My wife likes to get a box rather singles - I know it’s not as reliable as singles, but it is more fun, and I like to keep her engaged in the game.
Ah right. Well, it's good to have some measure of self-constraint while expanding a collection, and it is good to point out how you get cards to put card suggestions in perspective. Ugin's a rare though, so I suppose it isn't too hard to trade for (personally I don't like to put time in trading, which makes buying a box a dumb investment). I don't like planeswalkers as a card type, but WotS got me a bit excited to do something with them. I think I'm going up to four PW in the deck now, and at that point something like Contagion Engine is worth consideration. But only if you happen to have an Engine I do, but right now I think Animation Module will do the job just fine.
So yeah, Arkbow just didn’t come up. That being said, I get how it’d be a little conditional. There’s bound to be like an upper limit to its reliability, and an optimal number of mana to throw at it before you see diminishing returns. Maybe I’ll see playtest it online before I pick up a copy and see how it plays out. I suspect I won’t ever have the mana floating to make it do what it’s designed to do, but I guess I’ll find out one way or another. [/quote]
I see it less as a mana sink and more as an accelerator/graveyard filler personally
My thoughts on it:
- the discard can be nice if you have a strong reanimator suite (which I don't have)
- discarding artifacts is fine, as you can just get the artifact back with Glissa eventually (but that trigger is then competing with all the other artifacts you might rather have in your hand)
- without top deck manipulation there's a big chance to whiff if you have little mana available (so imagine a turn two play and an activition for 3 mana on turn 3: the odds you get something decent out of that are pretty slim, but by then you are down to cards (arkbow and the discard) and five mana)
But to put that in perspective, the card slot it was competing with had Survival of the Fittest in it. If that had been an artifact it'd have been the perfect card (and one of my all-time favorites), but I've sidelined it now in my quest to cut down on tutors.
You weren't satisfied with the Arkbow? It doesn't work for me as I just don't need a mana sink. I've put the new Ugin in instead. Now to find room for Warping Wail and living the dream of a free counterspell...
I wish I had a Plateau. I own 8 different duals, some of them multiples and some even playsets. But no Plateau and no Tundra, and that is a bit odd.
I'm also sad that I don't own a set of Bazaars. Not that I need them, but I was outbid several times when I tried to get them around Torment or something like that. Not owning them is a constant reminder on what I missed out on.
Have you considered Animation Module? It plays nice with Mazirek and Marionette Master. Another thing I found is that you might want to change one of your 1 mana ramp artifacts to something with a higher CC (like mind stone), just to make it easier to recur those sweet 1 CC artifacts (because you lack 0 CC artifacts, Hangarback is really nice!).
And yes, I know Animation Module is 1 CC so my suggestions are countering each other
I forgot to mention that I run Guardian Beast, so the first chapter of Phyrexian Scriptures has value for me. But you have a point regarding signalling, and with Scriptures being an enchantment it's not so easily recurred.
Anyway, that's not really budget either. I explored a bunch of building blocks for Glissa. Your inclusion of Myr Battlesphere takes me to Steel Overseer: that is good with untapping your stuff. A deck with tap abilities like Steel Overseer, Scarecrone and Myr Turbine (or whatever, the options are legion: Grimoire of the Dead, Contagion Engine, Metalworker, Predator, Flagship...) can get a lot of value out of Unwinding Clock and Seedborn Muse. And nowadays there's obviously Paradox Engine. An artifact like that can make a deck explode. And since it's an artifact, you can recur it with Glissa. Recurring baubles every turn is nice, but recurring bombs is better.
Phyrexian Scriptures seems really interesting to me... although I already have damnation. I mean I could replace disk its basically the same, wait a turn then wrath but doesn't hit your creatures. at the cost of recursion.
[/deck]
I really like it, it's a good addition to The Abyss. I like your side of the board clean.
I love your decklist, and the OP looks great. I have a couple of suggestions from my own experience with Glissa:
-Karn is great. Animate your own artifacts and smash face, or better, make opposing creatures drop their SoFI, kill their artifact "creature" and get a Glissa trigger
-my favorite trick with Karn: animate Eldrazi Monument when someone wants to break it
-speaking of which, Eldrazi Monument is great, but I don't think you have enough fodder to support it
-Engineered Explosives is good: there is a lot of stuff you want to kill with CMC 2 or less. If you recur it with Salvaging Station you can still kill tokens with it. I run Forbidden Orchard just to make sure they have tokens to kill
-Codex Shredder is CMC=1. This card really shines!
-Arcbound Ravager is sweet, especially when you have something like Mindless Automaton around as well. A good target for Blade of the Bloodchief, and it's a nice outlet for your eggs
In case you ever want to rebuild the deck, there's an option to go "big mana" with Unwinding Clock.
If you add Graveborn Muse, Titan and Praetors, perhaps you could try Strionic Resonator. It doesn't go so well with Torpor Orb though...
Your cut of Rune-Scarred Demon triggered something in my head: I tried RSD a while when I ran Deathrender. I don't like to pay full CMC for my cards, and Deathrender has a nice side-effect that it keeps people from playing sweepers. In that aspect it's better than Nim Deathmantle, which forces you to keep mana open. It's nice to recur a creature with Glissa and plop it on the table for free. It's also very good with Strionic Resonator. I wouldn't know what to cut though, but it's a nice trick you can keep in the back of your head for future deck tuning.
Perhaps you want to try Burnished Hart instead of Wood Elves.
Hunter's Prowess is OK, but I'd rather play Snake Umbra (which is great in a Sun Titan package). Hunter's Prowess reward is great, but since it's a sorcery it's a liability. Besides that, I like the card; while 5 mana is a lot for a combat trick (or a draw spell), by the time you have 5 mana it's about time to draw some cards. Other than that, there's not much in this set that tickles my fancy. I'm happy with Satyr Wayfinder for Glissa though.
Speaking of Sun Titan packages, if you do something with ETB triggered token producers, Gift of Immortality is really nice.
EE is pretty cool, but the problem is that I can never use it for more than 2, which misses most of the most popular EDH cards. If I was able to make a third color of mana, it would be a lot better. It is awesome against tokens, but right now the only tokens deck I commonly see is Prossh, which would just sac all the tokens for benefit anyway.
The list of commonly played cards with CMC 2 or less is pretty large. You can force SDT from the table, kill Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Survival, Rest in Peace (which makes its inclusion worthwhile on it's own), mana critters and utility dorks.
I don't think Tombstone Stairwell would work very well for me since I don't run that many creatures, and the cumulative upkeep gets very costly pretty quickly. Also, the fact that you get the last usage out of it is a little bit annoying.
You get creatures every turn. And you don't play it for the tokens, but for the Glissa triggers.
Okay, I solved this by brute forcing passwords while using the ancient email address, with this post as proof that I actually logged in This can be closed, though I suspect there'll be more users with a similar problem. Since there's no block after a number of failed logins, it's not that hard to gain access once you've figured out the email associated with the account. I guess that should be fixed as well.
Ah right. Well, it's good to have some measure of self-constraint while expanding a collection, and it is good to point out how you get cards to put card suggestions in perspective. Ugin's a rare though, so I suppose it isn't too hard to trade for (personally I don't like to put time in trading, which makes buying a box a dumb investment). I don't like planeswalkers as a card type, but WotS got me a bit excited to do something with them. I think I'm going up to four PW in the deck now, and at that point something like Contagion Engine is worth consideration. But only if you happen to have an Engine
So yeah, Arkbow just didn’t come up. That being said, I get how it’d be a little conditional. There’s bound to be like an upper limit to its reliability, and an optimal number of mana to throw at it before you see diminishing returns. Maybe I’ll see playtest it online before I pick up a copy and see how it plays out. I suspect I won’t ever have the mana floating to make it do what it’s designed to do, but I guess I’ll find out one way or another. [/quote]
About Arkbow:
My thoughts on it:
- the discard can be nice if you have a strong reanimator suite (which I don't have)
- discarding artifacts is fine, as you can just get the artifact back with Glissa eventually (but that trigger is then competing with all the other artifacts you might rather have in your hand)
- without top deck manipulation there's a big chance to whiff if you have little mana available (so imagine a turn two play and an activition for 3 mana on turn 3: the odds you get something decent out of that are pretty slim, but by then you are down to cards (arkbow and the discard) and five mana)
But to put that in perspective, the card slot it was competing with had Survival of the Fittest in it. If that had been an artifact it'd have been the perfect card (and one of my all-time favorites), but I've sidelined it now in my quest to cut down on tutors.
I'm also sad that I don't own a set of Bazaars. Not that I need them, but I was outbid several times when I tried to get them around Torment or something like that. Not owning them is a constant reminder on what I missed out on.
And yes, I know Animation Module is 1 CC so my suggestions are countering each other
Anyway, that's not really budget either. I explored a bunch of building blocks for Glissa. Your inclusion of Myr Battlesphere takes me to Steel Overseer: that is good with untapping your stuff. A deck with tap abilities like Steel Overseer, Scarecrone and Myr Turbine (or whatever, the options are legion: Grimoire of the Dead, Contagion Engine, Metalworker, Predator, Flagship...) can get a lot of value out of Unwinding Clock and Seedborn Muse. And nowadays there's obviously Paradox Engine. An artifact like that can make a deck explode. And since it's an artifact, you can recur it with Glissa. Recurring baubles every turn is nice, but recurring bombs is better.
I really like it, it's a good addition to The Abyss. I like your side of the board clean.
I think Ripjaw Raptor is worth running. Other enrage dino's are also popular in Marath decks (according to EDHREC).
-Karn is great. Animate your own artifacts and smash face, or better, make opposing creatures drop their SoFI, kill their artifact "creature" and get a Glissa trigger
-my favorite trick with Karn: animate Eldrazi Monument when someone wants to break it
-speaking of which, Eldrazi Monument is great, but I don't think you have enough fodder to support it
-Engineered Explosives is good: there is a lot of stuff you want to kill with CMC 2 or less. If you recur it with Salvaging Station you can still kill tokens with it. I run Forbidden Orchard just to make sure they have tokens to kill
-Codex Shredder is CMC=1. This card really shines!
-Arcbound Ravager is sweet, especially when you have something like Mindless Automaton around as well. A good target for Blade of the Bloodchief, and it's a nice outlet for your eggs
In case you ever want to rebuild the deck, there's an option to go "big mana" with Unwinding Clock.
Your cut of Rune-Scarred Demon triggered something in my head: I tried RSD a while when I ran Deathrender. I don't like to pay full CMC for my cards, and Deathrender has a nice side-effect that it keeps people from playing sweepers. In that aspect it's better than Nim Deathmantle, which forces you to keep mana open. It's nice to recur a creature with Glissa and plop it on the table for free. It's also very good with Strionic Resonator. I wouldn't know what to cut though, but it's a nice trick you can keep in the back of your head for future deck tuning.
Perhaps you want to try Burnished Hart instead of Wood Elves.
Speaking of Sun Titan packages, if you do something with ETB triggered token producers, Gift of Immortality is really nice.
The list of commonly played cards with CMC 2 or less is pretty large. You can force SDT from the table, kill Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Survival, Rest in Peace (which makes its inclusion worthwhile on it's own), mana critters and utility dorks.
You get creatures every turn. And you don't play it for the tokens, but for the Glissa triggers.
Use it to kill opponent's non-creature artifacts to get Glissa triggers, and let equipment drop like its hot.
Specifically for a Voltron deck: O-naginata.