I was getting my ass whooped last night by a 9sphere stax that ran 3 Gorilla Shamans. What's the general strategy against sphere decks? I was under the impression that Slaver had a good match here, but it was ugly last night.
I haven't got much experience playing CS vs 9sphere Stax (but there are also a lot of different builds, so I dunno what kind you had trouble with)
But generally you could use cards like: Rack and Ruin or other efficient Artifact removals Fire // Ice (to kill opposing Goblin Welders and/or Gorilla Shamans Engineered Explosives set on 2 to wipe out 1 or more Spheres.
or if you're lucky, resolve and stick the first welder so that you can control to some extent the artifacts in play. Duress (If you play it) might help a bit as well. Not sure how much tho. Long time since I played Duress in CS.
Probably someone else have better ideas or strategies. Please correct me if my ideas are bad as well.
I just recently put this deck together and have found that Darksteel colossus is not nearly as good as sundering titan in this deck. The best possible starting plays for this deck is always
land, welder pass
counter anything relevant
land, mox, thirst for knowledge to pitch something that can win you the game.
DSC doesnt help to this end at all, and will only be played off of a tinker. Sundering Titan can at least be drained into....not reliably but more often than DSC can.
I would suggest people trying it out for themselves but I am far more happy with Titan than DSC.
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I just recently put this deck together and have found that Darksteel colossus is not nearly as good as sundering titan in this deck. The best possible starting plays for this deck is always
land, welder pass
counter anything relevant
land, mox, thirst for knowledge to pitch something that can win you the game.
DSC doesnt help to this end at all, and will only be played off of a tinker. Sundering Titan can at least be drained into....not reliably but more often than DSC can.
I would suggest people trying it out for themselves but I am far more happy with Titan than DSC.
I've actually found the opposite to be true. I have the titan in my board and it can be pulled in for particular matches, but against a lot of decks the titan is worse for you than for him. We usually have 3 land-types in play, and we hate losing ours.
The DSC just beats on people so good. It creates a speed kill that the deck wouldn't otherwise have.
I've actually found the opposite to be true. I have the titan in my board and it can be pulled in for particular matches, but against a lot of decks the titan is worse for you than for him. We usually have 3 land-types in play, and we hate losing ours.
The DSC just beats on people so good. It creates a speed kill that the deck wouldn't otherwise have.
I have most of the staples to build a nice selection of decks, and I myself run the Sundering Titan for your same reasons JoshuaD. Darksteel is a wonderful clock beatseat, but the titan just hoses mana bases! Last I heard you can't win without mana {Ok Ichorid can lol} They can always chain the DSC to your hand..............but they think twice about the Titan.
Hey if you have some time JoshuaD can you P.M. your current build of slaver? I just want to have a few builds on back-up to see the new and great changes others are making.
That's the only deck I need to get current since the last B/R list.
My build's all over the place right now, but they're all very similar to the list I posted up above. I think today I've lost the Memory Jar for a fact or fiction, I'm up to 25 mana sources (add another island), i've lost the vampiric tutor, and I'm down to 3 welders. My robots are Pentavus, Mind Slaver, Trike and DSC.
I'm convinced that Fact or Fiction needs to be the first Thirst for knowledge. It's just a much better spell, and the one mana simply isn't a big enough issue not to run it. I tend to think 4 thirsts and 1 fact is right, but I'm cutting a thirst before the FoF if I was going that direction.
I'm going to be playing around with a trinket mage build eventually. I'm not quite sure what direction it goes, but I think it helps against the aggro match a lot, and it shouldn't hurt the other ones very badly. The devil's in the details though.
Does anyone have any idea how to get past mana denial with this deck? A few wastelands, or a gorilla shaman, or a null rod, hell, even some sinkholes, and the deck's dead. I'm trying to shore up this weakness, but I'm not really sure what direction to go. Any thoughts anyone?
What do you guys think of the addition of Strategic Planning? Two of the top 8 Slaver lists ran 4 copies of these paired with the regular Thirsts for Knowledge. Seem quite a good fit for the deck.
What do you guys think of the addition of Strategic Planning? Two of the top 8 Slaver lists ran 4 copies of these paired with the regular Thirsts for Knowledge. Seem quite a good fit for the deck.
Probe or Pulse of the Grid would fill a similar role as Strategic Planning but because they both cost an additional mana would have to be played differently than Strategic Planning as the latter can be played more proactively than the others.
Hopefully one of them will write a tournament report. I'm interested in hearing from either of them regarding the deck and their use of that card in particular. Given that their lists also ran Crucible of Worlds I'm wondering if Compulsive Research might be a good alternative as well.
Too bad the price for a copy of Strategic Planning just sky-rocket up to 100$ +
I have no doubt it is a good card for the deck but I will have to try out the budget version of it first before I consider investing on a set of those.
If anyone have done any testing (comparisons) on Strategic Planning vs Probe / Pulse of the Grid, LMK.
I only got two more proxy slots, so If I were to run Strategic Planning in my Slaver list I would have to cut some of the power.
I tested Probe yesterday and It is true that the 2cc SP makes a difference, however, it shouldn't be ignored that Probe is more like Thirst for Knowledge when you can choose from whats in your hand which card to discard. While SP can only choose from the 3 you look at.
Sometimes you draw broken things on the top 3 and have lots of useless stuff in hand.
Also, I read Demars's post about the strategy on strategic planning (tmd) and he said his dream card would have been 1U sorcery draw two cards. To make it short, they found strategic planning and considered it as close as you can get. but what about Night's Whisper? Is the reason it's black make so much difference?
Strategic Planning is by far one of the more interesting elements I suspect will by extremely influential in the upcoming era of vintage.
Having tested it, its extremely flexible tempo generation; very much so, its a BS replacement in its strategic importance to Slaver and similar decks.
It's cost will be prohibitive, however, which sucks. This is why I liked brainstorm so much, in that it would be a similar function, but at a very low financial cost, making the format more accessable. But I digress.
Unfortunately, to play slaver now, many people would have to exceed 15 proxies, which seems very wrong to me. Furthermore, suitable replacements are limited. Of the ones mentioned, most are unacceptable. Night's Whisper is a replacement, and a strong candidate in my opinion. In exchange for slightly less tempo, it does gain literal card advantage. Another drawback is that it isn't blue, and not quite as synergistic with the overall deck design, nor does it dig as deep, which is the big advantage to planning.
The other options mentioned so far are all 3 mana sorceries, which isn't really acceptable. 2 mana is very good because it is commonly playable turn 1, which is optimally when you want to play it. Furthermore, even late game, it is easier to play around it and keep things like drain mana up. Options like Probe are bad because you are now investing 3 mana and not gaining card advntage, and while 2 mana is fairly easily accessable turn 1, 3 is not, and then becomes a mid game tempo drain.
Joshua, I cannot understand why you dislike Thirst so much, it is one of the most powerful elements of the deck and the crux to leveraging card advantage and tempo advantage from mid game all the way on; playing with cs, Thirst is comonly the strongest common element you will be playing, while against it is commonly one of the most targeted cards; these conditions exist for a reason. A cs player resolving thirsts tends to be winning, so I don't get why you're cutting one of the strongest and synergsistic draw engines in the game.
Therefore, I would recomend Night's Whisper as the budget replacement for plannings, and I think we should explore this archetype, and this tempo enabler further, as its power is fairly evident (two decks in the whole touramnet ran the card and they both top 4ed).
Except both of those are card disadvantage, which is the opposite of what a control deck wants to accomplish. The idea isn't to just throw cards into the yard, its to do so while either maintaining or gaining incremental advantage and tempo. Plannings doesn't gain advantage, but it does gain significant tempo. Both study and ideas are card DISadvantage, which is antithetical to the overall strategy of cs.
Yeah, but you see new cards that you can keep in your hand. You choose what you want to get rid of, while accomplishing the goal of getting what you need to win, in the graveyard to weld back in.
At worst, it pitches to FoW.
Night's Whisper nets 1 card, but doesn't help any other way.
I think you're thinking about cs in the wrong theoretical light. While eventually getting cards in the yard is cohesive to the strategy, it isn't the goal. That is, cs is not a welder deck, not in a traditional sense; cs isn't ca. That's why you don't really even want to run 4 welders, 2 is fine, maybe 3 if you really want to push it. Furthermore, getting the cards into the yard should be incidental, not goal oriented. In truth, however, cs functions as a control deck in most matchups, and can't afford to through away card advantage for tempo gains, particularly when you can directly compare something like plannings to ideas, in which case planning doesn't force you to sacrifice card advantage, while still giving you the digging. Usually, you the hand is being sclupted anyway, as thirst, tutors, bs, etc are cohesive towards this strategy, planning augments this. Careful study would through a lot of this away, in addition to being poor in the late game, etc.
Control decks don't through away card advantage needlessly, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
I read the comments about Strategic Planning, and I have been thinking hard about trading for them or buying them. I'm pretty new to playing Control-Slaver {4 months} and after reading what you posted Glix I just don't know if I'm sold on them.
I completely understand what you're saying about card AVD and tempo. I'm just concerned that the money invested could be saved by sticking with Thirst of Knowledge......or do you run both for that matter?
As for the Golblin Welders in CS you said playing 4 is too many? I thought it was very important to drop one a.s.a.p? {again still a bit new at CS}
One last thing. I haven't been a fan of LoA so replacing that card with a Bazaar of Baghdad is bad choice or good choice?
Yeah, but you see new cards that you can keep in your hand. You choose what you want to get rid of, while accomplishing the goal of getting what you need to win, in the graveyard to weld back in.
At worst, it pitches to FoW.
Night's Whisper nets 1 card, but doesn't help any other way.
You also have to consider that CS is not like CA (Cerebral Assassin) a deck that is mainly about getting stuff (large stuff) into the yard asap to weld in or animate.
CS on the other hand has like 3 to 5 cards that could be nice to have in the yard and often you even have to Tinker them out rather than to use Welder. Players even seem to move further away from Welder by playing 2 copies of him instead of 4.
If you're going to use the two Strategic Slaver lists and replace Strategic Planning with something like Careful Study, you better find room for at least 1 or 2 more Goblin Welders in there as well. Because of the card disadvantage you will be forced to play the deck more aggressively than what you would normally want. Unless you want to rely more on winning by resolving Yawgmoth's Will.
EDIT: sorry, didn't see that Glix already replied to you with basically the same thing I had in mind.
I read the comments about Strategic Planning, and I have been thinking hard about trading for them or buying them. I'm pretty new to playing Control-Slaver {4 months} and after reading what you posted Glix I just don't know if I'm sold on them.
I completely understand what you're saying about card AVD and tempo. I'm just concerned that the money invested could be saved by sticking with Thirst of Knowledge......or do you run both for that matter?
As for the Golblin Welders in CS you said playing 4 is too many? I thought it was very important to drop one a.s.a.p? {again still a bit new at CS}
One last thing. I haven't been a fan of LoA so replacing that card with a Bazaar of Baghdad is bad choice or good choice?
ty
While I notice that the question is not directed to me, if it's ok. I'll give it a go.
#1. being sold or not. The card (Strategic Planning) is obviously a good card for CS's game plan. But , it's not like CS is a bad deck without them either. It's funny how nobody seem to notice this card up until now, and while the only two decks that top8 in the T1 Champs this year played 4x copies of this card. Doesn't mean that this is the only competitive (correct) Slaver list to play in todays meta.
#2. Never take out Thirst for Knowledge for any card if you play Control Slaver. IMO Thirst is better than Planning because it takes out the trash you have in hand and cycles them with hopefully more useful cards. Again, the two builds that top 8 played a set of both Thirst and Planning.
#3. Playing 4 or less Welders depends IMO mostly on meta-game or personal preferences. You could go for the quick T1 Welder, T2 Land, Mox Thirst then weld in Sundering Titan or Triskelion or whatever robot you choose to play. However, this is a very rare instance to go by. And not a very safe one either. Most CS players don't actually want to see Welders in the early-game, because you want to establish your mana-base and find answers and draw cards first. Welder is however, nice to have if you're matched up against other Welder decks.
#4. Bazaar of Baghdad is bad news in this deck because of the reasons Glix already mentioned by card disadvantage and that placing cards into our graveyard is not our primary strategy.
A lot of you seem to want to play cs like ca. This is inherently flawed theory regarding the deck's overall strategy, imo.
First of all, let me reiterate, 4 thirst, as of now, is mandatory; it's what makes the deck run smoothly and leverges mid to late game advantage and tempo crux to the strategy. Plannings is not analog to thirst, it is analog to brainstorm; that is, it shores up a big weakness of the above plan by gaining early game tempo- THAT is the point of planning.
When playing Slaver, you are playing a control deck, so rarely is welder good. Running 4 is just inviting you to draw multiples early game or something, which is actually tempo disadvantage. You rarely want more than one welder and you often DONT want more; they clutter up the hand and aren't really all that great until mid to late game, where they more compliment the draw engine. In this respect, the important things to resolve and cast aren't welders, they're thirsts and restricted elements; those are the cards that are actually good most of the time.
Like, playing turn 1 welder is fine, but you don't want more than one, you don't need it turn one, you often don't care about an early welder (it takes some effort usually to dump a bot, and you shouldn't be playing with that goal in mind anyway), and often its going to actually generate tempo disadavntage having a bunch of them in your deck by lowering card quality.
Most of your posts seem very much like you're wanting to play ca, not cs, from a strategic standpoint.
To recap, 4 thirsts is completely neccessary. 4 Plannings is optimal at the moment I think, but often boarded out, not neccessarilly neccessary as a 4 of, and while good, not as important to the strategy as thirst. Welders are sort of like an effecient morphling from older blue decks; they're good, and they eventually lead to you winning the game ideally, but you don't want a bunch of them and you don't want more than one in your hand and you don't want more than one on the field and you don't need to cast it asap, so why run 4?
Over to something else. I've been pondering about putting Night's Whisper back in the deck as a budget solution to Strategic Planning. while pondering on this earlier today I thought about Accumulated Knowledge.
Why and why not should we use Accumulated instead of something like Night's Whisper or Strategic Planning?
Accumulated Knowledge
AK just replaces itself the first time you cast it.
AK is Blue and Instant
AK gets better and better the longer the game goes. (Most likely)
Night's Whisper
NW draws two all the time (Giving you 1x card advantage)
NW Is Black and Sorcery
NW Takes away two of your life total each time casted.
Strategic Planning
SP replaces itself AND putting stuff to the graveyard
SP diggs for 3 cards (1 card more than NW and 2 card more than AK first time)
SP is Blue and Sorcery
EDIT:
If you're gonna replace LOA with something, either play 15 lands or put Strip Mine or just simply Island instead IMO.
I never argue with good logic, and all the above points are crystal! You guys clearly know what you're talking about so I thank you all for answering my questions.
I'll never run more than 3 welders now, and Thrist will ofcourse never be in mind to replace again with some other card.
The guy above as me thinking about the wisper's now, and I can't wait to read the future reply's to his comments.
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I think Glix covered most of what I would have said as well and better. Personally, my robot list is:
2 Slaver
1 DC
1 Triskelavus
But generally you could use cards like:
Rack and Ruin or other efficient Artifact removals
Fire // Ice (to kill opposing Goblin Welders and/or Gorilla Shamans
Engineered Explosives set on 2 to wipe out 1 or more Spheres.
or if you're lucky, resolve and stick the first welder so that you can control to some extent the artifacts in play.
Duress (If you play it) might help a bit as well. Not sure how much tho. Long time since I played Duress in CS.
Probably someone else have better ideas or strategies. Please correct me if my ideas are bad as well.
I've heard of some people useing Shattering Sprees (running 4 Volcanics), but I'm not a fan of that.
land, welder pass
counter anything relevant
land, mox, thirst for knowledge to pitch something that can win you the game.
DSC doesnt help to this end at all, and will only be played off of a tinker. Sundering Titan can at least be drained into....not reliably but more often than DSC can.
I would suggest people trying it out for themselves but I am far more happy with Titan than DSC.
I've actually found the opposite to be true. I have the titan in my board and it can be pulled in for particular matches, but against a lot of decks the titan is worse for you than for him. We usually have 3 land-types in play, and we hate losing ours.
The DSC just beats on people so good. It creates a speed kill that the deck wouldn't otherwise have.
I have most of the staples to build a nice selection of decks, and I myself run the Sundering Titan for your same reasons JoshuaD. Darksteel is a wonderful clock beatseat, but the titan just hoses mana bases! Last I heard you can't win without mana {Ok Ichorid can lol} They can always chain the DSC to your hand..............but they think twice about the Titan.
Hey if you have some time JoshuaD can you P.M. your current build of slaver? I just want to have a few builds on back-up to see the new and great changes others are making.
That's the only deck I need to get current since the last B/R list.
Ty
S.M.
I'm convinced that Fact or Fiction needs to be the first Thirst for knowledge. It's just a much better spell, and the one mana simply isn't a big enough issue not to run it. I tend to think 4 thirsts and 1 fact is right, but I'm cutting a thirst before the FoF if I was going that direction.
I'm going to be playing around with a trinket mage build eventually. I'm not quite sure what direction it goes, but I think it helps against the aggro match a lot, and it shouldn't hurt the other ones very badly. The devil's in the details though.
Since it's a pretty hard to get card, could something like Probe, Flash of Insight or Pulse of the Grid be used instead?
Probe or Pulse of the Grid would fill a similar role as Strategic Planning but because they both cost an additional mana would have to be played differently than Strategic Planning as the latter can be played more proactively than the others.
Hopefully one of them will write a tournament report. I'm interested in hearing from either of them regarding the deck and their use of that card in particular. Given that their lists also ran Crucible of Worlds I'm wondering if Compulsive Research might be a good alternative as well.
Turn one Welder
Turn two Mox, Land, Strategic/Thirst, Welder out threat
Looks like another great draw engine. The card should really make the deck more consistant too.
I have no doubt it is a good card for the deck but I will have to try out the budget version of it first before I consider investing on a set of those.
If anyone have done any testing (comparisons) on Strategic Planning vs Probe / Pulse of the Grid, LMK.
I'm currently trying a mix of Strategic Plannings, Thirsts, and Mystic Remora's. I tend to think something like this is right:
4 Strategic Planning
2 Mystic Remora
2-3 Thirst
1 Gifts
I tested Probe yesterday and It is true that the 2cc SP makes a difference, however, it shouldn't be ignored that Probe is more like Thirst for Knowledge when you can choose from whats in your hand which card to discard. While SP can only choose from the 3 you look at.
Sometimes you draw broken things on the top 3 and have lots of useless stuff in hand.
Also, I read Demars's post about the strategy on strategic planning (tmd) and he said his dream card would have been 1U sorcery draw two cards. To make it short, they found strategic planning and considered it as close as you can get. but what about Night's Whisper? Is the reason it's black make so much difference?
Having tested it, its extremely flexible tempo generation; very much so, its a BS replacement in its strategic importance to Slaver and similar decks.
It's cost will be prohibitive, however, which sucks. This is why I liked brainstorm so much, in that it would be a similar function, but at a very low financial cost, making the format more accessable. But I digress.
Unfortunately, to play slaver now, many people would have to exceed 15 proxies, which seems very wrong to me. Furthermore, suitable replacements are limited. Of the ones mentioned, most are unacceptable. Night's Whisper is a replacement, and a strong candidate in my opinion. In exchange for slightly less tempo, it does gain literal card advantage. Another drawback is that it isn't blue, and not quite as synergistic with the overall deck design, nor does it dig as deep, which is the big advantage to planning.
The other options mentioned so far are all 3 mana sorceries, which isn't really acceptable. 2 mana is very good because it is commonly playable turn 1, which is optimally when you want to play it. Furthermore, even late game, it is easier to play around it and keep things like drain mana up. Options like Probe are bad because you are now investing 3 mana and not gaining card advntage, and while 2 mana is fairly easily accessable turn 1, 3 is not, and then becomes a mid game tempo drain.
Joshua, I cannot understand why you dislike Thirst so much, it is one of the most powerful elements of the deck and the crux to leveraging card advantage and tempo advantage from mid game all the way on; playing with cs, Thirst is comonly the strongest common element you will be playing, while against it is commonly one of the most targeted cards; these conditions exist for a reason. A cs player resolving thirsts tends to be winning, so I don't get why you're cutting one of the strongest and synergsistic draw engines in the game.
Therefore, I would recomend Night's Whisper as the budget replacement for plannings, and I think we should explore this archetype, and this tempo enabler further, as its power is fairly evident (two decks in the whole touramnet ran the card and they both top 4ed).
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At worst, it pitches to FoW.
Night's Whisper nets 1 card, but doesn't help any other way.
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Control decks don't through away card advantage needlessly, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
I completely understand what you're saying about card AVD and tempo. I'm just concerned that the money invested could be saved by sticking with Thirst of Knowledge......or do you run both for that matter?
As for the Golblin Welders in CS you said playing 4 is too many? I thought it was very important to drop one a.s.a.p? {again still a bit new at CS}
One last thing. I haven't been a fan of LoA so replacing that card with a Bazaar of Baghdad is bad choice or good choice?
ty
CS on the other hand has like 3 to 5 cards that could be nice to have in the yard and often you even have to Tinker them out rather than to use Welder. Players even seem to move further away from Welder by playing 2 copies of him instead of 4.
If you're going to use the two Strategic Slaver lists and replace Strategic Planning with something like Careful Study, you better find room for at least 1 or 2 more Goblin Welders in there as well. Because of the card disadvantage you will be forced to play the deck more aggressively than what you would normally want. Unless you want to rely more on winning by resolving Yawgmoth's Will.
EDIT: sorry, didn't see that Glix already replied to you with basically the same thing I had in mind.
While I notice that the question is not directed to me, if it's ok. I'll give it a go.
#1. being sold or not. The card (Strategic Planning) is obviously a good card for CS's game plan. But , it's not like CS is a bad deck without them either. It's funny how nobody seem to notice this card up until now, and while the only two decks that top8 in the T1 Champs this year played 4x copies of this card. Doesn't mean that this is the only competitive (correct) Slaver list to play in todays meta.
#2. Never take out Thirst for Knowledge for any card if you play Control Slaver. IMO Thirst is better than Planning because it takes out the trash you have in hand and cycles them with hopefully more useful cards. Again, the two builds that top 8 played a set of both Thirst and Planning.
#3. Playing 4 or less Welders depends IMO mostly on meta-game or personal preferences. You could go for the quick T1 Welder, T2 Land, Mox Thirst then weld in Sundering Titan or Triskelion or whatever robot you choose to play. However, this is a very rare instance to go by. And not a very safe one either. Most CS players don't actually want to see Welders in the early-game, because you want to establish your mana-base and find answers and draw cards first. Welder is however, nice to have if you're matched up against other Welder decks.
#4. Bazaar of Baghdad is bad news in this deck because of the reasons Glix already mentioned by card disadvantage and that placing cards into our graveyard is not our primary strategy.
First of all, let me reiterate, 4 thirst, as of now, is mandatory; it's what makes the deck run smoothly and leverges mid to late game advantage and tempo crux to the strategy. Plannings is not analog to thirst, it is analog to brainstorm; that is, it shores up a big weakness of the above plan by gaining early game tempo- THAT is the point of planning.
When playing Slaver, you are playing a control deck, so rarely is welder good. Running 4 is just inviting you to draw multiples early game or something, which is actually tempo disadvantage. You rarely want more than one welder and you often DONT want more; they clutter up the hand and aren't really all that great until mid to late game, where they more compliment the draw engine. In this respect, the important things to resolve and cast aren't welders, they're thirsts and restricted elements; those are the cards that are actually good most of the time.
Like, playing turn 1 welder is fine, but you don't want more than one, you don't need it turn one, you often don't care about an early welder (it takes some effort usually to dump a bot, and you shouldn't be playing with that goal in mind anyway), and often its going to actually generate tempo disadavntage having a bunch of them in your deck by lowering card quality.
Most of your posts seem very much like you're wanting to play ca, not cs, from a strategic standpoint.
To recap, 4 thirsts is completely neccessary. 4 Plannings is optimal at the moment I think, but often boarded out, not neccessarilly neccessary as a 4 of, and while good, not as important to the strategy as thirst. Welders are sort of like an effecient morphling from older blue decks; they're good, and they eventually lead to you winning the game ideally, but you don't want a bunch of them and you don't want more than one in your hand and you don't want more than one on the field and you don't need to cast it asap, so why run 4?
Why and why not should we use Accumulated instead of something like Night's Whisper or Strategic Planning?
Accumulated Knowledge
AK just replaces itself the first time you cast it.
AK is Blue and Instant
AK gets better and better the longer the game goes. (Most likely)
Night's Whisper
NW draws two all the time (Giving you 1x card advantage)
NW Is Black and Sorcery
NW Takes away two of your life total each time casted.
Strategic Planning
SP replaces itself AND putting stuff to the graveyard
SP diggs for 3 cards (1 card more than NW and 2 card more than AK first time)
SP is Blue and Sorcery
EDIT:
If you're gonna replace LOA with something, either play 15 lands or put Strip Mine or just simply Island instead IMO.
I'll never run more than 3 welders now, and Thrist will ofcourse never be in mind to replace again with some other card.
The guy above as me thinking about the wisper's now, and I can't wait to read the future reply's to his comments.