Looking at some of the suggestions both of you do, this might be a good time to say that my playgroups are quite low-powered. Stuff like Coat of arms, Reaper King, and Liliana's Contract are a bit much (with some of the others also being borderline). Additionally, budget is a thing. Although the mana base suggests otherwise, my price range for "oof that's expensive, should I really pull the trigger on it?" is €3 to €5. Anything you see in the list that's more than that was acquired at a time when it was actually that low, in an older precon, or acquired through trade-ins for store credit when I was building a strong cube (hence the mana base).
So, while I agree that all those suggestions are good (I wish I had that new Black Market Connections!), they're simply not an option for me. I'm still dubbing whether to make this more of a community-topic or my own (as to keep track of what's in my decks instead of my binders).
@materpillar, you're free to copy all of this to the primer if you want, I can send the formatted stuff too.
I've added my thoughts concerning specific non-bank-breaking cards below in bold
materpillar wrote: ↑1 year ago
I'd recommend Avian Changeling and Mothdust Changeling instead of Fire-Belly Changeling and Impostor of the Sixth Pride. Flying is significantly more relevant for all the combat damage triggering synergies. Mothdust also has some niche synergies like with Magda, Brazen Outlaw when you couldn't otherwise attack.
Yeah 100% agreed on these. These are those typical cards that I'll think about after I've placed a new order for singles.
You should pick up a Murmuring Bosk. It's an inexpensive, fetchable tri-land that's on theme.
Yeah, I'm not going to add the tribal duals, but this one is well worth it. What would you cut for it though? I'm thinking of dropping the 5 basics for the rest of the checklands and maybe something else
Don't have Shared Animosity or Coat of Arms. Probably in the "go wide" section.
My Shared Animosity is in a different deck, but might be low-power enough to make the go-wide section. I'll have to see whether I want to migrate it here. Solid cards though for sure
Ramp section is really small could have Marwyn, the Nurturer, Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, Heronblade Elite, and Altar of the Pantheon. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. That's off the top of my head.
Yeah, those are solid adds, although I probably will skip the pantheon (as I'm not going as hard on meeting as many tribes as possible).
Removal. Man you're hating on my boys Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves and Patron of the Vein. Peer Pressure is the coolest removal spell we own.
Oof, I forget about Tolsimir all the time, but he's stellar indeed. I've got a peer pressure in my binder, not sure why it's not in there. Patron of the Vein has got serious spunk, I like it!
Mass board wipe you missed the coolest wrath Endemic Plague.
While definitely a fitting add, I do notice that this deck tends to build up boards of utility it'd rather not wipe away. What's your experience with the card as opposed to more asymmetrical ones like Crux of Fate?
I'll post more as I have time.
Elywood wrote: ↑1 year ago
Yea I meant keeping each batch to a fixed # of cards so its easy to grab-and-swap.
Some recommendations:
Changeling
- Moritte of the Frost
- Black Market Connections
Moritte is in there, but I misspelled it.
Attacking
- Knowledge Exploitation
Stellar card, but mine's in another deck (Krydle of Baldur's Gate rogue-flavoured deck).
Draw
- Liliana's Contract
- Cryptbreaker
- Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
Aside from the bank breaker Yuriko and too-easy alt-win Contract, the Cryptbreaker is awesome. Not sure if I'm willing to pay the dough for it, but a strong add definitely.
ETB (prob can split some of these up into other specific batches)
- Ganax, Astral Hunter
- Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm
- Necroduality
- Scourge of Valkas
- Spellstutter Sprite
- Dragon Tempest
I'm not sure why the Scourge and Tempest aren't on the list, they used to be in the pre-batchified deck itself too, I'm beginning to think I've already had to limit myself even with this approach. Miirym is on its way there with the upcoming update of the list, sick card. Necroduality is too pricey for me, but an easy add for the budgetless player. Spellstutter is nice, I'll have to see if I can trade for one with a friend, not feeling like paying that price for it. Concerning Ganax, I considered it, but aside from the looping that @materpillar's list is famous for, is this strong enough? Remember, using this batching system I'm probably never going to be looping changelings at any rate.
Removal
- Reaper King
Too strong for my tastes
Ramp package
- Loam Dweller
- Grell Philosopher
Same as Miirym, really looking forward to try the Grell! My pods aren't always as artifact ramp filled as they could be, but it's a fun card either way. Loam Dweller is somewhat tricky, didn't make my cuts back when I had a 100 list. When is this good enough? When you've ramped two times with its trigger?
Recursion
- Lazav, the Multifarious
- The Scarab God
Lazav is a really cute one for the more graveyard-centered version, nice! Scarab boi is way out of my price range
Having gone through your suggestions, the fact that I'm missing some really obvious ones makes me think that I had to cut it down to 200 cards in total to actually make it still fit my deckbox! I probably favoured newer cards (crimson vow was last update) over the tried and true stuff like Dragon Tempest 'n Peer Pressure. So in the end I apparently did limit my batches somewhat
@Elywood
Regarding your idea though, that feels more like fixed shells, as you'd probably have ramp, draw, and removal/wipes in the deck each time and thus having to limit those numbers. To alleviate that you could of course tune the shells towards specific gameplay options, so that they overlap very little. It's a viable alternative to what I'm doing, definitely more consistent! I like the variance of this approach though (and the fact that I have to cut less :p). I'd be interested in building such shells too though, but the end goal of this approach was to be greedy and try and play all the lovely diverse stuff that's out there, I'm not sure how well the other approach can reach that.
Lastly, I was able to play a game with this setup for the first time yesterday, but the deck was piloted by a friend of mine. Combining batches wasn't a lot of work with both him and I shuffling the necessary batches (we went with the graveyard-focused one). It functioned really well! By being able to set the bread n' butter stuff (ramp/removal/draw) to a specific amount you can also better influence the strength and speed of the deck. He managed to
Maskwood Nexus +
The World Tree his deck on the board for the win (stuff like
Wayward Servant draining for what was quickly counted 58 damage or so) after most of our attention had to be spent on keeping another player in check. Given that my groups run little land removal, it did make me decide to cut the tree: a bit too much of a clock, with player removal being the only option. I guess I can use that slot for Murmuring Bosk