I'm a Modern/EDH player that has finally decided to give Standard a chance. This is what I've come up with. It's a blue tempo build that slowly beats the opponent down with evasive one drops. Anticipate helps us find the right cards along with Thassa, God of the Sea who also functions as an alternate win condition. Devotion 5 is easy to get with this deck, especially with help from Singing Bell Strike. I feel that Nykthos, Shrine To Nyx is not really necessary here, although I guess it is worth considering casting Hypnotic Siren for its Bestow cost. I strongly prefer the life gain Radiant Fountain provides and I feel is emphasizes the tempo feel this deck is going for.
This deck is so cheap I decided to foil it out (except for Anticipate and Radiant Fountain, I have no idea why foil commons that see play in no other formats cost $10). I feel that this deck has potential, is surprisingly aggressive, and is faster than many decks in Standard now. Weaknesses to the deck that come to mind include Doomwake Giant and Anger of the Gods.
What are your thoughts on this budget brew? What decks would it do well against? What would is struggle against? How could this be improved? I would prefer not to play Master of Waves, it's slightly out of budget and it's out of the mana curve I have.
Sorry to say that it does well against nothing really. Ublockable matters when at a standstill. You have minimal defense and aggro just outraces you. Midrange even generally outraces you. You don't hit hard enough for control to worry. This really doesn't have any way to run away with the game which cripples it severely. Curve or no curve, master of waves is the only hope of viability for this at this time.
If you want to see how it does, this deck could probably actually be bought for 10 - 15 dollars on Magic Online. I do think that if you want to be successful with mono blue you really need to use the best cards available to you, and that means playing Master of Waves. While I don't feelShorecrasher Elemental is a necessity, the card will be very useful against faster aggro decks and control matchups, so I would consider that. Seriously dude all these cards are super cheap on magic online, so if you really want to test the strategy, I would use that. I understand you are going budget, but an aggro deck with a bunch of 1/1's needs pumps, which will require a color splash, which costs more money than just pitching in for master of waves. I would recommend raising the curve a little bit and playing a slightly more controlling strategy whether with Master of not. Just my two cents though.
I do like Wall of frost for resilient devotion count, but I think it is counter intuitive to an aggro strategy that curves out at three. IF you want to play a budget aggro deck that people won't constantly tell you to play more expensive cards, I would play mono red.
Long story short, they do more than you stop. You have 4 singing bell and 2 wall of frost plus 6 bounce spells. That's 4 semi permanent solutions, 2 cards that don't stop anything, and 6 temporary solutions. Rather than just telling you, let's look up at some midrange decks. For these, I just pulled up a random list for some different midranges.
Jeskai midrange.
4 seeker of the way
4 mantis rider
4 goblin rabblemaster
2 Brimaz
1 Sarkhan
Other versions play monastery mentor which is only worse for you because you literally have no real solutions for it and they can and will generally outrace you with that card alone. Singing bell does nothing. Wall of frost does nothing. Bounce spells don't matter. Either way, you have 12 "answers", none of which really get the job done on average. Mantis rider close to ignores the bounce. Rabblemaster ignores the all of the answers at least partly. Brimaz ignores the wall of frost and only needs to be untapped once through singing bell to not care anymore and that is relevant since your kill pace is so slow. Sarkhan ignores the things that aren't the bounce but has haste so it isn't a terribly good answer anyway. Seeker of the way is cheap, outpaces you, and gains life which hurts your cause, forcing you to use your bounces more than you wish. In short, you don't deal with them and each thing they play is worth 2-3 of everything you play in terms of board state. Some other versions play soulfire grandmaster which I shouldn't need to elaborate on the reasons why this is painful for you.
Jeskai tokens completely ignores you and runs back against you, hitting harder with more things. No individual card talk necessary.
Abzan
4 Fleecemane Lion
4 Siege Rhino
4 Anafenza, the Foremost
4 Rakshasa Deathdealer
3 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
2 Warden of the First Tree
21 threats that are represent twice the board presence of anything you play other than an active Thassa (which they do have direct removal for too) and more disruption than you. Only difference is that theirs is permanent.
Gx devotion
Something around 25+ threats to be had. Plenty of lifegain commonly sided. I don't see you winning this race.
The key is where almost every midrange creature puts out twice your clock per creature, even the cheaper ones. If you swing for 1 and they swing back for 2 or 3, they will just outpace you even if you slow them down a little. You're not moving so fast that you can just pressure them quickly and put them on any reasonable clock. If they happen to be packing any coincidental lifegain, it just gets uglier because their lifegain buys them multiple turns. In the SFGM case, it just stretches. Bounce is something you will run out of because it doesn't damper their resources. Meanwhile, their removal tends to acutally solve problems. If you want to tempo, your clock has to be fast enough to take advantage of things. Yours isn't.
Let's take a scenario, a pretty darn generous scenario. On the play too just for a little extra props.
Turn 1 island, triton shorethief.
Turn 1 land.
Turn 2 island, 2 more one drops and swing for 1. (This isn't terribly consistent, given that you have 12 only) 4 cards in hand.
Turn 2 land, seeker of the way.
Turn 3. Now you must answer it. Otherwise you risk them just gaining 3 and undoing most of your work already. So radiant fountain, void snare, holding for voyage's end. 2 cards in hand. You swing for 3.
Turn 3 land, seeker of the way. Wild slash one of the one drops on your turn. If you don't voyage's end the seeker, it is likely that they will gain 3.
Turn 4. Hall of triumph (Better here than Thassa since chances are the opponent has some kind of removal which will keep Thassa offline when it could swing) 2 cards in hand. Swing for 4. If you had opted for singing bell, you're only swinging for 2.
Turn 4. Land, Seeker of the way, holding lightning strike.
Turn 5. So far you've dealt a grand total of 6 damage and are almost out of cards. Any land you draw is probably not happy times either. There's also only about 4 damage on board, about to be just 2. Your opponent with their one seeker of the way can easily gain 3 a turn if you don't keep stopping it. So let's say singing bell strike. They strike your creature so you hit for 2 and play another. Hand a 0-1 depending on 4th land drop or not. Either way, you're prettymuch topdecking. They're at 12, 9 at worst if they pinged themselves a little.
Turn 5. Land, mantis rider + removal spell. They swing for 3 and can now block your hypnotic siren that they've been leaving alive.
Turn 6. You swing with what you can swing with and hit for nothing because it eats a removal and the siren can't swing. At this point, you're topdecking and might, might be able to outrace the one mantis rider by itself if they play nothing else... which is unlikely.
The plays on your side were based on your ideal opening, your god draw. The plays for the opponent were just a seeker of the way, a mantis rider, and some mishmash of removal which is all pretty normal for them and not even that much. Yet you run out before even getting close. If a tempo deck's god draw on the play might get a normal midrange draw down to 5, the odds are not much in your favor. If you'd like, we can talk about the merits of bouncing a siege rhino repeatedly for tempo too. Mirdrange doesn't exactly just beat you out by dropping things repeatedly like an aggro deck but you need so much board committal that anything that they play you almost must deal with unless you want their one creature to keep pace with all yours combined. This eats up your time and keeps you from establishing needed board presence and thus clock. In turn, you will run out of both ammo and answers as they slow you down. As your answers are so temporary and wishy washy, this leaves them commonly in a scenario where they may be down in life but can then repeatedly drop more efficient creatures, ultimately outracing you just because your clock is so slow. When you're swinging for 2 and they hit back for 6, they can get away with being down a fair bit. In the cases that midrange brings in mini sweepers or happens to pack life gain, this only gets worse and worse. Hence outracing.
If you say wall of frost, don't. About all wall of frost accomplishes is burning another turn of low damage output while not actually stopping anything. A prowess seeker still gains life when hitting a wall. Brimaz and rabblemaster still make tokens. Mantis rider still flies over. Etc, etc. You can't tap out against a polukranos unless you want it to eat your entire army for lunch. The clock is slow enough to allow multiple rhinos to drop. Butcher of the horde can get lifelink. There's so many things running against you and not nearly enough cards to do it all with. It might feel good pretty early but you will run dry.
I'm new to this format, but not to MTG. These cards like Mantis Rider and Butcher of the Horder seem slow, they are coming out on turn 3, and turn 4. Maybe? this is a format with pain lands, fetches, and tap lands. I don't see how any deck can possibly play Mantis Rider on turn 3 reliably or consistently without hurting itself. Most of the decks you are mentioning aren't even doing anything on turn 1. I don't think your scenario you provided is bad, but I really don't think it's "too generous" there are better scenarios.
What are ways I can improve this deck outside of improving the curve? More answers?
Tap lands slip in better than you assume. These decks like tap lands on turn 1 but don't mind them turn 3 either. Delaying a turn and playing seeker or a kill spell is perfectly fine without messing anything up. Pain lands really aren't that bad either. Mantis rider is about the only color stressful card is jeskai midrange. Tokens has a little more but that's a complete slaughter matchup. Between fetches and pain lands, they're not going to wantonly hit themselves for 7 or 8 for you, especially when anything they play gets the job done. If you forced them to move up faster, that might be different but you don't. Taking 1 to play mantis rider isn't bad either though I'd hold onto that and play the others first if available. Seeker pressures you in a bad way. Of course there are better scenarios like your opponent being mana screwed or flooded. However, I think that tempo deck on the play with a god draw had better be beating an average draw by a margin, not being short by a margin. Consider that that's all those considerations in your least bad field. Control wrecks you because slow clock, large board committal, and a bunch of dead cards equals you lose and aggro literally just does what you do except that every card they play hits harder and every removal they play is permanent. Its like playing a deck of shocks against a deck of lightning bolts.
Honestly, I think you're putting too much stock in evasion. You can have all the evasion in the world but if you can't bring it home efficiently, you won't get places. I feel like everything this deck does, a ur or uw prowess deck does better. Less necessary board committal, harder hitting, more actual solution cards, less vulnerability to anti-aggro sb cards which crush you. Same general tempo feel if you want. Everything is superior except the land base but those aren't terribly needy. The issue is that when you're poking for 1 at a time, you just can't hold the game like that. The evasion becomes meaningless when it comes at the cost of making it take twice as long to kill. The evasion is also terribly redundant. If they get things, they hammer you andyou die faster. You try to stop that mostly with bounce and lock... which takes away the ability to block anyway. So why are you playing subpar creatures for evasion that you don't need when you could have more damage?
I like a lot of what you are saying but I've played tempo in several other formats (Legacy, Modern, EDH, Pauper, etc.) and swinging for 2-3 damage each turn doesn't seem like much, but it really adds up when you are faster than your opponents, have mana open to deal with problems, and your opponent is already hurting themselves. I've watched people play standard at my card shop, and it seems very slow.
The way I see it is, if I'm on the play, I can have 3 power on board by turn 2 (with 12 one drops and Stratus Dancer and one color, this is quite consistent), while on their turn 2, they are finally playing their first creature, which I can bounce or lock down if it's something with haste or lifelink. Obviously this is a budget deck and not tier one proven or anything, but I feel this seems much more consistent than having to constantly ping yourself with pain lands and rely on tap lands.
Please tell me more cards that would be good in a mono/2 color tempo/control deck for this format.
"But I've played tempo in several other formats". The whole experience argument is moot. So have I but it doesn't take that to make the point. If you have, then you should understand the difference between one creature hitting for 3 and 3 creatures hitting for 3. That's a massive committal of cards and time. In a tempo sense, one jeskai sage literally beats out 3 of your creatures in terms of tempo play. That's because didn't cost you 3 cards to have. Those other 2 cards can be used to do other things. Efficiency. Evasion. Survivability. Value. These things tend to be common parts of what make a good tempo creature. Your creatures have great evasion but fail at everything else. Seeker of the way? Good efficiency. Reasonable survivability. Ok value. No evasion. But you're white so... Jeskai sage. Efficiency ok. Evasion none. Survivability. Good. Value. Fine. Let's go talking older. Young pyromancer. Efficiency. Good. Evasion. Not really. Survivability ok. Value, amazing. Delver. Efficiency great. Evasion, check. Survivability. Not really. Value. Not really. Just efficient. Every good tempo creature is excelling in at least one area and is passable elsewhere for overall rounding out. If you wish to "on your experience" continue to believe that you can tempo with a slow clock, nonpermanent answers, and huge card committal, be my guest. That's your loss. But if you want to talk it in concept or application, you'll find yourself coming short against anything but a draft deck. And even some of those will run you down. If your shop is playing at the quality of a draft deck, then by all means be successful there but that isn't standard as a whole.
3 power on the board by turn 2 is unimpressive. One seeker of the way might as well be 3 power on turn 2 with one card except it has props. Try taking the scenario I put out in your head but flip it around. Imagine you're on the play. Its a complete slaughter. Consider that that will happen roughly 50% of the time. Then consider that that's your best matchup because aggro and control are throw away matches. Midrange: unfavorable Aggro: unwinnable Control: unwinnable.
Don't use budget as an excuse. If you play budget (I emphasize play), that means that you understand that you have limited funds and fight money in such a way that you maximize your chances to win. An example of this was me choosing to play mono white hyper aggro with 24 one drops, brave the elements, and fortify in the mono blue devotion infested time of last standard. Of course it was a vulnerable deck but I knew what was around me and pinned my chances on the idea that I'd mostly run into mono blue and when I ran into mono black I could bet on whether they'd draw their drown in sorrows. In this case, you're autolosing in 2 fields to hope to win a third on a flawed idea. If you understand how modern and legacy tempo play, you'd know how important card advantage and conservation are. A tempo deck doesn't just wantonly try to keep the opponent off balance a bit. When being built, they gauge the time it takes for their threats to work and then calculate how long they think they can tempo their opponents out. This is a linear, one dimensional tempo as it is only for creatures and no attention is paid to the clock.
There is no delver in this format. Bounce isn't a very good tempo when your threat doesn't move fast enough. Efficient, evasive creatures also don't exist in this standard so the best way to tempo is an efficient creature that you will clear the way for however you do it. This is not my way of saying to play all of this. They are tempoish options that roll off the top of my head, though.
Black
Boon of erebos. The ability to threaten to allow any of your one drops to kill a courser or caryatid.
Crippling blight. Permanent evasion.
Ultimate price, bile blight, murderous cut. Cheap kill spells.
Duress and despise. Pre-emptive dealing with things.
White
Center soul. Double prowess trigger. Double evasion. Defensive spell.
Defiant strike. Prowess trigger, cantrip.
Seeker of the way. Efficient. Gets you a little life cushion.
Artful maneuver?
Not the most tempoish color as far as spells go but you can pull creatures at your leisure.
Blue
Jeskai sage and other prowess things. Basically just a creature base that can push damage while you do your tricks.
Anticipate. Your prowess trigger and best dig.
Elusive spellfist
It is one thing to bounce with vapor snag and snapcaster mage which was popular for a while. That's 2 turns of turn blanking and 2 free damage, often when you have a 3/2 flying already. This isn't that. As you have it, you're utterly tossing aggro and control in general because you literally cannot win them except by absurd mana screw or excessive unluckiness on the part of the opponent. If you played against UB control and they began with 3 lands a cmc 5 board wipe, 2 Ugins, and a Silumgar, I'd still favor the UB player because even with that molasses slow hand, you don't put the clock on fast enough to kill them and they will probably hit other things in that time. If you played against aggro, they'd have to be severely mana screwed or flooded while you had a particularly good hand. It is literally "You swing for 1. I swing back for 2. You swing for 2. I swing back for 4-6. You bounce my creature. I kill your creature." You severely overestimate how much midrange will hurt themselves and their normal pace but should we really even argue the point when you're voluntarily throwing aggro and control to the winds like a turbofog deck with the burn matchup?
I like that idea a lot Philosopher84. Are there other pump spells in the format currently? I also appreciate your analysis Nev, and am probably underestimating the pace and power lever of the format.
I do apologize if I come off as a bit rude, just trying to be accurate and realistic. The pump spells in the format are unfortunately wanting. Red has titan's strength. Black has boon of erebos. Green likely has the most. Aspect of hydra if green aggro. Titanic growth, become immense as noted. However, there are no blue cantrips and you only have 4 anticipate. Budget and wrong colors mean no grave filling fetch lands. For a pump build, GR is going to be better with the nonbuget fetch, a cmc 1 pump, a double strike spell in temur battle rage, and bigger beats. Not to say you can't do it with UG unblockable but become immense doesn't win on the spot. I'd rather have an enduring buff but this still doesn't address the issue of defense be it by defense or speed. As it stands, you don't just outrun them and now are weak to removal so you must prepare for that too.
This is a weird suggestion I just thought of, but maybe up the number wall of frost to 4 and add Profaner of the dead? And crippling chill is not the worst cantrip ever. Just throwing things out there.
I like shoguns suggestions, as soon as you feel like they are getting an edge on your evaders and getting a solid board presence you can drop the Profaner/frost combo for a blue board wipe and then re assess the situation.
I think if you put early pressure with the unblockables and then turn it into a midrange deck maybe that could help you win midgame races, instead of full commit to the 1 drop tricks.
Something like,
Turn 1 - land , 1 drop
Turn 2 - land, 1 drop swing for 1.
Turn 3 - land?, hold for counter, keep swinging.
If at this point they are keeping pace or just have a better board you can work into wall of frost and profaner.
At this point you can have a few 4 drops maybe some dig through times after all your 1 drop weenies are dead.
Just brainstorming ^.^
If they play anything on turns 1 or 2 (3 as well if they are on the play) that's beyond a mana dork, they're more than keeping pace. They have superior board state. The issue with wall and profaner lies in the fact that profaner is terribly weak without wall be it by drawing both or wall eating removal in response (which is actually relevant since it is the only thing that valorous stance's second mode hits and the first is meaningless) and that you can only do it once per wall and profaner. The profaner doesn't make for much board state either.
I'm not sure what 4 drop you'd want and if you wanted a slower deck, you'd be better off playing actual midrange and devoting spots to control type spells rather than wasting slots on one drops that aren't even a swift clock. I mean, just look at 2 one drops vs one seeker of the way. Is that worth bouncing? Of course not.
Why is the evasion part important to you? I think if that's what's important, it'd be most efficient to start from there.
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I'm a Modern/EDH player that has finally decided to give Standard a chance. This is what I've come up with. It's a blue tempo build that slowly beats the opponent down with evasive one drops. Anticipate helps us find the right cards along with Thassa, God of the Sea who also functions as an alternate win condition. Devotion 5 is easy to get with this deck, especially with help from Singing Bell Strike. I feel that Nykthos, Shrine To Nyx is not really necessary here, although I guess it is worth considering casting Hypnotic Siren for its Bestow cost. I strongly prefer the life gain Radiant Fountain provides and I feel is emphasizes the tempo feel this deck is going for.
Scenario:
Turn 1:Island > Triton Shorestalker
Turn 2 Island > Hypnotic Siren + Gudul Lurker
Turn 3 Radiant Fountain > Void Snare, keep mana open for Voyage's End or Anticipate
Turn 4 Thassa, God of the Sea or Hall of Triumph
Hall of Triumph is very strong here also and can frankly steal games. Singing Bell Strike is powerful removal and seems much better than Reality Shift. Wall of Frost is helpful when dealing with aggro decks, and also brings Thassa, God of Sea more devotion.
This deck is so cheap I decided to foil it out (except for Anticipate and Radiant Fountain, I have no idea why foil commons that see play in no other formats cost $10). I feel that this deck has potential, is surprisingly aggressive, and is faster than many decks in Standard now. Weaknesses to the deck that come to mind include Doomwake Giant and Anger of the Gods.
4x Hypnotic Siren
4x Triton Shorestalker
4x Omenspeaker
2x Stratus Dancer
2x Wall of Frost
4x Anticipate
4x Singing Bell Strike
3x Voyage's End
3x Void Snare
18x Island
4x Radiant Fountain
What are your thoughts on this budget brew? What decks would it do well against? What would is struggle against? How could this be improved? I would prefer not to play Master of Waves, it's slightly out of budget and it's out of the mana curve I have.
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
I do like Wall of frost for resilient devotion count, but I think it is counter intuitive to an aggro strategy that curves out at three. IF you want to play a budget aggro deck that people won't constantly tell you to play more expensive cards, I would play mono red.
Jeskai midrange.
4 seeker of the way
4 mantis rider
4 goblin rabblemaster
2 Brimaz
1 Sarkhan
Other versions play monastery mentor which is only worse for you because you literally have no real solutions for it and they can and will generally outrace you with that card alone. Singing bell does nothing. Wall of frost does nothing. Bounce spells don't matter. Either way, you have 12 "answers", none of which really get the job done on average. Mantis rider close to ignores the bounce. Rabblemaster ignores the all of the answers at least partly. Brimaz ignores the wall of frost and only needs to be untapped once through singing bell to not care anymore and that is relevant since your kill pace is so slow. Sarkhan ignores the things that aren't the bounce but has haste so it isn't a terribly good answer anyway. Seeker of the way is cheap, outpaces you, and gains life which hurts your cause, forcing you to use your bounces more than you wish. In short, you don't deal with them and each thing they play is worth 2-3 of everything you play in terms of board state. Some other versions play soulfire grandmaster which I shouldn't need to elaborate on the reasons why this is painful for you.
Jeskai tokens completely ignores you and runs back against you, hitting harder with more things. No individual card talk necessary.
Abzan
4 Fleecemane Lion
4 Siege Rhino
4 Anafenza, the Foremost
4 Rakshasa Deathdealer
3 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
2 Warden of the First Tree
21 threats that are represent twice the board presence of anything you play other than an active Thassa (which they do have direct removal for too) and more disruption than you. Only difference is that theirs is permanent.
Gx devotion
Something around 25+ threats to be had. Plenty of lifegain commonly sided. I don't see you winning this race.
The key is where almost every midrange creature puts out twice your clock per creature, even the cheaper ones. If you swing for 1 and they swing back for 2 or 3, they will just outpace you even if you slow them down a little. You're not moving so fast that you can just pressure them quickly and put them on any reasonable clock. If they happen to be packing any coincidental lifegain, it just gets uglier because their lifegain buys them multiple turns. In the SFGM case, it just stretches. Bounce is something you will run out of because it doesn't damper their resources. Meanwhile, their removal tends to acutally solve problems. If you want to tempo, your clock has to be fast enough to take advantage of things. Yours isn't.
Let's take a scenario, a pretty darn generous scenario. On the play too just for a little extra props.
Turn 1 island, triton shorethief.
Turn 1 land.
Turn 2 island, 2 more one drops and swing for 1. (This isn't terribly consistent, given that you have 12 only) 4 cards in hand.
Turn 2 land, seeker of the way.
Turn 3. Now you must answer it. Otherwise you risk them just gaining 3 and undoing most of your work already. So radiant fountain, void snare, holding for voyage's end. 2 cards in hand. You swing for 3.
Turn 3 land, seeker of the way. Wild slash one of the one drops on your turn. If you don't voyage's end the seeker, it is likely that they will gain 3.
Turn 4. Hall of triumph (Better here than Thassa since chances are the opponent has some kind of removal which will keep Thassa offline when it could swing) 2 cards in hand. Swing for 4. If you had opted for singing bell, you're only swinging for 2.
Turn 4. Land, Seeker of the way, holding lightning strike.
Turn 5. So far you've dealt a grand total of 6 damage and are almost out of cards. Any land you draw is probably not happy times either. There's also only about 4 damage on board, about to be just 2. Your opponent with their one seeker of the way can easily gain 3 a turn if you don't keep stopping it. So let's say singing bell strike. They strike your creature so you hit for 2 and play another. Hand a 0-1 depending on 4th land drop or not. Either way, you're prettymuch topdecking. They're at 12, 9 at worst if they pinged themselves a little.
Turn 5. Land, mantis rider + removal spell. They swing for 3 and can now block your hypnotic siren that they've been leaving alive.
Turn 6. You swing with what you can swing with and hit for nothing because it eats a removal and the siren can't swing. At this point, you're topdecking and might, might be able to outrace the one mantis rider by itself if they play nothing else... which is unlikely.
The plays on your side were based on your ideal opening, your god draw. The plays for the opponent were just a seeker of the way, a mantis rider, and some mishmash of removal which is all pretty normal for them and not even that much. Yet you run out before even getting close. If a tempo deck's god draw on the play might get a normal midrange draw down to 5, the odds are not much in your favor. If you'd like, we can talk about the merits of bouncing a siege rhino repeatedly for tempo too. Mirdrange doesn't exactly just beat you out by dropping things repeatedly like an aggro deck but you need so much board committal that anything that they play you almost must deal with unless you want their one creature to keep pace with all yours combined. This eats up your time and keeps you from establishing needed board presence and thus clock. In turn, you will run out of both ammo and answers as they slow you down. As your answers are so temporary and wishy washy, this leaves them commonly in a scenario where they may be down in life but can then repeatedly drop more efficient creatures, ultimately outracing you just because your clock is so slow. When you're swinging for 2 and they hit back for 6, they can get away with being down a fair bit. In the cases that midrange brings in mini sweepers or happens to pack life gain, this only gets worse and worse. Hence outracing.
If you say wall of frost, don't. About all wall of frost accomplishes is burning another turn of low damage output while not actually stopping anything. A prowess seeker still gains life when hitting a wall. Brimaz and rabblemaster still make tokens. Mantis rider still flies over. Etc, etc. You can't tap out against a polukranos unless you want it to eat your entire army for lunch. The clock is slow enough to allow multiple rhinos to drop. Butcher of the horde can get lifelink. There's so many things running against you and not nearly enough cards to do it all with. It might feel good pretty early but you will run dry.
What are ways I can improve this deck outside of improving the curve? More answers?
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Honestly, I think you're putting too much stock in evasion. You can have all the evasion in the world but if you can't bring it home efficiently, you won't get places. I feel like everything this deck does, a ur or uw prowess deck does better. Less necessary board committal, harder hitting, more actual solution cards, less vulnerability to anti-aggro sb cards which crush you. Same general tempo feel if you want. Everything is superior except the land base but those aren't terribly needy. The issue is that when you're poking for 1 at a time, you just can't hold the game like that. The evasion becomes meaningless when it comes at the cost of making it take twice as long to kill. The evasion is also terribly redundant. If they get things, they hammer you andyou die faster. You try to stop that mostly with bounce and lock... which takes away the ability to block anyway. So why are you playing subpar creatures for evasion that you don't need when you could have more damage?
I like a lot of what you are saying but I've played tempo in several other formats (Legacy, Modern, EDH, Pauper, etc.) and swinging for 2-3 damage each turn doesn't seem like much, but it really adds up when you are faster than your opponents, have mana open to deal with problems, and your opponent is already hurting themselves. I've watched people play standard at my card shop, and it seems very slow.
The way I see it is, if I'm on the play, I can have 3 power on board by turn 2 (with 12 one drops and Stratus Dancer and one color, this is quite consistent), while on their turn 2, they are finally playing their first creature, which I can bounce or lock down if it's something with haste or lifelink. Obviously this is a budget deck and not tier one proven or anything, but I feel this seems much more consistent than having to constantly ping yourself with pain lands and rely on tap lands.
Please tell me more cards that would be good in a mono/2 color tempo/control deck for this format.
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
3 power on the board by turn 2 is unimpressive. One seeker of the way might as well be 3 power on turn 2 with one card except it has props. Try taking the scenario I put out in your head but flip it around. Imagine you're on the play. Its a complete slaughter. Consider that that will happen roughly 50% of the time. Then consider that that's your best matchup because aggro and control are throw away matches. Midrange: unfavorable Aggro: unwinnable Control: unwinnable.
Don't use budget as an excuse. If you play budget (I emphasize play), that means that you understand that you have limited funds and fight money in such a way that you maximize your chances to win. An example of this was me choosing to play mono white hyper aggro with 24 one drops, brave the elements, and fortify in the mono blue devotion infested time of last standard. Of course it was a vulnerable deck but I knew what was around me and pinned my chances on the idea that I'd mostly run into mono blue and when I ran into mono black I could bet on whether they'd draw their drown in sorrows. In this case, you're autolosing in 2 fields to hope to win a third on a flawed idea. If you understand how modern and legacy tempo play, you'd know how important card advantage and conservation are. A tempo deck doesn't just wantonly try to keep the opponent off balance a bit. When being built, they gauge the time it takes for their threats to work and then calculate how long they think they can tempo their opponents out. This is a linear, one dimensional tempo as it is only for creatures and no attention is paid to the clock.
There is no delver in this format. Bounce isn't a very good tempo when your threat doesn't move fast enough. Efficient, evasive creatures also don't exist in this standard so the best way to tempo is an efficient creature that you will clear the way for however you do it. This is not my way of saying to play all of this. They are tempoish options that roll off the top of my head, though.
Black
Boon of erebos. The ability to threaten to allow any of your one drops to kill a courser or caryatid.
Crippling blight. Permanent evasion.
Ultimate price, bile blight, murderous cut. Cheap kill spells.
Duress and despise. Pre-emptive dealing with things.
White
Center soul. Double prowess trigger. Double evasion. Defensive spell.
Defiant strike. Prowess trigger, cantrip.
Seeker of the way. Efficient. Gets you a little life cushion.
Artful maneuver?
Devouring light
Oppressive rays
Valorous stance
Red
Wild slash
Lightning strike
Searing blood
Monastery swiftspear
Hammerhand
Titan's strength?
Green
Not the most tempoish color as far as spells go but you can pull creatures at your leisure.
Blue
Jeskai sage and other prowess things. Basically just a creature base that can push damage while you do your tricks.
Anticipate. Your prowess trigger and best dig.
Elusive spellfist
It is one thing to bounce with vapor snag and snapcaster mage which was popular for a while. That's 2 turns of turn blanking and 2 free damage, often when you have a 3/2 flying already. This isn't that. As you have it, you're utterly tossing aggro and control in general because you literally cannot win them except by absurd mana screw or excessive unluckiness on the part of the opponent. If you played against UB control and they began with 3 lands a cmc 5 board wipe, 2 Ugins, and a Silumgar, I'd still favor the UB player because even with that molasses slow hand, you don't put the clock on fast enough to kill them and they will probably hit other things in that time. If you played against aggro, they'd have to be severely mana screwed or flooded while you had a particularly good hand. It is literally "You swing for 1. I swing back for 2. You swing for 2. I swing back for 4-6. You bounce my creature. I kill your creature." You severely overestimate how much midrange will hurt themselves and their normal pace but should we really even argue the point when you're voluntarily throwing aggro and control to the winds like a turbofog deck with the burn matchup?
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
I think if you put early pressure with the unblockables and then turn it into a midrange deck maybe that could help you win midgame races, instead of full commit to the 1 drop tricks.
Something like,
Turn 1 - land , 1 drop
Turn 2 - land, 1 drop swing for 1.
Turn 3 - land?, hold for counter, keep swinging.
If at this point they are keeping pace or just have a better board you can work into wall of frost and profaner.
At this point you can have a few 4 drops maybe some dig through times after all your 1 drop weenies are dead.
Just brainstorming ^.^
I'm not sure what 4 drop you'd want and if you wanted a slower deck, you'd be better off playing actual midrange and devoting spots to control type spells rather than wasting slots on one drops that aren't even a swift clock. I mean, just look at 2 one drops vs one seeker of the way. Is that worth bouncing? Of course not.
Why is the evasion part important to you? I think if that's what's important, it'd be most efficient to start from there.