The Trials/Cartouches are cute as heck, but I really don't feel they merit slots. Thanks on reinforcing that I was being cute, I'll look for cuts for Cast Out elsewhere.
Good question. It's certainly a strong effect, the question is whether this is winmore or win-the-game stuff. So far, if the deck gets melted, I rarely feel that it would have been ok if I just had a few more spirits. Either inevitability sets in or I get dealt with in a manner where doubling spirits wouldn't do anything. Merits testing for sure, that much is a given.
Annointed Procession would work pretty well with the deck, but it's most likely the same kind timing as True Conviction: One only plays it when one is ready to close out the game. Before then producing two tokens for 1WB is definitely not flying under the radar.
I don't much like multipliers and such anymore unless they're a closer or a solution. By multipliers I mean the cards that support your agenda leaping forward but neither solve a problem or advance the agenda themselves. Even Sol Ring falls into this kind of group for me, especially when it comes down very early.
I like having a variety of solutions and approaches to my agenda, though, and I can see this card being an answer and a closer for those situations where you need to go wider by producing more tokens than normal.
Edit: In my own deck, I've adopted evasion in the form of Cover of Darkness to get more out of what spirits I do produce.
In all of my EDH career, there's never been a set quite as tuned to one of my deck's needs as AKH is to Daxos. There's no fewer than five possible includes in the set, so time to break them down!
Dusk - the no-brain slam-this-into-the-deck of this set. Daxos is a bear, so he lives as everything hill giant and above gets obliterated. We then rebuild momentarily, assuming we lost a spirit swarm in the explosion. An even stronger variation of Retribution of the Meek for the deck, will complement Sunspeth nicely, and the aftermath spell may get a bit of value every now and then as well.
Cast Out - Oblivion Ring effects have two main problems - the sorcery speed and the lack of permanence of handling the problem. When the former is removed, reasonable plays can be made. Stasis Snare was shoehorned into the deck as borderline filler early into its life, and it hung on for a surprisingly long time. As such, I have high hopes for this card. The potential cuteness with Cloudstone Curio, allowing the re-targeting of removal at instant speed if need be, the optional cycling rider I don't imagine myself using too often. I expect decent times to be had.
Gideon's Intervention - Nevermore is a very potent effect to have in the 99, handily kneecapping any deck that puts its eggs into a particular chokepoint spell basket. This comes with a faux-Runed Halo stapled on, for one more mana. As such, an automatic upgrade is staring us in the face, no? No. Those sort of effects need to come out hard and fast, and I've been known to sacrifice a Daxos experience counter to get the spell denial on board as soon as possible on occasion. Needing to front 4 mana instead of 3 could well make the difference. I might try to find a cut elsewhere, but at the time being it's not being included.
Anointed Procession - a seemingly no-brain include, seeing how the deck barfs tokens from the command zone. However, I feel that the card is likely to end up being winmore. Recall some Daxos losses and honestly ask yourself whether you'd have been able to turn the game around if you had twice the spirit total. The answer is going to be a resounding no the overwhelming majority of the time, as if the deck falls apart then this card's boon won't be enough to get things back on track. A comparison could be made to True Conviction, but this option comes with lifelink, a superbeast ability that turns games around by itself. I'm sure that some of you will ram it into your lists and report back how it plays, and I'll be interested to hear it. There's a chance I'm misjudging this card.
Cascading Cataracts - this is a very cute option to colour-fix if need be. Imagine tapping Serra's Sanctum for a boatload of white, and then filtering some of it to black to fuel spells and/or token generation. I'm a bit wary of it as it could be clunky in the early and mid game due to no innate coloured mana production, as well as the fact its fixing rider actually detracts one from your mana total.
As such, for the time being the first two cards are being included into the 99. The cuts may look a bit controversial, the first one in particular. However, I don't feel I've been using Academy Rector to her fullest potential. I'm very light on the sacrifice outlets, and only ever reliably kill her off with Attrition or a wrath. Otherwise, she's just a rattlesnake to get people to not swing into me (as people don't just pop her with swingers), and gets value once the inevitable wrath hits. There's nothing wrong with her, and I acknowledge she's a superbeast card, but I don't make enough use of the effect on my own terms. The second cut, Reconnaissance, is just for lack of a better option really. The utility is nice, but it's just that - utility. I imagine having an extra piece of removal in its place is going to be good for the deck's main game plan.
First, thanks for the awesome primer. Although my group seems way more casual than yours (like, discard effects is anything but flying under the radar) this was still a very informative for me.
What do you think about Liliana, Death's Majesty as another recursion and boardwipe piece? She is a bit slow with expensive abilities but the versatility may be worth a look. Daxos is a zombie so the ult does not destroy him.
First, thanks for the awesome primer. Although my group seems way more casual than yours (like, discard effects is anything but flying under the radar) this was still a very informative for me.
What do you think about Liliana, Death's Majesty as another recursion and boardwipe piece? She is a bit slow with expensive abilities but the versatility may be worth a look. Daxos is a zombie so the ult does not destroy him.
Glad to hear you found it useful I'd describe my group as semi-casual, the decks are reasonably built but there's nothing competitive running around.
You could do worse than the new Liliana, but she's not particularly stunning in here either. The minus isn't going to be super relevant here, as the deck runs barely any creatures and this isn't an easy way to circumvent commander tax like Phyrexian Reclamation. The plus makes a body, but you could just run the WB Sorin that makes anthem emblems and bodies and probably have a better time. I mean, if you want to you can obviously run her, but she doesn't seem to synergise too well with the main way the deck operates.
I feel like I can soundly give a report card on Marchesa's Decree: it's good.
I have a more casual build than Rumpy's build here because it was too hard to race Daxos vs the competitive decks while it had no problem completely locking out worse decks. So I made my deck intentionally casual so that players who don't have much experience, money or a combination have a deck that they can face that won't roll them over. With that in mind for its' build, the Decree is great for replacing itself, otherwise being harmless and thus sticking for Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Serra's Sanctum. Once Monarch comes into play, it gives players permission for you to keep making Spirits and you just seem so, so reasonable to attack players - after all, you just want to draw a card. This is a great psychological effect and once you've built a strong defense, suddenly they can't get Monarchy back from you so you're just in gravy town drawing tons of cards.
Perhaps not in a competitive-ish build like Rumpy's Primer but great in something solid.
@ lyonhaert: Love the Cover of Darkness suggestion. It's a great way to punch through.
I really do feel like Anointed Procession is being underestimated here. I have played quite a few games with it and I am always happy to see it. The consensus that if making an army of tokens isn't enough to win, then making double that number isn't likely to change that, isn't really the right way to look at it.
I see Anointed Procession as a mana doubler. It enables you to continue to do other things while still making tokens. Instead of spending six mana to make two tokens, I can spend 3 mana and still have 3 mana left over to cast another enchantment.
In a deck as mana hungry as this one, where there just often isn't enough mana available to do everything you would want to do, an effect like AP's really opens up some additional lines of play.
I really do feel like Anointed Procession is being underestimated here. I have played quite a few games with it and I am always happy to see it. The consensus that if making an army of tokens isn't enough to win, then making double that number isn't likely to change that, isn't really the right way to look at it.
I see Anointed Procession as a mana doubler. It enables you to continue to do other things while still making tokens. Instead of spending six mana to make two tokens, I can spend 3 mana and still have 3 mana left over to cast another enchantment.
In a deck as mana hungry as this one, where there just often isn't enough mana available to do everything you would want to do, an effect like AP's really opens up some additional lines of play.
Your reasoning is sound, now I'll have to track one down and give it a go. It's human to err, there was over a year that I could have spent running Genesis Wave in my Patron of the Orochi deck, but did not as it was a nonbo with the deck's original incarnation's game plan and I didn't connect the dots that the situation changed. Thanks for the feedback
Yeah, I can say for sure I underestimated Anointed Procession. At first, I thought that doubling your tokens is OK but I forgot the main strength of this deck: Constellation triggers, Cloudstone Curio and Skybind. Procession doubles all of those triggers. Suddenly, the Grim Guardian goes from a cutesy pinger into an actual clock. And it gets more efficient as I'm making so many Daxos-men I can have one attack and one stay back or if I'm really safe behind my Pillowfort, I swing for double. Now Grim Guardian's job is even easier and Grim Guardian is probably the weakest Constellation trigger you'd use in this type of deck.
I also found that it is a magical number: 4 - screw you Gaddock Teeg.
Something I just realized Rumpy, with the amount of Discard you have in Daxos, is there a reason you're not using Waste Not?
Yeah, yeah, I need to find a cut for it. I'm super preoccupied with a move for the time being, and I'm unsure if I'll even have a magic playgroup in the new place... also, Teeg does actually stop this
I don't like running cards that only come online with something else, unless I can guarantee the something else. This might be an artifact of my very first EDH deck, Purphoros, God of the Forge. I had ample on-theme two-card gg no re combos in there, and given red's lack of tutoring and the combo cards' commonly asynergistic nature in a vacuum, I'd often end up with dead crap on hand. As such, I tend to keep my 99 to stuff that works well by itself, the commander, or something that is just about guaranteed to be happening as it's a core element of the game plan. I only have 6 discard effects in here, and I don't tend to tutor to get them online, so Waste Not would often just sit there doing very little.
There's not much to this one, really. I rolled up to the last evening with my previous meta and a guy brought me the Procession. In order to try it out, I thumbed through the deck for something to yank out to make room. I pulled out the Knell without giving it too much thought, as it grants some level of Daxos independence but is very costly and is quite variable in its rate of return. The quick, impulsive change played reasonably well that night, and the one time I got to walk the deck since. EDH hasn't really been on my mind recently, I've moved town and had to set up a completely bare flat to become something liveable, settle into a new job etc. I don't even have a new local meta yet (speaking of that, if you know of something EDH'y happening regularly in the Cambridge area, feel free to give me a holler).
My sample size with the Procession has been pretty small, but it seems to play okay. It does grant a bit of play flexibility, as noted by Retsyn, and scales well into the later game due to its faux-doubler nature. It's definitely better than I gave it credit for, although it hasn't turned the deck on its head (at least yet). Haven't had to experience it go to town with the constellation goodness, but it's something I look forward to.
I mean, the inclusion of this fine fellow is a no-brainer. My gut tells me he's probably going to breach the "well, this is pretty damn silly in this shell" inner sanctum of the likes of Skybind with his incredibly fair and balanced " , pay 2 life: Demonic Tutor". True, you need to front eight mana to get this going, but this deck's quite good at getting the mana flowing, so it should hopefully be able to make it happen. And once Big Ole Razaketh hits the field, things are never gonna be the same. You don't even need to actively use him if you don't need to, you can just keep on going about your day, treating him as a wrath insurance of sorts. Someone screws with your board? Funnel all the dudes into tutors, untap with a stupidly sculpted grip and immediately get back on the horse. Alternately, start aggressively chewing through your ranks to get out silver bullets, power lifters, huge mana or whatever you need to rocket ahead. Seems like the most powerful card printed for the deck since its inception, might end up being the list's equivalent of Temur Sabertooth from my Patron of the Orochi build.
Room needed to be made. Seeing how this thing costs eight, and the curve of the deck works pretty well as is, the cut obviously had to come from the higher CMC echelons. In the end, it's going to be Myojin of Night's Reach. The thing with Myojin is that it doesn't actively synergise with the deck's "slow and steady" game plan, being the polar opposite to a Sword of Rampant Growth or Burnished Hart. You want to blast it down nearly immediately off a crazy rock cascade and gut hands, hobbling everyone back to the stone age before they had a chance to really do anything. That's not the sort of play you want to actually be making with this deck if you want to maintain appearances, plus it tapers off in effectiveness the later it happens. By contrast, Big Ole Raz comes down once you have some level of infrastructure and helps you ensure you don't fall back too hard while helping you progress if so desired. He just gels with the deck's game plan better.
I mean, the inclusion of this fine fellow is a no-brainer. My gut tells me he's probably going to breach the "well, this is pretty damn silly in this shell" inner sanctum of the likes of Skybind with his incredibly fair and balanced " , pay 2 life: Demonic Tutor". True, you need to front eight mana to get this going, but this deck's quite good at getting the mana flowing, so it should hopefully be able to make it happen. And once Big Ole Razaketh hits the field, things are never gonna be the same. You don't even need to actively use him if you don't need to, you can just keep on going about your day, treating him as a wrath insurance of sorts. Someone screws with your board? Funnel all the dudes into tutors, untap with a stupidly sculpted grip and immediately get back on the horse. Alternately, start aggressively chewing through your ranks to get out silver bullets, power lifters, huge mana or whatever you need to rocket ahead. Seems like the most powerful card printed for the deck since its inception, might end up being the list's equivalent of Temur Sabertooth from my Patron of the Orochi build.
Room needed to be made. Seeing how this thing costs eight, and the curve of the deck works pretty well as is, the cut obviously had to come from the higher CMC echelons. In the end, it's going to be Myojin of Night's Reach. The thing with Myojin is that it doesn't actively synergise with the deck's "slow and steady" game plan, being the polar opposite to a Sword of Rampant Growth or Burnished Hart. You want to blast it down nearly immediately off a crazy rock cascade and gut hands, hobbling everyone back to the stone age before they had a chance to really do anything. That's not the sort of play you want to actually be making with this deck if you want to maintain appearances, plus it tapers off in effectiveness the later it happens. By contrast, Big Ole Raz comes down once you have some level of infrastructure and helps you ensure you don't fall back too hard while helping you progress if so desired. He just gels with the deck's game plan better.
I didn't even think to include Razzy in Daxos but you've made a very convincing case for him. It seems like he's going in every EDH deck I own, I hope he'll be considered a junk rare. I have the further problem of not having an obvious high cost card to replace him with.
It looks that way to me. Then again I could be wrong. Elesh Norn doesn't need other cards to do something. Not to the extent Raz does anyway. He might chill at $7 alongside Rune-Scarred Demon but I think the fact that he's legendary (a potential commander) will raise his price over time.
If he gets reprinted a couple times he could drop to $7 the way Iona did.
Edit: He's hard to evaluate because he can tutor up all the pieces for an immediate win combo upon resolution, but it requires a lot of resources to do so. If you can reanimate him, give him a couple bodies to eat, and then play a combo like Buried Alive and Reanimate efficiently then he will be $$$. If not then he will probably stay around $7-$10
Haven't been able to play much EDH in the past handful of months, but I got another fun game in with Daxos last weekend. One-on-one vs Sorin, Grim Nemesis spirit/vampire tribal. We allow this guy some planeswalker commanders because he's a very casual player, kindof Timmy+Vorthos. Which also is how Daxos can go one-on-one successfully.
An early Necropotence on my side and some fliers on his side by midgame had me worried until I was able to place No Mercy, because I knew he'd stop attacking until he could alpha strike. I held back on using card disruption like Oppression because he was often hellbent with Sorin being his only source of extra cards and it would have hurt me more. Spirit of the Labyrinth was basically for an extra experience counter and blocker, as it otherwise wasn't doing anything to either of us. Darksteel Mutation and Necromancy were also used, the former to ground a flyer and the other to get his former Doomed Traveler and clamp it in the midgame for cards and a flyer.
But the dramatic climax of the game was when he had Sorin at 7 counters and I attacked it with a 5/5 spirit made unblockable by Rogue's Passage and my Academy Rector with equipped Skullclamp (which had gone unblocked for 4 turns prior). He decided to block the Rector to save his planeswalker, and I went for True Conviction before the draw from the clamp. On this, he conceded.
[...] In the long term, I intend to get fetches and a Scrubland and everything, but for now I have more pressing matters, such as ensuring that the deck actually runs smoothly.
Old me must have felt that something was going on, even though the deck was in its ugly larval stages at that point. While old me was not correct on some calls, like not slamming Fact or Fiction into a budget Tromokratis build because reasons, he did turn out to be dead on with this one. I've acquired a full set of fetches not too long ago, as the MM17 reprinting acted as a signal for me to stop putting the enemy ones off, so it dawned upon me recently that I'm just a Scrubland away from having a perfect mana base here. Given how much the fetches already cost, and the mileage the deck has offered, it wasn't that hard a decision.
Most of the room for the fetches and dual come from basics, but I also eat the two utility CIPT monocolour lands. I mean, if I'm running fetches and a dual, New Benalia ain't fooling anyone. Also, Bojuka Bog only really shone when I routinely played against a guy who nearly exclusively ran graveyard decks which fell apart to interaction, and has been more in the decent range otherwise. I still have graveyard interaction in the 99 with Agent of Erebos, but I'll feel safer keeping my basic count up for Land Tax and Sword of Rampant Growth purposes.
There's also a non-land swap. I also recently realised just how much removal this deck has packed - 17 pieces between spot and wrath options, which is pretty silly. Add in another deck with a decent splash of control and the pod can slog on for hours. While I'm not about to decimate my answer package or anything, I could make room for some more draw. My recent deck excursions have taught me the value of acquiring bonus cardboards, and it's time to try to reintroduce a card that might have gotten axed at an inopportune time and tossed to the wayside as clunky. Mesa Enchantress was last included back before I had stable mana, and it got yanked out along with Greed and Necropotence just as the deck was about to burst out of its cocoon and stop playing like death. She's the most natural include I can come up with when I consider how to boost the deck's draw power, so I'll give her another shot. A lot of reintroduced cards have managed to set up a comfy nest for themselves in the smoothly functioning version of the deck, and this may be the most recent one of those. Seeing how I went on a tirade about removal, I'm taking out Dusk // Dawn to make room. There's nothing wrong with the card, and I still firmly believe that it's a very good include in the shell. Wiping the board of fat and immediately rebuilding is powerful, but the window when the effect is at its finest is surprisingly narrow. I haven't been particularly wooed by the card any time I drew it, and I realise the cut may be a bit premature as even Sunspeth took forever to "click", but I just needed to make room for the enchantress. There. Now I'm an actual enchantress deck?
Also, a quick note on your Razaketh discussion - EDH alone doesn't tend to drive the prices of new cards to absurd levels. Look at Zendikar Resurgent. It's the most played OGW card in all of EDH, by a substantial margin, yet it's cheap as hell. As such, it's of little surprise to me that he's been falling like a rock ever since release. I traded a Rune-Scarred Demon for my Raz at HOU prerelease, a move which has proven to be suboptimal, but I don't regret it as the recipient of the trade is a good friend and the Demon will hopefully soup one of his decks up quite handily.
It was more tongue-in-cheek because so many folks auto-include it when they have a bunch of fetches. It's only been over $30 for a couple years — most I know who have one got it well before then. There's a slight chance he acquired one via the same channels he acquired swords and whatnot.
Nope, I don't own a Crucible. I am slightly tempted to acquire one, as it'd also help do ugly as hell stuff with Strip Mine and protect the fat mana lands from removal a little. But yeah, having played the deck a bit with the new mana base, this changes very little. Save your pennies for more useful cardboard unless you already have it sitting around.
Game snippets tend to be more lyonhaert's domain around these parts, but I figured I'd do a bit more this time than a quick "yeah Mesa Enchantress is good I suck".
The hand wasn't really anything super special to begin with. The enchantress, some land, a Skullclamp which ended up doing literally nothing. By turn four I had both Daxos and the enchantress on the field, had lucked into an Idyllic Tutor. Fine. Let's take this thing out for a spin. Fetch out Flickering Ward, start machine gunning it up and down. To the surprise of noone but me, bonus cardboard is good. Land drops were comfortably made, experience counters were amassed, various utility enchantments came down too. Eventually Skybind came out to play, along with Serra's Sanctum. Resource production was going good, and the table finally took some interest. However, Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant was getting the brunt of the attention thanks to a 20/20 Sunscorch Regent, and subsequently the Riku firing off a copied kicked Rite of Replication at the guy's Guardian of the Gateless.
Pretty soon, enough mass to consider going all in was accumulated. Upkeep, Vampiric Tutor... and this is where things fell apart, as I got complacent and was running out of time (buses don't adjust to EDH games yet). I got Extinguish All Hope, did a final run of massive Flickering Ward machine gunning along with a True Conviction, blow up the world, turn 8 double striking lifelinking 9/9s sideways. Oh, hello there Wing Shards with a storm count of 9. I likely would have had the game in the long run, a few turns of smart flickering and spirit amassment would have done the trick, but I was being hasty and got caught with my pants down. Had I not been time constrained and a bit distracted, I'd have fished out Thoughtrender Lamia and just done the draw lock, going for the alpha strike a swing or two later. Eh.
Anyway, yeah, Mesa Enchantress is good. By the time I allowed her to perish in the wrath, she had drawn me nine cards. Not a bad rate of return for an early turn of stunted development helping me fall under the radar. Probably just got axed at exactly the wrong time. True, there's an anti-synergy with Spirit of the Labyrinth in the current build, which might have somehow kept me from doing this earlier, but the Spirit is also anti-synergistic with stuff like Phyrexian Arena, and I didn't stop running that, now did I. On the other hand, the Arena grants experience... blech, you get the idea.
Also, the reduced basic count plus presence of fetches make for an interesting optimisation problem when Land Tax becomes involved, even more so if there's also a Sword of Rampant Growth. How much land do you suck up to your hand, potentially risking topdecking literal actual dead cards in fetches after a while? I'm never one to autopilot pick up three basics each upkeep and discard freely, but only having 14 on tap is making me ponder this for some reason. I'm probably just making a mountain out of a molehill really.
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
I don't much like multipliers and such anymore unless they're a closer or a solution. By multipliers I mean the cards that support your agenda leaping forward but neither solve a problem or advance the agenda themselves. Even Sol Ring falls into this kind of group for me, especially when it comes down very early.
I like having a variety of solutions and approaches to my agenda, though, and I can see this card being an answer and a closer for those situations where you need to go wider by producing more tokens than normal.
Edit: In my own deck, I've adopted evasion in the form of Cover of Darkness to get more out of what spirits I do produce.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
1 Academy Rector
1 Reconnaissance
1 Cast Out
1 Dusk
In all of my EDH career, there's never been a set quite as tuned to one of my deck's needs as AKH is to Daxos. There's no fewer than five possible includes in the set, so time to break them down!
As such, for the time being the first two cards are being included into the 99. The cuts may look a bit controversial, the first one in particular. However, I don't feel I've been using Academy Rector to her fullest potential. I'm very light on the sacrifice outlets, and only ever reliably kill her off with Attrition or a wrath. Otherwise, she's just a rattlesnake to get people to not swing into me (as people don't just pop her with swingers), and gets value once the inevitable wrath hits. There's nothing wrong with her, and I acknowledge she's a superbeast card, but I don't make enough use of the effect on my own terms. The second cut, Reconnaissance, is just for lack of a better option really. The utility is nice, but it's just that - utility. I imagine having an extra piece of removal in its place is going to be good for the deck's main game plan.
What do you think about Liliana, Death's Majesty as another recursion and boardwipe piece? She is a bit slow with expensive abilities but the versatility may be worth a look. Daxos is a zombie so the ult does not destroy him.
Glad to hear you found it useful I'd describe my group as semi-casual, the decks are reasonably built but there's nothing competitive running around.
You could do worse than the new Liliana, but she's not particularly stunning in here either. The minus isn't going to be super relevant here, as the deck runs barely any creatures and this isn't an easy way to circumvent commander tax like Phyrexian Reclamation. The plus makes a body, but you could just run the WB Sorin that makes anthem emblems and bodies and probably have a better time. I mean, if you want to you can obviously run her, but she doesn't seem to synergise too well with the main way the deck operates.
I have a more casual build than Rumpy's build here because it was too hard to race Daxos vs the competitive decks while it had no problem completely locking out worse decks. So I made my deck intentionally casual so that players who don't have much experience, money or a combination have a deck that they can face that won't roll them over. With that in mind for its' build, the Decree is great for replacing itself, otherwise being harmless and thus sticking for Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Serra's Sanctum. Once Monarch comes into play, it gives players permission for you to keep making Spirits and you just seem so, so reasonable to attack players - after all, you just want to draw a card. This is a great psychological effect and once you've built a strong defense, suddenly they can't get Monarchy back from you so you're just in gravy town drawing tons of cards.
Perhaps not in a competitive-ish build like Rumpy's Primer but great in something solid.
@ lyonhaert: Love the Cover of Darkness suggestion. It's a great way to punch through.
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
I see Anointed Procession as a mana doubler. It enables you to continue to do other things while still making tokens. Instead of spending six mana to make two tokens, I can spend 3 mana and still have 3 mana left over to cast another enchantment.
In a deck as mana hungry as this one, where there just often isn't enough mana available to do everything you would want to do, an effect like AP's really opens up some additional lines of play.
Your reasoning is sound, now I'll have to track one down and give it a go. It's human to err, there was over a year that I could have spent running Genesis Wave in my Patron of the Orochi deck, but did not as it was a nonbo with the deck's original incarnation's game plan and I didn't connect the dots that the situation changed. Thanks for the feedback
I also found that it is a magical number: 4 - screw you Gaddock Teeg.
Something I just realized Rumpy, with the amount of Discard you have in Daxos, is there a reason you're not using Waste Not?
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
I don't like running cards that only come online with something else, unless I can guarantee the something else. This might be an artifact of my very first EDH deck, Purphoros, God of the Forge. I had ample on-theme two-card gg no re combos in there, and given red's lack of tutoring and the combo cards' commonly asynergistic nature in a vacuum, I'd often end up with dead crap on hand. As such, I tend to keep my 99 to stuff that works well by itself, the commander, or something that is just about guaranteed to be happening as it's a core element of the game plan. I only have 6 discard effects in here, and I don't tend to tutor to get them online, so Waste Not would often just sit there doing very little.
1 Debtors' Knell
1 Anointed Procession
There's not much to this one, really. I rolled up to the last evening with my previous meta and a guy brought me the Procession. In order to try it out, I thumbed through the deck for something to yank out to make room. I pulled out the Knell without giving it too much thought, as it grants some level of Daxos independence but is very costly and is quite variable in its rate of return. The quick, impulsive change played reasonably well that night, and the one time I got to walk the deck since. EDH hasn't really been on my mind recently, I've moved town and had to set up a completely bare flat to become something liveable, settle into a new job etc. I don't even have a new local meta yet (speaking of that, if you know of something EDH'y happening regularly in the Cambridge area, feel free to give me a holler).
My sample size with the Procession has been pretty small, but it seems to play okay. It does grant a bit of play flexibility, as noted by Retsyn, and scales well into the later game due to its faux-doubler nature. It's definitely better than I gave it credit for, although it hasn't turned the deck on its head (at least yet). Haven't had to experience it go to town with the constellation goodness, but it's something I look forward to.
1 Myojin of Night's Reach
1 Razaketh, the Foulblooded
I mean, the inclusion of this fine fellow is a no-brainer. My gut tells me he's probably going to breach the "well, this is pretty damn silly in this shell" inner sanctum of the likes of Skybind with his incredibly fair and balanced " , pay 2 life: Demonic Tutor". True, you need to front eight mana to get this going, but this deck's quite good at getting the mana flowing, so it should hopefully be able to make it happen. And once Big Ole Razaketh hits the field, things are never gonna be the same. You don't even need to actively use him if you don't need to, you can just keep on going about your day, treating him as a wrath insurance of sorts. Someone screws with your board? Funnel all the dudes into tutors, untap with a stupidly sculpted grip and immediately get back on the horse. Alternately, start aggressively chewing through your ranks to get out silver bullets, power lifters, huge mana or whatever you need to rocket ahead. Seems like the most powerful card printed for the deck since its inception, might end up being the list's equivalent of Temur Sabertooth from my Patron of the Orochi build.
Room needed to be made. Seeing how this thing costs eight, and the curve of the deck works pretty well as is, the cut obviously had to come from the higher CMC echelons. In the end, it's going to be Myojin of Night's Reach. The thing with Myojin is that it doesn't actively synergise with the deck's "slow and steady" game plan, being the polar opposite to a Sword of Rampant Growth or Burnished Hart. You want to blast it down nearly immediately off a crazy rock cascade and gut hands, hobbling everyone back to the stone age before they had a chance to really do anything. That's not the sort of play you want to actually be making with this deck if you want to maintain appearances, plus it tapers off in effectiveness the later it happens. By contrast, Big Ole Raz comes down once you have some level of infrastructure and helps you ensure you don't fall back too hard while helping you progress if so desired. He just gels with the deck's game plan better.
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
If he gets reprinted a couple times he could drop to $7 the way Iona did.
Edit: He's hard to evaluate because he can tutor up all the pieces for an immediate win combo upon resolution, but it requires a lot of resources to do so. If you can reanimate him, give him a couple bodies to eat, and then play a combo like Buried Alive and Reanimate efficiently then he will be $$$. If not then he will probably stay around $7-$10
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
An early Necropotence on my side and some fliers on his side by midgame had me worried until I was able to place No Mercy, because I knew he'd stop attacking until he could alpha strike. I held back on using card disruption like Oppression because he was often hellbent with Sorin being his only source of extra cards and it would have hurt me more. Spirit of the Labyrinth was basically for an extra experience counter and blocker, as it otherwise wasn't doing anything to either of us. Darksteel Mutation and Necromancy were also used, the former to ground a flyer and the other to get his former Doomed Traveler and clamp it in the midgame for cards and a flyer.
But the dramatic climax of the game was when he had Sorin at 7 counters and I attacked it with a 5/5 spirit made unblockable by Rogue's Passage and my Academy Rector with equipped Skullclamp (which had gone unblocked for 4 turns prior). He decided to block the Rector to save his planeswalker, and I went for True Conviction before the draw from the clamp. On this, he conceded.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Old me must have felt that something was going on, even though the deck was in its ugly larval stages at that point. While old me was not correct on some calls, like not slamming Fact or Fiction into a budget Tromokratis build because reasons, he did turn out to be dead on with this one. I've acquired a full set of fetches not too long ago, as the MM17 reprinting acted as a signal for me to stop putting the enemy ones off, so it dawned upon me recently that I'm just a Scrubland away from having a perfect mana base here. Given how much the fetches already cost, and the mileage the deck has offered, it wasn't that hard a decision.
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Dusk // Dawn
1 New Benalia
3 Plains
3 Swamp
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
1 Marsh Flats
1 Mesa Enchantress
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
Most of the room for the fetches and dual come from basics, but I also eat the two utility CIPT monocolour lands. I mean, if I'm running fetches and a dual, New Benalia ain't fooling anyone. Also, Bojuka Bog only really shone when I routinely played against a guy who nearly exclusively ran graveyard decks which fell apart to interaction, and has been more in the decent range otherwise. I still have graveyard interaction in the 99 with Agent of Erebos, but I'll feel safer keeping my basic count up for Land Tax and Sword of Rampant Growth purposes.
There's also a non-land swap. I also recently realised just how much removal this deck has packed - 17 pieces between spot and wrath options, which is pretty silly. Add in another deck with a decent splash of control and the pod can slog on for hours. While I'm not about to decimate my answer package or anything, I could make room for some more draw. My recent deck excursions have taught me the value of acquiring bonus cardboards, and it's time to try to reintroduce a card that might have gotten axed at an inopportune time and tossed to the wayside as clunky. Mesa Enchantress was last included back before I had stable mana, and it got yanked out along with Greed and Necropotence just as the deck was about to burst out of its cocoon and stop playing like death. She's the most natural include I can come up with when I consider how to boost the deck's draw power, so I'll give her another shot. A lot of reintroduced cards have managed to set up a comfy nest for themselves in the smoothly functioning version of the deck, and this may be the most recent one of those. Seeing how I went on a tirade about removal, I'm taking out Dusk // Dawn to make room. There's nothing wrong with the card, and I still firmly believe that it's a very good include in the shell. Wiping the board of fat and immediately rebuilding is powerful, but the window when the effect is at its finest is surprisingly narrow. I haven't been particularly wooed by the card any time I drew it, and I realise the cut may be a bit premature as even Sunspeth took forever to "click", but I just needed to make room for the enchantress. There. Now I'm an actual enchantress deck?
Also, a quick note on your Razaketh discussion - EDH alone doesn't tend to drive the prices of new cards to absurd levels. Look at Zendikar Resurgent. It's the most played OGW card in all of EDH, by a substantial margin, yet it's cheap as hell. As such, it's of little surprise to me that he's been falling like a rock ever since release. I traded a Rune-Scarred Demon for my Raz at HOU prerelease, a move which has proven to be suboptimal, but I don't regret it as the recipient of the trade is a good friend and the Demon will hopefully soup one of his decks up quite handily.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
The hand wasn't really anything super special to begin with. The enchantress, some land, a Skullclamp which ended up doing literally nothing. By turn four I had both Daxos and the enchantress on the field, had lucked into an Idyllic Tutor. Fine. Let's take this thing out for a spin. Fetch out Flickering Ward, start machine gunning it up and down. To the surprise of noone but me, bonus cardboard is good. Land drops were comfortably made, experience counters were amassed, various utility enchantments came down too. Eventually Skybind came out to play, along with Serra's Sanctum. Resource production was going good, and the table finally took some interest. However, Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant was getting the brunt of the attention thanks to a 20/20 Sunscorch Regent, and subsequently the Riku firing off a copied kicked Rite of Replication at the guy's Guardian of the Gateless.
Pretty soon, enough mass to consider going all in was accumulated. Upkeep, Vampiric Tutor... and this is where things fell apart, as I got complacent and was running out of time (buses don't adjust to EDH games yet). I got Extinguish All Hope, did a final run of massive Flickering Ward machine gunning along with a True Conviction, blow up the world, turn 8 double striking lifelinking 9/9s sideways. Oh, hello there Wing Shards with a storm count of 9. I likely would have had the game in the long run, a few turns of smart flickering and spirit amassment would have done the trick, but I was being hasty and got caught with my pants down. Had I not been time constrained and a bit distracted, I'd have fished out Thoughtrender Lamia and just done the draw lock, going for the alpha strike a swing or two later. Eh.
Anyway, yeah, Mesa Enchantress is good. By the time I allowed her to perish in the wrath, she had drawn me nine cards. Not a bad rate of return for an early turn of stunted development helping me fall under the radar. Probably just got axed at exactly the wrong time. True, there's an anti-synergy with Spirit of the Labyrinth in the current build, which might have somehow kept me from doing this earlier, but the Spirit is also anti-synergistic with stuff like Phyrexian Arena, and I didn't stop running that, now did I. On the other hand, the Arena grants experience... blech, you get the idea.
Also, the reduced basic count plus presence of fetches make for an interesting optimisation problem when Land Tax becomes involved, even more so if there's also a Sword of Rampant Growth. How much land do you suck up to your hand, potentially risking topdecking literal actual dead cards in fetches after a while? I'm never one to autopilot pick up three basics each upkeep and discard freely, but only having 14 on tap is making me ponder this for some reason. I'm probably just making a mountain out of a molehill really.