Hey, so I was inspired to build this deck by these 3 cards Thing in the Ice, Gisela, the Broken Blade, and of course Bruna, the Fading Light. Functionally, I was hoping to make the deck work around Thing in the Ice non horror board wipe, which does lead me to question whether Gisela, the Broken Blade and Bruna, the Fading Light cease to be horror upon transformation? If so, not a big deal it does not dissuade me. Anyways, I was gonna throw in Archangel Avacyn, to give my creatures indestructible if necessary. I'm not sure she or Avacyn, Angel of Hope, especially since the latter is a little pricey. Anyways basic idea is to board wipe and then to hit them, right now the deck is a little rough and I am in need of little direction and more noncreature spells. Any help would be appreciated, also any special land suggestions would be helpful.
The 4 Thing in the Ice and 4 Delver of Secrets need instant and sorceries to be good...you only have 18 in your deck and you need 4 to flip Thing in the Ice.
The sorceries you chose to play have a rather high mana cost and wont be played easily. Also, many of them require that you have a creature in your graveyard that you want to bring back in play or that one of your creatures dies...which means that it will take forever before you play 4 instant/sorceries...which means that your Thing in the Ice has enough time to die 3-4 times before it has any chance to transform...and Reincarnation or the other spells you are running won't save it...it will come back to play with 4 counters on it and you will be back at square one.
Not all horrors are worth playing, Stitchwing Skaab is pretty useless in your deck...mana cost is too high for a 3/1 flyer, you dont want to discard your cards because you have a grand total of zero cards to make you draw and replace the cards you just discarded and your reanimation cards are expensive to play....which means that you are better off playing the angels themselves directly.
Stitched Mangler won't win you the game and won't save you if you're about to lose it. At best, it will delay the inevitable.
Telemin Performance has no synergy with anything in your deck - quite the opposite - when you Unsummon all non-horror creatures (if you ever do), you will bring their creatures back to their hand and they will probably thank you for it.
Myth Realized gets stronger when you play noncreature spells...1/3rd of your deck is creatures, 1/3rd of your deck is lands. This card is bad in late game and offers nearly no help if you are losing the game.
You are stretched over 3 colors with no mana acceleration and no way to fix your colors.
Your first step would be to decide if you want to make this a horror deck, an angel deck, an instant/sorcery deck or a reanimation deck...because, right now, you have a mix of all that and just about every aspect is missing the mark. When you know what you want to work on, we can start working. Find THE card or mix of cards (2-3) in that list that you want to play with, and we can build around them.
Hey! You're back! Also the previous deck has gone over well in my playgroup!
After having a think, I am leaning towards Gisela, The Broken Blade and Bruna, The Fading Light, but I have less thoughts on how to build a deck around them.
I dont have much time this morning so I dont have time to confirm it but I think that you can put one angel in the mimic vat, play the other and use the vat to put the other into play.
I dont have much time this morning...this is the best I can think of at the moment, I will try to think about better cards for your decks later today or this week-end.
Mimic Vat cannot be used to meld Gisela and Bruna, you can switch the vats for 2 Defense of the Heart ...since you play multiplayer, you might end up with an opponent with 3 or more creatures in play and Defense would allow you to put your two angels into play.
I would also switch the 2 Animate Dead for 2 Unearth that way you dont risk returning one of your opponent's creature to his hand and you dont mind if your Baleful Strix goes back to your hand (drawing is good for you...your doctor should say it to you more often).
Shadow Rift makes something big unblockable and makes you draw...it can even prevent your opponent's creature from blocking your army of small critters...all that for 1 blue mana...the card is REAL strong and often underestimated (my physics teacher once told me that the strength is the impact on the game divided by the mana cost).
Steely Resolve will protect your angels for cheap...making it harder for your opponents to deal with your melded angel once you have it in play and generally making your angels harder to deal with. You have a few creatures that you would want to cast Momentous Fall on, in response to a Wrath of God effect. The rest of the deck is there to allow you to survive until the angels are in play or to bring the angels in faster.
Haha thanks, I appreciate the deck suggestions. Do you think there is a different angle to go with these decks or another way to make them more budget? Maybe thats the nature of the beast but I'd open towards heading that direction though I do like the current synergy. Particularly Thing in the Ice with Consuming Aberration is hilarious. The angel deck is also pretty sweet with lots of potential Brisela, Voice of Nightmares! I started to make budget suggestions but each card is good that I don't want to get rid of it, ugh.
Steely Resolve is 8$ but it's a bit hard to replace...Lightning Greaves doesnt protect against spells cast in response to you equipping your creature, Dense Foliage doesnt protect from effects (it could be a budget solution but it's a bad one since it also protects your opponent's creatures), Asceticism and Privileged Position cost too much mana-wise and money-wise.
Temporal Mastery is a bit costy but it's hard to replace it with anything similar. The other U miracle cards don't fit as well in your deck and adding a third color to have access to other miracle cards will cause unneeded mana-fixing issues. You can replace them with any decent instant/sorcery...ideally something that makes you draw cards (Serum Visions comes to mind).
Thing in the Ice is around 5$ but it's the central idea of your deck...it's actually one of the cards around which you wanted to build your deck so it doesnt really have any similar replacement that could be used without dramatically changing the deck.
The rest of the cards are all 3$ or less so not really worth looking for replacements.
To save money, you can build only one of the two decks...I recommend the Thing in the Ice deck...which feels like the most fun deck (to me at least)...and keep the other deck idea for later.
4 Thing in the Ice
1 Gisela, the Broken Blade
1 Bruna, the Fading Light
1 Archangel Avacyn
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
4 Stitchwing Skaab
4 Stitched Mangler
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Breath of Life
2 Defy Death
4 Not Forgotten
2 Telemin Performance
4 Time of Need
4 Reincarnation
Enchantments 4
4 Myth Realized
The sorceries you chose to play have a rather high mana cost and wont be played easily. Also, many of them require that you have a creature in your graveyard that you want to bring back in play or that one of your creatures dies...which means that it will take forever before you play 4 instant/sorceries...which means that your Thing in the Ice has enough time to die 3-4 times before it has any chance to transform...and Reincarnation or the other spells you are running won't save it...it will come back to play with 4 counters on it and you will be back at square one.
Not all horrors are worth playing, Stitchwing Skaab is pretty useless in your deck...mana cost is too high for a 3/1 flyer, you dont want to discard your cards because you have a grand total of zero cards to make you draw and replace the cards you just discarded and your reanimation cards are expensive to play....which means that you are better off playing the angels themselves directly.
Stitched Mangler won't win you the game and won't save you if you're about to lose it. At best, it will delay the inevitable.
Telemin Performance has no synergy with anything in your deck - quite the opposite - when you Unsummon all non-horror creatures (if you ever do), you will bring their creatures back to their hand and they will probably thank you for it.
Myth Realized gets stronger when you play noncreature spells...1/3rd of your deck is creatures, 1/3rd of your deck is lands. This card is bad in late game and offers nearly no help if you are losing the game.
You are stretched over 3 colors with no mana acceleration and no way to fix your colors.
Your first step would be to decide if you want to make this a horror deck, an angel deck, an instant/sorcery deck or a reanimation deck...because, right now, you have a mix of all that and just about every aspect is missing the mark. When you know what you want to work on, we can start working. Find THE card or mix of cards (2-3) in that list that you want to play with, and we can build around them.
After having a think, I am leaning towards Gisela, The Broken Blade and Bruna, The Fading Light, but I have less thoughts on how to build a deck around them.
Deck #1
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Wall of Blossoms
3 Gisela, the Broken Blade
3 Bruna, the Fading Light
2 Sylvan Primordial
2 Angel of the Dire Hour
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
4 Eladamri's Call
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Momentous Fall
Enchantment (2)
2 Steely Resolve
1 Sol Ring
2 Mimic Vat
2 Thran Dynamo
Lands (22)
11 Forest
11 Plains
I dont have much time this morning so I dont have time to confirm it but I think that you can put one angel in the mimic vat, play the other and use the vat to put the other into play.
Deck #2
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Thing in the Ice
4 Consuming Aberration
4 Baleful Strix
Enchantment (2)
2 Animate Dead
1 Sol Ring
Spells (20)
2 Shadow Rift
2 Opt
4 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
2 Doom Blade
2 Go for the Throat
3 Counterspell
3 Temporal Mastery
11 Island
11 Swamp
I dont have much time this morning...this is the best I can think of at the moment, I will try to think about better cards for your decks later today or this week-end.
Use Opt, Ponder and Brainstorm to remove counters from Thing in the Ice, to trigger Consuming Aberration (and make it bigger), to place the top card of your deck to allow Delver of Secrets to flip and to cast Temporal Mastery for cheap. All that put together, and the fact that Thing in the Ice doesnt unsummon your Consuming Aberration should be interesting interaction overall.
Shadow Rift makes something big unblockable and makes you draw...it can even prevent your opponent's creature from blocking your army of small critters...all that for 1 blue mana...the card is REAL strong and often underestimated (my physics teacher once told me that the strength is the impact on the game divided by the mana cost).
Steely Resolve will protect your angels for cheap...making it harder for your opponents to deal with your melded angel once you have it in play and generally making your angels harder to deal with. You have a few creatures that you would want to cast Momentous Fall on, in response to a Wrath of God effect. The rest of the deck is there to allow you to survive until the angels are in play or to bring the angels in faster.
Steely Resolve is 8$ but it's a bit hard to replace...Lightning Greaves doesnt protect against spells cast in response to you equipping your creature, Dense Foliage doesnt protect from effects (it could be a budget solution but it's a bad one since it also protects your opponent's creatures), Asceticism and Privileged Position cost too much mana-wise and money-wise.
Temporal Mastery is a bit costy but it's hard to replace it with anything similar. The other U miracle cards don't fit as well in your deck and adding a third color to have access to other miracle cards will cause unneeded mana-fixing issues. You can replace them with any decent instant/sorcery...ideally something that makes you draw cards (Serum Visions comes to mind).
Thing in the Ice is around 5$ but it's the central idea of your deck...it's actually one of the cards around which you wanted to build your deck so it doesnt really have any similar replacement that could be used without dramatically changing the deck.
The rest of the cards are all 3$ or less so not really worth looking for replacements.
To save money, you can build only one of the two decks...I recommend the Thing in the Ice deck...which feels like the most fun deck (to me at least)...and keep the other deck idea for later.