So, I was randomly thinking about Ishkanah, Grafwidow as I have honestly visited the idea of making this deck like several times in the last year when it struck me: Growing Rites of Itlimoc & Gaea's Cradle are totally things I can run. Splice in Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and we are off to the races.
When I was working on a build for this commander, honestly... it was REALLY hard because there is nothing really saying build Ishkanah, Grafwidow this specific way. Because of that I worked out some of the naturaly good interactions and tried to build from that.
To achieve morbid for Ishkanah, Grafwidow I am going to want some level of self milling. It doesnt need to be the biggest thing in the world but if someone grave hates me I dont want to not be able to get tokens off my commander for the next 5 turns so I built some level of (can fill my graveyard) cards in. I didnt want to go as far as Millstone but things that give positive value while also putting things in grave is probably ok.
The ability to flicker, loop, and just cycle my commander repeatedly to generate tokens for both blocking purposes, grave pact, and Ishkanah, Grafwidow's activated ability. Getting bodies in play means generating mana and having additional resources so ways to repeatedly trigger that ETB are good.
Given I wanted to focus on some rather high profile lands as well as the fact that I am also looking at some small mill packages, I thought that Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, and Life from the Loam all had some natural synergy. Since I play fetchlands and some self milling I felt like they almost always had some nice action to play with.
Topdeck Manipulation seemed good because of some of the self milling aspects. I figured I could take what I want and potentially mill things I didnt want.
Additional Land Drops - Because of some of the tactics like being able to play lands from grave and the fetchlands I thought that playing multiple lands per turn was also beneficial.
Landfall - Well, I am playing multiple lands a turn, lands from grave, and a bunch of fetches. Well at this point landfall is somewhat good.
So I guess here I am, I built a deck with some milling, recursion, and a bunch of land based synergy.
CONSIDERATIONS: Rampaging Baloths - Obviously I just got done saying that the deck is kind of a land based deck. Right at the last second I decided that Nemata felt better for sheer bodies given the big mana of a few of the lands. I think Baloths is still good but I think Nemata might be more explosive. Baloths would be a better on curve play where as Nemata is a great play once I get a little more set up. Commune with the Gods / Benefaction of Rhonas / Scout the Borders - I think these cards are..... just kind of ok. I ended up keeping Grisly Salvage and Vessel of Nascency because I felt they were the best of the bunch. I think I want to be somewhere in between so I can do some testing and see how I feel about these cards. I could see liking them but I could also see really not liking them. It will depend a little on how much grave hate I get as to how I feel about these but I think also there is a lot of cards that just fill my grave and serve better functions and I am more interested in those. Attrition - its a tokens deck with black. Yea I thought about this card but in the end I wanted to keep Grave Pact effects more than I did this at the time. Its not to say you cant have both but they don't really work together so well. Birthing Pod - I love this card. That said, I didnt feel like I got enough of an ETB / Death based deck that I was happy with this. I liked the idea of kicking off of my commander I just saw the chain ending there and I wasnt so excited aobut that. Seedborn Muse - yea I did think about generating a bunch of mana and funneling it at my commander while mass untapping every turn. I just think its too niche in what I can do as I don't really see like.... any other intended purpose for this card than that. In that sense, if I am behind for some reason this card is terrible. Its only good when I am already set up kind of nice. Regrowth - I think this is a great card, I just wanted to see how much grave hate I get with this deck. Sometimes when I am already kind of muddling in my graveyard a bit I try not to go overboard and this deck feels like its already meddling quite a bit in the grave. Krosan Grip - I like the idea of taking out some grave hate before it could be used. Lots of the grave hate I see is artifacts that can be sacrificed to grave hate and Bojuka Bog.
I ordered the cards I was missing for this and I should be able to get everything sleeved up by next week. While I was sleeving some of the cards I cam across a few things I considered and wanted to make some changes. I think my lands theme is kind of cool and so I want to try to kind of run a bit deeper with that and see what comes of it.
DECK CHANGE:
Scavenging Ooze -> Harvest Season it occurred to me that I have 3 sources of grave hate in this deck as well as a TON of tutors. I think Ooze is a really solid card but at the same time Spellbomb cycles itself if its not relevant and I have a TON of nonbasic land tutors in this deck for bog. Harvest Season seems interesting to me given the number of Earthcraft effects I have I could tap all my creatures down and then fire out a big ramp effect behind it.
Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest -> The Gitrog Monster I think that Mazirek could still be cool but my issue is that it requires me to have made a bunch of tokens and then have a sac outlet. It just feels like when its good, its really late into me doing fine. I am pushing the lands thing a bit harder so I thought it would be cool to run the big frog man. Being that I am a little bit of a self mill deck as well as running fetchlands with land recursion I think there is some potential to turn him into an engine for this deck.
Coffin Queen -> Tireless Tracker - I like the queen but I am becoming less of a rez deck and more of a lands deck. I like her still but I want to explore more of the lands stuff for now. Tracker seems good with all the lands coming in and the mana generation I think it should make for a cool on theme draw.
Diamond Valley -> Volrath's Stronghold - I originally started with more rez abuse and as more of that has dropped off I would rather be able to recover a creature than to have another sac outlet. I like the lifegain on the valley but I really wanted to make room for stronghold given how much land recursion I have sticking that seems really nice. There is also the issue that valley didn't tap for mana naturally which put my lands that dont tap for mana naturally to 2 at the time.
Hopefully I can get some good testing in and get a better picture of how this works out. I think a lot of the self milling with land recovery is a very interesting start so I do really like the direction I went with it. We will see how that works in game though vs on paper.
I did consider the question of how spider focused I wanted to be. I think while its cool to have actual spiders in the list I think a little recursion is going to go a lot farther than adding a few spiders as far as Ishkanah's activated abilitiy goes. Some of the problem I had was that many of the spiders I looked at were too redundnant with what my commander does for me (give me bodies and clog up defense). Its true that if I wanted to specifically get better vs flying blockers Silklash Spider would probably be solid but even just having it at the point where I get 4 chump blockers per commander cast should make it so that a flying creature has a VERY hard time getting through my board. I think that of the spiders, Silklash Spider and Arachnus Spinner / Arachnus Web were probably the two I think have the most potential but in both cases I felt like they were kind of optional in what they did and they might be a little more of something you include if your meta builds in such a way that they would be good.
I was more viewing Ishkanah, Grafwidow as a strong defensive measure, wincon, and token producer for things like Gaea's Cradle, Grave Pact, and Earthcraft. In a lot of ways I am using the commander as sort of an engine for bodies that server multiple purposes for the deck. I think that adding more spider synergy is cool but I also think that most of the spiders are weak outside of a specific niche need that I think Ishkanah, Grafwidow often covers generically.
When I was building this list I had several concepts in mind that I considered and I built kind of between a few concepts. In the end I wanted to push the lands concept more than I had expected and the end result, the ETB / Sac / Looping portions I had also built in became a little less developed than I had anticipated which made some of my inclusions perhaps a little more questionable than when I was first building it up.
DECK CHANGES:
Rune-Scarred Demon -> Woodfall Primus I think the demon is solid but I think it was better when I was building for loop tactics. As I have built more focus into the lands package more of my creatures have become more of things with value in staying in play than creatures who want to be looped. I also noticed that my tutor count is really high and I dont know if there is anything I am going to do about that right now but my answers are also a bit low. Moving to Woodfall Primus gives me one of those answers I felt I might need and I actually like it with some of the sac based things I have kept in the list. Being that this is a green creature I can also tutor for it in a few ways and I felt like it is something that is harder to steal / copy for my opponents than a few other options. So many of my tutors are for creatures so I really wanted some sort of higher cost answer that I could flip into. Things like Natural Order really pushed me to wanting a higher cost green answer in my list.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed -> Genesis When I was building more for ETB / Death looping Mikaeus looked great but as I have moved to more creatures with value in staying in play it looks worse. Some of the best Mikeaus plays tend to be when you already have a board of ETB / Dies creatures and you drop him in with a sac outlet in play. Being that I would be using him more to keep things in play he gets siginfiicantly worse. I am adding Woodfall Primus right now but I don't execute infinites so that's not really a pro for me to keep him. Genesis gives me constant recursion and can be discarded through a number of means or even played and sacrificed.
Hermit Druid -> Survival of the Fittest The more I thought about Hermit Druid the less I liked him. Really I dont like how slow he is or that his primary goal is to recover me from grave hate. I felt like I would want to be a more dedicated graveyard deck for me to really like him. I am not really sure on Survival but I am adding Genesis which would be a great first steping stone. I have a lot of ramp and sac outlets so I want to try out Survival as I do still have some specific answers and utility that I would want to respond by moving to.
Grisly Salvage -> Reap and Sow I am trying to bring my self mill cards down a little and use some of the tutors more to get what I want. I figured I could use Reap and Sow to get Bazaar of Baghdad so in a way, it still gives me the self milling aspect but I think in a way that fits the deck better. Honestly I still don't know where I stand on some of the self milling cards as it might take me a few games with this deck to figure out how its working for me. I did consider Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map as well but given where my commander lands I figured that a 4 mana ramp a land was kind of nice given that if I need my Bazaar of Baghdad, Reap and Sow wont cost me a land drop. I think that Expedition Map still has some promise given that my artifact count is lower and I don't have much for self sacrificing artifacts.
Garruk Wildspeaker -> Living Death I thought about it more and while I think Garruk Wildspeaker is cool, I think in a lot of ways he is going to be winmore for me. The situations I would want him would be times where I have set up defenses with my commander and then set up some big mana lands. His untap could be super strong and the overrun seems nice but again, times in which I am set up with all of that sounds like I am doing fine anyways.
Arachnogenesis -> Yawgmoth's Will I had some issues with Arachnogenesis in that it felt really really niche in when it would really work for me. I would ideally speaking want it if someone were to swarm at me hard rather than coming at me with a few big single threats. Given how defensive my commander is I just feel like I might have to sit on this card forever which feels bad. I love the flavor of it but its specifically creatures attacking me and not just attacking creatures which makes me feel it might be too niche in when I can use it. Yawgmoth's Will seems like it fits this deck well being I am a big mana greaveyard based deck. I like that I could recover most anything off of it.
So.... I guess where I stand right now I have a few things on my mind:
Can I reliably hit delirium at a reasonable timeframe? I wonder what my recovery from grave hate will look like. There is the question from the start of the game how long it takes until I kind of go active for my commander and how long it takes me to recover back to delirium after grave hate. I made some changes above and most noticeably I moved my instant count down. Given my counts I think creatures and lands will be the most common way to get some counts going. I considered something like Bitterblossom because of its "tribal" typing as well. I think I am at the point that I just need to do some testing and make some notes how long it takes me to get to delirium each game as well as make a count of how many times I am taken off of it.
I am wondering how much grave hate is going to hurt. I looked through my list and I came up with what looks like 14 cards in my list that are graveyard dependant which sort of means that if I get hit by grave hate I have a lot of cards that are turned off for a bit. It will mean I might have to keep a few things in hand (such as an emergency fetchland)
My searches feels a little heavy. I don't know if I am going overboard but I counted 18 nonland search cards.
Basic Lands - I have a little bit of worry that I might not have enough given all of the fetchlands, recursion for lands, as well as some cards like Harvest Season in the list. I also worry with how much green I have in my list and yet I intentionally threw my landbase heavy black to enable coffers.
Anyways, I think this list is really interesting and I look forward to seeing how it plays. Several of these concerns may go away when I get to put this list into action. I need to get a better feel of how much of an issue some of these things are as well.
I played the deck two games last night. Overall it felt really nice I really enjoyed the lands package as I was really moving that kind of hard both games. The first game I got set up with a Courser of Kruphix, Ramunap Excavator, Oracle of Mul Daya which was letting me push fetchlands around nicely. In the first game there was a fast ramp up and the Atarka, World Render deck assembled a fast Xenagos, God of Revels and started one shotting people. I ended up wrathing his board but I forgot that he still had Xenagos, God of Revels so i got one shotted the second time. This was probably around turn 7 or 8 this happened. Given that he had a 12 powered trampling double striker though.... I dont think that Ishkanah was actually going to stand up to defending me from it anyways so I will just chalk this one up to a bad matchup. If that kind of a deck continues to be an issue I will consider adding some sort of answer such as possibly Arachnus Spinner / Arachnus Web.
Game two I set up with Oracle of Mul Daya + The Gitrog Monster. I managed to get Life From the Loam as well and I started repeatedly firing off Bojuka Bog on people with it. As the game went on I set up Cabal Coffers + Gaea's Cradle. This game was actually fairly long and grindy but I at one point got Nim Deathmantle and was moving my creatures in and out for value. Someone blew that up and I set up a Lifeline + Altar of Dementia which mill cannoned a graveyard deck out but he stayed alive with dredge. Someone shuffled graveyards in and wheeled us which saved that player. I got wrathed again after my Lifeline was exiled to a Hostage Taker. I ended up spider murdering the player who hijacked my Lifeline with Ishkanah, Grafwidow with Cabal Coffers + Gaea's Cradle and chained it to a second player who was also low. I then drew into Nim Deathmantle again, I generated 12 more spiders off of the deathmantle and then I chain gunned the remaining 2 players for 19 life per activation with my commander with roughly 50 mana from my lands.
Sorry if that recap was a little rough. Game 2 was actually a long game of a lot of people trying to murder the things I was trying to do. I felt like I wanted a little more draw as well as a little more lifegain in the games so thats kind of going to be my goal right now. I noticed that it was somewhat difficult to get my delerium online immediately. I am hoping that adding a little more draw might help on that front but if I continue to have issues with it I will consider bringing some of the cards that do directly mill me.
DECK CHANGES:
Caustic Caterpillar -> Gaze of Granite I just was not impressed with the caterpillar in retrospect. I just want more ways to in a pinch be able to clear everything out. I care most about my lands and so I just need something to take everything out from time to time.
Woodfall Primus -> Bane of Progress moving to more mass clear. My creatures and lands were the most important so I think I want to see if Bane can get me there. There were just too many times last night that even Terrastadon was not enough for what I needed to do.
Grave Pact -> Necropotence I just wasnt feeling it with my grave pact effect. I had a hard time turning my commander on early on and I dont have enough tokens outside of my commander to feel that the pact effects were going to be reliable. I had enough land / ramp action that I really just needed more draw action. One cool thing I like about Necro is that you can remove cards one at a time until you hit lands on top for Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya.
Pattern of Rebirth -> Erebos, God of the Dead I didnt feel like I had enough creatures I wanted to sacrifice on a regular basis that I want to keep in Pattern. I like that Erebos is kind of robust draw as I almost always had surplus mana I could push into draw if I had something like this. It also has some fun synergy with Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya in that I can push the top cards until I hit lands.
Dictate of Erebos -> Oblivion Stone I just wasnt feeling the creature sac portions of this deck. I think that picking up more generic answers is good as well. I like O Stone in that it clears the board off and possibly enables my commander to start the recovery process.
Eldritch Evolution -> Greed again, I wasnt feeling some of the sac portions of the deck and I think evolution needs to go. I just dont feel like I have the early game creatures I am willing to turn over for it to be as good as I want it to be. Greed gives me another controllable draw as needed effect and again I think it has some nice synergy with Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya.
Morbid Curiosity -> Batterskull I wasnt feeling the sac portions of the deck and I think my commander is one of the few things I wanted to use morbid on. Batterskull also seems really solid with my commander as it gives me a big thick creature that can attack and defend and give me some of the life I was hoping to pick up. I think that the return to hand option of this is strong given how I felt like I often had surplus mana if needed.
Thespian Stage -> Buried Ruin I just wasn't really digging Thespian last night. It can become another coffers but outside of that I just didnt see anything I really wanted to do with it. I feel like I have a few fairly high priority artifacts in this deck that I would love to be able to recover off of my lands.
Blighted Woodland -> Mystifying Maze I guess just given the super huge trample monster game I might be over reacting but I also dont think that I need Blighted Woodland in here. I guess there is some room to debate between Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland and I will try to sort out which I would prefer later but for now I think having a Maze could be helpful especially if my commander does not have delirium yet. Being that its a land I can tutor for it too so.... seems good.
Soooo, this bumps my card draw, global answers, lifegain, and sac outlets. The deck did feel fairly good last night and I think these changes will make it feel a bit smoother. I still need to kind of watch how my draw works out but I definitely felt that I had the mana to support some of the continuous draw outlets that I just added. I did feel a little bit of a lack of lifegain so we will see how some of the new adds adjust that for me.
I was just kind of fiddling with the deck a little in my head and going through the cards I have in here. I dont want to make too many changes right now because I think my issue last week was mostly down to an issue that I needed to draw more cards on a continuous basis. I did want to make one more small change though and see how things go with it:
DECK CHANGE:
Citanul Hierophants -> Night's Whisper my ability to make tokens has been a little questionable at times. Hitting delirium for my commander has been questionable at times and I just think I need to push more draw right now. I thought that perhaps I would want to tutor for the creature Earthcraft but it turned out that was never anything that made sense for me to do. I want to keep the other versions in for now but I just need to push more draw as I had the mana to support pushing some more draw.
I have a lot of other things I am keeping my eye on as well but I think I just really needed to push the throttle down on some draw first and foremost. Some of my sac package feels like I might not be supporting it properly for me to really get the benefit from it I want as well. I think more games with more draw will be my step one for now of seeing how things are going.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
So, I was randomly thinking about Ishkanah, Grafwidow as I have honestly visited the idea of making this deck like several times in the last year when it struck me: Growing Rites of Itlimoc & Gaea's Cradle are totally things I can run. Splice in Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and we are off to the races.
When I was working on a build for this commander, honestly... it was REALLY hard because there is nothing really saying build Ishkanah, Grafwidow this specific way. Because of that I worked out some of the naturaly good interactions and tried to build from that.
So I guess here I am, I built a deck with some milling, recursion, and a bunch of land based synergy.
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
CREATURES (20)
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Ramunap Excavator
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Genesis
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
1 Bane of Progress
1 Nemata, Grove Guardian
1 Ulvenwald Hydra
1 Protean Hulk
1 Razaketh, the Foulblooded
ARTIFACT (10)
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Altar of Dementia
1 Nim Deathmantle
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Conjurer's Closet
1 Batterskull
1 Lifeline
1 Exploration
1 Vessel of Nascency
1 Cryptolith Rite
1 Earthcraft
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Necropotence
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Greater Good
1 Greed
INSTANT (7)
1 Crop Rotation
1 Entomb
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Golgari Charm
1 Beast Within
1 Chord of Calling
1 Corpse Dance
SORCERY (12)
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Life from the Loam
1 Night's Whisper
1 Gaze of Granite
1 Harvest Season
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Natural Order
1 Reap and Sow
1 Hour of Promise
1 Living Death
1 Bayou
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Diamond Valley
3 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 High Market
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
11 Swamp
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vesuva
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Westvale Abbey
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
CONSIDERATIONS:
Rampaging Baloths - Obviously I just got done saying that the deck is kind of a land based deck. Right at the last second I decided that Nemata felt better for sheer bodies given the big mana of a few of the lands. I think Baloths is still good but I think Nemata might be more explosive. Baloths would be a better on curve play where as Nemata is a great play once I get a little more set up.
Commune with the Gods / Benefaction of Rhonas / Scout the Borders - I think these cards are..... just kind of ok. I ended up keeping Grisly Salvage and Vessel of Nascency because I felt they were the best of the bunch. I think I want to be somewhere in between so I can do some testing and see how I feel about these cards. I could see liking them but I could also see really not liking them. It will depend a little on how much grave hate I get as to how I feel about these but I think also there is a lot of cards that just fill my grave and serve better functions and I am more interested in those.
Attrition - its a tokens deck with black. Yea I thought about this card but in the end I wanted to keep Grave Pact effects more than I did this at the time. Its not to say you cant have both but they don't really work together so well.
Birthing Pod - I love this card. That said, I didnt feel like I got enough of an ETB / Death based deck that I was happy with this. I liked the idea of kicking off of my commander I just saw the chain ending there and I wasnt so excited aobut that.
Seedborn Muse - yea I did think about generating a bunch of mana and funneling it at my commander while mass untapping every turn. I just think its too niche in what I can do as I don't really see like.... any other intended purpose for this card than that. In that sense, if I am behind for some reason this card is terrible. Its only good when I am already set up kind of nice.
Regrowth - I think this is a great card, I just wanted to see how much grave hate I get with this deck. Sometimes when I am already kind of muddling in my graveyard a bit I try not to go overboard and this deck feels like its already meddling quite a bit in the grave.
Krosan Grip - I like the idea of taking out some grave hate before it could be used. Lots of the grave hate I see is artifacts that can be sacrificed to grave hate and Bojuka Bog.
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[Modern] Allies
DECK CHANGE:
Hopefully I can get some good testing in and get a better picture of how this works out. I think a lot of the self milling with land recovery is a very interesting start so I do really like the direction I went with it. We will see how that works in game though vs on paper.
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[Modern] Allies
I did consider the question of how spider focused I wanted to be. I think while its cool to have actual spiders in the list I think a little recursion is going to go a lot farther than adding a few spiders as far as Ishkanah's activated abilitiy goes. Some of the problem I had was that many of the spiders I looked at were too redundnant with what my commander does for me (give me bodies and clog up defense). Its true that if I wanted to specifically get better vs flying blockers Silklash Spider would probably be solid but even just having it at the point where I get 4 chump blockers per commander cast should make it so that a flying creature has a VERY hard time getting through my board. I think that of the spiders, Silklash Spider and Arachnus Spinner / Arachnus Web were probably the two I think have the most potential but in both cases I felt like they were kind of optional in what they did and they might be a little more of something you include if your meta builds in such a way that they would be good.
I was more viewing Ishkanah, Grafwidow as a strong defensive measure, wincon, and token producer for things like Gaea's Cradle, Grave Pact, and Earthcraft. In a lot of ways I am using the commander as sort of an engine for bodies that server multiple purposes for the deck. I think that adding more spider synergy is cool but I also think that most of the spiders are weak outside of a specific niche need that I think Ishkanah, Grafwidow often covers generically.
When I was building this list I had several concepts in mind that I considered and I built kind of between a few concepts. In the end I wanted to push the lands concept more than I had expected and the end result, the ETB / Sac / Looping portions I had also built in became a little less developed than I had anticipated which made some of my inclusions perhaps a little more questionable than when I was first building it up.
DECK CHANGES:
So.... I guess where I stand right now I have a few things on my mind:
Anyways, I think this list is really interesting and I look forward to seeing how it plays. Several of these concerns may go away when I get to put this list into action. I need to get a better feel of how much of an issue some of these things are as well.
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[Modern] Allies
Game two I set up with Oracle of Mul Daya + The Gitrog Monster. I managed to get Life From the Loam as well and I started repeatedly firing off Bojuka Bog on people with it. As the game went on I set up Cabal Coffers + Gaea's Cradle. This game was actually fairly long and grindy but I at one point got Nim Deathmantle and was moving my creatures in and out for value. Someone blew that up and I set up a Lifeline + Altar of Dementia which mill cannoned a graveyard deck out but he stayed alive with dredge. Someone shuffled graveyards in and wheeled us which saved that player. I got wrathed again after my Lifeline was exiled to a Hostage Taker. I ended up spider murdering the player who hijacked my Lifeline with Ishkanah, Grafwidow with Cabal Coffers + Gaea's Cradle and chained it to a second player who was also low. I then drew into Nim Deathmantle again, I generated 12 more spiders off of the deathmantle and then I chain gunned the remaining 2 players for 19 life per activation with my commander with roughly 50 mana from my lands.
Sorry if that recap was a little rough. Game 2 was actually a long game of a lot of people trying to murder the things I was trying to do. I felt like I wanted a little more draw as well as a little more lifegain in the games so thats kind of going to be my goal right now. I noticed that it was somewhat difficult to get my delerium online immediately. I am hoping that adding a little more draw might help on that front but if I continue to have issues with it I will consider bringing some of the cards that do directly mill me.
DECK CHANGES:
Soooo, this bumps my card draw, global answers, lifegain, and sac outlets. The deck did feel fairly good last night and I think these changes will make it feel a bit smoother. I still need to kind of watch how my draw works out but I definitely felt that I had the mana to support some of the continuous draw outlets that I just added. I did feel a little bit of a lack of lifegain so we will see how some of the new adds adjust that for me.
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[Modern] Allies
DECK CHANGE:
I have a lot of other things I am keeping my eye on as well but I think I just really needed to push the throttle down on some draw first and foremost. Some of my sac package feels like I might not be supporting it properly for me to really get the benefit from it I want as well. I think more games with more draw will be my step one for now of seeing how things are going.
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[Modern] Allies