You can use the Displacer to reset Walker of the Wastes, growing him proportioanately to the number of new Wastes on the battlefield since you cast him. You can also use it to reliably trigger Eldrazi Mimic, so you always have something large to swing with, but the ETB tapped clause makes this somewhat less effective. It does let you trigger him on defense I suppose.
Someone pointed out to me that following this up with Ruination Guide turns the mimic into a 4/2. Some kind of Grixis shell seems like the way forward, so that you can capitalize on things like Wasteland Strangler, Ruination Guide and Vile Aggregate.
Copying only colorless creatures does make the pool of things you can do smaller, but the base stats of Renegade Doppleganger as a 0/1 is much worse than a base 2/1. Also the very best thing you can probably copy with this thing is Phyrexian Dreadnaught, in which case it's like a one-shot version of Illusionary Mask.
Not being blue is actually something of a plus because it eases up your mana requirements. In Legacy you can drop this T1 with Ancient Tomb, and then drop a mountain T2, Dreadnaught, then Temur Battlerage for 24 trampling damage. It's obviously best-case scenario but it isn't impossible.
I like the guy. I think the current meta is a lot different from the Doppelganger's, and has some potential to be workable. It also carries Ghostfire Blade like a champ.
I went 4-1 during my event, and managed to nab first place off tie breakers because the entire 1-3 spots all had the same 4-1 record. I picked Sultai on the basis that Green and Blue both seemed really solid in FRF. Ended up with a solid pool sporting some strong uncommons and a few powerful rares. A quick eval by card:
Yasova Dragonclaw - As strong as she looks, but is indeed a little fragile. There seems to be more removal in FRF sealed than there was in KTK, and her 2 toughness makes her vulnerable to almost all of it. My deck also lacked ways to boost her toughness (no Bolster, most notably) that you might be able to nab if you picked her in Draft. Still, her ability is formidable and she can be utterly backbreaking if you manage any kind of a decent start. I used her most often to steal opposing Deathtouchers my opponent left behind on defense.
Jeskai Infiltrator - This card performed a lot better than I thought he would. He's fantastic when played on-curve, as he's often you're only creature when you get to untap on turn 4, letting you get that first Manifest trigger for free. He's surprisingly resilient too, as 3 toughness lets him dodge some of the red and black removal that might be aimed your way. Manifest is really strong, and he's a solid enabler for that plan.
Supplant Form - Opened two of them, started one in the main, but it wasn't often all that relevant. The best play I got off it was using it to 'save' my Sultai Soothsayer when my opponent tried to kill it, nabbing the ETB effect when the token was created. It was awesome for that, but kind of expensive in most other situations. I often sided it out in favor of cheaper cards when facing Mardu or Jeskai.
Archfiend of Depravity - This was my clan pack rare, and he's about as good as he looks, which is awesome. He ate many a Mardu/Abzan Charm/Dragonfire/etc over the course of the tournament, but he's supposed to. He makes it really hard for your opponent to set up any kind of reasonable board presence and is a huge clock.
Of my commons and uncommons, I want to mention specifically cards like Lotus Path Djinn and Mistfire Adept as being really really solid all day long; Aven Surveyor likewise pulled a lot of weight, either by resetting a creature with an Aura/mass of +1/+1 counters, removing a key blocker, or by working with my Manifest cards and returning a spell to my hand. I had two in my pool and played one, which I think is right simply because he's kind of pricey. Marang River Prowler was ok for me; I wasn't too aggressive but the extra evasion and inevitability meant that I could stabilize behind a wall of Sultai Flayers and Soothsayers and just beat my opponent to death, and removal didn't stop me. I would be wary of playing him without the ability to recur him from the yard. I had a Mindscour Dragon that was basically just a big flyer at six mana, his milling ability was almost a non-issue.
I really want to talk about the Manifest spells though. My deck had access to Write into Being, two Formless Nurturing, and Ethereal Ambush; all three spells were fantastic. Write into Being is huge in that it lets you Scry, gets you a creature, and potentially sets up your next draw all for three mana. Formless Nurturing was great on-curve by giving me a perfectly serviceable 3/3 for four mana that potentially had great upside. Ethereal Ambush was also stellar, as trading a Manifested land or spell for their morph or X/2, or giving you much better blocks out of nowhere, etc, was always relevant. I love how Manifest works, though it's impossible to decipher what the Morph might be, which can be frustrating. Part of the skill in 3KTK was deducing what an opposing morph might be, and that's basically made impossible with Manifest. Still, the Manifest spells are great because they are essentially creatures that trigger Prowess, giving you a boost while still letting you develop your board AND acting as pseudo card draw at the same time.
It's poorly suited to the tempo environment of Khans. You can't waste two turns, a billion mana and a whole creature before actually getting to DO something. If you subscribe to Quadrant Theory it satisfies the Winning and Parity states, but sucks badly when you're behind or just developing your board.
They're definitely sub-par, which is weirdly counterintuitive when you think about it, but the more colors you're running the more you want to prioritize morphs. Even with the ideal 12 non-basics you can't always be sure you'll hit the right colors of mana, so cards like the kiting and its ilk go down a notch in value.
I've managed to get this card to work in exactly one draft. You really want to put in on a creature with at least 3 power to make it backbreaking, but it's not a bad way to make use of an early 2/x that is now completely outclassed anyway. It's a way for more controlling decks to punch through in the late game once they've managed to stabilize, but you need to recognize it for the turn 8-9 play that it is. If you can minimize the amount of time your opponent has to react to it, you can crush them before they get a chance to bust up the strategy. Also not a bad topdeck once the game has locked up and you're both at parity.
Definitely not a high pick though. I wouldn't go out of my way to grab one, but if it shuffles by towards the end of a pack and there's nothing else available I might snag it just in case.
(I went for any duoland and just picked strong cards out of every pack that wasnt a landpick, therefore I had no real clear focus and the mana "fixing" didnt actually help me in the end.)
It's hard to second guess you since I don't know what you took over what, but usually I'm trying to do what you said, as well as establishing a dominant colour. If all of your 'filler' cards (like Alabaster Kirin and Highland Game) are in one colour, that gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of dabbling in splash colours as the draft progresses. It's when you get stranded with average or even slightly above average cards in more than two colours that your greedy decks start to fall apart.
On the other hand, 5-color morph is a real archetype in this format, and just as viable as the other 5 wedges. If you can consistently get between 8 to 10 mana fixing lands, it can be incredibly powerful. I've watched both Kenji and Noah actively draft these decks (and Kenji was actually forcing it for a time), picking tri-color lands very highly and snapping up any of the duals that stumble by, because it positions them to capitalize on any powerful card that comes their way in latter packs. There was a recent episode of Limited Resources that talked exactly about this.
I've never gone full 5 color, but I've happily done 4 and succeeded just fine. This format is really high variance, meaning even good players are going to do on average a little worse than they would in other formats. Just try to stay as open as you can until it's clear what colors are coming to you, and just move on in, and don't be afraid to switch even as late as mid pack 2. You can usually make things work if you shift and start prioritizing ways to incorporate earlier picks through fixing or what have you.
So today I lived the dream. Turn eight or so and the board is totally gummed up. I have a morph and a bunch of fat-butt blockers on the board to my opponents Jeskai-ish assembly. It's his turn, and he taps all his mana and exiles his graveyard to cast Treasure Cruise.
I tap six and unmorph my Keru Spellthief. My opponent just groans and passes the turn, and I happily untap, draw my card, then cast his own Treasure Cruise for free.
I've had the most luck with evasive decks. I know that sounds like a truism, but the decks that have had multiple flyers or unblockables really has an advantage in a format that is removal-light and prone to board stalls. It also makes the fat-butt creatures like Salt Road Patrol and Dragon's Eye Savants particularly useful because they are almost removal spells in and of themselves. They totally blank any number of possible threats while your evasive men do the heavy lifting. Sultai decks with Jeskai Wind Scout, Jeskai decks with the same, and Abzan decks running Kirins and Bird Scouts tend to do the best for me.
I find it very difficult to maintain an aggressive position for too long in decks outside of Jeskai. There are just too many ways for your opponent to create a durdling board state that you really have to have powerful enablers like the Chiefs in BW and the like to really maintain the pressure. I've also learned that it's not a bad idea to be greedy with the gold cards. If you're already in Abzan, and happen to open or get passed a Villainous Wealth, you should almost always splash for it. This gets easier if you've elected to take dual/tri lands out of mediocre packs earlier in the draft, to widen your options for potential splashes. You don't need to be in 5-color Kenji-style decks to take advantage of the fact that the format is kind of slow and rewards the use of high-power gold cards.
And I don't think I agree with Mystic of the Hidden Way being the best common. I think that honor falls to Feat of Resistance. That stupid thing is almost always a HUGE blowout.
IMO your mana curve will probably turn out like this:
2: ccss
3: cccccccccccssss
4: c
5: cc
6: c
Awkward. They mashed morph into a tri-color block. And in tri-color blocks they do 3cc mana-fixing and cycles of creatures and spells that cost XYZ. So there are a firetruck tonne of 3 drops.
I mean, in some formats you can hope the opponent misses his 3-drop and sneak in some damage on the play with a 3cc 4/1 or 4/2. I don't think that's happening here.
I also think that will mean a creature that can fit at either 3cc or somewhere else (i.e. a Morph) will be a boon to smoothing out your curve. In that case, I'd only play this if you were the Ferocious wedge.
I just wanted to point out, if you take all the common and uncommon creatures in the set by color and arrange them according to converted mana cost, there are actually very FEW creatures at the 3CC spot. Wizards appears to have intentionally left this area relatively empty to allow Morph to fill in the curve. This does not take tricks and Banners and things at 3CC into consideration, but by and large, your turn three play is going to be a morph because they ARE your 3 CC spells.
That being said, I think Alpine Grizzly is pretty important to the Ferocious deck, as it's one of the few ways (and the other is the uncommon Mardu Blazebringer) below 4 mana to get a base 4 power creature into play. Bloodfire Expert will do it to for the purposes of SPELLS with Ferocious, but not for creature effects.
The Grizzlies will also be one of the more punishing creatures against players who stumble on mana and can't get an early Morph in play. It combos well with Awaken the Bear, Savage Punch and Dragon Grip, too. You can also cast Heir of the Wilds turn two and start beating face with him on turn 3 after you have Grizzly in play to trigger Ferocious. Lots of synergies for Temur.
Having missed Alara block, I can only say that I'm looking at the upcoming Wedge Color season with a sense of impending dread. I really hope there are lots and lots of mana fixers and color enablers, because there's about nothing I detest more than 'playing' a game of limited where I don't get to cast much, or any, of the cards in my hand. As a drafter, I don't know how happy I am with the knowledge that often times the best card in the pack is going to be the multi-color producing land versus almost anything else. First picking lands just doesn't feel all that fun.
As for the mechanics, I'm with Phyrre on Raid; aggressive decks are turning guys sideways anyway, and giving them a 'bonus' for doing that feels like it has the potential just to accidentally snowball into a win. There aren't many ways to outright stop a creature from attacking.
Prowess...I don't know. Might be good? They aren't reprinting Buyback are they? Most limited decks are going to have anywhere from 5 to 9 'non-creature' spells; whether that's enough to make Prowess something to worry about I don't know. The temporary nature of the boost seems very tempo oriented, enabling you to punch through and keep the pressure on an opponent before they can stabilize.
I'm going to dissent a little bit here, so bear with me.
You were right to pick Hornet Queen and Hornet's Nest. You were right to not play them.
But I think you drafted this deck wrong.
Your main includes cards that I really don't think matter that much to the Triplicate Spirits plan. You are playing Divine Favor, Marked by Honor, and Heliod's Pilgrim to go find them. That's cute, sure, but it's making something decent out of cards that by themselves are just ok. Divine Favor is a lot scarier in the deck running multiple Oreskos Swiftclaws, of which you just don't have any. I have to believe that at some point during your draft you had the choice between these white cards and much stronger green (or red) cards, and I would suggest that you should have taken them instead.
Hornet Queen/Nest fit perfectly into the GW token strategy because they generate a whole freaking fleet of tokens that work with your Sanctified Charges, your Selfless Cathars, and all the rest. Queen might be the perfect seven drop, as far as seven drops go, because she will utterly brick almost any offense and totally lock down the board. There is almost nothing that can swing into Hornet Queen apart from Soul of Theros related shenanigans. She's a straight up bomb, and as soon as you had her, you definitely should have moved into green, no matter what your opponent happened to be doing to your right. He gets to affect exactly ONE pack out of three; unless you were flanked both left and right, you should have had decent access to green to support a GW deck.
That's why I think that while your deck (or Merl's) is probably the best you could assemble from the pool you had, I have reason to suspect you drafted the pool incorrectly to begin with. Do you happen to have the draftcap?
I don't mean to sound abrasive, it's just that I'm not sure you're asking the right question here.
Who gets FOUR Mythics?? I mean sure, the Hivelord is not 'really' a card I guess, but what the heck happened there?
I had no idea what I was dealing with after game 1, because all I saw was a few really random creatures over three colors, and a Crucible of Fire (???). I saw no dragons, but had to assume he had one in his deck? I saw Mountains, Forests, and Islands, and nothing that really interacted with my flying army.
I go into G2 pretty confident, building a perfect early curve of Selfless Cathar into Swiftclaw into T4 Triplicate Spirits. T5 I drop a Paragon and swing, but he catches me with an Aetherspout I hadn't seen, bouncing almost my whole team, and followed it up with a Perilous Vault a few turns later, with Illusiory Angel and Sliver Hivelord not far behind.
Ooookay...
Game 3 I was forced to play around the Spouts, which he kept telegraphing by leaving 3UU up. That plus Quickling kept me back until he found mana for Soul of Ravnica. He basically sat behind Spouts for five turns while he Soul'd on my endstep, drawing 3 cards each time. He finds Ajani (he was at 9 at this point), and Soul starts beating in for 7 vigilant, lifelinking, first striking damage. I have like two outs MAYBE, but I'm drawing lands like a champ and can't find any solution. My Pillar of Light gets Negated, as does my Spectra Ward a few turns later. Ajani goes Ultimate, but he's running out of time, and I have a wall of creatures to throw in front of his men. Sliver Hivelord comes down and gets immediate Hammerhands, but at this point it's too late. I can chump him till the end of time, which happens to be two minutes, as his clock runs out with him above 30 life, with five cards left in his library, and me at 13.
Not being blue is actually something of a plus because it eases up your mana requirements. In Legacy you can drop this T1 with Ancient Tomb, and then drop a mountain T2, Dreadnaught, then Temur Battlerage for 24 trampling damage. It's obviously best-case scenario but it isn't impossible.
I like the guy. I think the current meta is a lot different from the Doppelganger's, and has some potential to be workable. It also carries Ghostfire Blade like a champ.
Yasova Dragonclaw - As strong as she looks, but is indeed a little fragile. There seems to be more removal in FRF sealed than there was in KTK, and her 2 toughness makes her vulnerable to almost all of it. My deck also lacked ways to boost her toughness (no Bolster, most notably) that you might be able to nab if you picked her in Draft. Still, her ability is formidable and she can be utterly backbreaking if you manage any kind of a decent start. I used her most often to steal opposing Deathtouchers my opponent left behind on defense.
Jeskai Infiltrator - This card performed a lot better than I thought he would. He's fantastic when played on-curve, as he's often you're only creature when you get to untap on turn 4, letting you get that first Manifest trigger for free. He's surprisingly resilient too, as 3 toughness lets him dodge some of the red and black removal that might be aimed your way. Manifest is really strong, and he's a solid enabler for that plan.
Supplant Form - Opened two of them, started one in the main, but it wasn't often all that relevant. The best play I got off it was using it to 'save' my Sultai Soothsayer when my opponent tried to kill it, nabbing the ETB effect when the token was created. It was awesome for that, but kind of expensive in most other situations. I often sided it out in favor of cheaper cards when facing Mardu or Jeskai.
Archfiend of Depravity - This was my clan pack rare, and he's about as good as he looks, which is awesome. He ate many a Mardu/Abzan Charm/Dragonfire/etc over the course of the tournament, but he's supposed to. He makes it really hard for your opponent to set up any kind of reasonable board presence and is a huge clock.
Of my commons and uncommons, I want to mention specifically cards like Lotus Path Djinn and Mistfire Adept as being really really solid all day long; Aven Surveyor likewise pulled a lot of weight, either by resetting a creature with an Aura/mass of +1/+1 counters, removing a key blocker, or by working with my Manifest cards and returning a spell to my hand. I had two in my pool and played one, which I think is right simply because he's kind of pricey. Marang River Prowler was ok for me; I wasn't too aggressive but the extra evasion and inevitability meant that I could stabilize behind a wall of Sultai Flayers and Soothsayers and just beat my opponent to death, and removal didn't stop me. I would be wary of playing him without the ability to recur him from the yard. I had a Mindscour Dragon that was basically just a big flyer at six mana, his milling ability was almost a non-issue.
I really want to talk about the Manifest spells though. My deck had access to Write into Being, two Formless Nurturing, and Ethereal Ambush; all three spells were fantastic. Write into Being is huge in that it lets you Scry, gets you a creature, and potentially sets up your next draw all for three mana. Formless Nurturing was great on-curve by giving me a perfectly serviceable 3/3 for four mana that potentially had great upside. Ethereal Ambush was also stellar, as trading a Manifested land or spell for their morph or X/2, or giving you much better blocks out of nowhere, etc, was always relevant. I love how Manifest works, though it's impossible to decipher what the Morph might be, which can be frustrating. Part of the skill in 3KTK was deducing what an opposing morph might be, and that's basically made impossible with Manifest. Still, the Manifest spells are great because they are essentially creatures that trigger Prowess, giving you a boost while still letting you develop your board AND acting as pseudo card draw at the same time.
Definitely not a high pick though. I wouldn't go out of my way to grab one, but if it shuffles by towards the end of a pack and there's nothing else available I might snag it just in case.
On the other hand, 5-color morph is a real archetype in this format, and just as viable as the other 5 wedges. If you can consistently get between 8 to 10 mana fixing lands, it can be incredibly powerful. I've watched both Kenji and Noah actively draft these decks (and Kenji was actually forcing it for a time), picking tri-color lands very highly and snapping up any of the duals that stumble by, because it positions them to capitalize on any powerful card that comes their way in latter packs. There was a recent episode of Limited Resources that talked exactly about this.
I've never gone full 5 color, but I've happily done 4 and succeeded just fine. This format is really high variance, meaning even good players are going to do on average a little worse than they would in other formats. Just try to stay as open as you can until it's clear what colors are coming to you, and just move on in, and don't be afraid to switch even as late as mid pack 2. You can usually make things work if you shift and start prioritizing ways to incorporate earlier picks through fixing or what have you.
I tap six and unmorph my Keru Spellthief. My opponent just groans and passes the turn, and I happily untap, draw my card, then cast his own Treasure Cruise for free.
Just no coming back from that.
I find it very difficult to maintain an aggressive position for too long in decks outside of Jeskai. There are just too many ways for your opponent to create a durdling board state that you really have to have powerful enablers like the Chiefs in BW and the like to really maintain the pressure. I've also learned that it's not a bad idea to be greedy with the gold cards. If you're already in Abzan, and happen to open or get passed a Villainous Wealth, you should almost always splash for it. This gets easier if you've elected to take dual/tri lands out of mediocre packs earlier in the draft, to widen your options for potential splashes. You don't need to be in 5-color Kenji-style decks to take advantage of the fact that the format is kind of slow and rewards the use of high-power gold cards.
And I don't think I agree with Mystic of the Hidden Way being the best common. I think that honor falls to Feat of Resistance. That stupid thing is almost always a HUGE blowout.
I just wanted to point out, if you take all the common and uncommon creatures in the set by color and arrange them according to converted mana cost, there are actually very FEW creatures at the 3CC spot. Wizards appears to have intentionally left this area relatively empty to allow Morph to fill in the curve. This does not take tricks and Banners and things at 3CC into consideration, but by and large, your turn three play is going to be a morph because they ARE your 3 CC spells.
That being said, I think Alpine Grizzly is pretty important to the Ferocious deck, as it's one of the few ways (and the other is the uncommon Mardu Blazebringer) below 4 mana to get a base 4 power creature into play. Bloodfire Expert will do it to for the purposes of SPELLS with Ferocious, but not for creature effects.
The Grizzlies will also be one of the more punishing creatures against players who stumble on mana and can't get an early Morph in play. It combos well with Awaken the Bear, Savage Punch and Dragon Grip, too. You can also cast Heir of the Wilds turn two and start beating face with him on turn 3 after you have Grizzly in play to trigger Ferocious. Lots of synergies for Temur.
As for the mechanics, I'm with Phyrre on Raid; aggressive decks are turning guys sideways anyway, and giving them a 'bonus' for doing that feels like it has the potential just to accidentally snowball into a win. There aren't many ways to outright stop a creature from attacking.
Prowess...I don't know. Might be good? They aren't reprinting Buyback are they? Most limited decks are going to have anywhere from 5 to 9 'non-creature' spells; whether that's enough to make Prowess something to worry about I don't know. The temporary nature of the boost seems very tempo oriented, enabling you to punch through and keep the pressure on an opponent before they can stabilize.
You were right to pick Hornet Queen and Hornet's Nest. You were right to not play them.
But I think you drafted this deck wrong.
Your main includes cards that I really don't think matter that much to the Triplicate Spirits plan. You are playing Divine Favor, Marked by Honor, and Heliod's Pilgrim to go find them. That's cute, sure, but it's making something decent out of cards that by themselves are just ok. Divine Favor is a lot scarier in the deck running multiple Oreskos Swiftclaws, of which you just don't have any. I have to believe that at some point during your draft you had the choice between these white cards and much stronger green (or red) cards, and I would suggest that you should have taken them instead.
Hornet Queen/Nest fit perfectly into the GW token strategy because they generate a whole freaking fleet of tokens that work with your Sanctified Charges, your Selfless Cathars, and all the rest. Queen might be the perfect seven drop, as far as seven drops go, because she will utterly brick almost any offense and totally lock down the board. There is almost nothing that can swing into Hornet Queen apart from Soul of Theros related shenanigans. She's a straight up bomb, and as soon as you had her, you definitely should have moved into green, no matter what your opponent happened to be doing to your right. He gets to affect exactly ONE pack out of three; unless you were flanked both left and right, you should have had decent access to green to support a GW deck.
That's why I think that while your deck (or Merl's) is probably the best you could assemble from the pool you had, I have reason to suspect you drafted the pool incorrectly to begin with. Do you happen to have the draftcap?
I don't mean to sound abrasive, it's just that I'm not sure you're asking the right question here.
I'm feeling pretty good about things until round one, which went to three games because my 5 color opponent was playing this nonsense:
Who gets FOUR Mythics?? I mean sure, the Hivelord is not 'really' a card I guess, but what the heck happened there?
I had no idea what I was dealing with after game 1, because all I saw was a few really random creatures over three colors, and a Crucible of Fire (???). I saw no dragons, but had to assume he had one in his deck? I saw Mountains, Forests, and Islands, and nothing that really interacted with my flying army.
I go into G2 pretty confident, building a perfect early curve of Selfless Cathar into Swiftclaw into T4 Triplicate Spirits. T5 I drop a Paragon and swing, but he catches me with an Aetherspout I hadn't seen, bouncing almost my whole team, and followed it up with a Perilous Vault a few turns later, with Illusiory Angel and Sliver Hivelord not far behind.
Ooookay...
Game 3 I was forced to play around the Spouts, which he kept telegraphing by leaving 3UU up. That plus Quickling kept me back until he found mana for Soul of Ravnica. He basically sat behind Spouts for five turns while he Soul'd on my endstep, drawing 3 cards each time. He finds Ajani (he was at 9 at this point), and Soul starts beating in for 7 vigilant, lifelinking, first striking damage. I have like two outs MAYBE, but I'm drawing lands like a champ and can't find any solution. My Pillar of Light gets Negated, as does my Spectra Ward a few turns later. Ajani goes Ultimate, but he's running out of time, and I have a wall of creatures to throw in front of his men. Sliver Hivelord comes down and gets immediate Hammerhands, but at this point it's too late. I can chump him till the end of time, which happens to be two minutes, as his clock runs out with him above 30 life, with five cards left in his library, and me at 13.