materpillar wrote: ↑3 years ago
Oh, another changeling deck! I have been summoned. Have you gotten many games in with this list?
No, its been tough for me to test still. My LGS closed for some remodels and hasn't been open for play in over a year. I have a few guys locally where we get together about once every month or two to play but we last played about two or three weeks ago. What I have thus far is entirely untested and unproven on my end so just theorycrafting.
materpillar wrote: ↑3 years ago
Changelings are at their core only extremely underwhelming vanilla creatures that need a lot of pay-offs to be worth while and you seem to be quite light on pay-offs.
Some of my concern was a little bit on how narrow some of the payoffs are / were as well as questioning how many cards I would need to assemble for them to work. I ended up going with more of the payoffs that felt really strong or felt like they could sort of standalone run about and be somewhat decent.
Lyra Dawnbringer for example is still kind of a decent card even if she isn't amazing a
Baneslayer Angel is still kind of fine in this format even if you don't have a bunch of changelings.
Lots of the changeling payoffs also don't work together well. What I mean by this is along the lines of like what if you draw
Gilt-Leaf Archdruid and
Wirewood Savage for example (naming a few from your list)? Neither of those cards are really good cards on their own and both of them need follow up changelings to be cast. The archdruid does have the whole tap seven druids thing but I think that is a high number on average making me think its more for the draw a card effect. These lord effects work very poorly en mass with each other and aren't that reasonable of cards on their own.
Some of this lead me to consider how reasonable some of these lord effects are and were on their own or if you just draw a bunch of lords and not enough changelings which totally can happen. I am not saying my approach is correct or anything but the lords can be bad if you draw too many of them too.
Kindred Discovery /
Yuriko - Some of my fear in general is just that I am not going that wide and my creatures don't have that much evasion. Part of why I did include
Toski, Bearer of Secrets for example was that his effect works on the lords as well as the changelings. He is also green which helps for
Green Sun's Zenith and being indestructible helps in that he fits the wrath proof concept which I might possibly go harder on if I stay with
Sliver Hivelord.
Seshiro the Anointed being both draw on connecting and a big anthem also felt like it would add consequence for blocking my creatures in that its much more likely for my vanilla little changelings to kill blockers or give me some draw.
Yuriko in comparison doesn't really help me be evasive and the effect only works for my changelings which aren't that evasive which is a lot of the reason I didn't go for that one. I probably should add
Kindred Discovery though as it triggers on attacks. I avoided going deep on a ton of Coastal Piracy kind of effects because I am not that wide of a deck nor do I have that much evasion but I think
Kindred Discovery triggering just on attack probably makes it good enough that I run it.
Toski, Bearer of Secrets might not be quite where I want him to be right now but if I go heavier on sweepers he might be. I have had a hard back and forth on how heavy I want to go on wraths given that a lot of my payoffs won't gain the indestructible from my commander.
I debated some of the double strike effects as there are a few options in knights and slivers also. In the end I didn't like the body they came on enough. If I did run one in my current list it would probably be
Bonescythe Sliver because my commander would also give him indestructible. I tend to favor slivers primarily with my anthems and dragons as a secondary just given my already existing combination of effects.
Khorvath Brightflame really doesn't have any appeal other than being partner tutored by
Sylvia Brightspear but I would likely go with the sliver over Sylvia like I mentioned.
In the end though I didn't really like the body that these effects come on and I think it is important to consider those situations where you maybe draw too many lords. Its also important for the lords to be a bit concentrated to the same tribe potentially too. The double strike sliver could happen still I just don't know that I would be excited to draw him but fitting into the same tribe is good. But there is also the question of if double strike is better than something like say
Megantic Sliver for just pure stats. Ultimately I think both could potentially happen but I suppose there is something for curving better and having a lower curve in general with
Bonescythe Sliver.
Cloudshredder Sliver - It was in my list for a while. I think its a good sliver in general and its something that I would consider when branching out more. Mass flying / indestructible slivers is something that plays good offense and defense. I cut it ultimately because I was cutting back on some of the lesser anthems that didn't help me control the board on their own. I might come back to this one just because it + my commander makes for a fairly reasonable boardstate (assuming I stay with
Sliver Hivelord. I had been intending to do some testing with
The First Sliver as the commander too)
I don't do infinites so I wouldn't but even if I did combo play that seems like a lot of specific cards and expensive things to cast. Its a 4 card combo involving 15 mana of cards (cost reduce will get two of them so 13 mana). Generally speaking good combos tend to be 2-3 cards and cost less mana. I probably wouldn't bother with it even if I did play combo tactics. I think that
Hibernation Sliver is a bit lacking in general and outside of the combo its generally better to ramp or recover with something else as its not that efficient of a protection effect. I guess as a protection vs theft on my indestructible commander its ok but I might as well just have a tutor, exile removal, bounce effect, or homeward path for the same concept.
Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate probably works better in your list than she would with
Sliver Hivelord. She still offers the hexproof but I could run
Deflecting Swat for that if I really wanted. I could also just have a tutor for Crystalline Sliver though instead. I think Linvala works better when threatening to give indestructible is the primary sacrifice plan rather than mass hexproof. I didn't run her ultimately because I still felt she was rather weak given that she needs 3 changeling friends to enable party and her option to protect felt diminished with my commander choice.
I generally don't play a ton of dedicated wincons just as I generally build. I often build more with the idea of making the deck function as the idea. I am more interested when I get started in just seeing the deck work than pushing for wins which often starts me with few dedicated wincons. I actually somewhat of rarely push for dedicated wincon and pressure cards because I would rather see my deck work well then get a weird hand full of anthems.
Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore Its alright. Given that its an ETB tapped land I tend to play it as a nonland card rather than as a land. I did put some thought into clones in general in my list and if I wanted to play some of them. There are also the clones that can copy legendary creatures which I also considered. I am not really sold either way right now but they are a consideration. I figured for the time being I wanted to go without them as cloning most of the changelings seems not very good and getting my payoffs online then cloning them felt a little winmore.
Lyra Dawnbringer - To me there were two things about this card that got me to include it. 1) Mass lifelink buys me staying power. I don't have a ton of flying changelings so I felt like I might get pressured in the sky and this lets me rebuy some life and not die to chip damage or aristocrat concepts as easlily. 2) I felt like a
baneslayer angel on its own while not great was still a reasonable statline for a lord. If I for example can't stick to the board I can play Lyra out and she isn't terrible. She isn't part of any of my other tribes and won't gain any benefit of my other tribal effects but I felt like as a standalone card, she was still reasonably powerful which is hard to say about a lot of the other lords.
Knights' Charge for example is 100% reliant on other creatures and while the rez effect on it is kind of tempting I really don't care much for the trigger it gives as its kind of a weak sustain effect. Lyra is going to give a lot more life in general which was more of what I was going for. I almost ran
Syphon Sliver instead given the synergy with my commander but ultimately I felt like Lyra was a good compromise being a reasonable body herself, a small anthem, but ultimately the lifelink, small anthem, and reasonable body all added up to why I ran her.
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath - The whole point was that he was another
Explore /
Growth Spiral effect. He theoretically can come back later but the ETB on him is worth his effect and he threatens to be a real problem if left alone. I own three copies of this guy and he is banned like everywhere else and I really have yet to play him for the most part with covid having been a thing and how little I run UG. I get that this isn't a graveyard deck, he is just a goodstuff ramp card that cantrips and can be a problem later. I don't know that its really fair to compare an over time value card to an ETB one shot. I could just as easily say well all of those fancy artifacts are worthless if they get naturalized immediately after. Value over time effects are generally speaking powerful if you can get them into play early and have them be left alone but they also take time to get their work in. Ultimately, I am still trying to not go too deep on tribal mechanics especially ones that aren't all in sync with one another because they can have bad synergy when you see too many of them.
Herald's Horn - Cost reduction tends to be at its best when chaining a bunch of spells in a turn. Generally speaking you want to be casting 2-3 cards in a turn before cost reduction tends to be good but we also have a big problem with the fact that we are a 5 color deck which means we are hungry for colored mana. I didn't think that my list was going to be chaining a ton of spells in a turn which tends to be when cost reduction is at its best. As far as card draw goes, well... it might 1/4th of the time draw me one card but given what I was saying on my preferences to cost reduction I think its better to pick draw or ramp than it is to have something that is mildly both. You could get something that would probably be better ramp or be better draw. I actually don't think that most tribal decks have that much higher hit ratio than us that run this card but to be honest, I don't feel that this card is really that good for commander where its rare that you get more than 1/3 card draw with this effect. If you look at it in something like a Historic Goblins deck for instance they have probably a 50% or higher hit ratio. I think that this card is a lot better in a 1-2 color tribal deck where the cost reduction is the reason you want to run it personally.
Dragon's Hoard - Maybe.... I am not really fond of three mana artifact ramp to be honest though and it seems like it would take a long time to get its value back out of it. I get that its both draw and ramp but its really miserable at either effect. Its also something that can be target removed or swept. It also seems to get a lot worse if drawn later in the game which is part of why I don't really like these mopy psudo draw psudo ramp cards. It would probably be ok on curve and I think that if you use a somewhat budget landbase I think that some of this style of fixing can be good but I have expensive lands which I intend to use which tends to make explore effects a lot more attractive as my lands fix very well and a late game
explore effect just cantrips quickly into the next effect but still ramp early.
Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator - It goes back to my concern with a lack of evasion on a lot of the changelings. I don't go that wide really and a lot of them can easily be chump blocked or superior blocked in combat. For me, I didn't run this for the same reason I am not running a lot of Coastal Piracy effects in that I just don't know how often I will be able to connect. I think that treasure ramp is quite reasonable as its good fixing and temp ramp but I felt like my ability to trigger this just wasn't something I knew how it would go.
Dwarven Recruiter/
Goblin Recruiter - Its an interesting thought for chaining out a bunch of changelings. I will be honest in that I didn't really consider this one. Most of these my usual issue would be that they are some weird little bad body but they are kind of self contained in that
Realmwalker will let you stack a bunch behind it and chain through them. I guess it would kind of suck if someone counters or spot removes
Realmwalker immediately but I could see some spicy turns where you chain through a bunch of creatures. They do force you to set up your next turn which is a bit tough as you forecast what you are doing but it would be easy to chain 3-4 creatures behind
Realmwalker just churning through 1-2 mana changelings. Thats an interesting thought and one that probably does really benefit you on your Ur-Dragon cost reduction approach.
I thought about Ur-Dragon but I didn't really value the cost reduction enough. It comes back to a question of how many cards you plan to cast in a turn with said cost reduction. My deck was made up of roughly 1/4th changeling / dragons but I find a lot of cost reduction being in chaining multiple spells in a turn with said reduction. The changelings themselves are also still going to be a bit color intensive even if you cost reduce them and then there is the need to support them with lords that are mostly not cost reduced. For me, cost reduction is better with less colors and more draw than I felt I had. I think that you can shift and adjust in a way to make him effective like with your idea of
Dwarven Recruiter/
Goblin Recruiter because that would be a great way to shotgun a bunch of changelings with the help of
Realmwalker and your commander's cost reduction. Without testing out some of these concepts I can't really say what I would prefer. My plan for now is to try out the two slivers that I have been eyeing but I won't dismiss the idea. I just think that the different commanders give you different benefits and different incentives in building. With my current commander I should probably lean a tad harder on wraths than I am for instance.
I think that my current list is still very rough. Its far from where I want or need it to be. I need to order some cards though and get some testing in but I think you have a lot of insight on this concept. One of my biggest concerns is just that a lot of the lords don't work together well in that if you get a bunch of off tribe lords you can potentially end up changeling light. Its part of why I went with some more generic lords that help all creatures or are decent creatures on their own. I need to test a lot of concepts still though and I likely need to make a bunch of changes. I just don't have enough data yet to really make educated ones (I don't have the deck together nor have I played it yet.
