Did some more testing. Temur Sabertooth seems nice in the games where I got him, but a bit awkward all the same. There was one game where I had 5 lands/dorks and Frontier Siege out with him, and so I was able to play a hornet queen and bounce it the same turn. That's 4 1/1 flying deathtouch tokens for 9 mana, but doesn't cost a card. It was alright, I guess, but not overly impressive... I can't actually remember the last time I lost after resolving a Hornet Queen anyway. All the rest of the time I was bouncing dorks. I never once saved a creature with him or did anything impressive, but he was a solid 4/3 blocker or attacker that I could turn invincible at will, and that fit a spot that my deck didn't have. It seems though for 4 mana that Polukranos, World Eater provides a bigger impact than this guy.
Still not sure about the wisdom of putting Bow of Nylea mainboard.
Yavimaya Coast, Rattleclaw Mystic - I'm going to experiment with both of these.
Manifest - Some of my cards don't go well with this... Reclamation Sage, Genesis Hydra, and Hornet Queen all have ETB triggers. Since I'm only running one Temur Sabertooth atm, it doesn't seem like reliable card draw. If I need more cards I could run another Bident of Thassa, but card advantage really hasn't been a big issue for me... I feel like alot of my cards enable me to 2:1 my opponent. Hornet nest does this if they lack non-damage removal. Hornet Queen is essentially a 5:1. Nissa makes a 4/4 the turn she comes out, or untaps 4 lands making herself nearly free. Setessian tactics is almost always a 2:1.
As for surprise factor, this seems both unnecessary and less efficient than other means at my disposal. I have Prophet of Kruphix in the deck and I've put out surprise hornet queens at least once, but I don't remember ever surprising someone with a Hornet Nest. One thing I could do is bring in Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, alot of Prophet of Kruphix decks were running him because they can crank him up fast. He could totally bring out a hornet Nest on my opponent's turn. However I'm thinking about cutting Prophet because it doesn't synergize with Frontier Siege. These sorts of wierd anti-synergies are why I brought my deck to this forum... a feeling that it wasn't quite as smooth as it should be.
Quickling/Temur Sabertooth - There is value here, I can bounce my creatures in response to removal or even combat tricks. However the only creature that really benefits from being bounced is Hornet Queen. I think I prefer the Sabertooth - It's an indestructible attacker that can do 4 damage per turn which is pretty sweet, as with all my ramp I can easily see a situation where I'm bouncing a tapped mana dork. Quickling seems cool for the sideboard
Aetherspouts - good sideboard tech, but I don't know if I have enough blue mana sources for it. I feel like getting 2 blue mana for Bident of Thassa isn't difficult because the bident doesn't usually need to come out the first turn I can possible cast it. But yea, getting 2 blue isn't always easy for this deck with its current manabase, I need to change something. It's too bad there isn't a GU painland out yet, as that would solve my problem nicely. I want to keep my forest count high for Nissa.
Negate - Honestly I prefer mistcutter hydra against control, but it's silly to have 4 mistcutters, I'd be better off with a split.
Frost Walker - interesting... a creature that big actually becomes a candidate for fighting a Hornet Nest, but unfortunately this guy would poof if I tried to do that. So I'm going to pass on this.
Bow of Nylea - Probably worth putting one in the mainboard, but what would I take out for it? Also the attacking deathtouch seems less relevant - only 12 of my 28 creatures can benefit from this. Still, pumping creatures is always nice, and 3 life a turn is backbreaking against some decks.
So, I'm going to play around with this version of the deck:
Hi, this is a rogue deck that I've had a lot of success with, I'm currently 15/17 games on mtgo with it in the 'just for fun' queue, so clearly I need to move onto something more challenging. The idea is to block land combat and then kill them with fliers and unblockables.
The Hornet nest is probably my most important single component. I'm still amazed by how many decks he shuts down. I sometimes win from him alone, like in this game where I had 2 on the board and a Setessan Tactics in hand... and my opponent plays a Scuttling doom engine. 12 tokens later, he resigned.
Next up is Frontier Siege. You want to play a hornet queen on turn 4? With Frontier Siege and a single Mystic or Sylvan Caryatid you get there, with extra mana on your second main phases for sylvan caryatid's. If you draw a second frontier siege, then choose dragons and now every hornet's queen you draw is a one sided board wipe. And you still have the option to pull of shenanigans with Hornet nest.
Speaking of shenanigans, Bident of Thassa does double time with Hornet nest. Make them all attack, get several tokens, and then draw a card off each token on your next turn? Where do I sign up! Also synergizes nicely with Marang River Prowler and Hornet Queen, for obvious reasons.
Marang River Prowler... I was initially skeptical of this card, but he pulls his weight. He gets through when there's a Hornet Nest stalemate, he gets you valuable cards with Bident of Thassa, and he's impossible to kill permanently as you're almost always going to have a green permanent (Sylvan Caryatid and Frontier Siege both tend to stay up forever).
My worst matchup surprisingly seems to be mono-red, especially mono-red with alot of burn. I don't have alot of lifegain, and while a hornet's nest is going to slow them down a bunch I'm not guaranteed to get one. These decks also seem to have a lot of air, which allows them to get around a hornet's nest if I don't have Setessan Tactics and kill me before I can get a queen out. Bow of Nylea in the sideboard works wonders against these decks.
The sideboard is still a work in progress, I don't need 4 mistcutters in there (although they are hilarious if my opponent happens to be mono-blue control). I've never used the Arbor Colossus, the Nylea, or the Skyreaping either, although Pulukranos is probably good enough to be in the main board.
With the exception of the last one, they're alot more expensive, which means it will take you more time to get all the synergies online. But more importantly, the slivers get the buffs right away, the outlasters don't get the buffs from the others until they've been around an extra turn and tapped for extra mana at sorcery speed... The difference is immense. And Slivers weren't really a tier 1 deck to begin with.
eh, I liked Genesis wave better. It got lands, and it encouraged you to build a synergistic deck. This thing is just random... do your opponents have a deck with a lot of good, non-land permanents? I suppose if you're trying to mill them, then this is a way to stay alive until that happens, but most mill decks don't generate enough mana for this to be efficient.
Jeskai Ascendancy + Retraction Helix + Tormod's Crypt + one or more creatures without summoning sickness = all your dudes are infinite size. If you have more dudes than they have chump blockers, or a creature with evasion/trample, you win.
Jeskai Ascendancy + Triplicate Spirits + 6 creatures from other effects = 9 power from a zero cost card, 3 of which sticks around till next turn.
Rapid Hybridization is the only card that won't be standard legal. Is that on purpose?
ah no, I'd missed that.
I like TheLastCurryRice's idea. But there aren't alot of artifacts in standard that make it work - just Tormod's Crypt and Briber's Purse. The crypt is probably the more useful of the two.
Still, it's a 3 card combo (not counting the creatures that attack) that requires all 3 cards to work. Might be good in an affinity deck, but it's not my cup of tea.
Well, it does untap all your creatures. So ,if you're running alot of creatures that tap for something, say... mana dorks, or outlast creatures, then you can get a bonus from that. I could even see some sort of infinite combo with this and a bunch of mana dorks and some creatures enchanted with oracle's insight, but it requires you to go into 4 colors, and I don't think it's that great. Most often the untap will just be a way to give your creatures vigilance.
Anger of the gods is fine, but I'd have to give up Nissa, I can't invest heavily in red and retain the high forest count she needs. I've found that Hornet nest alone gives most aggro decks fits.
As for setessan tactics vs pit fight - I tried them both. The problem with tactics is that I have to tap my creatures to use it. With pit fight if I top deck a hornet's nest I can play it and keep 2 mana open to pit fight if they attack with alot of guys or if they have some non-burn removal for him. Setessan tactics takes another turn. I don't have any other creatures that I want to tap to fight a hornet nest with summoning sickness - I've probably already used my mana dork, but they would kill the nest and only give me 2 tokens, a minimum value. Genesis hydra is often big enough that I want to attack. Hornets from the queen or previous nests also kill the nest for only 2 tokens. Tactics could be the superior card if I was running a set of Loxodon Smiters, for instance. But I could be wrong, I wouldn't mind playing around with it a little more.
This is a ramp deck, with a lot of acceleration and a high curve.
Hornet nest is the best protective creature in standard, imo. Red and green cannot deal with it, blue can at best bounce it. Courser of Kruphix is much easier to remove, and cannot block big things, nor intimidate armies into not attacking.
You're going to get lots of tokens. Hornet Nest, Hornet Queen and Trostoni's summoner all make gobs of tokens. Single target removal doesn't really hurt you much.
Once you get all those tokens, you buff them with Collective blessing. Hornet queen + Collective Blessing = 21 power in the air, so that closes up games fast.
I've tried running master biomancer - he was cute but not worth it. I've tried Setessan tactics, but didn't like having to tap my creature, hence pit fight.
This deck has gone 28 matches on mtgo and only lost 3. Alot of the decks weren't that great, and I only saw control once. This deck is not good against waste not / discard decks.
There's the possiblity storm + eidolon of Rhetoric combo. There was a thread about it a while back, I tried out one of the decks, but couldn't get it to work myself.
I had good success several months ago (pre M15) with a combo deck that used Thassa's Ire, 8 untappers, and alot of Market festivals/verdant havens to produce infinite mana, then trample in with Nylea. I stopped playing it though because I play online and combo decks that require alot of card movement work poorly in the online format.
Another combo deck you can try is the defender/ twinflame combo. The deck revolves around casting twinflame targetting both a Axebane guardian and a mneumonic wall. The latter gets the twinflame back into your hand, the former gives you the mana to cast it again. Eventually you have infinite mana + infinite tokens, and then you either mill them to death with Doorkeeper or clone a creature that can actually attack (ie, archeomancer, dakra mystic)
Collective blessing and Hornet queen are, for a short time still, both available in standard. There has to be some sort of ramp deck that you could build around those.
I'm surprised by the barrage of expendables... is a sac outlet that necessary? You already have trading post and shrapnel blast, and your volatile rig is going to generally self destruct without a sac outlet. I'd rather run anger of the gods - granted, it kills Boros reckoner, but then you can forward the damage from the reckoner to a surviving target.
Still not sure about the wisdom of putting Bow of Nylea mainboard.
Yavimaya Coast, Rattleclaw Mystic - I'm going to experiment with both of these.
Manifest - Some of my cards don't go well with this... Reclamation Sage, Genesis Hydra, and Hornet Queen all have ETB triggers. Since I'm only running one Temur Sabertooth atm, it doesn't seem like reliable card draw. If I need more cards I could run another Bident of Thassa, but card advantage really hasn't been a big issue for me... I feel like alot of my cards enable me to 2:1 my opponent. Hornet nest does this if they lack non-damage removal. Hornet Queen is essentially a 5:1. Nissa makes a 4/4 the turn she comes out, or untaps 4 lands making herself nearly free. Setessian tactics is almost always a 2:1.
As for surprise factor, this seems both unnecessary and less efficient than other means at my disposal. I have Prophet of Kruphix in the deck and I've put out surprise hornet queens at least once, but I don't remember ever surprising someone with a Hornet Nest. One thing I could do is bring in Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, alot of Prophet of Kruphix decks were running him because they can crank him up fast. He could totally bring out a hornet Nest on my opponent's turn. However I'm thinking about cutting Prophet because it doesn't synergize with Frontier Siege. These sorts of wierd anti-synergies are why I brought my deck to this forum... a feeling that it wasn't quite as smooth as it should be.
Aetherspouts - good sideboard tech, but I don't know if I have enough blue mana sources for it. I feel like getting 2 blue mana for Bident of Thassa isn't difficult because the bident doesn't usually need to come out the first turn I can possible cast it. But yea, getting 2 blue isn't always easy for this deck with its current manabase, I need to change something. It's too bad there isn't a GU painland out yet, as that would solve my problem nicely. I want to keep my forest count high for Nissa.
Negate - Honestly I prefer mistcutter hydra against control, but it's silly to have 4 mistcutters, I'd be better off with a split.
Frost Walker - interesting... a creature that big actually becomes a candidate for fighting a Hornet Nest, but unfortunately this guy would poof if I tried to do that. So I'm going to pass on this.
Bow of Nylea - Probably worth putting one in the mainboard, but what would I take out for it? Also the attacking deathtouch seems less relevant - only 12 of my 28 creatures can benefit from this. Still, pumping creatures is always nice, and 3 life a turn is backbreaking against some decks.
So, I'm going to play around with this version of the deck:
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Hornet Nest
2 Courser of Kruphix
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Genesis Hydra
4 Marang River Prowler
1 Prophet of Kruphix
4 Hornet Queen
1 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Temur Sabertooth
2 Setessan Tactics
3 Frontier Siege
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
2 Bident of Thassa
1 Bow of Nylea
Lands
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Island
13 Forest
1 Hunt the Hunter
1 Skyreaping
2 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Nylea's Disciple
1 Unravel the Æther
1 Negate
2 Quickling
1 Genesis Hydra
2 Prophet of Kruphix
1 Aetherspouts
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Hornet Nest
2 Courser of Kruphix
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Genesis Hydra
4 Marang River Prowler
3 Prophet of Kruphix
4 Hornet Queen
2 Setessan Tactics
3 Frontier Siege
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
2 Bident of Thassa
Lands
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Island
13 Forest
1 Hunt the Hunter
1 Skyreaping
4 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Nylea, God of the Hunt
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Arbor Colossus
2 Bow of Nylea
1 Nylea's Disciple
1 Unravel the Æther
1 Polukranos, World Eater
The Hornet nest is probably my most important single component. I'm still amazed by how many decks he shuts down. I sometimes win from him alone, like in this game where I had 2 on the board and a Setessan Tactics in hand... and my opponent plays a Scuttling doom engine. 12 tokens later, he resigned.
Next up is Frontier Siege. You want to play a hornet queen on turn 4? With Frontier Siege and a single Mystic or Sylvan Caryatid you get there, with extra mana on your second main phases for sylvan caryatid's. If you draw a second frontier siege, then choose dragons and now every hornet's queen you draw is a one sided board wipe. And you still have the option to pull of shenanigans with Hornet nest.
Speaking of shenanigans, Bident of Thassa does double time with Hornet nest. Make them all attack, get several tokens, and then draw a card off each token on your next turn? Where do I sign up! Also synergizes nicely with Marang River Prowler and Hornet Queen, for obvious reasons.
Marang River Prowler... I was initially skeptical of this card, but he pulls his weight. He gets through when there's a Hornet Nest stalemate, he gets you valuable cards with Bident of Thassa, and he's impossible to kill permanently as you're almost always going to have a green permanent (Sylvan Caryatid and Frontier Siege both tend to stay up forever).
The rest? I'm still not sure about. Prophet of Kruphix, Courser of Kruphix, and Nissa, Worldwaker all provide enough value to be worth including, but aren't necessary for the deck to work.
My worst matchup surprisingly seems to be mono-red, especially mono-red with alot of burn. I don't have alot of lifegain, and while a hornet's nest is going to slow them down a bunch I'm not guaranteed to get one. These decks also seem to have a lot of air, which allows them to get around a hornet's nest if I don't have Setessan Tactics and kill me before I can get a queen out. Bow of Nylea in the sideboard works wonders against these decks.
The sideboard is still a work in progress, I don't need 4 mistcutters in there (although they are hilarious if my opponent happens to be mono-blue control). I've never used the Arbor Colossus, the Nylea, or the Skyreaping either, although Pulukranos is probably good enough to be in the main board.
Abzan Battle Priest vs Syphon Sliver
Abzan Falconer vs Galerider Sliver
Ainok Bond-Kin vs Striking Sliver
Mer-Ek Nightblade vs Venom Sliver
Tuskguard Captain vs Groundshaker Sliver
With the exception of the last one, they're alot more expensive, which means it will take you more time to get all the synergies online. But more importantly, the slivers get the buffs right away, the outlasters don't get the buffs from the others until they've been around an extra turn and tapped for extra mana at sorcery speed... The difference is immense. And Slivers weren't really a tier 1 deck to begin with.
Jeskai Ascendancy + Triplicate Spirits + 6 creatures from other effects = 9 power from a zero cost card, 3 of which sticks around till next turn.
ah no, I'd missed that.
I like TheLastCurryRice's idea. But there aren't alot of artifacts in standard that make it work - just Tormod's Crypt and Briber's Purse. The crypt is probably the more useful of the two.
Still, it's a 3 card combo (not counting the creatures that attack) that requires all 3 cards to work. Might be good in an affinity deck, but it's not my cup of tea.
So far I've got
4 Curse of the Swine
4 Hour of Need
4 Chasm Skulker
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
4 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4 Launch the Fleet
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Rapid Hybridization
4 Triplicate Spirits
4 Goblinslide
4 Hordeling Outburst
as good cards for it, but I need to actually decide which ones to include.
As for setessan tactics vs pit fight - I tried them both. The problem with tactics is that I have to tap my creatures to use it. With pit fight if I top deck a hornet's nest I can play it and keep 2 mana open to pit fight if they attack with alot of guys or if they have some non-burn removal for him. Setessan tactics takes another turn. I don't have any other creatures that I want to tap to fight a hornet nest with summoning sickness - I've probably already used my mana dork, but they would kill the nest and only give me 2 tokens, a minimum value. Genesis hydra is often big enough that I want to attack. Hornets from the queen or previous nests also kill the nest for only 2 tokens. Tactics could be the superior card if I was running a set of Loxodon Smiters, for instance. But I could be wrong, I wouldn't mind playing around with it a little more.
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Voyaging Satyr
4 Hornet Nest
4 Hornet Queen
2 Trostani's Summoner
4 Genesis Hydra
Other - 15
2 Pit Fight
2 Verdant Haven
2 Market Festival
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
1 Dictate of Heliod
4 Celestial Blessing
2 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
1 plains
4 evolving wilds
4 Temple Garden
14 Forest
2 Loxodon Smiter
2 Deicide
2 Reclamation Sage
2 Skyreaping
1 Hunt the Hunter
2 Kalonian Hydra
4 Mistcutter Hydra
This is a ramp deck, with a lot of acceleration and a high curve.
Hornet nest is the best protective creature in standard, imo. Red and green cannot deal with it, blue can at best bounce it. Courser of Kruphix is much easier to remove, and cannot block big things, nor intimidate armies into not attacking.
You're going to get lots of tokens. Hornet Nest, Hornet Queen and Trostoni's summoner all make gobs of tokens. Single target removal doesn't really hurt you much.
Once you get all those tokens, you buff them with Collective blessing. Hornet queen + Collective Blessing = 21 power in the air, so that closes up games fast.
I've tried running master biomancer - he was cute but not worth it. I've tried Setessan tactics, but didn't like having to tap my creature, hence pit fight.
This deck has gone 28 matches on mtgo and only lost 3. Alot of the decks weren't that great, and I only saw control once. This deck is not good against waste not / discard decks.
There's the possiblity storm + eidolon of Rhetoric combo. There was a thread about it a while back, I tried out one of the decks, but couldn't get it to work myself.
I had good success several months ago (pre M15) with a combo deck that used Thassa's Ire, 8 untappers, and alot of Market festivals/verdant havens to produce infinite mana, then trample in with Nylea. I stopped playing it though because I play online and combo decks that require alot of card movement work poorly in the online format.
Another combo deck you can try is the defender/ twinflame combo. The deck revolves around casting twinflame targetting both a Axebane guardian and a mneumonic wall. The latter gets the twinflame back into your hand, the former gives you the mana to cast it again. Eventually you have infinite mana + infinite tokens, and then you either mill them to death with Doorkeeper or clone a creature that can actually attack (ie, archeomancer, dakra mystic)
Collective blessing and Hornet queen are, for a short time still, both available in standard. There has to be some sort of ramp deck that you could build around those.