This is my own take on Mairsil, the Pretender. I am hoping to do a joint project with a friend of mine in my old playgroup to have us both come up with a list and then compare our lists and ideally run the same list. Life is busy for him right now so I am going to put my own take up.
So I guess a few things on my list:
I am building for a control build with no combos. I will not execute a combo if one comes up but I also wont omit cards because they "could go off". I just wont execute them as an infinite.
I am intentionally omitting Quicksilver Elemental. Most of this comes back to combo not being my objective. I also think that it adds an extra step that is very dependent on what it already has so I felt it to be kind of winmore.
For the most part when I was building this I asked how good most of these cards were outside of being caged. I tried to have very few cards that kind of suck without caging them. I really want cards that can on their own merit be decent cards but a few (like Morph/Aether/Torch/ling) cards I included because I thought they made Mairsil really cool. Scourge of Kher Ridges is probably another not so great card I allowed in because of how good of control it gives. For the most part though I wanted cards that I could play them and they were not terrible.
Bigger mana grixus control is kind of my goal here. I am trying to get enough ramp effects and consistent draw to keep the deck moving still.
Some cards that I have considered and are maybe close in consideration but I did not include:
Buried Alive - Yes, this is a bit of an interesting omission. My issue with the card is that I ended up not really having any reanimation effects in the deck so I felt like other than setting up for Aetherling and trying to chain through them I wasn't actually getting much done with this card. The three mana sorcery speed of it made this spell feel very clunky and slow to me combined with low rez. In the end I just didn't like the feel of this spell at three mana sorcery speed. Entomb being cheaper and instant speed felt a lot better to me so I made room for it still but I just couldn't get past the fact that I felt like I wasn't using Buried Alive very well in the build I ended up with.
Training Grounds - I like the potential of this card but when I started really looking at my list I came to the conclusion that I was really looking at about 7 cards that I really liked this with and some of them I liked less or more than others. I think its a cool concept that "can do work" but I am concerned that it feels a little reliant on a lot of things assembling correctly.
Memnarch - I opted to exclude it in part because I don't like it much as a card not being caged. The cost to play and then steal in one go is very high. It seems good caged but it also feels kind of lame too. I go back and forth but ultimately I liked Dark Impostor a little better even though they might be comparable in part because of the cheaper cost to play the imposter it makes it feel more like I could play and use it in a turn possibly for the 6BBB than the 11UUU to play and use memnarch. When comparing both of them on the cage end of things I think its fairly easy to name Memnarch the winner but factoring in that I want a lot of these cards to be playable outside of just trying to move everything to grave I opted not to run it.
Pack Rat - I saw this card in a lot of other player's builds. I see the point I just didn't like it as a card to be honest. Discarding a sweet cage target and caging it for 3 mana..... maybe. For the time being I am going to pass on it because I don't like the card much outside of getting a cage on it.
Necropotence - I play this card all the time in black but given that I am not running that much lifegain and more of a control / response style of deck where I want to possibly be able to discard I just didn't feel it as much here.
Crypt Ghast - I kind of do want to get to big mana and I do like this bugger. He is just a little fragile and I am not really rezing creatures in my list (kind of but not much... its like chainer and scarab god maybe).
I must also strongly recommend buried alive and intuition, any setup for aetherling cages is so strong, and it sets up all the feel good engines that are really strong without being game ending infinite combos. I've found mairsil doesn't do what I want if I don't find aetherling to cage, because it's the key that starts the engine.
Some feedback from my experience, having run a control-ish, non-combo build myself... a few things I felt about certain cards that I had in as wel that you also have in or that you did not include that I would say to add. I wil add them below with comments on why to add or why to possibly cut. Take in mind this is from experience in my play group, which might be alot different from yours.. As we have had these kind of discussions on Edgar as wel..
Cards I would take out: Sneak Attack - I know it might feel like a great card, when you read it and all goes wel it might actualy be good, but in my experience 90% of the time it was a dead card and most any draw would have been better...
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker - way to slow and doesn't realy do much for your strategy, for that kind of mana even Ugin is a better option... you need sweepers/destruction to stay alive alot of times.. cause Mairsil is a voltron at it's heart/base... and having Ugin gets you miles more than Nicol Bolas..
Shard Phoenix - why is it in here? are you going to try and use it to nuke small dudes all the times or something?? Cause there are probably better/cheaper options for this.. and overall just a normal Damnation or something similar alot of times is more needed... Also if you thought you could use this cards ability on Mairsil, it doesn't work... He doesn't have his ability in the grave..
You also seem to have alot of pretty random cards that don't realy add to your overall strategy or keep you from dying.. Blatant Thievery to name something, or Boompile (the random chance of going off is pretty horrible) also things like Crucible of Worlds all sound good and fun, but once you see what you need to do alot of times (blow stuff up) you wil start to see why they are not great in the deck...I also had some of those in my list but cut them all over time... ^^
Missing cards imo:
No Burried Alive and also I don't see Intuition... those cards are made for this deck... You don't need reanimation, Mairsil can get the cards from your hand and/or graveyard... (also there are options for such cards to be included...) The Scarab God is awesome for this or Chainer as example.. There are many things that can work with those cards and I would definitely say to reconsider adding them... Also Burried alive can get your anger in the grave alongside a card you want on Mairsil...
Gamble - this is the deck where gamble is always a win...
A few cards I would suggest that where great for me: Tree of Perdition - put someone on 4 or less life and beat face with unblockable (1 turn or 2 turn kill - not a combo.. but a great combination.. ^^) Daretti, Scrap Savant - a bit on the theme of draw + discard and also can swap big artifacts in for small ones... Phantasmal Image - if you don't get your search/Aetherling going - it can give you another out to get a second Mairsil... also great with Intuition and 1 more clone and the next card I wil mention... Havengul Lich - I get that it might give you infinte combo's, but this card is realy great imo... might be better than scarab god even... ^^ Faithless Looting - draw + discard is great in this deck as I mentioned.. this is the cheapest draw option out there I think... ^^ Carefull Study - another looting, without the upside of flashback.. Empress Galina - a much overlooked card, it can steal planeswalkers... ^^ Dralnu, Lich Lord - get more out of your sorcery and instant cards... Has no drawback on Mairsil... ^^ Minamo, School at Water's Edge - a land that gets you untaps.. and makes blue mana... gimme 5 if I could... Mercurial Chemist - decent draw and option to throw stuff at people from your hand... (it's no arcanis, but pretty good I would say) Eater of the Dead - grave hate and untaps your mairsil if caged... Not entirely dead on it's own... Frantic Search - better card draw option than a few you have in there imo.. for this deck at least... Vandalblast - for the pesky artifacts (not a must include I would say) Hateflayer - had another card for this before... spikeshot elder - but the untap and less red cost made it overall better for me... ^^
Hope the suggestions and feedback are usefull.. not sure what to write more or how to write more.. but there is probably more to be added or said... Wil see what your own thoughts on it all are... goodluck with the deck, it's one of my fave decks in years and my fave voltron for sure...
My goal really is not a proactive voltron but a responsive control plan. Lots of my card choices were with the plan to play out into the late game.
Sneak Attack I went through my deck and came up with 18 targets I would be happy to Sneak Attack, 4 that I was so so on, and 2 that I would probably not use it for. I don't see an issue with it offhand.
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker My goal is versatile spot removal. Ugin is also an option but I feel like my sweepers are ok right now. I like that its kind of like Karn Liberated but it can also steal creatures. Going to 8 loyalty and destroying a noncreature also seems strong or thefting a creature while living. I dont see an issue with him.
Shard Phoenix - I dont intend to cage him but sometimes he just wins games on his own. This guy is SOOOO good vs token and utility creatures. He also can self recur. I have literally won games off of the back of this guy. I really don't intend to cage him I just plan to use him as is to control the board. I have literally had a Narset, Enlightened Master player scoop to me when I recurred and played it the second time. It doesnt kill my own strategy and it can single handed bully several strategies.
Blatant Thievery - this card is crazy in control. I built a lot of my abilities to be mana dump abilities so I often plan to just hijack big mana producing lands as well as problematic commanders. I cant even tell you how many concedes I have seen to this damn card. It swings the board back to you really hard and given you can hijack lands its really never dead. I had one of my friends do a T5 Blatant Thievery and honestly it essentially won him the game because it was such a huge tempo swing his direction. Some players never recovered from the loss of that land.
Boompile - I have played this card in a lot of mono blue and mono black strategies. It has been completely bonkers for me almost every time. I want to be able to sweep the noncreatures and that is why its here. I like All is Dust and Ugin but they leave artifacts behind. The point of including this card is being able to reset the board. I considered Nevinyrral's Disk as well but honestly its so much weaker outside of caging it so I would much rather have 50% chance for a stronger / faster Nevinyrral's Disk, 25% chance for it to be the same and 25% that its worse. Its also hard to play arround where as Nevinyrral's Disk your opponents know more precisely what is happening and how to remove it the random elements of Boompile have worked out to be superior for me almost every time.
Crucible of Worlds - I run 9 fetchlands as well as filter cards. I can use this as essentially friendly card draw and guarentee land drops with it. I don't see what you don't like about it. I am already deep into fetches so that alone gives me guarenteed land drops which is what I want from it.
Burried Alive / Intuition I considered it but I am not running much for rez and in the end I cut them. I considered possibly a Balthor the Defiled plan where this sort of stuff would be decent but in the end I went for a little more of a classic control than a voltron or mass reanimator plan. Both cards are 3 mana do nothing style of cards and I can tell you, I cant come up with a 3 cage targetable cards that I would target with Intution that I really want any of the three to hand so I guess I maybe could run Intuition as an instant speed Buried Alive but I felt that both were sort of lacking since I planned on a more control strategy rather than doing it voltron. I don't even really have any particular wincon in mind as to how I win but lots of these effects on the commander could close the game out.
Gamble - maybe. It comes back to me not running as much for dedicated make my commander better as my plan.
Tree of Perdition - I refuse to play these effects. It would be good but I refuse to do it so pass.
Daretti, Scrap Savant - I considered him but honestly I would go with Dack Fayden over him. I had both in the list of possibles and I ended up cutting both of them. Discard and then draw is worse than draw and then discard and in the end I didnt really see myself protecting planeswalkers for the most part so I felt that a lot of the walkers I was considering from the standpoint of using them once and then they die. I also didnt really see myself using the artifact recursion part of Daretti so I dropped him and was looking to run Dack Fayden over him and later I cut Dack Fayden as well.
Phantasmal Image again, I am playing a responsive control strategy and not a voltron. I don't need another way to copy and cage something.
Havengul Lich - why would you run this over scarab god? You still have to cast the creature and thus be able to provide the mana to cast (including the right colors) not to mention you have to do it at sorcery speed. I considered it but it felt drastically worse than The Scarab God who can serve as grave hate for opponents and function at instant speed.
Faithless Looting / Frantic Search / Careful Study I had it in the list as well as several other filter cards like Wild Guess and others. In the end I opted to cut them as I was going for more of a control strategy so I was looking more for cards that preserve at least the same card advantage in hand or draw additional cards. These are card disadvantage in that they cost hand size (your overall hand size ends up -1). I considered them but ultimately I don't care if I cast my commander before turn 8 as I am planning to play a responsive control game instead of a proactive game where I would feel the need to get set up faster to the point that I need to push for these.
Empress Galina - I considered it. Ultimately I don't really like the idea of casting her so it was mostly a question of if I cage it. Maybe...
Dralnu, Lich Lord - I wouldn't cast him so its back to like.... yea I could cage him. I will think about it a little more but ultimately a lot of my spells feel like they are just kind of filtering for me. Its ok I guess.
Minamo, School at Water's Edge - I am hard pressed for spots in my landbase. I would also love to make room for Thespian's Stage and possibly a few more Strip Mine effects. There is also the colorless haste enabler that could be considered so ultimately I just don't have space. I don't think I care enough about the utility it gives.
Mercurial Chemister its ok. I was trying to avoid getting too many tap to do thing abilities for my commander as they all have an opportunity cost. I don't have much of that stuff in the list as it stands due to that. But you really don't want to end up with a ton of tap abilities because they require you to get past summoning sickness and often rely on having untap effects as well to be decent. I like that it offers draw and removal options in one so maybe. I did cut it somewhat early on while I was trying to cull a bunch of tap ability cards though. I might consider bringing it back in.
Eater of the Dead - interesting, I didn't actually notice that creature. I could possibly see myself running that instead of like Nihil Spellbomb because that is a really nice ability. I guess the issue I have there is that Whir of Invention gives me a little more access to my grave hate as well. I will have to give it some thought.
Vandalblast - possibly. Its a good card and I do have the filter cards to throw it if its not relivant. Its always a question of what to cut for things though and it doesnt actually have any direct synergy with anything. I did opt to run Fiery Confluence in here in part because it can function for artifact removal but I also like having the option to small damage sweep for tokens and utility commanders.
Hateflayer - Its ok. I would probably run Spikeshot Goblin over it myself because I dont run all that much effects that I tap for. I can see reason to run the flayer but I am not really on a voltron plan and I really dont have that many tap to activate abilities in my list. (I count 2)
I think a big part in some of our differences is that I am not trying to play a proactive voltron gameplan. I intend to play more responsively and play more towards mana sink plays later. I did kind of hate on tap abilities somewhat hard so its possible I need to circle back and consider a few more than what I have. I did try to put a lot of synergy into what interacts with my commander but ultimately I am still trying not to bank on cards being caged by my commander for them to be good. I want to still be casting some of these creatures out. This is all still very hypothetical as I have not tested any of this.
EDIT: It took me too long to respond so lets add responses in lol.
I must also strongly recommend buried alive and intuition, any setup for aetherling cages is so strong, and it sets up all the feel good engines that are really strong without being game ending infinite combos. I've found mairsil doesn't do what I want if I don't find aetherling to cage, because it's the key that starts the engine.
keranos, god of storms - maybe. I like the control element and draw is fine. I just liked it from the perspective of being robust. stinkweed imp - why would you not like stinky? Its so strong vs flyers and the delve recovery is really crazy useful for a deck with some grave reliance. batterskull - 100% I plan to equip it to Marsil and gain some life plus be able to attack with vigilance. There is a real concern of what do you do if people keep chip damaging you as a control deck so I needed some lifegain. shard phoenix - explained above. I dont intend to cage it, its just good on its own.
buried alive / intuition - pass, I am playing a responsive control. I might consider intuition because its an instant but for now no I am not running Buried Alive. Razaketh, the Foulblooded - I didnt really like this from the standpoint of needing other creatures to sac. I am not a token / ETB deck so it felt a little off. mystic remora - its been hit and miss for me. Kokusho, the evening star - its ok, I did consider it but ultimately I felt it didnt fit my build. I think its alright with Chainer / Scarab God but I don't really have much for sac outlets or recursion which is why ultimately I didn't think it fit my build that well.
Oh yeah totally forgot Razaketh, the foulblooded I don't own a copy but that card is definitely great... I do think with Kokusho it might be considered a combo though...
I get the batterskull inclusion though, it can bounce to hand and make Mairsil big + creating a token equiped with it when comes into play, overall just a great card on its own... Also gaining life might be helpfull.. I had a card for lifelink in my list also.. (though rarely used/searched/drew it..)
But yeah Keranos does feel out of place imo also, totally missed that one...(was skimping over what I thought where odd cards and bad cards I tried myself.. xD)
Razaketh, the Foulblooded I dont actually care for here as I said above. I just dont think it really fits in this style of deck as well as it does a token / etb / death based deck. Most of our creatures are value over time so I really would not want to cast one of them to turn it into an edict because the amount of mana I pay as well as the value I get back out of it seems poor.
Batterskull is something I intend to use to gain health back to prevent dying to chip damage. I have seen it be an issue for me several times if I get low as a control deck I have to have a way to gain life back or once I am low I will just slowly die off because I cant claw back in. Being my gameplan is sort of to get to big mana I like the idea of being able to push it arround once I have big mana so no I dont actually intend to cage this one. It can be a decent threat / defense on its own and I like the idea of an 8/8 vigilant lifelink commander as well if it ever comes to that.
Interested to hear some feedback as to how this plays out. I've looked at Mairsil as probably the most interesting thing to come out of the Arcane Wizardry precon, and can see him being lots of fun. Let me know if you have any feedback after playtesting.
Okay, I get your strategy is alot different, so guess the suggestions where naught for what you where trying to do with the deck...
I don't think it's the best strategy to go with Mairsil, but that is my opinion... if going more control Kess, Dissident mage might actualy be the overall better card.. cause it can generate more advantage over time, outside of the voltron style strategy... ^^
But yeah, opinions differ, which is what makes magic fun, people can run the same commander and have a way different take on it..
Maybe my way of playing the deck is to much all in.. but I like it like that.. mostly I base my strategy around the commander and don't tend to just add good cards.. same reason why I don't play Blatant thievery or other such cards in many of my decks... they are good cards, but for me they don't feel like they add to the deck strategy...
Mostly not gonne give feedback on the card opinions, cause I feel most is dependant on difference of strategy here.. I wil add a few things below here for the cards I feel might be good to give feedback/response on..
Havengul Lich is in a way better cause he gets the activated abilities of the cards as wel.. which is something you might have overlooked... Also my issue with The Scarab God is that he exiles the cards... might be good as anti-strategy (grave hate), but I don't like his exile part of the ability...
Actualy reading about Shard Phoenix, it might be better than I gave it credit... Might consider adding it, if something like goblins or such gives me issues.. (which it actually hasn't... Nev Disk + Aetherling locks out most creature strategies quite easily..)
Forgot about Dack Fayden, don't own a copy or I would have added it instead of Daretti I guess...
Its all cool. I dont expect everyone to build the same way I am building. When I looked at Mairsil, the Pretender the things I saw were:
Grixis - the colors tend to be more control oriented.
4/4 for 1URB. Thats solid stats for Grixis for the mana.
Lack of evasion. This to me pushes it a little more towards control.
Commander gets stronger as the game goes on. This to me also pointed towards control.
Of everything about the commander the stats for the mana could push it towards a more aggressive direction but the colors of Mairsil not to mention the fact that it gets stronger as the game goes on all pointed to control to me. When I thought of my commander being a Morphling potentially with the ability to inherit more abilities I got sort of excited about that. Everything I was seeing pointed me to trying to play a prolonged game and stall to make my commander better and get more mana sink abilities on my commander as well as land to input into said mana abilities.
Kess, Dissident Mage - my issues with Kess are numerous. I think she does look incredibly powerful but she is also a commander who needs to stick to the board and everyone else should be screaming to remove her. I did play with the concept of a build for her but in the end I just didn't really like how the list looked. Its a very different style of commander as Kess is going to push towards a spellslinger / spells matter build where as Mairsil is more of a creatures and artifacts matters style of build. I also really like that removing Mairsil might feel counter intuitive for my opponents in that then I can cage again and become stronger where as with Kess your goal is to kill / steal their commander every time it comes out to deprive their ability to play I felt like it was a difference in percieved threat as well as how you react to Mairsil which I found appealing.
I do feel that Mairsil has really good endgame as the commander by themselves where as Kess is going to be reliant on graveyard as well as what they draw so to me I like the fact that with Mairsil you are kind of always building towards your endgame with just general interactions with your commander. That to me is really cool as there are a lot of great late game activated abilities that prove to be very strong.
I really have not played with this at all so all of what I am coming in here with might all be wrong but these are just observations I have made given the commander and the colors we are in. I probably am too light when it comes to tap activated abilities in part because they have this nasty tenancy to clash with each other kind of hard or rely on picking up a bunch of untap enablers.
Generic Control Effects - Really, my goal is to stall the game out so yes some of my mechanics are a little generalistic but that is in part because my commander keeps getting better the longer I can draw the game out. I would rather even clear with Oblivion Stone several times and make this a question of who still has cards in hand and things to play because Marsil keeps picking up more value over time. Some of it really is kind of a generalist plan but the goal is to not die and when possible reset my opponents as many times as I can.
Caging Cards vs How good are they on their own - I asked myself how reasonable it was to run cards with really the only intention being to cage them vs cards I would be willing to cast out. In the end I felt that I wanted to emphasize cards that were on their own merit worth running. I will admit though until after I posted my list I did not realize Marsil could cage cards in my hand and thought I had to rotate them to my grave to pick them up. Spikeshot Elder for example is a card with really bad quality in play but if you were to cage it for Marsil shooting for 4 damage for 3 mana seems not half bad. I cut it from my list somewhat recently in part because I thought that I had to discard it / kill it to cage it. Its possible that I re-evaluate some cards because I didn't realize that I could cage from hand. At the same time though I still prefer for a card to be good on its own merit. I still really want to combine The Scarab God with Sneak Attack because I think that is literally hilarious when you pay 1 mana to flash him in for chump blocking / attacking use his ability and then he self cycles back to hand lol.
I really don't have all the answers. I am going into this off of some notions that this "could work" but I still have not played with this at all IRL. Lots of this was me just thinking up concepts that seem like they could work and seeing how it plays out IRL. Please feel free to give suggestions. I might be harsh in evaluations but of the cards you mentioned above still about half of them I could see working I am sometimes just kind of slow to move on cards. Being that I have not played with this yet I don't have a very good feel of things yet.
Interested to hear some feedback as to how this plays out. I've looked at Mairsil as probably the most interesting thing to come out of the Arcane Wizardry precon, and can see him being lots of fun. Let me know if you have any feedback after playtesting.
Will do, I have most of the list together already and I am putting in an order for some cards right now. I should have the deck all together by next week's games assuming weather holds enough for me to travel and try it out.
I really like your stated objectives for the deck. I’ve been playing with a similar non-combo Marisil idea for a while, so I’ll share my thoughts.
First off, I’m totally in the same spot with needing life-gain to withstand chip-damage. Our group of late has been heavy on Purphoros, God of the Forge, sometimes showing up in 2-3 decks at the table at a time. Also, I am following you on not using Quicksilver elemental to not get boring. My build has also made a point of excluding Nev’s disk, also so it doesn’t just become a deck that assembles a combo in the form of a board lock.
What I’ve found through building is that you’ll get to a point where Marisil really wants to cage a very narrow set of 2-4 creatures or so, then doesn’t really need to cage any more than that for the deck to do its thing. Usually this will involve Aetherling, or failing that some kind of card that allows for repeated caging. Then maybe something for protection, and last will be the thing that enables the deck’s function. Could be Tree of Perdition, Memnarch, Chainer, Dementia Master, so on. I’ve found that the rest of the deck tends to be focused on building around that piece, rather than looking for more things that might be cool to have caged. Like you said, if you put so many things into the deck because they are good while caged, you end up with a Voltron sort of win condition.
My build went in the direction of Chainer. So, I ended up using Koko, Gary, Noxious Gearhulk, so on for the Chainer setup, then Razaketh and Soldevi Adnate for the sacrifice outlet. I put in Buried Alive, Intuition and other tutors.to get as many targets as possible, then Archaeomancer and similar, because why not with Chainer. I also tried out a set of cards like Illusionist's Stratagem for caging and retrieving with those, then included Dualcaster Mage for the synergy. It was working to my liking, but far from the 12-15 cage targets that I started with.
The latest iteration of mine actually has Kess, Dissident Mage as the general, accessing Mairsil with the tutors. I’m pretty sure it was an improvement in overall performance, just even further along the lines of samey-ness when you are a Blue deck tutoring the same Intuition pile every game. Well, those are the tradeoffs.
For those interested, I did suit this deck up and played a game last night. I ended up on curve casting my commander caging Arcanis the Omnipotent. The game was a little odd though in that there was a lot of hug that happened soon after (there was a dedicated hug deck).
Anyways, I played the game and I copied Kozilek second. I was about to copy Geth as well when I got more or less chip damaged to death. I knew it was going to be a problem and it really was. I ended up going from low 20s to 2 life in one turn and then I was more or less doomed. I drew a LOT more hate than I had really anticipated with Mairsil as I got spot removed twice on my commander and ate a Swords to Plowshares on Chainer (who was wearing darksteel plate) and a counterflux through my countermagic while trying to push Olivia.
Going forward, I am still kind of weighing the concept of moving to a group of a few dedicated targets rather than trying to fill the deck up with fun toys. One concept I keep coming back to is the idea of if Balthor the Defiled was my primary target and the concept of building a 3 color Balthor deck essentially. I could with that concept run things like Purphoros, God of the Forge which would be really interesting not to mention some of the sick blue like say Tunnel Vision for Balthor the Defiled or Traumatize myself lol. The ability to run and abuse things like Kokusho, the Evening Star and Gray Merchant of Asphodel sounds like it might pan out better for me. I am uncertain if I will make a list for this concept or not but while I enjoyed the concepts here I think ultimately its not going to work out for me as my current list here is. I am going back to the drawing board for now and its possible I make psudo Balthor the Defiled and its possible I let this one drop. I guess we will see..
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 guess a few things on my list:
1 Mairsil, the Pretender
CREATURES (26)
1 Baleful Strix
1 Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
1 Burnished Hart
1 Crypt Rats
1 Dark Impostor
1 Kefnet the Mindful
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Anger
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
1 Chainer, Dementia Master
1 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Morphling
1 Shard Phoenix
1 The Scarab God
1 Torchling
1 Aetherling
1 Arcanis the Omnipotent
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
1 Scourge of Kher Ridges
1 Sphinx of Uthuun
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
ARTIFACT (13)
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Dowsing Dagger
1 Sword of the Animist
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Darksteel Plate
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Staff of Domination
1 Boompile
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Batterskull
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Rhystic Study
1 Sneak Attack
INSTANT (13)
1 Entomb
1 Stubborn Denial
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Izzet Charm
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Mana Drain
1 Pull from Tomorrow
1 Chaos Warp
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Whir of Invention
1 Fact or Fiction
SORCERY (6)
1 Cathartic Reunion
1 Chart a Course
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Compulsive Research
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Blatant Thievery
PLANESWALKER (1)
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
LAND (38)
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Canyon Slough
1 Command Tower
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Fetid Pools
1 Flamekin Village
1 Flooded Strand
1 High Market
2 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Steam Vents
1 Strip Mine
1 Sunken Hollow
2 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volcanic Island
1 Watery Grave
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Winding Canyons
Some cards that I have considered and are maybe close in consideration but I did not include:
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[Modern] Allies
The cards I'd say are most lackluster in the list:
keranos, god of storms
stinkweed imp
batterskull
shard phoenix
A list of some cards I think would be much better than these:
buried alive
intuition
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
mystic remora
Kokusho, the evening star
My goal really is not a proactive voltron but a responsive control plan. Lots of my card choices were with the plan to play out into the late game.
I think a big part in some of our differences is that I am not trying to play a proactive voltron gameplan. I intend to play more responsively and play more towards mana sink plays later. I did kind of hate on tap abilities somewhat hard so its possible I need to circle back and consider a few more than what I have. I did try to put a lot of synergy into what interacts with my commander but ultimately I am still trying not to bank on cards being caged by my commander for them to be good. I want to still be casting some of these creatures out. This is all still very hypothetical as I have not tested any of this.
EDIT: It took me too long to respond so lets add responses in lol.
keranos, god of storms - maybe. I like the control element and draw is fine. I just liked it from the perspective of being robust.
stinkweed imp - why would you not like stinky? Its so strong vs flyers and the delve recovery is really crazy useful for a deck with some grave reliance.
batterskull - 100% I plan to equip it to Marsil and gain some life plus be able to attack with vigilance. There is a real concern of what do you do if people keep chip damaging you as a control deck so I needed some lifegain.
shard phoenix - explained above. I dont intend to cage it, its just good on its own.
buried alive / intuition - pass, I am playing a responsive control. I might consider intuition because its an instant but for now no I am not running Buried Alive.
Razaketh, the Foulblooded - I didnt really like this from the standpoint of needing other creatures to sac. I am not a token / ETB deck so it felt a little off.
mystic remora - its been hit and miss for me.
Kokusho, the evening star - its ok, I did consider it but ultimately I felt it didnt fit my build. I think its alright with Chainer / Scarab God but I don't really have much for sac outlets or recursion which is why ultimately I didn't think it fit my build that well.
Razaketh, the Foulblooded I dont actually care for here as I said above. I just dont think it really fits in this style of deck as well as it does a token / etb / death based deck. Most of our creatures are value over time so I really would not want to cast one of them to turn it into an edict because the amount of mana I pay as well as the value I get back out of it seems poor.
Batterskull is something I intend to use to gain health back to prevent dying to chip damage. I have seen it be an issue for me several times if I get low as a control deck I have to have a way to gain life back or once I am low I will just slowly die off because I cant claw back in. Being my gameplan is sort of to get to big mana I like the idea of being able to push it arround once I have big mana so no I dont actually intend to cage this one. It can be a decent threat / defense on its own and I like the idea of an 8/8 vigilant lifelink commander as well if it ever comes to that.
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Its all cool. I dont expect everyone to build the same way I am building. When I looked at Mairsil, the Pretender the things I saw were:
Of everything about the commander the stats for the mana could push it towards a more aggressive direction but the colors of Mairsil not to mention the fact that it gets stronger as the game goes on all pointed to control to me. When I thought of my commander being a Morphling potentially with the ability to inherit more abilities I got sort of excited about that. Everything I was seeing pointed me to trying to play a prolonged game and stall to make my commander better and get more mana sink abilities on my commander as well as land to input into said mana abilities.
Kess, Dissident Mage - my issues with Kess are numerous. I think she does look incredibly powerful but she is also a commander who needs to stick to the board and everyone else should be screaming to remove her. I did play with the concept of a build for her but in the end I just didn't really like how the list looked. Its a very different style of commander as Kess is going to push towards a spellslinger / spells matter build where as Mairsil is more of a creatures and artifacts matters style of build. I also really like that removing Mairsil might feel counter intuitive for my opponents in that then I can cage again and become stronger where as with Kess your goal is to kill / steal their commander every time it comes out to deprive their ability to play I felt like it was a difference in percieved threat as well as how you react to Mairsil which I found appealing.
I do feel that Mairsil has really good endgame as the commander by themselves where as Kess is going to be reliant on graveyard as well as what they draw so to me I like the fact that with Mairsil you are kind of always building towards your endgame with just general interactions with your commander. That to me is really cool as there are a lot of great late game activated abilities that prove to be very strong.
I really have not played with this at all so all of what I am coming in here with might all be wrong but these are just observations I have made given the commander and the colors we are in. I probably am too light when it comes to tap activated abilities in part because they have this nasty tenancy to clash with each other kind of hard or rely on picking up a bunch of untap enablers.
Generic Control Effects - Really, my goal is to stall the game out so yes some of my mechanics are a little generalistic but that is in part because my commander keeps getting better the longer I can draw the game out. I would rather even clear with Oblivion Stone several times and make this a question of who still has cards in hand and things to play because Marsil keeps picking up more value over time. Some of it really is kind of a generalist plan but the goal is to not die and when possible reset my opponents as many times as I can.
Caging Cards vs How good are they on their own - I asked myself how reasonable it was to run cards with really the only intention being to cage them vs cards I would be willing to cast out. In the end I felt that I wanted to emphasize cards that were on their own merit worth running. I will admit though until after I posted my list I did not realize Marsil could cage cards in my hand and thought I had to rotate them to my grave to pick them up. Spikeshot Elder for example is a card with really bad quality in play but if you were to cage it for Marsil shooting for 4 damage for 3 mana seems not half bad. I cut it from my list somewhat recently in part because I thought that I had to discard it / kill it to cage it. Its possible that I re-evaluate some cards because I didn't realize that I could cage from hand. At the same time though I still prefer for a card to be good on its own merit. I still really want to combine The Scarab God with Sneak Attack because I think that is literally hilarious when you pay 1 mana to flash him in for chump blocking / attacking use his ability and then he self cycles back to hand lol.
I really don't have all the answers. I am going into this off of some notions that this "could work" but I still have not played with this at all IRL. Lots of this was me just thinking up concepts that seem like they could work and seeing how it plays out IRL. Please feel free to give suggestions. I might be harsh in evaluations but of the cards you mentioned above still about half of them I could see working I am sometimes just kind of slow to move on cards. Being that I have not played with this yet I don't have a very good feel of things yet.
Will do, I have most of the list together already and I am putting in an order for some cards right now. I should have the deck all together by next week's games assuming weather holds enough for me to travel and try it out.
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First off, I’m totally in the same spot with needing life-gain to withstand chip-damage. Our group of late has been heavy on Purphoros, God of the Forge, sometimes showing up in 2-3 decks at the table at a time. Also, I am following you on not using Quicksilver elemental to not get boring. My build has also made a point of excluding Nev’s disk, also so it doesn’t just become a deck that assembles a combo in the form of a board lock.
What I’ve found through building is that you’ll get to a point where Marisil really wants to cage a very narrow set of 2-4 creatures or so, then doesn’t really need to cage any more than that for the deck to do its thing. Usually this will involve Aetherling, or failing that some kind of card that allows for repeated caging. Then maybe something for protection, and last will be the thing that enables the deck’s function. Could be Tree of Perdition, Memnarch, Chainer, Dementia Master, so on. I’ve found that the rest of the deck tends to be focused on building around that piece, rather than looking for more things that might be cool to have caged. Like you said, if you put so many things into the deck because they are good while caged, you end up with a Voltron sort of win condition.
My build went in the direction of Chainer. So, I ended up using Koko, Gary, Noxious Gearhulk, so on for the Chainer setup, then Razaketh and Soldevi Adnate for the sacrifice outlet. I put in Buried Alive, Intuition and other tutors.to get as many targets as possible, then Archaeomancer and similar, because why not with Chainer. I also tried out a set of cards like Illusionist's Stratagem for caging and retrieving with those, then included Dualcaster Mage for the synergy. It was working to my liking, but far from the 12-15 cage targets that I started with.
The latest iteration of mine actually has Kess, Dissident Mage as the general, accessing Mairsil with the tutors. I’m pretty sure it was an improvement in overall performance, just even further along the lines of samey-ness when you are a Blue deck tutoring the same Intuition pile every game. Well, those are the tradeoffs.
Happy brewing!
Anyways, I played the game and I copied Kozilek second. I was about to copy Geth as well when I got more or less chip damaged to death. I knew it was going to be a problem and it really was. I ended up going from low 20s to 2 life in one turn and then I was more or less doomed. I drew a LOT more hate than I had really anticipated with Mairsil as I got spot removed twice on my commander and ate a Swords to Plowshares on Chainer (who was wearing darksteel plate) and a counterflux through my countermagic while trying to push Olivia.
Going forward, I am still kind of weighing the concept of moving to a group of a few dedicated targets rather than trying to fill the deck up with fun toys. One concept I keep coming back to is the idea of if Balthor the Defiled was my primary target and the concept of building a 3 color Balthor deck essentially. I could with that concept run things like Purphoros, God of the Forge which would be really interesting not to mention some of the sick blue like say Tunnel Vision for Balthor the Defiled or Traumatize myself lol. The ability to run and abuse things like Kokusho, the Evening Star and Gray Merchant of Asphodel sounds like it might pan out better for me. I am uncertain if I will make a list for this concept or not but while I enjoyed the concepts here I think ultimately its not going to work out for me as my current list here is. I am going back to the drawing board for now and its possible I make psudo Balthor the Defiled and its possible I let this one drop. I guess we will see..
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