So, I'm wondering about how embalm functions in edh in terms of your commander and the command zone. If your commander has embalm, and you choose to have them sent to the graveyard and then subsequently embalm them, will I still get the token if I send my commander to the command zone? I don't think you do but I would like to clarify.
As a point of rules, the GM's word is final. He is the conflict resolution system; that's his whole role in the roleplaying game. Now, a good GM will entertain arguments from the players before giving his final word, and it sounds like your GM has done that. In cases of extreme disagreement, players can always walk away from the game, but forcing something into the game against the GM's wishes -- well, it just isn't going to happen. So if, after hearing you out, your GM still maintains that you need to cease and desist, then you need to cease and desist.
Okay. That's the rules Nazi perspective out of the way. Now, you have to understand that what you're proposing is a really big ask. Tabletop RPGs conventionally run on the paradigm of "one player, one character". A lot of GMs would balk at the idea of a PC who runs around with bodyguards and minions, essentially multiplying the number of characters that player controls. Add onto that the extra resources provided by a criminal organization, and I hope you can see how this concept falls pretty far outside the boundaries of what most players and GMs expect from a PC. It doesn't matter that the game has rules for doing this. The rules in an RPG are tools that the players and GM use for resolving actions, not irrevocable permission to perform the action. If I recall correctly, the SWSE rules you're referring to are basically identical to 3E D&D Leadership. Well, lots of DMs disallow Leadership. And in fact the writers of the game seem to have anticipated that these particular rules would be especially contentious, because they did not put Leadership with all the other feats in the Player's Handbook, but rather in its own special section in the Dungeon Master's Guide, effectively stating, "This one is extra optional". So it's not like you're saying "I want my character to be left-handed" and your GM is saying "no". This is an extraordinary request, and it's not unreasonable for the GM to refuse.
It's not a matter of GM experience, either. GMs of all experience levels sometimes say no to Leadership. Even if it were, though -- you say you think your GM should be ready to run the rule by the time you get going with it, but shouldn't it be he, not you, who decides what he is and isn't ready to run? You're concerned that he's being too demanding of you, but consider what you're demanding of him.
Really, it sounds like what needed to happen here was a conversation much earlier in the campaign planning stage where the players and GM all discuss what they want out of the game. You want a sandbox, and that's fine, lots of groups run sandbox campaigns, but it's not correct to say sandboxing is "the point of an RPG". An RPG doesn't have a point, except what the players give it. If lots of groups run sandbox campaigns, lots of groups also run different styles of campaign, and they're not somehow playing the game wrong when they do it. Because there are so many different expectations and approaches for RPGs, it is so important to talk about them when planning a campaign. Players tell the GM what sorts of characters they want to play and what they want to do, the GM tells the players the sorts of stories he wants to tell, they build a consensus, and then the GM plans the campaign in a way that everybody is satisfied with. When the GM plans the campaign first and the players come in with their characters later, the players are unfortunately much more constrained.
So maybe you don't get to play the character you wanted. But not every character is suited for every campaign, anyway. Just remember: there's always the next campaign.
As a side note, the bodyguard talent I mentioned is a class ability for a prestige class in the core rulebook, so I wouldn't get the bodyguard until level 7, and the feat that allows you to start an organization is a class feat for nobles in another book that I wouldnt be able to obtain until level 3. I would have to design and layout the organization per the rules for player-made organizations, and then give the GM a copy of the sheet. He's said the bodyguard would be controlled by me only as far as giving orders, then he controls movement and who the bodyguard attacks and all that. Also, if my bodyguard dies, I basically lose the talent.
As for the conversation in the earlier planning stages, we are in the early planning stages, he isn't set to start the campaign for about 4 weeks, which is why it wouldn't be too big of a problem to change to a dedicated healing character, which I know he was hoping the group would have.
It sounds like I'm stubbornly not seeing that I am the problem, so I'm just going to reroll the character into a healer. It'll probably be best for the group at large anyways and I'll probably still have fun
My best friend is a star wars nut, he is extremely into the expanded universe, and pretty much has the entire timeline more or less memorized, as well as the broad strokes of what each individual (major/medium) faction is doing at any one point in time. So naturaully, he bought all of the rule books go play the Saga Edition RPG (it's pretty much starwars D&D.)
We tried to do a campaign a year ago with about 6 characters, and had about 3 or 4 sessions before we stopped playing. We decided to revisit it, and have 8 players for the new campaign, which hasn't starred yet.
I'm trying to role play a noble who wants to eventually make a "by the books" crime syndictate that has intergalactic influence, specializing as a sscurity force (as a front). That means creating a structure for the organization, having members and aquiring funding to be able to provide equipment to organization members, and having personal body guards for my character.
I am not making anything up as far as rules goes, all of the rules and templates for those things exist in the rules and are actually laid out for the player. Getting these things in order would actually take a pretty large number of levels, so its not like im being very overpowered in the early game. If anything, my character is as much as possible non-combat oriented, which means the early levels are actually extremely dangerous for me.
My GM vehemently dislikes the idea for where I'm taking the character, specifically having the organization at all, or the idea of me having body guards (which are supported in multiple ways in the rules).
Another reason he's opposed to the idea is because one of the thingd that I want to dp to turn a larger profit, and that I think would be in character for the character I'm designing, would be to be able to buy all of the materials/items (including rare, military, and illegal items) for the other players in the group at a much cheaper price than what they would be able to get from a vendor, but for slightly more than what it would cost me. I would also spot players money in return for favors. Again, all of this is completely allowed for in the rules, instead of taking combat bonuses I'm taking bonuses for influencing people/having connections/buying items for markedly cheaper.
The gm doesn't like it because he feels like it bypasses his level of control over what items and gear we have access too, even though the system to do what I want to has its own built-in balancing and limiters. Another reason is becauae he has a very carefully laid out campaign that falls into the established timeline in starwars of when our campaign ks set. He actually dislikes what I'm doing so much that he has asked me to cease and decist, and has implied that if he feels like I'm getting out of hand he'll specifically try and kill off my character.
What should I do? I've tried talking to him, and tried expressing to him that the point of am RPG like D&D isn't to make the character revolve around your campaign you constructed as a GM, it's to provide a sandbox for the players to try and do what they want to with their characters, not micromanage your players into doing what you want them to.
I understand he feels like that I'm dropping to much on him for his first actual campaign, but my feeling is that by the time we get to the point where I could get started really doing what I want to, he should start to really have the hang of it.
He is my best friend, so part of me feels like he may be right and I might be being selfish about it, as I'm pretty attached to the idea of this character. However, 2 of the other players in the group have agreed with the DM on the matter, which is also frustrating but again making me consider that I could probably be wrong and am too close to the situation.
So the way I see it, my two options are I could just reroll my character and do something different, something he wouldn't be quite so opposed to. (Our 8 man party doesn't have a dedicated healer, so I could do that, I'm not opposed to the idea, I enjoy support classes in other types of games) or I could stick with the character I want to make and hope he just adjusts to the idea of the character as we have our sessions.
Which should I do? Or is there other options that I'm not considering?
I think Abbundance will be an all star with gitrog. If you need 2 lands, it can guarantee you both lands. If you want a land and a spell, it does that for you too. If you also have horn of greed out, then you can draw for land on your first draw, draw for non-land on your draw-for-turn, land drop trigger going for a land on your third draw that turn, a second land drop trigger, and go for a non-land. Guarantees a land drop every time for each additional land drop when you have both.
I also like Zuran orb as a Sac outlet for lands. Works well with Herald o Leshrac. Also, the new land that they released, drownyard temple has great synergy since it just brings itself back for 3 mana, and you can do that at instant speed on another players turn to leave mana open for instant speed effects.
Also, I like grim discovery. For 2 mana you can recur both a creature and a land. I think it's a pretty undervalued card, and will probably be an all star in this deck.
Symmetrical discard is great for you. Liliana of the veil is great, assuming you can swing the dollar cost. Liliana Vess isn't Symmetrical discard, but she does have targeted discard, so you can choose yourself or an opponent, and she can help you tutor for things (like Abbundance) so that you never lose tempo. Liliana, Defiant Necromancer (aka Little Lilly) also has a Symmetrical discard effect, as well as a reanimation ability for non-legends.
Potential method for abusing her: Multiple creature deaths will create multiple delayed triggers, which will transform her back and forth when they all resolve, potentially creating multiple damage triggers and even leaving her in her non-Purifier state to set up more triggers again.
I don't believe it works like that my friend. The first one will resolve and transform her once and then the others will try to Transform her but won't work. Although that would be pretty trippy to flip her back and forth like that
I use a ping-pong table at a rec center I go to that has been officially dubbed the magic table. Normally games only have 4 or 5 players, but it isn't unheard of for there to be games of 8 people, so there's a ton of space. I can sometimes take up half the ping pong table. Sometimes I use the coffee table I made, it's got a 5'6"×3'6" table top, so that's also a hefty ammount of room to work with. If all else fails, I use my bed and a fold up plastic table top next to it, one of the 48x18 ones. As for my collection, I have my rares and major staples etc seperated out into binders by mono colors, colorless, 2 colors, and 3 color+. My commons, uncommons, and bulk rares are then seperated out similarly in 1000 count white cardboard boxes, seperated in the same way as the binders. This way, when I want to do a homebrew with my own collection, I grab the relevant binders and boxes for the colors and flip through them. It was very very time consuming to organize it all in that way, but the ammount of time it saves in the long run since I don't have to dig through my entire collection to make a black red deck or a blue white deck makes it worth it. I store the boxes and binders on my bookshelf.
Also, when I'm brewing a new deck and want to dig through in-color-cards, I love magiccards.info. it has the erreta'd card text, as well as ball-park card pricing, and card rulings as well. You can search by color identity as well, which I find to be extremely helpful. It also has an option to add proxies to a page so you can print out cards and try them. Great way to test a home brew, build the deck online, (I usually write down cards in a notebook and take the time to write out mana costs and do the math for the curve, and crunch out mana distribution etc) get the proxies with magiccards.info, sleeve the proxies up using lands or adverts as backings, and then playtest the deck shadow boxing style against a number of my decks that I know already do well in my particular playgroup. Enjoy brewing
So, say that I am playing a morph deck, and I am attacking with a Raven Guild Master that is morphed, and my opponent decides to not to block it. So priority passes, and I decide to pay the morph cost to flip the Raven Guild Master. Now, I understand that morph as a mechanic is a special action and can't actually be responded to, same as how you can't respond to a land entering the battlefield unless the land entering causes a seperate trigger.
However, phases can't end and move to the next until the stack is empty and each player has passed priority. So does that mean that an opponent can still put a murder on the stack to spot remove the guild master without actually responding?
On a different question, can I flip a card paying for the morph cost on the damage dealt step before the damage is actually dealt or as its dealt, or does it have to be done during declare blockers at the latest or I miss the combat damage triggers? My gut says I can't do it after declare blockers but I figured I'd ask.
There is no argument, comparing a TV to a Magic card in terms of how people consider money/time/effort spent on acquiring them is idiotic.
You're still stuck on the tv bit, which was just an example being used for conversations sake. He could have said a bike, an xbox, a playstation, a cake, it doesn't matter what the object/item is. His point is that if a cake or a bike or an Xbox had a 25% price drop, you might be bummed or have buyers remorse, but in the end you come to terms with a price drop, and don't feel entitled to have the manufacturer of the item to refund you on your loss.
But you're right. Comparing TVs and magic cards is something that shouldn't be compared, which is why 4 pieces of cardboard shouldn't cost more than your average tv. Wizards can sat what they want about not caring about the secondary market, but in the end it's a load of hooey. If wizards truly didn't care about the value of cards, then goyf would have been reprinted as a rare instead of a chase mythic, and the enemy fetches would have been in the new commander product. If they had put the fetches in the commander products and the flooded the market with copies of the product, it would probably be the best selling magic product they've ever had. Yes there's probably more reasons not to do that than there are to do it, but there's no reason to make goyf a chase mythic other than using it as a cash cow to sell product.
No one would be happy to find out that a card they bought/ traded for at X dollars lost 50% of value of it's value in a few weeks
You can claim you would be but I call total BS
No one is ever truly happy about finding out what they bought is suddenly for sale for 25% off the next week, but that's luck in a nutshell for you. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get unlucky. I don't complain to Best Buy when the T.V. I bought for $500 is $350 the next week, sometimes it is just the way it is and you have to deal with it, like an adult would. Would it sting to know all you had to do is wait a week and get something for less? Yeah, but that's hindsight and you'll just have to accept the fact, not want others to pay just as much as you did because you feel wallet bad about paying more for something.
Just because you don't understand that people would rather have more folks to play with when things are cheaper doesn't mean it is "BS".
Are all TV collectibles made by the same company?
This is an awful analogy.
I wasn't comparing TVs to cards, I was comparing the remorse of buying something expensive and watch it shoot down, televisions are one of those things that people buy that usually shoot down randomly, much in the same way you said people would feel bad about buying cards and the price of them dropping. I wasn't talking about collecting TVs, I was talking about the simple process of buying one, like you would cards, where the prices of both can drop suddenly after buying them.
It was a fine analogy.
That you don't understand why comparing TVs to collectible trading cards made by one company is pointless speaks volume about your grasp of the topic at hand.
The fact that you don't understand that his analogy was a sudden price drop on another, and not about tvs really, shows that you're not reading and processing what he's actually saying, you're waiting for a chance to attack whatever he's arguing. Also, just an FYI, what you just did is an Ad Hominem. It's a logical fallacy where your argument attacks an indivisual and/or their "reputation" rather than responding to their actual argument. Which is that large price drops occur all the time, in many markets, but only when they happen in the cardboard market do people become personally offended.
Okay, so I have a lot of suggestions. I like Nobilis of War, it on its own gives kalemne a 3 power boost as soon as you cast it, upping kalemne's burst by 6 total, other things that do that include Agrus Kos, Week Veteran, and Elesh Norn sudden power boosts like that can be deafly and can close out a game very quickly. scourge of the nobilis is also excelent. Boosts her total damage output by 4, while the firebreathing is very effective on her. Bonus points to being recurable with sun titan. World at war, savage beating, and aggravated assault are all very strong with her. Multiple combat phases are how you're going to pummel your opponents, especially if you're going to be making her unblockable. rogue's passage is your friend.
Whispersilk cloak should go in, it's pretty important I think. Tenza, godo's maul is also brutal on her, giving her +3/+3 and trample. Godsend, Champions Helm, Darksteel plate, and the sword, Shield, and helm of kaldra all make her more deadly and offer various forms of protection. If you decide to include a decent instant speed package (chaos warp, crib swap, swords to plowshare, comeuppance, path to exile, return to dust, allay, shattering pulse, and some other defensive spells. Fun fact, you can fetch alay or shattering pulse with the sunforger and pay the buyback cost to put them in your hand.) then Sun Forger is probably worth considering. A cool little interaction would be to also include Mistveil Plains to put the instants you use back on the bottom of your library for sunforger to recycle. Mistveil Plains is also a plains in its typeline, which means it's searchable with anything that can search for a plains. Makes sun titan recurring a fetch land more powerful. Anyways, if you decide to go more an even mix of equipments and supporting 5+cmc creatures, puresteel paladin might be worth considering.
Tempo is more what you want than anything, consistent card draw will go a long way to keeping your opponent held down. Mind's Eye is great, and mindstone is unebelievably strong in 1 on 1 if you get sun titan out and chugging. Burnished Hart is also a powerful mana ramping engine with sun titan out. Emeria Shephard is a good recursion engine, and Emeria, the Sky Ruin can be another strong recursion engine that keeps you in the game for longer. Duplicant is good removal that's available to you, more easily cast, and can be strong between a Sac outlet and recursion. Etb tapped mana rocks aren't that great mostly, I would cut them. You have coalition relic, gilded lotus, Darksteel ingot, thran dynamo, dreamstone hedron, hedron archive, commander sphere, and thawing glaciers to guarantee land drops. Also, some of those help with card draw in order to maintain your tempo.
Anyways, there's a lot that you can use and chew on for consideration, hope it helps a bit
What about arcane lighthouse? To me, personally, I think lighthouse should be included in every single commander deck you ever make. Removing hexproof and shroud from all creatures your opponents control is always, always, always relevant, whether or not you run a lot of targeted removal. There's a lot of games where somebody has targeted removal that can remove a problem creature that you and someone else both don't like, but it has hexproof/shroud and needs to be removed. Also, you knever know when somebody will sit down with Uril, Narset, geist, Thrun, or any other commanders who have hexproof/shroud stapled onto them. Also Whispersilk cloak, Swiftfoot boots, and lightning greaves all being so popular. Keeps maze of ith relevant. All at the cost of tapping 2 lands.
Also Nykthos, shrine to nyx is fantastic in any deck that can get more than 3 devotion with any regularity. It can generate tons and tons of mana. Often playing one has won me a game with a mono red deck by giving me such a large boost in mana. Also works great with burn spells.
As a side note, the bodyguard talent I mentioned is a class ability for a prestige class in the core rulebook, so I wouldn't get the bodyguard until level 7, and the feat that allows you to start an organization is a class feat for nobles in another book that I wouldnt be able to obtain until level 3. I would have to design and layout the organization per the rules for player-made organizations, and then give the GM a copy of the sheet. He's said the bodyguard would be controlled by me only as far as giving orders, then he controls movement and who the bodyguard attacks and all that. Also, if my bodyguard dies, I basically lose the talent.
As for the conversation in the earlier planning stages, we are in the early planning stages, he isn't set to start the campaign for about 4 weeks, which is why it wouldn't be too big of a problem to change to a dedicated healing character, which I know he was hoping the group would have.
It sounds like I'm stubbornly not seeing that I am the problem, so I'm just going to reroll the character into a healer. It'll probably be best for the group at large anyways and I'll probably still have fun
We tried to do a campaign a year ago with about 6 characters, and had about 3 or 4 sessions before we stopped playing. We decided to revisit it, and have 8 players for the new campaign, which hasn't starred yet.
I'm trying to role play a noble who wants to eventually make a "by the books" crime syndictate that has intergalactic influence, specializing as a sscurity force (as a front). That means creating a structure for the organization, having members and aquiring funding to be able to provide equipment to organization members, and having personal body guards for my character.
I am not making anything up as far as rules goes, all of the rules and templates for those things exist in the rules and are actually laid out for the player. Getting these things in order would actually take a pretty large number of levels, so its not like im being very overpowered in the early game. If anything, my character is as much as possible non-combat oriented, which means the early levels are actually extremely dangerous for me.
My GM vehemently dislikes the idea for where I'm taking the character, specifically having the organization at all, or the idea of me having body guards (which are supported in multiple ways in the rules).
Another reason he's opposed to the idea is because one of the thingd that I want to dp to turn a larger profit, and that I think would be in character for the character I'm designing, would be to be able to buy all of the materials/items (including rare, military, and illegal items) for the other players in the group at a much cheaper price than what they would be able to get from a vendor, but for slightly more than what it would cost me. I would also spot players money in return for favors. Again, all of this is completely allowed for in the rules, instead of taking combat bonuses I'm taking bonuses for influencing people/having connections/buying items for markedly cheaper.
The gm doesn't like it because he feels like it bypasses his level of control over what items and gear we have access too, even though the system to do what I want to has its own built-in balancing and limiters. Another reason is becauae he has a very carefully laid out campaign that falls into the established timeline in starwars of when our campaign ks set. He actually dislikes what I'm doing so much that he has asked me to cease and decist, and has implied that if he feels like I'm getting out of hand he'll specifically try and kill off my character.
What should I do? I've tried talking to him, and tried expressing to him that the point of am RPG like D&D isn't to make the character revolve around your campaign you constructed as a GM, it's to provide a sandbox for the players to try and do what they want to with their characters, not micromanage your players into doing what you want them to.
I understand he feels like that I'm dropping to much on him for his first actual campaign, but my feeling is that by the time we get to the point where I could get started really doing what I want to, he should start to really have the hang of it.
He is my best friend, so part of me feels like he may be right and I might be being selfish about it, as I'm pretty attached to the idea of this character. However, 2 of the other players in the group have agreed with the DM on the matter, which is also frustrating but again making me consider that I could probably be wrong and am too close to the situation.
So the way I see it, my two options are I could just reroll my character and do something different, something he wouldn't be quite so opposed to. (Our 8 man party doesn't have a dedicated healer, so I could do that, I'm not opposed to the idea, I enjoy support classes in other types of games) or I could stick with the character I want to make and hope he just adjusts to the idea of the character as we have our sessions.
Which should I do? Or is there other options that I'm not considering?
I also like Zuran orb as a Sac outlet for lands. Works well with Herald o Leshrac. Also, the new land that they released, drownyard temple has great synergy since it just brings itself back for 3 mana, and you can do that at instant speed on another players turn to leave mana open for instant speed effects.
Also, I like grim discovery. For 2 mana you can recur both a creature and a land. I think it's a pretty undervalued card, and will probably be an all star in this deck.
Symmetrical discard is great for you. Liliana of the veil is great, assuming you can swing the dollar cost. Liliana Vess isn't Symmetrical discard, but she does have targeted discard, so you can choose yourself or an opponent, and she can help you tutor for things (like Abbundance) so that you never lose tempo. Liliana, Defiant Necromancer (aka Little Lilly) also has a Symmetrical discard effect, as well as a reanimation ability for non-legends.
Also, when I'm brewing a new deck and want to dig through in-color-cards, I love magiccards.info. it has the erreta'd card text, as well as ball-park card pricing, and card rulings as well. You can search by color identity as well, which I find to be extremely helpful. It also has an option to add proxies to a page so you can print out cards and try them. Great way to test a home brew, build the deck online, (I usually write down cards in a notebook and take the time to write out mana costs and do the math for the curve, and crunch out mana distribution etc) get the proxies with magiccards.info, sleeve the proxies up using lands or adverts as backings, and then playtest the deck shadow boxing style against a number of my decks that I know already do well in my particular playgroup. Enjoy brewing
However, phases can't end and move to the next until the stack is empty and each player has passed priority. So does that mean that an opponent can still put a murder on the stack to spot remove the guild master without actually responding?
On a different question, can I flip a card paying for the morph cost on the damage dealt step before the damage is actually dealt or as its dealt, or does it have to be done during declare blockers at the latest or I miss the combat damage triggers? My gut says I can't do it after declare blockers but I figured I'd ask.
You're still stuck on the tv bit, which was just an example being used for conversations sake. He could have said a bike, an xbox, a playstation, a cake, it doesn't matter what the object/item is. His point is that if a cake or a bike or an Xbox had a 25% price drop, you might be bummed or have buyers remorse, but in the end you come to terms with a price drop, and don't feel entitled to have the manufacturer of the item to refund you on your loss.
But you're right. Comparing TVs and magic cards is something that shouldn't be compared, which is why 4 pieces of cardboard shouldn't cost more than your average tv. Wizards can sat what they want about not caring about the secondary market, but in the end it's a load of hooey. If wizards truly didn't care about the value of cards, then goyf would have been reprinted as a rare instead of a chase mythic, and the enemy fetches would have been in the new commander product. If they had put the fetches in the commander products and the flooded the market with copies of the product, it would probably be the best selling magic product they've ever had. Yes there's probably more reasons not to do that than there are to do it, but there's no reason to make goyf a chase mythic other than using it as a cash cow to sell product.
The fact that you don't understand that his analogy was a sudden price drop on another, and not about tvs really, shows that you're not reading and processing what he's actually saying, you're waiting for a chance to attack whatever he's arguing. Also, just an FYI, what you just did is an Ad Hominem. It's a logical fallacy where your argument attacks an indivisual and/or their "reputation" rather than responding to their actual argument. Which is that large price drops occur all the time, in many markets, but only when they happen in the cardboard market do people become personally offended.
Whispersilk cloak should go in, it's pretty important I think. Tenza, godo's maul is also brutal on her, giving her +3/+3 and trample. Godsend, Champions Helm, Darksteel plate, and the sword, Shield, and helm of kaldra all make her more deadly and offer various forms of protection. If you decide to include a decent instant speed package (chaos warp, crib swap, swords to plowshare, comeuppance, path to exile, return to dust, allay, shattering pulse, and some other defensive spells. Fun fact, you can fetch alay or shattering pulse with the sunforger and pay the buyback cost to put them in your hand.) then Sun Forger is probably worth considering. A cool little interaction would be to also include Mistveil Plains to put the instants you use back on the bottom of your library for sunforger to recycle. Mistveil Plains is also a plains in its typeline, which means it's searchable with anything that can search for a plains. Makes sun titan recurring a fetch land more powerful. Anyways, if you decide to go more an even mix of equipments and supporting 5+cmc creatures, puresteel paladin might be worth considering.
Tempo is more what you want than anything, consistent card draw will go a long way to keeping your opponent held down. Mind's Eye is great, and mindstone is unebelievably strong in 1 on 1 if you get sun titan out and chugging. Burnished Hart is also a powerful mana ramping engine with sun titan out. Emeria Shephard is a good recursion engine, and Emeria, the Sky Ruin can be another strong recursion engine that keeps you in the game for longer. Duplicant is good removal that's available to you, more easily cast, and can be strong between a Sac outlet and recursion. Etb tapped mana rocks aren't that great mostly, I would cut them. You have coalition relic, gilded lotus, Darksteel ingot, thran dynamo, dreamstone hedron, hedron archive, commander sphere, and thawing glaciers to guarantee land drops. Also, some of those help with card draw in order to maintain your tempo.
Anyways, there's a lot that you can use and chew on for consideration, hope it helps a bit
Also Nykthos, shrine to nyx is fantastic in any deck that can get more than 3 devotion with any regularity. It can generate tons and tons of mana. Often playing one has won me a game with a mono red deck by giving me such a large boost in mana. Also works great with burn spells.
Thank you, my friend kept insisting he had control over the stack and could organize it like that and he demanded I Google it haha