My question is this: I've been looking at Shadowborn decklists and most of them run around 30 of them. They rely pretty heavily on Shadowborn Apostle for the win condition, and usually don't run many other creatures aside from a small handfull of demons. I have not seen anything like what I am looking at doing with mine. Has anyone made a deck similar to this? Does anyone have any advice for a deck like this? Other cards that would fit the theme that would combo with Tesya or some of the other clerics? I'm pretty positive I'm going to be going with Teysa as my general. I've been wanting to build a deck around her for a while.
There are many excellent clerics. I don't necessarily know that you need shadowborn apostles to make the deck good. In fact, they seem like wasted slots. However, if you're going to build cleric tribal then without a doubt ayli makes the better general. That said, I don't know what people are using to combo, but teysa makes a nasty combo deck enough so that it's often hated out quickly.
I had a Karador Shadowborn Apostle deck a while back that had around 20-ish or 25-ish Apostles in it. Similar idea to you, it ran a few choice Cleric tribal cards like battletide alchemist, which makes a pretty good pillowfort card when you can use Karador to re-cast it whenever it dies to a non-repeatable effect. It also ran a bunch of cards that love multiples like pack hunt.
14 seems a little light unless you have some drastic effects to pull out the six you need. If you don't get six of them out they're incredibly lackluster 1/1s for 1 mana.
I have a Shadowborn deck using Karador as the commander. I've toyed with different amounts of Apostles and 30 is the bare minimum I've been able to go with and feel confident in drawing as many as I needed.
Recently I've been debating switching it to a jund deck with Kresh as the commander to allow access to some of the red demons that singlehandedly can change the game.
I'll second Battletide Alchemist as an amazing card in a Cleric deck. The ability to prevent damage to any player really gives you an opportunity to play some major politics. My Ayli deck is heavy on the pillowfort (I even run Koskun Falls) and the Alchemist has always been the card I most hope to draw.
I feel like for Shadowborns it's best to have 25+ or 0. I've been playing my Athreos Shadowborn Apostle deck for a good while and I run 32. The thing you have to realize is in any game, Apostle is a really bad card until you have 6. So if you ran 14 and didn't have easy ways to draw/tutor them, you'll draw 2 or 3 in an average game and you'll play them as 1/1 vanilla Cleric for B. If your cleric synergies are plentiful enough that you can make that worth a card in your hand, then running 14 would be fine. But I'd advise if you want to do a shadowborn deck, you have to commit to the theme and run a lot of them or it won't work out too well. But honestly making a Teysa tribal Clerics deck without Shadowborns should still have more than enough cards for it to work. I just think running fewer than 20 or so Shadowborns in any deck will generally turn into wasted slots.
If you end up going Jund, I recommend adding in Lyzolda, the Blood Witch. She can give draw value to the Shadowborn when you don't have the critical mass of them (6). Plus, she's a cleric, too!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I've got 14 Shadowborn Apostles currently and, while I could always trade up for more, I kind of want to try relying less on them for a win condition and make it more of a cleric / demon deck with other cleric cards like Edgewalker, High Priest of Penance, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Skirsdag High Priest, Mother of Runes, Suture Priest, Soul's Attendant, Soul Warden, Grand Abolisher, Disciple of Griselbrand, Soltari Visionary, etc. I've got most of the good demons so I can toss some of those in as well to make kind of a cultist/cleric deck (good & evil theme maybe? ...toss in some Angels for the good part?).
My question is this: I've been looking at Shadowborn decklists and most of them run around 30 of them. They rely pretty heavily on Shadowborn Apostle for the win condition, and usually don't run many other creatures aside from a small handfull of demons. I have not seen anything like what I am looking at doing with mine. Has anyone made a deck similar to this? Does anyone have any advice for a deck like this? Other cards that would fit the theme that would combo with Tesya or some of the other clerics? I'm pretty positive I'm going to be going with Teysa as my general. I've been wanting to build a deck around her for a while.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
14 seems a little light unless you have some drastic effects to pull out the six you need. If you don't get six of them out they're incredibly lackluster 1/1s for 1 mana.
Recently I've been debating switching it to a jund deck with Kresh as the commander to allow access to some of the red demons that singlehandedly can change the game.
Building: Varina
Karador might be a fun choice...I forgot about him. I like the idea of three colors too. Maybe I will see what I can put together with him.
Precisely the card that really enables the strategy to be effective. That combined with Edgewalker & Karador are simply nasty.
Only reason I'm debating switching from Karador to Kresh is access to some of the RB demons, either way G is necessity for Bloodbond.
Building: Varina