Sorry if this gets a little funky. I was planning a bunch of changes, trying to give some feedback on what I had tested so far, and highlight things I am watching moving forward and in retrospect the game highlights came out a bit funky. Ohhh well here we go:
Ok, I ended up playing this deck against a friend in some 1v1 games. Its important to mention that in this setup my attacks are more awkward in that I can't just choose the most open opponent but I am also less likely to encounter spot removal because we are both playing multiplayer decks in 1v1 and I expect my commander will be a spot removal magnet to some degree (just an assumption).
I should have done some notes earlier as I am going to have to go a little more vague as we played a lot of games and only 3 or 4 were with this deck. I guess I will talk about concepts to some degree rather than trying to do breakdowns of the games. I won all but one of the games with this deck where he used
Cyclonic Rift two turns in a row while tempo pressuring me.
Human Counts - my hyper geo for the deck puts me at about 80% chance to hit a human. I noticed a TON of whiffs though and to some degree I chalk this up to shuffle effects while thinning my deck of humans. My tutors are also often hitting my humans so.... I guess my chance to hit is going to go to %$#% real quick. I didn't feel like it was too much of a problem because it frontloads my chances and that was mostly what I was looking for in these games.
Anthems -
Angrath's Marauders,
Rick, Steadfast Leader, and
Blade Historian were all literally insane. I was trying to figure out if there were much for targets that I felt like I would tuck back into my library if they died and I think these guys are some of the few that I felt like I would want to push back into the deck if they die. I had a lot of boards where it wasn't very threatening then these guys hit and suddenly people were dying. This all said, I did replace
Mirror Entity before the games (I can recall with what) and I think I likely will end up making that cut. I also found
Hero of Bladehold once or twice and holy hell that card is getting cut. I was really displeased with how long it takes to spin up its value. When you find it off of Winota it does kind of nothing. Then the next turn hits and its a small anthem with some bad attackers who are easily killed that don't trigger the commander for more. I was extremely displeased with Hero so.... thats gone. Somehow I never found any of the lifegain payoffs which is odd because I run a lot of them but I guess only one is a human. I need to run them back more and see if I can see them in action.
Card Draw / Hitting Lands - Holy hell I have an issue with drawing more cards and hitting my lands. I thought about going into Land Tax but I don't know that I want to go that far because of the fact that its a noncreature and my creature counts matter a lot here. I am going to make some changes to try to draw more cards as it was something I definately saw issues with. If someone answered Winota the first time she came down right away it was really bad on my ability to keep functioning. I probably need more draw lol.
Three or less mana non-human creatures - Yup, we need more of these. Its going to be a focus of mine but I think we also have to be a little pickier about what we run for these. The deck seems to have a lot of early game reliance on Winota which I think our opponents are going to be aware of. I saw some of the creatures from the deck like
Righteous Valkyrie and others that don't really always do things and.... they weren't great. I think Valkyrie can get to the anthem but its going to take a lot of work and the deck is going to be firing on all cylinders when it does get there.
Life above starting - There are a few cards like
Speaker of the Heavens,
Righteous Valkyrie, and
Ajani, Strength of the Pride that care about our life total. I guess I am not gaining as much life / defending my life as well as I thought I might. I need more testing before I move to cut them especially given that I think that
Speaker of the Heavens seems really strong if we can consistently get there. I guess my early thoughts are that it might be a little inconsistent. I need more testing.
Lets talk about things I was impressed with real quick:
Norin the Wary - He was everything I wanted him to be. I guess he met my expectations.
Mardu Woe-Reaper - He triggers lifegain but beyond that I really valued his grave hate triggers. Lots of the Soul Sister effects need another payoff to really make them do work. Even though he doesn't trigger on everything the added value of grave hate felt amazing to me.
Blade Historian - I feel like I saw him in almost every game and I was VERY impressed every time I flipped into him from Winota. We will see if drawing him makes me change my mind at all but wow mid combat having him has been crazy.
Rick, Steadfast Leader - I really liked the size buff + adding mass lifelink. I only saw him once but that size buff and lifelink added onto Norin still count with the warstorm surge effects. That might be a bit narrow but flipping him mid combat was still really impressive and won me a game.
Angrath's Marauders - Very similar effects to
Blade Historian. I am a little less impressed with its cost to cast it but flipping it from the deck felt great. I might not be as impressed if I have to cast it though.
Goblin Rabblemaster & friends - I was impressed by them but in a lot of cases even curving them I found the token getting thrown away. I had a game where I got to build to three tokens before I had problems and it was really good for Winota triggers. This was again a situation of upfront hitting them but they are really strong starting if you can keep a token or two alive.
Radiant Solar - I got to cast it once and I finished the long dungeon (mad mage) by my next turn lol. I was really impressed with the value chain she brings. Looking forward to seeing a bit more of her but this is exactly the type of deck that is going to make amazing use of this card. Very pleased and looking forward to testing it more.
Genesis Chamber - I saw it in one game and got to pair it with Norin. I quickly climbed to like seven tokens and attacked with them with Winota and ran my opponent over essentially off the back of just this card's tokens and my commander.
DECK CHANGES:
- Thalia, Guardian of Thraben → Esper Sentinel I will be totally honest that I don't know about this change. I have had criticism of Esper Sentinel in this format since it was spoiled. I do have a humans matters concept though and I have a few ways I could pump him up. I am also having issues with card draw and I run a bunch of tutors that could find him as well. I don't know if I will like him but it feels like perhaps I need to give him more of a shot in a few lists. Thalia was fine and I think she does more for slowing opponents down but if you can pump up the Sentinel I think he will draw you cards and I think that is probably something I need a touch more right now.
- Mirror Entity → Mangara, the Diplomat Enetity's pump effect seems a tad expensive and he doesn't do much else for this deck. I am hoping to get a little bit of draw out of Mangara and its a human for a human so lets give it a shot.
- Hero of Bladehold → Keeper of the Accord Hero is too slow to get triggers and too slow for the tokens it makes (if they survive) to trigger my commander. It just felt all together slow. I am hoping to see if I can get a little faster performance out of Keeper. I am primarily including it for the land ramp here as while I do think I could possibly get some tokens it doesn't seem too likely to be a normal thing. I am adjusting my landbase a little to encourage this sort of trigger a bit more as I will be up to four effects after this change in this deck that cares about me having less lands.
- Resplendent Angel → Pilgrim's Eye For now, I just need some value and a cheap flyer and I think I want something a little more guarenteed than the angel. I think Resplendent is still good but hitting the lifegain goal is challenging as it takes a lot of setup or putting mana into it. Winota can still flip creatures to play and gain me life off a soul sister but the setup is high to get the angel token generation so for now lets go with something a little simpler.
- Righteous Valkyrie → Skyscanner similar to Resplendent I just want some cheap value evasive creature.
- Iroas, God of Victory → Duergar Hedge-Mage I end up pushing for evasion so much that a card dedicated to more evasion feels a bit odd. Instead I will just shift to some removal on a disposable creature and call it good.
- Reveillark → Boreas Charger just trying to bring the curve down and have more cheap evasives. I also found that I needed to keep pushing to hit my land drops so I feel like I am going to test this out and see how I feel about it. Charger isn't something I would normally be excited about but a 3 drop flyer with some ramp / card advantage ETB seems to be about where I need to be right now.
- Regna, the Redeemer → Sword of Fire and Ice I need more draw and while Regna seems sweet, the setup to get her working is still a bit spotty. Also Norin can't trigger her so I would need a soul sister to trigger off of someone else's play for the turn which brings me down to three possible soul sisters as the others don't trigger on opponents plays.
- Impact Tremors → Scroll Rack I often have a hard time with cards that just go face in that they can't bail me out of problems. I will still keep Purpheros but he hits twice as hard for one card and has an option to anthem my creatures. I don't like when I can only go face I guess. I have been thinking about Scroll Rack for a bit and I just increased the number of tutors in the deck. Pushing cards that aren't good in a situation back or pushing humans back into the deck seems like a useful trick. I will test it out at least and see what I think.
- Den of the Bugbear → Boros Garrison The cost for bubear's activation is too high. Also bounce lands sort of extend your lands in hand and put you behind on land count which matters for a few effects I am running.
- Dwarven Mine → Lotus Field Without more dual lands to play I felt like I couldn't easily hit the mine effect until somewhat late in the game. I also unfortunately drew the damn thing early a bunch and couldn't ever trigger it. I want to give Lotus Field a shot with some of the less land count concepts.
- Forbidding Watchtower → Flagstones of Trokair Trying to reduce my ETB tapped land count a bit and Flagstones fits the Lotus lands concept.
- Flamekin Village → Lotus Vale Less tapped lands and more less land concepts. I am not as sure on this land as it can be targeted by opponents but I own a few so time for testing.
- Hanweir Battlements → Inkmoth Nexus I wasn't really finding haste to be too relevant as the cost to activate was as much as activating my flying manlands so I figured I would cut into the haste some.
- 1 Mountain → Thespian's Stage I don't love cutting basics but it still leaves me at 11 basics in the deck and my plains count seems to be the ones I will be tutoring a bit more. I also cut the Dwarven Mine for now so I think that cutting my mountain count slightly should be fine but I still am running Emeria and my plains searching count went up. Thespian has three lands I just added that tap for more than one mana that it can copy so that seems useful to me.
Watch List:
- Speaker of the Heavens - I noticed that I wasn't gaining quite as much life as I expected. I need to play more games especially ones that go long in multiplayer but I have some concern that I might not hit and maintain the life total needed for this card. Lots of my games in 1v1 were fast though and I can't base too much on what I saw there. I need to test more in multiplayer games with this.
- Enlightened Tutor - I just had card advantage issues so a card disadvantage tutor is going to go on my watch list from that. I won't make any change yet especially since I could tutor for a card advantage engine but its a concern of mine.
- Chaos Warp / Generous Gift - Being noncreature one for one answers I guess the question is if I could get them to somehow feel less off theme for the deck. Probably not especially if I need an answer to some type of Torpor Orb effect but they are on my list.
- Ajani, Strength of the Pride - Same concerns as with Speaker of the Heavens. Getting this sort of thing to be setup might be winmore based on things working. One of the worst things that can happen is Winota gets countered / spot removed before I get to trigger her. Ajani feels like it could take more setup than I can lend him possibly.
- Emeria, the Sky Ruin - I don't know that there are enough fetchable duals that count as plains. Being enemy colors there are only 3. I need to test more especially with these less land cards I just added.
Lots of things are a bit experimental right now and I am sorry about testing some expensive landbase changes but I think there was enough of the less land concepts that made me want to experiment a bit more with running less. Anyone who wants to try some similar type of cards can always look into the
Karoo cycle and while they aren't as good they are budget friendly. I ended up on two evasive creatures that get me lands if I am behind because they were cheap non human flyers and by then I was already considering if I could make the less land concept work.
I had included
Weathered Wayfarer to search up
Field of the Dead but some of the new lands I added can also make for a good opener if you open with Wayfarer letting you start by playing him turn one, Turn 2 you tutor and play
Flagstones of Trokair, Turn three you tutor and play
Lotus Field ramping a land off of the Flagstones. Turn 4 you tutor and play
Thespian's Stage copying
Lotus Field putting you at seven mana from lands. The downside is it takes up the first four turns of play but its a good ramp start if you don't mind giving up some early game for a ramp start. I have no clue if I would do that but I do that in another deck of mine that is mono white that plays slower.