom Ancient token. Right before it got back to my turn, I was able to blink Ancient and Artisans enough to get me 7 Ancients (I obviously could have gotten way more, but it was overkill and I liked to have a solid number to work with). This meant that each one of my lands tapped for 2,187 mana. I had 4 lands that produced colorless mana and those were the ones I cared about. So, I had 8,748 mana to work with. The game went around another turn and Thrax was gone. Vaevictus cast Hamletback Goliath.

As a side note, I also had Capsize in hand to effectively deal with everything on board anyway, but this was more enjoyable

And, the fun begins. We ended up just ending the game since they knew they couldn't deal with what I had on board, but I wanted to make a note here as to what the board state actually was at the end. And, again, I realize this is arguably larger if I spent the first three lands to get me more Ancients.

Damage Calculation

Each iteration of the loop costs 6 mana: 3 to blink the creature I want to copy and 3 to blink the Artisans so the copy doesn't go away. That means I get 1,458 iterations of this loop or 1,458 Goliaths. The first Goliath gets (6 * 1,457) counters on it since that is how many Goliaths it sees entering. The second gets (6 * 1,456). And so on. There is probably a good Mathematical Formula to calculate all of this, but I don't know it. So, I wrote a Program to figure this out for me. This result doesn't preclude the possibility of me making a mistake in my code, but, whatever:

Once all the Goliaths enter, there is a total of 6,381,666 power total among all 1,458 Goliaths. The last Goliath has a power of 6 and the first Goliath has a power of 8,748. Assuming I didn't make a mistake somewhere. The only real reason I wanted to document this is because I have never gotten to an absurd amount of damage like this and I thought is was kind of a fun end to the game.

For arguments sake, if I had spent my first three lands to get more Ancients, this is what it would have looked like:
SPOILER
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Tap the first land for 2,187 mana. This, with the actions described above, gets me 729 more Ancients, for 736 total.

I tap my next land for 1,449,584,290,062,697,354,142,013,054,037,067,210,164,113,855,766,126,199,365,128,875,848,548,749,623,760,698,807,345,494,782,208,779,199,755,175,770,324,297,006,534,950,465,190,954,969,456,587,934,232,533,792,060,405,980,733,427,024,386,714,054,876,968,454,385,437,210,859,551,380,664,931,393,853,384,014,600,433,021,495,806,207,667,744,757,286,955,437,969,418,607,746,727,104,963,400,615,138,389,151,082,748,505,775,204,945,222,623,579,291,184,175,188,331,558,133,121 mana.

This gives me 241,597,381,677,116,225,690,335,509,006,177,868,360,685,642,627,687,699,894,188,145,974,758,124,937,293,449,801,224,249,130,368,129,866,625,862,628,387,382,834,422,491,744,198,492,494,909,431,322,372,088,965,343,400,996,788,904,504,064,452,342,479,494,742,397,572,868,476,591,896,777,488,565,642,230,669,100,072,170,249,301,034,611,290,792,881,159,239,661,569,767,957,787,850,827,233,435,856,398,191,847,124,750,962,534,157,537,103,929,881,864,029,198,055,259,689,589 Ancients including the 736 I had.

At this point, the online calculator I was using just said "nope" so I can't even get any further to figure out how much mana the next land tapped for. And this is still in the process of figuring out how much mana I had before I even get to the number of Goliaths. So, I guess I stop here :)

Final Musings and Changes

Anyway, the deck performed admirably. Brazen Borrower did literally nothing with the creature side, though the Bounce side was effective. I don't remember what I bounced, but I bounced something. I still feel this should be something else.

Here is the full list of changes I made. As I mentioned above, I saw a total of 1 of the new cards (the Leonin) so it wasn't the best showing for the new cards. But, in this game anyway, I never felt like I missed the cards I removed except maybe Return to Dust to deal with Mogis.

I am hoping that my next game with the deck, next week most likely, will let me experience the other cards a little more so I can get a better feel for them. I don't want to edit the primer with these changes just yet in case there are other changes I want to make as these are more of a trial than things I expect to be permanent (at least, not permanent yet).
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Post by MeowZeDung » 4 years ago

7 Nyxbloom ancients. 1,458 hamletback goliaths. And that was just the beginning. Magic is dumb. I love it.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I'm glad relic warder showed up with displacer first to give you a good first impression ;)


Man, that is some game. Reminds me a lot of the game I went off with displacer, artisans, and my opponent's great whale.

Artisans is really, really clutch. People used to kill it on sight the first time I played it back in Phoenix but people are a little less removal happy here, so it's been great.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

My first thoughts about that game when I was getting ready to type things up were "ugh....now I might have to praise Relic Warder" :)

I don't know why I don't like Relic Warder (probably due to the insane mana to dump into it just to exile stuff permanently) and I do know that it worked best here because of being able to Mana Drain something big *and* not having anything worthwhile to do with that mana. I think you are right that this showing presents the potential the card has with other cards, so I am interested to see how consistently this plays out like this.

As for Artisans: I know that my opponents generally have a healthy disdain for the card but it is sometimes surprising how often it actually sticks around. The value it provides in normal situations is very high and with Displacer it is even better since I can "regain" the exact token I want by just blinking my opponent's creature (o blinking the Artisans itself to keep a token). It is one of my favorite cards in the deck. Now, hopefully it is coming out in foil soon....

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

WizardMN wrote:
4 years ago
My first thoughts about that game when I was getting ready to type things up were "ugh....now I might have to praise Relic Warder" :)

I don't know why I don't like Relic Warder (probably due to the insane mana to dump into it just to exile stuff permanently) and I do know that it worked best here because of being able to Mana Drain something big *and* not having anything worthwhile to do with that mana. I think you are right that this showing presents the potential the card has with other cards, so I am interested to see how consistently this plays out like this.

As for Artisans: I know that my opponents generally have a healthy disdain for the card but it is sometimes surprising how often it actually sticks around. The value it provides in normal situations is very high and with Displacer it is even better since I can "regain" the exact token I want by just blinking my opponent's creature (o blinking the Artisans itself to keep a token). It is one of my favorite cards in the deck. Now, hopefully it is coming out in foil soon....
lol :) Yeah, I definitely see the downsides. If we had a white reclamation sage I'd likely play that; even a 4 CMC permanent exile card would be high on my list.

Have you heard something about Artisans coming out in foil? Maybe it'll be in the commander set, that would be quite hype as the kids say :)

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Have you heard something about Artisans coming out in foil? Maybe it'll be in the commander set, that would be quite hype as the kids say
No, but this is what I am hoping for. Or, it is on the foil sheet for the Mystery Booster product. There are a couple places for it to come out but my thought is that the Commander Legends makes the most sense so that is where I would expect it to be, if at all.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

WizardMN wrote:
4 years ago
pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Have you heard something about Artisans coming out in foil? Maybe it'll be in the commander set, that would be quite hype as the kids say
No, but this is what I am hoping for. Or, it is on the foil sheet for the Mystery Booster product. There are a couple places for it to come out but my thought is that the Commander Legends makes the most sense so that is where I would expect it to be, if at all.
pearl medallion and fellwar stone are my wishes for that mystery booster product that feel like they'd fit there. It's annoying how many cards I like that never get foils (or only have nonsensically expensive ones like Fellwar) - Ephara's prone to liking weird precon cards like Artisans, and a lot of older cards.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

I agree (and I had no idea Felllwar stone was nearly $100; I have never even thought of putting that into any decks) and my other ones for this deck are Selfless Squire and Angel of Finality. I am just glad they at least gave us a Judge foil of Teferi's Protection :)

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

WizardMN wrote:
4 years ago
I agree (and I had no idea Felllwar stone was nearly $100; I have never even thought of putting that into any decks) and my other ones for this deck are Selfless Squire and Angel of Finality. I am just glad they at least gave us a Judge foil of Teferi's Protection :)
Ooh man I always forget about selfless squire. That's one I think I would try if it dropped in foil. Seen a ton of uses for it.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

This summary will be short and sweet :)

I played last night against Silas Renn, Seeker Adept & Akiri, Line-Slinger partners, Tuvasa the Sunlit, and Rhys the Redeemed.

I didn't do much to start. I had Leonin Relic-Warder in hand to start but I waited until turn 5 to cast it so I could trigger Ephara. I don't remember what I exiled, but it was something of Tuvasa's. They ended up exiling it to Grasp of Fate which I blew up later to get Silas's Lightning Greaves.

I also had Eldrazi Displacer which I just cast to use my mana and get it out there for next turn if I needed it. And, boy did I need it :) It got back to my turn after Tuvasa tapped out to cast Nyxbloom Ancient. I cast Gilded Drake on my turn to steal it. I then had 15 mana at my disposal with 9 of it being colorless. I proceeded to flicker Gilded Drake and steal the board. I started my turn and could do it again. There wasn't much on board, but everyone scooped since I now had around 21 mana and could steal whatever creatures they cast.

So, the last two games have showed that Nyxbloom Ancient is really good for this deck. Especially considering I never need to pay the 7 mana for it :)

Unfortunately, this again didn't let me see any of my new adds (beyond the Relic Warder) so I am still trying to get a game where they make an appearance so I can better evaluate them before updating the Primer with those changes. Maybe next week.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

nyxbloom ancient being everywhere is enough to drive a man to bribery tbh :P

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

I had a pretty good game with this deck last night though, by all rights, I should have died earlier. A misplay by a player kept me alive though I did end up losing anyway.

I was playing against Slivers, Gods, and Rhonas. Turn 5, Slivers tried to Armageddon with Gemhide Sliver on board and a Crucible of Worlds. Luckily I had Disallow in hand to stop it. From there, my entire plan was to go after Slivers.

I wrathed the board with a huge amount of slivers on board but they cast Living Death to get everything back. They then tutored for a Sliver Hivelord so wraths were shut down. The entire table was trying to shut them down while they attacked people. The Sliver player attacked me with a bunch of flying slivers and I was able to block one with Stunt Double copying a Sliver Hivelord. Thank you old slivers :) (Winged Sliver gave mine flying). This put me at 9 poison counters since they had Poisonous Sliver.

The Gods player had a ton of gods online and was milling Slivers when they could. However, one turn I told them that the most likely way for us to get out of this jam was to mill me. So, they did. They milled me for 33. I was hoping for a Cyclonic Rift but they milled a Muddle the Mixture which was just as good. I played Mystic Sanctuary, put Muddle on top, drew it with Sensei's Divining Top and then tutored for Cyclonic Rift. I held onto that for a little while before needing to cast it.

The Sliver player kind of rebuilt but not enough to stay in the game. At one point, they did try to attack me to get me the last Poison counter and I cast Angel of the Dire Hour to clear the Slivers they had managed to cast.

I also cast Angel of Finality to exile their graveyard and Gods milled them for a bunch in response. The next card they drew was Rise of the Dark Realms but no one really had anything in their graveyard and theirs was gone. They tutored for a Sliver and found they only had 2 left.

From here, Rhonas basically just ran us over. We spent a lot of resources trying to deal with Slivers (and I really just focused on them for the turn 5 Armageddon play) that I didn't have enough in the tank to survive the huge beating they had where they buffed everything up considerably to take out me and the Gods player.

Some of this was just a bit of bad draws as I never really got Ephara going. But, the teamwork in getting rid of the Slivers player was pretty fun to do. Nothing really to comment on beyond the fact that having to deal with two aggro decks made things pretty tough when I wasn't actually drawing cards.

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Post by shermanido37 » 4 years ago

There's an Ur-Dragon player in our meta and they run both Living Death and Patriarch's Bidding, so removal that doesn't kill is very effective against them. Winds of Abandon won me the game against them.
If you're running Mystic Sanctuary, it's just bad manners not to run Terminus. I'm running the combo even though I haven't drawn it yet and am very excited to see how it works. It should be very strong for you considering the amount of indestructible beaters you encountered.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

This might be something in general to look into. The idea of exile/tuck over destruction anyway. My main concern over Terminus and Devastation Tide is that I don't generally have a good way to set them up. Now, Mystic Sanctuary certainly gives *a* way to do that but I am wondering if that is enough. Perhaps that, combined with the nature of Terminus, might be something to consider.

But, with that being said, I think there is an argument for Devastation Tide over Terminus. Very often I get situations where a complete board reset is warranted due to the amount of non-creatures on the board. It is tough sometimes since I want to be able to get rid of creatures more permanently but I also sometimes want to be able to deal with the artifacts and/or enchantments people have on board. Plus, tide lets me rebuild my board more easily (at the cost of others rebuilding theirs of course).

I will keep Terminus in mind to see where I land on it.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Terminus has been pretty good for me overall, cast for miracle quite a bit and it tends to hose the yard decks pretty hard. Unfortunately we are a yard deck (at least I am) and it really sucks to terminus my own stuff.

I think it's really a matter of taste, but you do have sensei's divining top too which is pretty good at setting it up. mystical tutor does make it a lot easier though as you have the seeker->mystical tutor, cast and upkeep tide option, which is very nice.

Reminds me I need to pick up a foil devastation tide jic :)

*generally* speaking we can beat most boards of enchantment/artifacts with rift/hour/cleansing nova, though darksteel forge is a problem.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

Those might be fair points. I have moved a little more into the tutor realm (which reminds me that I really should update the primer at some point with those new cards) so that also might make a good case for Terminus.

I never did add Hour of Revelation as I wasn't sure another wrath was what I needed, but as I talked about some issues with Artifacts and Enchantments above, now might be the time to add that in as well.

So, I think I will find room for both Terminus and Hour of Cleansing. I already know that I want to cut Brazen Borrower as I basically never feel the need to cast the creature side and with Terminus and Hour I am thinking the Bounce mode becomes a little less relevant. Plus, I need to wait for it to rotate out of Standard at least to see if the Showcase foil goes down since Sygg wants this card more. I don't want to pay $70 for another copy :P

I will have to see what other card ends up making the cut. I am honestly back to thinking about Land Tax but I will go through the entire list to see what I find.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I think it's possible you have had less luck with brazen borrower since I find most of the time I use it it's to enable a combo by removing a lock piece and that's less of an issue for you since you win through overwhelming advantage vs. combo.

So your deck plays a bit higher impactful creature count (most of mine are kinda derpy and I don't mind wrathing them since I'm higher on reanimation) but on the other side you have the ability to play the combo of eerie interlude + hour of revelation which I imagine ought to sew up almost any game state, so I think hour of revelation is almost surely going to be worthwhile for you. It's really debatable whether it's better than being able to just hit enchantments/artifacts like cleansing nova but I think the upside of sweeping planeswalkers is probably worth it.

I also surely do not mean to pressure you toward mystical tutor but I think it would raise the stock of the miracles quite a bit -- and not running it is maybe more of a reason to stick to something like austere command vs. terminus/tide. I dunno though.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

While I am still "testing" Mystical Tutor, it is in the deck. I think the previous conversation we had on it still applies to this situation: why try to add redundancy in different effects when that card adds redundancy to all of them. Tutor gives me a few options and Terminus being one of them probably leads into it staying in the long run (though I am guessing it would stay anyway).

I do think losing targeted bounce could be an issue as it has come in handy. But, one thought is more I don't really do much with targeted Bounce as it is (Venser, Capsize and, sort of, Rift are the others) and adding in the new cards hopefully makes that bounce less useful anyway as I should be able to just clear the board. Plus, it just never felt like I had a real good reason to bounce things in general. When I did use it, I just felt that there should be some way to permanently remove it instead of a temporary bounce.

I do like the interaction of Hour/Terminus/any wrath with Ghostway and Eerie Interlude so their stock obviously goes up with these inclusions.

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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

I have decided to try out Terminus and Hour of Revelation. To make room, I am going to cut Brazen Borrower based on the comments above. Also, I think it might be time to rethink my "dependence" on Twister effects for card draw. I still want Timetwister just in case but Day's Undoing may have lasted longer than I think it deserved to. I will see how much I miss the ability to refill my hand, but I think with the ways of getting Timetwister back I might not see too much of a negative impact.
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Post by WizardMN » 4 years ago

Alright, it is time to go over the potential includes from C20 and Ikoria. Since they are coming out at the same time, I am just going to group them together:

White Cards

Cartographer's Hawk - This appears to be a reasonable ramp effect. I put that in quotes as it only works when behind so it may not do a lot. The other piece is that when it does trigger, we get to bounce it and replay it to trigger Ephara. It is on the line but worth it to see how good it is

Dismantling Wave - This is an expensive removal spell but is Instant timing, basically uncounterable, and draws a card. Or, worse case, can still destroy early sol rings and other ramp. I am not entirely sure it fits, but it could turn out to be reasonable.

Verge Rangers - Another way to ensure land drops are hit, but doesn't get us ahead on anything. Land Tax does the same job but better. Being stapled to a creature is a big deal but so is the 3 mana. I might give it a try eventually but isn't something I want to slot in right away

Drannith Magistrate - The ability to shut off opposing commanders, along with a plethora of other strategies, is very appealing. I am choosing not to play it though since it just isn't an effect I like to begin with but any stax oriented build could definitely slot this in easily.

Luminous Broodmoth - This gives us a lot of resiliency for things but, based on how the deck has performed thus far, I am not sure it is entirely needed. First, a lot of our stuff has Flying innately so wouldn't come back. And second, we are expecting to blow the board somewhat often as it is so rebuilding is something we are already built around doing. There may be a point where I want to try this out, but I don't think now is the time.

Blue Cards

Fierce Guardianship - There are very few blue decks where I don't want this card. I will cut a counterspell for it, but free counterspell in a deck where I expect to always have my commander is pretty good

Tidal Barracuda - This has a good effect for our deck, but the symmetric Flash is very worrying. This deck is already heavy on Flash anyway, and Teferi does this better. So, I will continue to lean on Teferi for this effect and will leave this new one out.

Ominous Seas - This works well with our deck and doesn't really require any actual investment. But, waiting for 8 counters to be put onto it is a lot. I could imagine this giving us a token every 3 - 4 turns once we start going (maybe more often depending on what we cast) but still isn't likely to be worth a spot

Pouncing Shoreshark - Flash is good, but the effect, and needing another creature (not exactly a high hurdle, but still) meas it isn't really going to be all that great most often.

Sea-Dasher Octopus - This could be reasonable. 3 mana, Flash, card draw. It isn't super powerful, but can keep things going pretty well. I think this is one that I am going to try out. I don't expect Mutate to make a difference but it might.

Voracious Greatshark - This is so close to being a snap include. Maybe at 4 mana? Getting a creature and a counterspell in one is good, but the restriction on what it can counter and being 5 mana means I think it is just outside where we want to be
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Hey man,

How have Dream Eater and Cavalier of Dawn been for you? Giving some though to a minor re-tool and debating trying those out. I always forget eater has flash which is sick. But it does cost a lot.

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Post by WizardMN » 3 years ago

Do note I haven't played in about 2 months thanks to Covid so my take on Cavalier isn't totally fleshed out.

Dream Eater has been good for me. I don't think I would ever go as far as to say "great" but being a flyer, a bounce spell, a Surveil 4, and (probably) a card, it has done well. It does tend to show up more as a response to some other big play and it is rare that I will just throw it out on the field. But, it has the ability to do that where I just need to make sure I draw something decent even if the Dream Eater itself isn't that great in that situation.

6 mana is certainly a lot but, in my build anyway, I tend to find myself with a lot of mana at my disposal since I tend to want to play things at Instant timing so the fact that it is 6 mana isn't a huge deal most often.

Cavalier has had a couple pretty good plays but I do tend to find myself getting "caught" by the token it leaves behind. I don't think there is really a better option at the moment for how versatile it is, but not having Flash, being 5 mana, and giving them a token are still things to think about. Being a creature is nice for Ephara and as I said, it has done good work so far. But I also haven't had a lot of times where I got stuck with it in hand so I might have just gotten lucky so far.

I know this isn't what you asked but if I had to choose over the other, Dream Eater would win by a mile.

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Post by WizardMN » 3 years ago

Well, I have decided to really take a hard look at this deck, especially in light of some of @pokken's changes. I want to find room for some of the new cards I mentioned above and I do need to figure out whether some of the existing cards are pulling their weight.

Now, this particular set of changes is going to be based mostly on "feel" since I haven't had a chance to play the deck in a long time. So, there might be a few changes here that seem impetuous, especially with the lack of actually testing things out, but because of the current state of things, and because I want to try new cards out, I don't have a lot of options.

With that being said, the cards I want to try out are:

Cartographer's Hawk - There has been some back and forth on this card in @pokken's thread, but I feel that it at least warrants testing. There is a real possibility that it ends up being pretty underwhelming, but there are some potential upsides that I want to evaluate.

Fierce Guardianship - A free counterspell is a free counterspell. Now, it is "just" a Negate but because I plan on having access to Ephara most of the game, I think it allows for a little more reach in the early game to set up my board without needing to protect things. It is still astronomically expensive for a card in a PreCon so I am just going to proxy it for now.

Sea-Dasher Octopus - I am going to give this a try. I think there is a pretty big upside to this card and being able to Mutate it onto Ephara (hopefully) could mean a lot more cards. Even if not, it gives me a lot of opportunity for some "extra" card draw.

Now, to make cuts. Guardianship I think seems fairly easy: just cut a counterspell. However, the deck is actually still pretty light on Counterspells with only 4 in the deck. And 3 of those 4 (not Mana Drain) actually do more than "just" counter a spell. So, I don't think cutting a counterspell is what I want to do for a glorified Negate.

I think I have mentioned it in the past, but I am not entirely sold on Nimble Obstructionist as it is so I am going to try cutting that for this. I think this hits far more than the Obstructionist and won't just sit dead in my hand.

For the Hawk and Octopus, it is a little harder. I think Nadir Kraken is the cut for now. This is one that I don't think I have ever gotten on the field yet, so it might make its way back in eventually. But, for now, it gets the Axe.

And, as much as I don't like it, but based on the last exchange above, I am actually going to drop Cavalier of Dawn. It does a lot of work, but it is high on the curve and doesn't always do what I want it to anyway. I think this might be a mistake but cuts need to be made somewhere. This is another that could find its way back in.
05/24/20
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shermanido37
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Post by shermanido37 » 3 years ago

I think the Octopus is not good for Ephara, especially the thought of mutating it onto her. Doing that will not count the Octopus's mana cost for devotion, and Ephara will still have her Theros god ability, so if you won't have 7 devotion you will A) not be able to mutate Octopus on her, B) if you already had, she will still not be a creature, and the octopus will stay stuck onto her.

MeowZeDung has made some changes to his Kykar, and among them is Reconnaissance Mission. While the card is much better for him than it is for you, it still serves a good function in giving the benefit of the Octopus to ALL of your creatures. Plus, if you're stuck in a pinch, you can cycle it for 2 to try and find something better.
Overall it's less flash synergies but it's still pretty good.


So my thoughts on Kraken are that while it's no game warping Drannith Magistrate, the interaction between it and Ephara is just too good to ignore. While the overall mana cost can stack up, you're the one who decides when to let it grow and when to hold up mana in response, so I think it can be spectacular for an instant speed interaction build with Ephara, on par with Monastery Mentor.
Seeing as your deck is more of a fatty creature goodstuff deck, though, I can see taking it out.
The strength of Nimble Obstructionist is that it's never dead, especially in higher paced metas - countering abilities like fetches and commander activations can be nifty, and the body is a great surprise blocker against aggressive decks. That does not seem like what you're looking for though.

I'm sad you cut the Cavalier, as I'm looking to test it myself. What is your impression of it overall?
If you're looking for other cuts, I wouldn't be sure about Timetwister, Heliod's Intervention, or even Terminus if you can't manipulate your cards enough.

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Post by WizardMN » 3 years ago

shermanido37 wrote:
3 years ago
I think the Octopus is not good for Ephara, especially the thought of mutating it onto her. Doing that will not count the Octopus's mana cost for devotion, and Ephara will still have her Theros god ability, so if you won't have 7 devotion you will A) not be able to mutate Octopus on her, B) if you already had, she will still not be a creature, and the octopus will stay stuck onto her.
Which is a fair point. Most likely I wouldn't end up actually putting the Octopus onto her but the thought of an Indestructible Octopus seemed kind of nice. In either case, I still like the idea of the Octopus even on its own: it has Flash which allows me to still be reactive, it triggers Ephara when I want it to, and I can still use it to poke at a defenseless player to get a card. I do agree that Mutate is likely trinket text in this deck, but the effect seems decent. It might be overkill, but I just want to play with shiny new toys so I am going to try it out.
MeowZeDung has made some changes to his Kykar, and among them is Reconnaissance Mission. While the card is much better for him than it is for you, it still serves a good function in giving the benefit of the Octopus to ALL of your creatures. Plus, if you're stuck in a pinch, you can cycle it for 2 to try and find something better.
Overall it's less flash synergies but it's still pretty good.
I saw that card in his list as well and I am not sure. I really went with the Octopus as another Flash creature that has a reasonable ability. I don't like going "shields down" to drop an Enchantment that may or may not trigger too often. I still want to play reactive Magic after all.
So my thoughts on Kraken are that while it's no game warping Drannith Magistrate, the interaction between it and Ephara is just too good to ignore. While the overall mana cost can stack up, you're the one who decides when to let it grow and when to hold up mana in response, so I think it can be spectacular for an instant speed interaction build with Ephara, on par with Monastery Mentor.
Seeing as your deck is more of a fatty creature goodstuff deck, though, I can see taking it out.
The strength of Nimble Obstructionist is that it's never dead, especially in higher paced metas - countering abilities like fetches and commander activations can be nifty, and the body is a great surprise blocker against aggressive decks. That does not seem like what you're looking for though.
Pokken has had some really good experience with it and I wouldn't say my deck is a "fatty creature goodstuff deck" considering I have "maybe" 2 "fatties". In fact, I would probably go the other way and use that as an explanation of why I cut Kraken: I don't really do much with fatties in this deck. I want things that have good abilities on entering the battlefield or offer some other utility. Now, I am still on board with it being good since the "create a token every turn" (more or less) is still good; I just needed the space to try things out and I had to make some tough cuts somewhere (see below as well).

As for Obstructionist, I very rarely actually needed the body. While the ability counters something and draws me a card, I often held onto it way later than I probably should have because I wanted something more than "just" stopping a fetch land. Like stopping a Planeswalker Ultimate. But I already have creatures to attack with to do that anyway. And Disallow still gives me my counter ability functionality. It really isn't something that comes up often enough, to be honest, where I feel I even need the Stifle effect and I had thought about cutting Disallow as well because of it. But, because it can still counter a spell, it stayed.
I'm sad you cut the Cavalier, as I'm looking to test it myself. What is your impression of it overall?
If you're looking for other cuts, I wouldn't be sure about Timetwister, Heliod's Intervention, or even Terminus if you can't manipulate your cards enough.
I provided a little insight above regarding Cavalier. I didn't really get to play it enough to give it a fair shake but I ended up cutting it to make room and because it has a 5 mana card without Flash. I think it has its uses, and flickering it is even nicer. I don't like the token it leaves behind which still can be detrimental, but the sheer utility of it is pretty good. There is a future where I can see adding it back but, again, I needed to make some tough cuts to try things out.

I have been cutting Timetwister in more and more decks so there is a very real possibility it finally leaves this deck too. I still like the card as a "reset button" of sorts though and it has done a lot of good work in keeping my in games so I am not quite ready to pull the trigger yet.

Terminus was a thought too. But, I don't think I have played any games with it in the deck (at least Kraken had the opportunity to show up even if it didn't actually make an appearance). In either case, I might end up rethinking that as well. It was a suggestion made earlier that I felt warranted at least trying.

I still think that, due to how many games Resolute Archangel has won me, Intervention deserves a shot.

It is also still important to recognize that a lot of the cards I just added are things I want to try out. I am about 100% confident that not all changes will work out in the end, but I want to try them. I think there is merit to all of them, and I think there is merit in the cuts I made as well. I don't believe any are bad or wrong but once I get to the point of being able to play again, I will have a better idea on all of this.

On a side note, this whole Covid thing has gotten me seriously considering just buying some of my decks on MTGO so I can get some games in. I know @pokken has done this and it seems to work out fairly well to tune decks a little better. It also exposes the decks to a different meta. The latter could be a bad thing (I am not tweaking the deck to fight hordes of infinite combos because my groups doesn't play a lot) but it could allow for a little more "generalization" for different metas as well. Plus, I get to see how well these new cards actually function within the context of real games.

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