I wrote a follow-up on the three games I played with it. You can find it in my signature.duducrash wrote: ↑3 months agoYour simic Kellan did sound like a lot of fun as a concept TBH. I have been watching the videos of the youtuber you and @TheGildedGoose mentioned and while I understand the idea of the commander filling the whole that is lacking in the 99, I wonder if simic Kinnan did actually do that for you as Glissa Sunslayer did for him. How did it play out? one cast of the adventure side per game? did he offer you protection afterwards? I can't help but wonder if taking out Keruga, the Macrosage cutting down the bombs from high 40s to arround 25-30 and adding more ramp and interaction wouldn't make the deck flow better, you want to play a long game but it lacks attrition and it could even be added on theme maybe Ezuri's Predation Thorn Mammoth and Titan of Industry would be on plan and still provide you the chance to act on board.
To act on that philosophy of the Glissa Sunslayer what is Kellan giving you, that is allowing you to lack on the 99? and how well and consistently he is doing so?
Honestly, I probably haven't given it a fair shake, the first two games the whole table got ranched, and the third game I was victim to some awful variance (0.6%).
However, the deck was just so boring, which is kind of my own fault, I literally designed it to play identically for the first 3 turns, then play largely interchangeable bombs every turn for the rest of the game.
It was never supposed to be a fun deck though, I just found it to be an interesting challenge and I did enjoy brewing it, and figuring out the numbers.
Going back to the Glissa Sunslayer example. The decks are pretty fundamentally different, the Glissa Sunslayer deck just provided the inspiration.
Glissa is a strong 3 drop that can be consistently ramped into on turn 2 with a mana dork, but she's also a blocker, an enchantment killer, and a draw engine.
Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy is a consistent ramp engine on t2 and a cantriping body on turn 3, but after that he's much less exciting then Glissa Sunslayer.
None of this means that you couldn't make a fun deck with Simic Kellan, and I'd like to try that sometime, but this plan of relying solely on your commander to fill up the entire 1-4 section on your curve, while surprisingly sound, isn't a ton of fun to actually play.
I will say, I'm positive building the deck around Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy's attack trigger isn't worth it, between the clue he makes, Gingerbread Cabin consistently coming online early-mid game, and scary artifacts your opponents might be playing, you're already getting like, 90% of the total possible value you might get from his attack trigger, putting a bunch of Darksteel Relics in your deck to eek out that last 10% is a fool errand (Mithril Coat is a cool piece of tech though). So you're pretty much signing up to play a non-commander focused deck, where your commander is just a good role filler. Which is fine (and, again, the whole place this concept started). However, he has the unfortunate condition of being Simic, which might be the least interesting color combination.
It's funny I actually really like green and blue, but, being the two worst removal colors, they need to lean on another color for removal, on their own they're not for me, and adding them together doesn't really change that.
It's 10 mana total though.
