This is my take on a Voltron build based on what I have available for cards at the moment. I have plans to make it an extra combat, extra turn, savage beatdown deck....but I do not yet have the cards to do so.
This is the current build as of 12/16/16.
The game plan is to ramp land and get the commander, Yidris out as soon as possible and begin swinging, using a variety of pump/protection spells to increase the amount of commander damage. Cascade into more support spells and repeat. I hope to be able to continue to build and shape the deck into a mean multiplayer beat down machine.
I appreciate any and all suggestions.
Thanks for looking.
Removed the following cards from the original deck list:
[card]
1 Exquisite Firecraft
1 Flameshadow Conjuring
1 Braid of Fire
1 Damnable Pact
1 Kami of the Crecent Moon
1 Howl of the Horde
1 Primal Rage
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Fated Conflagration
1 Future Sight
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Barren Moor
1 Hypersonic Dragon
1 Izzet Chronarch
1 Insidious Will
1 Reverberate
1 Twincast
1 Dualcaster Mage
1 Izzet Guildmage
1 Demonspine Whip
1 Keeper of the Keys
1 Kaseto, Orochi Archmage
1 Woodcutter's Grit
1 Undying Evil
1 Neurok Invisimancer
1 Unnatural Endurance
1 Rush of Vitality
1 Bident of Thassa
[/card]
I assume that you are new to the format since you stated that EDH just took off recently at your LGS? Also, what commanders are you losing to when you play?
Here are some general things I noticed while looking at your decklist:
1) You have some cards that are terrible to cascade into (X spells and cards that copy spells). X has to be 0 of any spell you cascade into.
2) Since you are in green, you could replace your mana rocks with green ramp spells to help protect yourself against the possibility of your mana rocks being blow up.
3) There is little to no draw power in the deck. I've found while playing Yidris that I am always wanting more cards to fuel his shenanigans.
4) Overall, your deck seems to lack focus. There are quite a few cards that dont further your voltron gameplan and/or synergize well. Like Kami of the Crescent Moon or Braid of Fire. Blue has much better draw options than the kami and you have one red spell that can use the mana generated by Braid of Fire during the upkeep.
I did take a look at those pages.
I like the idea of having double combat steps and extra turns.
1x Temporal Mastery
1x Temporal Trespass
1x Time Warp
1x Walk the Aeons
1x Aggravated Assault
1x Hellkite Charger
1x Relentless Assault
1x Savage Beating
1x Seize the Day
1x World at War
1x Thassa, God of the Sea
1x Scourge of the Throne
1x Distortion Strike
1x Ponder
1x Preordain
1x Brainstorm
1x Fireshrieker
1x Pongify
1x Serum Visions
1x Read the Bones
1x Beast Within
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Tricks of the Trade
1x Talisman of Dominance
1x Talisman of Indulgance
1x Talisman of Impulse
I saw the above cards and though I may work towards obtaining them, and placing them in the deck.
I will tweak a bit tomorrow based on the suggestions and update it. I misread Braid of Fire, and thought the mana stayed, so that is why it is in there. Kami was in there for extra draw power.
The decks I have been losing too are just so much faster then mine, I want it to be able to set up in a matter of a few turns. Most of the players have very well tuned decks that are lightning quick, and are often doing things turn 3 or 4 and knocking me out by turn 6 or 7 when I am just starting to do what stuff.
My goal would be to make the deck as aggressive as possible.
Hi MagicMasterJr! Welcome to commander, and I hope you're having fun despite getting slaughtered at your lgs
You've got a protection/evasion plan that seems decent, which tells me that a central piece of your game plan is smash with Yidris, cast spells and get value off cascade. I imagine that this is why you have your X-spells and copy spells. Smash with Yidris, cast Villainous Wealth with X=10, and cascade into Twincast. Seems good.
But think about this: you're only running 11 instants/sorceries, 4 are copy spells and 4 are X spells. The "cast X spell and cascade into copy spells" plan is extremely fragile with those numbers. And when you cascade from big creatures into Reverberate or Rolling Thunder, then you didn't get any value off your cascade. It just ends up being a wasted opportunity.
I'd consider running spells that have some kind of utility both in hand as well as when you flip them as part of a cascade trigger. Cryptic Command and Mystic Confluence come to mind. I would also consider running some of the sick delve spells, like Treasure Cruise, Dig through Time, etc. You can often cast these at a severely reduced cost, plus you have an opportunity to cascade into something very big.
Looking at your creatures, you could consider adding some that have some kind enters-the-battlefield effect. Rune-Scarred Demon, for example, let's you Demonic Tutor while also enabling a big cascade. Reclamation Sage kills an annoying artifact or enchantment, while Bane of Progress destroys all artifacts and enchantments and leaves you with a big threat. These are just a few ideas.
-I don't like Rashmi unless you also have many instants for CA on other ppl's turns so that she becomes the instance of CA.
-I would not play any X Spells, will be a bummer when they are cascaded into.
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above posters make great points, I was gonna recommend similar.
Use advanced gatherer. get good at filtering. take the card you want more of, find its ORACLE text and use keywords from there to find similar cards. This will help you tons.
For me:
The only green ramp I have is far wanderings, sick card. I went with more rocks instead. I think somewhere along the line I thought I'd run MLD. It has worked out. This allows me to play minimal green and grixis. I play most red. Many free red spells that kill creatures. I can use before attack without using mana to clear a path for Yidris or after and get sick value with free spells and cascade. Submerge into decimate followed by snuff out into frantic search into..YIDRIS ROCKS!
Some form of graveyard to library recursion has been incredible. I need more I can tell. I need noxious revival (using reclaim for now, may keep both). Looking for a spot for conjurer's bauble. Maybe gaea's blessing or similar.
See, with the free spells into free spells into rocks and removal I start to run out of cascadable targets quicker than you'd think. I also run out of cards and mana, so multiple uses of Lotus Bloom, Ancestral Vision, and Wheel of Fate has been awesome.
The problem I have with Yidris is that I have no way of closing out besides Voltron. The deck is a control deck (no counterspells) that runs loads of cheap removal. But I can never quite get everyone. I run into this problem with Tasigur control as well.
Good luck, post an updated list with the obvious cards removed.
Using multiple combat steps like Fury of the Horde and my personal fave, Sieze the Day not only enables more cascades but will help you kill opponents much more efficiently. I also have to give a nod to Xenagos, God of Revels for boosting attack power (it triggers every attack phase so...these kind of things will help out big if you want to smash faces with Yidris.
I dont seem to have much destruction cards, I have a few cards that can destroy Artifacts or Enchantments in the green colors, but not much anywhere else. I have a lot of return to the hand cards that are cheap to cast, I was thinking this could be helpful. I was considering putting in Isochron Scepter to copy either a bounce spell, or a pump spell.
If I can recall, most of the other players have lots of mass removal and spot removal so I was not sure how that would work out though.
-I don't like Rashmi unless you also have many instants for CA on other ppl's turns so that she becomes the instance of CA.
-I would not play any X Spells, will be a bummer when they are cascaded into.
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above posters make great points, I was gonna recommend similar.
Use advanced gatherer. get good at filtering. take the card you want more of, find its ORACLE text and use keywords from there to find similar cards. This will help you tons.
For me:
The only green ramp I have is far wanderings, sick card. I went with more rocks instead. I think somewhere along the line I thought I'd run MLD. It has worked out. This allows me to play minimal green and grixis. I play most red. Many free red spells that kill creatures. I can use before attack without using mana to clear a path for Yidris or after and get sick value with free spells and cascade. Submerge into decimate followed by snuff out into frantic search into..YIDRIS ROCKS!
Some form of graveyard to library recursion has been incredible. I need more I can tell. I need noxious revival (using reclaim for now, may keep both). Looking for a spot for conjurer's bauble. Maybe gaea's blessing or similar.
See, with the free spells into free spells into rocks and removal I start to run out of cascadable targets quicker than you'd think. I also run out of cards and mana, so multiple uses of Lotus Bloom, Ancestral Vision, and Wheel of Fate has been awesome.
The problem I have with Yidris is that I have no way of closing out besides Voltron. The deck is a control deck (no counterspells) that runs loads of cheap removal. But I can never quite get everyone. I run into this problem with Tasigur control as well.
Good luck, post an updated list with the obvious cards removed.
Thank you for the suggestions. I have updated the list with the cards I have available to me at the moment.
Please take a look and let me know if it looks any better. The mana is what I am having trouble with now, I can never quite have the mana I need early enough....
1 Blossoming Defense - instant speed pumps and protection
1 Slip Through Space - cantrips and 1CMC
1 Artful Dodge - flashback is good
1 Unnatural Endurance - same as below. granting hexproof is generally best here. ppl will be using instants to target yidris before/during combat.
1 Rush of Vitality -lifelink? who cares? not Yidris. and pathing an indestructible feels great, so get rdy.
1 Veilstone Amulet - interesting, good idea, i haven't counted your instants.
1 Mask of Avacyn - good, expensive equip but i love to use in more casual games
1 Trailblazer's Boots - I've never cared for this boot
1 Wispersilk Cloak - good but then you cant target with your unblockable pumps
1 Keeper of the Keys - CMC too high
1 Kaseto, Orochi Archmage - not worth it. you dont get pumps and you have better to make unblockable
1 Woodcutter's Grit - terrible
1 Undying Evil - good, but see comments below
1 Neurok Invisimancer -terrible
You have way too many of these effects. Even the better ones should be cut. The reason is that you will be kicking yourself every time you cascade into one of these. Do you really want to be regenerating yidris or giving him hexproof after gambling for something good from a higher CMC? You want every spell to matter. Every spell needs to do something. Instead of giving Yidris unblockability, why not just clear the path with removal? At least when you cascade into more removal it won't be dead. And remember that you just need to connect to some player. After that you can target alpha with your cascading spells of death.
Demonspine Whip - you wanna tap out before combat?
Insidious Will - you will hate cascading into this off a non instant/sorcery
Reverberate
Twincast
Dualcaster Mage
Izzet Guildmage
in fact all these I would cut. you dont run enough instants and sorceries. you will play a creature for 3CMC and cascade into twincast and it's gonna piss you off. I could def. see the merit if you went all out inst/sorc.
The recycle package is nice though. cascading into spells that give you your old spells back feels great.
Bident of Thassa - not good here. need more evasive guys connecting.
Diminish - wth -- cmon man, i think shock is better than this -- but srsly, where is lightning bolt?
All in all, the glaring issues are the pumps you have in the first section and the copy spells. I would add way more removal. cheap removal. you want to clear a path for yidris to connect. You don't run many creatures so I would add red board sweeps that deal 2-3 damage. pyroclasm goes a long way. anger of the gods. etc. You will kill utility creatures and token, all which would have been thrown in Yidris' path.
I added in these cards as replacements, after making some trades. It kind of changes the way the deck is run, but it seemed to have some better opening hands. You were right about whiffing a cascade to pump spells and copy stuff after the fact. It got me a few times and was unfortunate. These cards seems to do better and help out more then unblockable and pump/copy does.
I found after playing games that I often was looking for creature removal and that sometimes I was having bad hands or needed to refresh the game or board state a bit, so the added cards to address the issues I saw. I plaed about 9 games before making the changes. I have not had a chance to play any games with the changes as they are now.
Comments? Should some cards go back in? or do others seem lackluster?
The changes look to be great. Let us know how it plays out.
The last three land in your list are no bueno. CIPT does not justify the amt of black mana crypt could ever produce. And the last two colorless lands are in antithesis.
two cheap cards off the top of my head you could use are Brainstorm and Snuff Out, oh and Contagion if you think you have enough black.
find a big table and create a 2x6, 3x6 or whatever matrix of cards whereby each column is CMC (i merge 0 and 1 and have 6+) and each row are related cards that serve a similar function.
Then I group by card quality (scry, draw, tutor), mana production (rocks, ramps, doublers), removal (if its a control deck with both counter spells and typical removal then I'll delineate.), utility (bounce (some decks that's removal (derevi, narset, etc), hexproof'ing, pro color'ing, untapping), recursion (which sometimes gets rolled into card quality or utility, depending on context.).
This method of laying it out was very useful for Yidris because you clearly saw what you were going to cascade into. You can then ask if you really want that and make the appropriate changes depending on your strategy. Manipulate Fate was added for that reason. Sometimes I just take three lands but other times I can remove what I don't want to cascade into. For instance, you have just one spell with zero CMC. So when you cast anything with 1CMC you will hit it, and since Wheel of Fate is that card, you will lose what else is in your hand. For this reason I even considered Selective Memory. There;s gotta be a combo there somewhere!
Good input, I traded for a few more cards that may be helpful to the deck. I just need to take a look at everything and revamp it. Ill be playing it tomorrow afternoon for sure and will report back.
Play tested a little bit and found that I ran into an issue with not having enough green mana, so I have made some adjustments for that. I also was able to get a Sword of Light and Shadow for more recycling and a World at War for some repeated combat steps.
Thunderblade Charge will not let you cascade. You will not have played it from your hand, which cascade requires in order to trigger.
39 lands seems high? Your build has a higher curve so maybe, but even then, you could replace 2-3 those with 2 mana rocks. Talismans if you can get them. If you don't wanna go more rocks then have you thought about Manamorphose or Turnabout?
I traded for Yidris as soon as I saw him and started researching and brewing some ideas. Here is the beginning of my build:
1 Yidris, Maelstom Wielder
Protection/Unblockable Package:
1 Blossoming Defense
1 Slip Through Space
1 Artful Dodge
1 Veilstone Amulet
1 Mask of Avacyn
1 Trailblazer's Boots
1 Whispersilk Cloak
Equipment Package:
1 Umezawa's Jitte
Tutors:
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Beseech the Queen
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
Mana Rocks/Ramp:
1 Simic Signet
1 Izzet Signet
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Golgari Signet
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Chromatic Lanturn
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Sol Ring
1 Frontier Seige
1 Rattleclaw Mystic
1 Quirion Explorer
1 Mina and Denn, Wildborn
1 Burgeoning
1 Peregrine Drake
Enchantments:
1 Rage Reflection
1 Sultai Ascendancy
1 Fevered Visions
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
Recycle Package:
1 Greenwarden of Murasa
1 Eternal Witness
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Additional Cascade:
1 Shardless Agent
1 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Etherium-Horn Sorcerer
Support Package:
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Gamekeeper
1 Seize the Day
1 Part the Waterveil
1 Vial Smasher the Fierce
Draw Package:
1 Think Twice
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Divination
1 Preordain
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Wheel of Fate
Creature Removal:
1 Man-o'-War
1 Diminish
1 Rapid Hybridization
1 Gilt of Tusks
1 Devistation Tide
1 Decimate
1 Ruinous Path
1 Dreadbore
1 Chaos Warp
1 Volcanic Vision
Land:
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Temple of Malady
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Sulfurous Springs
1 Izzet Guildgate
1 Stillwater Cliffs
1 Wandering Fumarole
1 Underground River
1 Choked Estuary
1 Darkwater Catacombs
1 Sunken Hallow
1 Breeding Pool
1 Lumbering Falls
1 Botanical Sanctum
1 Cinder Glade
1 Temple of Abandon
1 Game Trail
1 Ash Barrens
1 Frontier Bivouac
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Opulent Palace
1 Command Beacon
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Mana Confluence
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Shadowblood Ridge
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
7 Swamp
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Mountain
This is my take on a Voltron build based on what I have available for cards at the moment. I have plans to make it an extra combat, extra turn, savage beatdown deck....but I do not yet have the cards to do so.
This is the current build as of 12/16/16.
The game plan is to ramp land and get the commander, Yidris out as soon as possible and begin swinging, using a variety of pump/protection spells to increase the amount of commander damage. Cascade into more support spells and repeat. I hope to be able to continue to build and shape the deck into a mean multiplayer beat down machine.
I appreciate any and all suggestions.
Thanks for looking.
Removed the following cards from the original deck list:
[card]
1 Exquisite Firecraft
1 Flameshadow Conjuring
1 Braid of Fire
1 Damnable Pact
1 Kami of the Crecent Moon
1 Howl of the Horde
1 Primal Rage
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Fated Conflagration
1 Future Sight
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Barren Moor
1 Hypersonic Dragon
1 Izzet Chronarch
1 Insidious Will
1 Reverberate
1 Twincast
1 Dualcaster Mage
1 Izzet Guildmage
1 Demonspine Whip
1 Keeper of the Keys
1 Kaseto, Orochi Archmage
1 Woodcutter's Grit
1 Undying Evil
1 Neurok Invisimancer
1 Unnatural Endurance
1 Rush of Vitality
1 Bident of Thassa
[/card]
Here are some general things I noticed while looking at your decklist:
1) You have some cards that are terrible to cascade into (X spells and cards that copy spells). X has to be 0 of any spell you cascade into.
2) Since you are in green, you could replace your mana rocks with green ramp spells to help protect yourself against the possibility of your mana rocks being blow up.
3) There is little to no draw power in the deck. I've found while playing Yidris that I am always wanting more cards to fuel his shenanigans.
4) Overall, your deck seems to lack focus. There are quite a few cards that dont further your voltron gameplan and/or synergize well. Like Kami of the Crescent Moon or Braid of Fire. Blue has much better draw options than the kami and you have one red spell that can use the mana generated by Braid of Fire during the upkeep.
Here is a link to a Yidris thread that is up to six pages. It might help you come up with some ideas or ways to construct your deck.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/761216-lets-build-with-yidris-maelstrom-weilder
The Mimeoplasm || Karador, Ghost Chieftain
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher || Vial Smasher/Tymna Group Slug
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief || Talrand, Sky Summoner
Yidris - Unblockable Saboteurs || Kiki-Jiki, ETB breaker
Kess, Dissident Mage
I like the idea of having double combat steps and extra turns.
1x Temporal Mastery
1x Temporal Trespass
1x Time Warp
1x Walk the Aeons
1x Aggravated Assault
1x Hellkite Charger
1x Relentless Assault
1x Savage Beating
1x Seize the Day
1x World at War
1x Thassa, God of the Sea
1x Scourge of the Throne
1x Distortion Strike
1x Ponder
1x Preordain
1x Brainstorm
1x Fireshrieker
1x Pongify
1x Serum Visions
1x Read the Bones
1x Beast Within
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Tricks of the Trade
1x Talisman of Dominance
1x Talisman of Indulgance
1x Talisman of Impulse
I saw the above cards and though I may work towards obtaining them, and placing them in the deck.
I will tweak a bit tomorrow based on the suggestions and update it. I misread Braid of Fire, and thought the mana stayed, so that is why it is in there. Kami was in there for extra draw power.
The decks I have been losing too are just so much faster then mine, I want it to be able to set up in a matter of a few turns. Most of the players have very well tuned decks that are lightning quick, and are often doing things turn 3 or 4 and knocking me out by turn 6 or 7 when I am just starting to do what stuff.
My goal would be to make the deck as aggressive as possible.
Thanks for the suggestions.
You've got a protection/evasion plan that seems decent, which tells me that a central piece of your game plan is smash with Yidris, cast spells and get value off cascade. I imagine that this is why you have your X-spells and copy spells. Smash with Yidris, cast Villainous Wealth with X=10, and cascade into Twincast. Seems good.
But think about this: you're only running 11 instants/sorceries, 4 are copy spells and 4 are X spells. The "cast X spell and cascade into copy spells" plan is extremely fragile with those numbers. And when you cascade from big creatures into Reverberate or Rolling Thunder, then you didn't get any value off your cascade. It just ends up being a wasted opportunity.
I'd consider running spells that have some kind of utility both in hand as well as when you flip them as part of a cascade trigger. Cryptic Command and Mystic Confluence come to mind. I would also consider running some of the sick delve spells, like Treasure Cruise, Dig through Time, etc. You can often cast these at a severely reduced cost, plus you have an opportunity to cascade into something very big.
Looking at your creatures, you could consider adding some that have some kind enters-the-battlefield effect. Rune-Scarred Demon, for example, let's you Demonic Tutor while also enabling a big cascade. Reclamation Sage kills an annoying artifact or enchantment, while Bane of Progress destroys all artifacts and enchantments and leaves you with a big threat. These are just a few ideas.
Also: run Fact or Fiction
Blue lives don't matter in the slightest.
-I would not play any X Spells, will be a bummer when they are cascaded into.
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above posters make great points, I was gonna recommend similar.
Use advanced gatherer. get good at filtering. take the card you want more of, find its ORACLE text and use keywords from there to find similar cards. This will help you tons.
For me:
The only green ramp I have is far wanderings, sick card. I went with more rocks instead. I think somewhere along the line I thought I'd run MLD. It has worked out. This allows me to play minimal green and grixis. I play most red. Many free red spells that kill creatures. I can use before attack without using mana to clear a path for Yidris or after and get sick value with free spells and cascade. Submerge into decimate followed by snuff out into frantic search into..YIDRIS ROCKS!
Some form of graveyard to library recursion has been incredible. I need more I can tell. I need noxious revival (using reclaim for now, may keep both). Looking for a spot for conjurer's bauble. Maybe gaea's blessing or similar.
See, with the free spells into free spells into rocks and removal I start to run out of cascadable targets quicker than you'd think. I also run out of cards and mana, so multiple uses of Lotus Bloom, Ancestral Vision, and Wheel of Fate has been awesome.
The problem I have with Yidris is that I have no way of closing out besides Voltron. The deck is a control deck (no counterspells) that runs loads of cheap removal. But I can never quite get everyone. I run into this problem with Tasigur control as well.
Good luck, post an updated list with the obvious cards removed.
The following adjustments I have made already:
- Maga, Traitor to Mortals
- Rolling Thunder
- Lavalance
+ Woodcutters Grit
+ Treasure Cruise
+ Eternal Witness
I looked through my binders and found I do not have many of the cards you all suggested.
Of them, these appeared to be useful or could be useful.
What do you guys think of some of them?
I dont seem to have much destruction cards, I have a few cards that can destroy Artifacts or Enchantments in the green colors, but not much anywhere else. I have a lot of return to the hand cards that are cheap to cast, I was thinking this could be helpful. I was considering putting in Isochron Scepter to copy either a bounce spell, or a pump spell.
If I can recall, most of the other players have lots of mass removal and spot removal so I was not sure how that would work out though.
Thank you for the suggestions. I have updated the list with the cards I have available to me at the moment.
Please take a look and let me know if it looks any better. The mana is what I am having trouble with now, I can never quite have the mana I need early enough....
1 Slip Through Space - cantrips and 1CMC
1 Artful Dodge - flashback is good
1 Unnatural Endurance - same as below. granting hexproof is generally best here. ppl will be using instants to target yidris before/during combat.
1 Rush of Vitality -lifelink? who cares? not Yidris. and pathing an indestructible feels great, so get rdy.
1 Veilstone Amulet - interesting, good idea, i haven't counted your instants.
1 Mask of Avacyn - good, expensive equip but i love to use in more casual games
1 Trailblazer's Boots - I've never cared for this boot
1 Wispersilk Cloak - good but then you cant target with your unblockable pumps
1 Keeper of the Keys - CMC too high
1 Kaseto, Orochi Archmage - not worth it. you dont get pumps and you have better to make unblockable
1 Woodcutter's Grit - terrible
1 Undying Evil - good, but see comments below
1 Neurok Invisimancer -terrible
You have way too many of these effects. Even the better ones should be cut. The reason is that you will be kicking yourself every time you cascade into one of these. Do you really want to be regenerating yidris or giving him hexproof after gambling for something good from a higher CMC? You want every spell to matter. Every spell needs to do something. Instead of giving Yidris unblockability, why not just clear the path with removal? At least when you cascade into more removal it won't be dead. And remember that you just need to connect to some player. After that you can target alpha with your cascading spells of death.
Demonspine Whip - you wanna tap out before combat?
Insidious Will - you will hate cascading into this off a non instant/sorcery
Reverberate
Twincast
Dualcaster Mage
Izzet Guildmage
in fact all these I would cut. you dont run enough instants and sorceries. you will play a creature for 3CMC and cascade into twincast and it's gonna piss you off. I could def. see the merit if you went all out inst/sorc.
The recycle package is nice though. cascading into spells that give you your old spells back feels great.
Bident of Thassa - not good here. need more evasive guys connecting.
Diminish - wth
All in all, the glaring issues are the pumps you have in the first section and the copy spells. I would add way more removal. cheap removal. you want to clear a path for yidris to connect. You don't run many creatures so I would add red board sweeps that deal 2-3 damage. pyroclasm goes a long way. anger of the gods. etc. You will kill utility creatures and token, all which would have been thrown in Yidris' path.
Good luck!
The ones I left are pretty good and can be considered.
I added in these cards as replacements, after making some trades. It kind of changes the way the deck is run, but it seemed to have some better opening hands. You were right about whiffing a cascade to pump spells and copy stuff after the fact. It got me a few times and was unfortunate. These cards seems to do better and help out more then unblockable and pump/copy does.
I found after playing games that I often was looking for creature removal and that sometimes I was having bad hands or needed to refresh the game or board state a bit, so the added cards to address the issues I saw. I plaed about 9 games before making the changes. I have not had a chance to play any games with the changes as they are now.
Comments? Should some cards go back in? or do others seem lackluster?
The last three land in your list are no bueno. CIPT does not justify the amt of black mana crypt could ever produce. And the last two colorless lands are in antithesis.
two cheap cards off the top of my head you could use are Brainstorm and Snuff Out, oh and Contagion if you think you have enough black.
Then I group by card quality (scry, draw, tutor), mana production (rocks, ramps, doublers), removal (if its a control deck with both counter spells and typical removal then I'll delineate.), utility (bounce (some decks that's removal (derevi, narset, etc), hexproof'ing, pro color'ing, untapping), recursion (which sometimes gets rolled into card quality or utility, depending on context.).
This method of laying it out was very useful for Yidris because you clearly saw what you were going to cascade into. You can then ask if you really want that and make the appropriate changes depending on your strategy. Manipulate Fate was added for that reason. Sometimes I just take three lands but other times I can remove what I don't want to cascade into. For instance, you have just one spell with zero CMC. So when you cast anything with 1CMC you will hit it, and since Wheel of Fate is that card, you will lose what else is in your hand. For this reason I even considered Selective Memory. There;s gotta be a combo there somewhere!
The following changes have been made:
Removed:
Added:
I have to find one more card to remove, I think it will be the Sea-Gate Wreckage. I have not decided yet if 39 lands would be fine or not....
39 lands seems high? Your build has a higher curve so maybe, but even then, you could replace 2-3 those with 2 mana rocks. Talismans if you can get them. If you don't wanna go more rocks then have you thought about Manamorphose or Turnabout?
I did remove Thunderblade Charge, as it did not help much.