Averna, Roulette Croupier - Cascade Chaos

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Gentle Giant
It's all jank, always has been
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Post by Gentle Giant » 1 year ago

Let's spin the wheel and see!



Premise

Back when the first Commander Legends came out, Averna piqued my interest quite a bit. I'd played Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder briefly when I got his precon, trying to make it a bit stormy, but that never really worked out nicely within my group (taking long turns, very hit or miss). With Averna, I wanted to avoid the obvious cascade path of vomiting value by focusing on the randomness of it: what if each spin introduces new 'rules' to the game, or introduces other wrinkles to the game's dynamics? Thus, the goal is to keep ALL players on their toes, including yourself, never knowing whether the roulette will work out in your favour or not.
How does the deck win? Well, amidst all the topsy turvy stuff you're still playing sizeable beaters and ramp, so you do present a clock. Cascading from one cascade creature into the next can also create quite an army out of nowhere. Nothing strong or anything, but at precon/lower power level, it can get the job done.

Themes

The themes for this deck are quite straightforward: roulette spins (cascade cards) and rule setting/gameplay influencing cards (aka 'the spice'). What's nice about the latter is that you can switch it up between games by changing what spices you want to play!

Roulette spins



As the artcrops already hint at: we're going deep on the cascade cards here. Not just because bouncing the only good ones back to our hand constantly leads to very repetitive patterns, but we're also eschewing tutors as they're antithetical to the variance goals of this deck. We do include some creature bounce cards, just to be able to keep spinning (as the deck features very little card draw). Note that because we're being extremely greedy with the mana curve of the cascade cards, we allow ourselves to run higher cmc spice cards. Naturally, this leads to longer setup times (i.e. setting up the roulette table) and thus a low power level and early game fragility. Trying to fix these issues by including more ramp sadly also makes our spins much less interesting by cutting into our amount of spice, so we're simply not going to do that! :halo:

Spice



The spice is entirely up to personal taste. For me, this culminates into a mixture of
1) Stealing from the top of each player's deck (e.g. Stolen Strategy, Share the Spoils, Telemin Performance).
2) Removal through switcheroo and polymorphs (e.g. Grenzo's Rebuttal, Amphin Mutineer, & Wild Magic Surge).
3) Cards that make everyone commit to the board or in some way incentivize them to act (e.g. Wild Evocation, Jinxed Choker, Braids, Conjurer Adept).

The balance between these effects might still need some tuning in my version, as it currently features perhaps too little lasting 'rule changers' (perhaps more group sluggy ones, or something from the recent glut of goad cards). The nice part about this theme is that our removal is almost completely in the form of polymorph-esque effects. This makes even that part of the play experience feel dicey, and also gives our opponents some moments to spin the wheel.

Decklist

Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:


Further additions/thoughts

I think this is a good place to mention that my collection mostly consists of 1 offs in the rare/mythic department. That's why for example the manabase is in such an odd state: in terms of dual lands it's what I had left at the time that I made this deck (I have so many decks that I don't update them all that often: prolly also the reason for the lack of command tower and such). Additionally, that's why I might be missing some obvious includes/nice spice: it simply was in another deck at the time of building this one. So suggestions for spice are very much welcome! I'd love to simply extend the list of potential includes and be able to bring it to the right taste from there.
Aside from that, there's a couple of new cards I'm looking to add here (they are in the mail, hence the 97 card deck), like Wild Magic Surge, Audacious Swap, and Life of the Party.
Curious to hear what kind of spice you'd add!

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BaronCappuccino
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Post by BaronCappuccino » 1 year ago

I've always had a bit of envy for people willing to simply build with what they've got. A friend of mine does that - probably doesn't even have a TCG account. Just builds with whatever trades, drafts and packs get him. Me, I don't even keep a collection. I have a deck, and I totally disregard prior ownership when building a deck. I build each one like it's my first ever Magic deck and plan to buy the whole thing outright, selling everything in my prior deck, often to Card Kingdom. Taken as a deck built from available parts, it's hard to criticize. It's like Iron Man's 1st suit - yeah, it's not going toe to toe with Thanos, but he made it with a hammer and scrap metal in a cave with a car battery tethered to his heart. Did pretty well, all things considered. I think the only way I'd ever build an expensive color pairing like Izzet, is by somehow adopting a similar mindset and willingness not to engineer the deck top down without compromise. It's the way Magic was intended to be played, and it's definitely easier on the wallet.

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Gentle Giant
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Post by Gentle Giant » 1 year ago

BaronCappuccino wrote:
1 year ago
I've always had a bit of envy for people willing to simply build with what they've got. A friend of mine does that - probably doesn't even have a TCG account. Just builds with whatever trades, drafts and packs get him. Me, I don't even keep a collection. I have a deck, and I totally disregard prior ownership when building a deck. I build each one like it's my first ever Magic deck and plan to buy the whole thing outright, selling everything in my prior deck, often to Card Kingdom. Taken as a deck built from available parts, it's hard to criticize. It's like Iron Man's 1st suit - yeah, it's not going toe to toe with Thanos, but he made it with a hammer and scrap metal in a cave with a car battery tethered to his heart. Did pretty well, all things considered. I think the only way I'd ever build an expensive color pairing like Izzet, is by somehow adopting a similar mindset and willingness not to engineer the deck top down without compromise. It's the way Magic was intended to be played, and it's definitely easier on the wallet.
Having only 1 of each rare is a choice I made around... Shadows over Innistrad? Maybe even earlier. It's one of the ways of keeping my spending in check. I buy most rares/mythics of a set that are under a euro (and what interests me that's more than that but €3 tops) and a set of uncommons and commons, so my collection is pretty big, but it's all the jank with hardly any of the good stuff unless I luck into it through a prerelease, draft, trade, and/or sell to an LGS. I've got some duplicates, but it's from older commons/uncommons and 2014 era commander cards when I was still buying whole precons.
I came to this pattern because brewing decks is half of the game to me, so I have a ton of decks (40+) but hardly play them 😅 buying all the top of the bill stuff for that is just not worth it, nor would it give me the opportunity to play all these unique cards that they put out (at breakneck pace). It's very liberating, although it can be a hassle to know where a specific card is when I'm looking for it. That's one of the reasons why I'd like to have my decklists on here :P
I can't even begin to imagine which of my decks I'd keep if I had to choose only one like you do. You mention your process, but can you explain why you do it that way? Really curious!
Remember: not everyone is intent on 'growing as a player', analysing their meta and adapting to it, etc. For some people, Magic is just another board game.

Decklists:
A boy and his dog: an adventure (Rograkh & Yoshimaru) | Storytelling, Jank, Cute
Averna, Roulette Croupier: Cascade Chaos | Cascade, Chaos, Group Choices
The Ur-Dragon Tribal Tribal | Randomized Batches, Diverse, Quirky
Zirda, Patron Goddess of Trash Artisanry | Trash for Treasure, Artifact Aristocrats, low-powered

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BaronCappuccino
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Post by BaronCappuccino » 1 year ago

I want, I desperately want, one "pet deck" that's more than just a deck, but almost a facet of my character. A friend of mine has this with Azusa. Dirk of these forums seems to have this with Pheldagryff. I want one deck that I tweak and optimise perpetually. That's the primary reason I stick to one deck at a time. The other is finances. My wife is cool with me playing Magic, which is great, but we're relatively new homeowners (three years) with a ginormous bucket list of home projects to complete - by ginormous, I mean endless, because it never ends. I struggle to justify the expense of doing a single deck right, but I'm capable of it. I don't think it'd be right for us to be putting home projects on my credit cards we're working to pay off from past and current efforts while I'm supporting multiple commander decks that probably should be four digits easy in price if done halfway right. Especially now-a-days, it's near impossible to do anything at a try-hard casual level (not a c-edh deck, but doesn't hold back) without hitting 1k on lands and rocks alone. Even my signature deck down below, newly replacing my D&D deck, the latest contender to be "the deck", is probably less a no-holds-barred casual deck than it is a newbie gatekeeper "knowledge check" deck -- Like Kaalia, I guess. Anyhow, that's largely why I do what I do - I like the idea of having a definitive deck associated with me, and it doesn't hurt that that goal works amazingly well with my current financial situation. I can guilt-free support a single deck, even getting big tickets if one fits, but I'd feel guilty tacking Magic onto household debt if it was supporting several decks.

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Gentle Giant
It's all jank, always has been
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Post by Gentle Giant » 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing :) Yeah, home renovations/projects can get quite costly (also a home owner).
I see that this current deck costs $94: I'd never pay that for this deck. It's the combination of having a playgroup where these wacky low-powered decks can actually function, having built an extensive collection over time, and the fact that the new cards for these decks are often cheap (living in Europe helps a ton too) that I brew so much. If I had to meet a certain power level above slightly modified precon all the time, I would hardly brew. It's a reason I'm not really looking to play at LGSs either.
Last question: why do you want 'the one deck', i.e. a deck that represents a facet of your character? What do you hope to find once you have it?
Remember: not everyone is intent on 'growing as a player', analysing their meta and adapting to it, etc. For some people, Magic is just another board game.

Decklists:
A boy and his dog: an adventure (Rograkh & Yoshimaru) | Storytelling, Jank, Cute
Averna, Roulette Croupier: Cascade Chaos | Cascade, Chaos, Group Choices
The Ur-Dragon Tribal Tribal | Randomized Batches, Diverse, Quirky
Zirda, Patron Goddess of Trash Artisanry | Trash for Treasure, Artifact Aristocrats, low-powered

User avatar
BaronCappuccino
Posts: 246
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 1
Pronoun: he / him
Location: Quiet Corner

Post by BaronCappuccino » 1 year ago

It's just how I am. I'm compulsively monogamous in anything that allows it - I suppose mostly on display with Magic and fighting games, where I pick one game and one character and dedicate to it (Guilty Gear Strive/Testament currently). As far as commander goes, I want a Rocky story. The deck can't be a known overpowered entity, nor an obviously low powered one. I want to take a nobody and over time make it into something my way. Maybe do a primer once I feel qualified. Not sure exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll know when I get there, and I know it's an aggro deck, whether it's more like Jund or more like Naya, I don't know, so hence, Gruul for now. We'll see what happens.

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