I'll use my addition to get Impact Tremors in. I don't know the appropriate number... Looks like we're leaving flexibility in how we finish out the game. So 1 or 2 I guess. Do we want a single tutorable cannon, or redundancy here?
I'll start by adding 1 Impact Tremors, we can vote it up to 2 if needed.
If we streamline our Shardless Agent interactions, we can trim some slots off our endgame combo.
I like Gumgod's call on Impact Tremors over Sparkmage & Furious Assault : Tremors replaces both of these cards. Agent or tutors find it, and it allows Harpy/Aluren to win without Curio.
Swapping out Idyllic Tutor for Enlightened allows us to dig up Aluren or Curio more consistently off an Agent.
I'll refrain from adding anything until feedback from the group backs or disputes this course of action, because I don't want force the cutting phase before we have more of a consensus on this.
Other than Demonic, what cards would want Agent to find? Enlightened Tutor is less versatile, but it'll find either Aluren or Curio. I'm not too familiar with the newer Enchantment Creatures, anything good and low cmc to choose from there?
(Side note: Check out this thread to learn how to use card and deck tags.)
Welcome to the forum!
I think you have too much fog and not enough squirrels. Fog slows the game down so you can generate more critters, but you're also giving your opponent more time to draw answers, and 1/1 creatures aren't too hard to answer. Even with the threat of Overrun somewhere on the horizon.
Instead, I'd look to ways that make your squirrels more capable of defense or consistent offense. My first thought was to run fewer copies of Overrun, replacing them with Eldrazi Monument. For the small price of a Nest tap each turn, you get a huge upgrade in creature utility and deck options.
- Your creatures can block, and even gang block to kill. You can get by with fewer fogs.
- Your creatures can float over for points of damage. Less reliant on Overrun, which requires small blockers/no tricks from your opponent.
- If you run both army pumpers, Overrun + Monument is terrifying.
With less space dedicated to fog, you can run ramp and card draw in order to speed up the deck.
Land destruction is just a control variant, and control strategies are fair game for casual in my book.
In this particular case, absolutely no debate that it is fine. Some lands are dangerous and versatile spot removal should be expected. Even so, some people will complain even if you just Slime or Blastmine on something like Coffers or Nyx.
No one should ever complain about my singleton and untutorable Blastminer. They should giggle that it is in my deck.
There are just so many choices there, I'm not sure of where to begin...
It really depends on you. There are cards that offer a single centerpiece, or a center you can build around and all the way to things with enough chaos to meld seamlessly (with the right cards).
You mention Golgari Longlegs. Help us out. Why does that card appeal to you? Is the art, the ideology of the guild, something with bugs?
You're going to have this art added to you, and art is extremely subjective. What's your goal with this piece?
Recently, I got a hold of one of my favorite cards: Tolarian Academy. I really, really love this card, and want to play it with my friends. However, there is no denying its inherent brokeness, and I don't want to be playing something super powerful with players who only play in a strictly casual setting. How should I build my deck in order to play my favorite card without outclassing my friends? I only have one, so that helps. I could include less ways to tutor it and less powerful payloads for the massive amounts of mana, but what else should I do?
You should start a thread to discuss deckbuilding.
I like Clock since we're running a lot of artifacts that don't tap to do their magic. It might need to get cut down to a tutor target, but it is powerful. Maybe we need some recursion to help our growing set of singletons. Buried Ruin, Academy Ruins or both?
+2 Academy Ruins: I'm liking the option of Oracle recursion in particular, and between Mages, Sphere, Prism, Pool and Glimmervoid, we can afford two or three colorless lands.
-1 Land: I agree that we have enough mana rocks to run 23.
-1 Blade of the Bloodchief: We can find it with all 8 tutors and we need room.
-2 Mox Opal: Both Opal and Prism can generate explosive plays. But we need room, so I'm okay relegating it to a singleton superland. Additionally, our mages will be able to find any color once we fill out the mana base.
I rescind my vote to cut Spheres. They are a necessity now that we can't replace them with something similar.
I think I'd cut down to UB in order to make the Scrying Sheets fit in nicely. You've got nearly 40 Snow cards, and you should get a fair amount of shots at free cards off it with the way your deck is geared towards a late game. With red being such a small splash, you could just run a third owl and another playset of removal.
I notice not everything is or references Snow, so I'm guessing you're theme allows leeway on card selection? Chill to the Bone could be swapped for cheaper removal, you're paying an extra 2 for nonsnow vs nonblack or non-artifact.
I'll start by adding 1 Impact Tremors, we can vote it up to 2 if needed.
4 Mentor of the Meek
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Skyshroud Sentinel
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Man-O'-War
1 Caustic Caterpillar
1 Cadaver Imp
1 Blade Splicer
4 Shardless Agent
1 Sparkmage Apprentice
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Cavern Harpy
4 Aluren
1 Impact Tremors
Instant (5)
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Enlightened Tutor
Sorcery (1)
1 Demonic Tutor
Artifacts (3)
2 Cloudstone Curio
1 Sol Ring
17 Forest (2 @ -1)
3 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Nomad Outpost
I like Gumgod's call on Impact Tremors over Sparkmage & Furious Assault : Tremors replaces both of these cards. Agent or tutors find it, and it allows Harpy/Aluren to win without Curio.
Swapping out Idyllic Tutor for Enlightened allows us to dig up Aluren or Curio more consistently off an Agent.
So
-1 Sparkmage Apprentice
-2 Furious Assault
-4 Idyllic Tutor
I'll refrain from adding anything until feedback from the group backs or disputes this course of action, because I don't want force the cutting phase before we have more of a consensus on this.
4 Mentor of the Meek
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Skyshroud Sentinel
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Man-O'-War
1 Caustic Caterpillar
1 Cadaver Imp
1 Blade Splicer
4 Shardless Agent
1 Sparkmage Apprentice (1 @ -1)
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Cavern Harpy
4 Aluren
2 Furious Assault (1 @ -2)
Sorcery (5)
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Idyllic tutor (1 @ -4)
Artifacts (3)
2 Cloudstone Curio
1 Sol Ring
Lands:
17 Forest (2 @ -1)
3 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Nomad Outpost
-1 Harmonic Sliver because my brain is a liar. And I'll reverse my vote on Caterpillar.
4 Mentor of the Meek
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Skyshroud Sentinel
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Man-O'-War
1 Caustic Caterpillar
1 Cadaver Imp
1 Blade Splicer
1 Ghitu Slinger
4 Shardless Agent
1 Harmonic Sliver (1 @ -1)
Sorcery (1)
1 Demonic Tutor
Artifacts (2)
2 Cloudstone Curio
Lands:
21 Forest
3 ancient ziggurat
+1 Harmonic Sliver for above reason.
Other than Demonic, what cards would want Agent to find? Enlightened Tutor is less versatile, but it'll find either Aluren or Curio. I'm not too familiar with the newer Enchantment Creatures, anything good and low cmc to choose from there?
4 Mentor of the Meek
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Skyshroud Sentinel
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Man-O'-War
1 Caustic Caterpillar (1 @ -1)
1 Cadaver Imp
1 Blade Splicer
1 Ghitu Slinger
4 Shardless Agent
1 Harmonic Sliver
Sorcery (1)
1 Demonic Tutor
Artifacts (2)
2 Cloudstone Curio
Lands:
21 Forest
3 ancient ziggurat
[dice=1]14[/dice]
1. FTW1987
2. Kumlekar
3. BlackVise
4. kamikazi339
5. GumgodMTG
6. CalvinSchwa
7. Shale Warbringer
8. GumgodMTG
9. Shale Warbringer
10. Kumlekar
11. BlackVise
12. kamikazi339
13. CalvinSchwa
14. RabidVacin
Welcome to the forum!
I think you have too much fog and not enough squirrels. Fog slows the game down so you can generate more critters, but you're also giving your opponent more time to draw answers, and 1/1 creatures aren't too hard to answer. Even with the threat of Overrun somewhere on the horizon.
Instead, I'd look to ways that make your squirrels more capable of defense or consistent offense. My first thought was to run fewer copies of Overrun, replacing them with Eldrazi Monument. For the small price of a Nest tap each turn, you get a huge upgrade in creature utility and deck options.
- Your creatures can block, and even gang block to kill. You can get by with fewer fogs.
- Your creatures can float over for points of damage. Less reliant on Overrun, which requires small blockers/no tricks from your opponent.
- If you run both army pumpers, Overrun + Monument is terrifying.
With less space dedicated to fog, you can run ramp and card draw in order to speed up the deck.
In this particular case, absolutely no debate that it is fine. Some lands are dangerous and versatile spot removal should be expected. Even so, some people will complain even if you just Slime or Blastmine on something like Coffers or Nyx.
No one should ever complain about my singleton and untutorable Blastminer. They should giggle that it is in my deck.
If that is too risky for you, Street Wraiths are 2/3 of a Probe. I rather have those than the Marrow Shards.
It really depends on you. There are cards that offer a single centerpiece, or a center you can build around and all the way to things with enough chaos to meld seamlessly (with the right cards).
You mention Golgari Longlegs. Help us out. Why does that card appeal to you? Is the art, the ideology of the guild, something with bugs?
You're going to have this art added to you, and art is extremely subjective. What's your goal with this piece?
I guess that Oracle with Sunburst is a colorless option for counter based card draw too. (Anybody remember the name of it offhand?)
1. FTW1987
2. Kumlekar
3. pokerbob1
4. Pokerkingdave
5. GumgodMTG
6. CalvinSchwa
7. BlackVise
8. GumgodMTG
9. FTW1987
10. Kumlekar
11. BlackVise
12. CalvinSchwa
+2 Academy Ruins: I'm liking the option of Oracle recursion in particular, and between Mages, Sphere, Prism, Pool and Glimmervoid, we can afford two or three colorless lands.
-1 Land: I agree that we have enough mana rocks to run 23.
-1 Blade of the Bloodchief: We can find it with all 8 tutors and we need room.
-2 Mox Opal: Both Opal and Prism can generate explosive plays. But we need room, so I'm okay relegating it to a singleton superland. Additionally, our mages will be able to find any color once we fill out the mana base.
I rescind my vote to cut Spheres. They are a necessity now that we can't replace them with something similar.
4 Suncrusher
4 Etched Oracle
4 Etched Champion
3 Trinket Mage
Artifacts: 24
2 Fist of Suns
2 Blade of the Bloodchief (2 @ -1)
3 Mox Opal (1 @ -2)
4 Pentad Prism
4 Energy Chamber
2 Contagion Clasp
1 Lux Cannon (1 @ -1)
1 Magistrate's Scepter
2 Clock of Omens (1 @ -1)
3 Sphere of the Suns
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
Sorcery: 3
3 Fabricate
Lands: 24
9 Vault of Whispers (2 @ -1)
2 Tree of Tales
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Academy Ruins
4 Glimmervoid
3 Reflecting Pool
I notice not everything is or references Snow, so I'm guessing you're theme allows leeway on card selection? Chill to the Bone could be swapped for cheaper removal, you're paying an extra 2 for nonsnow vs nonblack or non-artifact.
I also like Trinket Mage.