I've been thinking about a slightly more combo oriented list with traverse the ulvenwald and a hatebear package. Would really like a bit of feedback/opinions. Thanks in advance!
As I understand rhonas, activating him on a pridemage or voice will proc his condition. I don't think it'll be all that hard to get him live, I just can't seem to find room for him.
I like that rhonas can activate himself by pumping a dude. Hit him and a qasali off of CoCo eot, then pump qasali and swing for 9. It's just that the 3 cmc slot is SUCH prime real estate, what comes out?
I don't have a tonne of experience with tireless tracker, but loading up on 3 mana threats and the mana dorks to power them out on turn two is a common plan I've seen here. Courser is definitely more defense than I would play, but the incidental life gain vs burn is back breaking and valuing lands off the top can mess with GBx decks as well. The three drops you play are largely decided by your local meta.
Actually, if you adjust your mana base a bit, you could support a couple vendilion cliques as well. Alongside geist, queller and reflector mage, five devotion isn't unheard of.
Been on this deck for about 3 months now. I'm borrowing it indefinitely from a buddy of mine with a much more robust collection than I have. Played mostly at the store level - Modern events on Tuesdays, etc. - as well as playing online with XMage. I'd estimate I've probably played ~250 games with the deck so far. I'm finally feeling pretty confident with the deck, enough to want to offer some insight. In fact, I made a new account to do just that.
Most of these opinions have already been voiced at some point or another, but there are a few things that get rehashed from time to time. I figured I'd give my two cents on some of the popular topics, as well as some of my own observations. Please feel free to weigh in, as none of these points are set in stone (except possibly Goyf).
Goyf - Goyf has been extremely underwhelming for me so far. The times I've dropped it and felt bad about it have far outweighed playing it and feeling justified having it in the deck. The only reason it's in the deck at all is because my buddy put it there, and I haven't gotten around to swapping it out yet.
CoCo - Collected Company has been almost the opposite of Goyf. I came close to leaving it out of the deck entirely. There are some games where I don't see it, but the games where I do, it's almost always worthwhile. The nature of our deck means that leaving 4 mana untapped isn't all that unusual. In my experience, people don't play around Company, even if your mana telegraphs it
EWit - Let me first say that I love Eternal Witness. It is a sweet card with a lot of awesome applications. I play one in my list. It has never paid off for me. Hardcasting it, the targets are usually underwhelming. I still have yet to hit it off CoCo, so do take this point with a grain of salt, however, a card should be able to be cast outright and feel good. If I hit it off CoCo, I'm using it to get CoCo. I could see playing it after CoCo had already been cast, but overall, I haven't been incredibly pleased with this card's performance.
Geist - Geist has been a card of mixed results for me. I love the card, definitely in my top 5 cards of all time. Some games, it definitely packs a punch, and then some. Other times... Not so much. If you aren't landing him on T2 or 3, he's probably not going to pull his weight. If you're lucky enough to have a Kessig or Rogue's Passage live, however, he becomes very good. With all that in mind, Geist definitely makes the cut. The games where he is good, he's incredibly good, enough so to solidify his place in the deck.
Steppe (I ended up writing way more about this card than I thought I would) - So good. Worst case scenario, you're using it to push through a few points of damage. If you're seeing it early, you're doing it wrong. Our deck is not nearly mana-hungry enough to outright crumble over one land coming in tapped. Comboing out and getting your Knight Pathed not only fizzles the combo, it likely leaves you with a sub-optimal land base on board. Furthermore, why are you playing a combo that isn't going to win when it happens? Leaving out Steppe is tantamount to tacking the text "You lose if your opponent has 1 open White mana" onto Retreat. Our deck does not play the long game well enough to wait for an opening to combo consistently enough for that to be the plan. This deck isn't Twin, and I don't think anyone wanting to play a "Twin replacement" would ever look to this deck anyway.
Going forward, I'm thinking of replacing Goyf with Scooze. I haven't tested it yet, and I would love to hear how Scooze has performed for those who play it. I would also like to hear peoples' opinion on the Burn and Affinity matchups. I have yet to win a match against either one, and I believe these are the only 2 archetypes I can say that about. My N-value isn't significantly high, so again, grain of salt. Could be bad luck, but I think that we make our deck a bit slower in order to make it more resilient and hateful, which makes it harder for us to compete against the faster decks, at least pre-board.
Thanks for reading! Looking forward to contributing to this thread.
Would love to see your list. I run two Fink's in the main and three firewalkers in the side for burn, though I usually just out pace them. I also run 3 kataki's and 2 reclamation sages in the side, but I haven't tested against affinity yet. They're mostly for lantern control.
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I am never never calling that card anything else now. Thank you.
Would love to see your list. I run two Fink's in the main and three firewalkers in the side for burn, though I usually just out pace them. I also run 3 kataki's and 2 reclamation sages in the side, but I haven't tested against affinity yet. They're mostly for lantern control.