Eutropia's Ice Cream Parlour and Enchantment Dollar Store

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Rumpy5897
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

"Image"
Fine, at some point the deck will run out, but my point still stands

One of the stupidest MTG purchases I've ever made was snagging a Tropical Island in spite of murmurs from my playgroup about its target Kumena deck. Fishsticks may have been a riot to pilot, but an absolute chore to play against and the list, Trop included, has been gathering dust in my drawer for months. As such, I've been on the lookout for UGx that would be crap enough to not get despised so that the dual could get to see some use. A bit of a silly reason to want to build a deck, but so it goes sometimes.

Cue Eutropia, Twice-Flavoured stage left.

My initial reaction to the legend was mild amusement. She looked dismal, which in combination with her {g/u}'ness, mildly comical art/name and wonky enchantment'y nature (who in the hell builds an enchantment deck without white?) made me consider her. I stuck the design in the back of my mind and started returning from my Christmas break, and airplane idleness made me realise she actually had some crappy glass cannon potential. Crappy glass cannons are my jam! Ram in all the enchantresses ever, keep spamming ridiculously crummy enchantments with virtually no mana requirements, have the enchantress triggers and commander counters come together into a magnificent flurry of "what the hell just happened?". The list originally sported a few high-end haymakers to try to make use of the chaos, but they got taken out quickly - the voltron proved itself, weirdly enough, perfectly sufficient for game ending. The deck fared okay in early Cockatrice testing with my group, and the very next day they spoiled Enigmatic Incarnation.

Flavour Town

Ice Cream Monk

Counter-Soak

Multi-Casty Bois

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The list has exited the dreaded early days, and runs pretty smoothly by now. The trick's pretty easy - play enchantments, draw cards, ramp, leave up interaction mana to protect the delicate voltron from getting popped. The fact the deck's pretty dedicated to the voltron shtick results in relatively slow game ending, but could be argued to make games more interesting due to offering a wider interaction time frame. Still, this could probably be better. Oh Nexus collective, grant me your wisdom so that I may punch people with a flying 10/10 with five do-nothing one mana auras attached to it more efficiently!
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Flavour Town

Ice Cream Monk

Multi-Casty Bois

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08.01.2020 Changes
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Last edited by Rumpy5897 3 years ago, edited 18 times in total.
 
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Curious Obsession
Mark of Sakiko
Oath of Nissa
Thassa, God of the Sea
Seal of Primordium

Nature's Will and Bear Umbra will basically cost you nothing as you get to untap straight away.

With Enigmatic Incarnation you want Fortitude as way to get ALL your enchantress 3 cmc over the course of turns. Plus the protection is nice. There is also Aspect of Mongoose and Launch but they are not very good for you build.

Reality Ripple as you don't want Auras and the +1/+1 counters to be removed from whatever you want to protect.

Energy Flux with no artifacts.

Floodgate is super interesting right? Give your enchantresses flying, then this and kill off your opponents creatures. Sounds like just the janky but super awesome play I'd want to accomplish.

The 2-for-1 package of Pir, Imaginative Rascal and Toothy, Imaginary Friend seems too good to pass up.

Nylea's Intervention is the new Hurricane, but if your opponents are not playing flying creatures then you can use it for the land search instead.
On that note Yavimaya Hollow for protection.
Inkmoth Nexus is also an option giving it the +1/+1 counters so that you avoid creature sorcery removal and infect can be nasty.
The deck is vulnerable to Maze of Ith type lands stopping you, so a Strip Mine is insurance.


As far as cuts Shimmering Wings and Whip Silk don't really do anything outside of enchantress draw, and I swear you should always have cards to cast given that there is a lot of draw engines in the deck.

Favor of the Overbeing bit boring.

Earthcraft seems very underwhelming in this deck.

Instill Energy and Nature's Chosen are pretty specific to a few creatures, that probably need to be in play for a few turns to build them up anyway with +1/+1 counters.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Wow, that's a bunch of cool suggestions. Let me act on some of them real quick!

08.01.2020 Changes
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I have a Nature's Will in the Kumena deck that will probably die to make room for this, and it was earmarked as an include. I just forgot about it once I started adding all the other stuff :P I honestly have no idea how I missed Curious Obsession, maybe I thought I wouldn't be attacking with creatures all the time? Joke's on you, Past Rumpy, this thing swings with the commander every turn and lives the voltron life. Mark of Sakiko is a lovely source of mana and another questionable skip. Adding more countermagic in Muddle the Mixture and Negate (straight countering is better than phasing for overall board protection, I feel), phasing out three-drop removal and trying out Nature's Claim. It's possible its narrowness will have me exploring other options soon, but I may as well try it.

I'll agree that Earthcraft is far from its full potential here, the list is quite creature-light. Hacking off two relatively do-nothing one-drops in Awesome Presence and Storm Front. The whole three-drop crackdown takes Hadana's Climb with it, I've never once been incentivised to use the activated ability on the land it flips into, and three mana for a single extra land is not a dazzling rate of return.

I need to seriously consider the Strip Mine variants, for now I'll skip it as Mazes don't exist in my group. Favor of the Overbeing may be boring, but the vigilance is surprisingly important in a creature-light list like this one. The repeatable enchantments are something to do for when the engine fails to assemble or a simple re-triggering of Ice Cream Monk is necessary, and have worked okay so far.

Need to get more games in with this thing, see what could get shaved for a two-drop recurring enchantment. I tried Destiny Spinner for a while as an Enchantment Pod stepping stone, but I drew it and it just rotted in my hand and I was sad. There is a very good chance this will get papered out - the commander's laughable first impression means not many folks will build her, allowing me to get a bit of hipster vibes, the likes of which have been hard to come by since 2014/2015. I liked feeling smart for figuring out my Patron of the Orochi/Tromokratis lists, this is a similar sort of underground legend nobody will care about. Initial group testing has been promising - the deck holds its own, people don't hate it. It's actually a little frightening how "me" this commander turned out to be. Underground like Patron of the Orochi, spammy and draw'y like Feather, the Redeemed, weird coloured enchantress like Daxos the Returned.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

So I haven't quite gotten around to carving out Strip Mine slots, trying to get some test games in with the current deck configuration to see what works and what doesn't. It would be nice if the build was a bit better at gumming up the ground, but there's nothing that can really be done about that. At least nothing that comes to mind.

I just had a particularly zany game happen, which made me want to come here to record it. Rosheen ramps up and sets down a 40/40 Voracious Hydra, which I end up having to Pongify in response to a Greater Good. Two cards in hand, he took a while to recover from that. Intet goodstuff had a bit of a slow start, but set up some ramp, Sunbird's Invocation, and got up to four Giant Adephages. Tana + Ravos enrage tribal accumulated some weenies and a Plague Spitter to start triggering them. This means my Enchantment Pod can't go get Argothian Enchantress, as she'll just fall over and die. I'm weirdly stalled by contrast. I may have the two three-drop enchantresses in play, but I fail to consistently get enchantments in hand. The board's gummed with various debris, including a three-counter Marwyn, and Ice Cream Monk is sitting at a comfy tramply 6/6. I'm starting to get outscaled. Even Rosheen topdecks another hydra. Crap, what do I do?

I check out my enchantment-less hand again, and notice Finale of Devastation. I look at my Nykthos and truckload of green devotion, plus Minamo for maximum untap overkill. Finally the gears connect in my head. In my defence, it is pretty late. I cast it for 10 and go find Eidolon of Blossoms. Suddenly I'm looking at a board of five chunky swingers, and I get to draw some cards off the enchantresses, including the new one. The magical number of three enchantresses works its magic yet again (it's often been the tipping point in prior games), I start quite reliably shredding through the deck and casting various low-cost green debris. I find an Instill Energy for Marwyn to get 13 mana out of her, yet also have access to her as a swinger or more mana or something. I locate Bower Passage, an oddball card that has been an absolute MVP each time it's showed up. I quickly cast some more junk and make sure everybody got a counter this turn. I proceed to fly in with a squadron of five 10-20'ish power dudes (the Setessan Champion is sitting on 26 as an outlier), taking out three people from ~30 life each. Nobody can block because of the weird Passage thing. Kind of silly, really.

I have mixed feelings towards stuff like Rhystic Study. It'd probably be responsible to keep it, as it is a reliable source of cards (or at least annoyance) when enchantresses don't come around, and the deck does tend to struggle then. However, when things are well it's just a colossal overcosted shrug. I've never been one for contingency plans, but in this particular deck missing the engine setup stings nontrivially.
 
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Sounds like you didn't get your Curious Senses going?

Nessian Wanderer is another draw fixer.

Uncage the Menagerie is a fine way to find your enchantresses. You can 2gg for Argothian Enchantress and Nessian Wanderer. Or 3gg for Setessan Champion, Verduran Enchantress, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds for example.

Defense of the Heart is an option, especially if your opponents come to know that it only gets enchantresses.

For "gummy up the board", instead you can go for Spike Weaver which you can keep up forever with the +1/+1 counters.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Damn, man, you're carrying this deck's early days improvements so hard :P Thank you so much for pointing out some stuff that needs to go in immediately!

11.01.2020 Changes
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I forgot Uncage the Menagerie is a card, as it's not something that was a sensible include in any of my prior decks. It's an absolute windmill slam in here, with the only real adjustment I'd make to your piles being Gyre Sage at 2. Spike Weaver is even better than just swarming. The perspective of it being included has caused some grumbling, but the guys will be forced to suck it up - I'm already not stealing boards with Willbreaker, I deserve something nice :P Also carved out a slot for the Strip Mine as it's good practice to run, like you said. I may not have mazes in my group, but I'm entertaining the thought of making this into a primer at some point.

The cuts are the irresponsible side of me grabbing the wheel. Search for Azcanta mainly contributed by being sac fodder for Enchantment Pod, and my Rhystic Study musings still hold. The three cost is just a nuisance for this hyper slim cast spam build. I've got some includes floating in the back of my mind - this is probably a Mirri's Guile deck, and I think that Destiny Spinner deserves another chance. Mainly for Enchantment Pod purposes, but still.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

As you may have noticed, I did not cut Sylvan Library in the prior update. Unconditionally fishing three deep each turn is a good way to dredge up missing pieces, and helps with early game setup. I mentioned Mirri's Guile, as it's a similar sort of principle. Let's act on it.

14.11.2020 Changes
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So Mirri's Guile in. Not a ton to say, three deep setup for one mana, seems useful in getting off the ground. Taking out Font of Fertility, as there's plenty of ramp left without it and three mana for one land is a bit of a letdown in comparison. If Hadana's Climb went down, so should this. Also, who knew, countermagic is all-around useful for interacting with things. Mana Drain was in an early draft in the deck and got taken out as a feel-bad card, but I've kind of ran out of sensible options to jam here. I don't want to extend beyond 2 CMC in the counter suite, this fits the bill. In it goes over the unused Nature's Claim. The beauty of countering is that if needed, it may still stop that thing on the way down. But we all know that.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

I've been regularly getting in test games with this thing in preparation for papering out in a few weeks, many thanks to my playgroup for their patience. Things have been running pretty smoothly overall. Some observations with regards to deck performance:
  • This is snowball city once the basic engine assembles. More junk cast means more cards drawn, means more mana, more follow-up plays, more permission to stop all this from falling apart, more Ice Cream Monk voltron counters to take people out. The deck's been known to catch up explosively from poor starts, gaining ~10 commander power in a single turn once the pieces finally come together.
  • Given the fact the shell's casting for casting's sake, there could be more draw. Had a game where I got an enchantress online, yet mostly flooded out and was sitting on a tidy two cards in hand when the Selenia life swap deck played Pain's Reward. I actually went deep on the bidding and won with 21. The resulting card boost won me the game. Plus, draw for draw's sake is decent, on grounds similar to what was outlined in the previous point.
  • Same guy, different game. This time Morophon spirit tribal. Absolute nut start, Sol Ring, turn three Zendikar Resurgent, Kindred Summons into pure girth from hell. Barely hanging on with nothing going on. Set down Enchantment Pod, table remarks how if I had a 3 CMC enchantment I could go fetch Spike Weaver and stabilise. I don't have any, but I rip through a bit of deck via enchantress triggers off junk and locate Enchantress's Presence. The moral of the story is twofold - Spike Weaver is a house (thanks for pointing me that way, Darren), and fitting in some solid 3 CMC enchantments for this occasional synergy wouldn't be bad.
  • The counter-soak ramp guys have been kind of feelbad. Drawing them in multiples is horrible, and I've also tended to do okay in games when I didn't get them online. Plus their most common 3 CMC clashes with the commander, making sequencing marginally awkward if the hand also features enchantresses.
  • Finale of Devastation is a monster of a card and should be ran in pretty much every single deck ever created. I've done that whole "buff enchantresses and steal the game out of thin air" thing multiple times by now. Other relative MVPs have included Aqueous Form, Mana Bloom (the bouncy things do matter!) and Dowsing Dagger.
16.01.2020 Changes
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The cuts are severely downsizing the counter-soak ramp module of the deck, trimming it down to Gyre Sage and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. The former is a two-drop, working nicely in early sequencing. The latter can come out whenever, look at swole Ice Cream Monk and churn mana. The untapper auras were quite questionable, as noticed by Darren as well, and with so little support for them now they're easy cuts for more impactful stuff. Said more impactful stuff is a return of Rhystic Study (it's a responsible card to run, and far and away the best three drop enchantment in the deck's card pool), plus the inclusion of Bred for the Hunt and Ordeal of Thassa. The former's a bit on the pricey side for a Curiosity, but it doesn't follow Ice Cream Monk to the grave and might occasionally incentivise trying to swing with multiple things. It was in my initial brainstorm list along with Nature's Will, but got similarly forgotten. Now getting resurrected as 3 CMC. The latter's following the success of Ordeal of Nylea. It may not be quite as disproportionately good, as two for 2 is not unheard of draw-wise, but it's a decent crack stuffer that helps stuff run smoother. Plus we get Elephant Grass to help survive a bit better. The deck tends to want to get stuff rolling pretty early, asking people to cough up two extra mana per swinger should still matter at that stage. The fact legacy Enchantress lists run this stuff means it should be good enough for me too, right?
 
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
Given the fact the shell's casting for casting's sake, there could be more draw. Had a game where I got an enchantress online, yet mostly flooded out
I do think Nessian Wanderer is a slam-dunk. It helps in fact with flooding out as you get to thin out land draws somewhat AND goes great with Burgeoning and Exploration.
Set down Enchantment Pod, table remarks how if I had a 3 CMC enchantment I could go fetch Spike Weaver and stabilise. I don't have any, but I rip through a bit of deck via enchantress triggers off junk and locate Enchantress's Presence. The moral of the story is twofold - Spike Weaver is a house (thanks for pointing me that way, Darren), and fitting in some solid 3 CMC enchantments for this occasional synergy wouldn't be bad.
Courser of Kruphix is a nice 3 cmc enchantment so you can use this to bridge gaps as well for Enigmatic Incarnation.
So any 2 cmc → Courser of KruphixSpike Weaver/Eidolon of Blossoms.

On a completely different note, a card that I think is really under played is Mind Harness. Like it always has a target, and the tempo swing for u mana can be ridiculous. And honestly the cumulative upkeep is not a factor at all, because you can setup attacking into blockers that will kill it anyway, or perfect for blocking. And if it's a big creature then you can just stomp and dominate with it and opponents have to deal with it anyway.
Definitely a surprise card that opponents won't know/play around.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Sheesh, fine, I'll keep the garbage "enchantress" in mind :P The thing doesn't really help thin unless a shuffle happens though - it doesn't change the original deck order, so the subsequent cards you encounter will have the same original land density.

An enchantment creature for enchantment creature's sake is not necessarily the best, as evidenced by my brief misadventure with Destiny Spinner. Might be a meta thing, not a ton of countermagic floating around. That said, the best three-drop one would probably have to be Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, which was present in some super early iteration of the deck and got axed for being do-nothing. That, or Riptide Chimera. Will keep all this stuff in mind. This is still early days, we'll see where this congeals with time. I ran the list past Dominicus, who's been very helpful with ironing out overall direction and solid includes in the past, and he just dismissed the build entirely. Seemed to be more keen on stronger enchantments like theft auras and stuff.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

The new three-drops have been working quite well. I've taken to piloting the deck a little slower, leaving interaction mana up earlier in the game, and these high-impact standalone things are good to set down early before the board is too pent up with engines that want to let it rip and churn low costs like no tomorrow. Bred for the Hunt in particular is very nice early, as there's typically someone without winged blockers who I can send a minimally countered up enchantress at for bonus top-up. There are still some cute piloting/synergy quirks that I'm working out, e.g. I linked up Hardened Scales with Fathom Mage when frantically digging for replacement permission after two guys colluded to try to take double-digit Ice Cream Monk out and I had to blow all the protection I drew up to that point. Still, the list runs smoothly. Committed to papering, sent out want lists for guys in my group to comb their collections for before hitting up the vendor circuit.

22.01.2020 Changes
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Uncage the Menagerie is a card I like on paper for this deck. I have a lot of mana, so I should be able to devote 4 or 5 of it to go find multiple nice creatures, right? Somehow not right. All the other tutors require a 1-2 mana bonus for getting a creature into play, whereas this is one giant overhead. It just never really sat right, I couldn't sequence it comfortably. I found myself avoiding Sigil of Sleep, as forcibly adding bounce to Ice Cream Monk damage just felt like rubbins. The two slots go to Propaganda and Sylvan Scrying. The former is a lovely brain fart on behalf of yours truly yet again, somehow I recalled Elephant Grass but forgot about literal actual blue Ghostly Prison. The latter's solid here as there's a reasonable land set to grab - Nykthos for borderline crazy mana dumb, Reliquary Tower for "why can't I hold all this cardboard?", Strip Mine for Maze variant pacification or other jobs of that nature.
 
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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

this is fun, I was looking at Eutropia as a new commander for myself but your approach is way lower to the ground than what I have in mind! It's funny that you call this list crummy and inoffensive when it's full of top-end card replacers, Mana Drain, Strip Mine, a few of the best global enchantments in the game, etc. :)) your play group must be fairly vicious!

some of the cards I was looking at:
Avatar of the Resolute
Fertilid
Renata, Called to the Hunt etc etc

Containment Membrane
Bonds of Mortality
Kenrith's Transformation

dunno. I like jank. Maybe this is useless to you but good luck with your deck!

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Hey, utility's utility, the key engine of the deck is all the enchantresses I could get my hands on in the colour pair fuelled by various ultra-cheap stuff of sometimes questionable nature. The end result is a fragile flying voltron which the Mana Drain protects, rather than its standard uses of sabotaging someone's early setup play to rocket ahead with a surprise burst of mana :P Of your suggestions, I like Fertilid, Bonds of Mortality and Kenrith's Transformation the most. Cantrips are never too bad an idea (consider Omen of the Sea too!), and having a counter soak Rampant Growth outlet is pretty cute.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Mini-tweak season is officially open!

25.01.2020 Change
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A bit of idle pondering on the composition of the deck made me realise Primal Rage's main contribution has been dying to Enchantment Pod to fetch up Setessan Champion. To be fair, Aqueous Form and Bower Passage are both better for evasion, and Rancor/Fists of Ironwood are trample sources with other benefits. Ice Cream Monk is the main one in need of dedicated evasion - typically there's someone at the table without wings, so if any secondary utility punching is needed, it can go to their face. In Cold-Eyed Selkie. Three test games revealed this thing to be pretty potent in the shell. Once the engine pops off, it pops off, barfing an amount of counters onto Ice Cream Monk that usually eclipses most early-game voltron damage anyway, so sparing a few counters for the Selkie shouldn't be too hard. Connecting should be pretty easy, someone's gonna have an island or lack wings, and then a nice load of bonus options gets delivered straight to the hand for main two consumption. Charge it up a bit early and it'll just keep on giving. Good times. The slot was originally going to be Omen of the Sea, but Selkie's quite a bit better. This takes me down to the precariously low enchantment count of 39 :P

A well-placed Elephant Grass/Propaganda has saved my bacon a couple times by now, just tempoing out the main threat to my survival so I could take them out with Ice Cream Monk meatshots. I looked for other pillow fort options in Simic, but there isn't a lot. There are a couple mediocre blue four drop enchantments, but nothing to write home about. Ah well.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Did a bit of brainstorming as to possible directions to expand the deck in. Both of these would introduce some degree of modularity, so not pursuing them for now, but they should make for interesting discussion points. Whatcha think?
  • Extra turns. The beauty of something like Edric is that all he needs to do is go turbo wide and draw a ton of cards. There's no real engine building component, unlike here. As such, the Time Walks would be a bit more temperamental here. The pros are pretty pro'y though, what with the whole "set up and clamp down" angle.
  • Clones. The deck likes its enchantresses, and wants multiples to start machine gunning through the 99. As such, a cheap clone like Phantasmal Image essentially becomes an enchantress with "you can only play me if you already have another enchantress out". I did a goldfish session and in most cases it worked out fine.
If either of those angles were to be pursued, I'd need to carve out room in the 99. I'm down to 38 enchantments with this update, which is starting to get a little low for the purposes of machine gunning. That's another challenge to figure out.

For now, a different swap!

06.02.2020 Change
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It's not that uncommon to encounter winged chumps. In the very last game I played before this post, the Brudiclad had the power to generate a bunch of sky chickens with Loyal Apprentice, but chose not to. There are ways to get around it, to some extent. There's Bower Passage, Aqueous Form or trample for Ice Cream Monk, but tutoring those is rough. There is creature tutoring though, which is there to get the enchantresses in theory. But why not have it get some other stuff from time to time? Spike Weaver's worked as a one man Fog machine, so outsourcing evasion to legs should also be fine. Cue Herald of Secret Streams. The swingers will be countered up by Eutropia anyway, so this is essentially four mana unblockable. Fantastic get off a finishing Finale of Devastation too. In that aforementioned Brudiclad game, I ripped one for X=30 and had nothing sensible to fetch. This would have been quite nice. Herald should also work okay in the mid game, allowing counter utility use with some degree of impunity.

Shaving off Shimmering Wings. It's not that the recastable enchantments are bad, as I've had plenty of good things happen because of Whip Silk and Mana Bloom, but the deck's mainly green. Blue mana's a bit of a commodity, and often gets saved for interaction. There's not much opportunity to sink it into this thing. Thinking about underperformers, most of the counter-soak module comes to mind. Gyre Sage is great early, but neglected late. Fathom Mage is a bit pricey for an enchantress and hogs the counters to act as one. Need more data.
 
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I don't like that Herald of Secret Streams is not tutorable by Green Sun's Zenith or isn't an enchantment.

Nylea, God of the Hunt hits a few more axis this way.

Again I will mention Thassa, God of the Sea as a way to provide guaranteed unblocking.

Herald of Secret Streams is better in deck that go a bit wider with creatures.

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

I hear you, and in a vacuum agree with you. I guess I can take this opportunity to crunch down deeper on the philosophical musings of the previous post and see where all this lands.

One of the deck's most common steals in the face of adversity is a massive Finale of Devastation. Set up Ice Cream Monk, some enchantresses, maybe some saprolings, distribute counters to give stuff wings, pump up the team massively and destroy the table out of nowhere. Herald of Secret Streams is a fantastic synergy piece with that, granting all the stuff unblockability. Otherwise I'm stuck hoping there's not much winged presence, or wishing to skilfully topdeck Bower Passage somewhere along the way. More or less consciously, these scenarios influenced my decision to try him out, and he's already won me a game in this exact fashion since being put in.

I'll admit it's not the best he's not an enchantment. However, these particular alternatives you list are not that tempting. I already cut Primal Rage for being too do-nothing, making it cost twice as much won't really help a lot. Thassa requires mana sinking to do her thing - mana that would like to be used on protection or aurastorm. I expect this to be more of a mid game issue than being unable to fork over a few pips later on, but still. She also happens to cost an arm and a leg for whatever insane reason these days (pioneer?). Still, I should probably try her out and see how she fares.

However, the slot might be better used to pursue one of the other angles listed in the post. If Finale of Devastation steals are a common fixture of accelerating the deck's clock, maybe it's not actually incorrect to just shoehorn in an Expropriate and accelerate that way? Thing is, if I go for a more explicitly turns'y build, I'll want to run the support pieces, your Eternal Witnesses and stuff, which will naturally eat into aurastorm space. Eating into aurastorm space will in turn slow down Ice Cream Monk growth, and by extension the clock of the deck. Bit of a push-pull dynamic here. What do :P
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Ice Cream Monk has been papered out. In the process of papering out, I noticed I accidentally skipped a fetch. Oops.

16.02.2020 Changes
Approximate Total Cost:

Fetch in. Taking out a forest to make room as it is a Gx one, and I don't think I've ever ran out of forests in particular in the deck. Islands I have managed to run out of somehow, blue mana's good to have around for permission. That, and green tends to appear en masse off things like Gyre Sage or Nykthos.

There's also a second swap. I pondered the use of the aforementioned slot some more in the context of overall gameplay dynamics. Everything revolves around the critical turn where the draw and mana come together, typically churning through half the deck in a single go and killing someone at the end of it. For a visual illustration of this phenomenon, refer to this turn five game state...

"Image"

...followed by the Coat of Arms player dying to external sources, undoing the wonky P/T of the prior screenshot, and turn six ending up like this:

"Image"

However, as this is a voltron deck, this is followed by an awkwardly lumbering Ice Cream Monk taking out the rest of the table one person at a time, corny slasher flick style. The reason Finale of Devastation has been so clutch is the sudden acceleration of the clock out of nowhere, taking out extra people in the process. Likewise, Cyclonic Rift offers a massive tempo bump that everybody takes a while to recover from, usually granting enough leeway for the monstrous voltron terror to set itself up and roam free. Spike Weaver also does something similar, nullifying arguably the most common kill condition for as long as necessary. Expropriate fits this mould perfectly, as evidenced by its debut appearance. Things are not looking good in this corner of the table, Aurelia curved out a bunch of ramp, utility beatsticks, and capped off with the commander herself. Eutropia's like 5/5 or so, the draw engine's not there yet, things are not looking great. Expropka time! I get two turns off it, Aurelia wasn't willing to part with a permanent, and somehow those two turns were enough to turn a middling board state into enough of an engine to surgically remove the Aurelia from the game. Sounds better than a four mana non-enchantment that works nicely with an alpha spell - why not just have another alpha spell instead?

If anything, making this realisation leads to me feeling further away from the correct build here. What other alpha spells should the innards hold? Are the cheap clones actually a good idea for accelerating engine assembly? How in tarnation would I fit all this without diluting enchantment count? What even is the correct enchantment fraction anyway? That's not to say the deck doesn't run correctly as is, but dabbling with the possibilities from the prior musings and finding them to be functional leads me to wonder where else I should take the build.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

I've been mulling over the points brought up in the last update post, coupled with the weak links singled out earlier (Gyre Sage, Fathom Mage). I figured the least I should do is openly trial the clones, and they didn't do great. I wouldn't call stuff like Phantasmal Image winmore as much as unreliable. It does literally nothing without the first enchantress out. As such, that's the topic of clones done. As for alpha spell density, there's currently four (need to just admit Spike Weaver is one and reposition him in the OP). Given the fact they want to come out at a rather particular time, this should be adequate. A bunch of them respond to Spellseeker, who also happens to get some other useful utility things. If anything, that's shaping up to be a plausible include. The deck plays perfectly fine as is, I'm considering primering it out. However, that would be my fifth primer, which is a lot of primer all things considered. I'll sleep on it a bit more.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

New sets, new cards, new pushed cycle where the blue one's stupid. Hello Freegate, come on in.

IKO/C20 Change
Approximate Total Cost:

The deck wins via Ice Cream Monk and the Negate is used to protect stuff, so doing it for free is pretty much straight upside. Swap time.

Some other stuff of interest:
  • Obscuring Haze - The deck gets its fogging from Spike Weaver, if needed, and hasn't pursued other options due to the relatively narrow window of effectiveness. Turns out sealing wins is easier if you blast a gigantic haymaker spell than try to reactively catch someone out. Nobody could have foreseen this.
  • Ominous Seas - Cashing in every eight draws for a fat Kraken is nice once the deck is already going off, but this does next to nothing if the engine is still setting up. Winmore incarnate. At this point in the list's development, even the low-drop enchantments need to contribute more.
I'm not sure whether this will get primered out. I don't really have the mental fortitude for it right now, plus primers take a nontrivial amount of upkeep whenever changes occur so stuff retains coherence. I don't play this list a ton right now, my group isn't fond of it. That said, it's still a lot more accepted than merfolk tribal was, so that's a success. Ice Cream Monk will likely stay fifth in the pecking order, making the occasional appearance and coasting along because I like the deck.
 
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

Building openly inferior versions of decks is not something that comes lightly to me. I'm not trying to sell myself as the world's best builder or anything, but I like to build each commander to be their best possible version while retaining a distinct flavour of said legend mechanically. However, when ironing out Feather, I realised that the deck would respond well to hatebears. I chose not to pursue them, making the deck weaker but less unpleasant to play against. I repeated this with Ghired, preemptively keeping stuff like Aura Shards and Yosei away from the build. This newfound mindfulness was a response to how my Kumena shook out. The deck was meant as a ditzy exercise in tribalness, a place to hang up Kindred Discovery and some equipment, and quickly got out of hand. Attempts to reign it in worked to an extent, but I remembered what the deck used to be capable of. Combine that with needing further nerfing to fare well in the meta and its fate was sealed. Being preemptive about excludes prevented feel-bad of interacting with a neutered version of the deck further down the line. After a while of familiarising myself with that mindset, I was able to take things a step further and nerf Daxos by creating an alternate Rule of Law-free build branch. The curse of forced wannabe-optimality started lifting.

My recent pursuit of high-end haymaking in Ice Cream Monk rendered the deck disliked by the group. I'd hobble a semi sensible board state together, rip a mega tempo bomb and use the resulting advantage to close out. While correct to do, my opposition did not enjoy getting locked off combat or watching me take multiple turns in a row, so the deck fell a bit to the wayside. This rendered it homeless - the list is nowhere near potent enough to walk in Cockatrice pubs either. After a few months of little action, I realised I would quite like to have this deck in my repertoire. It's a very "me" deck, what with its critical mass engine that somehow bases off enchantments. Feather and Daxos's weird Simic baby would actually be meta appropriate if I dealt with the haymaking. And given the fact there's only so much I can play Daxos/Ghired in near daily quarantine Cockatrice EDH, I was incentivised to do so.

03.05.2020 Changes
Approximate Total Cost:

The ultimate purpose of the bombs is to buy time. The corny slasher flick dynamics from the prior discussion still hold true, and it's all about having that magical engine click turn and then surviving long enough to take the opposition out. The deck runs very few creatures, and has little interest in blocking with the ones it does have. As such, my face is ripe for punching. What punishes that? Fogs! However, blowing a fog to blank a single combat is not perfect. At the same time, Spike Weaver demonstrates that blanking too many combats with one fog is undesirable as well. Arachnogenesis and Moment's Peace seem to hit a reasonable balance of impact per card, and might be enough to buy enough time to apply player removal where appropriate.

With Expropriate and Spike Weaver gone, that's half the original alpha spells cut. I'm keeping Cyclonic Rift for now as I have no other wiping and very little other removal. Hopefully taking out these roadblocks will be enough to allow Eutropia to become third in command in the local rotation, coming out as relief when there's been enough Daxos/Ghired for the time being. Plus this way I'd get to occasionally play one of those engine decks I'm so fond of for whatever reason. Here's hoping.
 
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Post by Haman » 3 years ago

aura swap?

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Post by Rumpy5897 » 3 years ago

Maybe in another take. The deck's curve is nonexistent, paying five mana for two constellation triggers is not the best, especially since Arcanum Wings shenanigans don't trigger the classic enchantresses. Compare to stuff like Whip Silk that is its own pre-packaged "trigger everything for CC" deal, without the need for extra cards.

The deck hasn't been played in months. The local rate of virtual cardboard went down some time over the summer, and even before that Ice Cream Monk has been problematic. It's a classic example of a build that you feel bad preemptively destroying early, but then it has an explosive turn, draws 75% of the deck and suddenly has protection from getting messed with. And if it does still somehow successfully get messed with, then it's game over as it physically can't rebuild as it will deck itself. Just not particularly healthy play patterns. Still, the existence of the Trop forced me to try to make some sort of group-appropriate Simic. Think Eligeth plus Gilanra came closer. I should update that deck actually...
 
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