MTG Salvation

Why play child of alara?
Built in Oblivion stone, of course. This deck stops permanent based strategies cold in their steps.

Play child if you like:
-Complicated decision trees
-to wrath every turn
-to hit all you land drops
-resilient decks that can withstand most shenanagains
-long grindy games
-recurring nearly anything from your GY

Why Child might not be for you
-you feel bad to wiping the board all the time
-your meta is non permanent based combo
- people play recurring GY hate
- you like playing a lot of creatures



Card Explanations:

CARD DRAW
Cephalid Coliseum Discarding lands for nonlands or more lands is good, filtering through our deck is always good
Trade Routes Turns any land into a cycling land and allows you to fill up your GY for a big Knight of the Reliquary or Creeping Renaissance.
Ad Nauseam our average cmc is 1, this draws up stupid amounts of cards
Sensei's Divining Top Helps us dig when we're in topdeck mode, and check before we dredge.
Treasure Hunt Basically ad nauseam's snot nosed brother
Horizon Canopy recurrable card draw w/ lftl or crucible
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea sometimes letting everyone draw a card is bad, other times its okay, but you get to choose when so its alright. More importantly you tend to empty your hand sooner than others AND it can be used to dredge LFTL in response to GY hate.
Horn of Greed the best card draw for this kind of deck.

RAMP
Exploration turn one its amazing, and later in the game its great with lftl, crucible, and oracle
Manabond Makes Sunder one sided, great with chaining LFTL, most cards we dont mind discarding.
Oracle of Mul Daya Most of the deck is lands, this card is amazing
Azusa, Lost but Seeking Like Exploration, except double the effect and is easily recurrable

Tutors!
Realms Uncharted usually gets cycling lands, or if we have recursion it gets anything we want
Demonic Tutor self explanatory
Knight of the Reliquary one of ur few beaters that also finds the land we need for any situation
Enlightened Tutor Usually finds Seismic Assault or Horn of Greed
Vampiric Tutor self explanatory
Intuition There are a lot of piles we can get. Heres a few:
LFTL cycle land any land
Witness, Loyal Retainers, any legend
LFTL, Academy Ruins/Buried Ruin, any artifact
Volrath's Stronghold Eternal Witness any card
Genesis, Sac Land, Any Creature
Turn 3 if I've drawn this and have nothing I need to answer I usually go with LFTL, cycle land, Fetch Land/Cycle Land.
Entomb usually gets LFTL or a target for it
Gamble with a few cards in hand its entomb, with a lot it gets us anything- we can fill our hand easily w/ LFTL

RECURSION
Crucible of Worlds and Life From the Loam
The best cards in the deck, w/o them makes the game very hard, though it is possible to win without them
Eternal Witness with genesis/volraths stronghold we can recurr anything in our deck
Genesis and Volrath's Stronghold
Lets us recur any of our creatures
Loyal Retainers We run a lot of legendaries, moreover he lets us reccurr Child for only 6 mana a turn with one of the above.
Buried Ruin and Academy Ruins
Sticking Cruicible and Horn of greed on the table wins games
Haunted Fengraf We only run 10 creatures including our general, this isnt usually that random, especially when we can use it multiple times a turn
Emeria, the Sky Ruin Its a lot easier to get this to kick than you would think. With the amount of duals/shocks/fetches we run we can intentionally grab plains to get this online early in the game. If the game gets really grindy and lasts a long time its only a matter of time before this guy comes online.
I used to run Prismatic Omen, but I found that we really want to use emeria to sac child every turn, which ends up killing omen.. just doesnt make sense in the long run.
Creeping Renaissance This usually names lands to fuel seismic assault, but getting back horn of greed and crucible early game can be crucial.


UTILITY
Cyclonic Rift There are a few cards that Child of Alara cannot deal with, this helps with that. It may become (or be supplemented by) All is Dust.
Riftstone Portal Mana fixing
Deserted Temple Untaping Maze of Ith, Miroko, a sac outlet, stronghold, or ruins can be very strong.
Kessig Wolf Run alt wincon for manlands or general damage
Strip Mine i usually only use this for problematic lands, but i suppose you could be a dick and string activations together too
Dust Bowl same as above, also good for putting cycle lands into the GY that you might have had to play early game.
Creeping Tar Pit, Nantuko Monastery MANLANDS
Alchemist's Refuge Hasnt been too relevant so far, but I can see the benefits of dropping my commander at instant speed to sac

DONT ATTACK ME!?
Maze of Ith, Glacial Chasm, Zuran Orb, Mystifying Maze, Kor Haven
We can get off to a slow start sometimes, so stalling out early attacks can make a huge difference in the longterm.

WINCONS
Worm Harvest Make a ton of tokens and swing, be wary of Massacre Wurm tho
Borborygmos Enranged Seismic Assault
With LFTL we can do a decent amount of damage, with Sunder and Creeping Renaissance we can just kill numerous people at once. Borb 2.0 is quite expensive, but he's a lot easier to recurr and deals much more damage.
Sunder Can be used to fuel Borb or assault, is one sided with Manabond, or can be used someone's EOT to make them discard a ton of cards.
Meloku the Clouded Mirror Lots of fun with manabond, fuels borb, makes beaters and chumps
Rude Awakening This is our huge mana ramp spell, or our alpha swing spell. Its not uncommon to have 20 lands out on turn 12.


Weaknesses:
Recurring GY hate (we can deal with one-shot effects)
Indestructible Permanents


Ill add more as I find time to do so.
Next Update will have cards that I have tested, want to test, and intentionally omitted cards.

I have to say, their are a few ovious adds you need to make. one being countryside crusher. another being.. ugh its 3 mana and it makes all lands indestructable (you kinda loose when armagedon hits) also you would benefit greatly from a few counters here and their, as they help with GY hate. Another issue is your complete dependence on Life from the loam. i think you should consider adding some sort of graveyard based combo that can work from the GY such as... some combo with triskeleton/mikaeus necrotic ooze. nim deathmantle would make you almost unhittable on the ground (if they attack you, block with child so it dies, and just recur it) I just feel in its current form it lacks a backup plan.

I dont lose when armageddon hits. This deck loves armageddon, there isnt another deck (outside of maybe azusa) that recovers from armageddon as well as we do. Ruination can indeed slow us down.

I really want him to be good, but Countryside Crusher is just a big beefstick that mills lands into the yard. He does nothing late game when 1/2 your library is already in the yard. Ive tested him and what this deck really needs is more utility to answer odd situations than another huge creature. Knight of the Reliquary fills that position very well and can tutor in adition to do fancy things w/ maze of ith. If I ever make the deck more aggro win oriented and not a 'combo' win I'll probably return to him.

Terra Eternal sounds great in practice, but the problem is that Child of Alara destroys it and enchantments are the hardest thing to get back in the deck. If ruination makes a huge splash Ill probably try it out or if I end up running Suntitan.
Sadly its the same reason that Nim Deathmantle doesnt work with child.
Even if you return child to play with it, child will die to it's own wrath trigger.

Worm harvest makes me almost unhittable on the ground, as does Maze of Ith and Kor Haven with Deserted Temple.
I really, really, dont want to play infinite combos in this deck. I try to keep only 1 deck in my collection that goes infinite unless its a 5 piece combo.

I do wish however there was another card I could depend on like I do LFTL, I dont see it happening anytime soon tho.

Im looking to possibly add Sun Titan for easier enchantment recursion, Boseiju, Who Shelters All and Cavern of Souls for counterspell protection, Bojuka Bog- I dont know why this isnt already in here.

Im considering cutting some of the nonwhite duals for more various utility lands. Possibly manlands or token making lands, so I can apply pressure early game against control decks.

You desperately need something to protect your yard. A first turn Leyline of the Void will wreck you silly.

No Crop Rotation?

Also consider Oblivion Stone in case Child gets tucked/blown up too much.

I feel like Humility/Topor Orb/Null Rod would be decent. You would need to change a few things, but it is definitely something to try.

There really isnt too much too use to protect the yard.

Leyline of Sanctity might be playable.

I put in All is Dust, Oblivion Stone, and Cyclonic Rift as ways to get around leyline of the void and just an extra reset button.
Stone is recurrable, AisD lets crucible and horn stick around, and Rift can respond to alpha strikes or bounce early threats.

Crop rotation and scapeshift are slightly underwhelming. Generally it isnt lands that you need to tutor for but the things that let you accelerate them out.

Ill update the OP to what my current list is tonight.
They key is keeping the land count as high as possible.

Really cool deck. One of the best land based 5 color control decks I've seen.

It's too bad you can't add too many more permanents to the build. The general sort of nullifies cards that protect the graveyard. Does anyone know an instant speed way to return cards from the graveyard?

Quote from XeroxedFool

Does anyone know an instant speed way to return cards from the graveyard?

• Faith's Reward
  
• Elixir of Immortality
  
• Reclaim
  
• Second Sunrise
  

Valakut and Prismatic Omen to combo with your Manabond.

Quote from XeroxedFool

Really cool deck. One of the best land based 5 color control decks I've seen.

It's too bad you can't add too many more permanents to the build. The general sort of nullifies cards that protect the graveyard. Does anyone know an instant speed way to return cards from the graveyard?

The best way is to just keep a cycle land in hand to dredge loam in response.
Ive had more than 1/2 of the deck exiled before and still pulled out a in before, its just ROUGH. Its why the deck runs so many different win conditions.

Ive thought about adding Reveilark and Karmic Guide to be able to keep child on the table with Loyal Retainers all the time, but it seems possibly overly redundant.
Or maybe Sun Titan and Saffi Eriksdotter...


The other option is to run Riftsweeper to retrieve our RFG'd goodies.

Faith's Reward might actually be a pretty good for looping child with witness out.

Sadistic Sacrament or its ilk might be the only 'real' answer to GY hate.

I dont know why I didnt think about the manabond/valakut combo.
Prismatic Omen is just hard to keep on the board.
Generally speaking, unless I have manabond, crucible, or horn of greed on the board I'll aggressively wipe the board every turn to keep my opponents from stabilizing/getting any kind of a foothold.

Prismatic Omen would probably be a lot more playable if Sun Titan was in the mix to recurr it.