If I have a face down manifested creature with the "Whenever X attacks and isn't blocked" trigger such as Pygmy Hippo is there an opportunity between blockers being declared and the trigger to flip it face up so that you can flip it face up after blockers have been declared and still trigger and activate the effect or is the only spot before the trigger that you have priority to flip it face up before/while blockers are being declared?
I don't think you need 4 Aetherlings either. It's a great creature but I believe you don't want to see multiples in your starting hand...
Main reason I have 4 atm is more of that I'm not sure what are some other "wrath friendly" creatures to include. I mean sure, I could add things that are indestructible or something, but that tag generally means they take a hit to their power or toughness unlike AEtherling who is just...stupid.
I've found that 12 sweepers is too much. Even if Akroma's Vengeance can be cycled away, you may want to make room for some persistent effects.
Main reason for Akroma's Vengeance is more for a way to deal with artifacts and enchantments. Cycling it away and also functioning as sweeper 9-12, if that's ever necessary, was why I chose that one over anything else.
I'd like to point out the Gideon, Champion of Justices and singleton Eternal Dragon, as they are my win conditions. I HIGHLY suggest you run Gideon with all of those sweepers. The plan is hilariously simple: play Gideon, use his +1 (and hopefully get >5 loyalty counters or whatever), wipe the board, swing with Gideon. If you're playing a number of creature heavy decks, you can make the game very hard to recover from with his ultimate (since it'd be hopefully easier to surpass 15 loyalty counters enough to wipe and be able to swing for 5-10+ as your opponents recover)
Speak of the... A wrath friendly "creature" and something that can deal with artifacts and enchantments. Think I found a decent AEtherling replacement.
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New version that I've thrown together based on the suggestions.
Trying to build something that's effective at stopping ...extreme aggro decks... that my friends like playing that can effectively end the game on their 4th turn (playing with 3-5 people). You know the sort, goblins, elves, slivers, voltron, ect, ect.
Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not that experienced with control decks so I'm not sure if there's a more effective way to do this or not. At minimum I'd think there should be a better way then just "pick 9 cards, run 4 of each, and add 24 land."
Ideal play (if it isn't already incredibly obvious)
T1: Land
T2: Land + Ramp
T3: Board Wipe
T4: Ramp/Luminarch Ascension + Rhystic Study
T5: Board Wipe, Angel Token Span, Aetherling
T6+: Continue shoving Board Wipes down their throat until you either overwhelm them with angel tokens or Aetherling does his job.
Anyone else have a U/W Control deck that I can get ideas from or something?
I just kind of clicked on this by accident, so sorry if this was already suggested. Tradewind Rider works really well here. In fact, Tradewind-Awakening was a control deck back in the day.
I've only heard good things mentioned about that card from others in this thread.
My apologies about necroing this thread (was still technically on the first page).
I've been messing around with my own version of a Prophet of Kruphix deck and I ended up with something...a bit different...from what most other people posted.
During early testing I noticed that I happened to be running a decent number of elves in the deck so I was curious if I could essentially create a Prophet of Kruphix deck that capitalized on all the elves I was running, and after some messing around I came up with this.
Now, the cards have to align perfectly to actually lock out the game by turn 3, but it's not that rare to drop a Prophet of Kruphix on turn 3, have a Mystic Snake in hand during turn 4 in case of a Wrath, and drop Deadeye Navigator on turn 5 for the lock from whatever solitaire testing I've done so far.
There are a few cards that seem less then stellar so far and I'm wondering if there are any better upgrades.
Joraga Warcaller, Imperious Perfect, and Ezuri, Renegade Leader are essentially there to be the finishers that can re-purpose my drawing and ramp cards into beaters since the deck doesn't really have many. Are there any other cards that might do the job better or some that might have some better utility that can help in establishing the lock in addition to being finishers as well?
Are there any lands that would help the deck out more that won't hike the price of the deck up significantly. It's a pretty crappy situation where I need a forest turn 1 while at the same time I need as many islands as I can get on the field since islands are generally what's my biggest limiting factor in how many plays I can make per turn (It's risky to drop Deadeye on the field until I have at least 4 since if people are being smart I may need to Mystic Snake a card that is aimed at one of the key cards, and the ideal time generally is when you are casting Deadeye).
Any suggestions or comments are welcome.
(Biggest problem I've noticed with the deck so far from solitairing may just be how much time it takes to play since Coiling Oracle / Elvish Visionary + Wirewood Symbiote + Joraga Treespeaker retarded ramp/draw shenanigans tend to take a bit of time, and you aren't just doing that during your turns, but ideally during all of your opponents turns as well).
(Also, I'm intentionally leaving out Opposition since that along with Wirewood Symbiote would push the deck WAY over the top for my meta. It may already be too much as it is for them).
Krovikan Mist counts ALL illusions in play, which shifts the DID's focus of ingeniously killing off the other creatures into using them to pump up your own flyer...
All you need do is make the Mist unblockable, which is easy enough in blue.
Cheers!
Making it unblockable without targeting it on the other hand...is a bit trickier.
A Lurking Predators deck can only be too expensive if you're personally forcing it to be too expensive. LP is cheap, L.Ascension is cheap, ramp is cheap and budget lands are cheap. No aspect of the core should cost you an unreasonable amount of money.
Not gonna lie, most of that list looks rather substellar compared to the green and red options. (Gideon's Avenger does seem like a good replacement for the Tauraus though)
Looking through a list of creatures I can kinda see what I was afraid of running G/W. G/W just has big bodies, tokens, and that's about it (though Aramada Worm is a bit excessive when it comes to big bodies and tokens). Most G/W late game creatures seem to completely lose their utility. It's almost strange. Green has some great bodies with powerful effects, Red has some great bodies with powerful effects, White has some great fliers with powerful effects. G/R has some great bodies with powerful effects. W/R has some great bodies with some game breaking effects. W/G...not much besides Day of Judgment Worm.
I mean even Naya colors has some obnoxious creatures.
G/W has probably some of the best early drops in the game, but their later game drops in terms of utility is highly disappointing as far as I have seen.
Running 3 colors and abusing all the Boros high CC creatures with Lurking Predators and Battalion BS with Luminarch Ascension doesn't sound like a horrible idea except good mana bases for 3 color decks tend to be sliiiiiiiightly spendy. Maybe with all the ramp and titans thrown into my deck it might work?
Which build are you going with. I thought I saw a r/g and a g/w one? I like splashing red myself just for Kessig. In fact because of this card there is almost never any reason to run just mono green in a ramp deck. It has ruined me because it gives most creatures the opportunity to be a finisher.
The G/R one is what I'm most likely going to get.
The G/W one was mostly just for lulz (and way out of my budget). I basically took the R/G one from before and just inverted all the R to W and vise versa.
Though if I have time I might mess around with the G/W version and if I can create a budget version that is just completely superior to the G/R one I might consider getting that one instead.
If I were to create a G/W version abusing both Lurking Predators and Luminarch Ascension what would be some good creatures to run in it (that are relatively cheap)? I'd imagine there would be some great options to destroy enchantments and artifacts on a non sacrificial body somewhere. I already liked Day of Judgment on a body.
With 4 Primetimes I could still easy enough splash for KWR even in G/W.
Only reason I'm shying away from Ursapine is that I am running dual colored though looking it over I should have clearly enough green sources to make use of him.
I'm probably still going to go for the Possibility Storm version since it's significantly cheaper, it acts as a form of protection for Lurking Predators, and there's nothing quite like dropping a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed or 2 and a Possibility Storm turning every non creature spell they play into a clock.
Did I miss the part where Tempting Licid became a good card? You already have KWR to push past defenses and the Licid is just a glorified Aura. It still opens you up to 2-for-1s and I mean it's not like people have much of a choice but to remove it. When they're being attacked for 10 and they're given the choice of "not blocking" or "blocking" then their hands are tied no? I don't see why it would be a good card in this or any deck for that matter.
To be fair, it's REALLY hard to get 2-1ed with the card outside of wrath effects that would nuke it regardless since unequipping the Licid can't be responded to.
Ascension vs Roost is certainly in Ascension's favor. You can just drop that card on turn 2 and probably win a huge % of your games. I don't think that it pairs well with ramp in general since you want blockers more than you want lands early on. Still, I don't think that it matters much either way. Ascension is fairly overpowered and any "weaknesses" of the card are relatively insignificant.
If you were so inclined you could easily make a GW version that abuses Gavony Township instead of KWR. You lose out on Taurean Mauler but that's fine really.
Just for the hell of it I threw this together quickly essentially taking the deck above and replacing red for white where relevant.
You actually got me thinking about this and so I played a variation of the deck earlier and decided to try some additional support spells out. The first one that I ended up settling on was Dragon Roost. It was a 6 CMC spell that gives you "infinite gas" and it puts mana to use. It means that you're only forced to commit 1 creature to the board at any one time at the most but you can usually just activate it for a 5/5 Dragon every turn. The problem with the card is that it doesn't do anything the turn that you cast it which kind of sucks when you spent your previous turns ramping. You also need to rip a 7th mana source to activate it and it kind of has to be land, not a ramp spell with a CMC. Because of this I found it to be somewhat lacking. The power is there, it performed better than I anticipated, but it had some problems. For what it's worth it did more work than Primeval Bounty did. That card did not impress me at all
The last cards that I tried were Call the Skybreaker and Spitting Image. At that point every fatty that you draw is a fatty and every land that you draw is a good creature. The cards performed "fine" but the problem was that drawing your mana dorks was still awkward. I would just defend with KWR when I did since they could trade with most things that that stage. Not everything mind you, but hey, enough. I actually didn't hate this plan and I think that I'd be willing to try it again.
Maybe there's some way to splash Luminarch Ascension in effectively? I mean let's face it, A 1W enchantment that gives you 4/4s for 1W beats the hell out of a 4RR that gives you 5/5s for 5RR. The only real question is the splashability and whether you can get the counters on it.
A deck that can effectively run both Lurking Predators and Luminarch Ascension just sounds outright terrifying. I'm not sure it can be done though since the strategies of the 2 cards tend to be opposite in nature.
Then i would add one or two Tempting Licids to deck. It's a lure on a stick, will be fetched by Lurking Predators and helps your creatures to punch through any heavy creature based defense. You can always attach the licid to Sakura-Tribe Elder and de-attach it after blockers are declared, then sacrifice the elder for land. Insect tokens do the same job. And hey, in a multiplayer-environment you can always stick it to some opponents attacking creature, changing the combat between two of your opponents.
With a playset of Primevil Titan, i would put in a singleton Contested Cliffs in case that Taurean Mauler wants to mess his strength with other crits.
And a single Swarmyard will protect the Mauler and the Spider.
Interesting suggestions. The only issue is at this point I have no idea what to cut to add any of those, especially the lands.
I need at least 10 useable green sources available on turn 1 which gives me an 80% chance to play a T1 Joraga Treespeaker or Birds of Paradise if I open with either of them. I'm currently running 10.
From there I need at least 16 red sources (STE and Birds count) so that I have an 80% to play cards that require double red (Possibility Storm and Dragonlair Spider) by turn 3 if necessary. I currently have 19. (Only 6 of those come into play immediately untapped so I still only have a ~68% chance to actually play a T3 double red card. Just under a 90% chance by T4 though)
The only changes I can afford is I could drop 1 Raging Ravine, 1 Forgotten Cave, and 1 Gruul Turf, and while I like those lands mentioned above I'm not sure I can justify their situational nature over a manland or a free card with Titan (Though if I were to come across an Overgrown Tomb and a Vault of the Archangel that would be a different story lol). Maybe I could drop 1 Raging Ravine for the Swarmyard since it covers the Taurii, Spiders, and the tokens they Spiders make.
In terms of the Licid I'm not sure what to cut either. I need 10 ramp creatures so that I have an 80% chance of starting with one as this deck just fails if it has to play the game normally. I don't want to cut any of the 12 bombs in the deck as 12 fatties in a LP deck is already on the small end. From there that just leaves the 6 Taurean Mauler and Forgotten Ancient. I could cut 1 or 2 of those for the Licid, but those are like my only early game defenses if something goes wrong and I can't quite get the Lurking Predators on the field early enough (not to mention that with Possibility Storm on the field they become bombs themselves). I'll have to think about that one.
If I have a face down manifested creature with the "Whenever X attacks and isn't blocked" trigger such as Pygmy Hippo is there an opportunity between blockers being declared and the trigger to flip it face up so that you can flip it face up after blockers have been declared and still trigger and activate the effect or is the only spot before the trigger that you have priority to flip it face up before/while blockers are being declared?
Would love to m nom nom some mana.
Predator's Rapport
Mirri's Guile
Canopy Cover
Conviction (Goes well with Ajani's Chosen as white version of Whip Silk)
Keen Sense
Nature's Kiss
Main reason I have 4 atm is more of that I'm not sure what are some other "wrath friendly" creatures to include. I mean sure, I could add things that are indestructible or something, but that tag generally means they take a hit to their power or toughness unlike AEtherling who is just...stupid.
Main reason for Akroma's Vengeance is more for a way to deal with artifacts and enchantments. Cycling it away and also functioning as sweeper 9-12, if that's ever necessary, was why I chose that one over anything else.
Speak of the... A wrath friendly "creature" and something that can deal with artifacts and enchantments. Think I found a decent AEtherling replacement.
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New version that I've thrown together based on the suggestions.
1x Eternal Dragon
2x Gideon, Champion of Justice
2x Rout
4x Day of Judgment
4x Supreme Verdict
3x Blind Obedience
3x Trade Secrets
3x Thirst for Knowledge
4x Everflowing Chalice
4x Mind Stone
8x Island
8x Plains
4x Skycloud Expanse
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Azorius Chancery
How does it look? At least it's not a 9/24 anymore lol.
4x Akroma's Vengeance
4x Day of Judgment
4x Supreme Verdict
4x Rhystic Study
4x Azorius Signet
4x Everflowing Chalice
4x Mind Stone
8x Island
8x Plains
4x Skycloud Expanse
Trying to build something that's effective at stopping ...extreme aggro decks... that my friends like playing that can effectively end the game on their 4th turn (playing with 3-5 people). You know the sort, goblins, elves, slivers, voltron, ect, ect.
Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not that experienced with control decks so I'm not sure if there's a more effective way to do this or not. At minimum I'd think there should be a better way then just "pick 9 cards, run 4 of each, and add 24 land."
Ideal play (if it isn't already incredibly obvious)
T1: Land
T2: Land + Ramp
T3: Board Wipe
T4: Ramp/Luminarch Ascension + Rhystic Study
T5: Board Wipe, Angel Token Span, Aetherling
T6+: Continue shoving Board Wipes down their throat until you either overwhelm them with angel tokens or Aetherling does his job.
Anyone else have a U/W Control deck that I can get ideas from or something?
I've only heard good things mentioned about that card from others in this thread.
For the Oppositions you would probably remove 1 Deadeye Navigator (though you will have to be a bit more careful with your remaining one) and Imperious Perfect (I actually edited the deck a bit more and replaced Imperious Perfect with Lys Alana Huntmaster).
(What I'm currently solitairing if you are wondering).
4x Coiling Oracle
1x Deadeye Navigator
3x Elvish Visionary
1x Ezuri, Renegade Leader
4x Joraga Treespeaker
1x Joraga Warcaller
1x Lys Alana Huntmaster
4x Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
4x Mystic Snake
4x Priest of Titania
4x Prophet of Kruphix
2x Sages of the Anima
4x Wirewood Symbiote
3x Halimar Depths
4x Hinterland Harbor
5x Island
4x Yavimaya Coast
Obviously from this version you would probably remove Sages of the Anima for the Oppositions.
Haven't Solitaired the newer version much yet, but so far the drop to 22 lands seems to be fine with the recently added Priest of Titanias .
I've been messing around with my own version of a Prophet of Kruphix deck and I ended up with something...a bit different...from what most other people posted.
During early testing I noticed that I happened to be running a decent number of elves in the deck so I was curious if I could essentially create a Prophet of Kruphix deck that capitalized on all the elves I was running, and after some messing around I came up with this.
4x Coiling Oracle
2x Deadeye Navigator
2x Devoted Druid
3x Elvish Visionary
1x Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1x Imperious Perfect
4x Joraga Treespeaker
1x Joraga Warcaller
4x Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
4x Mystic Snake
4x Prophet of Kruphix
4x Wirewood Symbiote
3x Halimar Depths
10x Island
Ideal play goes something like this
T1: Joraga Treespeaker
T2: Level up Joraga Treespeaker
T3:Prophet of Kruphix
T3-1 Momir Vig, Simic Visionary at End Step or Mystic Snake is necessary.
T3-2: Coiling Oracle / Elvish Visionary + Wirewood Symbiote + Joraga Treespeaker retarded ramp/draw shenanigans.
T3-3: Deadeye Navigator + Mystic Snake lock when you have enough mana.
Now, the cards have to align perfectly to actually lock out the game by turn 3, but it's not that rare to drop a Prophet of Kruphix on turn 3, have a Mystic Snake in hand during turn 4 in case of a Wrath, and drop Deadeye Navigator on turn 5 for the lock from whatever solitaire testing I've done so far.
There are a few cards that seem less then stellar so far and I'm wondering if there are any better upgrades.
Devoted Druid atm is essentially in the deck to be Joraga Treespeaker 5 and 6, and while it's nice to power out a Prophet of Kruphix on turn 3 I generally also want to drop a Vig right after and Devoted Druid can't really help with that. Devoted Druid also isn't quite as abusable as Joraga Treespeaker with Wirewood Symbiote. I don't suppose there are any other cards like Joraga Treespeaker that aren't named Sol Ring. If there aren't would it be better to just drop them for something else and pray I can hit a Joraga Treespeaker in my opener with mulligans?
Joraga Warcaller, Imperious Perfect, and Ezuri, Renegade Leader are essentially there to be the finishers that can re-purpose my drawing and ramp cards into beaters since the deck doesn't really have many. Are there any other cards that might do the job better or some that might have some better utility that can help in establishing the lock in addition to being finishers as well?
Are there any lands that would help the deck out more that won't hike the price of the deck up significantly. It's a pretty crappy situation where I need a forest turn 1 while at the same time I need as many islands as I can get on the field since islands are generally what's my biggest limiting factor in how many plays I can make per turn (It's risky to drop Deadeye on the field until I have at least 4 since if people are being smart I may need to Mystic Snake a card that is aimed at one of the key cards, and the ideal time generally is when you are casting Deadeye).
Any suggestions or comments are welcome.
(Biggest problem I've noticed with the deck so far from solitairing may just be how much time it takes to play since Coiling Oracle / Elvish Visionary + Wirewood Symbiote + Joraga Treespeaker retarded ramp/draw shenanigans tend to take a bit of time, and you aren't just doing that during your turns, but ideally during all of your opponents turns as well).
(Also, I'm intentionally leaving out Opposition since that along with Wirewood Symbiote would push the deck WAY over the top for my meta. It may already be too much as it is for them).
Making it unblockable without targeting it on the other hand...is a bit trickier.Edit:RTFC! D:
Not gonna lie, most of that list looks rather substellar compared to the green and red options. (Gideon's Avenger does seem like a good replacement for the Tauraus though)
Looking through a list of creatures I can kinda see what I was afraid of running G/W. G/W just has big bodies, tokens, and that's about it (though Aramada Worm is a bit excessive when it comes to big bodies and tokens). Most G/W late game creatures seem to completely lose their utility. It's almost strange. Green has some great bodies with powerful effects, Red has some great bodies with powerful effects, White has some great fliers with powerful effects. G/R has some great bodies with powerful effects. W/R has some great bodies with some game breaking effects. W/G...not much besides Day of Judgment Worm.
I mean even Naya colors has some obnoxious creatures.
G/W has probably some of the best early drops in the game, but their later game drops in terms of utility is highly disappointing as far as I have seen.
Running 3 colors and abusing all the Boros high CC creatures with Lurking Predators and Battalion BS with Luminarch Ascension doesn't sound like a horrible idea except good mana bases for 3 color decks tend to be sliiiiiiiightly spendy. Maybe with all the ramp and titans thrown into my deck it might work?
The G/R one is what I'm most likely going to get.
The G/W one was mostly just for lulz (and way out of my budget). I basically took the R/G one from before and just inverted all the R to W and vise versa.
Though if I have time I might mess around with the G/W version and if I can create a budget version that is just completely superior to the G/R one I might consider getting that one instead.
If I were to create a G/W version abusing both Lurking Predators and Luminarch Ascension what would be some good creatures to run in it (that are relatively cheap)? I'd imagine there would be some great options to destroy enchantments and artifacts on a non sacrificial body somewhere. I already liked Day of Judgment on a body.
With 4 Primetimes I could still easy enough splash for KWR even in G/W.
...who to cut though...
I'm probably still going to go for the Possibility Storm version since it's significantly cheaper, it acts as a form of protection for Lurking Predators, and there's nothing quite like dropping a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed or 2 and a Possibility Storm turning every non creature spell they play into a clock.
To be fair, it's REALLY hard to get 2-1ed with the card outside of wrath effects that would nuke it regardless since unequipping the Licid can't be responded to.
Just for the hell of it I threw this together quickly essentially taking the deck above and replacing red for white where relevant.
4x Joraga Treespeaker
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Kitchen Finks
2x Knight of the Reliquary
2x Adarkar Valkyrie
2x Novablast Wurm
4x Primeval Titan
1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
2x Sylvan Primordial
1x Terastodon
1x Stomping Ground
2x Plains
4x Sungrass Prairie
3x Selesnya Sanctuary
2x Stirring Wildwood
2x Secluded Steppe
1x Gavony Township
1x Kessig Wolf Run
4x Lurking Predators
Not that I could ever afford something like that since that's like double the price of what I had from before lol.
I might mess around with that a bit later to see if I can come up with something more budget friendly though.
Maybe there's some way to splash Luminarch Ascension in effectively? I mean let's face it, A 1W enchantment that gives you 4/4s for 1W beats the hell out of a 4RR that gives you 5/5s for 5RR. The only real question is the splashability and whether you can get the counters on it.
A deck that can effectively run both Lurking Predators and Luminarch Ascension just sounds outright terrifying. I'm not sure it can be done though since the strategies of the 2 cards tend to be opposite in nature.
Interesting suggestions. The only issue is at this point I have no idea what to cut to add any of those, especially the lands.
My current version looks like this.
4x Joraga Treespeaker
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Taurean Mauler
2x Forgotten Ancient
2x Dragonlair Spider
2x Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
4x Primeval Titan
1x Spearbreaker Behemoth
2x Sylvan Primordial
1x Terastodon
1x Temple Garden
2x Mountain
4x Mossfire Valley
3x Gruul Turf
2x Forgotten Cave
2x Raging Ravine
1x Gavony Township
1x Kessig Wolf Run
3x Possibility Storm
(Note: All the math is assuming I'm on the draw)
I need at least 10 useable green sources available on turn 1 which gives me an 80% chance to play a T1 Joraga Treespeaker or Birds of Paradise if I open with either of them. I'm currently running 10.
From there I need at least 16 red sources (STE and Birds count) so that I have an 80% to play cards that require double red (Possibility Storm and Dragonlair Spider) by turn 3 if necessary. I currently have 19. (Only 6 of those come into play immediately untapped so I still only have a ~68% chance to actually play a T3 double red card. Just under a 90% chance by T4 though)
The only changes I can afford is I could drop 1 Raging Ravine, 1 Forgotten Cave, and 1 Gruul Turf, and while I like those lands mentioned above I'm not sure I can justify their situational nature over a manland or a free card with Titan (Though if I were to come across an Overgrown Tomb and a Vault of the Archangel that would be a different story lol). Maybe I could drop 1 Raging Ravine for the Swarmyard since it covers the Taurii, Spiders, and the tokens they Spiders make.
In terms of the Licid I'm not sure what to cut either. I need 10 ramp creatures so that I have an 80% chance of starting with one as this deck just fails if it has to play the game normally. I don't want to cut any of the 12 bombs in the deck as 12 fatties in a LP deck is already on the small end. From there that just leaves the 6 Taurean Mauler and Forgotten Ancient. I could cut 1 or 2 of those for the Licid, but those are like my only early game defenses if something goes wrong and I can't quite get the Lurking Predators on the field early enough (not to mention that with Possibility Storm on the field they become bombs themselves). I'll have to think about that one.