Unfortunately, most of the cards you listed just don't work for Feather.
Abnormal Endurance is okay, but Unlikely Aid is better. During an combat phase your creatures hit. Bladebrand is inferior to Defiant Strike. If you want deathtouch, that means you're attacking into bigger threats, which means yor attacker is likely to die. Feather doesn't want targets to die. Bleeding Edge is ok, but 3 cmc is too high. You would have to choose from casting this or another card more often than not. Fungal Infection is much more playable, but still not that impressive. Clear the Stage way too costly and situational. Blessing of Belzenlok is solid. Nightmare's Thirst and Skulduggery are just bad, the former could only work in a dedicated deck. Macabre Mockery doesn't work, creature card in a graveyard is not the same as creature you control Undercity Uprising is so much worse than Prey Upon...
Unfortunately, most of the cards you listed just don't work for Feather.
Abnormal Endurance is okay, but Unlikely Aid is better. During an combat phase your creatures hit. Bladebrand is inferior to Defiant Strike. If you want deathtouch, that means you're attacking into bigger threats, which means yor attacker is likely to die. Feather doesn't want targets to die. Bleeding Edge is ok, but 3 cmc is too high. You would have to choose from casting this or another card more often than not. Fungal Infection is much more playable, but still not that impressive. Clear the Stage way too costly and situational. Blessing of Belzenlok is solid. Nightmare's Thirst and Skulduggery are just bad, the former could only work in a dedicated deck. Macabre Mockery doesn't work, creature card in a graveyard is not the same as creature you control Undercity Uprising is so much worse than Prey Upon...
Well, overall not yet there.
Doesn't work for the [i]existing[/i] Feather strategies. The idea is actually more splashing white into a mostly-Black strategy for Feather to recur some valuable effects in a different kind of creature-based strategy, rather than being [i]primarily[/i] a large pile of combat tricks like the current Feather strategies.
The reason I brought up Macabre Mockery is that the creature [i]is[/i] on the field and affected by the card, so you [i]do[/i] control it as the card affects it on the battlefield. I'm not sure if the attached buff, which is a separate clause, counts for Feather's targeting requirement. It's very much an edge case mentioned because of the [i]chance[i] of recurrent reanimation.
Skulduggery is a 2/2 swing for one mana and will [i]always[/i] recur with Feather. If two of them are in hand, everything with two toughness is a valid target for recurring two-mana removal. Nightmare's Thirst pairs perfectly well with Blessing of Belzenlok for a reliable -6/-6 when you eventually need it (and with M20 coming up, it'd fit well for an Orzhov-base lifegain deck splashing red for Feather) and being a life a turn for a mana whenever you have Black spare before that, while Undercity Uprising is mentioned for the "all creatures you control gain Deathtouch" as a way to crack open the board and close out the game, the Fight trigger is just why it recurs to [i]keep[/i] cracking the board open until they can't keep blocking. You only need one of it, as it's there to be a win condition when you eventually come across it in longer games, and you have Black for [i]much[/i] harder removal than Prey Upon.
Abnormal Endurance has the important potential advantage of allowing creatures to leave the battlefield, letting both ETB and on-death effects trigger in the process, while Unlikely Aid is only better if you're wanting to smash the opposing line. In which case, you've got reanimation because you're running Black, just use Bladebrand and bring the thing whatever they used the big threat to block back, if you actually care about it enough. Bladebrand is far better as a combat trick, since it [i]outright kills[/i] most blocking creatures instead of only swinging by 1 power. Yes, it costs one more. It's also pretty close to recurrent removal for two, in this case, and there's no reason you can't run two of it and two of Defiant Strike, or some other ratio to smooth draw power and color distribution.
Essentially, the idea is altering a "Kill My Things" deck or some Reanimator strategy into a Feather deck, running removal-with-upside to trigger the deaths and having Feather recur this self-targeted removal to [i]keep[/i] triggering it as desired while preserving the removal for if you need to hit an enemy with it, with combat tricks so you can close out with combat easier and handle other creature-based decks, rather than having the combat tricks be the only engine of the deck's strategy.
I don't really have an exact decklist in mind, just a general deck idea for Mardu-colored Feather.
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I love Slivers, Myr, Saprolings and generally any creature type best served by spamming loads of tokens
For an example of the "Kill My Things" deck type, here's a video of one in the proper colors. Dreadhorde Butcher is a pretty big target to make an argument for Abnormal Endurance over Unlikely Aid, especially alongside Midnight Reaper turning the repeated deaths into cards drawn (also done by so that the rates of reaching the engines is increased significantly.
I don't keep track of the game with nearly enough detail to be able to spin off a decklist with any kind of ease, I just know what mechanics at large exist and can look at cards and pretty quickly think of what could go well with them. Actually fitting the pieces together? Takes a rather long time for me to even try to get started on that.
So I can point out that Costly Plunder and Blood Divination are good for digging through the deck to reach Feather so recurring the draw-upside cards can begin, but I don't actually know how to run all the numbers to determine which card with this sort of effect is best, or whether it's worth the deck space taken away from a cantrip that does something else in addition to drawing a card, or if the death triggers as a whole can make them viable over the draw-and-also-something cards. Heck, given the idea of having the deck be mostly Reanimator with a splash of White for Feather to recur some stuff, Ajani's Influence as a four-of and Feather and Teysa Karlov as less-than four-ofs could work out perfectly well, burrowing through the deck for the few White cards of importance while building up a Dreadhorde Butcher to burn the enemy down or off a Planeswalker.
Basically, I know what the numbers are, but don't know how to crunch them, because I have issues with keeping track of the number of variables that go into making a whole deck function smoothly, so I have to build out decks one card interaction at a time more or less by feel.
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I love Slivers, Myr, Saprolings and generally any creature type best served by spamming loads of tokens
Not gonna lie, Gods Willing makes this deck soo much more competitive this season than last. This took my feather deck from being a somewhat fragile to insane. Being able to recur it with dreadhorde arcanist is nutter butters.
Unfortunately, most of the cards you listed just don't work for Feather.
Abnormal Endurance is okay, but Unlikely Aid is better. During an combat phase your creatures hit.
Bladebrand is inferior to Defiant Strike. If you want deathtouch, that means you're attacking into bigger threats, which means yor attacker is likely to die. Feather doesn't want targets to die.
Bleeding Edge is ok, but 3 cmc is too high. You would have to choose from casting this or another card more often than not. Fungal Infection is much more playable, but still not that impressive.
Clear the Stage way too costly and situational.
Blessing of Belzenlok is solid.
Nightmare's Thirst and Skulduggery are just bad, the former could only work in a dedicated deck.
Macabre Mockery doesn't work, creature card in a graveyard is not the same as creature you control
Undercity Uprising is so much worse than Prey Upon...
Well, overall not yet there.
Doesn't work for the [i]existing[/i] Feather strategies. The idea is actually more splashing white into a mostly-Black strategy for Feather to recur some valuable effects in a different kind of creature-based strategy, rather than being [i]primarily[/i] a large pile of combat tricks like the current Feather strategies.
The reason I brought up Macabre Mockery is that the creature [i]is[/i] on the field and affected by the card, so you [i]do[/i] control it as the card affects it on the battlefield. I'm not sure if the attached buff, which is a separate clause, counts for Feather's targeting requirement. It's very much an edge case mentioned because of the [i]chance[i] of recurrent reanimation.
Skulduggery is a 2/2 swing for one mana and will [i]always[/i] recur with Feather. If two of them are in hand, everything with two toughness is a valid target for recurring two-mana removal. Nightmare's Thirst pairs perfectly well with Blessing of Belzenlok for a reliable -6/-6 when you eventually need it (and with M20 coming up, it'd fit well for an Orzhov-base lifegain deck splashing red for Feather) and being a life a turn for a mana whenever you have Black spare before that, while Undercity Uprising is mentioned for the "all creatures you control gain Deathtouch" as a way to crack open the board and close out the game, the Fight trigger is just why it recurs to [i]keep[/i] cracking the board open until they can't keep blocking. You only need one of it, as it's there to be a win condition when you eventually come across it in longer games, and you have Black for [i]much[/i] harder removal than Prey Upon.
Abnormal Endurance has the important potential advantage of allowing creatures to leave the battlefield, letting both ETB and on-death effects trigger in the process, while Unlikely Aid is only better if you're wanting to smash the opposing line. In which case, you've got reanimation because you're running Black, just use Bladebrand and bring the thing whatever they used the big threat to block back, if you actually care about it enough. Bladebrand is far better as a combat trick, since it [i]outright kills[/i] most blocking creatures instead of only swinging by 1 power. Yes, it costs one more. It's also pretty close to recurrent removal for two, in this case, and there's no reason you can't run two of it and two of Defiant Strike, or some other ratio to smooth draw power and color distribution.
Essentially, the idea is altering a "Kill My Things" deck or some Reanimator strategy into a Feather deck, running removal-with-upside to trigger the deaths and having Feather recur this self-targeted removal to [i]keep[/i] triggering it as desired while preserving the removal for if you need to hit an enemy with it, with combat tricks so you can close out with combat easier and handle other creature-based decks, rather than having the combat tricks be the only engine of the deck's strategy.
I don't really have an exact decklist in mind, just a general deck idea for Mardu-colored Feather.
I don't see it, but hey, maybe 15 years in Magic is just not enough.
Went ahead and quickly looked up the sort of deck I was thinking of diverging from, and found somebody else's Mardu Feather decklist that splashes black for control and Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, with a video going over it on Arena.
For an example of the "Kill My Things" deck type, here's a video of one in the proper colors. Dreadhorde Butcher is a pretty big target to make an argument for Abnormal Endurance over Unlikely Aid, especially alongside Midnight Reaper turning the repeated deaths into cards drawn (also done by so that the rates of reaching the engines is increased significantly.
I don't keep track of the game with nearly enough detail to be able to spin off a decklist with any kind of ease, I just know what mechanics at large exist and can look at cards and pretty quickly think of what could go well with them. Actually fitting the pieces together? Takes a rather long time for me to even try to get started on that.
So I can point out that Costly Plunder and Blood Divination are good for digging through the deck to reach Feather so recurring the draw-upside cards can begin, but I don't actually know how to run all the numbers to determine which card with this sort of effect is best, or whether it's worth the deck space taken away from a cantrip that does something else in addition to drawing a card, or if the death triggers as a whole can make them viable over the draw-and-also-something cards. Heck, given the idea of having the deck be mostly Reanimator with a splash of White for Feather to recur some stuff, Ajani's Influence as a four-of and Feather and Teysa Karlov as less-than four-ofs could work out perfectly well, burrowing through the deck for the few White cards of importance while building up a Dreadhorde Butcher to burn the enemy down or off a Planeswalker.
Basically, I know what the numbers are, but don't know how to crunch them, because I have issues with keeping track of the number of variables that go into making a whole deck function smoothly, so I have to build out decks one card interaction at a time more or less by feel.
4 Blood Crypt
4 Godless Shrine
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Silence
2 Temple of Triumph
2 Fabled Passage
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Bishop of Wings
4 Feather, the Redeemed
3 Kaalia, Zenith Seeker
4 Seraph of the Scales
3 Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice
1 Sephara, Sky's Blade
Instant/Sorcery (8):
4 Gods Willing
1 Defiant Strike
1 Bedeck // Bedazzle
1 The Elderspell
1 Legion's End
4 Wishclaw Talisman
1 Prison Realm
Planeswalker (4)
2 Gideon Blackblade
2 Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord
I see where you're going with this, but is it really worth giving up Tenth District Legionnaire, Dreadhorde Archanist, etc.?
I see where you're going with this, but is it really worth giving up Tenth District Legionnaire, Dreadhorde Archanist, etc.?
These belong in the aggro version of the deck. This one is midrange with much more emphasis put on Feather.