I describe in detail why I prefer wildest dreams over seasons past in the card glossary. Basically it's that recursion is bad because it means your opponents know what's in your hand, so they'll force you to use it before they deploy their wincons. Seasons past is great in the 1v1 game, but by that time you can usually dump a ton into wildest dreams anyway. And you can use wildest dreams early/mid to get a board wipe or critical removal or w/e for cheap. Also you can't run seasons past with mystical tutor unless you want to instantly become the threat (although it is sweet). Mostly, it's just too powerful and it reveals the cards, so it makes you the threat. Also, slow vs competitive.
In this instance, have you considered that perhaps your opponents knowing that you have a grip full of removal serves as a useful deterrent?I've certainly played games where, after gaining hundreds of life with something like Grim Feast, my opponents don't want to attack me anymore because doing so seems like a futile effort to them. Similarly, with enough removal in hand to dissuade opponents (and a lack of incentives on your side of the board to make attacking you more enticing than other opponents), wouldn't a card like Seasons Past encourage opponents to attack you even less?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
In this instance, have you considered that perhaps your opponents knowing that you have a grip full of removal serves as a useful deterrent?I've certainly played games where, after gaining hundreds of life with something like Grim Feast, my opponents don't want to attack me anymore because doing so seems like a futile effort to them. Similarly, with enough removal in hand to dissuade opponents (and a lack of incentives on your side of the board to make attacking you more enticing than other opponents), wouldn't a card like Seasons Past encourage opponents to attack you even less?
If you only returned targeted removal it might be ok-ish? Targeted removal is generally not terrible to have known to the table, as long as you aren't worried about disrupting combos. Counters people will generally try to play around by baiting you with other stuff, and they definitely won't try to resolve their big wincons, which is not really what you want. You want people to overextend and kill each other and run out of gas (or at least their best gas). Board wipes you definitely don't want to reveal, since then people with big boards will probably want to kill you before you get the chance to wipe (unless it's instant-speed, then it's better, but they'll still probably avoid overextending). Value stuff is generally fine to recur, no real problem there. But then you still have the problem that it's a 6 cmc sorcery in a draw-go control deck, so the value better be really really high. Wildest dreams can always, like, recur a fetch land if you're missing your fourth land drop, or recur and play a board wipe in the midgame on the same turn, or get the exact piece of targeted removal you need, in addition to being an insane treasure trove of value in the very late game like seasons past.
I have to say that your opponents sound unlike most people I've played. Generally if I have something that makes me near invincible (constant mists for example, which I cut for that reason) I find my opponents are all the more motivated to find a way through, especially before it becomes 1v1 and they have no way to win. I'd expect them to be attacking with at least their commanders, provided no one else is a bigger, more immediate threat. Not to just go "well screw it, may as well play for second". Although really, 100 life isn't that crazy, I'm sure most decks can still beat that if they have a reasonable endgame.
I have to say that your opponents sound unlike most people I've played. Generally if I have something that makes me near invincible (constant mists for example, which I cut for that reason) I find my opponents are all the more motivated to find a way through, especially before it becomes 1v1 and they have no way to win. I'd expect them to be attacking with at least their commanders, provided no one else is a bigger, more immediate threat. Not to just go "well screw it, may as well play for second". Although really, 100 life isn't that crazy, I'm sure most decks can still beat that if they have a reasonable endgame.
Eh, I boiled down human psychology into a single sentence, so I probably didn't do any justice explaining their behavior.
Something I've noticed from playing years of Commander is that there's this interesting point where players will often attack me if I have too much life because it looks threatening (or the most life. That's a fun excuse ), but if I have an excess of life to the point where attacking me feels futile, opponents will usually direct their attacks elsewhere. I guess this is because, at a certain life total, the strategic benefits of attacking one opponent with 20 life are much more apparent than attacking a different opponent with 300 life. I was wondering if the same principle might apply to a card like Seasons Past.
I get what you're saying about Constant Mists though. Cards like that can potentially serve as deterrents, but seemingly have the opposite effect instead. Recently, I built a Memnarch deck, and Memnarch possesses similar qualities. While he could serve as a deterrent by threatening to steal my opponent's most valuable cards if they aggress me, more often Memnarch intimidates my opponents to the extent that they aim all of their firepower in my direction (and rightly so) since they fear Memnarch will create some kind of insurmountable advantage if they don't collectively work to stop him.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Having known targeted removal in your hand is great if your opponents have their biggest, most critical threats on the field. Then they're motivated to be nice so you don't use it on them. If they have their critical threat in their hand (or CZ), though, then they're motivated to force you to use it, to protect the card they really care about.
Same deal with all answers, really. Counters are worse to be known, ofc, because by definition they can only work on stuff in their hand (which means you can't hold something hostage in the same way, and you can't control when you retaliate so if they attack you, you don't have any recourse), and board wipes are sorcery speed, which opens the window to kill you before the get the chance, and because they kill everything your opponents are more urgently concerned with getting it over with so they can re-extend.
Anyway, there's good reason why I generally don't like my cards to be known specifically. but I like the perception that I definitely MIGHT be able to ruin their lives in some unexpected way. Because sometimes comeuppance happens.
I find when I play control decks that often really good graveyard recursion strategies can cause problems with grinding you out. You do have Stonecloaker and Scavenger Grounds. I'd be tempted into running another Desert, so that you can threaten multiple uses out of Scavenger Grounds.
Like there are a couple of lands I'm not fan of, Memorial to Genius, Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers. I just find trading in a land for two cards is not really where you want to be at, and Okina is pretty limited.
Maybe play Desert of the Mindful and Desert of the Indomitable instead?
You've got a pretty nice suite of utility lands, and believe or not another factor I find when I play control is opponents with utility lands that gain advantages themselves. After all most of the removal cards are "non-lands", hence the problem.
On that note have you ever played with Crop Rotation? Gains you access to your lands as answers to what opponents are doing (Kor Haven, Arcane Lighthouse, Detection Tower, Scavenger Grounds, Strip Mine, Mystifying Maze) or card advantage (Arch of Orazca). The instant speed of it is what you want, because often you don't know what you need until somethings are happening on the stack. Pretty nice in response to opponents land removal as well.
At it's worst if you're feeling like it's a bit of a dead crad in your starting hand, you can use it as a 1 mana Farseek getting Krosan Verge to gain you an extra mana at the start of the game or whenever. You can also play a bounce land as a backup like, Azorius Chancery.
Also Prahv, Spires of Order is a nice versatile card in the late game.
New version is up! Mostly just making the glossary prettier, in order to curry the favor of the primer committee. I can't believe how much work this takes =/
I don't think I can emphasize this enough, but the decklists are not meant to be taken as gospel. They're really more examples of the template. In my local playgroup(s), stonecloaker and scavenger grounds have generally been enough to handle grave-based shenanigans (along with, of course, the option to just try to ensure other people kill the grave-based player for you). But if your meta is more grave-infested, then you can definitely go deeper on deserts, or the other grave hate that I list in the grave hate section of the glossary (scavenger grounds is in the land section, though).
Tbh my meta is pathetically devoid of utility lands. When someone plays tempt with discovery I always have a laugh as everyone else elects to search for a command tower or whatever, while I'm searching up kor haven, volrath's stronghold, arch of orazca, etc. So I probably undervalue land destruction. That said, I'd definitely recommend the classics, strip mine, wasteland, and dust bowl to counter land-based problems you might have. I usually just run 1-2 and then tutor for it if necessary.
I've played crop rotation in other decks, I may have had it in the non-budget phelddagrif at one point? Not sure. I definitely think it's a reasonable tutor, but it's less flexible than I'd love, compared to wargate, for example. When evaluating tutors I tend to think "how many different sorts of things can I get", with the main categories being removal, board wipes, counters, and value. lands do cover a decent number of those bases, but they can't get removal for most permanent types, or board wipes, and have somewhat limited value options. Hence why I prefer something like wargate. but my meta is pretty slow generally, so if you're in a fast meta I could definitely see running crop rotation. I think I rated it pretty highly in the glossary, it's a good card.
And lol, yeah I've run prahv before. It was good enough in that meta that it actually got targeted too. It's way too slow to be a good competitive card, but for slow metas I think it's totally includable if you don't want to shell out for kor haven. Or if you just really want to stick it to some purphoros player or whatever.
For the record, all these cards are in the glossary section. I know it's kind of a big pain in the ass, though (try formatting it sometime o_O).
New version is up! Mostly just making the glossary prettier, in order to curry the favor of the primer committee. I can't believe how much work this takes =/
Haha. Just be glad I stepped down from the Primer Committee. I was like their strictest member.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Dirk, have you given much thought to Howling Mine? I suspect your deck may be the perfect home for it since 1.) it masquerades as an innocent group hug card, and 2.) it helps keep you topped off while simultaneously fueling opponents who are much more likely to use their resources against one another than they are to use them against you (due to the construction of your deck), subtly making it an even more powerful Phyrexian Arena.
Something I find myself asking quite often is "What cards are the best of their kind?" Like, what cards are the best at gaining life, ramping, etc.? Often, these questions are difficult for me to answer, and determining which cards are the best at drawing cards is no exception, especially given the existence of cards like Howling Mine.
See, I find Howling Mine rather peculiar. At 2 mana, Howling Mine boasts one of the most impressive cards-drawn-to-mana-spent ratios for its CMC. Few other cards are as good as the Mine at drawing that don't also cost buckets of mana. Provided you can't tap the Mine however, the fact that it also funnels cards to opponents can't be ignored, especially given the multiplayer nature of Commander. But if, somehow, it were possible to ensure the cards it gave couldn't be used against you, Howling Mine's downside wouldn't be a downside at all. In fact, it would be a tremendous upside. Opponents pouring gasoline on each other would only further your own goal.
This is why I find cards like Howling Mine and Forbidden Orchard so intriguing and so difficult to evaluate. While their potential downsides may look terrible, it may also be possible that furthering your opponent's goals also furthers your own goal, making cards of this sort better than virtually anything else you could play in their respective categories (since the downsides of these cards are obviously used to balance their upsides, mana efficiency in Howling Mine's case), and I can't think of a deck more likely to be in that position than your take on Phelddagrif.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I have actually thought about them a bit, as I was sorting through all the potential CA engines. They're definitely difficult to evaluate, since their effectiveness is very meta-dependent. But so is everything in this deck.
Tbh I haven't had time to test the theory yet, I'm in the middle of a move from the US to the UK so things have been a bit hectic. I see a few potential stumbling blocks, but I really think testing is the only way to be sure.
-Giving everyone CA allows us to answer more things, but it doesn't generally accelerate us in the same way a ramp deck might. If our opponents are using those resources to actually build and accrue more resources it could get out of hand quickly. We get a lot of value out of reliably playing a land and keeping not too far behind the table, but if everyone is ramping while not losing CA the gap might become a problem.
-of course, if we should ever become the threat, all those cards we gave our opponents are going to haunt us. Obviously we're trying to avoid that with the whole construction of the deck, but hey, it still happens sometimes.
-in the 1v1 game, of course this is inevitable and makes the card basically dead at that place in the game.
-forced CA every turn is actually not my favorite. Early in the game (when 2 cmc is the best) we usually don't want to actually cast most of our spells since there aren't worthwhile targets. By the late game, less risky CA is affordable. And even late-game, our hand can get full and then we either have to throw out answers at subpar targets or reveal that we're sitting on a bunch of answers by discarding one.
-Some players (i.e. me playing other decks) see cards that break the normal rules of card advantage - i.e. letting everyone draw many cards a turn - as a threat to their control gameplan, and might see howling mine as a significantly bigger problem than phyrexian arena. Or they might assume we're playing regular group hug and hate us out for it. I wouldn't assume howling mine is going to appear "innocent" to other players, especially competitive ones.
So those are my reasons for why I'm skeptical. That said, it does bear testing and once I have a new group to test with in the UK I might give it a go. First we're on vacation for most of the next two months, though, so it might be a bit.
Edit: in terms of cards that resolve most of my issues with the concept, mikokoro, center of the sea is a CA engine I can get behind. geier reach sanitarium is also decent. Colorless sources are at a premium, but if you just subbed a CA tool for mikokoro I think you'd be fine.
Added a little tip that I've have rolling around in my brain for a few weeks - third place (threat-wise) is generally the safest position to be in (in a 4+ player game). First place gets the table's hate. Second place gets first place's hate. Fourth place (or last place) gets the opportunistic hate. And of course, doing better is better so no reason to be in fourth place if we don't have to. So third place is really where we're looking to be in the 4p game.
This is also part of why I think the 3p game is so much harder with this deck. First place is easier to end up in on accident, second place attracts a higher percentage of first place's hate because they're a larger percentage of the opposition, and third place can be difficult to obtain if one of your opponents stumbles or has a bad deck (plus opportunistic attacks are more likely with a smaller table, since the benefits of eliminating one player are greater). The game tends to be faster and bloodier, and harder to escape notice. Not our cup of tea at all.
I finally got my girlfriend to finish prepping the hippo tokens to go online, sorry for the rather long delay...Feel free to print these out, or if you visit the site I think she'll send you copies for a buck a pop plus shipping. There are more series of hippos getting finished, and I have a whole bunch of rather crudely painted on actual cards hippos doing the kama sutra tokens. She plans to make other tokens too, so if anyone has special requests let us know.
Some good conversation going on here, I'll try and make a point to chime in sometime soon. One thing I'll say before leaving for now is that howling mine didn't really work out too well for me. Without burgeoning or exploration out it's really hard to use the card advantage to your advantage. Most other strategies can take better advantage of consistent CA better than draw go Pheldy. It also looks a little funny when you're discarding answers all the time to get to hand size (if you don't have a vehicle to move lands out). With a high composition of diverse answers you shouldn't need too much draw, and giving opponents draw is a pretty high cost to pay.
Lol, those are pretty hilarious. I like the Fantasia-inspired ones the most, I think. I won't have the chance to play for another month or so, but I'll print some off when I get the chance.
Glad to hear someone's tried howling mine, that's pretty much what I would have guessed. Thinking about it some more, what occurred to me was: everyone is naturally drawing cards (main source of CA) and untapped/playing lands (main source of tempo) once per turn. Playing howling main increases CA without increasing tempo, globally. This essentially makes tempo more valuable and CA less valuable. So the question we should ask is - do we benefit when the game is all about tempo and not about CA? And I think the answer is generally no, a lot of our gameplan is focused around incremental CA. When someone makes a move on us and we retaliate, it ought to hurt. They shouldn't just shrug and play more threats of equal value. Of course when someone else is a reliable ally we can safely benefit from giving them cards, but phelddy already does this (admittedly, pretty well late-game but very slowly in the mid/early...my dream commander would be phelddagrif except his third ability is a MUST draw and a MAY bounce, instead of the reverse, but oh well).
And yeah, I guessed that hand size would be an issue. Probably it works better if it's real late and you're on a somewhat reduced hand where you can draw for a few turns before filling up, but then you can just play better, safer draw engines with all your mana.
I do want to try mikokoro, center of the sea for sure though, that seems like basically the best version of the symmetrical draw effect. Doesn't cost a card itself, and it's optional to turn it on/off so you're not hitting hand size or giving draw to people who you really don't want to be.
Haven't played the deck since last posting 'cause vacation, but I've been playing a ton of standard and draft ("draft") thanks to mtg arena. Turns out mono-red is preeeetty good (kinda want to make RW angels but it runs an obscene number of rares and mythics considering how hard wildcards are to get hold of).
Still going infinite off the $5 upfront cost, although I can't stay infinite with draft. Infinite standard is super easy, though (and funds my drafts when I can afford it).
Belated congratulations on the primer status. It's a lot of work and yours is particularly insightful compared to some others.
On the subject of tokens, what's your opinion on this beautiful boy:
I love the aesthetic but I feel like its expression might give away the gameplan too much. Too menacing, or what?
I'm still a big advocate for the cheap cantrips. When you get a chance to play after you move I'd try to find room for some of them to at least test them out for your analysis section. I've never been disappointed to see them in any of my other blue-based control decks so I would think they would be incredible here.
I prefer Austere Command over Akroma's Vengeance because of the potential political implications. I don't want to blow up poor Timmy's mana rocks if he's in last place if I can avoid it. Command is a tactical nuke as opposed to thermonuclear annihilation. I suppose I could run both?
I'm running 13.5 counterspells which is approximately one in seven cards, which means statistically I'm likely to have one in my opening grip and thus theoretically prepared for early/mid game shenanigans. Since many of my counters are 3cmc+ I don't think I'll be storming any cEDH tables anytime soon, but I'm okay with that. I'm thinking of replacing one with Dream Fracture, probably Exclude or Negate.
Is Sylvan Library really non-threatening enough to run? I usually groan to see it on turn 2 because in Erebos I don't have any good answers to it and that player typically runs away with the game. I suppose the plan is to use it as a pseudo-Brainstorm every turn and use it as a card advantage engine only when necessary?
I took out my ramp package because I think you're right that there's really nothing to ramp into and it's unnecessarily threatening. Not that threatening, but still. Is Exploration worth running alongside Oona's Grace? I feel like pitching late game lands when you have 10+ mana available is stronger than putting extras into play. Outside of heavy ramp decks and lands.dec I've never been too terribly impressed with Exploration so I'm thinking of cutting it for more interaction or draw.
How does my draw/selection package look to you? 5.5 cantrips, 2.5 filterers, and 4.5 actual card advantage spells seems a bit light compared to what I'm used to playing with. I guess the deck doesn't commit too much to the board and only plays spells when absolutely necessary so running too many risks raising our threat profile to uncomfortable levels. Seems like 4, possibly 5 cards in hand is where you would want to be for most of the game to have enough answers without appearing like you're sculpting a combo-hand.
Sorry if you think these are all answered by reading the primer. I'm just trying to find a solid base to start with to go ahead and order before fine-tuning.
Glad to see you chose correctly! I'm still on vacation so this'll be a bit abbreviated, but here goes.
I've seen that token and I think it's solid. If anything I think the implication of group hug (free hugs) is more likely to draw hate than the vaguely sinister hippo smirk. Anyway I've always said that the deck works fine even when people know how it works.
It's kind of hard for me to look critically at lists grouped by card type, I prefer sorted by function. I think it makes it easier to see what the deck is doing while card type says very little in most cases.
I don't love type-restrictive counters usually. I'd replace exclude (with dream fracture).
With all draw engines, it's about how your group reacts. Library is definitely borderline. But you could always wait until later turns to play it, when scarier cards are running loose. It's not like you need t3 draw anyway.
Exploration I like in decks with heavy draw, especially x draw or repeatable draw like pulse. Your deck is relatively light on big draw so it probably underperforms. Also imo you're land-light, although I understand the canttips make up for this partially. I don't love oonas because it clashes with, for example, whispers of the muse, pulses, rev, and other cards that want big mana, which expo works in harmony with.
I haven't used austere in the deck recently but I generally feel that the political aspects are minimal. Timmy understands you had to blow his rocks to save everyone from the eldrazis or whatever. Using austere makes him happier but he probably doesn't read it as a favor, and sorcery-speed favors suck anyway. As far as balancing the table it could, but it could also be incapable of stopping all the scary things at once, which akromas does better. But honestly they're close, try it and see.
I usually like having 5-6 cards in hand (though I'll go low if I think the table is particularly non threatening to reduce my profile) and bigger impact draw spells. Usually one of the cards in hand is more draw that I wait until I'm getting low for. Your count seems low (well, a high number actually, but collectively low impact, the consequence of cantrips), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think the deck can work well with just a few good draw engines, but it means it's harder to play because your threat assessment has to be on point. (Actually on closer review your draw amount looks about average. It would have been easier to figure out if you had it sorted by function though)
I don't love type-restrictive counters usually. I'd replace exclude (with dream fracture).
Probably a good call. I'm also thinking of replacing the other with Condescend. At the very least X is 0 and you get to Scry 2, otherwise you get a lot of value for a small investment. Tax counters do lose steam over time but in the early and mid game when people are frequently tapping out it functions as a 2cmc counter with a solid upside. Dissolve is also on the fringe. Better than Sinister Sabotage due to a lack of recursion in my list and you don't give away information.
It's not like you need t3 draw anyway.
Good point.
Exploration I like in decks with heavy draw, especially x draw or repeatable draw like pulse. Your deck is relatively light on big draw so it probably underperforms. Also imo you're land-light, although I understand the canttips make up for this partially. I don't love oonas because it clashes with, for example, whispers of the muse, pulses, rev, and other cards that want big mana, which expo works in harmony with.
Pull From Tomorrow is a viable candidate for an addition big, bursty draw spell to replace Oona's. Your analysis is likely correct there, I hadn't considered the negative synergy. As for the land count, 38 mana producers (37 lands + Sol Ring) means there's a land every ~2.6 cards, which averages out to ~3 in your starting hand. I suppose that's too few for a reactive deck without ramp. Coming from a mono-black deck playing 8 cheap rocks and a general that draws cards has probably spoiled me with regards to land counts. I could cut something for Mystifying Maze and maybe another basic.
Happy new year and new deck!
¡Próspero año y felicidad! Enjoy your vacation and move across the pond.
I tend to like a high land count because, in the early turns especially, you don't want to play anything except lands in most cases, and discarding to max hand size suuuucks. Plus it's the safest way to accumulate a lot of mana without drawing attention. So I like it nice and high. I imagine that cantrips do work as pseudo-lands though.
Added a new tip (although it's status as a tip is kind of questionable but I couldn't think of a better section). Mostly I just thought of this metaphor as a good way to explain how the deck works on repeated plays and wanted to write it down. Not sure if I like it enough to move it to the intro (after revision) but hey, maybe. Anyway, here were my thoughts, feedback appreciated.
"But what if they figure out what I'm up to?"
A common concern with how this deck operates is that the opponents will figure out how it works, and then easily dismantle it by teaming up against you. This is possible, but unlikely. In fact I usually don't mind talking to my opponents about even some of the theory of how the deck works, and it's not a big knock to the win percent. If this seems strange to you, then allow me a metaphor.
Phelddagrif, as a deck, is like climate change. Most people agree that climate change is a problem, and that something ought to be done about it. And we'll all piss and moan about how ridiculous it is that more isn't being done, and some people are telling us that, unless we make massive changes, we're all going to be dead in a few hundreds years or whatever, but nothing much ever seems to HAPPEN. Because even though we'd LIKE to help fix the problem, fixing the problem is a big personal inconvenience. If our countries were to institute the kind of sweeping legislation that scientists recommend, it'd really hurt competitively in terms of trade. Maybe we commit to doing a little teensy tiny something, but it feels like we're all playing a sort of game of chicken where no one wants to commit too much to doing anything until everyone else has already done more.
If you can't see the parallels, your opponents may know that you're a problem, that eventually it's very likely that you'll be the winner, but there's always more pressing problems to deal with, and if they dedicate a lot of resources to fighting you and the other players don't, they're going to be at a huge disadvantage because you can put them in a miserable spot competitively by removing everything they care about and funding their enemies who are more cooperative. Sure, if everyone collectively agrees not to be swayed by your bribes, to keep fighting you with everything they've got and not let up until you're really, truly dead, then they can take you out. And if the whole world could agree to put aside short-term gains in order to really commit wholeheartedly to combating climate change, we could probably solve it. But that doesn't seem too likely, now does it?
The addendum is basically worthless to us so we're primarily looking at the eot wheel effect. While this could be useful, in general we're looking to have one of the biggest hands at the table, and we'd rather use removal or counters for combo disruption rather than trying to disrupt hands. And refilling our opponents is not generally something we want. Sure, there are times this will be effective, but for a 7 drop I'd really like more reliability.
absorb -
pretty passable albeit unexciting (reprint) counter. Might add it to the list as a weak option once the price drops to make it reasonable for budget lists.
Dovin's Acuity -
This is a tough one. At first I was kind of excited for it, but I think it's pretty tough to get great value out of. To state the obvious, you generally want to cast your instants as instants. Counters will very rarely be able to trigger it, and most of your board wipes are sorceries, generally. So that mostly leaves targeted removal and other instant-speed draw. Which might be enough to justify it, but I'm not totally psyched about it. It's also a bummer that you can't really protect it with the bounce clause, since it's only triggerable on your turn so enemy removal will hit it just fine unless you keep it in your hand all the time (unlike disinformation campaign).
Lawmage's Binding -
One of the best of the pacifism-style neutralizing commander removals, having flash is a big add relative to arrest. I'm still not blown away since commanders are relatively easy to free compared to the land-making versions, and will probably be eventually cleared by you with a board wipe. Plus it doesn't block static or triggered abilities, which is what a lot of the stronger commanders rely on. But for what it is, it's pretty good.
Precognitive Perception -
Strict upgrade to jace's ingenuity, which was an...ehh?...draw spell. As a sorcery it's pretty strong, but I wouldn't cast it as a sorcery unless I was sitting on a lot of mana. As a flexible draw spell it's not bad, though.
Arrester's Admonition - repulse is a solid card, but casting this as a sorcery is a huge downside and a 3-mana unsummon is extremely trash. Noooope.
Split cards -
Boooo, so much garbage token-making. warrant // warden and depose // deploy both waste half of the card on token production that will very rarely be a good choice for us. repudiate // replicate is especially sad since the repudiate side is great, but replicate is hard for us to cast for any value at all, let alone for good value. And incubation // incongruity also has one decent side for us, with a front half that does very nearly nothing. As effective non-split cards, all of these are underwhelming and/or overcosted. The best of the bad sides - deploy, since at least it's an instant if you need an emergency blocker or a few points of lifegain - also has the least exciting front side. Really sad about these since flexibility is what we're all about, but all of these are very underwhelming. If you could make warrant // depose or repudiate // incongruity those would be amazing cards for us, especially repudiate // incongruity. But instead we've got split cards that manage to only have one useful side each. Lame.
Growth Spiral -
I mean it's fine. It's better than the sorcery-speed version. We don't really want ramp but it also just draws a card so...whatever.
Rampage of the Clans -
The biggest limit on this card is whether we actually want to play an artifact/enchantment wipe at all, since wiping creatures too only costs a few more mana (although it's usually sorcery speed), and depending on the build we may have a decent number of artifacts/enchantments we'd rather not lose. The drawback is fairly minimal to us, but it could certainly backfire. Being instant speed is great, but the relatively low mana cost isn't that crucial since we're usually using board wipes for big CA in the mid-late, and it's hard to imagine wanting to fire this off on turn 4, much less in a scenario where a simple disenchant wouldn't work just as well.
wilderness reclamation -
This is a sweet card for a more proactive control deck, but I doubt we're doing enough on our turn to really get good value out of this. Could be used to get extra draw out of pulse of the grid or whatever, but that seems like too much setup to make it good. One of the biggest strengths of the deck is that very few of its cards require setup or synergy.
clear the mind -
It's concealed instant-speed grave hate that doesn't burn a card (the first of it's kind in our CA) and doubles as a way to refill your deck vs mill or in an exceptionally long game. Between this and memory's journey it's mostly a matter of preference - journey being cheaper and repeatable, but not hitting the entire grave or giving you back your card. It's not super exciting but it's definitely functional, and might be the only piece of hate from the set that I actually consider playing. Pretty disappointing considering the set had 2 guilds within our CI. Still salty about those friggin' split cards.
swirling torrent -
My journey looking at this card: "Ooh, it's flexible. Ooooh, it targets creatures. Ooooooooh, it targets creatures twice! Two modes I'm interested in? That's awesome! What's it cost...6? Craaap. Well at least it's an instant....no, it's a sorcery, craaaaaaaap." Yeah this card super blows.
Eyes Everywhere -
Scry 1 every turn is ok but very replaceable, unfortunately I don't think we can get much value from the second part and I think it will mostly just make us a target. If it was at least an instant I'd be more into it, but as a sorcery, naw.
Verity Circle -
This is maybe the best value engine from the set - You'll probably get lots of random free draws, but luckily the draw is optional which is great for controlling hand size, and it comes with a last-resort pseudo-removal that can do serious work in the 1v1 game, and allow us to wait longer on our board wipes for better value a la icy manipulator. The nonflying restriction is a bummer, and of course tapdown removal is not ideal since it makes us a target, but overall I think this might end up being a pretty solid choice.
Smothering Tithe -
This card looks super fun for other decks, but I don't think we need the big ramp or to draw that much attention. Maybe viable as a setup to a big USZ but I'm generally against the deck going in that direction.
Expose to Daylight -
It's fine but I don't think the upside justifies running it over stronger options that either cost less or provide bigger benefits.
Tome of the Guildpact -
5 (pseudo-4) is a lot for a value engine, and we don't cast that many multicolor cards generally. Being a permanent is already a strike against it. Plus it's non-optional draw which is a bummer. Passable but not something I'd recommend.
Lockets -
We don't need ramp, but ramp that doubles as draw when you stop caring as much about mana, and also lets you empty your hand while keeping the ability to refill it, is pretty ok. The rate isn't amazing but they're fine.
So...pretty weak set overall. No board wipes, no (new) counters, only one passable targeted removal (lawmage's binding), one "other" answer (clear the mind), and a couple ok value engines, of which only verity circle stands out to me, with precognitive perception as a solid but unexciting and replaceable option for single-shot draw versions. Outside of those 4 I doubt anything in this set is likely to see much play in Phelddagrif, although I might be underrating Dovin's Acuity (I'd be happy if I was, I like the bouncy-enchantment design).
This post is awesome, thank you for the excellent work you have share with us in these 6 pages of topic.
I have red a couple of times this post last week, because I am actually building my own version of the deck following your recomendations because I think this deck could be 'what I am looking for'
I tried (and succeed) build a non oppressive, non combo focuses control deck that would win most of the time (in my playgroup), because the deck will rarely win before turn 20, would never have a turn 4-8 combo, wont tax people, won't counter everything, won't play rule of law or enter the battlefield tapped and friends I thought no one would be upset if the deck wins... but I was wrong with that.
Propaganda, Aurification and other non aggressive pillowfort cards will aggro everyone in the table very soon, people will krosan grip any of my enchants and complaint because they have no answer at turn 20 to be able to deal with solemnity+ Glacial chasm
So, I decided it is time to build a new deck, and I want a deck that can be perceived as fair, with no combos and with a win ratio over 50%, and it may very be this one.
I like the 'counter wall', the heavy spot removal and the boardwipes retaliation
In my actual control deck I have 9 boardwipes, in my pheldy I am starting at 12 and will be increased to 15 when I am able to get another copy of cyclonic rift, tragic arrogance and evacuation.
I like the 'I have no permanents' strategy so we are able to play boardwipes like hour of revelation that normally I would not play
It is incomplete, the lands needs some fix (incluing arch), there are some cards that I have in the list because I don't have yet the 'real ones', for example I have deep freeze in the list because I don't have yet a darksteel mutation, narcolepsy will leave whenever I can get a imprisonment in the moon .
Besides those cards, I need to make room for 2 more counterspells 3 boardwipes and 2 more spot removal spells so I will apreciate if you can take a peek at my list and point me out which cards are the 'best candidates to go'
Dispel is debatable. Not definitely wrong, but I'd only include it if you're in a pretty heavy counterspell meta where you'll have to win a counter war to block someone's wincon. If that's you, though, go ahead and keep it in. If it's not, though, I usually prefer more flexibility in my counters.
If I was going to use a second fog after moment's peace, it'd be either tangle or teferi's protection, not fog. The low mana cost isn't super important, more value is better.
spell burst is really bad in most circumstances, and when it's good it's kind of a nasty lock, at least on low-cmc spells, that could easily drive people to attack you. Not the sort of attention we want, for the same reason we don't play forbid, although at least forbid is a cancel at worst.
Turn to frog is too combat-dependent imo. If you try to block the creature they could just use removal on phelddagrif and force a bounce, and then their creature lives. I'd put in something more reliable, like crib swap for example.
Hushwing Gryff is double trouble. It's a creature so our board wipes will kill it, it can absorb removal that we'd rather was pointed at our opponents, and even if it survives it's creating a scenario where your opponents may be motivated to kill you to prevent it impeding their plans in an ongoing way. I'd cut it in an instant.
Mystic Snake is a pretty weak counter imo since it's overcosted by 2 for a body we don't need and can't really use outside of chump blocking. It's not terrible or anything but I'd prefer something else, personally.
Selfless Squire is a fun card but I don't think I'd use it. Again, it gives a target for removal when we'd normally present none. Not terrible but 3 fogs is too many imo.
Sakura-tribe Elder I spend a bit of space in the guide on ramp - we don't really need it. We aren't ramping TO anything. One land per turn is plenty. As such, steve doesn't have much of a role in the deck. Doubly so for cultivate, Rampant Growth, and Kodama's Reach. Cut them all and add more lands instead. 38 is too few imo, I like over 40 myself but 40 would be as low as I'd go in most metas.
Conqueror's Galleon I've experimented with and found it to be too threatening for what we're trying to do.
Steel of the Godhead is pretty random. Doesn't make much sense for the deck - Phelddagrif is great, in part, because he can bounce to hand so easily. Strapping him up with auras kind of negates this benefit - and anyway, it doesn't do anything useful for us. If you want lifegain, run pulse of the fields or sphinx's revelation.
I also don't think you need 3 neutralization removals (narco, lignify, deep freeze). Usually you need none. They're totally unnecessary. You should try to steer the game in such a way that you'll be 1v1ing the opponent who you can most easily handle, which shouldn't necessitate the use of such a card. BUT in some games you don't have full control of the game, or maybe the weakest deck has a commander that's hard to handle despite the rest of the deck being weaker. For commanders that either generate enormous value if left in play for any length of time (i.e. mayael) or who generate enormous value even when countered or removed by normal means (i.e. maelstrom wanderer). In those cases, neutralizing the commander in a permanent way can be the only way to keep control of the game long enough to win. That said, the neutralizers you've got already are weak because they leave the target as a (non-indestructible) creature so your board wipes will put their commander back in the command zone. So maybe you need 3 to be able to keep it locked down, idk. But I'd try to at least cut 1.
Land-wise I'd cut treva's ruins and reliquary tower. Reliquary tower I talk about in the guide so read that. Trevas is just bad imo. We want to play a land almost every turn. Setting ourselves back just for fixing is bad news. I like the karoo lands from ravnica block, though. They work just fine since they don't slow us down long-term and they give us a free extra card/mana.
Thanks a lot for your input, please take in consideration that I am actually building the deck, I haven-'t really tried yet so I may be wrong in several statements
Dispel is debatable. Not definitely wrong, but I'd only include it if you're in a pretty heavy counterspell meta where you'll have to win a counter war to block someone's wincon. If that's you, though, go ahead and keep it in. If it's not, though, I usually prefer more flexibility in my counters.
My meta is blue heavy, not counterspell heavy, I don't use dispel in any of my decks, but because this deck has 15+ countespells It is just another option, but I will considered it as a possible cut.
Turn to frog is too combat-dependent imo. If you try to block the creature they could just use removal on phelddagrif and force a bounce, and then their creature lives. I'd put in something more reliable, like crib swap for example.
Hushwing Gryff is double trouble. It's a creature so our board wipes will kill it, it can absorb removal that we'd rather was pointed at our opponents, and even if it survives it's creating a scenario where your opponents may be motivated to kill you to prevent it impeding their plans in an ongoing way. I'd cut it in an instant.
Mystic Snake is a pretty weak counter imo since it's overcosted by 2 for a body we don't need and can't really use outside of chump blocking. It's not terrible or anything but I'd prefer something else, personally.
Selfless Squire is a fun card but I don't think I'd use it. Again, it gives a target for removal when we'd normally present none. Not terrible but 3 fogs is too many imo.
Hushwing Gryff has won me games out of nowhere, but maybe he does not have a spot here, I will keep it for a time to see how it goes
Selfless Squire: you are right, a 4cmc fog does not worth the slot.
Sakura-tribe Elder I spend a bit of space in the guide on ramp - we don't really need it. We aren't ramping TO anything. One land per turn is plenty. As such, steve doesn't have much of a role in the deck. Doubly so for cultivate, Rampant Growth, and Kodama's Reach. Cut them all and add more lands instead. 38 is too few imo, I like over 40 myself but 40 would be as low as I'd go in most metas.
I like the idea of getting those for co,or fixing, but I will try them out and add lands up to 40, you are right that we need no ramp
I also don't think you need 3 neutralization removals (narco, lignify, deep freeze). Usually you need none. They're totally unnecessary. You should try to steer the game in such a way that you'll be 1v1ing the opponent who you can most easily handle, which shouldn't necessitate the use of such a card. BUT in some games you don't have full control of the game, or maybe the weakest deck has a commander that's hard to handle despite the rest of the deck being weaker. For commanders that either generate enormous value if left in play for any length of time (i.e. mayael) or who generate enormous value even when countered or removed by normal means (i.e. maelstrom wanderer). In those cases, neutralizing the commander in a permanent way can be the only way to keep control of the game long enough to win. That said, the neutralizers you've got already are weak because they leave the target as a (non-indestructible) creature so your board wipes will put their commander back in the command zone. So maybe you need 3 to be able to keep it locked down, idk. But I'd try to at least cut 1.
My meta is full of "nasty" commanders, narset, mairsil, alesha and a long etc. So I may need to neutralize those
Steel of the Godhead is pretty random. Doesn't make much sense for the deck - Phelddagrif is great, in part, because he can bounce to hand so easily. Strapping him up with auras kind of negates this benefit - and anyway, it doesn't do anything useful for us. If you want lifegain, run pulse of the fields or sphinx's revelation.
I definitevly would run pulses, Ill switch steal for sphinx revelation as you suggested
Conqueror's Galleon I've experimented with and found it to be too threatening for what we're trying to do.
I know, I read all your posts about it, but I need to try it, it is just too awesome, maybe he doesn't not have a spot here but maybe for my OLoro,
Land-wise I'd cut treva's ruins and reliquary tower. Reliquary tower I talk about in the guide so read that. Trevas is just bad imo. We want to play a land almost every turn. Setting ourselves back just for fixing is bad news. I like the karoo lands from ravnica block, though. They work just fine since they don't slow us down long-term and they give us a free extra card/man
I haven't thought about karoo lands, I never play those, but it may very be worth the try, I need the color fixing
Thanks for your input, Ill let you know how it went after I play a couple of games with the list and your suggestions
Ideally you'd have more fixing lands and fewer basics, making fixers like steve unnecessary (and there are plenty of cheap fixers like the karoos, you don't need fetches and duals). Also it only fixes if you have green already, which is the least important and least represented color, so the one you're least likely to have when you're trying to fix your mana. So it doesn't make a lot of sense as a fixer.
If you want to neutralize narset, short of repeatedly countering her you'll need detection tower or arcane lighthouse. Those are worth including for sure, at least one, and ideally a tutor or two too. Then make sure you get arch of orazca as another tutor target, because it's the best thing since sliced bread.
I still think 3 is too many neutralizers. Even if the commanders are scary, at the end of the day you're only going 1v1 against one of them. Your goal should not be to neutralize multiple enemy commanders at once - neutralizing someone's commander in a permanent-ish way will almost certainly make them want to kill you a lot more, so putting multiple people in that situation is pretty antithetical to what we're doing. Once it's 1v1, neutralize to your heart's content, of course.
I could see using multiple neutralization removals IF and ONLY IF there are multiple commanders which are not only scary, but an instant-win combo all on their own - i.e. narset (which is already badly handled by neutralizers unless you have that land) or new jhoira. In that case you might have no choice but to neutralize multiple commanders because otherwise you'd have to kill or counter them every time they come down. But that's really unlikely, most commanders that combo can be disrupted by removing other parts of their combo.
I think you might have too many draw spells btw. Harmonize, for example, is pretty weak. It's just color-shifted concentrate. If you want more single-shot draw I'd focus more on instants, paying 1 more for precognitive perception, whether as an instant or a sorcery, is a better deal.
I think galleon is kind of a litmus test for playing the deck. Because it's absolutely a powerful card. And it can absolutely win you games. When I was running it (in multiple decks) it frequently became "ok, well, the right play here is to recur this board wipe...again...and then destroy all your stuff...again...and then I have to replay my commander so I can eventually end this game..."
It slows the game down to a crawl, basically, a miserable crawl with all the focus on you, where you're going to win but it's going to take forever, and at the end people will not be thinking "huh, how weird, that game had so many powerful nasty things happening, but at the end it came down to just a derpy hippo beating face after doing nothing much all game, isn't commander funny?" No, they'll be thinking "Well, that Phelddagrif deck LOOKS innocent enough, but eventually it's going to pull off some lockdown combo so you'd better smash it when you've got half a chance."
So Conqueror's galleon is a sweet card, but it's not a card that fits with what we're trying to do. It's a card that fits into a normal control deck, one that's fine with becoming the threat and intends to do so when trying to win the game. Our goal is to avoid ever being the threat, right up until the game is over. Ideally, even when it's 1v1, your opponent should look like the favorite to an outside observer. Otherwise our opponents won't want to get into a 1v1 against you, and might try to eliminate you before the 1v1 game.
I think galleon is kind of a litmus test for playing the deck. Because it's absolutely a powerful card. And it can absolutely win you games. When I was running it (in multiple decks) it frequently became "ok, well, the right play here is to recur this board wipe...again...and then destroy all your stuff...again...and then I have to replay my commander so I can eventually end this game..."
It slows the game down to a crawl, basically, a miserable crawl with all the focus on you, where you're going to win but it's going to take forever, and at the end people will not be thinking "huh, how weird, that game had so many powerful nasty things happening, but at the end it came down to just a derpy hippo beating face after doing nothing much all game, isn't commander funny?" No, they'll be thinking "Well, that Phelddagrif deck LOOKS innocent enough, but eventually it's going to pull off some lockdown combo so you'd better smash it when you've got half a chance."
So Conqueror's galleon is a sweet card, but it's not a card that fits with what we're trying to do. It's a card that fits into a normal control deck, one that's fine with becoming the threat and intends to do so when trying to win the game. Our goal is to avoid ever being the threat, right up until the game is over. Ideally, even when it's 1v1, your opponent should look like the favorite to an outside observer. Otherwise our opponents won't want to get into a 1v1 against you, and might try to eliminate you before the 1v1 game.
Yopu have conviced me about galleon, I will play it only in my Oloro deck, seems like a perfect fit for the endgame (Oloro is a 4/5)
Edit (to avoid double post)
I am imagining this game
Turn 1 - Land and go (for every player)
Turn 2 - Land and go (maybe 1 player casts a spell and 2 a 1/1 or 2/2)
Turn 3 - Land and go (I get 3 damage because I cant block amd I play blue, then there are a bunch of dorks in the table)
Turn 4 - Land and go (I get 7-10 more damage and people gets more dudes / spells)
Turn 5 - Land and play my Comander (saving a blue to bounce, people stops atacking because now there is a 4/4 bloquer unless they have much bigger stuff)
Turn 6 - ????
Turn 7 - Profit
By turn 6 I still have 7 cards in hand, and if I miss a single LD I will be forced to discard unless of course I have spent some spells before.. but.... all our spells are counters and removal so , how do you normally play those first 6 turns?
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I have to say that your opponents sound unlike most people I've played. Generally if I have something that makes me near invincible (constant mists for example, which I cut for that reason) I find my opponents are all the more motivated to find a way through, especially before it becomes 1v1 and they have no way to win. I'd expect them to be attacking with at least their commanders, provided no one else is a bigger, more immediate threat. Not to just go "well screw it, may as well play for second". Although really, 100 life isn't that crazy, I'm sure most decks can still beat that if they have a reasonable endgame.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Something I've noticed from playing years of Commander is that there's this interesting point where players will often attack me if I have too much life because it looks threatening (or the most life. That's a fun excuse ), but if I have an excess of life to the point where attacking me feels futile, opponents will usually direct their attacks elsewhere. I guess this is because, at a certain life total, the strategic benefits of attacking one opponent with 20 life are much more apparent than attacking a different opponent with 300 life. I was wondering if the same principle might apply to a card like Seasons Past.
I get what you're saying about Constant Mists though. Cards like that can potentially serve as deterrents, but seemingly have the opposite effect instead. Recently, I built a Memnarch deck, and Memnarch possesses similar qualities. While he could serve as a deterrent by threatening to steal my opponent's most valuable cards if they aggress me, more often Memnarch intimidates my opponents to the extent that they aim all of their firepower in my direction (and rightly so) since they fear Memnarch will create some kind of insurmountable advantage if they don't collectively work to stop him.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Same deal with all answers, really. Counters are worse to be known, ofc, because by definition they can only work on stuff in their hand (which means you can't hold something hostage in the same way, and you can't control when you retaliate so if they attack you, you don't have any recourse), and board wipes are sorcery speed, which opens the window to kill you before the get the chance, and because they kill everything your opponents are more urgently concerned with getting it over with so they can re-extend.
Anyway, there's good reason why I generally don't like my cards to be known specifically. but I like the perception that I definitely MIGHT be able to ruin their lives in some unexpected way. Because sometimes comeuppance happens.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Like there are a couple of lands I'm not fan of, Memorial to Genius, Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers. I just find trading in a land for two cards is not really where you want to be at, and Okina is pretty limited.
Maybe play Desert of the Mindful and Desert of the Indomitable instead?
You've got a pretty nice suite of utility lands, and believe or not another factor I find when I play control is opponents with utility lands that gain advantages themselves. After all most of the removal cards are "non-lands", hence the problem.
On that note have you ever played with Crop Rotation? Gains you access to your lands as answers to what opponents are doing (Kor Haven, Arcane Lighthouse, Detection Tower, Scavenger Grounds, Strip Mine, Mystifying Maze) or card advantage (Arch of Orazca). The instant speed of it is what you want, because often you don't know what you need until somethings are happening on the stack. Pretty nice in response to opponents land removal as well.
At it's worst if you're feeling like it's a bit of a dead crad in your starting hand, you can use it as a 1 mana Farseek getting Krosan Verge to gain you an extra mana at the start of the game or whenever. You can also play a bounce land as a backup like, Azorius Chancery.
Also Prahv, Spires of Order is a nice versatile card in the late game.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
I don't think I can emphasize this enough, but the decklists are not meant to be taken as gospel. They're really more examples of the template. In my local playgroup(s), stonecloaker and scavenger grounds have generally been enough to handle grave-based shenanigans (along with, of course, the option to just try to ensure other people kill the grave-based player for you). But if your meta is more grave-infested, then you can definitely go deeper on deserts, or the other grave hate that I list in the grave hate section of the glossary (scavenger grounds is in the land section, though).
Tbh my meta is pathetically devoid of utility lands. When someone plays tempt with discovery I always have a laugh as everyone else elects to search for a command tower or whatever, while I'm searching up kor haven, volrath's stronghold, arch of orazca, etc. So I probably undervalue land destruction. That said, I'd definitely recommend the classics, strip mine, wasteland, and dust bowl to counter land-based problems you might have. I usually just run 1-2 and then tutor for it if necessary.
I've played crop rotation in other decks, I may have had it in the non-budget phelddagrif at one point? Not sure. I definitely think it's a reasonable tutor, but it's less flexible than I'd love, compared to wargate, for example. When evaluating tutors I tend to think "how many different sorts of things can I get", with the main categories being removal, board wipes, counters, and value. lands do cover a decent number of those bases, but they can't get removal for most permanent types, or board wipes, and have somewhat limited value options. Hence why I prefer something like wargate. but my meta is pretty slow generally, so if you're in a fast meta I could definitely see running crop rotation. I think I rated it pretty highly in the glossary, it's a good card.
And lol, yeah I've run prahv before. It was good enough in that meta that it actually got targeted too. It's way too slow to be a good competitive card, but for slow metas I think it's totally includable if you don't want to shell out for kor haven. Or if you just really want to stick it to some purphoros player or whatever.
For the record, all these cards are in the glossary section. I know it's kind of a big pain in the ass, though (try formatting it sometime o_O).
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Something I find myself asking quite often is "What cards are the best of their kind?" Like, what cards are the best at gaining life, ramping, etc.? Often, these questions are difficult for me to answer, and determining which cards are the best at drawing cards is no exception, especially given the existence of cards like Howling Mine.
See, I find Howling Mine rather peculiar. At 2 mana, Howling Mine boasts one of the most impressive cards-drawn-to-mana-spent ratios for its CMC. Few other cards are as good as the Mine at drawing that don't also cost buckets of mana. Provided you can't tap the Mine however, the fact that it also funnels cards to opponents can't be ignored, especially given the multiplayer nature of Commander. But if, somehow, it were possible to ensure the cards it gave couldn't be used against you, Howling Mine's downside wouldn't be a downside at all. In fact, it would be a tremendous upside. Opponents pouring gasoline on each other would only further your own goal.
This is why I find cards like Howling Mine and Forbidden Orchard so intriguing and so difficult to evaluate. While their potential downsides may look terrible, it may also be possible that furthering your opponent's goals also furthers your own goal, making cards of this sort better than virtually anything else you could play in their respective categories (since the downsides of these cards are obviously used to balance their upsides, mana efficiency in Howling Mine's case), and I can't think of a deck more likely to be in that position than your take on Phelddagrif.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Tbh I haven't had time to test the theory yet, I'm in the middle of a move from the US to the UK so things have been a bit hectic. I see a few potential stumbling blocks, but I really think testing is the only way to be sure.
-Giving everyone CA allows us to answer more things, but it doesn't generally accelerate us in the same way a ramp deck might. If our opponents are using those resources to actually build and accrue more resources it could get out of hand quickly. We get a lot of value out of reliably playing a land and keeping not too far behind the table, but if everyone is ramping while not losing CA the gap might become a problem.
-of course, if we should ever become the threat, all those cards we gave our opponents are going to haunt us. Obviously we're trying to avoid that with the whole construction of the deck, but hey, it still happens sometimes.
-in the 1v1 game, of course this is inevitable and makes the card basically dead at that place in the game.
-forced CA every turn is actually not my favorite. Early in the game (when 2 cmc is the best) we usually don't want to actually cast most of our spells since there aren't worthwhile targets. By the late game, less risky CA is affordable. And even late-game, our hand can get full and then we either have to throw out answers at subpar targets or reveal that we're sitting on a bunch of answers by discarding one.
-Some players (i.e. me playing other decks) see cards that break the normal rules of card advantage - i.e. letting everyone draw many cards a turn - as a threat to their control gameplan, and might see howling mine as a significantly bigger problem than phyrexian arena. Or they might assume we're playing regular group hug and hate us out for it. I wouldn't assume howling mine is going to appear "innocent" to other players, especially competitive ones.
So those are my reasons for why I'm skeptical. That said, it does bear testing and once I have a new group to test with in the UK I might give it a go. First we're on vacation for most of the next two months, though, so it might be a bit.
Edit: in terms of cards that resolve most of my issues with the concept, mikokoro, center of the sea is a CA engine I can get behind. geier reach sanitarium is also decent. Colorless sources are at a premium, but if you just subbed a CA tool for mikokoro I think you'd be fine.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
This is also part of why I think the 3p game is so much harder with this deck. First place is easier to end up in on accident, second place attracts a higher percentage of first place's hate because they're a larger percentage of the opposition, and third place can be difficult to obtain if one of your opponents stumbles or has a bad deck (plus opportunistic attacks are more likely with a smaller table, since the benefits of eliminating one player are greater). The game tends to be faster and bloodier, and harder to escape notice. Not our cup of tea at all.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Some good conversation going on here, I'll try and make a point to chime in sometime soon. One thing I'll say before leaving for now is that howling mine didn't really work out too well for me. Without burgeoning or exploration out it's really hard to use the card advantage to your advantage. Most other strategies can take better advantage of consistent CA better than draw go Pheldy. It also looks a little funny when you're discarding answers all the time to get to hand size (if you don't have a vehicle to move lands out). With a high composition of diverse answers you shouldn't need too much draw, and giving opponents draw is a pretty high cost to pay.
Enjoy the tokens!
Glad to hear someone's tried howling mine, that's pretty much what I would have guessed. Thinking about it some more, what occurred to me was: everyone is naturally drawing cards (main source of CA) and untapped/playing lands (main source of tempo) once per turn. Playing howling main increases CA without increasing tempo, globally. This essentially makes tempo more valuable and CA less valuable. So the question we should ask is - do we benefit when the game is all about tempo and not about CA? And I think the answer is generally no, a lot of our gameplan is focused around incremental CA. When someone makes a move on us and we retaliate, it ought to hurt. They shouldn't just shrug and play more threats of equal value. Of course when someone else is a reliable ally we can safely benefit from giving them cards, but phelddy already does this (admittedly, pretty well late-game but very slowly in the mid/early...my dream commander would be phelddagrif except his third ability is a MUST draw and a MAY bounce, instead of the reverse, but oh well).
And yeah, I guessed that hand size would be an issue. Probably it works better if it's real late and you're on a somewhat reduced hand where you can draw for a few turns before filling up, but then you can just play better, safer draw engines with all your mana.
I do want to try mikokoro, center of the sea for sure though, that seems like basically the best version of the symmetrical draw effect. Doesn't cost a card itself, and it's optional to turn it on/off so you're not hitting hand size or giving draw to people who you really don't want to be.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Haven't played the deck since last posting 'cause vacation, but I've been playing a ton of standard and draft ("draft") thanks to mtg arena. Turns out mono-red is preeeetty good (kinda want to make RW angels but it runs an obscene number of rares and mythics considering how hard wildcards are to get hold of).
Still going infinite off the $5 upfront cost, although I can't stay infinite with draft. Infinite standard is super easy, though (and funds my drafts when I can afford it).
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
On the subject of tokens, what's your opinion on this beautiful boy:
I love the aesthetic but I feel like its expression might give away the gameplan too much. Too menacing, or what?
I'm still a big advocate for the cheap cantrips. When you get a chance to play after you move I'd try to find room for some of them to at least test them out for your analysis section. I've never been disappointed to see them in any of my other blue-based control decks so I would think they would be incredible here.
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Breeding Pool
1 Brushland
1 Command Tower
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Forest
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Hinterland Harbor
8 Island
1 Kor Haven
1 Maze of Ith
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Path of Ancestry
4 Plains
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Temple Garden
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Temple of Mystery
1 Temple of Plenty
1 Yavimaya Coast
Sorceries: 12
1 Austere Command
1 Cleansing Nova
1 Council's Judgment
1 Hour of Revelation
1 Mystic Speculation
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Rout
1 Serum Visions
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Wrath of God
1 AEtherspouts
1 Arcane Denial
1 Bant Charm
1 Beast Within
1 Blink of an Eye
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Comeuppance
1 Commit // Memory
1 Counterspell
1 Cryptic Command
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Delay
1 Dig Through Time
1 Disallow
1 Evacuation
1 Exclude
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Forbid
1 Impulse
1 Into the Roil
1 Krosan Grip
1 Moment's Peace
1 Mystic Confluence
1 Nature's Claim
1 Negate
1 Oona's Grace
1 Path to Exile
1 Pongify
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Pulse of the Grid
1 Rapid Hybridization
1 Reality Shift
1 Render Silent
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Supreme Will
1 Swan Song
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tangle
1 Teferi's Protection
1 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Voidslime
1 Whispers of the Muse
1 Exploration
1 Imprisoned in the Moon
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Sylvan Library
1 Telepathy
Artifact: 1
1 Sol Ring
Somewhere between your budget list and your non-budget list, with lots of room for tuning. Notes:
As always, the omissions of Mystical Tutor and Wargate are intentional.
I prefer Austere Command over Akroma's Vengeance because of the potential political implications. I don't want to blow up poor Timmy's mana rocks if he's in last place if I can avoid it. Command is a tactical nuke as opposed to thermonuclear annihilation. I suppose I could run both?
I'm running 13.5 counterspells which is approximately one in seven cards, which means statistically I'm likely to have one in my opening grip and thus theoretically prepared for early/mid game shenanigans. Since many of my counters are 3cmc+ I don't think I'll be storming any cEDH tables anytime soon, but I'm okay with that. I'm thinking of replacing one with Dream Fracture, probably Exclude or Negate.
Is Sylvan Library really non-threatening enough to run? I usually groan to see it on turn 2 because in Erebos I don't have any good answers to it and that player typically runs away with the game. I suppose the plan is to use it as a pseudo-Brainstorm every turn and use it as a card advantage engine only when necessary?
I took out my ramp package because I think you're right that there's really nothing to ramp into and it's unnecessarily threatening. Not that threatening, but still. Is Exploration worth running alongside Oona's Grace? I feel like pitching late game lands when you have 10+ mana available is stronger than putting extras into play. Outside of heavy ramp decks and lands.dec I've never been too terribly impressed with Exploration so I'm thinking of cutting it for more interaction or draw.
How does my draw/selection package look to you? 5.5 cantrips, 2.5 filterers, and 4.5 actual card advantage spells seems a bit light compared to what I'm used to playing with. I guess the deck doesn't commit too much to the board and only plays spells when absolutely necessary so running too many risks raising our threat profile to uncomfortable levels. Seems like 4, possibly 5 cards in hand is where you would want to be for most of the game to have enough answers without appearing like you're sculpting a combo-hand.
Sorry if you think these are all answered by reading the primer. I'm just trying to find a solid base to start with to go ahead and order before fine-tuning.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
I've seen that token and I think it's solid. If anything I think the implication of group hug (free hugs) is more likely to draw hate than the vaguely sinister hippo smirk. Anyway I've always said that the deck works fine even when people know how it works.
It's kind of hard for me to look critically at lists grouped by card type, I prefer sorted by function. I think it makes it easier to see what the deck is doing while card type says very little in most cases.
I don't love type-restrictive counters usually. I'd replace exclude (with dream fracture).
With all draw engines, it's about how your group reacts. Library is definitely borderline. But you could always wait until later turns to play it, when scarier cards are running loose. It's not like you need t3 draw anyway.
Exploration I like in decks with heavy draw, especially x draw or repeatable draw like pulse. Your deck is relatively light on big draw so it probably underperforms. Also imo you're land-light, although I understand the canttips make up for this partially. I don't love oonas because it clashes with, for example, whispers of the muse, pulses, rev, and other cards that want big mana, which expo works in harmony with.
I haven't used austere in the deck recently but I generally feel that the political aspects are minimal. Timmy understands you had to blow his rocks to save everyone from the eldrazis or whatever. Using austere makes him happier but he probably doesn't read it as a favor, and sorcery-speed favors suck anyway. As far as balancing the table it could, but it could also be incapable of stopping all the scary things at once, which akromas does better. But honestly they're close, try it and see.
I usually like having 5-6 cards in hand (though I'll go low if I think the table is particularly non threatening to reduce my profile) and bigger impact draw spells. Usually one of the cards in hand is more draw that I wait until I'm getting low for. Your count seems low (well, a high number actually, but collectively low impact, the consequence of cantrips), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think the deck can work well with just a few good draw engines, but it means it's harder to play because your threat assessment has to be on point. (Actually on closer review your draw amount looks about average. It would have been easier to figure out if you had it sorted by function though)
Happy new year and new deck!
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
EDIT: Some minor changes:
- Oona's Grace
- Imprisoned in the Moon
- Exclude
- Negate
- Into the Roil (Blink of an Eye has better art)
+ Pull from Tomorrow
+ Dream Fracture
+ Dissolve
+ Strip Mine
+ Mystifying Maze
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Breeding Pool
1 Brushland
1 Command Tower
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Forest
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Hinterland Harbor
8 Island
1 Kor Haven
1 Maze of Ith
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Path of Ancestry
4 Plains
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Strip Mine
1 Temple Garden
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Temple of Mystery
1 Temple of Plenty
1 Yavimaya Coast
Board Wipes: 10
1 AEtherspouts
1 Austere Command
1 Cleansing Nova
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Evacuation
1 Hour of Revelation
1 Rout
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Wrath of God
1 Beast Within
1 Blink of an Eye
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Council's Judgment
1 Krosan Grip
1 Nature's Claim
1 Path to Exile
1 Pongify
1 Rapid Hybridization
1 Reality Shift
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Unexpectedly Absent
Countermagic: 12
1 Arcane Denial
1 Counterspell
1 Cryptic Command
1 Delay
1 Disallow
1 Dissolve
1 Dream Fracture
1 Forbid
1 Mystic Confluence
1 Render Silent
1 Swan Song
1 Voidslime
Card Selection/Draw: 13
1 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Impulse
1 Mystic Speculation
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Pull from Tomorrow
1 Pulse of the Grid
1 Serum Visions
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Sylvan Library
1 Whispers of the Muse
1 Bant Charm
1 Comeuppance
1 Commit // Memory
1 Exploration
1 Moment's Peace
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Supreme Will
1 Tangle
1 Teferi's Protection
1 Telepathy
1 Sol Ring
Probably a good call. I'm also thinking of replacing the other with Condescend. At the very least X is 0 and you get to Scry 2, otherwise you get a lot of value for a small investment. Tax counters do lose steam over time but in the early and mid game when people are frequently tapping out it functions as a 2cmc counter with a solid upside. Dissolve is also on the fringe. Better than Sinister Sabotage due to a lack of recursion in my list and you don't give away information.
Good point.
Pull From Tomorrow is a viable candidate for an addition big, bursty draw spell to replace Oona's. Your analysis is likely correct there, I hadn't considered the negative synergy. As for the land count, 38 mana producers (37 lands + Sol Ring) means there's a land every ~2.6 cards, which averages out to ~3 in your starting hand. I suppose that's too few for a reactive deck without ramp. Coming from a mono-black deck playing 8 cheap rocks and a general that draws cards has probably spoiled me with regards to land counts. I could cut something for Mystifying Maze and maybe another basic.
¡Próspero año y felicidad! Enjoy your vacation and move across the pond.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
Added a new tip (although it's status as a tip is kind of questionable but I couldn't think of a better section). Mostly I just thought of this metaphor as a good way to explain how the deck works on repeated plays and wanted to write it down. Not sure if I like it enough to move it to the intro (after revision) but hey, maybe. Anyway, here were my thoughts, feedback appreciated.
A common concern with how this deck operates is that the opponents will figure out how it works, and then easily dismantle it by teaming up against you. This is possible, but unlikely. In fact I usually don't mind talking to my opponents about even some of the theory of how the deck works, and it's not a big knock to the win percent. If this seems strange to you, then allow me a metaphor.
Phelddagrif, as a deck, is like climate change. Most people agree that climate change is a problem, and that something ought to be done about it. And we'll all piss and moan about how ridiculous it is that more isn't being done, and some people are telling us that, unless we make massive changes, we're all going to be dead in a few hundreds years or whatever, but nothing much ever seems to HAPPEN. Because even though we'd LIKE to help fix the problem, fixing the problem is a big personal inconvenience. If our countries were to institute the kind of sweeping legislation that scientists recommend, it'd really hurt competitively in terms of trade. Maybe we commit to doing a little teensy tiny something, but it feels like we're all playing a sort of game of chicken where no one wants to commit too much to doing anything until everyone else has already done more.
If you can't see the parallels, your opponents may know that you're a problem, that eventually it's very likely that you'll be the winner, but there's always more pressing problems to deal with, and if they dedicate a lot of resources to fighting you and the other players don't, they're going to be at a huge disadvantage because you can put them in a miserable spot competitively by removing everything they care about and funding their enemies who are more cooperative. Sure, if everyone collectively agrees not to be swayed by your bribes, to keep fighting you with everything they've got and not let up until you're really, truly dead, then they can take you out. And if the whole world could agree to put aside short-term gains in order to really commit wholeheartedly to combating climate change, we could probably solve it. But that doesn't seem too likely, now does it?
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Emergency Powers -
The addendum is basically worthless to us so we're primarily looking at the eot wheel effect. While this could be useful, in general we're looking to have one of the biggest hands at the table, and we'd rather use removal or counters for combo disruption rather than trying to disrupt hands. And refilling our opponents is not generally something we want. Sure, there are times this will be effective, but for a 7 drop I'd really like more reliability.
absorb -
pretty passable albeit unexciting (reprint) counter. Might add it to the list as a weak option once the price drops to make it reasonable for budget lists.
Dovin's Acuity -
This is a tough one. At first I was kind of excited for it, but I think it's pretty tough to get great value out of. To state the obvious, you generally want to cast your instants as instants. Counters will very rarely be able to trigger it, and most of your board wipes are sorceries, generally. So that mostly leaves targeted removal and other instant-speed draw. Which might be enough to justify it, but I'm not totally psyched about it. It's also a bummer that you can't really protect it with the bounce clause, since it's only triggerable on your turn so enemy removal will hit it just fine unless you keep it in your hand all the time (unlike disinformation campaign).
Lawmage's Binding -
One of the best of the pacifism-style neutralizing commander removals, having flash is a big add relative to arrest. I'm still not blown away since commanders are relatively easy to free compared to the land-making versions, and will probably be eventually cleared by you with a board wipe. Plus it doesn't block static or triggered abilities, which is what a lot of the stronger commanders rely on. But for what it is, it's pretty good.
Precognitive Perception -
Strict upgrade to jace's ingenuity, which was an...ehh?...draw spell. As a sorcery it's pretty strong, but I wouldn't cast it as a sorcery unless I was sitting on a lot of mana. As a flexible draw spell it's not bad, though.
Arrester's Admonition -
repulse is a solid card, but casting this as a sorcery is a huge downside and a 3-mana unsummon is extremely trash. Noooope.
Split cards -
Boooo, so much garbage token-making. warrant // warden and depose // deploy both waste half of the card on token production that will very rarely be a good choice for us. repudiate // replicate is especially sad since the repudiate side is great, but replicate is hard for us to cast for any value at all, let alone for good value. And incubation // incongruity also has one decent side for us, with a front half that does very nearly nothing. As effective non-split cards, all of these are underwhelming and/or overcosted. The best of the bad sides - deploy, since at least it's an instant if you need an emergency blocker or a few points of lifegain - also has the least exciting front side. Really sad about these since flexibility is what we're all about, but all of these are very underwhelming. If you could make warrant // depose or repudiate // incongruity those would be amazing cards for us, especially repudiate // incongruity. But instead we've got split cards that manage to only have one useful side each. Lame.
Growth Spiral -
I mean it's fine. It's better than the sorcery-speed version. We don't really want ramp but it also just draws a card so...whatever.
Rampage of the Clans -
The biggest limit on this card is whether we actually want to play an artifact/enchantment wipe at all, since wiping creatures too only costs a few more mana (although it's usually sorcery speed), and depending on the build we may have a decent number of artifacts/enchantments we'd rather not lose. The drawback is fairly minimal to us, but it could certainly backfire. Being instant speed is great, but the relatively low mana cost isn't that crucial since we're usually using board wipes for big CA in the mid-late, and it's hard to imagine wanting to fire this off on turn 4, much less in a scenario where a simple disenchant wouldn't work just as well.
wilderness reclamation -
This is a sweet card for a more proactive control deck, but I doubt we're doing enough on our turn to really get good value out of this. Could be used to get extra draw out of pulse of the grid or whatever, but that seems like too much setup to make it good. One of the biggest strengths of the deck is that very few of its cards require setup or synergy.
clear the mind -
It's concealed instant-speed grave hate that doesn't burn a card (the first of it's kind in our CA) and doubles as a way to refill your deck vs mill or in an exceptionally long game. Between this and memory's journey it's mostly a matter of preference - journey being cheaper and repeatable, but not hitting the entire grave or giving you back your card. It's not super exciting but it's definitely functional, and might be the only piece of hate from the set that I actually consider playing. Pretty disappointing considering the set had 2 guilds within our CI. Still salty about those friggin' split cards.
swirling torrent -
My journey looking at this card: "Ooh, it's flexible. Ooooh, it targets creatures. Ooooooooh, it targets creatures twice! Two modes I'm interested in? That's awesome! What's it cost...6? Craaap. Well at least it's an instant....no, it's a sorcery, craaaaaaaap." Yeah this card super blows.
Eyes Everywhere -
Scry 1 every turn is ok but very replaceable, unfortunately I don't think we can get much value from the second part and I think it will mostly just make us a target. If it was at least an instant I'd be more into it, but as a sorcery, naw.
Verity Circle -
This is maybe the best value engine from the set - You'll probably get lots of random free draws, but luckily the draw is optional which is great for controlling hand size, and it comes with a last-resort pseudo-removal that can do serious work in the 1v1 game, and allow us to wait longer on our board wipes for better value a la icy manipulator. The nonflying restriction is a bummer, and of course tapdown removal is not ideal since it makes us a target, but overall I think this might end up being a pretty solid choice.
Smothering Tithe -
This card looks super fun for other decks, but I don't think we need the big ramp or to draw that much attention. Maybe viable as a setup to a big USZ but I'm generally against the deck going in that direction.
Expose to Daylight -
It's fine but I don't think the upside justifies running it over stronger options that either cost less or provide bigger benefits.
Tome of the Guildpact -
5 (pseudo-4) is a lot for a value engine, and we don't cast that many multicolor cards generally. Being a permanent is already a strike against it. Plus it's non-optional draw which is a bummer. Passable but not something I'd recommend.
Lockets -
We don't need ramp, but ramp that doubles as draw when you stop caring as much about mana, and also lets you empty your hand while keeping the ability to refill it, is pretty ok. The rate isn't amazing but they're fine.
So...pretty weak set overall. No board wipes, no (new) counters, only one passable targeted removal (lawmage's binding), one "other" answer (clear the mind), and a couple ok value engines, of which only verity circle stands out to me, with precognitive perception as a solid but unexciting and replaceable option for single-shot draw versions. Outside of those 4 I doubt anything in this set is likely to see much play in Phelddagrif, although I might be underrating Dovin's Acuity (I'd be happy if I was, I like the bouncy-enchantment design).
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
This post is awesome, thank you for the excellent work you have share with us in these 6 pages of topic.
I have red a couple of times this post last week, because I am actually building my own version of the deck following your recomendations because I think this deck could be 'what I am looking for'
I tried (and succeed) build a non oppressive, non combo focuses control deck that would win most of the time (in my playgroup), because the deck will rarely win before turn 20, would never have a turn 4-8 combo, wont tax people, won't counter everything, won't play rule of law or enter the battlefield tapped and friends I thought no one would be upset if the deck wins... but I was wrong with that.
Propaganda, Aurification and other non aggressive pillowfort cards will aggro everyone in the table very soon, people will krosan grip any of my enchants and complaint because they have no answer at turn 20 to be able to deal with solemnity+ Glacial chasm
So, I decided it is time to build a new deck, and I want a deck that can be perceived as fair, with no combos and with a win ratio over 50%, and it may very be this one.
I like the 'counter wall', the heavy spot removal and the boardwipes retaliation
In my actual control deck I have 9 boardwipes, in my pheldy I am starting at 12 and will be increased to 15 when I am able to get another copy of cyclonic rift, tragic arrogance and evacuation.
I like the 'I have no permanents' strategy so we are able to play boardwipes like hour of revelation that normally I would not play
Now, I have a prototype here
It is incomplete, the lands needs some fix (incluing arch), there are some cards that I have in the list because I don't have yet the 'real ones', for example I have deep freeze in the list because I don't have yet a darksteel mutation, narcolepsy will leave whenever I can get a imprisonment in the moon .
Besides those cards, I need to make room for 2 more counterspells 3 boardwipes and 2 more spot removal spells so I will apreciate if you can take a peek at my list and point me out which cards are the 'best candidates to go'
Thanks in advance
EDH: RWB Edgar Markov The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Oloro, Ageless ascetic The current updated decklist is here
EDH: UWG Phelddagrif, The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Alela, Artful provocateur The current updated decklist is here
EDH: GB Hapatra, vizier of poisons The current updated decklist is here
Dispel is debatable. Not definitely wrong, but I'd only include it if you're in a pretty heavy counterspell meta where you'll have to win a counter war to block someone's wincon. If that's you, though, go ahead and keep it in. If it's not, though, I usually prefer more flexibility in my counters.
If I was going to use a second fog after moment's peace, it'd be either tangle or teferi's protection, not fog. The low mana cost isn't super important, more value is better.
spell burst is really bad in most circumstances, and when it's good it's kind of a nasty lock, at least on low-cmc spells, that could easily drive people to attack you. Not the sort of attention we want, for the same reason we don't play forbid, although at least forbid is a cancel at worst.
Turn to frog is too combat-dependent imo. If you try to block the creature they could just use removal on phelddagrif and force a bounce, and then their creature lives. I'd put in something more reliable, like crib swap for example.
Hushwing Gryff is double trouble. It's a creature so our board wipes will kill it, it can absorb removal that we'd rather was pointed at our opponents, and even if it survives it's creating a scenario where your opponents may be motivated to kill you to prevent it impeding their plans in an ongoing way. I'd cut it in an instant.
Mystic Snake is a pretty weak counter imo since it's overcosted by 2 for a body we don't need and can't really use outside of chump blocking. It's not terrible or anything but I'd prefer something else, personally.
Selfless Squire is a fun card but I don't think I'd use it. Again, it gives a target for removal when we'd normally present none. Not terrible but 3 fogs is too many imo.
Sakura-tribe Elder I spend a bit of space in the guide on ramp - we don't really need it. We aren't ramping TO anything. One land per turn is plenty. As such, steve doesn't have much of a role in the deck. Doubly so for cultivate, Rampant Growth, and Kodama's Reach. Cut them all and add more lands instead. 38 is too few imo, I like over 40 myself but 40 would be as low as I'd go in most metas.
Conqueror's Galleon I've experimented with and found it to be too threatening for what we're trying to do.
Steel of the Godhead is pretty random. Doesn't make much sense for the deck - Phelddagrif is great, in part, because he can bounce to hand so easily. Strapping him up with auras kind of negates this benefit - and anyway, it doesn't do anything useful for us. If you want lifegain, run pulse of the fields or sphinx's revelation.
I also don't think you need 3 neutralization removals (narco, lignify, deep freeze). Usually you need none. They're totally unnecessary. You should try to steer the game in such a way that you'll be 1v1ing the opponent who you can most easily handle, which shouldn't necessitate the use of such a card. BUT in some games you don't have full control of the game, or maybe the weakest deck has a commander that's hard to handle despite the rest of the deck being weaker. For commanders that either generate enormous value if left in play for any length of time (i.e. mayael) or who generate enormous value even when countered or removed by normal means (i.e. maelstrom wanderer). In those cases, neutralizing the commander in a permanent way can be the only way to keep control of the game long enough to win. That said, the neutralizers you've got already are weak because they leave the target as a (non-indestructible) creature so your board wipes will put their commander back in the command zone. So maybe you need 3 to be able to keep it locked down, idk. But I'd try to at least cut 1.
Land-wise I'd cut treva's ruins and reliquary tower. Reliquary tower I talk about in the guide so read that. Trevas is just bad imo. We want to play a land almost every turn. Setting ourselves back just for fixing is bad news. I like the karoo lands from ravnica block, though. They work just fine since they don't slow us down long-term and they give us a free extra card/mana.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
My meta is blue heavy, not counterspell heavy, I don't use dispel in any of my decks, but because this deck has 15+ countespells It is just another option, but I will considered it as a possible cut.
Turn to frog is bad, for me is a proxy for rapid hybridization and/or Reality Shift (both cards I don't have yet)
Mystic Snake, maybe Ill just replace it with dissolve
Hushwing Gryff has won me games out of nowhere, but maybe he does not have a spot here, I will keep it for a time to see how it goes
Selfless Squire: you are right, a 4cmc fog does not worth the slot.
I like the idea of getting those for co,or fixing, but I will try them out and add lands up to 40, you are right that we need no ramp
I also don't think you need 3 neutralization removals (narco, lignify, deep freeze). Usually you need none. They're totally unnecessary. You should try to steer the game in such a way that you'll be 1v1ing the opponent who you can most easily handle, which shouldn't necessitate the use of such a card. BUT in some games you don't have full control of the game, or maybe the weakest deck has a commander that's hard to handle despite the rest of the deck being weaker. For commanders that either generate enormous value if left in play for any length of time (i.e. mayael) or who generate enormous value even when countered or removed by normal means (i.e. maelstrom wanderer). In those cases, neutralizing the commander in a permanent way can be the only way to keep control of the game long enough to win. That said, the neutralizers you've got already are weak because they leave the target as a (non-indestructible) creature so your board wipes will put their commander back in the command zone. So maybe you need 3 to be able to keep it locked down, idk. But I'd try to at least cut 1.
Theese are replacement cards for darksteel mutation, imprisonment in the moon and song of the dryads wich I still dont have yet.
My meta is full of "nasty" commanders, narset, mairsil, alesha and a long etc. So I may need to neutralize those
I definitevly would run pulses, Ill switch steal for sphinx revelation as you suggested
I know, I read all your posts about it, but I need to try it, it is just too awesome, maybe he doesn't not have a spot here but maybe for my OLoro,
I haven't thought about karoo lands, I never play those, but it may very be worth the try, I need the color fixing
Thanks for your input, Ill let you know how it went after I play a couple of games with the list and your suggestions
EDH: RWB Edgar Markov The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Oloro, Ageless ascetic The current updated decklist is here
EDH: UWG Phelddagrif, The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Alela, Artful provocateur The current updated decklist is here
EDH: GB Hapatra, vizier of poisons The current updated decklist is here
If you want to neutralize narset, short of repeatedly countering her you'll need detection tower or arcane lighthouse. Those are worth including for sure, at least one, and ideally a tutor or two too. Then make sure you get arch of orazca as another tutor target, because it's the best thing since sliced bread.
I still think 3 is too many neutralizers. Even if the commanders are scary, at the end of the day you're only going 1v1 against one of them. Your goal should not be to neutralize multiple enemy commanders at once - neutralizing someone's commander in a permanent-ish way will almost certainly make them want to kill you a lot more, so putting multiple people in that situation is pretty antithetical to what we're doing. Once it's 1v1, neutralize to your heart's content, of course.
I could see using multiple neutralization removals IF and ONLY IF there are multiple commanders which are not only scary, but an instant-win combo all on their own - i.e. narset (which is already badly handled by neutralizers unless you have that land) or new jhoira. In that case you might have no choice but to neutralize multiple commanders because otherwise you'd have to kill or counter them every time they come down. But that's really unlikely, most commanders that combo can be disrupted by removing other parts of their combo.
I think you might have too many draw spells btw. Harmonize, for example, is pretty weak. It's just color-shifted concentrate. If you want more single-shot draw I'd focus more on instants, paying 1 more for precognitive perception, whether as an instant or a sorcery, is a better deal.
Ok, so Conqueror's Galleon.
I think galleon is kind of a litmus test for playing the deck. Because it's absolutely a powerful card. And it can absolutely win you games. When I was running it (in multiple decks) it frequently became "ok, well, the right play here is to recur this board wipe...again...and then destroy all your stuff...again...and then I have to replay my commander so I can eventually end this game..."
It slows the game down to a crawl, basically, a miserable crawl with all the focus on you, where you're going to win but it's going to take forever, and at the end people will not be thinking "huh, how weird, that game had so many powerful nasty things happening, but at the end it came down to just a derpy hippo beating face after doing nothing much all game, isn't commander funny?" No, they'll be thinking "Well, that Phelddagrif deck LOOKS innocent enough, but eventually it's going to pull off some lockdown combo so you'd better smash it when you've got half a chance."
So Conqueror's galleon is a sweet card, but it's not a card that fits with what we're trying to do. It's a card that fits into a normal control deck, one that's fine with becoming the threat and intends to do so when trying to win the game. Our goal is to avoid ever being the threat, right up until the game is over. Ideally, even when it's 1v1, your opponent should look like the favorite to an outside observer. Otherwise our opponents won't want to get into a 1v1 against you, and might try to eliminate you before the 1v1 game.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Yopu have conviced me about galleon, I will play it only in my Oloro deck, seems like a perfect fit for the endgame (Oloro is a 4/5)
Edit (to avoid double post)
I am imagining this game
Turn 1 - Land and go (for every player)
Turn 2 - Land and go (maybe 1 player casts a spell and 2 a 1/1 or 2/2)
Turn 3 - Land and go (I get 3 damage because I cant block amd I play blue, then there are a bunch of dorks in the table)
Turn 4 - Land and go (I get 7-10 more damage and people gets more dudes / spells)
Turn 5 - Land and play my Comander (saving a blue to bounce, people stops atacking because now there is a 4/4 bloquer unless they have much bigger stuff)
Turn 6 - ????
Turn 7 - Profit
By turn 6 I still have 7 cards in hand, and if I miss a single LD I will be forced to discard unless of course I have spent some spells before.. but.... all our spells are counters and removal so , how do you normally play those first 6 turns?
EDH: RWB Edgar Markov The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Oloro, Ageless ascetic The current updated decklist is here
EDH: UWG Phelddagrif, The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Alela, Artful provocateur The current updated decklist is here
EDH: GB Hapatra, vizier of poisons The current updated decklist is here