Jace's Archivist and Buried Alive make for some of the best ways to fill your graveyard and I've always liked Tortured Existence for making your graveyard an extension of your hand- or vice versa.
Flash with Twilight Shepherd or Ashen Rider. One saves your creatures after a wipe while and persist keeps it in play and the other one allows you to exile 2 lands on turn two. I once used a protean hulk to fetch a twilight shepherd- the guy who board wiped wasn't happy.
[Whispersilk] cloak is ideal for your general, I use it in kaalia.
I've made interesting decks with [Souls of the Faultless], [Mog Fanatic], [Wall of Souls], [Wall of Hope], [High Priest of Penance] with [Saving Grace] & [Pariah Shield]. It's wonderful for buying time, because they are all low cost cards which the other player needs to deal with before committing their creatures or attacking you may hurt them more than it hurts you.
[Children of Korlis], [Sunbond] and [Gift of Immortality] also fit that kind of deck.
[Strionic Resonator]
You should look at adding a few walls that have effects. They generally have low power and since Alesha brings them into play attacking, they can be played without being declared as an attacker.
Has anyone considered augmenting Populate with Embalm or Eternalize? It seems like an easy way to go big and the Egyptian set had some nice options including ways to easily discard. Tokens with coming into play abilities are a great way to exploit populate if you can mana ramp to them. Honored Hydra Would be my first choice as a 6/6 token for 4 mana.
On the other hand, Hooded Hydra is a favorite of mine for dropping cheap creatures. I added it to a Simic deck as a way to survive board wipes. Casting Mirrorweave on Hydra in response to a board wipe is memorable.
The mana cost on some of these is higher than ideal, however I'm used to multiplayer games so it's less of an issue. Sylvan Offering and Hunted Troll are also much better in multiplayer because the tokens they give provide means to stabilize the board and make good bartering chips. They stack well with wardens too.
I know that this is an older post- which is ok because I'm going to leave info for casual players mostly.
First, manifesting does work great with flash effects or bounce abilities. My personal favorite is Mark of Eviction, because it can be used every turn to return lands and spells to you for one mana. So if the card you manifest turns out to be a valuable spell, just use Mark of Eviction on it, and it'll pop back into your hand for use. This removes the biggest drawback from Manifesting (the possibility of Manifesting a valuable non-creature card). My second favorite for this purpose is Brago, King Eternal because he can exile and return any number of cards each turn- face up. Any deck with Brago should also be able to run Mastery of the Unseen or make him unblockable in order to guarantee that his combat damage ability will have a chance to trigger.
Creatures with triggers that go off when they deal combat damage fit nicely with manifest because the blocking player won't know which creature is a threat.
Rageform may have usability in Rakdos decks because if the manifested card is a creature then it gives a one time card advantage while keeping the card out of your hand until you can use it. This ties in well with the Hellbent mechanic. Secondly, a lot of the cards in that set had high power and low toughness, which makes double strike that much more powerful. Also Qarsi High Priest.
Qarsi High Priest should be read as "sacrifice your token creature or the card you just manifested in order to get a new manifested creature." It triggers creatures that care when another creature enters or leaves the battlefield like Deathspeaker or Soul Warden. It allows you to sift through your deck almost as if you were drawing an extra card and discarding another until you find the right creature. That also means that you can fill your graveyard with fill effects like Reassembling Skeleton or use a manifested Vengeful Pharaoh as a chump blocker and then sacrifice him to kill all of the creatures which then get through.
Fool's Demise, False Demise, Abduction, Shade's Form, Unhallowed Pact and Gift of Immortality all allow you to play whatever permanent you already have manifested because they'll return that CARD to play after it dies. It works on anything except instants and sorceries. For example, this means that with Carrion Feeder, Soul Summons and Unhallowed Pact in your opening hand you could put anything into play on turn three. Baneful Omen, Mind's Dilation, Omniscience, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn are just some ideas. You can of course come up with better combos on turn 4 as long as your deck has white, blue or black mana. One of the best parts about using these cards is that because they are technically being played out of your graveyard they can't be countered.
Manifest is a great way to avoid paying additional enter the battlefield costs. For example, I am building a deck around Bazar Trader and cards like him which give cards to opponents. With Summoner's Egg I can gift wrap Phage the Untouchable, the Leveler, Eater of Days, Worldgorger Dragon or Sky Swallower and give it to the other person- and then mind control it. Manifest cards would give me a chance to play most of these early in the game without the substantial drawbacks.
I mainly see manifest's long term use as a Johnny mechanic in focused casual decks and occasionally in EDH as an early card with late game potential.
Here are a few more, some of them are newer cards.
Sheltering Ancient, Intellectual Offering, Jötun Grunt, Kavu Predator, Beacon of Immortality, Beacon of Tomorrows, captivating glance (play ping-pong with a third player's creature), Blessings of Nature, Collective Effort, Dark Salvation, Incremental Growth, Not Forgotten, Lumengrid Augur, Gilder Bairn, Leech Bonder, Unspeakable Symbol, and Blessed Reincarnation.
Proliferate can really help an opponent especially in conjunction with modular or graft. I want to make two graft/evolution/planes walker (because you can proliferate loyalty counters) decks with proliferate for a two headed giant game. The blue/green decks can also make good use of hunted phantasm and hunted troll.
And of course if you have an ally then cards which require an opponent to choose something suddenly become a lot more feasible. Callous Oppressor, Tribute mechanic, Grenzo's Rebuttal.
Bazaar Trader, Donate, Harmless Offering, Daring Thief and Puca's Mischief allow you to give one of your cards to someone else.
White & green have several "target player gain's life" cards in addition to Beacon of Immortality, which works great if you have already cast Sunbond on one of their creatures.
White has "prevent the next _ damage."
Blue and white can counter spells and effects.
Untap target creature, artifact, land or permanent- especially if you give them enough mana to cast a larger spell: Aphetto Alchemist, Argothian Elder, Captain of the Mists, Kiora's Follower, Fatestitcher, Filigree Sages, Fyndhorn Brownie, Galvanic Key, Ghostly Touch, Hyperion Blacksmith, Ith, High Arcanist, Jandor's Saddlebags, Juniper Order Druid, Kiora, Master of the Depths, Krosan Restorer, Ley Druid, Magewright's Stone, Magus of the Candelabra, Maze of Ith, Puppet Strings and Puppeteer. ect.
These might help you and someone else more than the others depending on the situation: Reforge the Soul, Death by Dragons, Descent of the Dragons, and the parley mechanic.
Ask your ally to attack you and then block him with the Swans of Bryn Argoll.
Several of the cumulative upkeep cards have useful abilities if you have an ally.
This is my first time on this site and it looks like my hyperlinks didn't go with the text- how do you add hyperlinks on this site to make the pictures load when someone hovers over a card name?
Sun Titan
Ashen Rider
Nightmare Shepherd
Stoneforge Mystic
And if you're running mystic then you should probably run Skullclamp, Heirloom Blade
and of course Helm of the Host for all the other ETB and LTB abilities.
Jace's Archivist and Buried Alive make for some of the best ways to fill your graveyard and I've always liked Tortured Existence for making your graveyard an extension of your hand- or vice versa.
I've made interesting decks with [Souls of the Faultless], [Mog Fanatic], [Wall of Souls], [Wall of Hope], [High Priest of Penance] with [Saving Grace] & [Pariah Shield]. It's wonderful for buying time, because they are all low cost cards which the other player needs to deal with before committing their creatures or attacking you may hurt them more than it hurts you.
[Children of Korlis], [Sunbond] and [Gift of Immortality] also fit that kind of deck.
[Strionic Resonator]
You should look at adding a few walls that have effects. They generally have low power and since Alesha brings them into play attacking, they can be played without being declared as an attacker.
Some others are Angel of Sanctions, Adorned Pouncer, Sunscourge Champion, Anointer Priest, Resilient Khenra.
You could make a good Bl/W deck to take advantage of Aven Wind Guide, Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun, Vizier of Many Faces, Vizier of the Anointed, Champion of Wits and of course Rite of Replication. Blue allows counter and bounce which buys time. Rites of Refusal may be better than counter as it isn't mono blue and it gives you an excuse to discard embalmers. Rites of Spring for the same reason. Most of the crazy token decks that I've seen have all been Bl/G unless they're racial based.
If you are splashing black, then Dreamstealer, Quest for the Gravelord, Skirsdag High Priest, Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath and Reign of the Pit all become solid options. Black is particularly nice because it has card draw, mana excel and offers rewards for sacrificing creatures. Culling the Weak
Ooze Garden is good at converting big cheap creatures into tokens and stacks well with Hunted troll or Force of Savagery augmented by an anthem.
I'm sure that someone could make an EDH or a gimmicky deck involving Dark Depths and either Hex Parasite or Fate Transfer with Wind Zendikon followed by a proliferate, but that's excessive.
On the other hand, Hooded Hydra is a favorite of mine for dropping cheap creatures. I added it to a Simic deck as a way to survive board wipes. Casting Mirrorweave on Hydra in response to a board wipe is memorable.
The mana cost on some of these is higher than ideal, however I'm used to multiplayer games so it's less of an issue. Sylvan Offering and Hunted Troll are also much better in multiplayer because the tokens they give provide means to stabilize the board and make good bartering chips. They stack well with wardens too.
First, manifesting does work great with flash effects or bounce abilities. My personal favorite is Mark of Eviction, because it can be used every turn to return lands and spells to you for one mana. So if the card you manifest turns out to be a valuable spell, just use Mark of Eviction on it, and it'll pop back into your hand for use. This removes the biggest drawback from Manifesting (the possibility of Manifesting a valuable non-creature card). My second favorite for this purpose is Brago, King Eternal because he can exile and return any number of cards each turn- face up. Any deck with Brago should also be able to run Mastery of the Unseen or make him unblockable in order to guarantee that his combat damage ability will have a chance to trigger.
Creatures with triggers that go off when they deal combat damage fit nicely with manifest because the blocking player won't know which creature is a threat.
Rageform may have usability in Rakdos decks because if the manifested card is a creature then it gives a one time card advantage while keeping the card out of your hand until you can use it. This ties in well with the Hellbent mechanic. Secondly, a lot of the cards in that set had high power and low toughness, which makes double strike that much more powerful. Also Qarsi High Priest.
Qarsi High Priest should be read as "sacrifice your token creature or the card you just manifested in order to get a new manifested creature." It triggers creatures that care when another creature enters or leaves the battlefield like Deathspeaker or Soul Warden. It allows you to sift through your deck almost as if you were drawing an extra card and discarding another until you find the right creature. That also means that you can fill your graveyard with fill effects like Reassembling Skeleton or use a manifested Vengeful Pharaoh as a chump blocker and then sacrifice him to kill all of the creatures which then get through.
Fool's Demise, False Demise, Abduction, Shade's Form, Unhallowed Pact and Gift of Immortality all allow you to play whatever permanent you already have manifested because they'll return that CARD to play after it dies. It works on anything except instants and sorceries. For example, this means that with Carrion Feeder, Soul Summons and Unhallowed Pact in your opening hand you could put anything into play on turn three. Baneful Omen, Mind's Dilation, Omniscience, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn are just some ideas. You can of course come up with better combos on turn 4 as long as your deck has white, blue or black mana. One of the best parts about using these cards is that because they are technically being played out of your graveyard they can't be countered.
Manifest is a great way to avoid paying additional enter the battlefield costs. For example, I am building a deck around Bazar Trader and cards like him which give cards to opponents. With Summoner's Egg I can gift wrap Phage the Untouchable, the Leveler, Eater of Days, Worldgorger Dragon or Sky Swallower and give it to the other person- and then mind control it. Manifest cards would give me a chance to play most of these early in the game without the substantial drawbacks.
I mainly see manifest's long term use as a Johnny mechanic in focused casual decks and occasionally in EDH as an early card with late game potential.
Sheltering Ancient, Intellectual Offering, Jötun Grunt, Kavu Predator, Beacon of Immortality, Beacon of Tomorrows, captivating glance (play ping-pong with a third player's creature), Blessings of Nature, Collective Effort, Dark Salvation, Incremental Growth, Not Forgotten, Lumengrid Augur, Gilder Bairn, Leech Bonder, Unspeakable Symbol, and Blessed Reincarnation.
Proliferate can really help an opponent especially in conjunction with modular or graft. I want to make two graft/evolution/planes walker (because you can proliferate loyalty counters) decks with proliferate for a two headed giant game. The blue/green decks can also make good use of hunted phantasm and hunted troll.
And of course if you have an ally then cards which require an opponent to choose something suddenly become a lot more feasible. Callous Oppressor, Tribute mechanic, Grenzo's Rebuttal.
Bazaar Trader, Donate, Harmless Offering, Daring Thief and Puca's Mischief allow you to give one of your cards to someone else.
White & green have several "target player gain's life" cards in addition to Beacon of Immortality, which works great if you have already cast Sunbond on one of their creatures.
White has "prevent the next _ damage."
Blue and white can counter spells and effects.
Untap target creature, artifact, land or permanent- especially if you give them enough mana to cast a larger spell: Aphetto Alchemist, Argothian Elder, Captain of the Mists, Kiora's Follower, Fatestitcher, Filigree Sages, Fyndhorn Brownie, Galvanic Key, Ghostly Touch, Hyperion Blacksmith, Ith, High Arcanist, Jandor's Saddlebags, Juniper Order Druid, Kiora, Master of the Depths, Krosan Restorer, Ley Druid, Magewright's Stone, Magus of the Candelabra, Maze of Ith, Puppet Strings and Puppeteer. ect.
These might help you and someone else more than the others depending on the situation: Reforge the Soul, Death by Dragons, Descent of the Dragons, and the parley mechanic.
Ask your ally to attack you and then block him with the Swans of Bryn Argoll.
Several of the cumulative upkeep cards have useful abilities if you have an ally.
This is my first time on this site and it looks like my hyperlinks didn't go with the text- how do you add hyperlinks on this site to make the pictures load when someone hovers over a card name?