If you're running Memory Adept because you're prepping for control matchups, you should also be maindecking your Counterfluxes and keeping your Dissipates in the side.
3x Chandra is too many. Her +1 doesn't help your board state, and the only card her -2 is good with here is your 2x Devil's Play. I'd cut one.
I'd replace the Safe Passages with 2x O-ring and 1x Detention Sphere. Unless they're for dealing with swarms, in which case Aurelia's Fury might be what you want. Either way, Safe Passage is not good.
I think Searing Spear is a bad card and you ought to be running Pillar of Flame instead. It stops sticky dorks like Messenger, Strangleroot, and Gravecrawler, and everything else can just get stalled until you can toss down O-ring or Verdict.
Auger blocks really well in the early game against Gravecrawlers and ballsy Snapcasters, and it digs for board wipes and counterspells. Sometimes you'll whiff, and those times you'll frown, but every time you don't, he's solid card advantage. He also helps power through land flooding.
Instead, I've been using a underrated one: Dramatic Rescue :-P
Here are some of the reasons why:
- it very often more than a five life differential -- especially if the creature you bounced doesn't have haste and your opponent has to wait an extra turn to play it
- it can countered Rancor and other auras (well unless hexproofed :P)
- kill tokens
- protect your side against kill/gain control spells (for example: when Olivia is trying to steal your Thragtusk)
- break souldbound links
- protect you Angel tokens from Detention Sphere (using good timing, your return/kill the targetted angel, the others will live!)
- allow you to retrieve a creature when Terminus is on the stack...
Azorius Charm seems better; puts the target out of mind for two turns, and messes with their topdecks. It's still risky, though.
I get a lot of split Ultra Pro sleeves in the pile I keep for Limited, but I keep buying them because they don't have that weird sticky gloss finish. I bought a batch of Dragonshield one time; they're durable, yes, but after I played 'em for a few months shuffling became an ordeal.
Played this at a local store on Sunday; it's not big, but the regulars are all reasonably competitive. Went 3-1-1 before top 8. My loss was to some kind of rogue Boros Tokens; he drew really well, I drew really poorly, I frowned. The tie was to GW with a red splash, we went to time in game 3. On his turn 4 he had me at 3 with a Thragtusk token on the board, but I tapped out for Sphinx's Revelation for one and he couldn't push me back into lethal range, so I just drew and passed to finish it.
Went to top 8, got paired up against Bant Control. Game 1, I got a Tamiyo emblem and started hardcasting Entreat every turn, but he dug with Jace and Alchemy, flashbacking with Chromatic Lantern, and kept churning out the board wipes until he managed to stick Door To Nothingness to the board, with the mana to pop it immediately. Game 2, got mana screwed.
I wasn't convinced Jace 4 was all that, but I'm pulling out Think Twice, so I guess I have room for him. I'm also thinking I move Cyclonic Rift to the side in favor of two mainboard Dissipates; bounce is just so dangerous in this format.
They are fragile little assassins, aren't they? But man, they pack a hell of a wallop.
What that means for you is, when I attack, you'd better have a way to deal with all three. So you have to have three creatures/removal spells. But what if I just made you discard your hand with Rakdos' Return? What if I have two other creatures on the board in addition to the tokens? The tokens may day, but my other damage is getting through.
People aren't seeing the versatility of this card, and they're certainly not using the right cards with her in their little "mental decklists." Don't think of her in a vacuum, think of her in this format and with the cards b/g have to abuse. If you could fit her in mono-black market (ignoring the green for now) would you? If you could fit her in b/w tokens, would you? Those kinds of questions might lead you to see why most of us see her as awesome.
If the stars align, and you go T1 Forest, Arbor Elf, T2 Swamp, Arbor Elf, T3 Vraska, and then she makes it to seven without getting touched, those tokens still aren't coming down until turn 5, and not swinging until turn 6. That's three turns of warning to get ready to deal with 3 1/1s with no baked-in protection, who don't do anything to blockers. As men on the board, they're slow and weak. As a win condition, they're unreliable and easily pushed back. I don't see any versatility here; she's expensive, she's slow, she's more color-intense then average, and she gets you two abilities: destroy target thing, and make some men. Wouldn't it present less weak points in your game to just continue ramping and kill me with Rakdos' Return directly, instead of using it as horrendously expensive support to a horrendously expensive plan?
The biggest problem with her ultimate isn't that you have to jump through hoops to actually deliver it - that's A problem, but not the biggest one. The problem is that it's excessively fragile. The tokens have player-deathtouch, yes, but whenever they're not dealing damage to players, they're vanilla 1/1 tokens. You'll have to protect them from blockers, from removal and burn spells, from board wipes...there's a lot of things that will just send these guys packing, and G/B isn't the color combo best suited to protecting them.
It's here to be a removal spell, okay, fine. So ignore the name and the type and look at it as a removal spell. For five mana, in two colors, at sorcery speed, destroy target nonland; two turns later, destroy another target nonland. That's the absolute best case scenario. It's a little cheaper then two Murders, but the Murders would be instant speed and only one color. Two Dreadbores would be cheaper, instant speed, and almost have the same kind of range. Acidic Slime can be tutored for by Beast Tracker or Green Sun, it can reach lands, when it defends it also protects you, it's one color and an uncommon. This card is a two, maybe three dollar rare, but it's got the word planeswalker on it so it's going to be ten times that.
Also, she's a Gorgon, but her ult has her deploying assassins? They could at least be snakes or something! WIZAAAAAAAARDS
If you're looking for alternate decks, I had a problem being the high profile target, and then I built a Darien, King of Kjeldor deck. One of the side effects of that is that a significant amount of Darien's power is defensive in nature; you don't get any soldiers until the other players attack you. It discourages attacks, and it also doesn't look as scary until you're really in pole position. I opted for a bunch of life gain as well, which is both unintimidating and makes Darien even better. You just have to remember not to play Eldrazi Monument until it's time to end the game, because you'll rocket to the top of the public enemy list when that shows up.
My dad and I went to San Diego Comicon a few years ago. They were handing out little mini-decks, we got green and blue. He showed me the ropes while we waited for food and such, he being a veteran player from back in the day. I got interested, and we set out to acquire some meatier decks. We played with precons up until I went out and just bought a bunch of boosters, determined to build my own deck, and stumbled my way into an OK blue/black ninja deck. We found a card store near our house some time later and went for a draft, Shards(Conflux wasn't out yet). I drafted a Bant deck that was surprisingly competent; I blame beginner's luck. It became a constructed Standard thing that eventually evolved to abusing the hell out of stacking lifelink, and I never won a game with it. From there it's shifted through Mono-white Soldiers, a brief stint as a Kor deck, Red/White Allies, Boros Bushwhacker, then more Allies(Naya to four color to Bant). I find the cyclical nature here a little amusing.
I still never win games. Bah. Way too stubborn to give up, though. I can make this Bant allies deck work, damnit. I can feel it get closer every time I tweak it.
If you're running Memory Adept because you're prepping for control matchups, you should also be maindecking your Counterfluxes and keeping your Dissipates in the side.
3x Chandra is too many. Her +1 doesn't help your board state, and the only card her -2 is good with here is your 2x Devil's Play. I'd cut one.
I'd replace the Safe Passages with 2x O-ring and 1x Detention Sphere. Unless they're for dealing with swarms, in which case Aurelia's Fury might be what you want. Either way, Safe Passage is not good.
I think Searing Spear is a bad card and you ought to be running Pillar of Flame instead. It stops sticky dorks like Messenger, Strangleroot, and Gravecrawler, and everything else can just get stalled until you can toss down O-ring or Verdict.
Auger blocks really well in the early game against Gravecrawlers and ballsy Snapcasters, and it digs for board wipes and counterspells. Sometimes you'll whiff, and those times you'll frown, but every time you don't, he's solid card advantage. He also helps power through land flooding.
Azorius Charm seems better; puts the target out of mind for two turns, and messes with their topdecks. It's still risky, though.
8 Island
8 Plains
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Glacial Fortress
Creatures
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Angel of Serenity
1 Drogskol Reaver
Enchantments
3 Detention Sphere
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Azorius Charm
4 Feeling of Dread
2 Think Twice
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Sorceries
2 Entreat the Angels
3 Supreme Verdict
2 Terminus
Planeswalkers
3 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
2 Negate
4 Dissipate
3 Syncopate
2 Think Twice
4 Geist of Saint Traft
Played this at a local store on Sunday; it's not big, but the regulars are all reasonably competitive. Went 3-1-1 before top 8. My loss was to some kind of rogue Boros Tokens; he drew really well, I drew really poorly, I frowned. The tie was to GW with a red splash, we went to time in game 3. On his turn 4 he had me at 3 with a Thragtusk token on the board, but I tapped out for Sphinx's Revelation for one and he couldn't push me back into lethal range, so I just drew and passed to finish it.
Went to top 8, got paired up against Bant Control. Game 1, I got a Tamiyo emblem and started hardcasting Entreat every turn, but he dug with Jace and Alchemy, flashbacking with Chromatic Lantern, and kept churning out the board wipes until he managed to stick Door To Nothingness to the board, with the mana to pop it immediately. Game 2, got mana screwed.
I wasn't convinced Jace 4 was all that, but I'm pulling out Think Twice, so I guess I have room for him. I'm also thinking I move Cyclonic Rift to the side in favor of two mainboard Dissipates; bounce is just so dangerous in this format.
If the stars align, and you go T1 Forest, Arbor Elf, T2 Swamp, Arbor Elf, T3 Vraska, and then she makes it to seven without getting touched, those tokens still aren't coming down until turn 5, and not swinging until turn 6. That's three turns of warning to get ready to deal with 3 1/1s with no baked-in protection, who don't do anything to blockers. As men on the board, they're slow and weak. As a win condition, they're unreliable and easily pushed back. I don't see any versatility here; she's expensive, she's slow, she's more color-intense then average, and she gets you two abilities: destroy target thing, and make some men. Wouldn't it present less weak points in your game to just continue ramping and kill me with Rakdos' Return directly, instead of using it as horrendously expensive support to a horrendously expensive plan?
It's here to be a removal spell, okay, fine. So ignore the name and the type and look at it as a removal spell. For five mana, in two colors, at sorcery speed, destroy target nonland; two turns later, destroy another target nonland. That's the absolute best case scenario. It's a little cheaper then two Murders, but the Murders would be instant speed and only one color. Two Dreadbores would be cheaper, instant speed, and almost have the same kind of range. Acidic Slime can be tutored for by Beast Tracker or Green Sun, it can reach lands, when it defends it also protects you, it's one color and an uncommon. This card is a two, maybe three dollar rare, but it's got the word planeswalker on it so it's going to be ten times that.
Also, she's a Gorgon, but her ult has her deploying assassins? They could at least be snakes or something! WIZAAAAAAAARDS
I still never win games. Bah. Way too stubborn to give up, though. I can make this Bant allies deck work, damnit. I can feel it get closer every time I tweak it.
Anyway, yeah. Hello.