MTG Salvation

This is an attempt to make a Talrand, Sky Summoner deck that doesn't try to win via Mass Polymorph/Palinchron, using High Tide/Extraplanar Lens and other mana doublers to chain cantrips, or by utilizing prison elements such as Overburden. Instead, this deck aims to gently steer the flow of the game by either encouraging attackers to go elsewhere (Reality Shift, Snap, Submerge, Curse of Verbosity, etc.) or trying to play the political game by giving gifts to other players. Dowsing Dagger can help someone with a slow start get some blockers out, Domineering Will can donate blockers to a neighbor, etc. This deck also includes as many cards that involve choices by the whole table as possible. This allows for a lot of political fun and "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" plays ("Give me a 4-1 split on Fact or Fiction and I'll Submerge the Zurgo Helmsmasher coming your way"). The permission and removal are meant to be either cheap or free, usually requiring only a single Island available if any cost reducers are out. This lets me play 5-6 CMC spells on my turn and still have a decent amount of defense/negotiation power. Eventually the deck aims to win by landing a huge finisher or overwhelming with drake tokens. Here's the deck:



Some notes on card choices:

This list is meant to be fairly budget. I'm willing to shell out for Academy Ruins, Riptide Laboratory, and Expropriate because they're likely to be staples in my collection and they do so much for this deck. Caged Sun is the only mana doubler I own. Every other card on this list that costs more than ~$8.00 are already in my collection. This is a big reason why I chose not to build around Extraplanar Lens and/or Gauntlet of Power, and why Force of Will and Pact of Negation are missing.

I'm a little medium on Wash Out due to sorcery speed, but it can give a lot of breathing room and is fairly one-sided (This will be the only mono-blue deck in my group). Ensnare seems like another really good option I can use when I'm tapped out but I ran out of space to fit it in. Likewise, Conqueror's Galleon seems like a great late-game mana sink if it can be flipped, but it seems like it'll come online too late to be worth it.

What do you guys think? Cuts, additions, scrap the whole thing?

Thanks for the reply!

I'm not really trying to go group hug with this deck. It's more of a control deck that allows a bit of extra interacting with my opponents. I mostly play with friends who are very casual Magic players, so bringing a full-on draw-go/stax/prison control deck wouldn't be much fun for anyone. I also wanted to try to avoid the classic playstyle of doing everything at the end of my opponent's turns, hence the combination of big spells and stuff i can use for free/cheap.

Rather than group hug cards, I'm more looking for things that can bring someone who had an awful start or who's getting teamed up on a way back into the game. Try and prevent the games where one player has to wait for a long game to finish because he couldn't draw lands his first 5 turns. But I still want to win in the end, so they should aid my overall game plan. For example, Hunted Phantasm is great at helping one player stall for time, but a 4/6 unlockable doesn't do much for me by itself, it isn't an instant or sorcery, and I can't stop the tokens from just coming back my way because I'm not running Propaganda effects.

As for the other "free" card suggestions you made, Commandeer is a little steep (In mana cost, alternate cost, and monetary cost) for what it does. Often Split Decision will have a comparable effect (I'll either get a copy of a spell i want because the caster won't vote to counter his own spell, or he'll get outvoted in the case of a spell that says "counter this or I win") and it costs 25 cents. Daze and Thwart got chopped because I felt i had enough counters and they were the least appealing of what i had.

I've been playing a Talrand deck for a couple weeks and I find he works more consistently for me with lots of tap and bounce spells, with a selection of the best counters as a complement to those more interactive nuisance spells. I encounter decks that rely on abilities that put permanents onto the field by bypassing the spell stack, so going heavy with counters would just put me in a position to sit and wait to be steamrolled.

I haven't thought about playing a group hug kind of deck, so I dont have insight how you would do it, but Talrand is a good exploiter of extra card draw situations. If you play a few global card draw spells, your opponents will not mind so much, especially if they can't get their own out. Talrand requires you to cast lots of inexpensive instants and sorceries, and because the spells in his library all vary a bit in their specificity you need to draw lots of them to get max value. Plus all the extra card draw will get you reliably into one of your kill combos.

Primal Amulet/Primal Wellspring is a great card. Tapping the Wellspring to cast Rite of Replication can be a game ender, especially if you can play a Twincast on top of it.

Fatestitcher is a very versatile creature and you might find him handy. I use him defensively to tap a big threat as its owner declares combat phase, to tap a threatening land following untap step or also I use him to untap Proteus Staff to get a second creature out of my library per turn. He is a rockstar at holding off Eldrazi titans. His tap/untap ability might get you some bargaining power in a political multi-player game.

I used to play Fact or Fiction because lots of players say it's a great card, but I find it underwhelming, especially in my Talrand deck. I swapped it out for Magus of the Future instead and I will see how that goes.