I was going to apologize for being so behind here cause I've been busy, then I saw it's only been three days. Time is weird.
Zyren wrote: ↑5 months ago
Starke of Rath is a very promising card for
Agatha's Soul Cauldron . This guy can act as removal and give your opponents permanents.
[condensed for space, but plenty of good stuff here]
Starke is certainly an interesting card, and by no means do I intend to dismiss or minimize the value (strategic or entertainment) of the synergies you've identified, but I think Starke would be a bad inclusion. Starke gives our opponent's options, which in many cases I am all for, but we have to consider what options they'd be incentivized to take. How would we expect people to respond to Starke:
1) If we pass it over as intended, people will probably use it, but if they use it on each other we'll keep drawing with Zedruu. So unless there is a big threat that needs immediate answer, the default target is us, and the things it can target are probably mostly or entirely mana rocks, howling mines, and Zedruu. We've thus played a card that actively destroys our own strategy.
2) If we never do the above, if we only use Starke in situations where we can either make big gains or regain control immediately, Starke still acts as a rattlesnake. To anyone unfamiliar with Magic jargon, a rattlesnake is a card that sits in play and threatens interaction. Rattlesnakes disincentivize action. A
Royal Assassin sitting in play tells the rest of the table to avoid tapping their creatures. Starke would tell people to avoid playing any big artifacts or creatures. In the situation where we can machinegun boards, it would tell people not to play artifacts or creatures at all until Starke is gone. This goes against our strategy in a more subtle way. With everyone drawing lots of cards, they have access to tons of options they want to take, and would rather not discard to hand size, which does the opposite of a rattlesnake: we're encouraging people to play out more stuff. And then with a decent pile of instant speed interaction and a couple flash enablers, we get to be the opportunist that waits for people to be caught tapped out. A rattlesnake like Starke telling people to keep their threats in hand and wait for someone to spend removal on us makes most of the rest of this deck less effective.
Ioreth is a card I considered on release. I'd prefer not to cut
Unbender Tine, just as a card that under the right circumstance can add mana the turn I draw it, but it could be worthwhile, and both is also an option.
I have
Catch // Release as a haste granter currently, but since
Cadric, Soul Kindler already grants haste, clones or bounce spells also complete this combo. But, notably,
Venser, Shaper Savant does this too well, as with Cadric in play and enough mana you can bounce multiple times, get to 3 hasty Ioreths, make infinite mana without the Relic, and make infinite hasty attackers with a 3-card combo.
That Venser is decidedly a pet card of mine, it will take a while to talk myself into not playing him, but I've pretty much already sold myself on cutting the
Displacer Kitten and related cards, so that might happen.
I know this doesn't technically end the game, but I call this a 2-card combo.
Sefir wrote: ↑5 months ago
the Heliod+Wave dance was extremely powerful on its own both in keeping a board in check and saving my own stuff.
This is an aspect of
Parallax Wave I admittedly never considered (though too be fair, my lack of thought is mostly cause I like
Opalescence). Basically any bounce or recursion can turn Wave into a tempo machine. Without some combo to exile people's creatures forever, that could make for some interesting and technical board states.