I noticed there is no real section for battlebox, tower, dandan etc. I'm a big fan of shared library formats and have been putting a list together for a monoblack variant with Ovalchase Daredevil as the primary threat. Lots of discard and top deck manipulation involved. I have to get a few more cards together to put it together but I'm looking for opinions on what I've put together so far.
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ovalcha ... 1703039591
I'm fairly happy with this as a revised draft, but it still needs playtesting and maybe some other sets of eyes to look over the card selection and number of cards included.
Card by card descriptions are on the description section of the listing on tappedout. I'll try to update this posting with more in depth card analysis if this gets a little more traction here.
I'm happy to talk about other aspects of these mini formats here as well!
Ovalchase : Black Metal
Honestly I missed that there's only 78, I was trying to keep to 80 like dandan. I'm still mulling over how many of each card to include, and I've been busy with some life stuff. I'm thinking that this will end up feeling a little more like a control mirror since the primary threat is on the higher cmc side for cost, but I don't want games to take too too long. I've always been in love with topdeck fights and lantern control, so thats why there are so many mill pieces and stuff. Maybe I could cut it closer and make deckout a more likely scenario to fight against. Seems more metal that way too
Getting back to this project, as much as I love Ovalchase Daredevil, I think that Grim Reminder is way cooler as a concept card wincon wise. I'm still weary of how much game knowledge I want players to have regular access to, since the recipe for good tension is ensuring some level of unknown elements in the game state. To this end, I understand cards like Grim Reminder, Psychotic Episode, and Lantern of Insight give away a lot of information. I'm still on the fence about the lantern, but I'm pretty okay with one time knowledge giveaways like Mishra's Bauble, mindgames from Misinformation, and 1 time setup from Brainstone. Full hand checks and continual knowledge I'm more concerned with, but I think if I run enough cantrips and other filtering effects I can still make for an exciting environment where you need to take risk when plays are made. With enough filtering, deckout as the other "wincon" to fight over can be more obtainable without taking too much time as well. To this end I think finding a slimmer library size might help speed games along, so 60-70 cards is my current goal.
