ok so I was not too far off, but the decision to ban Ramunap Ruins rather than Hazoret is puzzling. Well, maybe RR would survive without Hazoret, but it's not clear it's that crippled without Ramunap Ruins. I guess they want to make RR still viable.
without going into details of what's going to get banned, here's why I think Wizards will have to do SOMETHING to address the metagame.
They release a set with THREE tribes decently represented (Merfolk, Pirates, Dinosaurs), with Vampires coming along for the ride, and NONE of them are seeing any play. Try to brew a deck with the newest cards, there's no way you'll have a good matchup against either Temur or Ramunap Red.
What would I do? Banning energy cards alone isn't going to help, since it makes Ramunap Red THE deck to run. Other archetypes are fringe at best, depending on how bad you hose energy builds, they might barely compete with it (if they still win, the ban didn't fix anything).
So at the minimum, the card that has to be in the ban list is Hazoret. Without it, RR is just another fast horde, there are ways to stop it. Hazoret just makes it impossible for other decks to defend against both a lightning fast start and midrange inevitability.
Rogue Refiner, Hazoret, Bristling Hydra, The Scarab God, Attune with Aether. 5 cards which, if no longer in standard, will even the playing field. You can still run Energy but if you think it's going to be nearly as consistent without Rogue Refiner or as scary without Bristling Hydra, you're wrong. It's still a cool deck but not nearly as dominant.
I've been testing in Green/Black, which could take another color (I'm thinking Jund might be a good way to go).
Here's the BIG dilemma with this type of deck:
0. Sacrifice outlets
1. Have solid reanimation targets
2. Solid ETB effects
3. Hold-off aggro or midrange decks
Look at the perfect setup, and you start reanimating on turn 5 at best. It's ungodly slow since you're playing zero counter magic or disruption of any kind, you're letting the opponent develop and totally run over you for the first FOUR turns.
3. can be accomplished with ETB which gains you life.
Journey to Eternity is highly questionable in Standard. I want to love this card, but I just cannot make it consistently work.
Land base is just vanilla, if the deck has any chance to do anything, it can be perfected. I'm running quite a few creatures with Explore in order to dump stuff into the graveyard and get to Journey to Eternity faster, ditto with Benefaction of Rhonas, which is the only decent graveyard filler in green, which also fetches Journey to Eternity. Ravenous Chupacabra and Noxious Gearhulk are ways to kill opponent creatures, but after testing, don't get too excited since it's sloooooooow. Filigree Familiar and Arborback Stomper are ways to gain life - Familiar also draws us a card when it dies, which is quite nice, especially when sac'ed to Bontu. Yahenni, Undying Partisan and Bontu the Glorified are the sac outlets. Vicious Conquistador is just a one-drop, Narnam Renegade is another option.
This deck is very weak to flyers, so a few things probably need to be tweaked.
Back in the days of BG Delirium, this would have been fantastic. It just comes too late to the party I think to make a tier1 deck. Deck is fun to play though.
cool ideam but Panharmonicon is really slow. It dies to Abrade, so I would be really wary of playing this card. It's great when it synergizes, but with all the ETB triggers that exist in Standard, it never managed to find a home anywhere. That's not the sign of a good card, and I don't think a drain life effect is going to change that (e.g you can draw 2 cards with Rogue Refiner or 4 cards + 4 life with Cloudblazer, it looks bonkers but never took off despite many attempts for people to break this card).
If you start playing monuments on top of that, you're depleting your deck of the most vital resources, which is creatures. Based on their power level, running less than 28 isn't going to work. There's not much room for extraneous cards in a deck like this.
Don't try too hard, I think either go with Oketra's Monumnent to go wider, or Bontu's Monument to pile up the drain life effects.
7 or 8 vampires? Pipe dream. Well, if that happens you're already winning the game. Or, you're not blocking a horde of bigger creatures, and you lost already.
The new lord for vampires Legion Lieutenant is weak since he dies to every single removal currently in Standard. If you want a reason why cards like Hapatra never saw play, it's exactly that. Radiant Destiny should work much better, ascend or not. I guess if you want to build a Vampire deck, put both and force the opponent to spend their removal on the lords, since the rest is not exactly scary to look at.
Vampires was nowhere close to tier 1, I'm not sure Rivals brings enough to the table to change this. I guess you could play Slaughter the Strong against Temur and Ramunap to get rid of large bodies, then hopefully trade with what's left. You're not coming off that far ahead, but at least you avoid wiping next turn.
OK guys it's probably too early for this, but I wanted to try out the new dinausors in Ixalan and see whether it could work... and it's a blast.
This decklist is nothing but carnage, the goal is to drop Liliana, Death's Majesty and put Gishath, Sun's Avatar in play and fill the board with utter monsters.
Why red? To have both Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice, in order to find Liliana quickly because we simply can't do anything without her.
All the creatures are Dinausors, so that they can be dropped in play when Gishath attacks. And from there, the game is over soon after. Fumigate does nearly nothing to us, since we'll bring Gishath back with Liliana. I could actually use Goring Ceratops, but giving double strike isn't quite necessary, and that guy needs to attack to be effective. Burning Sun's Avatar is the only card which we can hard-cast, it's a very useful body which kills a creature and also bolts the opponent, nothing to ignore.
Gishath works wonders in this deck. He swings for 7 the turn you reanimate him, and brings over a couple of friends with him. You end up with over 20 points of power on the board, and win the game next turn usually. It's brutal and crazy fun to play.
Adding green to put ramp spells (whatever we'll get in Ixalan) would probably destabilize the deck. If you're in hard-casting mode for whatever reason, you most likely lost the game. It would obviously be better to not rely on Liliana alone to win, but right now there are no other reanimator spells in standard.
If we get other red dinausors, we can probably drop Ripjaw Raptor, although he's a quite solid body and will make the opponent think twice about attacking into it (in our case, since most cards we draw are stuff we can't actually play, it's not such a huge deal).
Edit: got rid of Tormenting Voices, not really needed. Opted for more spot removal, and leaving only a single Sweltering Suns since it's too situational, might remove it altogether. Spot removal is good enough since we can have Dinosaurs out by turn 5, usually a couple of them. Per Standard Forum Rules and Regulations, "Discussion of spoiled cards must be confined to the Standard New Card Discussion subforum." Moving - hoser2
This is a deck I've been working on for a while, on and off, trying a bunch of different strategies. I was on a pure lifelink deck for a while, but while it has a good matchup against monored, it's a little lackluster and can have trouble closing.
Straight up curses are ungodly slow, so a mix of both lets us not die early and establish long term threats.
The plan is simple: all the creatures we play make us gain life and trade with others.
Accursed Witch is a disguised curse, it's slow but in this deck, things add up quickly.
Torment of Scarabs comes in once we have enough stuff on the board or after a Fumigate, and chips away at opponent's board, hand or life total, so it's more of a long game setup.
Assuming we wiped the board, we reduce the choices and eventually, they'll have to take 3.
Torment of Hailfire is to close the deal quickly, typically we cast this for X=4 or 5, it's enough to win the game.
Control is a tougher matchup, but we still come up on top. Doomfall is useful early game, and gets rid of Torrential Gearhulk later since it's usually alone. We can actually switch to a pure aggro deck after side which control will have a tough time handling, e.g with a couple of Dreamstealer which control has to handle.
I like it. It builds on fatties which should block monored once you get them online. Rhonas can block Hazoret all day long, too, although requires a Glorybringer in play.
Woodland Wanderer is the obvious surprise, but it's out of reach for monored and will block Hazoret since you play it as a 6/6 almost every time. We have enough mana fixing to make it happen, the difficulty is to not drop too low.
Grasp of Darkness is another option, but BB can be difficult to reliably get early so probably a sideboard card. If we can ramp into Hour of Devastation, it clears the board and takes care of opposing Chandra as well, which monored can maindeck.
Look at the track record of Izzet Control at the last Pro Tour, that's your answer right there. Hoping to nuke everything without putting a single creature on the board (Torrential Gearhulk nonwithstanding, it's a T6 drop at best, you have to be alive by then to be able to cast it, and even then it dies to Abrade. Don't tell me you'll wait to have backup counter to cast it, please) is very dubious.
Even if you somewhow manage to stop the bleeding, Ramunap Ruins finishes the job.
It could, and I've tested it. It's still a losing matchup. You need a very lucky hand to win - assuming Monored is on the play. Your sweep come so late in the game you might as well not run them, save perhaps for Flaying Tendrils which is very effective (especially against Khenra), I guess you would need to mulligan to 5 to get one. But a red player facing BW control won't be stupid enough to empty their hand, they'll make you play your sweepers only to handle two more haste creatures next round.
Let me be clear: you can build a deck which handles the 'fast' version of monored. But having the correct card to handle the post-side, big red version with 4x Glorybringer, 4x Chandra, and 3x Hazoret... I have NO clue how to do this. And it's not for a lack of trying.
Here's the main problem: monored can shift for a bunch of 1-drop to 12 4,5-drops which are very impactful (Chandra, Hazoret and Glorybringer are the best red permanents), and red has access to what's probably the best removal in the game (Abrade).
I'm testing the "post side" version of Monored aggro with fewer (but still enough) early threats and 4x Glorybringer + 4x Chandra, Torch of Defiance, it's brutal beyond belief. If it's on the play, I cannot find anything currently in Standard post side which will handle everything this deck has.
Zombies, BG, control, WU Monument, Temur... nothing works. It's too fast, too brutal. You may think there's a way to hande this deck, but I really don't think it stands any competition right now in Standard.
People claim that lifelink is the way to do it, you're welcome to try. Trespasser's Curse which will do a tiny drain won't go a long way. Kalitas gets gobbled up by Glorybringer, other ways to gain life like Aethersphere Harvester dies to Abrade. Red only needs to find a couple of removal to clear the path, while a control deck will need to find more than a dozen in order to handle the onslaught.
Even the mighty Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is totally helpless. Touted as "too good for Standard" since it's been printed, backbone of so many winning strategies such as Mardu Vehicles, it's absolutely dead in the water again the monored.
This deck is no joke, with a half decent opening hand, it WILL destroy you.
Here's the list I'm testing - taken from PVDDR, but slightly tweaked to emulate a post side. It's actually better than the base version.
Before you claim the list is crazy, give it a shot. Sure, not everyone will agree with 4x Chandra or 4x Glorybringer. The deck runs 24 LANDS, you don't need to hit Chandra or Glorybringer on curve, there's more than enough to deal 40+ damage by t5, it's that quick. I took out the Village Messenger from Paulo's list and replaced them with Glorybringer, made room for 2 more Chandra (-1 Shock, -1 Kari Sev) and voila.
You can adjust the curve, e.g +1 Kari Sev and -1 Glorybringer, personally I think Glorybringer is soooo good in this format that 4 is what you want, even in a fast deck.
Magic is a game of skill, but which involves a bit of luck. To have a decent openening hand, to not flood out, to be able to play your spells, etc.
Winning against an opponent who's mana-screwed the whole game feels empty. And getting beat when you're mana flooded is no more fun.
You could argue that the Pro Tour is usually decided by luck - sometimes, one deck is clearly above others, most of the time, there's a balance in the format. Sam Black had to mulligan down to 4, Pardee had a ~decent hand but no board presence whatsoever in the first 4 turns, and it was still a massacre.
Idea #1: For openeing hand, keep 7 out the top 15, then shuffle the rest. Scry X during your draw step (X=2 or 3 - i.e you get a free Sylvan Library, without the ability to PsiBlast yourself to get more cards), and reveal the card you're drawing every turn (ok maybe not, at that point counterspell would be dead... which may not be a bad thing after all)
Idea #2: make distinct piles of cards: 1 pile for lands, 1 pile for non-lands. Draw from whichever pile you want any time you would need to draw a card, including your opening hand.
Of course it massively changes the game. Now, randomness is a tiny factor, and decks will be truly shining at their best. It also makes existing cards totally useless, but the same could be said about new concepts (e.g Morph and Illusionary Mask).
Sometimes Magic feels like poker: you have to guess what the opponent has, and decide what to do based on this. Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has. Welcome! Per "Standard Main Forum- What Belongs Here", these interesting ideas don't belong here. Moving to Magic General. -hoser2
Strategy is simple: get rid of early game threats to move to midgame quickly, then fill our graveyard. We use Obelisk Spider as a good blocker to protect Liliana. Dreamstealer can be a solid early game card to hurt the opponent's hand, but maybe we could use fewer.
We can cheat Razaketh or Ulamog into play, but not worth putting more than 1 copy. If they end up in our hand, we can discard using Collective Brutality, ditto I did not want to put 4 copies since it's an expensive card to play.
Assuming we can protect Liliana long enough and put 5 zombies in play, a one-sided wrath wins the game real quick.
Dissenter's Deliverance MD is mainly because I'm testing against Mardu Vehicles as a gold standard for speed and versatiliy in this format.
Dominiah: Relentless Dead / Plague Belcher is a Zombies theme. I'm not sure you have room for that in this deck. Besides, 2 black on T2 is not going to happen often. Defiant Greatmaw looks like a draft card, I'm not a huge fan. Eternal Ammit is probably much better.
Nest of Scarabs is something to get away from I think. It has zero board impact when you play it, and for standard this is not acceptable.
Rather, rely on Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Obelisk Spider to act as your -1/-1 triggers, and leave Nest of Scarabs as a SB option against control decks.
They release a set with THREE tribes decently represented (Merfolk, Pirates, Dinosaurs), with Vampires coming along for the ride, and NONE of them are seeing any play. Try to brew a deck with the newest cards, there's no way you'll have a good matchup against either Temur or Ramunap Red.
What would I do? Banning energy cards alone isn't going to help, since it makes Ramunap Red THE deck to run. Other archetypes are fringe at best, depending on how bad you hose energy builds, they might barely compete with it (if they still win, the ban didn't fix anything).
So at the minimum, the card that has to be in the ban list is Hazoret. Without it, RR is just another fast horde, there are ways to stop it. Hazoret just makes it impossible for other decks to defend against both a lightning fast start and midrange inevitability.
Rogue Refiner, Hazoret, Bristling Hydra, The Scarab God, Attune with Aether. 5 cards which, if no longer in standard, will even the playing field. You can still run Energy but if you think it's going to be nearly as consistent without Rogue Refiner or as scary without Bristling Hydra, you're wrong. It's still a cool deck but not nearly as dominant.
Here's the BIG dilemma with this type of deck:
0. Sacrifice outlets
1. Have solid reanimation targets
2. Solid ETB effects
3. Hold-off aggro or midrange decks
Look at the perfect setup, and you start reanimating on turn 5 at best. It's ungodly slow since you're playing zero counter magic or disruption of any kind, you're letting the opponent develop and totally run over you for the first FOUR turns.
3. can be accomplished with ETB which gains you life.
Journey to Eternity is highly questionable in Standard. I want to love this card, but I just cannot make it consistently work.
Here's the list I'm currently working with:
# 24 LANDS
4 Blooming Marsh
10 Forest
10 Swamp
# 28 CREATURES
4 Vicious Conquistador
3 Merfolk Branchwalker
3 Skymarch Bloodletter
2 Bontu the Glorified
4 Filigree Familiar
3 Arborback Stomper
2 Noxious Gearhulk
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
3 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
# 8 Others
4 Benefaction of Rhonas
4 Journey to Eternity
>>>
Land base is just vanilla, if the deck has any chance to do anything, it can be perfected. I'm running quite a few creatures with Explore in order to dump stuff into the graveyard and get to Journey to Eternity faster, ditto with Benefaction of Rhonas, which is the only decent graveyard filler in green, which also fetches Journey to Eternity.
Ravenous Chupacabra and Noxious Gearhulk are ways to kill opponent creatures, but after testing, don't get too excited since it's sloooooooow. Filigree Familiar and Arborback Stomper are ways to gain life - Familiar also draws us a card when it dies, which is quite nice, especially when sac'ed to Bontu.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan and Bontu the Glorified are the sac outlets.
Vicious Conquistador is just a one-drop, Narnam Renegade is another option.
This deck is very weak to flyers, so a few things probably need to be tweaked.
Back in the days of BG Delirium, this would have been fantastic. It just comes too late to the party I think to make a tier1 deck. Deck is fun to play though.
If you start playing monuments on top of that, you're depleting your deck of the most vital resources, which is creatures. Based on their power level, running less than 28 isn't going to work. There's not much room for extraneous cards in a deck like this.
Don't try too hard, I think either go with Oketra's Monumnent to go wider, or Bontu's Monument to pile up the drain life effects.
The new lord for vampires Legion Lieutenant is weak since he dies to every single removal currently in Standard. If you want a reason why cards like Hapatra never saw play, it's exactly that. Radiant Destiny should work much better, ascend or not. I guess if you want to build a Vampire deck, put both and force the opponent to spend their removal on the lords, since the rest is not exactly scary to look at.
Vampires was nowhere close to tier 1, I'm not sure Rivals brings enough to the table to change this. I guess you could play Slaughter the Strong against Temur and Ramunap to get rid of large bodies, then hopefully trade with what's left. You're not coming off that far ahead, but at least you avoid wiping next turn.
This decklist is nothing but carnage, the goal is to drop Liliana, Death's Majesty and put Gishath, Sun's Avatar in play and fill the board with utter monsters.
Why red? To have both Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice, in order to find Liliana quickly because we simply can't do anything without her.
# 24 Lands
8 Swamp
8 Mountain
4 Canyon Slough
4 Dragonskull Summit
# Creatures
4 Gishath, Sun's Avatar
4 Ripjaw Raptor
4 Carnage Tyrant
4 Burning Sun's Avatar
# Spells
4 Abrade
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
4 Cathartic Reunion
3 Fatal Push
1 Sweltering Suns
3 Walk the Plank
# Others
4 Liliana, Death's Majesty
All the creatures are Dinausors, so that they can be dropped in play when Gishath attacks. And from there, the game is over soon after. Fumigate does nearly nothing to us, since we'll bring Gishath back with Liliana. I could actually use Goring Ceratops, but giving double strike isn't quite necessary, and that guy needs to attack to be effective. Burning Sun's Avatar is the only card which we can hard-cast, it's a very useful body which kills a creature and also bolts the opponent, nothing to ignore.
Gishath works wonders in this deck. He swings for 7 the turn you reanimate him, and brings over a couple of friends with him. You end up with over 20 points of power on the board, and win the game next turn usually. It's brutal and crazy fun to play.
Adding green to put ramp spells (whatever we'll get in Ixalan) would probably destabilize the deck. If you're in hard-casting mode for whatever reason, you most likely lost the game. It would obviously be better to not rely on Liliana alone to win, but right now there are no other reanimator spells in standard.
If we get other red dinausors, we can probably drop Ripjaw Raptor, although he's a quite solid body and will make the opponent think twice about attacking into it (in our case, since most cards we draw are stuff we can't actually play, it's not such a huge deal).
Edit: got rid of Tormenting Voices, not really needed. Opted for more spot removal, and leaving only a single Sweltering Suns since it's too situational, might remove it altogether. Spot removal is good enough since we can have Dinosaurs out by turn 5, usually a couple of them.
Per Standard Forum Rules and Regulations, "Discussion of spoiled cards must be confined to the Standard New Card Discussion subforum." Moving - hoser2
This is a deck I've been working on for a while, on and off, trying a bunch of different strategies. I was on a pure lifelink deck for a while, but while it has a good matchup against monored, it's a little lackluster and can have trouble closing.
Straight up curses are ungodly slow, so a mix of both lets us not die early and establish long term threats.
Here's the list:
# 24 Lands
4 Concealed Courtyard
8 Swamp
8 Plains
4 Shambling Vent
# 20 Creatures
4 Sacred Cat
4 Gifted Aetherborn
4 Filigree Familiar
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Aerial Responder
3 Accursed Witch
# 12 Spells
3 Fatal Push
4 Doomfall
3 Fumigate
2 Torment of Hailfire
# 4 Others
4 Torment of Scarabs
The plan is simple: all the creatures we play make us gain life and trade with others.
Accursed Witch is a disguised curse, it's slow but in this deck, things add up quickly.
Torment of Scarabs comes in once we have enough stuff on the board or after a Fumigate, and chips away at opponent's board, hand or life total, so it's more of a long game setup.
Assuming we wiped the board, we reduce the choices and eventually, they'll have to take 3.
Torment of Hailfire is to close the deal quickly, typically we cast this for X=4 or 5, it's enough to win the game.
Control is a tougher matchup, but we still come up on top. Doomfall is useful early game, and gets rid of Torrential Gearhulk later since it's usually alone. We can actually switch to a pure aggro deck after side which control will have a tough time handling, e.g with a couple of Dreamstealer which control has to handle.
Here's the list I'm working on:
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Forest
2 Game Trail
2 Hissing Quagmire
2 Mountain
2 Smoldering Marsh
3 Swamp
# Creatures
4 Servant of the Conduit
4 Woodland Wanderer
4 Glorybringer
4 Winding Constrictor
4 Walking Ballista
# Spells
4 Attune with Aether
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Fatal Push
2 Hour of Devastation
# Others
3 Aethersphere Harvester
Woodland Wanderer is the obvious surprise, but it's out of reach for monored and will block Hazoret since you play it as a 6/6 almost every time. We have enough mana fixing to make it happen, the difficulty is to not drop too low.
Grasp of Darkness is another option, but BB can be difficult to reliably get early so probably a sideboard card. If we can ramp into Hour of Devastation, it clears the board and takes care of opposing Chandra as well, which monored can maindeck.
Even if you somewhow manage to stop the bleeding, Ramunap Ruins finishes the job.
Here's the main problem: monored can shift for a bunch of 1-drop to 12 4,5-drops which are very impactful (Chandra, Hazoret and Glorybringer are the best red permanents), and red has access to what's probably the best removal in the game (Abrade).
I'm testing the "post side" version of Monored aggro with fewer (but still enough) early threats and 4x Glorybringer + 4x Chandra, Torch of Defiance, it's brutal beyond belief. If it's on the play, I cannot find anything currently in Standard post side which will handle everything this deck has.
Zombies, BG, control, WU Monument, Temur... nothing works. It's too fast, too brutal. You may think there's a way to hande this deck, but I really don't think it stands any competition right now in Standard.
People claim that lifelink is the way to do it, you're welcome to try. Trespasser's Curse which will do a tiny drain won't go a long way. Kalitas gets gobbled up by Glorybringer, other ways to gain life like Aethersphere Harvester dies to Abrade. Red only needs to find a couple of removal to clear the path, while a control deck will need to find more than a dozen in order to handle the onslaught.
Even the mighty Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is totally helpless. Touted as "too good for Standard" since it's been printed, backbone of so many winning strategies such as Mardu Vehicles, it's absolutely dead in the water again the monored.
This deck is no joke, with a half decent opening hand, it WILL destroy you.
Here's the list I'm testing - taken from PVDDR, but slightly tweaked to emulate a post side. It's actually better than the base version.
# 24 Lands
4 Ramunap Ruins
4 Sunscorched Desert
2 Scavenger Grounds
14 Mountain
# 26 Creatures
4 Ahn-Crop Crasher
4 Bomat Courier
4 Earthshaker Khenra
4 Falkenrath Gorger
3 Hazoret the Fervent
2 Kari Zev, Skyship Raider
4 Glorybringer
# 7 Sorcery/Instants
4 Abrade
3 Shock
# 4 Others
4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Before you claim the list is crazy, give it a shot. Sure, not everyone will agree with 4x Chandra or 4x Glorybringer. The deck runs 24 LANDS, you don't need to hit Chandra or Glorybringer on curve, there's more than enough to deal 40+ damage by t5, it's that quick. I took out the Village Messenger from Paulo's list and replaced them with Glorybringer, made room for 2 more Chandra (-1 Shock, -1 Kari Sev) and voila.
You can adjust the curve, e.g +1 Kari Sev and -1 Glorybringer, personally I think Glorybringer is soooo good in this format that 4 is what you want, even in a fast deck.
Winning against an opponent who's mana-screwed the whole game feels empty. And getting beat when you're mana flooded is no more fun.
You could argue that the Pro Tour is usually decided by luck - sometimes, one deck is clearly above others, most of the time, there's a balance in the format. Sam Black had to mulligan down to 4, Pardee had a ~decent hand but no board presence whatsoever in the first 4 turns, and it was still a massacre.
Idea #1: For openeing hand, keep 7 out the top 15, then shuffle the rest. Scry X during your draw step (X=2 or 3 - i.e you get a free Sylvan Library, without the ability to PsiBlast yourself to get more cards), and reveal the card you're drawing every turn (ok maybe not, at that point counterspell would be dead... which may not be a bad thing after all)
Idea #2: make distinct piles of cards: 1 pile for lands, 1 pile for non-lands. Draw from whichever pile you want any time you would need to draw a card, including your opening hand.
Of course it massively changes the game. Now, randomness is a tiny factor, and decks will be truly shining at their best. It also makes existing cards totally useless, but the same could be said about new concepts (e.g Morph and Illusionary Mask).
Sometimes Magic feels like poker: you have to guess what the opponent has, and decide what to do based on this. Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has.
Welcome! Per "Standard Main Forum- What Belongs Here", these interesting ideas don't belong here. Moving to Magic General. -hoser2
Here's a rough deck idea which I'm testing, it's fun to play and there appears to be room to make the deck competitive.
# 23 Lands
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Hissing Quagmire
2 Evolving Wilds
7 Forest
7 Swamp
# 14 CREATURES
4 Dreamstealer
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Obelisk Spider
2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
2 Razaketh, the Foulblooded
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
# 14 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Fatal Push
2 Grasp of Darkness
2 Collective Brutality
2 Never // Return
3 Dissenter's Deliverance
# 6 Others
2 Liliana, Death's Majesty
4 Vessel of Nascency
Strategy is simple: get rid of early game threats to move to midgame quickly, then fill our graveyard. We use Obelisk Spider as a good blocker to protect Liliana. Dreamstealer can be a solid early game card to hurt the opponent's hand, but maybe we could use fewer.
We can cheat Razaketh or Ulamog into play, but not worth putting more than 1 copy. If they end up in our hand, we can discard using Collective Brutality, ditto I did not want to put 4 copies since it's an expensive card to play.
Assuming we can protect Liliana long enough and put 5 zombies in play, a one-sided wrath wins the game real quick.
Dissenter's Deliverance MD is mainly because I'm testing against Mardu Vehicles as a gold standard for speed and versatiliy in this format.
Dominiah: Relentless Dead / Plague Belcher is a Zombies theme. I'm not sure you have room for that in this deck. Besides, 2 black on T2 is not going to happen often.
Defiant Greatmaw looks like a draft card, I'm not a huge fan. Eternal Ammit is probably much better.
Nest of Scarabs is something to get away from I think. It has zero board impact when you play it, and for standard this is not acceptable.
Rather, rely on Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Obelisk Spider to act as your -1/-1 triggers, and leave Nest of Scarabs as a SB option against control decks.