Sorry about the delay, I knew I needed to do a second pass through a lot of things as my first list was a little bit rough still. I missed a bunch of things some of which were mentioned by some already and some were things I thought I might want. I tend to not be a combo focused individual so while I was thinking about some things I realized how combo tastic a lot of the buyback spells were with a lot of things like cost reduction,
3+ colored mana producing effects, and essentially anything that
untaps lands when it enters play. Hell even just having a Nykthos in play can spin up infinites with most of the buyback spells. Its not something that I particularly like seeing but I also won't cut all of the buyback spells because they can go infinite.... I just probably will refuse to play them in such a way.
I really hate combo and while I won't completely axe cards because they can combo, having more combo interactions in my list isn't a plus to me. I REALLY don't like executing them even when they come up and I even more prefer to not be running cards that combo together but so long as they are reasonable cards on their own I just try not to mix them.
MeowZeDung wrote: ↑3 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑3 years ago
I think potentially using it on the creatures who spawn tokens on spellcast would also be really good as they wouldn't spiral infinitely but would also create a very concerning boardstate that would be hard to undo without a sweeper.
This was my thought with
Master of Waves, I hadn't considered the possibility of setting up an indefinite loop with another targeting spell and abusing the stack with Orvar. I just saw it as, "Hey, a free master off Orvar's trigger PLUS a bunch of free masters from the token etbs with
Mystic Reflection!". The only issue with it is mono blue's lack of haste/indestructible for token armies, so unless you are somehow flickering master at instant speed on an opponent's end step (
Essence Flux or
Ghostly Flicker I guess), making this huge elemental army is too telegraphed and likely to be dealt with before your next turn.
As far as
Mystic Reflection itself goes, that card is far and away my favorite from Kaldheim. I want to abuse it in Kykar so bad, but I'm not set up to be real degenerate with it outside of combining it with
Underworld Breach. . . which is already degenerate with just about anything. That has led me to think about ways to take advantage of it in other contexts. Like you said, I think just hosing ETB commanders, or ones with crucial value generating static abilities, is great - but ultimately that just makes it a fancy instant speed modal
Hushbringer/
Mystic Subdual, which ain't shabby at all FWIW.
One interaction that I've heard talk about, which would work for you here potentially, is reflection targetting
Hunted Phantasm for a jillion tokens to flood the board - but the targeted nature of the token creation makes that less appealing (if you REALLY want to go to fantasy combo land, there's
Crafty Cutpurse.) So, I've been pondering ways to make it work best with army-in-a-can spells.
Avenger of Zendikar is the obvious combo. Big token spells like
Secure the Wastes,
Worm Harvest,
Army of the Damned /
From Under the Floorboards, or
Rise from the Tides are probably next in line if there is a juicy non-legendary target on the battlefield. After that I think the ETB devotion cycle make for great targets because each copy ups your devotion count. I can see
Fanatic of Mogis or
Gray Merchant of Asphodel being huge haymakers with reflection, but I think
Evangel of Heliod and our boy (. . .girl . . . fish?)
Master of Waves are cleaner interactions since they bring bodies with them for max reflection value and stack interaction.
Aaaaaanywho, that was a lot of words to basically say - I've always loved
Master of Waves, and I can't see myself running it anytime from now on without at least asking myself if the deck wouldn't mind also including
Mystic Reflection.
Mystic Reflection - I am still not sure where I stand on this card but I think I will try to put it in and see what it does for me. It works better with a higher mix of token proders in a list and while it can work with the commander I think its better to follow with something else to make additional clones of something. I don't think that if we use it as a weird make 2ish tokens of a card its that great given that we could run Artful Dodge and Defy Gravity and get two spell triggers for some of the token producers that kick off on spellcast. The key is going to be either triggering a large number of tokens to spawn in one shot or disrupting opponents. I will put it in and see I guess.
Armies in a can - I looked at a few others and probably the best I could come up with is maybe
Myr Battlesphere. There were a few other things that seemed kind of funny if you could go the distance too. I was eyeing
Lullmage Mentor for instance based on the idea of getting to the tap seven merfolk to counter. As soon as you would get seven of him in play you kind of get to start looking at hard lock countering players but that seems both lame and there is the issue that he does literally nothing unless you get the full distance on him. I also looked into several of the tribal buffs for which merfolk probably have some of the better ones but
Corsair Captain was kind of cool in that you get that treasure on ETB often making the spellcast targing him free. I just don't think that the commander changeling beat down play is really that realistic.
Seafloor Oracle does replicate in a super funny way though and its not legendary which is one that kept drawing me back to maybe merfolk as a tribal theme.
MeowZeDung wrote: ↑3 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑3 years ago
If I justify the spell it will be based on its general use rather than assuming I draw it plus one specific card in deck.
Pardon the double post, but I think this is worth commenting on: I agree with this in principle, but think it's worth considering that you shouldn't justify it solely on its general use or solely on its best-case, but rather a blend of both. In other words, reflection is solid removal/ETB hosing at instant speed and a very competitive rate in it's general use, but it's potentially game ending in its best-case. So in terms of card evaluation and evaluating it as worth a slot in a deck, I would personally value this as something like 1.5 cards rather than just a single removal spell, especially here where it can just be a value-generating targeting spell in a deck that wants targeting spells.
There is also the option of leaning into it a bit more in deckbuilding.
Amphin Mutineer and
Whirler Rogue are solid creatures in a deck like this by themselves, plus they could be degenerate with reflection. Imagine either of them or
Master of Waves entering while you have an
Agent of Treachery + Orvar on board and a
Mystic Reflection in hand. You also already have
Wurmcoil Engine's death trigger giving a similar effect.
All that said, I would agree that it's a bad idea to include a spell JUST because of the magical christmas land c-c-c-combo scenario.
Amphin Mutineer - I forget about this guy all the time. I will give some thought to him. I was in the process of cutting Duplicant from my list in part because of just how many chunky expensive creatures I have in the list but this might be something for me to circle back to after I get some testing in.
Whirler Rogue - I thought about it. It might be alright from a reusable defense plan goes but I didn't feel like sending in unblockable creatures was super high on my list of wants. I guess it might depend on how much of a flying plan my opponents have but I didn't feel like my flying defense plan was too bad.
RowanKeltizar wrote: ↑3 years ago
I second the inclusion of
Sapphire Medallion. Yes you have a lot of spells costing just
U but it helps put Orvar on the table earlier as well as help with some of your bigger plays (mostly creatures).
I would think
Skullclamp should be pretty good in this list since you are making so many 1/1 tokens. And generally I think you could use more draw for a spellslinger list. I worry that you will run out of gas quickly with all the
U instants/sorceries.
A few draw engines to consider:
Reconnaissance Mission,
Coastal Piracy,
Teferi's Ageless Insight
Sakashima of a Thousand Faces cancels the ledgendary rule. Not reliable to get into play, but worth a thought.
Chasm Skulker might be able to do some work
Mind Bend,
Moonlace,
Thermal Flux,
Mind Games,
Twiddle,
Glamerdye all seem like considerations. I think you want the ability to hit other types of permanents besides creatures whenever possible mostly so you can ramp your lands but also to copy things. Enchantments are harder to get rid of than creatures.
The Timmy in me wants to run HUGE creatures. I'm talking about things like:
It That Betrays,
Pathrazer of Ulamog,
Brinelin, the Moon Kraken
Metallurgic Summonings seems pretty good for the activation as well as the ability to keep making tokens
Sapphire Medallion - I decided against adding it from the standpoint that it felt like my reasons to run it primarily felt like it would push me towards combo wins which I don't like doing. If you get a buyback spell down to costing just
U to cast you can create infinite basic lands or any land that taps for
U. I get the appeal for combo and that does sound great.... I just don't like to combo so I think I will avoid it. Lots of the cards in my list only cost one mana to cast them so the reason to run cost reduction felt kind of heavily towards buyback combo loops.
Skullclamp - It might work. I don't run a ton of x/1s in my list but obviously the option to copy skullclamp and then attach multiple clamps to a creature to draw like 4 or more cards is a thing. My issue with that is just that its incredibly expensive to do all of this and even then, I don't know that I am swimming in small tokens. I feel like to some degree if someone hits me hard on my commander that it could be a real pain to try to get clamp to bail me out. If my deck is working really well then do I really need clamp value? Clamp can spend a lot of time spinning its wheels just to draw some cards but I am in blue. Its sort of the question of how many tokens and how well the deck works for me. If the deck is firing on all cylinders or not firing well I don't know how well I would make use of it. I guess I can maybe circle back after I see the list in action. Sometimes its just hard to envision how things are going to go until I run a list and see where some of the shortcomings are.
Reconnaissance Mission /
Coastal Piracy - I think its sort of similar to Skullclamp on my thoughts. Its just going to depend on how consistent things go for me. I similarly considered Opposition but I felt like all of these were a little bit winmore in that say if an opponent just comes down hard and answers my commander the first two times before I can do anything with him I am hesitant to have these sort of effects in my list. Some of the spells that target are already going to be REALLY bad if I can't get my commander in and stick him for a bit and these sort of cards are a little less on theme and sort of take an assumption of "if things are working it would be sweet". I just want to try to get some games in and see how the basic functions of the commander go first before I jump to stuff like this.
Teferi's Ageless Insight - Yea, that could be a thing. I think I like it just a touch more than the Coastal Piracy idea in that I think even when I am doing poorly I can still target cantrip an opponents creature and use this to draw 2 cards instead.
Sakashima of a Thousand Faces - When I have a strong commander with a focus on them I really hate adding extra setup time and support. I get the whole army of Orvar thing but who is to say you don't eat spot removal in response to trying this or the next player doesn't just wrath. I think there is already a lot of power in just having Orvar in play and clone something. I get the want to see it go to the moon with value but I also think its a greedy play to go for that rather than just try to make him work. I have a
Sai, Master Thopterist deck for instance and I did try the
Efficient Construction and
Sakashima the Impostor and in the end, I realized that it made my deck far clunkier and slower to try to grind extra value out of trying to have 2+ of them in play than it was worth. It was better to just play off of my commander and accept the value there then be greedy and take an extra turn on setup to get swept.
Chasm Skulker - Its probably a fine card. I guess the reason I am not super excited is just that it has little immediate return and even when it does split if it hasn't been around for a while it isn't that impressive. We do have draw in the list to make it bigger but even with 2-3 of these at a few counters each I am just not that excited about this card. I guess my issue is that its not that much immediate pressure, its more of an over time concern for opponents in that it comes in two waves but its easily chump blocked until it dies.
Mind Bend,
Moonlace,
Thermal Flux,
Mind Games,
Twiddle,
Glamerdye - yea I think all of these are quite reasonable. I was digging through cards putting my list together when I tripped over
Mind Games and asked myself why the hell it wasn't in my list. I ended up going back through and finding a lot more spells that I could possibly run here today and I have a good update to my own list.
Gigadrowse and
Dizzy Spell also went on my maybe list in the cheap one drop options that aren't on my list or in my current list of changes.
Dizzy Spell being a tutor for any of the buyback spells or even getting a sol ring or whatever would be cool.
Eldrazi - Yea, really any big thing that isn't legendary would be nuts. I also considered
Tidespout Tyrant because lets be honest, how hard would it be to bounce everything in play with a few of those? I ultimately didn't do that because well.... I would probably feel bad lol.
Stormtide Leviathan also made a short list of considerations if I wanted to go beat down but have some defense too.
Metallurgic Summonings - So, I have played this effect in the past and honestly, its a HUGE pain in the ass to track token sizes. I get that I did include Shark Typhoon which is going to have exactly the same issue but those tokens fly as well which I used as sort of justification here. I do think that summonings is fine though, I just hate tracking the size of every token because it creates extremely confusing boardstates.
DECK CHANGES:
- Artful Dodge → Defy Gravity I think I like this move better. Unblockable is a stronger evasion but I can use instant flying on defense in a number of ways. Plus its moving a sorcery to an instant which I am all onboard for.
- Distortion Strike → Thermal Flux I am not sure how I overlooked Thermal Flux but I suspect it was based on some of my filter searching. I tried looking up all blue spells that targeted originally but was trying to weed out all the counterspells in my search filter from there which probably did it. It seems like a big improvement over Distortion Strike though.
- Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca → Expedition Map I had planned to feel maybe a touch more like a control deck originally but now I see all of these lines where this deck becomes very aggresive. I think that copying the Maze part of the compass could still be good but at the same time getting one of several useful utility lands could also be really good.
- Dowsing Dagger // Lost Vale → Gilded Lotus These cards are quire similar but I think that in a deck that doesn't have a commander with evasion or a lot of evasive creatures it can sometimes be harder to flip the dagger. As I got to looking at my creatures I became a bit more convinced that it could be a problem. Technically either of these cards could still go infinite with Whim of Volrath or the other buyback spells I am using with a cost reducer which isn't really a positive for me but I see a lot of synergy with the deck as a whole with these effects outside of infinites which is why I plan to still run these. If combo is a positive for anyone else then running more of these with some cost reducers might be a positive thing.
- Mind Bend → Mind Games Mind Bend doesn't really do anything so Mind Games can mostly target the same things (it can't hit enchants) but the buyback option seems like a good pickup and you can still tap someone's creature or maybe a Cabal Coffers in their upkeep for tilt factor here. Generally speaking the most Mind Bend might do is change the colors of a sword of X and Y to not give pro blue.
- Recurring Insight → Spellseeker I gave it some more thought and I realized that Spellseeker is actually sort of insane draw. Think of it from this perspective, you just continue to tutor for flicker or cantrip cards and you get a new spellseeker to get another card while also drawing a card from your deck. The downside is you burn through your spells hella fast but you draw some cards and get some board state for it. I felt it was more on theme and cheaper than recurring so I opted to throw that away.
- Fact or Fiction → Treachery So........ adding Treachery opens up the can of worms that it goes infinite with all of the buyback spells. That said, I love what Treachery does in this deck outside of targeting it infinitely with buyback spells. I came very close to not including it for the combo factor but its a good card with synergy with what my commander does and the deck as a whole which is why I am sort of letting it in. Even when nothing is working right casting Treachery is still a very reasonable play which I like. I avoided a lot of the untap land creatures for combo reasons and the fact that they don't really do much outside of the combo (sure they still make mana but the point would be combo).
- Teferi's Time Twist → Preordain I have been working on a way to make a few of the cheap selection cantrips make my list. The twist is still fine, I was just looking to lower the curve and get more good and cheap spells in.
- Withdraw → Ponder I think that Withdraw is cute but in hindsight, the inability to target noncreators doesn't seem as good for me. I was thinking along the lines of bounce your creature, target mine, and pay the one + copy it but I think only targeting creatures kind of sucks.
- Toils of Night and Day → Mystic Reflection Mystic Reflection is just an interesting and odd card. I guess for now I bring it in and just see how it plays out. I was planning on just having a weird ramp spell out of Toils of the Night and Day but in retrospect paying two mana to ramp and tap one thing isn't that efficient for this deck especially without a cantrip attached. I thought maybe that the untap on my land paired with tapping something else was good enough..... but I think its still a bit boarderline.
- Duplicant → Artisan of Forms I felt like my 6ish mana creatures felt kind of heavy handed. Duplicant is still good removal when you look at making a bunch of copies of him on demand but its still expensive. I felt like I liked my other creatures in the sixish mana range more than Duplicant offhand so I guess for now I am going to put him away and see how thigns go. Maybe based on how testing goes he might be back though. I considered a number of traditional clones as well as spells that generate clones. Ultimately what I liked about Artisan of Forms was its ability to readjust to any target on demand and spin me off a copy. It isn't as strong standalone but since almost all of my spells target I felt like it was a strong way to on demand spin up clones of anything in play. It does lose a little bit of power when copying ETB creatures as you don't get those triggers on the original one entering but the cheap mana cost and its ability to continue to evolve to whatever is in play are interesting. The biggest downside in my mind is that if you clone a legend you run into the legend rule which probably kills the original and keeps the token that gets made. Still, you would have a better base to it then and could fire off other tokens later and return to that cool legend you copied out rather than its 1/1 base.
Well, that was a long post. Sorry about that.