Akroma, Angel of Fury is one of my all-time absolute favorite Legendary Creatures,
and a 1v1 deck built around her is an absolute blast to play (for the pilot, at least :)). She runs a
VERY fast clock, and if your opponent doesn't know what's coming, he'll be dead before he can
adjust his playstyle to accomodate for this deck's approach. And, even against friends who've
played it hundreds of times, it is still nearly untouchable. Read on for
more information!!
BACKGROUND
First, if you haven't already seen mutedequilibrium's Primer, be sure to take a glance over there first. His deck is tuned for a slightly less aggro-oriented (though still very quick) playstyle, and noticeably is built to handle Gaddock Teeg in the meta. Despite his list, I feel that he and I still approach the game quite differently, and as such decided to contribute my own primer.
The second thing you must be aware of is that this IS a land destruction deck. While most of my friends are perfectly fine with that (they understand it is built to be highly competitive), there will definitely be those who consider it to be 100% un-fun to play against. It is not meant for casual games, and it can be incredibly frustrating to play against. This is meant for competitive tournaments and not the kitchen table, but if your friends are keen to the flavor of 1v1 EDH, by all means - go for it!
I originally saw the idea for an Akroma Land-Destruction EDH deck from frankwu9's decklist. I really liked the basic idea he had come up with, but didn't like a lot of his card choices. I found a lot of his spells really hurt tempo or simply didn't suppress the opponent viciously enough..... although it's a very good deck, it was an early incarnation, and there are better options out there now. However, original credit does go to him, who, as far as I know, was one of the first to originate the deck theme.
WHY IS THIS POWERFUL?
First of all, Akroma is an absolute house as a general. She is one of the most powerful standalone Legendary Creatures in Magic, has protection from what are arguably the two most efficient "deal-with-that" colors in the game, can't be countered, Flies, Tramples, and breathes fire. Not to mention, she's in a deck which will reliably cast her Turn 5 / 6 and start beating face. Once she's down your opponent is on a ridiculously fast clock, and if they find no solution in two (sometimes three) turns, the game is over.
Pair this with a hard-edged, efficient board strategy centered around locking your opponents out from playing ANYTHING, and you have a ringer of a deck. This deck is a finely-tuned resource denial engine and preys upon the fact that many of the competitive alternatives out there won't see this coming (and don't have answers if they do). For example - the vast majority of EDH players will be more than happy to take a three-land opening hand, thinking they'll curve nicely into their key spells. One round of land disruption is often enough to stop that, and this is why the early land-trading (as discussed later) is hugely helpful - you want your opponent locked down as quickly as possible, and keeping them out of their colors is almost an auto-win.
BANLIST:
This deck was not created with any particular banlist in mind. The intention here is that I have presented the deck in its prime, and each player is free to edit it as needed for their restrictions. HOWEVER, it should be noted that this deck benefits greatly from the French 1v1 banlist. The even loss of acceleration like Sol Ring, Mishra's Workshop, and Mana Crypt is highly beneficial to you - they deny opposing decks of two of the most effective "outs" against land destruction (whereas they are only accelerants in this deck). Further bannings such as Crucible of Worlds, Sensei's Divining Top, Necropotence, Imperial Seal, and Vampiric Tutor mean the opponent loses many of the best answers to a sticky situation. The loss of Mind Twist tilts the balance further in our favor, as we don't have as great a risk of losing our entire hand to a black deck with hard acceleration. Not having Strip Mine hurts slightly, but it's by no means central to our strategy.
Cards in this deck which are commonly banned in 1v1 include:
Unfortunately I have not prepared a list of cards to swap in for these - my playgroup does not use the French banlist, so the cards never come out of my deck. However, if anyone has suggestions I am more than happy to entertain them!
I've built this deck from the ground up to be a very tempo-heavy deck, focusing on powering out the quickest possible win with Akroma. By turn 6-8, the game will either be over (you won), or you'll have lost. Don't expect long, drawn-out games, as the board advantage this deck generates relies heavily on keeping your opponent's land count LOW. That is, if he or she can start casting things (and isn't playing mono blue or white), you're probably in trouble.
As with the other Akroma decklists on MTGSalvation, this deck is heavy on land and artifact acceleration sources. However, this is why I have chosen to take a different approach from the others listed here. you can see, it runs 38 land and plenty of artifact acceleration sources. I've recognized that there's almost no chance an opponent will have the consistent land drops and / or mana ramping at his or her disposal (unless they're playing mono-green, but we'll get into that), and as a result, the deck is more than comfortable trading lands with your opponents. Take a look at the decklist and you'll see Raze, Scorched Earth, Tremble, Tectonic Break, and others.
Yes, you read that correctly. This deck's tempo leans towards 1-for-2'ing yourself - you're dumping both a card-in-hand and sacrificing (at least) one land in order to cripple an opponent. For most players, this seems completely counter-intuitive, as EDH is generally all about the card advantage. HOWEVER, this is one of the few times where such a strategy works. These cards are in the deck to disrupt your opponent's tempo AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. Conventional land destruction should reliably come by Turn 3 /4, but you still want to be nailing lands earlier than that whenever possible... by Turn 2, or even Turn 1, if you can. This alone will lock in 70+% of your wins.
Many of the best generals are in 2-3 colors, and as such you opponents will often be dropping their ETB-Tapped lands on Turn 1. Remember that these are the ones which tap for multiple colors, and much of the time it will be their only source of a certain color. As a result, when you're playing against Uril, Rafiq, Zur, or even many of the dual-colored generals, you're instantly cutting them off from their required mana sources. Not to mention, many few decks will not have countermagic support setup by turn 2 (for those that do, I'll discuss that later), so you're beginning your path of destruction there. To sum it up: you WANT to be killing lands ASAP, even if it means giving up some of your own.
Backing these up are the more conventional land-destruction cards (see "Playing the Deck" for more information), powerful sweepers, and one one of the most powerful generals in the game; you'll find yourself with a flexible, hard-hitting deck which most opponents won't have an answer to.
IN-DEPTH CARD CHOICE ANALYSIS:
GENERAL
Akroma, Angel of Fury - As mentioned above, she is a super-efficient general. For land destruction, I wanted to go mono-color, as we can't afford to stall out or fail to hit our colors. This left Green, Black, and Red. Green has good tempo options and Black has efficient land destruction, but it seemed as though Red had the most flexible spells, allowing me to kill artifacts and creatures when needed. Moreover, having access to powerful sweepers and global land destruction really helped. This left a few possible generals in the color, but this deck needed a no-nonsense hitter which would win games with no backup..... as the deck itself needed to be focused entirely upon tempo and land destruction, the general needed to support itself. Thus, Akroma, Angel of Fury was the obvious choice. First, she's a 6/6 Flying, Trampling angel with firebreathing. Even better, she can't be countered, so many of the most popular answers to generals are null and void. Finally, she has protection from two of the most relevant colors in EDH. She can't be stolen, Bant Charmed, Spin Into Myth'd, Swords to Plowshares'd, Path'd, stolen by conventional means, etc. Unfortunately she doesn't have haste, but you can't have everything, can you?
CREATURES
This deck is very creature light, as Akroma is the win-con. I cut the list down to those which I knew were absolute no-brainers, and it has seemed to work well.
Avalanche Riders - 4cmc land destruction and a body for chumping, if need be (Doran, Uril, etc.)
Goblin Settler - See Avalanche Riders, with no echo cost.
Iron Myr - 2cmc acceleration providing access to R
Magus of the Moon - Single-handedly shuts down a good number of decks out there, and often protects itself because your opponent may not have colors to deal with it.
INSTANTS
Fissure - Edging towards the more expensive (mana-wise) side, it's good land destruction and doubles as red creature removal, which you don't see very often. I don't mind playing this at 5cmc as there are so few spells at that cost.
Seething Song - I actually would prefer not to play this card - I would much rather find another 2cmc non-creature artifact accelerant.... seeing all of them are already in the decklist, this is the next best thing to hitting the bigger spells by turn 3.
Shattering Pulse - Artifacts are what will save an opponent, so you need solutions to keep them out of play. At 2cmc this is very efficient, but also reusable at no card-disadvantage (if need be).
Bend or Break - An unconventional choice that nonetheless allows you to destroy one or more lands. Not problematic for us, as this deck will often have many artifacts and only a couple lands (so trades are typically symmetric, which is good for us). Key to this is that WE choose which pile of the opponent's, so the bigger pile will always get nuked.
Ruination - At 4cmc, this is almost guaranteed to hit something and has the potential to single-handedly end the game. With the recent cut of non-basics in this deck, the potential for self-harm has also been reduced. Again, we're not concerned with losing a land or two, so long as our opponent does the same.
Implode / Incendiary Command / Lava Flow - At 5cmc these won't be landing as often, but because they are so few in number, I'm not worried about them ruining our consistency. There are simply no 4cmc cards that provide near the same versatility as these, so I've elected to keep them.
Wheel of Fortune - Red's best Draw-7, it's a shame there aren't more of these available (Wheel of Fate is too slow and unreliable to include). Asymmetric, as your opponent's new hand will be essentially unplayable.
Shattering Spree - Quite possibly the best artifact destruction in the game, and an answer when your opponent is also playing heavy acceleration. Plus, if you replicate multiple times, each copy must be countered separately.
ENCHANTMENTS
Blood Moon - Shouldn't need an explanation, can single-handedly devastate a multicolor deck.
Everflowing Chalice - A great addition, as it can be an early 2cmc accelerant or late-game Thran Dynamo.
Coalition Relic / Heart of Ramos - 3cmc artifact acceleration, the only ones left in the deck - I kept them here for lack of 2cmc replacements and their capability of producing RR on one turn.
Crystal Ball / Sensei's Divining Top - Absolutely stellar in this deck. We don't have many draw options, so instead, why not fix the ones we do? Keep the pressure on, and the land destruction coming. Crystal Ball is an absolute house, and the Top is as good as ever.
Extraplanar Lens / Gauntlet of Might / Gauntlet of Power - Huge acceleration, often the nail in the coffin. Helps not only power out Akroma, but also to pump her for the quick win. There's a possibility your opponent may benefit off of Gauntlet of Might + Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon, but 9/10 they're still out of colors and can't play something anyway. The acceleration these cards provide is absolutely insane.
Crucible of Worlds - Allows us to play all of the lands we traded or swept. Combos well with Strip Mine / Wasteland. Note that this deck actually plays well without it (in formats where it's banned), as loss of access to this card is a bigger blow to the opponent than to you.
Expedition Map - Helpful, typically finding Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop, or a plain-old Snow-Covered Mountain with a mana doubler in play. Considering dropping it, however, as I think I'd rather just have acceleration or more LD in the slot.... assuming we get viable versions of either in coming sets. It was largely here because of Boseju, but as I don't play it anymore, it's not as useful.
Ring of Gix - A recent addition to the deck, but one that I like very much. Without access to additional versatile land destruction spells, this works very nicely. Granted, it still consumes mana later on, but that's fine as it does its job well. Tap a land at upkeep, solve a problematic general, or keep your opponent off of artifact acceleration. Chosen over Icy Manipulator because it's at a totol cmc of 4, including activation (Icy Manipulator is at 5 for this, which means you can't usually hit it turn-three).
LANDS
Ancient Tomb - It's truly beyond me why any mono-colored EDH deck WOULDN'T run this. Stellar land.
Dust Bowl - Can singlehandedly lock down games, a true star and it can't be countered. No reason not to run it, especially because it's reusable.
Library of Alexandria - This is an extremely powerful card, but IT MUST BE USED PROPERLY. If you get it in your opening hand, ONLY use it turn one (you must be on the draw to do so). As tempting as drawing again on turn-two sounds, you NEED to drop acceleration or you will likely lose. On the play, don't even try to draw with it, it kills your tempo and means the opponent will reach critical mass to get themselves in the game. This land is SOLELY here to net you an extra card on-the-draw, or help you keep card advantage after a Wheel of Fortune.
Mishra's Workshop - A no-brainer with the artifact count in this deck. Speeds up an already quick clock.
Rishadan Port - Doesn't come into play tapped, and shuts down another land per turn when your destruction can't.
WANT TO TEST Chrome Mox - For a deck so obsessed with tempo, you'd think this would go in.... but so much of me thinks the card disadvantage would be too great. This is a true double-edged sword - a game-winner in some situations, but dead in others (if we can't afford to pitch). Thoughts of Ruin - This card genuinely scares me, but I'm not entirely sure why. It has SUCH high potential to wreck your opponent, and even when it's asymmetric out of our favor, that means that we're in an advantageous place anyway. I will be testing this card very intensely.... I feel like there is a sweet-spot in T4-T7 (or even T3 on the draw, if we have a great opening hand and can drop a few acceleration pieces) where it could singlehandedly draw a win. Winter Orb - It's just so. Damn. Good. And fits perfectly here. My meta does not see swarm decks so I will likely pull Rolling Earthquake for it.
NOTABLE EXCLUSIONS Valakut, the Molten Pinnace - You would think that in a deck sporting so many mountains, this would be an excellent choice. However, it's simply sub-par. Rarely will it ever come online, and you'll often finding yourself trading lands anyway, so 95% of the time it's just a ETB-tapped mountain.... that doesn't provide RR off the three doublers in the deck. Ghost Quarter - I want to deny resources, not swap my opponent's land. A basic (color of his choice) is just as good as a nonbasic, so I don't want to give him that opportunity. Hall of the Bandit Lord - In testing, this card was simply a liability, mainly for the ETB clause. Even the life problem was fairly negligible, but the tempo loss is simply insurmountable. Fork - Often a dead draw, because it required an additional RR if I wanted it to do anything. The deck already taps out almost every turn, so no room for this. Rain of Rust - Simply too expensive. Rain of Salt - A very powerful card, and it was hard for me to cut it when I did. However, it's a detriment in an opening hand and a 4-cmc destruction spell is more useful. Braid of Fire - More often than not this just generated useless mana. Cut it a while back and haven't regretted it once. Destructive Force - Expensive, and often a little overkill. Hurts to pull this in an opening hand, and rarely is the 5 damage truly needed. Earthquake - With Rolling Earthquake, Devastation, Wildfire, and Burning of Xinye in the deck, Earthquake wasn't really needed. Duplicant / Combust / Lightning Bolt / Starstorm - In this build, removal just bogs us down. We either lock our opponent out, or devote everything towards winning with Akroma. There is no room for these cards - with more slots this archetype might be more consistent, but at only three, it's rare to both (a) draw one, and (b) have it be immediately useful. Darksteel Ingot / Foriysian Totem / Spectral Searchlight / Gilded Lotus - Simply too expensive. When I played these, my opponent was not disabled quickly enough and the game was lost. Boseiju, Who Shelters All - ETB KILLS this card, and we really don't need help against blue anyway. See "Playing the Deck" or "Matchups", below. Darksteel Citadel - I'd much rather just have a Mountain, especially since they have the potential to produce double mana. Forgotten Cave - Again, ETB is the killer here. Mouth of Ronom - Expensive, only narrowly effective, and doesn't provide colors. However, this may be a good addition in some metas. Mox Opal - We simply won't have three artifacts on the battlefield when the game is young enough that this would be helpful. Mishra's Helix - For this build.... too expensive, and win-more. In an opening hand it's useless and that's the last thing we can afford.
PLAYING THE DECK
This deck wants to be played hard and fast. It's a shame there aren't any great Hellbent cards out there in red, because you're playing hands out quite quickly. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however - you're dropping a lot of efficient spells, while your opponent is being locked out from playing.... anything!
Let's get this settled right away: the purpose of this deck is to drop acceleration T1 / T2, and be hitting lands by T3. If you're not, you're losing, especially with how competitive this format has become. Virtually all of the chaff has been cut away from this deck, and it is almost exclusively 1-2cmc accelerants and <4cmc land destruction spells. The goal here is to destroy your opponent's tempo and keep him / her off their vital colors. Hit early and hit hard, and the rest of the game should play out rather nicely.
Beginning the game, a three to four land hand is optimal. Draw into more than four and you just need to be sure that you have acceleration + land destruction in the last two slots.... otherwise, mulligan. Pulling two lands is often just fine, but just be sure you can be hitting lands by turn three. If you pull Mishra's Workshop + Crucible of Worlds + Strip Mine, don't even worry about the other four are, you probably already won :).
On your early turns, your first priority against most decks will be to cripple your opponent. As mentioned, drop cheap acceleration early and be hitting lands by turn three. On the play this is devastating, as they'll likely never get off of two lands. Don't be worried about delaying Akroma - you'll get to her eventually. Cripple your opponent as quickly as possible.
You might think that playing against blue would be difficult with all of their countermagic..... however, that's actually a secret strength here. Blue will not have enough countermagic to nail your acceleration AND land destruction - they'll have to pick one or the other. If they counter acceleration, you'll have an open path to blow up lands and lock them out. If they counter land destruction, simply race to Akroma and they simply won't have answers. Either way, this is a fairly mindless matchup and you don't have to play any differently (this is why Boseiju has been removed from the deck, as it was honestly rather useless).
Be wary against a black deck - they pack the most efficient anti-Akroma removal, so you want to pick and choose when you play her. Focus as hard as you can on land destruction, and don't shoot for a quick win, you'll fall hard on your face and fail to shut down your opponent's tempo. Rather, keep your opponent down on lands and play Akroma when possible (though again, priority for casting her is below priority for crippling the opponent). By keeping them off of resources you'll deny them board position, and eventually you should be able to force Akroma through. Skithiryx is a tough matchup because of the heavy discard and capability to race you.... but you should still play the same way. If you can prevent the opponent from actually getting to Skittles you'll be in a very good place. As fast as that deck is, between our hard acceleration and resource denial, we will hopefully be able to get our wincon out first. On the bright side, mono-black in Competitive 1v1 is somewhat of rare sight, so this isn't the biggest problem.
Moral of the story: hit land destruction as early as possible, and when you're out of gas, bring down Akroma. Don't be afraid to swing with her, you want to win before your opponent can respond. MOST IMPORTANTLY, don't be afraid to play out your hand! It means you're way ahead of your opponent, and it's a good indicator that your deck is operating well (and theirs isn't). Moreover, if your hand is empty by turn 5-6 it probably means Akroma is on the field and plowing the way to victory.
Matchups can be tougher if you're playing a friend who's seen it a lot in the past and changed the deck as such. Imp's Mischief is troublesome, as is Swerve, Twincast, Fork, etc. Luckily these are fairly rare to find in competitive decklists, and those that do include them need miracle draws to actually access them. Terra Eternal shuts down half the deck, but that means they're in white, so just race Akroma. Note that Clone can kill Akroma, as can Duplicant (obviously). Global destruction (Wrath of God) hurts too, but the common theme here is that Akroma really only dies to high-cost cards, so keep them off of lands and you're pretty safe (even Brittle Effigy requires 4 to activate).
DECK WISHLIST (FUTURE SETS)
Although this deck is very solid as it stands, it's still a few cards away from being as consistent as possible. Here is the wishlist for future sets:
Raze effects - extremely efficient early land destruction which plays towards our strategy of trading. 1CMC is best, but a functional reprint of Tremble would be awesome too.
3cmc destruction (a la Pillage or Molten Rain would be huge, though I doubt this will ever happen as Wizards doesn't seem keen to print efficient LD
4cmc LD with some versatility (sweeper effect, ability to kill more than just land, or reusability)
2cmc artifact acceleration (non-creature) - We are simply maxed out on the available options, there is nothing left. The few artifacts at 3cmc would be replaced in a heartbeat, but I feel we are at least a couple of sets away from this goal being realized.... it is, however, the most realistic point on this list.
A new Devastating Dreams, but worded to say "target opponent" and not "each player". I'm still convinced they screwed this up, as at best this is a 3-for-1.... but with a slight wording change this would be an auto-include.
MATCHUPS / WEAKNESSES
Mono-Blue(copied from above)
You might think that playing against blue would be difficult with all of their countermagic..... however, that's actually a secret strength here. Blue will not have enough countermagic to nail your acceleration AND land destruction - they'll have to pick one or the other. If they counter acceleration, you'll have an open path to blow up lands and lock them out. If they counter land destruction, simply race to Akroma and they simply won't have answers. Either way, this is a fairly mindless matchup and you don't have to play any differently (this is why Boseiju has been removed from the deck, as it was honestly rather useless). Arcum can be a more difficult matchup to deal with as he is fairly non-dependent on lands, but you simply don't see him around much anymore and the hope here is that the rest of the meta will kill him before you need to (as his wincon is so, so fragile). However, if you face one, the best bet is to play as normal - if Arcum never hits, you win.
Mono-Black(copied from above)
Be wary against a black deck - they pack the most efficient anti-Akroma removal, so you want to pick and choose when you play her. Focus as hard as you can on land destruction, and don't shoot for a quick win, you'll fall hard on your face and fail to shut down your opponent's tempo. Rather, keep your opponent down on lands and play Akroma when possible (though, priority for her is below priority for crippling the opponent). By keeping them off of resources you'll deny them board position, and eventually you should be able to force Akroma through. Skithiryx is a tough matchup because of the heavy discard and capability to race you.... but you should still play the same way. If you can prevent the opponent from actually getting to Skittles you'll be in a very good place. As fast as that deck is, between our hard acceleration and resource denial, we will hopefully be able to get our wincon out first. On the bright side, mono-black in Competitive 1v1 is somewhat of rare sight, so this isn't the biggest problem.
Uril
Very few Uril decks can keep up with the pace of Akroma. Why? Uril's CMC is 5, so your opponent is going to have a hard time even casting him in the first place.... but perhaps more importantly, he's in three colors, so it should be fairly easy to lock him out from being played. If he somehow does land, you'll either need Akroma to block and kill him (then proceed with land destruction as usual so he doesn't resurface), or simply try to race him. However, I've found this matchup is usually over before it's begun, simply because he costs so much and is color-reliant.
Rafiq
The reduction in cost by 1 (compared with Uril) means that this matchup is significantly harder to race - assuming an all-in build. The hope here is, again, to lock the opponent out of colors and off of the general. If he comes out to play, you MUST cast Akroma and block - she's both pro-blue and pro-white, so barring combat tricks, you can hold him off indefinitely and typically kill him with firebreathing (remember, Rafiq's strength is Double Strike, but very rarely is his toughness high enough that he will survive 6+ damage....). Don't worry about countermagic as that usually isn't dropped by this deck until after Rafiq has hit (the deck is too busy accelerating before then). T3 Rafiq can be deadly, but T4+ is much more common.... in either case, disabling the mana base is the immediate priority. This is where trading lands comes into play, or nailing an early Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon. In my experience the matchup with an all-in deck is still favorable, mainly due to the disruptability of tri-color decks and Akroma's inherent protection. Mid-range Rafiq isn't much of a problem as your clock is significantly faster and targeting the manabase will make the deck flounder.
Gaddock Teeg
I can't attest to this matchup; no one plays it in my area, so my deck is not tuned for it. This could be a very rough go, but if I were thrown into the matchup I would simply race to Akroma - the advantage of this deck is that even if our land destruction is nullified, we're more than happy to simply get to Akroma..... almost all of our acceleration is still viable and Pro-White would help immensely. Teeg + Null Rod is probably grounds to forfeit, however (unless you can land a Gauntlet or Extraplanar Lens). But, in the end, these are all assumptions on my part.
Azusa / Omnath
These are often a toss-up, mainly because land destruction does little to delay your opponents here.... though that can still win you the game in many cases. The primary objective is to just race with Akroma - green doesn't have much to deal with her (or at least much that is commonly played), this should still be favorable. Land destruction on the way won't shut down the opponent, but will stall them long enough that you should race faster. Even Lignify isn't a giant problem - she just needs to die and be recasted (through blocking, Wildfire, your own removal, etc).
Edric / Lyzolda Aggro
No one in my area plays either of these decks, partly because 1v1 is scare here.... I would imagine they would be fairly tough, though, as land destruction will be largely useless against decks with such low curves. In my head I would consider these very weak matchups, as there isn't too much we can do to stop them from hitting the cards they need to, save for great opening hands. The hope here would be to hit sweepers (Incendiary Command, Wildfire, Burning of Xinye) or the few creature removal spells we pack, and otherwise race to Akroma to block. There's a chance we could pull some wins out, but I doubt we'd have the advantage. If you see lots of swarm in your meta, consider running Devastate over Lava Flow. You might also pick Volcanic Fallout, Slagstorm, Earthquake, or Pyroclasm over Implode and Fissure. Any more than this and you'd be giving up slots and beginning to abandon the deck's goal.
Doran
Again, not played here. Mutedequilibrium does not seem to like this matchup at all, and I don't blame him - Doran packs quite a punch that is difficult for mono-red to face. However, I feel that this version of Akroma has a trump card up its sleeve - with the super-cheap acceleration and very efficient land-trading cards, you have a solid chance of disrupting the Doran player's manabase before he can be cast (assuming you mulligan aggressively). Yes, that means T1 / T2 disruption - it's entirely possible and actually quite common (though T1 Birds of Paradise on-the-play probably spells doom for us, almost regardless of our opening hand.....). If you manage to rock the boat like this the matchup will become a lot easier, but otherwise this could be an uphill battle. Still, the fact that Doran's on three colors is a boon to us, as we often need to hit just one land to make a big impact.
Five-Color
Many five-color decks are packed with counterspells, discard, and removal, so this can be a bit of a sticky matchup. However, that doesn't mean they'll have all of them at once. If you can land an early LD spell they'll likely be dead in the water, as their access to colors will be gone. The game-plan will shift according to the actual build, but simply tweak your playstyle according to the color the deck leans towards (generally blue vs. black). I haven't found that anything too special must be done here - just business as usual.
All in all, Akroma is very strong against the typical control decks we've seen in the meta over the past few years. Unfortunately, fast swarm decks are a weakness that has yet to be addressed, but I will attempt to do so once I find someone to actually test with.
+1 Slagstorm
+1 Volcanic Fallout
+1 Pyroclasm
+1 Earthquake
+1 ?? (Will check in the morning)
Over the last week or so, I have done extensive testing against the faster, cheaper creature-oriented decks (specifically, all-in Radha). In general, I've found that virtually any LD at 5cmc was not as useful as I would like in these matchups. In the last update, the focus of this deck was shifted to nailing T3 LD - meaning, 4cmc is the ideal cost for consistency. I often found that the cards higher in the curve were neither fast enough, nor versatile enough - having the option of killing a creature is nice, but often it's too little, too late. I REALLY shy away from cutting anything at 4cmc, and actually hope that we see at least one efficient LD spell in Dark Ascension, but even without one, I just don't think 5cmc cuts it. Expedition Map is quite honestly just useless now and an incredible waste of tempo... and that's the killer here. There are definitely lands worth fetching, but in my experience, I'd rather have almost any other card 9/10 times. As far as land goes, 38 is just too many with this many acceleration pieces, and it was necessary to cut down or risk total flooding later in the game. Depending on what we get in Dark Ascension, this may be cut down to 36 lands, as 37 might even be too many. If not, this slot may go to artifact destruction in one form or another.
The general trend that I've noticed with this deck is as follows:
(a) Against more expensive generals and decks (not running heavy, heavy acceleration, a la Chrome Mox / Mox Diamond) the current build is consistent enough to keep them off their curve, and in general they don't get much opportunity to play anyway. Losing out on targeted creature removal is not a problem; their usefulness was quite narrow (rarely was a creature out of sweeper range able to be played) and being that there were only two (not counting Aftershock), they weren't consistent answers anyway.
(b) Against cheap, efficient, fast decks, 5cmc spells are simply too expensive for too little effect. 4cmc is still extremely powerful.... the aggro builds can be likened to a blown pipe - cut the problem off early at the source (with land destruction) and then clean up the mess (sweepers). 5cmc is, again, just too slow, but more importantly, the slots are MUCH better used for mass removal.
As an aside, I am rather unimpressed by Bend or Break. In games so far it's typically meant trading 3-4 of my lands for 2 of my opponents, and in addition to losing the card itself, that's a bit too much card-disadvantage. However, it's in for the time being as it hasn't seen too much play (much less against a variety of decks). Thoughts of Ruin seems clearly better, at the moment.
* I haven't updated the rest of the primer to reflect these changes, but will do so soon.
January 12, 2012
-1 Dwarven Miner
-1 Lightning Bolt
-1 All Is Dust
-1 Fissure Vent
-1 Plunder
-1 Volcanic Submersion
-1 Darksteel Ingot
-1 Foriysian Totem
-1 Gilded Lotus
-1 Grafted Skullcap
-1 Sisay's Ring
-1 Spectral Searchlight
-1 Thran Dynamo
-1 Ur-Golem's Eye
-1 Worn Powerstone
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
-1 Darksteel Citadel
-1 Forgotten Cave
+1 Guardian Idol
+1 Bend or Break
+1 Goblin Settler
+1 Star Compass
+1 Dwarven Landslide
+1 Ruination
+1 Seething Song
+1 Iron Myr
+1 Sphere of the Suns
+1 Ring of Gix
+1 Everflowing Chalice
+1 Incendiary Command
+1 Implode
+1 Ruby Medallion
+1 Avalance Riders
+3 Snow-Covered Mountain
The key shift in this update is the focus on T1/T2 acceleration and T3 land destruction. As a result, most 5cmc spells are gone. Expensive acceleration has been likewise removed as it did not land quickly enough to hurt the opponent. Removal is gone, as it was so situational that they were typically dead-draws (many generals can be stopped simply through resource denial). The land count is back up by 1 - Boseiju was not necessary and ETB tapped was a killer, while indestructibility on the Darksteel Citadel was not worth it for the loss of access to R (or RR with doublers).
I feel this deck has jumped a full level or two in nastiness with these edits - the consistency has increased IMMENSELY, and I am now truly confident in its power.... it had always been strong before, but again, the newfound consistency is what makes this deck so great.
With these edits, I decided to bring the land count down by two. I was getting a little flooded before, and often didn't have the cards in-hand the first few turns to accomplish what I needed to. Combust, Starstorm, Mouth of Ronom, and Duplicant definitely have their places in certain decks, but I've found that I NEVER like drawing into them. Yes, there are certain situations where they are useful, but they were far from justifying a slot in the deck. Throwing in more acceleration and destruction helped the consistency and curve of the deck. Library of Alexandria is a little hit-and-miss, if it's in your opening hand on-the-draw it can single-handedly win you the game. Otherwise it's only a colorless source, but that's not a bad thing at all, especially when it doesn't ETB tapped. Grafted Skullcap is a new addition that I want to try out - after Turn 5 / 6 my hand is usually empty anyway, and I'll play it out as soon as I draw into cards, so the disadvantage isn't really very real. Mox Diamond is a GREAT card - yes, I two-for-one myself, but throwing down land destruction a turn early is CRITICAL in EDH - crippling their curve or color-access on T2 rather than T3 (or T3 rather than T4) can have an unbelievable effect on the game.
Thanks all, and as mentioned, I'm more than happy to take suggestions! Good luck!
The entire deck has been streamlined, and consistency improved by magnitudes. All updates have been noted and the entire primer overhauled - enjoy guys
I'll have to try it out! However, it's a late-game card (will never be useful in an opening hand) and not an immediate effect. It's competing for slots with Boom // Bust (which has better versatility) and Devastation (great emergency card against creatures). The cmc on Impending Disaster is nice, but usually by that time of the game I don't really care about it.
But I do want to try it out! Unfortunately I don't get much play time at school, but I'll get back to it sometime soon
Thanks folks! Still need to make some changes and update the list above, but it's a crazy time right now so I'm not sure how soon that may be. As far as suggestions:
Crack the Earth - Oh man, I REALLY love this card, and it's one of the few I literally haven't looked through.... this is extremely intriguing, but it'll definitely take some testing. The real question is how many decks I face will get quick weenies out. It also has potential to hit the general if your oppo is desperate for land.... but I'm not sure how many times it would hit something bland and unuseful. I will definitely need to look into this when I get the time!
Manakin I've kept on the fence about. I love the 2cc, don't love the colorless... also don't love the fact he's a creature. I can live with Iron Myr because of the R, but maybe this could find a spot? It's pretty funny, every single time I revise this list Manakin is one of the very last cards to be cut, I probably just need to give him a try.
Worn Powerstone / Palladium Myr - Powerstone was in a recent version of the deck, but the Myr never was because he's always a huge target (more expensive, easier to kill creature-version of Sol Ring). However, I cut them because of the ETB-tapped, which actually hurt me quite a bit. The benefit to Heart of Ramos and Coalition Relic are BOTH the colors, and the fact that they only cost a net of 2 mana that turn - when you are at 4-5 mana in play, it's possible to play one of these pieces AND cheap LD, whereas with the powerstone it simply wasn't. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I found myself in lots of situations where I was just one mana short of having the explosive turn I needed, and that's why I cut those two cards.
Conquer - At 5cc, I'm thinking it's too expensive. This deck REALLY wants to hit hard on 3-4cc cards, and I've done everything I can to cut 5cc that aren't incredibly powerful.
Dwarven Miner - Doesn't have an immediate lock-out effect (like Magus of the Moon or Goblin Settler, who protect themselves). I've noticed he tends to eat removal before he's useful, and then I haven't gotten any use out of him. I had him in here for a long time, and when he worked he sure as hell worked, but the times he didn't made it not worth it. The nail in the coffin is that this deck loses to FAST multicolored decks or monocolored decks, and he doesn't help against either (not fast enough for multi, and too many basics in mono).
Galvanoth is veeeeerry win-more in this deck. If he cost 1 or 2 he'd be a good fit (albeit broken) but if I could hit him at 5cc, 90% of the time I'd rather just have topdecked an immediate-effect card... especially because Galvy has no guaranteed payout
Jeweled Amulet is decent turn-1 but way too slow otherwise. I don't want to have to commit resources beyond the initial casting cost, and technically this is not a mana source but rather mana storage.
Solfatara - My gut feeling tells me no, because it doesn't permanently stop anything. Meaning, yes I can lock him out for a turn, but that land is still going to hit.... whereas conventional LD will just get rid of it entirely. Best-case scenario I would cantrip into LD, but then I could have just used the LD the first time around?
Thanks for the suggestions guys! I'm always looking for ways to tune the decks and you never fail to throw a few new and brilliant opinions into the mix. Hoping to get some minor revisions up in the next few weeks, but it may have to wait a while since I haven't had a chance to get back to it recently!
If you haven't actually tried Jeweled Amulet, I'd highly suggest you do. True, it often only gets used twice in a game, but getting the first Stone Rain or Magus of the Moon on turn 2 versus turn 3 is a massive difference maker. I use it in my monored Norin the Wary deck and it's fantastic for 3cc spells. You don't have much going on during turn 1 in this deck anyways, so it's the ideal candidate.
Late in the game it's about as valuable as a basic land; it has some pluses and minuses compared to a Mountain. But the early game acceleration makes it well worth inclusion over a mountain.
That is quite true; however, 3cc land destruction in this list is currently at just six cards. Thus, to see maximum effectiveness, I would need to draw the Amulet in my opening hand, along with such a 3cc spell and a decent land mix (not very likely, over the course of many games). Without 3cc in-hand it can still serve as storage, but in this case it won't speed things up (compared with existing accel) and with the very low curve of the deck, it's unlikely that it will get more than one storage counter on the first few turns. Without 3cc spells in-hand, my choices will be: a) 1cc / 2cc LD available, in which case Amulet didn't influence the play; or b) 4cc and cheap (<= 2cc) acceleration, whereby I will hit T3 LD anyway (note this is far from a guarantee, but an opening hand without cheap acceleration and at least one LD card is essentially a dead-hand in this deck anyway....).
Topdecked, the card is rather useless as at that point in time I would rather see hard accel, simply because Amulet is so cumbersome - perhaps if you could remove multiple counters I could see the late-game potential, but the limit of one makes it difficult to justify the card beyond a T1 play.
Finally, and the primary reason I don't think it fits that well - with proper mulliganing, this deck is quite consistent at hitting T2 2cc acceleration / T3 LD (or better). As it stands, each card has a number of others that could take its place, and this is what gives the deck its consistency and "clockwork"-like playstyle. I DO absolutely agree with you that Amulet can, in many situations, speed up that clock - however, I fear that the deck will be sacrificing consistency for this slight speed advantage, for the aforementioned reasons. It's definitely a good card, but it either hits or it misses... and in a deck requiring strict and stalwart consistency (for the first few turns), it doesn't fit quite as well here.
That being said, a very similar card to Jeweled Amulet (and the one I would consider most for addition) is Lotus Petal. In either case, the effective acceleration in the first few "critical turns" is the same (1) and both spells are free. However, Petal doesn't require mana input and, more crucially, doesn't need a full turn of investment to bring a return - thus, it can be quite effective even if topdecked T3 or T4. I've been very back and forth about this card, because I'm just not sure the deck wants to give up a full draw for it. In tabletop games with my roommate, the deck has some trouble with fast, cheap weenies (he plays R/G Radha). In those situations, sweepers, rather than speed, have been crucial - in most other matchups, speed is great, but even after intense consideration, I've simply never found myself wishing I've had a Petal in-hand (over the other cards in-hand - assuming proper shuffling and mulliganing).
As a side note, I have actually tested with Petal in the past, and I would corroborate your claim that it provides for incredibly explosive starts. However, it was very hit-or-miss - I either dominated the opponent quickly and viciously, or I drew into Petal and wished I had hit more steam to guarantee victory. So yes, it does do incredible things; but I couldn't personally justify the drop in consistency.
Below is my most recent card list for this deck, updated about 1 year ago (no real changes since then). I still love the deck to death, though unfortunately the game lacks enough fast LD (<4 CMC) cards to really maintain consistency against Tier-1 decks if you are all-out on LD. That strategy is really strong when it hits its stride, but there just aren't quite enough tools in the toolbox to make LD consistently fast enough to be viable in truly competitive play. Granted, against some (slower) top-tier commanders this approach performs very well, but others are so fast that NOT landing LD on T2 means they hit their curve and the game gets very hard because they only ever need 3 lands anyway. Wizards avoids low CMC land destruction for obvious reasons in newer printings but it's a shame there weren't more variants printed in past sets to take advantage of. Now don't get me wrong, the all-in Land Destruction strategy is ridiculously scary and potent (and will wipe the floor of most decks you'll see at your local store), but against Tier-1's it's just not reliable enough to be a standard pick.
As a result, I tried diluting the LD strategy to include a lot more burn and sweepers. Surprisingly this actually makes the deck quite strong against a lot of the competitive meta - burn is VERY strong against most of the popular 1v1 Generals, who are typically (a) fairly low on toughness, (b) have targeted protection but typically no protection from sweepers, and (c) are generally built towards the standard meta (AKA not tuned to face a strong mono-red deck). You will notice the deck maintains a reasonable amount of acceleration (it's needed), and land destruction is still present - not necessarily to keep your opponent off mana entirely, but to nuke key lands that either get them into colors they need, or offer some strong utility. The rest of the deck is designed to wipe your opponent's board frequently enough to win with Akroma.
Anyway, the updated list, apologies it isn't sorted by card type:
With these updates the deck runs much smoother.... however, my current build of Red Akroma actually forgoes LD entirely in favor of a control-style mono-red. I really miss the LD (and it's a showstopper in real life) but in a competitive meta I've found it's not as strong as good old mono-red control. Yes, that sounds ridiculous, but it's completely possible just because of how damn strong Red Akroma is (Pro-white, Pro-blue, Pro-counter, and Trample mean lots of the standard answers are automatically worthless). That, and red is actually surprisingly good at efficiently dealing with some of the most common (and difficult) threats in this game, if you know how to play it right. If you're interested in that decklist (also about a year old, I've unfortunately been pretty overloaded this past year), I'm happy to post it.
COMPETITIVE 1v1 EDH
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Akroma, Angel of Fury is one of my all-time absolute favorite Legendary Creatures,
and a 1v1 deck built around her is an absolute blast to play (for the pilot, at least :)). She runs a
VERY fast clock, and if your opponent doesn't know what's coming, he'll be dead before he can
adjust his playstyle to accomodate for this deck's approach. And, even against friends who've
played it hundreds of times, it is still nearly untouchable. Read on for
more information!!
BACKGROUND
The second thing you must be aware of is that this IS a land destruction deck. While most of my friends are perfectly fine with that (they understand it is built to be highly competitive), there will definitely be those who consider it to be 100% un-fun to play against. It is not meant for casual games, and it can be incredibly frustrating to play against. This is meant for competitive tournaments and not the kitchen table, but if your friends are keen to the flavor of 1v1 EDH, by all means - go for it!
I originally saw the idea for an Akroma Land-Destruction EDH deck from frankwu9's decklist. I really liked the basic idea he had come up with, but didn't like a lot of his card choices. I found a lot of his spells really hurt tempo or simply didn't suppress the opponent viciously enough..... although it's a very good deck, it was an early incarnation, and there are better options out there now. However, original credit does go to him, who, as far as I know, was one of the first to originate the deck theme.
WHY IS THIS POWERFUL?
First of all, Akroma is an absolute house as a general. She is one of the most powerful standalone Legendary Creatures in Magic, has protection from what are arguably the two most efficient "deal-with-that" colors in the game, can't be countered, Flies, Tramples, and breathes fire. Not to mention, she's in a deck which will reliably cast her Turn 5 / 6 and start beating face. Once she's down your opponent is on a ridiculously fast clock, and if they find no solution in two (sometimes three) turns, the game is over.
Pair this with a hard-edged, efficient board strategy centered around locking your opponents out from playing ANYTHING, and you have a ringer of a deck. This deck is a finely-tuned resource denial engine and preys upon the fact that many of the competitive alternatives out there won't see this coming (and don't have answers if they do). For example - the vast majority of EDH players will be more than happy to take a three-land opening hand, thinking they'll curve nicely into their key spells. One round of land disruption is often enough to stop that, and this is why the early land-trading (as discussed later) is hugely helpful - you want your opponent locked down as quickly as possible, and keeping them out of their colors is almost an auto-win.
Cards in this deck which are commonly banned in 1v1 include:
Crucible of Worlds
Library of Alexandria
Mana Crypt
Mishra's Workshop
Sensei's Divining Top
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Unfortunately I have not prepared a list of cards to swap in for these - my playgroup does not use the French banlist, so the cards never come out of my deck. However, if anyone has suggestions I am more than happy to entertain them!
1x Akroma, Angel of Fury
CREATURES
1x Avalanche Riders
1x Goblin Settler
1x Iron Myr
1x Magus of the Moon
INSTANTS
1x Fissure
1x Seething Song
1x Shattering Pulse
SORCERIES
1x Aftershock
1x Bend or Break
1x Boom // Bust
1x Burning of Xinye
1x Demolish
1x Devastation
1x Dwarven Landslide
1x Earth Rift
1x Flowstone Flood
1x Icefall
1x Implode
1x Incendiary Command
1x Lava Flow
1x Lay Waste
1x Molten Rain
1x Pillage
1x Raze
1x Rolling Earthquake
1x Ruination
1x Scorched Earth
1x Seismic Spike
1x Shattering Spree
1x Stone Rain
1x Sunder from Within
1x Tectonic Break
1x Tremble
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Wildfire
1x Blood Moon
ARTIFACTS
1x Coalition Relic
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Crystal Ball
1x Everflowing Chalice
1x Expedition Map
1x Extraplanar Lens
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Fire Diamond
1x Gauntlet of Might
1x Gauntlet of Power
1x Grim Monolith
1x Guardian Idol
1x Heart of Ramos
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Mox Diamond
1x Prismatic Lens
1x Ring of Gix
1x Ruby Medallion
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
1x Sphere of the Suns
1x Star Compass
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Dust Bowl
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mishra's Workshop
1x Rishadan Port
1x Scrying Sheets
1x Strip Mine
1x Wasteland
30x Snow-Covered Mountain
1x Akroma, Angel of Fury
T1 ACCELERATION
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Sol Ring
T2 ACCELERATION
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Everflowing Chalice
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Fire Diamond
1x Grim Monolith
1x Guardian Idol
1x Iron Myr
1x Mind Stone
1x Prismatic Lens
1x Ruby Medallion
1x Sphere of the Suns
1x Star Compass
LATER ACCELERATION
1x Coalition Relic
1x Extraplanar Lens
1x Gauntlet of Might
1x Gauntlet of Power
1x Heart of Ramos
1x Seething Song
1x Boom // Bust
1x Raze
1x Scorched Earth
1x Tremble
T2 / T3 LAND DESTRUCTION
1x Blood Moon
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Molten Rain
1x Pillage
1x Stone Rain
1x Tectonic Break
T3 LAND DESTRUCTION
1x Aftershock
1x Avalanche Riders
1x Bend or Break
1x Demolish
1x Dwarven Landslide
1x Goblin Settler
1x Earth Rift
1x Flowstone Flood
1x Icefall
1x Lay Waste
1x Ruination
1x Seismic Spike
1x Sunder from Within
1x Fissure
1x Implode
1x Incendiary Command
1x Lava Flow
SWEEPERS / OTHER REMOVAL
1x Burning of Xinye
1x Devastation
1x Rolling Earthquake
1x Shattering Pulse
1x Shattering Spree
1x Wildfire
OTHER
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Crystal Ball
1x Expedition Map
1x Ring of Gix
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Wheel of Fortune
UTILITY LAND
1x Dust Bowl
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mishra's Workshop
1x Rishadan Port
1x Scrying Sheets
1x Strip Mine
1x Wasteland
1x Ancient Tomb
30x Snow-Covered Mountain
As with the other Akroma decklists on MTGSalvation, this deck is heavy on land and artifact acceleration sources. However, this is why I have chosen to take a different approach from the others listed here. you can see, it runs 38 land and plenty of artifact acceleration sources. I've recognized that there's almost no chance an opponent will have the consistent land drops and / or mana ramping at his or her disposal (unless they're playing mono-green, but we'll get into that), and as a result, the deck is more than comfortable trading lands with your opponents. Take a look at the decklist and you'll see Raze, Scorched Earth, Tremble, Tectonic Break, and others.
Yes, you read that correctly. This deck's tempo leans towards 1-for-2'ing yourself - you're dumping both a card-in-hand and sacrificing (at least) one land in order to cripple an opponent. For most players, this seems completely counter-intuitive, as EDH is generally all about the card advantage. HOWEVER, this is one of the few times where such a strategy works. These cards are in the deck to disrupt your opponent's tempo AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. Conventional land destruction should reliably come by Turn 3 /4, but you still want to be nailing lands earlier than that whenever possible... by Turn 2, or even Turn 1, if you can. This alone will lock in 70+% of your wins.
Many of the best generals are in 2-3 colors, and as such you opponents will often be dropping their ETB-Tapped lands on Turn 1. Remember that these are the ones which tap for multiple colors, and much of the time it will be their only source of a certain color. As a result, when you're playing against Uril, Rafiq, Zur, or even many of the dual-colored generals, you're instantly cutting them off from their required mana sources. Not to mention, many few decks will not have countermagic support setup by turn 2 (for those that do, I'll discuss that later), so you're beginning your path of destruction there. To sum it up: you WANT to be killing lands ASAP, even if it means giving up some of your own.
Backing these up are the more conventional land-destruction cards (see "Playing the Deck" for more information), powerful sweepers, and one one of the most powerful generals in the game; you'll find yourself with a flexible, hard-hitting deck which most opponents won't have an answer to.
Avalanche Riders - 4cmc land destruction and a body for chumping, if need be (Doran, Uril, etc.)
Goblin Settler - See Avalanche Riders, with no echo cost.
Iron Myr - 2cmc acceleration providing access to R
Magus of the Moon - Single-handedly shuts down a good number of decks out there, and often protects itself because your opponent may not have colors to deal with it.
Seething Song - I actually would prefer not to play this card - I would much rather find another 2cmc non-creature artifact accelerant.... seeing all of them are already in the decklist, this is the next best thing to hitting the bigger spells by turn 3.
Shattering Pulse - Artifacts are what will save an opponent, so you need solutions to keep them out of play. At 2cmc this is very efficient, but also reusable at no card-disadvantage (if need be).
Bend or Break - An unconventional choice that nonetheless allows you to destroy one or more lands. Not problematic for us, as this deck will often have many artifacts and only a couple lands (so trades are typically symmetric, which is good for us). Key to this is that WE choose which pile of the opponent's, so the bigger pile will always get nuked.
Ruination - At 4cmc, this is almost guaranteed to hit something and has the potential to single-handedly end the game. With the recent cut of non-basics in this deck, the potential for self-harm has also been reduced. Again, we're not concerned with losing a land or two, so long as our opponent does the same.
Implode / Incendiary Command / Lava Flow - At 5cmc these won't be landing as often, but because they are so few in number, I'm not worried about them ruining our consistency. There are simply no 4cmc cards that provide near the same versatility as these, so I've elected to keep them.
Boom // Bust / Raze / Scorched Earth / Tectonic Break / Tremble - Low-cmc land destruction which comes online as early as turn one and allows us to trade lands with the opponent.
Boom // Bust / Burning of Xinye / Devastation / Rolling Earthquake / Wildfire - The best sweepers available to us, with the primary target being land. I'm not settled on Rolling Earthquake, however, as it doesn't synergize with the rest of the deck...
Wheel of Fortune - Red's best Draw-7, it's a shame there aren't more of these available (Wheel of Fate is too slow and unreliable to include). Asymmetric, as your opponent's new hand will be essentially unplayable.
Shattering Spree - Quite possibly the best artifact destruction in the game, and an answer when your opponent is also playing heavy acceleration. Plus, if you replicate multiple times, each copy must be countered separately.
Coldsteel Heart / Fellwar Stone / Fire Diamond / Grim Monolith / Guardian Idol / Mind Stone / Prismatic Lens / Ruby Medallion / Sphere of the Suns / Star Compass - Acceleration at the critical 2cmc spot, allowing consistent turn-three land destruction.
Everflowing Chalice - A great addition, as it can be an early 2cmc accelerant or late-game Thran Dynamo.
Coalition Relic / Heart of Ramos - 3cmc artifact acceleration, the only ones left in the deck - I kept them here for lack of 2cmc replacements and their capability of producing RR on one turn.
Crystal Ball / Sensei's Divining Top - Absolutely stellar in this deck. We don't have many draw options, so instead, why not fix the ones we do? Keep the pressure on, and the land destruction coming. Crystal Ball is an absolute house, and the Top is as good as ever.
Extraplanar Lens / Gauntlet of Might / Gauntlet of Power - Huge acceleration, often the nail in the coffin. Helps not only power out Akroma, but also to pump her for the quick win. There's a possibility your opponent may benefit off of Gauntlet of Might + Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon, but 9/10 they're still out of colors and can't play something anyway. The acceleration these cards provide is absolutely insane.
Crucible of Worlds - Allows us to play all of the lands we traded or swept. Combos well with Strip Mine / Wasteland. Note that this deck actually plays well without it (in formats where it's banned), as loss of access to this card is a bigger blow to the opponent than to you.
Expedition Map - Helpful, typically finding Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop, or a plain-old Snow-Covered Mountain with a mana doubler in play. Considering dropping it, however, as I think I'd rather just have acceleration or more LD in the slot.... assuming we get viable versions of either in coming sets. It was largely here because of Boseju, but as I don't play it anymore, it's not as useful.
Ring of Gix - A recent addition to the deck, but one that I like very much. Without access to additional versatile land destruction spells, this works very nicely. Granted, it still consumes mana later on, but that's fine as it does its job well. Tap a land at upkeep, solve a problematic general, or keep your opponent off of artifact acceleration. Chosen over Icy Manipulator because it's at a totol cmc of 4, including activation (Icy Manipulator is at 5 for this, which means you can't usually hit it turn-three).
Dust Bowl - Can singlehandedly lock down games, a true star and it can't be countered. No reason not to run it, especially because it's reusable.
Library of Alexandria - This is an extremely powerful card, but IT MUST BE USED PROPERLY. If you get it in your opening hand, ONLY use it turn one (you must be on the draw to do so). As tempting as drawing again on turn-two sounds, you NEED to drop acceleration or you will likely lose. On the play, don't even try to draw with it, it kills your tempo and means the opponent will reach critical mass to get themselves in the game. This land is SOLELY here to net you an extra card on-the-draw, or help you keep card advantage after a Wheel of Fortune.
Mishra's Workshop - A no-brainer with the artifact count in this deck. Speeds up an already quick clock.
Rishadan Port - Doesn't come into play tapped, and shuts down another land per turn when your destruction can't.
Scrying Sheets - Helps with our draw, and combos well with Crystal Ball / Sensei's Top
Strip Mine / Wasteland - Auto-includes, need I say more?
Chrome Mox - For a deck so obsessed with tempo, you'd think this would go in.... but so much of me thinks the card disadvantage would be too great. This is a true double-edged sword - a game-winner in some situations, but dead in others (if we can't afford to pitch).
Thoughts of Ruin - This card genuinely scares me, but I'm not entirely sure why. It has SUCH high potential to wreck your opponent, and even when it's asymmetric out of our favor, that means that we're in an advantageous place anyway. I will be testing this card very intensely.... I feel like there is a sweet-spot in T4-T7 (or even T3 on the draw, if we have a great opening hand and can drop a few acceleration pieces) where it could singlehandedly draw a win.
Winter Orb - It's just so. Damn. Good. And fits perfectly here. My meta does not see swarm decks so I will likely pull Rolling Earthquake for it.
NOTABLE EXCLUSIONS
Valakut, the Molten Pinnace - You would think that in a deck sporting so many mountains, this would be an excellent choice. However, it's simply sub-par. Rarely will it ever come online, and you'll often finding yourself trading lands anyway, so 95% of the time it's just a ETB-tapped mountain.... that doesn't provide RR off the three doublers in the deck.
Ghost Quarter - I want to deny resources, not swap my opponent's land. A basic (color of his choice) is just as good as a nonbasic, so I don't want to give him that opportunity.
Hall of the Bandit Lord - In testing, this card was simply a liability, mainly for the ETB clause. Even the life problem was fairly negligible, but the tempo loss is simply insurmountable.
Fork - Often a dead draw, because it required an additional RR if I wanted it to do anything. The deck already taps out almost every turn, so no room for this.
Rain of Rust - Simply too expensive.
Rain of Salt - A very powerful card, and it was hard for me to cut it when I did. However, it's a detriment in an opening hand and a 4-cmc destruction spell is more useful.
Braid of Fire - More often than not this just generated useless mana. Cut it a while back and haven't regretted it once.
Destructive Force - Expensive, and often a little overkill. Hurts to pull this in an opening hand, and rarely is the 5 damage truly needed.
Earthquake - With Rolling Earthquake, Devastation, Wildfire, and Burning of Xinye in the deck, Earthquake wasn't really needed.
Duplicant / Combust / Lightning Bolt / Starstorm - In this build, removal just bogs us down. We either lock our opponent out, or devote everything towards winning with Akroma. There is no room for these cards - with more slots this archetype might be more consistent, but at only three, it's rare to both (a) draw one, and (b) have it be immediately useful.
Darksteel Ingot / Foriysian Totem / Spectral Searchlight / Gilded Lotus - Simply too expensive. When I played these, my opponent was not disabled quickly enough and the game was lost.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All - ETB KILLS this card, and we really don't need help against blue anyway. See "Playing the Deck" or "Matchups", below.
Darksteel Citadel - I'd much rather just have a Mountain, especially since they have the potential to produce double mana.
Forgotten Cave - Again, ETB is the killer here.
Mouth of Ronom - Expensive, only narrowly effective, and doesn't provide colors. However, this may be a good addition in some metas.
Mox Opal - We simply won't have three artifacts on the battlefield when the game is young enough that this would be helpful.
Mishra's Helix - For this build.... too expensive, and win-more. In an opening hand it's useless and that's the last thing we can afford.
Let's get this settled right away: the purpose of this deck is to drop acceleration T1 / T2, and be hitting lands by T3. If you're not, you're losing, especially with how competitive this format has become. Virtually all of the chaff has been cut away from this deck, and it is almost exclusively 1-2cmc accelerants and <4cmc land destruction spells. The goal here is to destroy your opponent's tempo and keep him / her off their vital colors. Hit early and hit hard, and the rest of the game should play out rather nicely.
Beginning the game, a three to four land hand is optimal. Draw into more than four and you just need to be sure that you have acceleration + land destruction in the last two slots.... otherwise, mulligan. Pulling two lands is often just fine, but just be sure you can be hitting lands by turn three. If you pull Mishra's Workshop + Crucible of Worlds + Strip Mine, don't even worry about the other four are, you probably already won :).
On your early turns, your first priority against most decks will be to cripple your opponent. As mentioned, drop cheap acceleration early and be hitting lands by turn three. On the play this is devastating, as they'll likely never get off of two lands. Don't be worried about delaying Akroma - you'll get to her eventually. Cripple your opponent as quickly as possible.
You might think that playing against blue would be difficult with all of their countermagic..... however, that's actually a secret strength here. Blue will not have enough countermagic to nail your acceleration AND land destruction - they'll have to pick one or the other. If they counter acceleration, you'll have an open path to blow up lands and lock them out. If they counter land destruction, simply race to Akroma and they simply won't have answers. Either way, this is a fairly mindless matchup and you don't have to play any differently (this is why Boseiju has been removed from the deck, as it was honestly rather useless).
Be wary against a black deck - they pack the most efficient anti-Akroma removal, so you want to pick and choose when you play her. Focus as hard as you can on land destruction, and don't shoot for a quick win, you'll fall hard on your face and fail to shut down your opponent's tempo. Rather, keep your opponent down on lands and play Akroma when possible (though again, priority for casting her is below priority for crippling the opponent). By keeping them off of resources you'll deny them board position, and eventually you should be able to force Akroma through. Skithiryx is a tough matchup because of the heavy discard and capability to race you.... but you should still play the same way. If you can prevent the opponent from actually getting to Skittles you'll be in a very good place. As fast as that deck is, between our hard acceleration and resource denial, we will hopefully be able to get our wincon out first. On the bright side, mono-black in Competitive 1v1 is somewhat of rare sight, so this isn't the biggest problem.
Moral of the story: hit land destruction as early as possible, and when you're out of gas, bring down Akroma. Don't be afraid to swing with her, you want to win before your opponent can respond. MOST IMPORTANTLY, don't be afraid to play out your hand! It means you're way ahead of your opponent, and it's a good indicator that your deck is operating well (and theirs isn't). Moreover, if your hand is empty by turn 5-6 it probably means Akroma is on the field and plowing the way to victory.
Matchups can be tougher if you're playing a friend who's seen it a lot in the past and changed the deck as such. Imp's Mischief is troublesome, as is Swerve, Twincast, Fork, etc. Luckily these are fairly rare to find in competitive decklists, and those that do include them need miracle draws to actually access them. Terra Eternal shuts down half the deck, but that means they're in white, so just race Akroma. Note that Clone can kill Akroma, as can Duplicant (obviously). Global destruction (Wrath of God) hurts too, but the common theme here is that Akroma really only dies to high-cost cards, so keep them off of lands and you're pretty safe (even Brittle Effigy requires 4 to activate).
Raze effects - extremely efficient early land destruction which plays towards our strategy of trading. 1CMC is best, but a functional reprint of Tremble would be awesome too.
3cmc destruction (a la Pillage or Molten Rain would be huge, though I doubt this will ever happen as Wizards doesn't seem keen to print efficient LD
4cmc LD with some versatility (sweeper effect, ability to kill more than just land, or reusability)
2cmc artifact acceleration (non-creature) - We are simply maxed out on the available options, there is nothing left. The few artifacts at 3cmc would be replaced in a heartbeat, but I feel we are at least a couple of sets away from this goal being realized.... it is, however, the most realistic point on this list.
A new Devastating Dreams, but worded to say "target opponent" and not "each player". I'm still convinced they screwed this up, as at best this is a 3-for-1.... but with a slight wording change this would be an auto-include.
You might think that playing against blue would be difficult with all of their countermagic..... however, that's actually a secret strength here. Blue will not have enough countermagic to nail your acceleration AND land destruction - they'll have to pick one or the other. If they counter acceleration, you'll have an open path to blow up lands and lock them out. If they counter land destruction, simply race to Akroma and they simply won't have answers. Either way, this is a fairly mindless matchup and you don't have to play any differently (this is why Boseiju has been removed from the deck, as it was honestly rather useless). Arcum can be a more difficult matchup to deal with as he is fairly non-dependent on lands, but you simply don't see him around much anymore and the hope here is that the rest of the meta will kill him before you need to (as his wincon is so, so fragile). However, if you face one, the best bet is to play as normal - if Arcum never hits, you win.
Mono-Black (copied from above)
Be wary against a black deck - they pack the most efficient anti-Akroma removal, so you want to pick and choose when you play her. Focus as hard as you can on land destruction, and don't shoot for a quick win, you'll fall hard on your face and fail to shut down your opponent's tempo. Rather, keep your opponent down on lands and play Akroma when possible (though, priority for her is below priority for crippling the opponent). By keeping them off of resources you'll deny them board position, and eventually you should be able to force Akroma through. Skithiryx is a tough matchup because of the heavy discard and capability to race you.... but you should still play the same way. If you can prevent the opponent from actually getting to Skittles you'll be in a very good place. As fast as that deck is, between our hard acceleration and resource denial, we will hopefully be able to get our wincon out first. On the bright side, mono-black in Competitive 1v1 is somewhat of rare sight, so this isn't the biggest problem.
Uril
Very few Uril decks can keep up with the pace of Akroma. Why? Uril's CMC is 5, so your opponent is going to have a hard time even casting him in the first place.... but perhaps more importantly, he's in three colors, so it should be fairly easy to lock him out from being played. If he somehow does land, you'll either need Akroma to block and kill him (then proceed with land destruction as usual so he doesn't resurface), or simply try to race him. However, I've found this matchup is usually over before it's begun, simply because he costs so much and is color-reliant.
Rafiq
The reduction in cost by 1 (compared with Uril) means that this matchup is significantly harder to race - assuming an all-in build. The hope here is, again, to lock the opponent out of colors and off of the general. If he comes out to play, you MUST cast Akroma and block - she's both pro-blue and pro-white, so barring combat tricks, you can hold him off indefinitely and typically kill him with firebreathing (remember, Rafiq's strength is Double Strike, but very rarely is his toughness high enough that he will survive 6+ damage....). Don't worry about countermagic as that usually isn't dropped by this deck until after Rafiq has hit (the deck is too busy accelerating before then). T3 Rafiq can be deadly, but T4+ is much more common.... in either case, disabling the mana base is the immediate priority. This is where trading lands comes into play, or nailing an early Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon. In my experience the matchup with an all-in deck is still favorable, mainly due to the disruptability of tri-color decks and Akroma's inherent protection. Mid-range Rafiq isn't much of a problem as your clock is significantly faster and targeting the manabase will make the deck flounder.
Gaddock Teeg
I can't attest to this matchup; no one plays it in my area, so my deck is not tuned for it. This could be a very rough go, but if I were thrown into the matchup I would simply race to Akroma - the advantage of this deck is that even if our land destruction is nullified, we're more than happy to simply get to Akroma..... almost all of our acceleration is still viable and Pro-White would help immensely. Teeg + Null Rod is probably grounds to forfeit, however (unless you can land a Gauntlet or Extraplanar Lens). But, in the end, these are all assumptions on my part.
Azusa / Omnath
These are often a toss-up, mainly because land destruction does little to delay your opponents here.... though that can still win you the game in many cases. The primary objective is to just race with Akroma - green doesn't have much to deal with her (or at least much that is commonly played), this should still be favorable. Land destruction on the way won't shut down the opponent, but will stall them long enough that you should race faster. Even Lignify isn't a giant problem - she just needs to die and be recasted (through blocking, Wildfire, your own removal, etc).
Edric / Lyzolda Aggro
No one in my area plays either of these decks, partly because 1v1 is scare here.... I would imagine they would be fairly tough, though, as land destruction will be largely useless against decks with such low curves. In my head I would consider these very weak matchups, as there isn't too much we can do to stop them from hitting the cards they need to, save for great opening hands. The hope here would be to hit sweepers (Incendiary Command, Wildfire, Burning of Xinye) or the few creature removal spells we pack, and otherwise race to Akroma to block. There's a chance we could pull some wins out, but I doubt we'd have the advantage. If you see lots of swarm in your meta, consider running Devastate over Lava Flow. You might also pick Volcanic Fallout, Slagstorm, Earthquake, or Pyroclasm over Implode and Fissure. Any more than this and you'd be giving up slots and beginning to abandon the deck's goal.
Doran
Again, not played here. Mutedequilibrium does not seem to like this matchup at all, and I don't blame him - Doran packs quite a punch that is difficult for mono-red to face. However, I feel that this version of Akroma has a trump card up its sleeve - with the super-cheap acceleration and very efficient land-trading cards, you have a solid chance of disrupting the Doran player's manabase before he can be cast (assuming you mulligan aggressively). Yes, that means T1 / T2 disruption - it's entirely possible and actually quite common (though T1 Birds of Paradise on-the-play probably spells doom for us, almost regardless of our opening hand.....). If you manage to rock the boat like this the matchup will become a lot easier, but otherwise this could be an uphill battle. Still, the fact that Doran's on three colors is a boon to us, as we often need to hit just one land to make a big impact.
Five-Color
Many five-color decks are packed with counterspells, discard, and removal, so this can be a bit of a sticky matchup. However, that doesn't mean they'll have all of them at once. If you can land an early LD spell they'll likely be dead in the water, as their access to colors will be gone. The game-plan will shift according to the actual build, but simply tweak your playstyle according to the color the deck leans towards (generally blue vs. black). I haven't found that anything too special must be done here - just business as usual.
All in all, Akroma is very strong against the typical control decks we've seen in the meta over the past few years. Unfortunately, fast swarm decks are a weakness that has yet to be addressed, but I will attempt to do so once I find someone to actually test with.
-1 Implode
-1 Lava Flow
-1 Snow-Covered Mountain
-1 Expedition Map
+1 Slagstorm
+1 Volcanic Fallout
+1 Pyroclasm
+1 Earthquake
+1 ?? (Will check in the morning)
Over the last week or so, I have done extensive testing against the faster, cheaper creature-oriented decks (specifically, all-in Radha). In general, I've found that virtually any LD at 5cmc was not as useful as I would like in these matchups. In the last update, the focus of this deck was shifted to nailing T3 LD - meaning, 4cmc is the ideal cost for consistency. I often found that the cards higher in the curve were neither fast enough, nor versatile enough - having the option of killing a creature is nice, but often it's too little, too late. I REALLY shy away from cutting anything at 4cmc, and actually hope that we see at least one efficient LD spell in Dark Ascension, but even without one, I just don't think 5cmc cuts it. Expedition Map is quite honestly just useless now and an incredible waste of tempo... and that's the killer here. There are definitely lands worth fetching, but in my experience, I'd rather have almost any other card 9/10 times. As far as land goes, 38 is just too many with this many acceleration pieces, and it was necessary to cut down or risk total flooding later in the game. Depending on what we get in Dark Ascension, this may be cut down to 36 lands, as 37 might even be too many. If not, this slot may go to artifact destruction in one form or another.
The general trend that I've noticed with this deck is as follows:
(a) Against more expensive generals and decks (not running heavy, heavy acceleration, a la Chrome Mox / Mox Diamond) the current build is consistent enough to keep them off their curve, and in general they don't get much opportunity to play anyway. Losing out on targeted creature removal is not a problem; their usefulness was quite narrow (rarely was a creature out of sweeper range able to be played) and being that there were only two (not counting Aftershock), they weren't consistent answers anyway.
(b) Against cheap, efficient, fast decks, 5cmc spells are simply too expensive for too little effect. 4cmc is still extremely powerful.... the aggro builds can be likened to a blown pipe - cut the problem off early at the source (with land destruction) and then clean up the mess (sweepers). 5cmc is, again, just too slow, but more importantly, the slots are MUCH better used for mass removal.
As an aside, I am rather unimpressed by Bend or Break. In games so far it's typically meant trading 3-4 of my lands for 2 of my opponents, and in addition to losing the card itself, that's a bit too much card-disadvantage. However, it's in for the time being as it hasn't seen too much play (much less against a variety of decks). Thoughts of Ruin seems clearly better, at the moment.
* I haven't updated the rest of the primer to reflect these changes, but will do so soon.
-1 Lightning Bolt
-1 All Is Dust
-1 Fissure Vent
-1 Plunder
-1 Volcanic Submersion
-1 Darksteel Ingot
-1 Foriysian Totem
-1 Gilded Lotus
-1 Grafted Skullcap
-1 Sisay's Ring
-1 Spectral Searchlight
-1 Thran Dynamo
-1 Ur-Golem's Eye
-1 Worn Powerstone
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
-1 Darksteel Citadel
-1 Forgotten Cave
+1 Guardian Idol
+1 Bend or Break
+1 Goblin Settler
+1 Star Compass
+1 Dwarven Landslide
+1 Ruination
+1 Seething Song
+1 Iron Myr
+1 Sphere of the Suns
+1 Ring of Gix
+1 Everflowing Chalice
+1 Incendiary Command
+1 Implode
+1 Ruby Medallion
+1 Avalance Riders
+3 Snow-Covered Mountain
The key shift in this update is the focus on T1/T2 acceleration and T3 land destruction. As a result, most 5cmc spells are gone. Expensive acceleration has been likewise removed as it did not land quickly enough to hurt the opponent. Removal is gone, as it was so situational that they were typically dead-draws (many generals can be stopped simply through resource denial). The land count is back up by 1 - Boseiju was not necessary and ETB tapped was a killer, while indestructibility on the Darksteel Citadel was not worth it for the loss of access to R (or RR with doublers).
I feel this deck has jumped a full level or two in nastiness with these edits - the consistency has increased IMMENSELY, and I am now truly confident in its power.... it had always been strong before, but again, the newfound consistency is what makes this deck so great.
-1 Combust
-1 Starstorm
-1 Mouth of Ronom
-1 Duplicant
+1 Extraplanar Lens
+1 Prismatic Lens
+1 Flowstone Flood
+1 Library of Alexandria
+1 Lay Waste
+1 Grafted Skullcap
+1 Mox Diamond
With these edits, I decided to bring the land count down by two. I was getting a little flooded before, and often didn't have the cards in-hand the first few turns to accomplish what I needed to. Combust, Starstorm, Mouth of Ronom, and Duplicant definitely have their places in certain decks, but I've found that I NEVER like drawing into them. Yes, there are certain situations where they are useful, but they were far from justifying a slot in the deck. Throwing in more acceleration and destruction helped the consistency and curve of the deck. Library of Alexandria is a little hit-and-miss, if it's in your opening hand on-the-draw it can single-handedly win you the game. Otherwise it's only a colorless source, but that's not a bad thing at all, especially when it doesn't ETB tapped. Grafted Skullcap is a new addition that I want to try out - after Turn 5 / 6 my hand is usually empty anyway, and I'll play it out as soon as I draw into cards, so the disadvantage isn't really very real. Mox Diamond is a GREAT card - yes, I two-for-one myself, but throwing down land destruction a turn early is CRITICAL in EDH - crippling their curve or color-access on T2 rather than T3 (or T3 rather than T4) can have an unbelievable effect on the game.
Thanks all, and as mentioned, I'm more than happy to take suggestions! Good luck!
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
But I do want to try it out! Unfortunately I don't get much play time at school, but I'll get back to it sometime soon
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
Searching through my cache of cards, I came across Conquer, Dwarven Miner, Galvanoth, Jeweled Amulet, and Solfatara as possible card alternatives/replacement.
Assist me in discussing the possibility of the above-mentioned cards.
Thanks.
Is Crack the Earth just too unreliable?
Why no Manakin?
Worn Powerstone and Palladium Myr aren't better than Heart of Ramos and Coalition Relic?
Mono Red's Strengths and Mono White's Strengths
Crack the Earth - Oh man, I REALLY love this card, and it's one of the few I literally haven't looked through.... this is extremely intriguing, but it'll definitely take some testing. The real question is how many decks I face will get quick weenies out. It also has potential to hit the general if your oppo is desperate for land.... but I'm not sure how many times it would hit something bland and unuseful. I will definitely need to look into this when I get the time!
Manakin I've kept on the fence about. I love the 2cc, don't love the colorless... also don't love the fact he's a creature. I can live with Iron Myr because of the R, but maybe this could find a spot? It's pretty funny, every single time I revise this list Manakin is one of the very last cards to be cut, I probably just need to give him a try.
Worn Powerstone / Palladium Myr - Powerstone was in a recent version of the deck, but the Myr never was because he's always a huge target (more expensive, easier to kill creature-version of Sol Ring). However, I cut them because of the ETB-tapped, which actually hurt me quite a bit. The benefit to Heart of Ramos and Coalition Relic are BOTH the colors, and the fact that they only cost a net of 2 mana that turn - when you are at 4-5 mana in play, it's possible to play one of these pieces AND cheap LD, whereas with the powerstone it simply wasn't. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I found myself in lots of situations where I was just one mana short of having the explosive turn I needed, and that's why I cut those two cards.
Conquer - At 5cc, I'm thinking it's too expensive. This deck REALLY wants to hit hard on 3-4cc cards, and I've done everything I can to cut 5cc that aren't incredibly powerful.
Dwarven Miner - Doesn't have an immediate lock-out effect (like Magus of the Moon or Goblin Settler, who protect themselves). I've noticed he tends to eat removal before he's useful, and then I haven't gotten any use out of him. I had him in here for a long time, and when he worked he sure as hell worked, but the times he didn't made it not worth it. The nail in the coffin is that this deck loses to FAST multicolored decks or monocolored decks, and he doesn't help against either (not fast enough for multi, and too many basics in mono).
Galvanoth is veeeeerry win-more in this deck. If he cost 1 or 2 he'd be a good fit (albeit broken) but if I could hit him at 5cc, 90% of the time I'd rather just have topdecked an immediate-effect card... especially because Galvy has no guaranteed payout
Jeweled Amulet is decent turn-1 but way too slow otherwise. I don't want to have to commit resources beyond the initial casting cost, and technically this is not a mana source but rather mana storage.
Solfatara - My gut feeling tells me no, because it doesn't permanently stop anything. Meaning, yes I can lock him out for a turn, but that land is still going to hit.... whereas conventional LD will just get rid of it entirely. Best-case scenario I would cantrip into LD, but then I could have just used the LD the first time around?
Thanks for the suggestions guys! I'm always looking for ways to tune the decks and you never fail to throw a few new and brilliant opinions into the mix. Hoping to get some minor revisions up in the next few weeks, but it may have to wait a while since I haven't had a chance to get back to it recently!
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
Late in the game it's about as valuable as a basic land; it has some pluses and minuses compared to a Mountain. But the early game acceleration makes it well worth inclusion over a mountain.
Topdecked, the card is rather useless as at that point in time I would rather see hard accel, simply because Amulet is so cumbersome - perhaps if you could remove multiple counters I could see the late-game potential, but the limit of one makes it difficult to justify the card beyond a T1 play.
Finally, and the primary reason I don't think it fits that well - with proper mulliganing, this deck is quite consistent at hitting T2 2cc acceleration / T3 LD (or better). As it stands, each card has a number of others that could take its place, and this is what gives the deck its consistency and "clockwork"-like playstyle. I DO absolutely agree with you that Amulet can, in many situations, speed up that clock - however, I fear that the deck will be sacrificing consistency for this slight speed advantage, for the aforementioned reasons. It's definitely a good card, but it either hits or it misses... and in a deck requiring strict and stalwart consistency (for the first few turns), it doesn't fit quite as well here.
That being said, a very similar card to Jeweled Amulet (and the one I would consider most for addition) is Lotus Petal. In either case, the effective acceleration in the first few "critical turns" is the same (1) and both spells are free. However, Petal doesn't require mana input and, more crucially, doesn't need a full turn of investment to bring a return - thus, it can be quite effective even if topdecked T3 or T4. I've been very back and forth about this card, because I'm just not sure the deck wants to give up a full draw for it. In tabletop games with my roommate, the deck has some trouble with fast, cheap weenies (he plays R/G Radha). In those situations, sweepers, rather than speed, have been crucial - in most other matchups, speed is great, but even after intense consideration, I've simply never found myself wishing I've had a Petal in-hand (over the other cards in-hand - assuming proper shuffling and mulliganing).
As a side note, I have actually tested with Petal in the past, and I would corroborate your claim that it provides for incredibly explosive starts. However, it was very hit-or-miss - I either dominated the opponent quickly and viciously, or I drew into Petal and wished I had hit more steam to guarantee victory. So yes, it does do incredible things; but I couldn't personally justify the drop in consistency.
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R
As a result, I tried diluting the LD strategy to include a lot more burn and sweepers. Surprisingly this actually makes the deck quite strong against a lot of the competitive meta - burn is VERY strong against most of the popular 1v1 Generals, who are typically (a) fairly low on toughness, (b) have targeted protection but typically no protection from sweepers, and (c) are generally built towards the standard meta (AKA not tuned to face a strong mono-red deck). You will notice the deck maintains a reasonable amount of acceleration (it's needed), and land destruction is still present - not necessarily to keep your opponent off mana entirely, but to nuke key lands that either get them into colors they need, or offer some strong utility. The rest of the deck is designed to wipe your opponent's board frequently enough to win with Akroma.
Anyway, the updated list, apologies it isn't sorted by card type:
With these updates the deck runs much smoother.... however, my current build of Red Akroma actually forgoes LD entirely in favor of a control-style mono-red. I really miss the LD (and it's a showstopper in real life) but in a competitive meta I've found it's not as strong as good old mono-red control. Yes, that sounds ridiculous, but it's completely possible just because of how damn strong Red Akroma is (Pro-white, Pro-blue, Pro-counter, and Trample mean lots of the standard answers are automatically worthless). That, and red is actually surprisingly good at efficiently dealing with some of the most common (and difficult) threats in this game, if you know how to play it right. If you're interested in that decklist (also about a year old, I've unfortunately been pretty overloaded this past year), I'm happy to post it.
UR [PRIMER] Flash of the Firemind (Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind) RU
BG Death and Staxes: FireStorm4056's Competitive Meren Stax List GB
W Avacyn Angel of Hope W
R Akroma, Angel of (Your Opponent's) Fury R
R 99-Mountain Ashling R