The deck is a delight and is currently undefeated. My wife typically pilots it, since she A) loves to win, B) hates to be mean or aggressive, and C) is a master politician with a law degree. It's always hysterical to watch folks (even folks like me who "know what's she's up to") get wheel-and-dealed, and then somehow believe they can win the 1v1 shoot-out, not realizing that like Thanos the hippo is inevitable - if you are in a 1v1 with Phelddagrif you are already dead. you just don't know it yet.
Perfectly Balanced Hippos
Approximate Total Cost:
I made a few updates to the deck as I posted it:
+ Adarkar Wastes , - Bounty of the Luxa: Bounty was pretty underwhelming, and I felt like a 44th land was in order. A copy of the painland had recently been freed up so in it went to help the manabase.
+ Devastating Mastery, + Hour of Revelation, - Devastation Tide - Austere Command: Cutting the two worst boardwipes for two better ones I recently acquired. Normally I will sing the praises of Command all day, but Phelddy rarely cares about breaking the symmetry of it. I know another deck in my collection will be thrilled to have a copy opened up.
As far as a few notes: our take is generally a bit slower than Dirks since our meta is a bit slower. This build also has less boardwipes and a bit more digging/draw including "trinkety" draw like Whispers and Brainstorm. I'm aware the manabase is super sketchy, but we're fairly budget players and have 17 decks between us. Also hard to justify spending even ~50 bucks on Spara's Headquarters + Misty Rainforest for a deck that is 4-0. Finally, there's a greater emphasis on being "Ready for anything" since while our playgroup is smaller with a handful or reliable players, we do occasionally play at shops (or would, pre-COVID) or play with friends when we travel. And everyone in our small playgroup of ~5 folks have 6+ decks they cycle between, so games vary.
For some specific atypical card notes:
- Oblation, Cast Out: My wife really wanted to be able to answer any card type at instant speed. Now that it exists, Endless Detour likely replaces one of these when and if I decide to go buy one.
- Lignify, Nevermore: These are budget/"playing what I own and not putting in random orders" concessions to my wife wanting lots of ways to put the screws on problematic commanders. Would be Song of the Dryads and Out of Time eventually.
- Reliquary Tower: Violates one of Dirk's principles, but our meta doesn't seem to care when she finds this and amasses a 10+ card hand? I think we'd be pushing it with Thought Vessel or Venser's Journal or Wizard Class but this tends to fly under the radar.
- Soothsaying: We only own one Sensei's Divining Top and it has a bit of a reputation. This is a way to rearrange and dig deep without arousing a ton of ire; it's been really good for card selection!
. Brainstorm mostly won out for being an instant and digging deep when she needs to dig deeper to find the answer in a shoot-out. Honestly it's sixes and it could be dropped especially with all the miracle spells out of the deck now so I'll think about it. 
