MTG Salvation

I picked up a copy of her precon deck and thought her abilities would be pretty cool to build around. I do have some restrictions I would like to work with while building the deck:
1. Non-combo win condition. I find tutoring into a combo to be astoundingly boring, repetitive, and my group is way to casual for that anyway. So, I'm not using combos and will be using cards like Forced Fruition and other alternate wins.
2. Very few creatures. Decks need recursion to sustain themselves against control or just in longer games. Decks that lend themselves to a large creature count typically just end up being reanimator decks, especially in these colors.

My first thought was her +1 with a bunch of topdeck manipulation with cards like Counterbalance to take advantage of being able to put cards on the top of my library, but there were problems. There are very few cards outside of Green that do things with, specifically, the top card. Most cards in black and blue that deal with the top card are things like Scry and Anticipate. There's very few cards that actually do anything that isn't akin to drawing cards.

My second idea was Miracles, until I realized there was very few miracle cards, let alone in black (at 1). Putting miracles on top and drawing at instant speed on another player's turn for a blow out Terminus or at someone else's eot for a game winning Entreat the Angels seemed pretty awesome until I realized that those were 2 of the only 4 good miracles.

I had a few other ideas, decreasingly less fun sounding as time went on. I thought about Astral Slide which lets me blink and draw cards at instant speed to help with my miracles Idea. I thought about Pillow-fort control. I thought about Enchantress. As time goes on, I'm less building an Aminatou deck and more just wanting to build something else.

Anyone else have some ideas? Maybe some topdeck styled cards that I just didn't realize existed? Or perhaps some strategy or synergy with Aminatou I didn't think of at all?

I built Aminatou Miracle-Blink to setup instant-speed miracles and just get good value out of ETBs (Gilded Drake, Resolute Archangel, lots of others), but it seems the MVP of the deck is Approach of the Second Sun - I don't tutor it, but once I get it, I often cast it twice in two turns or less. Not sure if that violates your first rule or not. I also tried to make Twilight Prophet work as a win-con, but it rarely lives more than one upkeep (though it has hit each opponent for 10 in that upkeep).

I basically built around her first two abilities and ignored her ultimate.

There was another post about using her ultimate, and I suggested a sort of "hug deck". I'll just repost the ideas I had.

You could try and make a "Hug" deck. The trick is to somehow making sure you get 6 loyalty on Aminatou, while feeding your opponents potentially draw and mana. You want them to commit creatures to the board, but at the same time not being able to just remove Aminatou whenever they want.

If want to to use a card like Forced Fruition, then you can let your opponents go crazy, with the hope of taking one of your opponents boards.

There are a few pillow forts cards specifically for planeswalkers in Mystic Barrier and Sphere of Safety, Baird, Steward of Argive.
Silent Arbiter, Meekstone, Crawlspace, Meishin, the Mind Cage.

If you did have static draw effects, then you could look at fogging opponents attacks with; Angelsong, Darkness, Frontline Strategist, Harmless Assault, Holy Day, Kami of False Hope, Knight-Captain of Eos, Pollen Lullaby.

You can also look at "return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step" cards to mitigate handing over your permanents to opponents;
Aetherling, Astral Slide, Argent Sphinx, Cauldron Haze, Cauldron of Souls, Eerie Interlude, Flickerform, Flickerwisp, Galepowder Mage, Ghost Council of Orzhova, Ghostway, Glimmerpoint Stag, Liberate, Long Road Home, Mistmeadow Witch, Nezahal, Primal Tide, Oath of Teferi, Otherworldly Journey, Saltskitter, Skybind, Sudden Disappearance, Venser, the Sojourner.

Some of the cards that really stand out to me to build around there are; Astral Slide, Eerie Interlude, Ghostway, Mistmeadow Witch, Skybind, Sudden Disappearance

Astral Slide does suggest a creature heavy(ish) build which you specifically said you didn't want however.

So, I like some of the ideas here and some of the suggested cards. I still want to build Aminatou, but I just realized that I have five decks with black in them already and I don't have enough staples for another one. So... yeah... I don't even have the cards to properly build the deck. I might just have to wait until something else get's old and I feel like taking something apart before I can put any more effort into building Amanatou, and maybe there will be more cards to support the way I want to build her by then anyway.

A blink variant does not need hat much black staples. I build her as a U/W with a few good black cards in there mainly for removal, Ravenous Chupacabra and Noxious Gearhulk mostly.

Interesting package in the deck is a token package with Day of the Dragons and Divine Visitation. The token makers are Knight-Captain of Eos, Captain of the Watch, Grave Titan and one or two others I can't remember right now. The beauty of Day of the Dragons is that, using Aminatou, you can blink it to in turn blink your entire team. So you can attack and block with 5/5 flyers and still get all the ETB value every turn. Also provides some form of board wipe insurance. Add in Divine Visitation and Day of the Dragons will make an ever growing army of Angels instead.

Clash? A bunch of "Reveal the top card of your library." cards?

Tangle Wire, Planeswalkers, Oaths of Lily, Jace and Gideon and Stonehorn Dignitary.
Glowing Anemone for extra fun.
Oh, and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria with Nexus of Fate, for more interaction.

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

Clash? A bunch of "Reveal the top card of your library." cards?

Yeah, I looked at clash. Other than Scattering Stroke and Revive the Fallen there's no good clash cards in esper that you can actually manipulate the top card for. Research the Deep and Hoarder's Greed both clash after a card draw, so Aminatou can't help you win those clashes. Other than those, all the good clash cards are green.

I plan on running Conundrum Sphinx and cards like Arbiter of the Ideal. There are also cards to deal with the top card although being at work i am unable to search them out.

My Aminatou deck is mostly built on the idea of playing "exchange" cards, and then using her -1 to get my half of the exchange back. Vedalken Plotter, Political Trickery, Djinn of Infinite Deceits, Gilded Drake, Perplexing Chimera, and Phyrexian Infiltrator are all in the deck. Then I also run ways to make her +1 card-positive (Thought Reflection, Alhammarret's Archive) or control the top of my library (Brainstorm, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Liliana Vess, Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Lim-Dul's Vault, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins) and some more generic Esper blink cards. Finally, add in a few planeswalkers and PW support cards, and some counterspells/removal.