I had a Lovecraft-themed deck in the past (first commanded by Lazav, Dimir Mastermind (Mill) and later by Ramses Overdark (Auras)) but while having great flavour it was always hard to have reliable win conditions.
On another note: the new investigate-mechanic seems a bit lovecraftian to me. At least if you have played the board game "Arkham Horror" where investigators can collect clue tokens.
I read your comment in the stax primer thread and you were so passionate about your Hanna deck that you got me interested.
I have always been that kind of guy who likes to play "fun" commander games which means to me that it is fun for me to play my deck but also fun for my opponents to play against it. Unfortunately during the last weeks I have played against so many "unfun" decks at my local game store that I decided to build a deck just for those occasions. And that was when I read about your Hanna deck and started to build my own one based off of your version.
I gathered almost all cards I need and next friday will be the first time I will actually play it.
Now I have some questions:
Another combo thing: I think the combo Master Transmuter + Illusionist's Bracers + Gilded Lotus + Unbender Tine does not work because the Illusionist's Bracers copy only the effect of the ability and not the costs. That means that you can return only one artifact to your hand and not two as would be required.
Is that right or am I missing something here?
Next thing: tutors. Sometimes I read threads on this forum of people asking how they can make a deck less competitive and a frequent answer is to take tutors out. Thinking the other way around more tutors means finding combo pieces more reliable and thus makes the deck more competitive. A great and inexpensive tutor for this deck is Muddle the Mixture. It tutors a lot of stax and combo pieces and can be a potential Counterspell. Idyllic Tutor and Transmute Artifact are more great tutors but unfortunately they are very expensive money-wise.
Question: what do you do against early combat damage? I see that you have Energy Field, Peacekeeper and Humility but I imaging playing this deck a few times at my local game store. After a while all opponents will probably turn against me from turn one if they see Hanna as the commander which might be too overwhelming.
Have you never had situations when you wished for more options against combat damage? What do you think about Propaganda and Ghostly Prison (which are also tutorable - Peacekeeper here has the same problem as Aphetto Alchemist)? With the mana-denial in the deck these might keep you alive much longer.
Or do you always manage to establish the Kismet/Stasis lock early enough? In case you did not know: Frozen Æther is the time-shifted version of Kismet which I included in my deck because it is vital to our strategy (Kismet might get exiled after all).
Hey Outcryqq - as mentioned in January I am going to relaunch my Lord of Tresserhorn deck.
And again I first want to try out zombie tribal with some nice addditions from the latest sets.
(If that does not work I can still try Grixis good stuff)
If your list on the first page is your current one I have a question: do you sometimes have problems with having too few creatures (I count 24)? When I ran Lord of Tresserhorn the last time I had 27 creatures and that felt ok.
Whenever I drew the Charm it just did not do enough. In terms of removal Crux of Fate is awsome in a dragon deck (duh...) and should have been in here from the beginning. Savage Ventmaw provides me continously with mana each turn and it is a dragon which obviously matters. I am not really happy with dumping the Elf because ramping early game is important but I just did not know what else to remove.
Still this deck is super fun to play and I love it!
Mykatdied and Bigbadbern thanks again for your help!
I have altered my list accordingly and will probably have a chance to play the deck on friday.
Just one more question: you guys both use Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top to lock opponents out. How many copies do you run of each card?
About my meta: I play a lot against Death and Taxes but have also seen all kinds of Delver (RUG, BUG, WUR) decks, U/G Infect, ANT, NO Elves and Maverick.
Thanks mykatdied (hi fellow Pox player! )and bigbadbern for your feedback - really appreciate it!
Since this is the competetive High Tide thread let's pretend the three Cloud of Faeries in my list are Candelabra of Tawnos. The guys at my LGS don't mind if someone runs three proxies for testing a new deck.
Apart from that I own a lot of expensive Magic cards and I would probably consider investing in Candelabra of Tawnos over time if the deck stays interesting for me - so the point for now for me will be to find that out.
I still have some questions:
In this case since you don't have candle you need to run more turnabout.
With the candles what is the normal number of Turnabouts? I think I would like at least two.
As i have mentioned before intuition is "old school tech" and we have discovered better draw spells. Please cut this card.
This one I am really curious about what are the better draw spells? Intuition can find Time Spiral two times and Candelabra of Tawnos once if we are playing three. What is your opinion about Meditate?
Try spell pierce for this. But do not cut flusterstorm completely.
I played High Tide about three years ago and am now interested in picking it up again.
I read a bit here and over at The Source and it seems to me that there are no major changes, right? Pore Over the Pages and Pieces of the Puzzle are probably new interesting options to try out.
Still the old problem: I do not own any Candelabra of Tawnos and have used Cloud of Faeries in the past instead.
Is that legit or what would you advise?
So, what is the pros and cons list of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth v. Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
I got an Ulamog for my list because I thought the destroy a permanent was great in a color without a ton of removal, the indestructible helps in a deck that can't use the stack very well, and it has annihilator.
I guess the question is, does the 4 cards Kozilek draws you outweigh the removal and board resilience of Ulamog?
I didn't think so previously, but I'm starting to lean towards Kozilek, namely for him costing less, letting me draw cards, and still having annihilator on board combined with the graveyard shuffle.
Thoughts?
There are several ways to build Omnath and I think it depends on what your deck tries to do.
This primer aims more at a token strategy and I do not know which Eldrazi would be better there.
I have been playing Omnath for a long time and initially based my deck on this guy's version. This Omnath strategy is more to have one really big turn in which you win. In this deck I definitely prefer Kozilek, Butcher of Truth over Ulamog.
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade, Jasmine Boreal, Nebuchadnezzar, Sol'kanar the Swamp King, Dakkon Blackblade, Kasimir the Lone Wolf, Livonya Silone, Ramses Overdark, The Lady of the Mountain, Hazezon Tamar, Riven Turnbull.
A deck I actually built because of the awesome art is Lord of Tresserhorn. Going to have it signed by the artist in december.
I had a Lovecraft-themed deck in the past (first commanded by Lazav, Dimir Mastermind (Mill) and later by Ramses Overdark (Auras)) but while having great flavour it was always hard to have reliable win conditions.
My suggestion for more control: Crush of Tentacles.
Or for the mill strategy:
Guiltfeeder
Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker (Fire Vampire)
Mindslicer
Reanimate
Necromancy
Memory Erosion
On another note: the new investigate-mechanic seems a bit lovecraftian to me. At least if you have played the board game "Arkham Horror" where investigators can collect clue tokens.
I read your comment in the stax primer thread and you were so passionate about your Hanna deck that you got me interested.
I have always been that kind of guy who likes to play "fun" commander games which means to me that it is fun for me to play my deck but also fun for my opponents to play against it. Unfortunately during the last weeks I have played against so many "unfun" decks at my local game store that I decided to build a deck just for those occasions. And that was when I read about your Hanna deck and started to build my own one based off of your version.
I gathered almost all cards I need and next friday will be the first time I will actually play it.
Now I have some questions:
My main concern is that the strongest combo in the deck is the one: Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers.
While being really powerful we have no way to tutor for the Aphetto Alchemist. I know there are Skyship Weatherlight, Ring of Three Wishes and Planar Portal but at least in my meta I have to have the mana to immediatelly use the tutor effect because otherwise the artifact will get removed before I have a chance to use it on my next turn. This means that I have to have 8, 10 or 12 mana available to tutor for Aphetto Alchemist which is quite a lot.
Do you have problems assembling the combo Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers?
Another combo thing: I think the combo Master Transmuter + Illusionist's Bracers + Gilded Lotus + Unbender Tine does not work because the Illusionist's Bracers copy only the effect of the ability and not the costs. That means that you can return only one artifact to your hand and not two as would be required.
Is that right or am I missing something here?
Next thing: tutors. Sometimes I read threads on this forum of people asking how they can make a deck less competitive and a frequent answer is to take tutors out. Thinking the other way around more tutors means finding combo pieces more reliable and thus makes the deck more competitive. A great and inexpensive tutor for this deck is Muddle the Mixture. It tutors a lot of stax and combo pieces and can be a potential Counterspell.
Idyllic Tutor and Transmute Artifact are more great tutors but unfortunately they are very expensive money-wise.
Question: what do you do against early combat damage? I see that you have Energy Field, Peacekeeper and Humility but I imaging playing this deck a few times at my local game store. After a while all opponents will probably turn against me from turn one if they see Hanna as the commander which might be too overwhelming.
Have you never had situations when you wished for more options against combat damage? What do you think about Propaganda and Ghostly Prison (which are also tutorable - Peacekeeper here has the same problem as Aphetto Alchemist)? With the mana-denial in the deck these might keep you alive much longer.
Or do you always manage to establish the Kismet/Stasis lock early enough? In case you did not know: Frozen Æther is the time-shifted version of Kismet which I included in my deck because it is vital to our strategy (Kismet might get exiled after all).
I think I will run Kor Haven over Prahv, Spires of Order because it is much cheaper to activate. Do you often need Prahv, Spires of Order for preventing non-creature damage? Maybe I should run both...
So that is all for now. Thanks for the great inspiration and I am really looking forward to play the deck on friday!
And again I first want to try out zombie tribal with some nice addditions from the latest sets.
(If that does not work I can still try Grixis good stuff)
If your list on the first page is your current one I have a question: do you sometimes have problems with having too few creatures (I count 24)? When I ran Lord of Tresserhorn the last time I had 27 creatures and that felt ok.
Two more changes I did some weeks ago and had the chance to playtest:
- Farhaven Elf
- Darigaaz's Charm
+ Crux of Fate
+ Savage Ventmaw
Whenever I drew the Charm it just did not do enough. In terms of removal Crux of Fate is awsome in a dragon deck (duh...) and should have been in here from the beginning.
Savage Ventmaw provides me continously with mana each turn and it is a dragon which obviously matters. I am not really happy with dumping the Elf because ramping early game is important but I just did not know what else to remove.
Still this deck is super fun to play and I love it!
Mills all players but this thing is so powerful if you want to mill yourself it's not even funny.
Give it a try and you will soon be including Copy Artifact, Sculpting Steel, Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator and the like just to have more orbs.
Believe me - I have been there...
I have altered my list accordingly and will probably have a chance to play the deck on friday.
Just one more question: you guys both use Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top to lock opponents out. How many copies do you run of each card?
About my meta: I play a lot against Death and Taxes but have also seen all kinds of Delver (RUG, BUG, WUR) decks, U/G Infect, ANT, NO Elves and Maverick.
Since this is the competetive High Tide thread let's pretend the three Cloud of Faeries in my list are Candelabra of Tawnos. The guys at my LGS don't mind if someone runs three proxies for testing a new deck.
Apart from that I own a lot of expensive Magic cards and I would probably consider investing in Candelabra of Tawnos over time if the deck stays interesting for me - so the point for now for me will be to find that out.
I still have some questions:
With the candles what is the normal number of Turnabouts? I think I would like at least two.
This one I am really curious about what are the better draw spells? Intuition can find Time Spiral two times and Candelabra of Tawnos once if we are playing three. What is your opinion about Meditate?
So maybe three Spell Pierce main and one Flusterstorm in the sideboard?
Thanks again for your help - I am really looking forward playing this deck once more!
I played High Tide about three years ago and am now interested in picking it up again.
I read a bit here and over at The Source and it seems to me that there are no major changes, right?
Pore Over the Pages and Pieces of the Puzzle are probably new interesting options to try out.
My deck looked like this:
12 Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
Spells
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
3 Flusterstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition
2 Meditate
1 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
4 Time Spiral
3 Cloud of Faeries
1 Brain Freeze
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
3 Pact of Negation
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Flusterstorm
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Snap
1 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Wipe Away
1 Turnabout
I would make the following changes: Remove the two Sensei's Divining Tops for an additional Turnabout and Preordain.
Still the old problem: I do not own any Candelabra of Tawnos and have used Cloud of Faeries in the past instead.
Is that legit or what would you advise?
There are several ways to build Omnath and I think it depends on what your deck tries to do.
This primer aims more at a token strategy and I do not know which Eldrazi would be better there.
I have been playing Omnath for a long time and initially based my deck on this guy's version. This Omnath strategy is more to have one really big turn in which you win. In this deck I definitely prefer Kozilek, Butcher of Truth over Ulamog.
I am interested in building Lorthos as well.
Did the lockout strategy work?