Funeral charm is killer! Double duty as removal is just to good not to have. Piracy charm is also great but I would need more than one card to justify running blue. Suggestions for blue splash? And the biggie what would you cut to get it in there.
Yay, finallY wrapped up my maybe board. I know that these posts are full of questions but please try to help where u can. I have thus far built this deck in a vacuum And my playtesting oppertunites are limited.
Thx y'all, I'll post up any updates.
bump, hopin for some help from those with more experience in the format. I know that I'm asking a ton of questions throughout the post but any suggestions are welcome
Mana - I rly need to hit those first 3 land drops and get BB on turn 2. I have drawn a lot of hands on tappedout and it seems like 1 more land is right, can't cut anything though! I can't overstate how important having consistent, explosive starts are for this archetype and it all starts here. If I do cut something it should be a 3 drop to lower the curve, HELP!!
Swamp - makes it all happen, I have seen some snow hate so unnecessary and extra planer lens seems to slow / delicate. Amazing when lake of the dead is 'used properly'. Some cards do care about swamps, my first choice to add a land, statistically I could be ok with something colorless but I rly feel like being safe about those first 3 land drops is important. Thoughts?
Arcane Lighthouse seems like it should be my goto utility land, at least sb but I rly feel like I have enough non targeted removal to be safe.
Dust bowl / wasteland - still pretty new but I know that 20/20 avatars are a thing. Do these even stop that though? Esp with all the recursion.
Dark Ritual - this was the last card cut in v1.0. Can't justify it without one more land first, then what aspect of my game plan could afford to suffer for this? So much potential for early game God hands though, thoughts?
Anything else mana related? Like I said I'm pretty unexperinced in actual games in the format, what's the right number of lands?
Discard - Here is the big one, I think I should probably go from 13 to 15 to assure I'm seeing what I want to early game. What can suffer though? Here is a big list of possible swaps and includes, input please!
Bog Down missed this the first time around, will replace mind rot maybe this should be stupor? the slot it self though could be on the chopping block.
opression,words of waste - I rly like these 2 perments, A LOT, 3 cmc is to tight to not have it replace something. These could really help with run away card draw.
mindstab thrill, hollow Spector - these guys are good if they hit but are 3 cmc and will they hit or survive? Turn 4 swing is slow already here for something not guaranteed to cause a discard, I could be wrong though.
pulse of dross - although mana intensive I feel like this has a lot of mid to late game potential. With my list as it is though I "feel" like repeatable discard in the form of a permanent is probally better.
stronghold rats -potential! Soft but these guys should get thru.
sword of feast and famine - wow I thought this was banned, to good not to run, does everything I need and sygg can always hold it.
cabal interrogator - herm, repeatable. Very stage of the game dependent, possibly expensive but this guy could still put in some work.
mind shatter - should be mind twist but that's banned, not sure this one lives up to it.
scepter of fugue I think this is probally my number one pick for a permanent to add. No weak body
thoughtseize - this is probally going in, think it will replace despise, maybe not though, keeping both would help to lower the curve.
blackmail - I do need to lower the curve but this is barley a contender.
cry of contrition - I will run this over blackmail. As much as I would like I don't see both making it even though 1 cmc discards are super important to assure I draw into early game.
Mind peel - this will probably replace despise. At least this will always hit something in an unknown meta and it has late game upside.
duress - sb maybe? Room is so tight I'm to scared this will fizzle.
isochron scepter - maybe I can fiddle with the number of instants? Idk, thoughts on number of instants in the deck to make it worth while.
Removal - finally an aspect of this deck that I'm happy with. Only real ideas I have is deciding if royal assassin should be main board or sb, I rly feel like he should be in here though. Also any ideas on comprable instants for isochron scepter abuse.
Draw - same idea, anything that can be switched to an instant? Is this an area to consider cutting? I'm having a very hard time deciding.
Win Cons - Pretty happy here, possible cuts on some of these to make the deck more consistent.
SideBoard - Open to suggestions, not entirely in love with lifebane zombie. Also hoping for advice on fighting mill, currently have 2 cards, maybe 3 is the right number. Seems strong enough to be a prevalent deck.
So please help me! I started playing Tiny Leaders today and this is my first deck. I have been playing edh exclusively for years and this is my first foray back into competitive formats. I love this deck because it is exactly the kind of old school thing I was playing back in my revised days when I was a competitive player. Please bear with me as I explain what I am looking for and how I've gotten here.
Deck building has been a difficult adjustment for me at first as I feel like every cut weakens the deck in one facet or another. I fear that I may have crossed the line into to much utility with having my cards serve multiple functions. I really would like to have a land destruction sub theme as well but after getting my first few games into today i'm not sure how effective that would be as 2/3 matches I played where against decks that had huge amounts of land or a lot of ramp. I am also considering a stax theme.
So what would you do to make this the most vicious MBC out there? I know a lot of tuning is meta dependent, I have very few people to play with but those that I do have a large number of decks. Today I lost to Merieke Ri Berit Mill (1-2), Alesha, Who Smiles at Death Super efficient aggro (1-2) and won against Mikaeus, the Lunarch Token Swarm (2-0). In short it looks like the meta I am facing is everything under the sun, just about anything competitive.
So here are my thoughts. It seems like hitting discard, hopefully discard that goes 2 for 1 early in the game is critical. Ideally I want a discard 1st and 2nd turn, and ideally something after that driven by a permanent or larger spells. Obviously my balance of removal has to be right to stabilize anything that slips through. From there work on digging for wincons, grinding out card advantage through the mid - late game.
It seems like I'm only getting the discard I need maybe 50/60 % of the time though in my opening hands, even with aggressive mulligening. I feel like I need more discard in the 1 and 2 cmc area but don't know where to cut. With all the draw depending on life the nominal amount of life gain seems important enough to keep.
So as you can see a lot of these cards serve multiple functions depending on what I need out of them. Here is a quick breakdown of how many cards are serving what purpose in an effort to tune it properly. Any ideas on where the discard should be to try to make sure I'm seeing three discard spells (or two high quality )hopefully on curve by turn 4/5, also looking for cross purpose utility wherever possible.
Sygg is a good wall / intermittent card draw, once i get momentum rolling his card per turn can really help it, occasionally he even contributes to it by adding one damage on top of another creatures 2. Maybeboard coming soon, also please help with the SB
Thanks for the feedback! Dack Fayden defiantly seems like he will be able to earn a spot in here. In my bolas deck I run an Aladdin and I think he will be replacing that spot in there as well. I can see the appeal of possibility storm but personally I'm not to fond of the chaos effects. I actually had chaos warp horribly backfire on me last night when I was playing against a xenagos fatty deck.
I started the game with a sol ring on turn one and by turn three I was beating face with a Trepanation Blade equipped Mindshrieker (I need to update the deck, I had added Trepanation Blade and some others) by turn 3. Ofc I went after xenagos player to reanimate his fatties but the best I hit was a spellbreaker behemoth even though I milled like 20 of his cards and did a little over 20 dmg to him in 3 turns. He finally dropped xenagos and started beating my face until I drew a chaos warp. I warped his god into an akroma (the red one) then the next turn he tutored his god back up and swung at me for lethal, even though it was a 4 player game it pretty much turned into a grudge match between the two of us and I was out by turn 8 or so. What can I say though, I wanted his fatties and if I had hit better stuff on the mill I would have had a far easier time defending myself and probably could have stayed in the game.
One important thing to note with this style of deck, you will notice with this deck and it's B/U twin, I included cards like fissure and stream of acid. The ability to blow up a homeward path is critical!, This deck can very easily fold to that card. fissure type cards are rly nice because they can do double duty taking out creatures as well.
So I made this deck up in response to a lot of players that I would see running those bomb blow-out cards such as storm herd and time walk effects. Many people who run over the top cards like this have never had the (dis)pleasure of playing against them. I have drawn some bad looks from people when I am able to do something like animate dead an It that betrays on turn 3, but I have to remind people that I'm not the one who brought it to the table. One of my favorite plays was having cruel ultimatum cast on me and then proceeding to cast it on the offending player three times in a row until it was finally exiled after being spelltwined.
This deck is a mirror reflection of the other decks at the table but when there are at least 4 people I tend to be able to pull together a good board out of their hand, library and or graveyard. This is the grixis version of this deck, I also have a dimir version which is a little more consistent but I prefer the grixis version a little more because it makes player's hands fair game as well as their hands and libraries.
If you have players who love to bring decks full of single card powerhouses then I would encourage trying something like this, it can be a ton of fun to beat people with their own tech.
A word on the generals, I like to keep a grip of grixis generals in reserve and switch them up so that my playgroup can't peg the deck that I'm playing when I sit down, some tend to get cranky when they know before the game starts that they will be milled. I usually use Gwendlyn Di Corci. She makes a great wall early game and can do good work with getting tasty reanimation targets.
Here is the deck, comments and suggestions welcome!
Also just a note, nothing has been added from nyx onward, I would love suggestions on new cards.
Although technically not a win I would also consider Divine Intervention. Always takes the board by surprise if you are able to pull it off and being the one to have pulled it off somehow leaves you closer to having won the game then anyone else.
And of course you will want your academy rectors and such to fetch the enchantments.
So below is the deck I've been running for about the last week or so with a moderate amount of success. Any comments, questions or suggestions are weclcome
The deck had started out with chandra's phoenix over guttersnipe, fewer counter spells and some other small tweaks, but I always found myself in awkward positions where I was tapped out when I really needed to be reacting on my opponents turn. I ended up splitting the deck into two separate builds, one more aggressive with a higher creature count, some mizzium skins thrown in for creature protection, no counterspells outside of the charm and higher damage burn spells such as flames of the firebrand and annihilating fire. If I'm playing as aggressively as possible then I should be tapped out on their turn anyways. While I'm still toying around with the more aggressive version, the more reactive version posted above seems to be more resilient.
The key seems to be depending on instants so that you can stay untapped until the end of your opponents turn. Waiting until mid game to play guttersnipes and young pyromancers is important as well. They will get doom bladed or otherwise removed but being able to respond with an instant or two to still get value out of them is key.
As for where this deck is going, I had totally forgotten that epic experiment existed. Next I am going to try to squeeze it into both the list above and the aggressive build I mentioned. I also intend to try a build with a splash of white to gain access to boros charm, warleader's helix and chained to the rocks for the sideboard. It would seem to have epic experiment be at it's most effective the burn spells are going to have to be of a higher quality.
pithing needle and burning earth in the SB can help a lot. At one point I was running 2 x skullcrack mb just for the revelation but have since cut them since I don't see as much esper as I used to. An early burning earth can go a long way though. I also run 2 x hammer of purphoros, this is a card that once resolved esper can have trouble with as the game drags on you should be able to eat all their spot removal and still keep coming at them. It is also a good card in general I don't see a lot of lists running here, a mid to late game spellheart w/ haste is nothing to scoff at.
Counter heavy builds will do a lot better as well. Play style has to be a lot different against an esper deck, never tapping out and holding counters for the right things is key. Also using steam augrey at the end of their turn to bait out counter magic is a great trick if you need to get something through on your turn.
Yay, finallY wrapped up my maybe board. I know that these posts are full of questions but please try to help where u can. I have thus far built this deck in a vacuum And my playtesting oppertunites are limited.
Thx y'all, I'll post up any updates.
bump, hopin for some help from those with more experience in the format. I know that I'm asking a ton of questions throughout the post but any suggestions are welcome
Mana - I rly need to hit those first 3 land drops and get BB on turn 2. I have drawn a lot of hands on tappedout and it seems like 1 more land is right, can't cut anything though! I can't overstate how important having consistent, explosive starts are for this archetype and it all starts here. If I do cut something it should be a 3 drop to lower the curve, HELP!!
Arcane Lighthouse seems like it should be my goto utility land, at least sb but I rly feel like I have enough non targeted removal to be safe.
Dust bowl / wasteland - still pretty new but I know that 20/20 avatars are a thing. Do these even stop that though? Esp with all the recursion.
Dark Ritual - this was the last card cut in v1.0. Can't justify it without one more land first, then what aspect of my game plan could afford to suffer for this? So much potential for early game God hands though, thoughts?
Anything else mana related? Like I said I'm pretty unexperinced in actual games in the format, what's the right number of lands?
Discard - Here is the big one, I think I should probably go from 13 to 15 to assure I'm seeing what I want to early game. What can suffer though? Here is a big list of possible swaps and includes, input please!
opression,words of waste - I rly like these 2 perments, A LOT, 3 cmc is to tight to not have it replace something. These could really help with run away card draw.
bottomless pit - see above, don't like it as much But still good better to not have this on a body?cunning lethemancer
mindstab thrill, hollow Spector - these guys are good if they hit but are 3 cmc and will they hit or survive? Turn 4 swing is slow already here for something not guaranteed to cause a discard, I could be wrong though.
pulse of dross - although mana intensive I feel like this has a lot of mid to late game potential. With my list as it is though I "feel" like repeatable discard in the form of a permanent is probally better.
stronghold rats -potential! Soft but these guys should get thru.
sword of feast and famine - wow I thought this was banned, to good not to run, does everything I need and sygg can always hold it.
cabal interrogator - herm, repeatable. Very stage of the game dependent, possibly expensive but this guy could still put in some work.
mind shatter - should be mind twist but that's banned, not sure this one lives up to it.
scepter of fugue I think this is probally my number one pick for a permanent to add. No weak body
thoughtseize - this is probally going in, think it will replace despise, maybe not though, keeping both would help to lower the curve.
blackmail - I do need to lower the curve but this is barley a contender.
cry of contrition - I will run this over blackmail. As much as I would like I don't see both making it even though 1 cmc discards are super important to assure I draw into early game.
Mind peel - this will probably replace despise. At least this will always hit something in an unknown meta and it has late game upside.
duress - sb maybe? Room is so tight I'm to scared this will fizzle.
isochron scepter - maybe I can fiddle with the number of instants? Idk, thoughts on number of instants in the deck to make it worth while.
Removal - finally an aspect of this deck that I'm happy with. Only real ideas I have is deciding if royal assassin should be main board or sb, I rly feel like he should be in here though. Also any ideas on comprable instants for isochron scepter abuse.
Draw - same idea, anything that can be switched to an instant? Is this an area to consider cutting? I'm having a very hard time deciding.
Win Cons - Pretty happy here, possible cuts on some of these to make the deck more consistent.
SideBoard - Open to suggestions, not entirely in love with lifebane zombie. Also hoping for advice on fighting mill, currently have 2 cards, maybe 3 is the right number. Seems strong enough to be a prevalent deck.
1x Drown in Sorrow (swarms / aggro)
1x Engineered Plague (swarms / aggro)
1x Lifebane Zombie (tokens / elves)
1x Pithing Needle (To Useful not to have once i know what to hit)
1x Perish (elves)
1x Elixir of Immortality (mill)
1x Sadistic Sacrament (mill / combo)
1x Cranial Archive (mill)
1x Marsh Casualties (swarms / aggro)
1x Virtue's Ruin (token swarm)
15 Swamp
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Lake of the Dead
Artifact (1)
1 The Rack
Creature (6)
1 Nyxathid
1 Cunning Lethemancer
1 Nezumi Shortfang
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
Planeswalker (1)
1 Liliana of the Veil
Enchantment (4)
1 Shrieking Affliction
1 Quest for the Nihil Stone
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Underworld Connections
Instant (4)
1 Funeral Charm
1 Smother
1 Tribute to Hunger
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Raven's Crime
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Wrench Mind
1 Mire's Toll
1 Despise
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Smallpox
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Drain Life
1 Consume Spirit
1 Profane Command
1 Read the Bones
1 Damnable Pact
1 Mind Rot
Commander (1)
1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
1x Drown in Sorrow
1x Engineered Plague
1x Lifebane Zombie
1x Pithing Needle
1x Perish
1x Elixir of Immortality
1x Sadistic Sacrament
1x Cranial Archive
1x Marsh Casualties
1x Virtue's Ruin
DeckList By Function
15 Swamp
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Lake of the Dead
WinCons (Damage)
1 Nyxathid
1 Cunning Lethemancer (Discard)
1 Nezumi Shortfang (Discard)
1 Hypnotic Specter (Discard)
1 Vampire Nighthawk (Defense / LifeGain)
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir (removal)
1 The Rack
1 Shrieking Affliction
1 Quest for the Nihil Stone
1 Profane Command (Removal)
1 Funeral Charm (Removal)
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Raven's Crime
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Wrench Mind
1 Mire's Toll
1 Despise
1 Mind Rot
1 Liliana of the Veil (Removal)
Draw
1 Read the Bones
1 Damnable Pact
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Underworld Connections
1 Skeletal Scrying (Damage)
1 Drain Life (Damage / LifeGain)
1 Consume Spirit (Damage / LifeGain)
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Smallpox (Discard)
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Smother
1 Tribute to Hunger (LifeGain)
Commander
1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
1x Drown in Sorrow (swarms / aggro)
1x Engineered Plague (swarms / aggro)
1x Lifebane Zombie (tokens / elves)
1x Pithing Needle (To Useful not to have once i know what to hit)
1x Perish (elves)
1x Elixir of Immortality (mill)
1x Sadistic Sacrament (mill / combo)
1x Cranial Archive (mill)
1x Marsh Casualties (swarms / aggro)
1x Virtue's Ruin (token swarm)
So please help me! I started playing Tiny Leaders today and this is my first deck. I have been playing edh exclusively for years and this is my first foray back into competitive formats. I love this deck because it is exactly the kind of old school thing I was playing back in my revised days when I was a competitive player. Please bear with me as I explain what I am looking for and how I've gotten here.
Deck building has been a difficult adjustment for me at first as I feel like every cut weakens the deck in one facet or another. I fear that I may have crossed the line into to much utility with having my cards serve multiple functions. I really would like to have a land destruction sub theme as well but after getting my first few games into today i'm not sure how effective that would be as 2/3 matches I played where against decks that had huge amounts of land or a lot of ramp. I am also considering a stax theme.
So what would you do to make this the most vicious MBC out there? I know a lot of tuning is meta dependent, I have very few people to play with but those that I do have a large number of decks. Today I lost to Merieke Ri Berit Mill (1-2), Alesha, Who Smiles at Death Super efficient aggro (1-2) and won against Mikaeus, the Lunarch Token Swarm (2-0). In short it looks like the meta I am facing is everything under the sun, just about anything competitive.
So here are my thoughts. It seems like hitting discard, hopefully discard that goes 2 for 1 early in the game is critical. Ideally I want a discard 1st and 2nd turn, and ideally something after that driven by a permanent or larger spells. Obviously my balance of removal has to be right to stabilize anything that slips through. From there work on digging for wincons, grinding out card advantage through the mid - late game.
It seems like I'm only getting the discard I need maybe 50/60 % of the time though in my opening hands, even with aggressive mulligening. I feel like I need more discard in the 1 and 2 cmc area but don't know where to cut. With all the draw depending on life the nominal amount of life gain seems important enough to keep.
So as you can see a lot of these cards serve multiple functions depending on what I need out of them. Here is a quick breakdown of how many cards are serving what purpose in an effort to tune it properly. Any ideas on where the discard should be to try to make sure I'm seeing three discard spells (or two high quality )hopefully on curve by turn 4/5, also looking for cross purpose utility wherever possible.
Mana (18)
Damage / Wincons (12)
Discard (13)
Draw (5)
Removal (11)
LifeGain (4)
Sygg is a good wall / intermittent card draw, once i get momentum rolling his card per turn can really help it, occasionally he even contributes to it by adding one damage on top of another creatures 2. Maybeboard coming soon, also please help with the SB
1x Drown in Sorrow (swarms / aggro)
1x Engineered Plague (swarms / aggro)
1x Lifebane Zombie (tokens / elves)
1x Pithing Needle (To Useful not to have once i know what to hit)
1x Perish (elves)
1x Elixir of Immortality (mill)
1x Sadistic Sacrament (mill / combo)
1x Cranial Archive (mill)
1x Marsh Casualties (swarms / aggro)
1x Virtue's Ruin (token swarm)
I started the game with a sol ring on turn one and by turn three I was beating face with a Trepanation Blade equipped Mindshrieker (I need to update the deck, I had added Trepanation Blade and some others) by turn 3. Ofc I went after xenagos player to reanimate his fatties but the best I hit was a spellbreaker behemoth even though I milled like 20 of his cards and did a little over 20 dmg to him in 3 turns. He finally dropped xenagos and started beating my face until I drew a chaos warp. I warped his god into an akroma (the red one) then the next turn he tutored his god back up and swung at me for lethal, even though it was a 4 player game it pretty much turned into a grudge match between the two of us and I was out by turn 8 or so. What can I say though, I wanted his fatties and if I had hit better stuff on the mill I would have had a far easier time defending myself and probably could have stayed in the game.
One important thing to note with this style of deck, you will notice with this deck and it's B/U twin, I included cards like fissure and stream of acid. The ability to blow up a homeward path is critical!, This deck can very easily fold to that card. fissure type cards are rly nice because they can do double duty taking out creatures as well.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/562367-grixis-b-u-r-why-you-shouldnt-run-storm-herd#c1
The idea is to beat people silly with their own spells and creatures, not much more then that. It is a style of play I enjoy immensely.
I have not updated the deck with anything printed in nyx onwards. Suggestions and comments are always welcome, enjoy!
1 Academy Ruins
1 Command Tower
1 Drowned Catacomb
13 Island
1 Rogue's Passage
13 Swamp
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Underground Sea
1 Vesuva
1 Watery Grave
Artifacts (8)
1 Coalition Relic
1 Memory Jar
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Quicksilver Amulet
1 Sol Ring
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Trailblazer's Boots
1 Whispersilk Cloak
Enchantments (5)
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Dauthi Embrace
1 Necromancy
1 Animate Dead
1 Dance of the Dead
Instants (11)
1 Brainstorm
1 Counterlash
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Lim-Dûl's Vault
1 Mana Drain
1 Memory Plunder
1 Perplex
1 Spin into Myth
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Visions of Beyond
1 Wheel and Deal
1 Ashen Powder
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Befoul
1 Blatant Thievery
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Vision
1 Imperial Seal
1 Life's Finale
1 Mind Funeral
1 Mind Grind
1 Spelltwine
1 Stream of Acid
1 Syphon Mind
1 Telemin Performance
1 Whispering Madness
1 Windfall
1 Knowledge Exploitation
Creatures (23)
1 Body Double
1 Chancellor of the Spires
1 Coffin Queen
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Cryptoplasm
1 Diluvian Primordial
1 Dimir Doppelganger
1 Duplicant
1 Evil Twin
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Jace's Mindseeker
1 Lazav, Dimir Mastermind
1 Mindleech Mass
1 Mindshrieker
1 Nemesis of Reason
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Scythe Specter
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Silent-Blade Oni
1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep
This deck is a mirror reflection of the other decks at the table but when there are at least 4 people I tend to be able to pull together a good board out of their hand, library and or graveyard. This is the grixis version of this deck, I also have a dimir version which is a little more consistent but I prefer the grixis version a little more because it makes player's hands fair game as well as their hands and libraries.
The (B/U) version can be found here
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/562370-why-you-shouldnt-run-time-walk-spells-b-u-wrexial
If you have players who love to bring decks full of single card powerhouses then I would encourage trying something like this, it can be a ton of fun to beat people with their own tech.
A word on the generals, I like to keep a grip of grixis generals in reserve and switch them up so that my playgroup can't peg the deck that I'm playing when I sit down, some tend to get cranky when they know before the game starts that they will be milled. I usually use Gwendlyn Di Corci. She makes a great wall early game and can do good work with getting tasty reanimation targets.
Here is the deck, comments and suggestions welcome!
Also just a note, nothing has been added from nyx onward, I would love suggestions on new cards.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Command Tower
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Drowned Catacomb
6 Island
6 Mountain
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
6 Swamp
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Underground Sea
1 Vesuva
1 Volcanic Island
1 Watery Grave
Artifacts (8)
1 Coalition Relic
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Quicksilver Amulet
1 Sol Ring
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Trailblazer's Boots
1 Whispersilk Cloak
Enchantments (9)
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Dauthi Embrace
1 Liliana's Caress
1 Megrim
1 Seer's Vision
1 Telepathy
1 Necromancy
1 Animate Dead
1 Dance of the Dead
1 Chaos Warp
1 Fissure
1 Lim-Dûl's Vault
1 Mana Drain
1 Memory Plunder
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel and Deal
1 Wrecking Ball
Planeswalkers (1)
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Sorcery (15)
1 Ashen Powder
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Breaking // Entering
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Vision
1 Incendiary Command
1 Mind Grind
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Spelltwine
1 Telemin Performance
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Whispering Madness
1 Windfall
1 Knowledge Exploitation
Creatures (25)
1 Barbed Shocker
1 Body Double
1 Chancellor of the Spires
1 Coffin Queen
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Cryptoplasm
1 Diluvian Primordial
1 Dimir Doppelganger
1 Duplicant
1 Evil Twin
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
1 Jace's Mindseeker
1 Lazav, Dimir Mastermind
1 Mindclaw Shaman
1 Mindleech Mass
1 Mindshrieker
1 Nicol Bolas
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Sangromancer
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Shocker
1 Silent-Blade Oni
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep
1 Gwendlyn Di Corci
And of course you will want your academy rectors and such to fetch the enchantments.
3 x Spellheart Chimera
3 x Young Pyromancer
4 x Guttersnipe
Spells (26)
3 x Lighting Strike
4 x Magma Jet
3 x Shock
3 x Izzet Charm
4 x Turn // Burn
2 x Syncopate
4 x Dissolve
3 x Steam Augury
2 x Hammer of of Purphoros
Lands (22)
4 x Steam Vents
4 x Izzet Guildgate
7 x Mountain
7 x Island
3 x Gainsay
4 x Anger of the Gods
3 x Pithing Needle
2 x Curse of the Swine
3 x Burning Earth
The deck had started out with chandra's phoenix over guttersnipe, fewer counter spells and some other small tweaks, but I always found myself in awkward positions where I was tapped out when I really needed to be reacting on my opponents turn. I ended up splitting the deck into two separate builds, one more aggressive with a higher creature count, some mizzium skins thrown in for creature protection, no counterspells outside of the charm and higher damage burn spells such as flames of the firebrand and annihilating fire. If I'm playing as aggressively as possible then I should be tapped out on their turn anyways. While I'm still toying around with the more aggressive version, the more reactive version posted above seems to be more resilient.
The key seems to be depending on instants so that you can stay untapped until the end of your opponents turn. Waiting until mid game to play guttersnipes and young pyromancers is important as well. They will get doom bladed or otherwise removed but being able to respond with an instant or two to still get value out of them is key.
As for where this deck is going, I had totally forgotten that epic experiment existed. Next I am going to try to squeeze it into both the list above and the aggressive build I mentioned. I also intend to try a build with a splash of white to gain access to boros charm, warleader's helix and chained to the rocks for the sideboard. It would seem to have epic experiment be at it's most effective the burn spells are going to have to be of a higher quality.
Counter heavy builds will do a lot better as well. Play style has to be a lot different against an esper deck, never tapping out and holding counters for the right things is key. Also using steam augrey at the end of their turn to bait out counter magic is a great trick if you need to get something through on your turn.