So
Reality Ripple is an absolutely killer card. I haven't been this excited about a discovery since IDK... never?
Reality Ripple is great because it is both an offensive and defense spell and excels at both roles. It performs the role of something like
Flawless Maneuver while also being similar in power to something like
Reality Shift. It is a swiss army knife spell that is efficient to cast. It's one of the few spells that solves the issue of board wipes and having Niv on the field. Offensively it can be used to shut down A LOT of infinite combos as well as simply turn off a problematic permanent for a full turn cycle.
Scorched Earth scratches a similar itch. I think this card has also earned a special place of respect in my list to be honest. I had nothing that dealt with utility lands quite at this level. I guess
Chaos Warp can always deal with lands if absolutely needed but it felt like card-disadvantage to use it on a land. Or it can also stall a certain player if the rest of the table is behind. There are a lot of great utility lands and I think most decks should be slotting in spot removal for them.
Scorched Earth can also simply be
"target player loses the game" .By blowing up enough lands or locking a player out of certain colors, this can completely shut someone out of the game if need be. It is a dastardly move, but unlike
Armageddon the OPTION is there. This card only really works well in a deck that draws as many cards as this deck does.
Steal Enchantment is also a no brainer I think. Whenever I've drawn it there have been good targets on the field. It allows this deck to do things it shouldn't be able to do like have
Smothering Tithe or a
Mirari's Wake. Stealing something is almost always better than blowing it up.
Firestorm will replace
Lightning Bolt beyond a doubt. I think this card is vastly underrated in our format. Sure, it only works in a deck like this, but it's really fantastic at what it does. Similar to Scorched Earth it has a useful low end of being a
Forked
Shock for only
R and discard 2 cards. But at the high end it can simply be a win condition. If you are able to copy this spell on the stack with 20 or so targets, that should be GG. And that is absolutely perfect. I think to go along with this card I will slot in 1 or 2 copy spells to support it.
Reiterate at the very least since I should be able to simply close out a game with the buyback.
Fade Away still needs more testing but so far I am actually missing
Blasphemous Act in this slot as a hyper efficient sweeper. To be honest, most of the time creatures don't have indestructible. It's more important to actually take out everything, inluding my opponents best creatures. Although, I question if I need two sweepers in here.
Magmaquake or
Blashphemous act, but not both.
______________________________________________________________________
Moving forward, I'm actually looking at leaning even more heavily into rituals with
Mana Geyser. The other rituals in the deck have been performing very well for me. I want to try keeping
Past in Flames in the deck with these rituals hopefully to have some blowout turns. I'm taking out
Gilded Lotus for now in place of Mana Geyser to see how it plays. Same cmc and I think Mana Geyser has the potential to be better in many situations.
Past in Flames I think works best with these sorts of rituals, otherwise I really struggle to have enough mana to utilize it.
Turnabout is another card I am potentially looking at in this role. Alongside cards like
Reiterate and
Past in Flames I think we can get some value. The more instants and sorceries I can maindeck the better as far as I'm concerned.
____________________________________________________________________________
Cards on the chopping block.
Flusterstorm - too many times I've realized this doesn't counter what I need it to counter or my opponent actually has enough mana up to pay the tax. I think this probably should just be a
Fierce Guardianship
Sapphire Medallion - this card has actually been out of the deck for a while already. I just need to update the primer.
Merchant Scroll,
Long-Term Plans - I guess I feel that both of these tutors are pretty lackluster. I'd almost always have something else in my hand.
Mizzix's Mastery - this doesn't allow me to pay alternative casting costs which can be annoying. I think it makes sense to run Past in Flames but not this one.
Lightning Bolt again, this was here for flavor and I think Firestorm will replace it in the primer.
Thirst for Knowledge,
Thirst for Meaning - my higher cost looting effects I think are both coming out for other things.
Windfall - yup, windfall is a long standing card, but I find myself just not needing it. Dropping my handcycling spells by 1 hasn't felt like gimping the deck. I disliked the fact that
Windfall often gave certain opponents an advantage and it doesn't work well when I myself have a lot of cards in hand. I think this is an easy swap.