I'm well overdue for an update on this list. By my reckoning any readers would've thought I'd abandoned it. That isn't the case, RL has been hugely busy. With that said though, I have retooled the list to some degree, and I'm trying a few new angles. Specifically, the deck is going in more on board control; it's not entirely a stax list now per se, but there's certainly some element of it there now. Goldfishing has been relatively successful, and while the deck isn't perfect it can certainly do some things.
There's still a bit more coming, in particular I want to try out
Calamity's Wake and
Loran of the Third Path, but I'm a trip to the LGS away from picking those up just at the minute.
This is a pretty big update, so apologies for smashing this out all in one chunk:
So there's a crap ton to go over here, obviously. Firstly I feel like I've gone a bit more all in on board control and winning by grinding the table down and beating face. Whether everything that's been added fits well or not is a little up for debate, purely because in terms of control I've just tried to add as many utilities as I can to my tool belt. I don't think they're all perfect (
Stony Silence and
Armageddon stick out a little) but the deck has been running well, the curve is a little lower, and I've had very few, if any, points at which my control has conflicted with my own pacing and plays. I've trimmed the lands down a lot, and surprisingly it feels quite good; I'm getting a lot less flood, and things like
Sword of the Animist and
Sword of Hearth and Home are keeping me going just fine (that second is a straight up monster).
In terms of standout additions that have been really good,
Paladin Class is excellent, very versatile at any stage in the game.
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is fantastic too,
Sanctuary Warden has been very good too, and either or both paired with
Skullclamp does what the Clamp does so, so well.
Sigarda's Vanguard has been solid too, I can constantly swing for solid double digit numbers a ton, and having the
Sun Titan clause of ETB and attack makes it really handy.
Giada has been surprisingly nice. It doesn't take a lot of board presence for her to give me a nice stat buff, and with stuff like
Court of Grace and
Resplendent Angel pooping out angels here and there she's actually kinda frightening. As well as that, I can use the Hearth Sword to blink stuff for incremental buffs too. She's more versatile than she looks for sure.
Serra Paragon has been good too, not amazingly critical, but adds some nice resilience to the lower end of my curve and a little land destruction support; any creatures I cast with her I can, again, blink to reset so they don't exile too, and I think if I were able to track down some things like
Scorched Ruins,
Lotus Vale et al she would be a lot more handy. Certainly more versatile than a Crucible at any rate.
The one or two pieces I'm not entirely certain of are
Pyre of Heroes[/card, and [card]Chancellor of the Annex. The latter is easy to define, it's quite expensive to cast. I don't ever want to spend mana on it, it is purely there to reanimate or pod into. The former, though, I think could be a really good add. I know it's a little questionable in what's ostensibly a dual tribe list, but there's enough bleedover with subtypes like Clerics, Soldiers and Warriors that it can mostly work. I haven't had a lot of play time with it to know for sure, and part of that is not having anything I can use to tutor for it. But I think there's a possibility it could be pretty decent.
As far as future adds go, there's very little affordable on the horizon; I'd like an
Ancient Tomb,
Scorched Ruins and such here for more burst lands and a bit of better acceleration, but the chances of getting them in anytime soon is unlikely. In terms of BRO,
Loran of the Third Path is on the way, and I'm keen to try out
Calamity's Wake too; it's rough on the graveyard, but it's a really nice
Silence effect that I think could be useful on clutch turns (melding or alpha striking for example). I'm on the fence regarding
Myrel, Shield of Argive - there ARE soldiers here, but I think if I want her static effect I'm probably better just getting
Grand Abolisher back in the list.
That's where things are at at the moment, and despite the radio silence I'm really enjoying playing this list in it's newest iteration.