Nicol Bolas is a ruthless villain who cares only about his own nefarious schemes at the expense of his "allies". In reality, Bolas has no real allies no matter what those who align with him think. As such, they are expendable to him and he gives no real thought to their well being or even caring about their survival if their death moves him closer to his goals.
This deck is intended to put that mind set into deck form. We care about our army just enough to make it to the end of the game and be victorious with just enough support to get them to do what we need them to do. As something Bolas would do, we don't necessarily about keeping all of our Planeswalkers alive. We need to constantly evaluate whether it is worth saving a Planeswalker at risk of dying or if their death is acceptable. Very often we will need to hold back on a wrath or board clear of some sort, which allows for some planeswalkers to die, just to make sure we don't "waste" resources trying to save every planeswalker.
This deck was created out of a desire to do a couple things. To start with, a superfriends deck that wasn't Atraxa (or Green for Doubling Season) felt refreshing. I had an Atraxa deck built as soon as she was released and it was awful to play. I tried to tone down the power level and I tried to make it fun for me as well as my opponents and I wasn't very successful. I am also not a huge fan of 4 color either so it meant the deck was dismantled very soon after putting it together.
I was tempted to revisit the idea of Superfriends with the reveal of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and I realized creature Bolas would make a good general for this type of deck. Since it didn't have Doubling Season, it meant that the deck would play out as trying to have enough Planeswalkers to take over the game without the game being mostly about trying to ultimate our walkers as soon as possible. Which meant with a slower, grindier game than I experienced with Atraxa since she often just won out of nowhere and really felt more like a combo deck.
And second, I have never really explored the idea of a theme deck. Others have done things like "Art Tribal" or building around the lore of a specific general, but that kind of thing never really interested me. With Bolas though, it seemed like a cool idea (especially with the War of the Spark story) to try to build a deck around the theme of being Bolas's Army. This idea has dictated some of the playstyle or, at least, justified some of the playstyle of the deck but so far it seems to be working out exactly as I wanted it to.
Why you should play the deck
You enjoy long grindy games of Magic
You are confident in your ability to accurately assess board states
You enjoy making legitimate strategic decisions every turn
You feel creatures are overrated
You want a Superfriends deck that isn't just a race to Doubling Season
Why you shouldn’t play the deck
You don't think control can be done except with Instants and counterspells
You want to win as fast as possible
You can't stop yourself from spending resources to protect everything
You think Planeswalkers are a mistake and should not be in the game
You are impatient and can't handle your stuff dying
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice - The "default" Superfriends general. I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention her here. While her playstyle tends to be faster or more aggressive than Bolas, she is still a very good option for a Superfriends player.
Nicol Bolas - OG Bolas isn't quite as thematic since he isn't a Planeswalker but he still has good stats and a good ability. Being a 7/7 Flyer allows for blocking when needed and, if he connects for damage, can keep an opponent from trying to advance the board. If you can keep all your opponents in top deck mode, you can more easily run away with the game. 8 mana and an upkeep cost make him tough to make work though.
Overall, the focus on the deck is the Planeswalkers. A number of cards are included to make sure the deck doesn't run out of gas and a number are there for the synergy with Planeswalkers in general. We want to protect our Planeswalkers but we are fine with giving up some when needed so there is very little targeted removal beyond what our Planeswalkers give us. We want to focus on mass removal when possible.
The suite of Planeswalkers is likely ever evolving as we only have so many slots for them and we get a lot of new ones each year. Also, the ones listed in this list are certainly not the only, or necessarily the best, for every build so this can play out differently for everyone.
Lands
Duals and Fetches - This includes the ABU Duals, Shocks, Bicycle, and Tango lands. They are here for mana fixing as being some of the best ways to ensure we get our mana
City of Brass - This is a very color hungry deck and City of Brass helps a lot to ensure we get the right colors at the right time.
Command Tower - The quintessential EDH land. Should be an auto-include in basically any 3+ color deck.
Interplanar Beacon - The colorless mana hurts when trying to cast non-planeswalker spells but gains us some much needed life and fixes our mana for the bulk of our deck.
Karn's Bastion - Again, colorless can be troublesome but Proliferate on a land gives us a way to use some of our mana that we may not otherwise use each turn cycle.
Mana Confluence - Same as City of Brass in that it helps ensure we get our colors when we need them.
Creatures
Archaeomancer - The deck is not super heavy on Instants or Sorceries, but the ones we do have can be very important. This gives us a way to re-use some of those cards. Plus, this and Evacuation is a soft lock while we go off with Walkers.
Archfiend of Depravity - This is a reasonable way to keep our opponents' boards clear so we have fewer creatures we need to deal with overall. It is also a big flyer that can block and get in some incidental damage when needed.
Burnished Hart - Without green, we want to make sure we get our land drops and our colors. Burnished Hart helps with these (on top of our mana rocks).
Deepglow Skate - This is one of our few "instant-win" cards. That is, after building up a board, this can come down to immediately let us ultimate our stuff to potentially win the game on the spot. And, generally, even if we don't win, this will put us pretty far ahead where it becomes difficult for our opponent to catch up.
Flux Channeler - One of the few Proliferate cards in the deck. Proliferate is, overall, really good with Planeswalkers and this one tends to be on the more useful side since it can trigger more than once per turn.
Grave Titan - This is just a big beater that potentially creates a bunch of blockers for us. It also gives us an alternate way to win in case we are unable to get our Walkers to stick.
Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain - Since most of our spells are Legendary, she should trigger quite often which should help keep our hand full. This deck always wants to have cards in hand to ensure it never just stalls out and Jhoira can help with that.
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs - There are very few effects we can use to make it unappealing to attack our Planeswalkers. And, since we run few creatures, they can often become vulnerable. Kazuul gives our opponents something to think about when attacking us or our Walkers and, if they choose not to pay, we can get some tokens for blocking or for attacking later on.
Solemn Simulacrum - Ramp, the same as Burnished Hart but also helps us draw a card if it ever dies. We are more interested in the ramp though.
Spark Double - We run a lot of Planeswalkers (obviously) so getting a second of one of our better ones can be very helpful. Even creating an additional copy of our General (though Spark Double can't transform if he is a creature) or Jhoira can be value plays that help keep us in the game. There is almost no downside to this card and the ceiling is pretty high.
Instants
Commit // Memory - This is here mostly for the Memory half, but Commit can be invaluable in helping to protect our Planeswalkers when we need it.
Counterspell - We are still playing blue so we want to be able to answer any significant threats if we can. There isn't a good reason not to have some form of counter magic and the classic is still really good.
Crypt Incursion - This deck has a problem against swarms of creatures and can end up at a low life total. This can ensure players can't reanimate creatures en masse and, in a pinch, can just give us some much needed life in response to being attacked for lethal.
Cyclonic Rift - This is a blue deck. That should be all the justification needed for running Rift.
Dig Through Time - We want to ensure we don't stall and seeing 7 cards can help make sure we keep our plan moving. We will often have at least some cards we don't care about in our grave so Delving away 6 cards is easy. Even though we only get 2 cards, they are out of 7 which means they should be pretty good.
Disallow - More counter magic but also with the ability to stop opposing planeswalkers or any other activated or triggered abilities we need to stop.
Evacuation - Since we run very few creatures, this is almost as good as Rift (for creatures anyway). And, the creatures we do have have good ETB effects so we don't mind casting them again.
Fact or Fiction - More card selection akin to Dig Through Time. Every so often, you may only get one card but it will probably be pretty good if you are choosing that pile over the other. There are very few situations where this is a whiff and, even if it is, it gets those 5 cards out of the way.
Fuel for the Cause - Counter magic that also buffs up our Planeswalkers. It is on the high side for a counterspell but being able to put counters on anything more than 1 planeswalker makes the additional cost worth it.
Mana Drain - The best counterspell in the game. It counters spells and ramps us (for a turn). We have a high enough curve that this helps out quite a bit.
Mystical Tutor - We sometimes need a silver bullet now and Mystical Tutor can get it for us. With our other card draw, especially that on our Walkers, we can often tutor for something and cast it the same turn.
Sorceries
Blasphemous Act - Wraths are important to the deck and, while damage based wraths can be made ineffective, this one will often be cast for 1 or 2 mana which makes it a very cheap option that doesn't generally impact our board in any significant way.
Command the Dreadhorde - There are not many mass reanimation spells for Planeswalkers and this one is pretty good. It can get creatures or walkers and can get them from our opponents if we need them. Just watch your life total!
Damnation - Another very good wrath to keep our Planeswalkers safe.
Deliver Unto Evil - This is here for much the same reason Archaeomancer is: it gives us more use out of a lot of our spells but this can get us our permanent cards back. We may not always have a Bolas planeswalker but even getting the two worst cards of our chosen 4 is likely to be pretty good.
Tezzeret's Gambit - Card draw and Proliferate are very good. This should almost always be cast by paying the two life as our mana is a precious resource and we want it for whatever we draw.
The Elderspell - This has two main uses: as a kill spell against opposing Superfriends decks or just dealing with powerful Planeswalkers and sacrificing our own walkers to get another to ultimate.
Timetwister - We can sometimes run through our deck or want cards in our graveyard back. Memory and Twister both help with this. This can also be tutored up early to refill our hand if we dump our hand early
Toxic Deluge - A cheap wrath that also deals with indestructible creatures.
Wheel of Fortune - This is one that may or may not be needed. It is obviously here to give us a new hand of 7 when we need it but our card draw elsewhere is actually pretty solid. We still want one or two of these effects, but this is likely the one to cut if we need to go down on this effect.
Windfall - Another card draw spell that can help keep our hand full
Yawgmoth's Vile Offering - Another Planeswalker reanimation spell that also doubles as a removal spell. We should always be able to cast this and this can help turn the game around in the right situations.
Artifacts
Bolas's Citadel - This is on theme and gives us a way to flood the board with Planeswalkers. This can easily help us rebuild if we are behind (as long as we have the life for it). It does tend to be on the powerful side, which most free spells are, so your meta may or may not be accustomed to something like this.
Dimir Signet, Izzet Signet, Mana Crypt, Rakdos Signet, & Sol Ring - All the mana rocks. Since we are not running green, we want to have a way to ramp and to get things out faster. There is very little we have that will blow up artifacts so we don't need to worry much about accidentally destroying our own stuff. They are still susceptible to opposing artifact hate, but we are hopefully in a good position when that happens where we don't care as much about these being destroyed.
And, as a caveat, Mana Crypt can eat away at our life total pretty heavily so it is something to watch for as the game moves on.
Heart of Kiran - This is an attacker and a blocker that is cheap so it often comes down before our planeswalkers or can come down on the same turn as one without costing a lot of mana to do so. It is often preferable to take one loyalty counter from a walker to block something rather than letting that attacker deal damage to our walker. It is fairly common for this to die in a block in certain cases but sometimes it is necessary and is the difference between ultimating a planeswalker next turn and never getting to ultimate it.
Enchantments
Inexorable Tide - Repeatable Proliferate is really good and it triggers for all of our spells. If we can chain spells together, this can sometimes do the same job as Deepglow Skate to get us to our ultimates much quicker and, thus, end the game much quicker.
The Eldest Reborn - Another reanimation spell for Planeswalkers (or a creature in a pinch) that also helps control our opponents' boards and hands. It may not be as high impact as some other spells in that regard, but the first two chapters do help as we are waiting to get to Chaper 3.
Planeswalkers
Ashiok, Dream Render - Graveyards and Library searching are two things that are very prevelant in EDH. This one card helps shut them all down while being a (very slow) win condition in itself.
Dack Fayden - Sometimes filtering cards is enough to keep you moving and stealing an early Sol Ring or other artifact ramp can be very important to get you further ahead and/or set an opponent behind. The ultimate here is very rarely used as we really want the first two modes.
Jace, Architect of Thought - This is a way to protect our walkers from *some* damage. In a meta of tokens, this is likely to be even more important. His mini Fact or Fiction can also be useful but there is generally other card draw where you are really trying to get to his ultimate.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Card draw and "removal" are very good in this deck. For as powerful as Jace is in other formats, he doesn't do quite as much in EDH. But, he is still welcome in this deck for his second and third modes. His ultimate is a bonus if you can get to it but it isn't something we should be actively working towards.
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets - He is here mostly for the Draw and Scry. Bouncing creatures is also pretty relevant and, if you can get to his ultimate, it can be game over for your opponents. A bit high on the curve but has 3 very relevant abilities.
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries - This is a tough sell and is here just as card draw. The three Blue mana requirement is tough and he doesn't do much beyond card draw so he may or may not be necessary. He is in here now on a trial basis to see if just card draw is enough. There isn't likely a situation where we win with him.
Karn, Scion of Urza - Card Advantage with him is great but very often, the tokens he creates are even better. We are not a heavy artifact build in general but even without a lot of other artifacts his tokens can be game changing. And, they because even better if you do go further into including artifacts.
Liliana Vess - She is here entirely for her tutor ability. This may not be enough but she can help get to our answers when we need them and, since we have other Planeswalkers that draw cards, we can often cast that card the same turn we tutor for it.
Liliana, the Last Hope - She can kill, or slow down, one opposing creature a turn. Her biggest draw is that she comes down early and her ultimate is game breaking. But, her second ability is useless and her first isn't that great. I have gotten close to her ultimate twice and never got it off. She takes a lot of focus and resources to get her to her ultimate and I think it is more than we really want to spend so she likely isn't worth the slot. But, as her ultimate is game ending, she hasn't been cut yet.
Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God - He has 3 relevant abilities already and then being able to double up on another ability each turn is just icing on the cake. I am never disappointed to see him and he can be instrumental in closing out games or even just controlling the game as it is.
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh - Another Bolas who has great abilities. Free cards, one way or the other, is good and very often I will find myself using his -4 first to get rid of a big threat before ticking him up again to get more value out of him.
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker - A bit on the high side for mana cost, but still has 3 good abilities. However, his mana cost can be enough to warrant slotting him out to lower our curve. I happen to like him for his abilities, but he is not an auto-include by any means.
Ob Nixilis Reignited - Some of our biggest threats are, of course, creatures. Ob helps with this with being a destruction spell on a stick. And he is card draw after that. 5 mana can sometimes be a lot for a kill spell, but he is rarely unwanted.
Ral, Izzet Viceroy - This is an interesting inclusion from my experience. I like the card selection of his first ability, but his second ability is useless since we don't run enough Instants or Sorceries. However, he is the one who I have Ultimated the most often and his Emblem can be very good. We may not have a lot of spells that trigger it, but we have enough that even drawing 4-6 cards and dealing 8-12 damage over the course of the game can be enough as that damage can be pointed at creatures and the cards keep us going.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer - Since we are running almost all non-creature abilities, she will get us an additional token each time. These tokens can help swarm to attack or just act as blockers and they also beef up the tokens from Karn. She is effectively just an enchantment as it is rare to ever use her Loyalty ability.
Sorin Markov - I personally hate Sorin's second ability so Sorin is likely on the chopping for that reason. But, his ultimate is cool and his first ability can get some much needed life. Realistically though, you either play him for his second ability or you don't play him. I am still waiting for a suitable replacement though. Will Kenrith is probably a better card here.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage - Tamiyo's first ability can deal with problematic creatures and her second can (conditionally) draw us cards. Both are good, but neither are stellar. But her ultimate is really good and is worth including even if the other abilities are somewhat mediocre. This is another ultimate where it becomes tough to lose once you have the Emblem.
Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Teferi basically has 1 ability: his "Untap 4 permanents" ability. Sure, he can get us a card (like Ral can) but we almost always want to keep him around so we can untap our permanents. This allows us to ramp and gives us the opportunity to attack while keeping up blockers. Copying him with Spark Double is also a fun, and powerful, play.
Tezzeret, Artifice Master - We don't have the mass of artifacts necessary for his second abiliity to be better, but it is still good. We will sometimes get enough to be able to draw 2 cards and his first ability helps for this too. He also gives us flying blockers which are very good in this deck since that is one of the bigger weaknesses. And, again, this is an Emblem that tends to ends games. We may not be able to activate any Planeswalkers we get off of him, but just getting free planeswalkers (or anythingelse) can be game winning.
Cyclonic Rift & Evacuation - These 2 especially become very important as the game wears on because neither one really affects our board and they help keep our opponents' boards clear to prevent them from attacking into our planeswalkers.
Deepglow Skate - This allows for a quick end to the game if we have a critical mass of planeswalkers. It doesn't do much if we are behind but if we have stalled out or are trying to punch through some opposing board states, this can get us to our ultimates to end the game.
Jokulhaups, Obliterate, etc. - These cards generally work well with Planeswalkers as they don't affect them. So, you can build up a board state, blow up everything else (including lands) to make sure your opponents can't interact, and then continue ticking up your planeswalkers to get to an evential win. This is not something I enjoy, but they are legitimate inclusions for this kind of deck.
Narset, Parter of Veils - Narset works well to get us more cards in hand and works really well with our Wheels and Twisters. The latter is the main reason I didn't include it as I don't really like "lock" elements like this. But, again, she can be very good in this type of deck and can work to keep our opponents with very few cards in hand.
Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver - It would be nice to run all of the Bolas walkers, but this one is just too expensive and does very little. It is an issue with most Planeswalker deck Planeswalkers so this one was excluded even if, flavorfully, he would have made sense.
The main issue with this deck is that some planeswalkers are expensive. While the planeswalkers in the list are not set in stone and there is a lot of freedom in which are included, there aren't really alternatives for them as they are generally unique. So, beyond playing with different lands instead of duals, the budget considerations move more into choosing different walkers entirely and potentially changing up a bit of the strategy of the deck.
Main Strategy
The main strategy is to build up an army over the course of the game. Since planeswalkers are high costed, and tough to protect (at least, this many are tough to protect) we need to focus on spending our resources wisely. We need to realize that we can't just flood the board and win. We will encounter resistance and we will often have to make a decision of letting a planeswalker (or two) die at certain points of the game.
And this last point is very important. We can't protect all of our planeswalkers, especially early on. We can try to protect them but it generally a bad idea to spend removal or resources trying to save just one or two planeswalkers. We are usually better off letting them die and get new ones on the field to try again. Sometimes it is hard to just let your planeswalkers die if you usually only play a couple in your deck, but with the sheer numbers we have here, we need to be aware that some will die and we need to let them die. In fact, in some cases, you may want to throw out a walker just to let them die so our opponents use their removal on a "lesser" Planeswalker so the path is clear for a better one.
Early Game
While we are not an overly aggressive deck, we still need to play aggressively. Our early game will generally focus on trying to ramp out our general. So, we want to get a mana rock or two, cast Bolas (to get a card out of everyone's hands) and then hopefully have him around as a blocker as we start casting Planeswalkers.
He is still a 4/4 flyer so this will often be enough to protect Ral or Jace as we try to tick them up. Each turn, from turn 4-7 should be about trying to cast a planeswalker (hopefully with our general on the board) and forcing our opponents to interact. We want to get a number of planeswalkers down at this time and focus less on truly protecting them. Some may die, and some may go lower on loyalty, but that is fine.
Mid Game
Here is where we hopefully have 4+ planeswalkers so we want to start to protecting them. Any of our wraths will usually get cast around turn 8 to clear up the boards and leave our Planeswalkers intact. The next couple turns after that should be about casting a planeswalker and leaving up mana for counter magic if needed. We still want to cast Planeswalkers, but we want to start focusing on not over-extending and accepting that our opponents will really start trying to interact with our board. Casting a couple wraths here is not necessarily out of the question.
Late Game
After 12 or so turns, we really want to start putting the pressure on. We have hopefully caused our opponents to either overextend into a wrath in hopes of killing our Planeswalkers in combat or we have successfully taken control of the board with any Planeswalkers that have survived to this point.
This is where we want to have 6+ Planeswalkers and we want to keep ticking them up for value. Hopefully, there is at least one that is close to ultimating that we can fire off to really do damage to at least one opponent. We still want to keep mana up for a counter spell if possible but, otherwise, we want to be aggressive in trying to close out the game with anything we have left.
Generally, this is where Deepglow Skate will come down to end things or even using The Elderspell to sacrifice some of our weaker walkers (or ones with lower loyalty) to get an ultimate off. Generally, one of the Bolas ultimates is what we want here but there are a few that will take over, or outright win, the game.
The deck's main strength is its inevitability. That is, the ability to go long and wait out the rest of the table while they attempt to close out the game earlier. We are able to weather the early beats and use our Planeswalkers to gain us advantage as the game goes longer. If nothing else, our early walkers provide some shielding for our life total since players will be focuses mostly on those.
We are also not hindered by almost any mass removal spell. Beyond things like The Elderspell and Merciless Eviction or "destroy all" like Planar Cleansing) we can escape unharmed. While these spells are played, most spells are going to be mass removal for creatures which we don't care much about.
The deck can also be fitted to basically any meta. If you find that too many players are playing the mass removal spells that deal with Walkers, just add more counterspells. If you find players are more aggro, pack in your own, cheap mass removal spells. If certain Walkers just don't match up against other decks well, take them out and replace them with something that will. Our list is ever evolving and ever flowing and I doubt any two lists would ever look identical. Our deck is not locked into a certain list or even a specific play style by virtue of what we can do with Planeswalkers so there is an inherent freedom to the deck that allows for tinkering and experimenting as one wants to do.
Super aggro, or super fast, decks can make games tough. We are playing for the long game and we expect to lose life in the early game while we try to build a board. But, planeswalkers are expensive and wraths only do so much. If we play against a deck that is trying to win as fast as possible, especially with creatures, we will have a tough time in the early game. And, even if we don't lose right away, the hit to our life total can be significant.
In the same vein, combo can be tough to deal with. Our plan is to make our opponents focus on our board and focus on our Walkers to run them out of resources. A combo player doesn't care about us as they just need to get to a point where they feel they can combo off. While we do have counter magic for this reason, it also means that we haven't affected their resources as much as we have the other players.
As said in the Strengths section though, these issues can be mitigated with the inclusion of more specific hate cards. Even if we need to reduce the quantity of Planeswalkers, we can still be a Superfriends deck. We will just be one that has adapted to the meta.
We also need to be aware of when to protect that one walker we absolutely need to win. Generally, we are fine with most of our Walkers dying if it means others survive to carry on. But, sometimes we need to evaluate the board and make the decision to put a large number of resources into one Walker. Making you think and strategize is not necessarily a weakness, but learning the deck and learning these situations may take some time which could cause frustration in the first few games as you figure things out.
Obviously we are getting a lot of new planeswalker cards coming up in WAR and after seeing what Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God does (assuming it is a real card), I thought I would like to try my hand at another Superfriends deck with Transform-Walker Bolas at the helm. I used to have an Atraxa Superfriends deck and I really didn't like it due to a variety of factors. Being green meant Doubling Season was a big deal and, while I made sure it wasn't super easy to get to DS, it did tend to make things easier when I got to it. Deepglow Skate as similar but as a one shot that needed the walkers already out, it wasn't as a big a deal.
With creature Bolas, there is at least a theme that could be built around whereas Atraxa just didn't have that. Sure, Proliferate works great, but she wasn't really thematically linked to planeswalkers. Bolas on the other hand is a planeswalker (when transformed anyway). He doesn't have green so the game is less about getting to DS to just Ult everything and more about the build up to Ultimating walkers.
With Bolas, I envision this to be more about commanding an actual army. I want to play it as more of a controlling type of build. That is, slam a few walkers, let them do their stuff, and work to protect them as I can. Since players will inevitably go after my Walkers, I have to make decisions about who is expendable and who I need to save. It seems like a fun idea to try anyway. I don't necessarily want a ton of Walkers but I do want a fair amount. The initial list has 25+ in the main. I have a feeling a number will get cut as things go on and I work to find which ones work and which ones don't. There are a number of questionable inclusions that I stuck with mostly on the merit of one ability. There are also a number of cards I have here that are from WAR that are either just to fill out the numbers or because they seem cool and I want to try them.
So, here is the initial deck list I am working with.
I don't really want to go through the card choices too much in depth as I think most speak for themselves. Though, I am willing to discuss any specific choices I have made. I have a few Proliferate cards because they obviously work well with Walkers. I have common mana ramp and artifact ramp to make sure I can actually cast things.
I am sure I have forgotten some easy/obvious includes and I am sure there might be a few cards that really won't work out as well as I want them to. I am hoping to proxy up some of the newer cards and try it out this week.
I do know The Chain Veil is missing. This is for 2 reasons:
1) It combos easily with a few walkers and I have a feeling it might make the deck more powerful/oppressive than I really want it to be. Superfriends decks tend to be on the overpowered side due to the difficulty in interacting with them or the ease in keeping the board clear to keep them alive. Certain decks can obviously deal with them better than others, but I am not sure I want or need the card in the deck for my meta.
2) It is expensive. Right now it is about a $65 foil. It is also a card they might be willing to reprint in M20 (along with The Immortal Sun) since a lot of walkers only have 1 or 2 abilities (though that might be a bit optimistic).
On a final note, even if the new Bolas card we see isn't real, I like the idea of the deck and will end up putting whatever Bolas card they print into this deck anyway. The only major thing I might change is to remove Jace, Cunning Castaway if the real Bolas has different abilities though the token it creates is still relevant.
I played a couple games with this deck the other day. One of them I won and one I lost.
The first game basically took way to long to build a board state. For the majority of the game, I didn't have more than 2 Walkers on the board. I spent most resources trying to keep the board clear of creatures or sending walkers to their death just to give me one use out of them and using them as meat shields so I didn't take damage. The latter only worked so well as I was still losing quite a but of life. By the time I finally stabilized and got more than 2 walkers, I was at 2 life. And another player just cast Sorin Markov and dealt 2 damage to me to finish me off.
The next game went much better. I was able to keep control of the board using Ob Nixilis, Nicol Bolas, the Arisen, Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver, and a few others. A big part of this game was that I had Bolas's Citadel. That got me the 8 drop Bolas for "free" as well as one other spell. Beyond that, it basically ensured I hit my land drops which it did very well. Karn, Scion of Urza was actually instrumental in this game as it created 4 tokens which ended up being 8 power total due to my other artifacts. Dack Fayden stole a couple super important artifacts; the main one being Basilisk Collar to keep my life total high since I just had to swing with a token to gain a bunch of life.
I did get to ultimate Nicol Bolas the Arisen and killed one player that way. I then got it back with The Eldest Reborn, transformed it, and just kept up the value with it. I didn't ultimate it again since I ended up not needing to. I did get Deepglow Skate down once to help keep walkers alive. And I found Koth of the Hammer is actually really good if I use him for ramp. I don't think there is even a need to try to get his ultimate off.
A big issue with both games is that with walkers it is tough to put up a good defense right away which means I lose life pretty easily early on. Most effects stopping creatures from attacking only stop them from attacking me. I do have Smoke and Meekstone to help with this, but they may not be enough. The only other card I can see that will do well is War Tax so I think I will try to slot that in.
The other issue with life is that Bolas's Citadel takes a lot which is why I only got a couple spells off of it. I think a solution to both issues is to find a way to consistently gain life as I need to. Though, gaining life is generally Green and White's domain. I will try to search through some cards to see if I can find a way to gain life in these colors in a way that is meaningful and impactful.
Another possible solution is to try to find cards that will let me build up a small army of creatures that can be used to protect my walkers. Archetype of Imagination or even Gravity Sphere can be good to ensure things can't just fly over my blockers and then I just need to find a way to create a bunch of tokens to allow for better blocking. Again, I will have to run through the different cards to see if anything stands out as I want the CMC to be low enough to be able to get them out early.
The deck looks really neat and it's nice to see a different take from the usual 5-color mush that is superfriends.
One possible answer to your defense issues could be Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, as he can pump out blockers every time you're attacked unless your opponents want to sink a bunch of mana.
Alternatively, cards like Goblin Diplomats, Disrupt Decorum, or Maddening Imp could help to send creatures in other directions, especially if combined with War Tax and the like.
Another good blocker you could employ is Heart of Kiran as having a walker lose one counter is better than losing multiple.
I like Kazuul. That seems like a worthwhile include. It still makes blocking flyers troublesome, but acts as a Propaganda variant that potentially gives me attackers if they choose not to pay. It also kind of plays well into the idea of the deck where if an army is swinging into my planeswalkers, I can sacrifice one or two (that is, not block the creatures attacking them) to try to wittle down the opponent's creatures. 5 mana can potentially be an issue as 4 and 5 are the most common CMC's in my curve so I will usually want to be dropping Walkers at that point, but I think the utility of the card makes it worth trying.
I think Diplomats, Decorum, and Imp are a little too narrow or limited in scope. I like the Decorum the best as it ensures my walkers don't get hit by anything but that is still only for one turn cycle. I am going to try War Tax mostly because I can repeat its effect. I am not sure if the mana investment will be a problem, but I do think it is one of the better, repeatable ways to prevent my walkers from getting attacked.
Heart of Kiran is another that I thought of and maybe I am too skeptical with it, but I didn't think it did enough as a single blocker. However, as I think about it more, it does kind of handle a few things, especially early on. It comes down sooner than any walker, is cheap enough that it isn't the worst thing later on when I am trying to bring down walkers every turn, and is big enough to handle a fair amount of creatures.
Other cards I have been thinking about are Sorin Markov for the life gain and, maybe, the minus ability to put me back to 10. I really do despise the card in EDH though because it always feels bad to just set someone's life to 10. I can always avoid that ability if I want and use it only if I need to.
I am also thinking of adding in Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast. This is mostly because he is a 3 drop that spits out blockers. His -2 can be relevant but his ultimate is hit or miss since I don't run artifacts. Since it copies opponents' stuff too, it might come in handy. But, I really want the tokens for blockers.
Crypt Incursion is grave hate as well as life gain and it can be a large amount of life gain when I need it. Even hitting someone's graveyard with 6 or 7 creatures in it gets me 18 or 21 life which can be a huge swing when I need it. Druidic Satchel is ramp and life gain though both can be inconsistent. However, since the bulk of my deck is noncreatures, the 2 best options on the card are very likely to hit so I am willing to give it a try.
The next issue with the 7 includes talked about above is trying to find out what to cut. With the 2 lands from WAR, I am at 41 lands so I can probably drop that down to 39. Especially since I have 5 mana rocks. I might be able to go down to 38 but my curve is high enough that I don't want to go too low. The two lands I would cut are a Swamp and an Island. I actually have the fewest red spells, but I want to keep Mountains to help make Koth more effective.
Pirate Jace is mostly here because of his interaction with the new Nicol Bolas (and it isn't even confirmed that is a real card) but his first ability isn't all that great and his second puts him at serious risk of just dying. So, I think it is fine to just cut him for now.
Liliana is great in Modern (or, she has been in the past) but in EDH she is a bit too weak. Even her ultimate is barely a set back for people. I ultimated her against a player that had one creature and 9 lands and I got rid of a few lands. Basically, I got rid of Needle Spires and it wasn't really worth it. At best, she might be a one sided wrath.
Ugin is powerful but potentially hits my walkers as well when I want him to wrath the board. His Ultimate is great but, at 8 mana, it is just too much for mostly just bolting each turn. Plus the foil is ridiculously expensive so I have just been using my normal copy which means he just isn't as good as he could be since he is not foil
Jace, Memory Adept is really weak until he ultimates. 5 mana just to draw a card isn't really worth it. And his mill ability really doesn't do enough. Maybe with adding in Crypt Incursion, his Mill is more powerful, but it is still slow and potentially fuels graveyard strategies so I wouldn't use it all that often. His ultimate is great but, even then, I can only do so much with 20 cards and it is unlikely I can actually kill anyone by doing it.
Finally, Chandra, Flamecaller doesn't quite fit. I am not trying to be super aggressive so the tokens don't do much. Discarding my hand to draw X+1 cards can be useful, but probably not as much as I want. And her -X only goes so far. I had her in hand one time in a previous game and spending 4 counters (since that is all she had) killed 0 of the 5 creatures on board. Which meant she was basically useless. For a 6 mana walker, that is not good. Maybe if my meta ran more token strategies I could see her value but I am not sure as she is a bit slow to come down.
So, with that long winded write up, here are the changes I am thinking of for now:
I know that you chose Nicol Bolas, the Ravager as your commander, but have you thought about splashing white and going with something like Breya, Etherium Shaper for your commander? She is generally regarded as a combo commander, but I have seen people run Stax with her and I think the addition of white not only gives your Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God additional utility from other walkers, but also additional Stax effects to help keep your planeswalkers secure. You also get access to some crazy plays with Primevals' Glorious Rebirth.
It does kind of suck that I can't cast Rebirth in this deck but I really don't like 4 color decks. And I have the same problem with Breya as I do with Atraxa: the general has nothing to do with planeswalkers. While Atraxa at least works with walkers because of proliferate, Breya doesn't even have something like that.
I also don't really want to go too far into stax elements. I have a few of course because this kind of deck does need some, but there is a limit which means adding white wouldn't really give me much more I would actually want to add.
With all of that being said, I can certainly see the desire to add white as there are some good walkers and a few good support spells. It just isn't a direction I want to take this deck.
I played this the other day and it was pretty successful. I played against Karador, Animar, and Progenitus. The game started off with me being able to get to a turn 4 Angrath which was super important. I ticked him up a bunch of times so I was able to keep my opponents' hands fairly light. I got a Karn down shortly after Angrath as well which gave me a token to block with. I ticked him up once and got a Koth from it so Koth was able to give me a fair amount of mana.
It is worth nothing that I did a bit of this without access to Blue mana and the early game showed a distinct lack of blue for a while. I got my first Island when Karador used Field of Ruin on my Badlands. They actually ended up blowing up 3 of my lands but it worked out pretty well as I was able to get the necessary blue mana I needed.
Karn ended up dying so I had Koth and Angrath on the field. I cast a Blasphemous Act to clear out the board of about 4 creatures on Animar's side. I actually stole Rashmi from them first with Angrath so I could try to get a free spell of B Act. I ended up revealing a Disallow which wasn't as good as I wanted, but I needed it anyway. I cast Nicol Bolas after the Act resolved. I ended up transforming him next turn.
Karador got down a Sun Titan (which allowed for the Field of Ruin again) but it wasn't enough. I got down a Deepglow Skate, ultimated Koth (with only 2 Mountains) and I ultimated Angrath as well. 2 turns later, after Progenitus used Scapeshift to get all their guildgates and Maze's End, I ultimated Angrath again to win the game.
Deepglow Skate was huge and Nicol Bolas was actually pretty instrumental as well. I also ended up tutoring for Yawgmoth's Vile Offering off Mystical Tutor to kill Sun Titan and get back Jace the Mindsculptor. This was a big tempo swing and I went with Jace since I only had 1 card in hand. But Bolas helped that out and Dack Fayden helped once as well.
Overall, I felt the deck performed very well and I didn't see anything that stood out as needing correction. Hopefully I am just as successful during the next outing.
How much use are you getting out of Liliana, the Last Hope? I was considering her in my Bolas list but she didn't seem to have enough of an impact.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH GWSelvala and the Return to HumanityGW UWDragonlord Ojutai, Control's Elder DragonUW UBGTasigur, the God-Pharaoh's Gift to EDHUBG UBRNicol Bolas and his SuperfriendsPawnsUBR
Modern UWUW Control/Midrange/Bad JundUW WUBRGHumansWUBRG BGMidrangeBG
I haven't actually cast her yet so I can't say for certain. The main reason I wanted her is that she is cheap, she (kind of) protects my planeswalkers as I am trying to build up my board, and she is a win con that can't be removed once she does ultimate. I don't expect her to do a lot all on her own, but in conjunction with other cards, I am hoping she can be useful enough.
The main issue is what happens when she comes down later. Her ultimate is backbreaking so the longer the game goes on, the harder it is to protect her so maybe I will find that if she comes down after turn 6 (for example) she doesn't do as much. Hopefully I can play some more with the deck and actually get a game where she lands so I can see how difficult it is to get her ultimate.
The game was exceptionally slow for me and Ravos having access to Bounty Agent kind of set me back a little as I could not get Nicol Bolas to stick around. He isn't the most important element of the deck, but I want him to transform if I can. I ended up finally getting rid of it with Crypt Incursion (and gaining 6 life in the process).
There actually wasn't much for interaction in the game as everyone was kind of slow. I did get a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets to the point I could ultimate him, but he got killed before that could happen. Luckily, the Vial Smasher player didn't realize the Smasher trigger could hit Walkers so Jace survived a little longer than he should have.
Beyond that, I got down a Chandra, Torch of Defiance which got me a Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast. I also had a Rowan Kenrith that allowed me to kill off some opposing creatures. At one point, Ravos got down Razaketh, the Foulblooded at which point the board was wrathed. They were able to tutor up two cards though. They also had a Black Market that ended up with 14 counters on it. My board was kind of scary with those 3 walkers (I ticked down Daretti at one point to kill a creature) but still not terrible. Karador tutored off of Protean Hulk for a creature and got...something. I actually don't even remember what it was. What I do remember is that it was *not* something that could blow up an enchantment. As such, Ravos untapped and just cast Torment of Hailfire for X = 21 which just killed us all.
I kind of forgot about the tutoring they had done but I was super surprised that Karador left the Black Market alone which ultimately allowed the game to just end. It was pretty disappointing for it to end that way. Mostly because it wasn't like it had to end that way and the Black Market should have been blown up.
As to my deck, Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs got me a few tokens but not many. I wouldn't say it was an issue with Kazuul though as there was very little attacking going on overall. War Tax did help stop some attacks but I was very light on blue mana early on so it wasn't as useful as it could have been. I like both cards though and I think War Tax is pretty good. I don't think this game gave Kazuul the opportunity to really shine but I see the potential.
I had the dumbest game with this deck the other day. I played against Vaevictus, Freyalise, and Kira (maybe?).
I started the game with 2 lands, Sol Ring, Mystical Tutor, and Liliana of the Last Hope. Liliana came down turn 2 and I just slowly ticked her up. I ended up tutoring for a Twister effect and then realized I didn't have any in the deck. I grabbed Toxic Deluge instead and just bided my time. Unfortunately, Freyalise blew up my Sol Ring so Liliana died shortly thereafter (she was at 7 counters twice). And I missed about 37 land drops (give or take 30). I was at 2 lands for the longest time and I just struggled to be a relevant player in the game. But, because I was doing nothing, nobody paid me any attention.
On one play, Vaevictus attacked Kira with a huge Deathbringer Thoctar. They tried to stop it and I countered their spell with Fuel for the Cause and then added a counter to the Thoctor just for good measure. This killed Kira and Vaevictus now had a 22/22 Thoctar. I finally got to 5 mana and slammed an Angrath. I ticked him down fully expecting to just die from the Thoctar. Instead, they let me take him. I attacked the Freyalise player then removed all the counters to kill the Vaevictus player.
The next turn, I played a land and cast Bolas’s Citadel. This got me some free walkers. I then cast Jace the next turn and drew 3 cards (3 lands) but I put Rowan Kenrith and Deepglow Skate on top. I cast Rowan and then cast Deepglow Skate. I ultimated Rowan. I then activated Citadel and Rowan copied it so it caused Freyalise to lose 20 life total while they were at 14.
I ended up winning a game I had no business winning due to a misplay on the part of an opponent. But it was nice to actually use Bolas's Citadel and I really like that card.
I already wasn't sure if excluding Twister and Wheel effects was correct and I now think that I definitely want at least 2. Timetwister is the obvious inclusion and I might add in Wheel of Fortune. I might go with Day's Undoing but I don't like it as much for this deck since I want to be able to continue my turn after it resolves.
With the release of WAR and the way my last game with this deck went, I have decided to make a number of changes. To start with, here are the list of changes:
Angrath, the Flame-Chained - Overall, he is pretty underwhelming. The only time he has made a large impact is due to a mistake by the opponent. I just don't feel that his impact is high enough to warrant keeping.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - She isn't too bad and her ramp is decent. But, she doesn't do a lot on her own and she is kind of a victim of just needing to find space.
Cryptic Command - Triple Blue is proving to be a large enough drawback in certain situations and the main reason I wanted it was because it could tap down opponent's creatures and I don't think that is a good enough reason to keep around.
Druidic Satchel - Supposed to help with ramp and card draw mostly (the tokens were alright) but I have yet to see it and I don't think it is really necessary.
Kiora's Dambreaker - 1 time Proliferate for 6 mana is worse than I expected it to be. I think there are better things I could be doing in this slot that also lower my curve.
Koth of the Hammer - Koth was mostly here for ramp and didn't really do it all that well.
Liliana of the Dark Realms - Supposed to help with land drops and I think she might still be fine for that. But, I never saw her and I think she doesn't really do enough.
Rowan Kenrith - Her first two abilities are basically useless. The only time I get any use out of her was when I cast Deepglow Skate right after. Her Ultimate is fantastic, but it is not enough.
Thrummingbird - Dealing damage with a flyer for Proliferate isn't the hardest thing to do, but I just think this can be something better.
And the adds:
Ashiok, Dream Render - Awesome grave hate and a lock piece so people find it harder to find answers.
Command the Dreadhorde - A mass reanimation spell that can scale based on how much life I have. Going from an empty board to 5+ Walkers/creatures at minimum (hopefully) seems like fun.
Deliver Unto Evil - Since Bolas is my general, I should be able to get all 4 cards relatively consistently and even getting 2 cards isn't bad. It also gives these colors decent access to picking up any card type in the graveyard when I need it.
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries - Mainly hear for the card draw. I have a feeling he won't be good enough in the long run since his static ability will likely never matter. Though, his ultimate can be beneficial even if I don't win the game off of it.
Spark Double - Another copy of any of my walkers can be really good.
The Elderspell - Thematically it makes sense and it can help ultimate one of my walkers at the expense of my others in a worse case scenario. Hopefully there are enough other walkers that opponents control to destroy to really get massive value out of it.
Timetwister - Card draw
Wheel of Fortune Card draw
Windfall - Card draw
I am not sure when I will play this next but I hope to try out these new changes soon to see which ones work and which ones don't.
I'm building Grixis superfriends atm, so it's nice to see someone else playing around with this too.
How is Bolas at the helm? I don't own a copy personally. I'm starting with Vial Smasher the Fierce and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus as my generals at present. Partly because they're what I have, but Vial Smasher is nice disruption, and sort of plays well with walkers in that a fair number of them are reasonably costly to cast. Kraum I'm not super happy with, but he's better than Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist who's just terrible or Silas Reen, Seeker Adept who is a bit too niche for me. At the least Kraum cantrips for opponent interaction, so that's not nothing.
I'm assuming you don't have a copy of Rings of Brighthearth? Or just don't want to run it because it's grossly strong?
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer seems like it could be here too - every walker you play gives you a chump blocker, and her second ability is pure shenanigan material for ramp or utility.
How has The Eldest Reborn worked out for you? Works well with proliferate obviously, does it have enough impact to consider or is it a purely flavour inclusion?
I don't have a list up as of yet, I've still got lots of stuff to pick up from the LGS, as well as a couple of higher cost walkers I'd like to add (Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and Will Kenrith are the big tickets), but I'm pretty keen to get some feedback as to how Grixis superfriends plays as a general archetype.
I'm building Grixis superfriends atm, so it's nice to see someone else playing around with this too.
How is Bolas at the helm?
He has actually been pretty decent. Having everyone discard a card is nothing to scoff at and he is something that needs to be answered to stop him from transforming which takes a little heat off other potential targets. Being a flyer has been relevant in a fair amount of situations as a protector of my other walkers. And, of course, once he does transform, he impacts the game quite a bit. I have actually used his -4 more often than I thought I would (I expected to just grind his +2 more often than not).
I'm assuming you don't have a copy of Rings of Brighthearth? Or just don't want to run it because it's grossly strong?
I don't want to run it (though this would give me a reason to run one of my Masterpiece copies). I kind of folded on whether to include Deepglow Skate but I figured being a one-shot was fine. Rings just seems like it would be a little too over the top for what I want. I used to have a Superfriends deck with Atraxa and another person in my meta has a The Ur-Dragon Superfriends deck and I just feel those decks are less fun because they either try to win in one turn (with Doubling Season) or go out of their way to grind too much value in a single turn. In other words they seems more "combo-esque" than I like. It is why I stayed away from The Chain Veil. I think Rings is a good choice from a power and synergy standpoint though if you chose to include it.
I hadn't thought about her but that doesn't seem like a bad idea. I also play a few artifacts that would trigger her. I might have to give her a try (if I can find the room).
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer seems like it could be here too - every walker you play gives you a chump blocker, and her second ability is pure shenanigan material for ramp or utility.
I haven't looked at a lot of the new walkers in depth since there are so many. I saw a couple that stood out and I went with those. Saheeli is probably better than Daretti as Daretti is mostly in here for the tokens also (and because I have the Mythic Edition version ). I might just swap them.
How has The Eldest Reborn worked out for you? Works well with proliferate obviously, does it have enough impact to consider or is it a purely flavour inclusion?
That is a good question. I don't know that I have ever gotten it onto the field. It is here mostly because it is a good way to reanimate walkers but it also can get other creatures from people at worse. I don't have anything good or bad to say about it yet but I think the ceiling is fairly high on it and it does kind of help protect my walkers by keeping the board clear and keeping cards out of people's hands. I might try to monitor that a little more to see how much it really does when I get it down.
I don't have a list up as of yet, I've still got lots of stuff to pick up from the LGS, as well as a couple of higher cost walkers I'd like to add (Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and Will Kenrith are the big tickets), but I'm pretty keen to get some feedback as to how Grixis superfriends plays as a general archetype.
I am not sure why I don't run Will Kenrith. I know I looked at him at one point and maybe just being 6 mana hurt it. But his -2 is really good and his +2 can help protect walkers. I might give him a second look.
Overall, the deck plays amazingly (for me anyway). I was hesitant to build superfriends because it is almost overdone at this point but I thought these colors, and having Bolas at the helm, would make for more interesting, and more grindy games. Rather than just racing towards ultimates (though some support cards do speed that up) the games tend to be about resource management, giving up one walker to save another, and strategy. Which encourages you to pay attention to board states. One thing I really find interesting, and it kind of fits with the Bolas theme, is waiting to wrath the board. That is, giving up some walkers or letting them get attacked in order to get more use out of wraths. Rather than just always trying to keep the board clear to tick up walkers, you can allow for them to take hits (and some to die) to turn the tides in your favor later on.
Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like my sort of superfriends. My wife runs Atraxa, and I've encouraged her to make it as good as she can, I sort of regret it now - if you don't end her quick combatting her is often just insurmountable purely in the value she can generate. She doesn't even have a Doubling Season in the deck and it's still tough.
I'm likely to stay away from creature Bolas purely based on price - just checked and he's up to $51 NZD post WAR. Yikes. I actually haven't played partners before anyway, so it'll be interesting to see how they play out.
Rings of Brighthearth is the one of super strong legacy staples I own from prior to my first hiatus from MtG, so I feel like I ought to use it somewhere - if I trade it now I'll never see it again, and it's unlikely I'll get my money's worth from it. I'm specifically against running Monoliths with it, and hopefully I'll be able to avoid too much grossness otherwise. As it is, I definitely don't have the coin to pick up any of the other big counter boosters (Deepglow Skate, The Chain Veil (holy crap did that get expensive), Inexorable Tide), so I figure it's reasonable to include this in lieu of busting ultimates out left right and centre and just get value from abilities where I can.
I sort of feel the same way about superfriends. A lot of the games get pretty eye-rolling and stally; I wouldn't even mind if they end quickly, but a lot of the time the win con is a lockout, and the archetype is new enough that, in my experience anyway, there's not many people out there who know how to manage a walker-heavy list and win against it. Grixis is usually brutal enough to hopefully avoid the grind, at any rate. Vial Smasher immediately puts the table on a clock anyway, so there's that
One thing I really find interesting, and it kind of fits with the Bolas theme, is waiting to wrath the board. That is, giving up some walkers or letting them get attacked in order to get more use out of wraths. Rather than just always trying to keep the board clear to tick up walkers, you can allow for them to take hits (and some to die) to turn the tides in your favor later on.
That's an interesting observation. I'd always assumed you fort out as hard as you can, but this almost sounds a lot more strategic than that. I'm really looking forward to some playtime in this area, sounds like fun. Thanks again for your thoughts!
Grixis is usually brutal enough to hopefully avoid the grind, at any rate. Vial Smasher immediately puts the table on a clock anyway, so there's that
I agree that Vial Smasher, alone, can kind of help with that feeling of the game grinding to a halt. No matter what other partner you go with, I think Vial Smasher is a great choice.
That's an interesting observation. I'd always assumed you fort out as hard as you can, but this almost sounds a lot more strategic than that. I'm really looking forward to some playtime in this area, sounds like fun. Thanks again for your thoughts!
You're welcome. I found this deck to be much better (in terms of my playstyle) than I thought it would be so I am glad to see others taking an interest.
As to your comment about trying to fort out hard: that honestly might be the "right" way to run this type of deck. I do have War Tax and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs that help deflect attacks by creating Propaganda effects, but I purposely stayed away from doing too much in that space (though Grixis doesn't have much anyway that would help Walkers). That is because I don't really want the games to become these things where I sit and durdle while everyone does nothing against me. Granted, some inclusions are mostly for creature tokens to help protect walkers, but the game still "works" for everyone where they still attack, try to get through defenses, and there is a lot of back and forth. It is possible that it still isn't as fun for everyone since there is still a pretty high focus on walkers, but I haven't gotten that impression from my group.
I look forward to hearing about the way your games go if you end up creating a thread for your list.
I agree that Vial Smasher, alone, can kind of help with that feeling of the game grinding to a halt. No matter what other partner you go with, I think Vial Smasher is a great choice.
That's good to hear. I think Kraum is a reasonable partner - he's in the colours I want, but also gives me incremental draw and he has evasion. Worst comes to worst, he's a decent body to block out threats.
As to your comment about trying to fort out hard: that honestly might be the "right" way to run this type of deck. I do have War Tax and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs that help deflect attacks by creating Propaganda effects, but I purposely stayed away from doing too much in that space (though Grixis doesn't have much anyway that would help Walkers). That is because I don't really want the games to become these things where I sit and durdle while everyone does nothing against me. Granted, some inclusions are mostly for creature tokens to help protect walkers, but the game still "works" for everyone where they still attack, try to get through defenses, and there is a lot of back and forth. It is possible that it still isn't as fun for everyone since there is still a pretty high focus on walkers, but I haven't gotten that impression from my group.
That's what I'm going for too. I don't want the feeling of me meting vengeance from on high while my opponents try to storm the castle. There's gotta be some back and forth. I'm a little short on Propaganda effects, but there's a couple of options I've given myself. I'm thinking of running Efficient Construction, I've got Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs and Heart of Kiran to pick up, and a few of the walkers I'm going to run will reanimate to some extent too. It might or might not be enough, I'll probably have a full 100 in the next couple of days, and I'm definitely going to be posting a list shortly. It'll go into the random deck discussion thread, tstorm is running, too. It'll likely be more budget than what's possible, but that shouldn't matter too much - work in progress and all that.
Basically, I started off with Nicol Bolas from the Command Zone followed by Ral Zarek. Bolas was enough to protect Ral and I got his ultimate off. This allowed me to kill a variety of things that I needed to as the game wore on and kept my hand full. I then got Bolas's Citadel down shortly after that along with Teferi, Temporal Archmage and just ran away with the game. I ended up spending about 12-15 life to cast things off the top of my library and my favorite was casting a Mana Drain for free to counter someone's Atarka so I got 7 mana. That is when things really got going as I used that mana to transform Bolas and I also cast a Spark Souble off Citadel to copy Teferi so I could untap even more things.
Inexorable Tide made an appearance so I was able to keep beefing up my walkers. I stole a few things from Progenitus using Dack Fayden and Bolas, God-Pharaoh. Daretti was able to keep pumping out tokens but they didn't do a lot since they don't fly so I never blocked with them. I ended up letting a couple walkers die due to this and my Spark Double copy of Teferi went away when Progenitus cast Urza’s Ruinous Blast which hit Spark Double and Sol Ring and that was about it.
In the end, I was able to ultimate Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh to exile everything and then immediately follow it up with the ultimate from Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God to make everyone lose since no one had any creatures or planeswalkers any more.
At one point, I got Heart of Kiran down and was able to use that to protect one of my walkers. It died but even that small tempo play was enough to save my walker and give me time to deal with the attacking creature on my turn. So, while not super impactful, it shows that just having flying blockers is important for the deck.
All in all, it seemed to play exactly how I wanted with Inexorable Tide and Bolas's Citadel being the stars of the match. I did use Blasphemous Act at one point to clear the board (mostly to get rid of Vaevictus) and I had a Toxic Deluge in hand if I needed to wrath the board again. That is the one thing that I didn't have to deal with: nobody beyond Beckett Brass had a board state and that went away when I cast B. Act and nobody was able to rebuild. Progenitus had a Kefnet the Mindful that was finally able to attack because I cast Windfall to give everyone 9 cards. That is what killed a couple of my walkers but it was worth it to get a new hand as I really only had Sorin Markov in my hand I didn't want to cast him.
I also finally got The Eldest Reborn down and this was with Inexorable Tide on the field. This is actually how I got rid of Kefnet and then I just proliferated twice with the Tide, had everyone discard and I got back my Teferi that Kefnet had killed earlier. The Eldest Reborn worked out very well in that particular instance and, even without Proliferating, I think it would have been fine too just to get a Walker back a turn or two later. But being able to proliferate to get everything back right then worked out well.
I am looking at Bolas's Citadel as potentially being a bit *too* powerful for my liking. I knew that going in of course (free spells are always powerful) but it just creates this situation where it propels me so far ahead of everyone else that it becomes a bit less fun to use those free spells. I don't know if I really need to cut it as it can be dealt with fairly easily and it is 6 mana. I am going to keep an eye on it for now and see how other games go.
Sorin Markov, Clever Impersonator, Viral Drake, Contagion Clasp, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, and Jace, Architect of Thought might be on the chopping block.
I haven't felt I really need the Drake and Clasp for Proliferating and, as shown with Inexorable Tide, repeatable Proliferate can be on the annonying side. Clasp is probably the worst anyway since it only works once per turn cycle. Drake is good since it just requires mana to keep using it but I don't think I need it with Tide and Flux Channeler. And I wouldn't mind cutting down on some of the proliferate stuff anyway to make things a bit more "fair". Karn's Bastion gets a pass mostly for being a land so it doesn't really take up any room in the deck.
Sorin and Daretti aren't doing as much as I thought they would. Sorin is one of my few sources of life gain and (as I mentioned before) I really do hate his -3 ability. It would be cool to take someone's turn with him, but generally he will be a 6 mana to drain 2 and that isn't good enough. And I am finding Daretti did basically nothing during the game I had him out and he got up to 12 loyalty. There were no Artifacts anywhere I wanted to make copies of and I didn't need his -3 ability. So, I just ended up with a bunch of 1/1 tokens that couldn't block anything relevant and they couldn't attack. Now, for Daretti, I am willing to admit that the game I was playing was a bit out of the ordinary in that no one really got any creatures and the creatures that did land were flyers. But, I would rather get flying blockers to cover more situations and Daretti doesn't do that.
I do agree with toctheyounger77 that Saheeli is good and I am starting to believe that she is better than Daretti due to being able to make more than 1 token at a time. It sucks hers don't fly either which means I may not end up with either one, but I think Saheeli, in this deck, is likely the superior card as her tokens can at least attack.
Clever Impersonator is an inferior Spark Double as I can't really copy my own stuff due to the Legend Rule. I did play it in the game last night and ended up copying an opponent's Utvara Hellkite to protect my walkers, but I don't think I really need this effect since Spark Double is so much better for the way this deck functions.
And, finally, Jace is questionable. He does "draw" me cards and he does sort of protect walkers, but I saw him a couple times last night and not once was I excited to come across him. I never did cast him because I didn't need to. Not many people are playing 1 power creatures so his plus is a mild annoyance for people at best and doesn't effectively stop anything.
I am certain I will include Jhoira in this list so she will take the spot of something. As things evolve, the list of cards above will likely be the first cuts I make.
Sounds like the deck is playing out nicely, all things considered. I got my list together - very much a work in progress, but if you want to compare notes feel free to here.
I’m surprised Jace, Architect of Thought isn’t pulling weight. His ultimate is something my deck would very much like to take advantage of, purely as a way to play blowout spells and get some extra damage from Vial Smasher here and there. That being said, I get that his first two abilities are a little bland. I like the pseudo-FoF for a way to fill our yard with things to resurrect. Command the Dreadhorde and such play nicely into it.
Pleased to hear The Eldest Reborn is putting in work. I feel like it’d be nice to have a couple of ways to reuse it, but if you’re able to run through the lore counters quick enough it seems like it’s good value. As an aside it’s a great flavour point for a Bolas-themed deck too.
Regarding Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, how would Saheeli the Gifted suit as a replacement? Her thopters have a bit more value than a ground-bound defender, and her 2nd ability gives you a big boost to your curve if you’re able to lean into it. My deck is very much for artifact laden than yours, but that’s not hard to tweak, especially if you’re casting non-creature spells with Saheeli, Sublime Artificer on board.
In terms of considerations for my build, you’ve got a lot of walkers here I can’t afford, but there’s a couple I could consider for my list. How have Ob Nixilis Reignited, Ral, Izzet Viceroy and Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver worked out? They seem pretty versatile, and I like that Nixilis has a non-conditional creature destruction on him. Ral seems built for a more spellslinger build though, I wonder whether his original iteration would be preferable. I can’t afford a copy, but also wondering how Liliana, the last Hope has worked out thus far? Her emblem is nuts, but I’ve always wondered how well she scales to this format outside of that.
Sounds like the deck is playing out nicely, all things considered. I got my list together - very much a work in progress, but if you want to compare notes feel free to here.
I will check it out and see what you ended up with. Thanks for the link.
I’m surprised Jace, Architect of Thought isn’t pulling weight. His ultimate is something my deck would very much like to take advantage of, purely as a way to play blowout spells and get some extra damage from Vial Smasher here and there. That being said, I get that his first two abilities are a little bland. I like the pseudo-FoF for a way to fill our yard with things to resurrect. Command the Dreadhorde and such play nicely into it.
I guess that is my issue; his ultimate is great and is one of the bigger reasons I put him in here, but I don't care for the other two abilities. And, generally, if I am using him at all it is for the mini-FoF which gets him further from the ultimate anyway. I think I have other, better, forms of card draw that he isn't needed for that. I accept that it might be a mistake to put him on the chopping block (and I am not cutting him yet) but maybe as I play with him more I will see if anything skews him to one side or the other.
Regarding Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, how would Saheeli the Gifted suit as a replacement? Her thopters have a bit more value than a ground-bound defender, and her 2nd ability gives you a big boost to your curve if you’re able to lean into it. My deck is very much for artifact laden than yours, but that’s not hard to tweak, especially if you’re casting non-creature spells with Saheeli, Sublime Artificer on board.
I am definitely starting to think Saheeli is the better option. I likely won't put her in for a while as I am kind of waiting to see where the prices end up for the foils. Though, if I open a regular one of her (and maybe I did in the box I bought), I might slot her in sooner.
In terms of considerations for my build, you’ve got a lot of walkers here I can’t afford, but there’s a couple I could consider for my list. How have Ob Nixilis Reignited, Ral, Izzet Viceroy and Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver worked out? They seem pretty versatile, and I like that Nixilis has a non-conditional creature destruction on him. Ral seems built for a more spellslinger build though, I wonder whether his original iteration would be preferable. I can’t afford a copy, but also wondering how Liliana, the last Hope has worked out thus far? Her emblem is nuts, but I’ve always wondered how well she scales to this format outside of that.
Ob is pretty decent for the versatility. I did get him down in the game I was playing last night and he "just" drew me cards, but being able to deal with a threat is important as well. I almost got his emblem off but I won with the Bolas ultimates first.
Ral is pretty good card advantage (and also works with Command the Dreadhorde) but his minus is something I don't think I will generally use. His ultimate is pretty sweet and drew me a lot of cards and dealt with a lot of threats. I think he is worth keeping in the deck. I have 19 spells that trigger the emblem and that seemed to be enough for the game last night to get a lot of use out of him. I looked at his original card and wasn't all that impressed. I think for the 1 mana more, the new Ral is a lot better. The original is another that would basically revolve around his ultimate and even that isn't guaranteed to be that great and will likely be tough to even get to.
I was actually really close to including Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver in my list of cards above as ones that might get cut. His plus is basically useless. It is +3 so after 3 turns I can ultimate but even his ultimate is kind of underwhelming compared to everything else. His minus is probably the best ability. The main issue is that he is just mediocre I feel and mostly because he is 8 mana. The main reason I have not looked at cutting him yet is because he is still a Bolas. But I may decide that isn't important enough and end up cutting him.
Liliana is a honestly a bit tough to evaluate. Her first two abilities are kind of terrible (her second is borderline useless) but her ultimate just wins games. The problem is that she takes 5 turns to get to that ultimate so a lot of resources are needed to ensure that happens. She only kind of protects herself, but against 3 other people, someone is going to get an attack in at her. Her main appeal is being 3 mana so she comes down early which potentially allows for the ability to get to her ultimate before opponents have a good board but you are looking at turn 8 in general for that and I just can't see a situation where turn 8 rolls by and nobody has attacked into her or killed her yet without a lot of focus on keeping her alive. I don't think she is worth it but I have been close to her ultimate a couple times so it is hard to just outright cut her.
I guess that is my issue; his ultimate is great and is one of the bigger reasons I put him in here, but I don't care for the other two abilities. And, generally, if I am using him at all it is for the mini-FoF which gets him further from the ultimate anyway. I think I have other, better, forms of card draw that he isn't needed for that. I accept that it might be a mistake to put him on the chopping block (and I am not cutting him yet) but maybe as I play with him more I will see if anything skews him to one side or the other
To be fair, I have the same reservations about him. A mini FoF is a far cry from the value of Fact or Fiction. The ultimate is great in either of our shells, but I do try to make a point of not including walkers in any build purely based on ultimates - if they don’t provide value in multiple ways there’s a good chance they don’t make the cut. My big consideration at present is considering which walkers to actually add, as I’m currently at a fairly low count by comparison to your list.
Ob is pretty decent for the versatility. I did get him down in the game I was playing last night and he "just" drew me cards, but being able to deal with a threat is important as well. I almost got his emblem off but I won with the Bolas ultimates first
That’s a fairly decent endorsement, in all honesty. My take is that all of his abilities are reasonable, and while he’s not well costed to cast, he’s fairly costed. He’s got advantage, board protection and a strong ultimate, plus he’s reasonable in terms of price to pick up.
Ral is pretty good card advantage (and also works with Command the Dreadhorde) but his minus is something I don't think I will generally use. His ultimate is pretty sweet and drew me a lot of cards and dealt with a lot of threats. I think he is worth keeping in the deck. I have 19 spells that trigger the emblem and that seemed to be enough for the game last night to get a lot of use out of him. I looked at his original card and wasn't all that impressed. I think for the 1 mana more, the new Ral is a lot better. The original is another that would basically revolve around his ultimate and even that isn't guaranteed to be that great and will likely be tough to even get to.
I hear you here. I’m on the fence with either one in all honesty. There’s a fair number of instants/sorceries to theoretically include to get value from his second and third abilities, I’m just not sure they’d be worth it for any other reason. I like that he plays well into Command the Dreadhorde, and I guess his first ability is reasonable value filtering. I’ve used Azor’s Gateway in similar ways in other builds. The original Ral is pretty niche, and extra turns have a ‘feels bad’ vibe, so I get why you’d not want him here. I guess for me I’m going to really struggle to even find a Teferi, Temporal Archmage, let alone afford him, so Ral’s similar first ability to Teferi’s second makes him a consideration. I’m definitely going to be better off with Teferi, but he’s just that much harder to track down.
I was actually really close to including Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver in my list of cards above as ones that might get cut. His plus is basically useless. It is +3 so after 3 turns I can ultimate but even his ultimate is kind of underwhelming compared to everything else. His minus is probably the best ability. The main issue is that he is just mediocre I feel and mostly because he is 8 mana. The main reason I have not looked at cutting him yet is because he is still a Bolas. But I may decide that isn't important enough and end up cutting him.
Yeah, he suffers from the same overcosted, undervaluable problems that all planeswalker theme deck walkers suffer from. I guess it depends how tired you are to that theme, but he seems an obvious cut to me for any other reason. He pales in comparison to any other walker iteration of Bolas.
Liliana is a honestly a bit tough to evaluate. Her first two abilities are kind of terrible (her second is borderline useless) but her ultimate just wins games. The problem is that she takes 5 turns to get to that ultimate so a lot of resources are needed to ensure that happens. She only kind of protects herself, but against 3 other people, someone is going to get an attack in at her. Her main appeal is being 3 mana so she comes down early which potentially allows for the ability to get to her ultimate before opponents have a good board but you are looking at turn 8 in general for that and I just can't see a situation where turn 8 rolls by and nobody has attacked into her or killed her yet without a lot of focus on keeping her alive. I don't think she is worth it but I have been close to her ultimate a couple times so it is hard to just outright cut her.
Yeah I get this. Her ultimate is nuts, and it’s important to have value along your curve. I think in terms of CMC, there’s probably better inclusions at this point of the curve (Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, Saheeli Rai are my picks) but there’s undeniable value in that last ability. Purely for price alone I won’t be adding her personally. At this point in my curve I have Liliana, heretical Healer (as well as the above Saheeli’s), which has its own hoops to jump through needing to flip, but I think I can work around that. And again, her ultimate is savagely good, much like Last Hope.
I played this deck again last night and ended up winning with 6 or 7 walkers on the field, Ral's Emblem and Tamiyo's Emblem. I never even had her Emblem trigger because of how the game was going but I had a Mana Drain in hand that I would have been able to get back all the time so the game was pretty well locked down. Here are some observations and some plays that occurred in the game.
I got Ral's Emblem fairly early after being able to protect him with Toxic Deluge and Blasphemous Act. I had 2 Nicol Bolas creatures thanks to a Spark Double and both died to the Deluge. I never cast Bolas again in the game. After getting the Emblem, it triggered 2 or 3 times and that was it. It likely would have been more except for a couple other plays that made my instants and sorceries matter very little
I did land a Jace AoT and his +1 mattered basically once. The Jhoira player had a few tokens so it helped stop them from attacking but B. Act killed them the next turn anyway. So, it did matter but not by a lot. I used his mini-FoF about 3 times so I got some decent cards that way, with Bolas, Dragon-God being one of them later in the game. I never got to his Ultimate as I wanted the card draw. I am still on the fence about him but this showed he isn't terrible.
I dropped down a Dack Fayden and stole and opponent's Worn Powerstone. I never used it since they bounced it to their hand before I got to untap with it. But, I was able to use his card filtering to get rid of excess lands which kept me moving. At one point, I stole Jhoira's Unwinding Clock and then, later, their Panharmonicon. This will be important later.
I had a Bolas, Planeswalker down and slowly blew up noncreature permanents. I got to his ultimate and had the Omnath player sac and discard stuff leaving them with 3 lands. I also got down Saheeli (I swapped Daretti for her) and she pumped out 4 tokens. I never used her ability since I don't have good enough creatures. I also had a Karn that created a Construct that kept growing bigger thanks to Saheeli. I did end up dropping down a Meekstone which kept the 2 big hydras Omnath still had tapped down but also tapped down my Construct. Luckily Saheeli's tokens could still attack if I wanted.
I then dropped down a Deepglow Skate. Since I had Panharmonicon, I got two triggers so I doubled everything and then doubled everything again. Tamiyo went to 32 counters, Karn to 24, Dack went to 6, Jace went to 12, Bolas went to 16 and so on. I ended up ultimating Bolas again and having Jhoira sac and discard. And I Ultimated Jace, Unraveler of Secrets so everything my opponents cast would be countered if it was their first spell of the turn. They decided to all pack it in at this point. I realized later, I could have made a copy of Panharmonicon to get another trigger from the Skate but that was probably overkill at that point anyway.
Overall, I like the way Saheeli played and she did pretty decent. Ral's Emblem wasn't too important as I didn't cast many Instants or Sorceries but i did have a Wheel in hand along with 2 counters but I never needed to cast them since Bolas's ultimate slowed the others down a lot.
I did realize after I started that I did not put Jhoira in the deck yet and that is something I want to do. I will do that before the next time I play the deck.
Sounds like this is playing out really well at present! Glad to hear Saheeli is playing out well, I've heard really good things from tstorm82's Zedruu list too.
I will have to watch your thread to see how well Mortars and Dig Through Time work out. I also saw you had Fact or Fiction which is a card I enjoy playing as well. If those seem to be working out pretty well overall, I might actually cut down on some of the Wheel effects in my deck and go for one sided Card Advantage even though it lets me see fewer cards. Though, Dig allows me to see 7 to get the best 2 so that is definitely something.
Yeah, there's obvious reason to run Dig in my build with Vial Smasher at the helm. Fact or Fiction is just a card I love. It challenges the person playing and the person choosing, it's always fun. With Narset in my build, I'm less likely to add any wheels, as I don't want to go to feel bad.
As far Mortars goes, it's really just to make sure I have options offensively and defensively to protect my walkers.
Table of Contents
Nicol Bolas is a ruthless villain who cares only about his own nefarious schemes at the expense of his "allies". In reality, Bolas has no real allies no matter what those who align with him think. As such, they are expendable to him and he gives no real thought to their well being or even caring about their survival if their death moves him closer to his goals.
This deck is intended to put that mind set into deck form. We care about our army just enough to make it to the end of the game and be victorious with just enough support to get them to do what we need them to do. As something Bolas would do, we don't necessarily about keeping all of our Planeswalkers alive. We need to constantly evaluate whether it is worth saving a Planeswalker at risk of dying or if their death is acceptable. Very often we will need to hold back on a wrath or board clear of some sort, which allows for some planeswalkers to die, just to make sure we don't "waste" resources trying to save every planeswalker.
I was tempted to revisit the idea of Superfriends with the reveal of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and I realized creature Bolas would make a good general for this type of deck. Since it didn't have Doubling Season, it meant that the deck would play out as trying to have enough Planeswalkers to take over the game without the game being mostly about trying to ultimate our walkers as soon as possible. Which meant with a slower, grindier game than I experienced with Atraxa since she often just won out of nowhere and really felt more like a combo deck.
And second, I have never really explored the idea of a theme deck. Others have done things like "Art Tribal" or building around the lore of a specific general, but that kind of thing never really interested me. With Bolas though, it seemed like a cool idea (especially with the War of the Spark story) to try to build a deck around the theme of being Bolas's Army. This idea has dictated some of the playstyle or, at least, justified some of the playstyle of the deck but so far it seems to be working out exactly as I wanted it to.
You enjoy long grindy games of Magic
You are confident in your ability to accurately assess board states
You enjoy making legitimate strategic decisions every turn
You feel creatures are overrated
You want a Superfriends deck that isn't just a race to Doubling Season
Why you shouldn’t play the deck
You don't think control can be done except with Instants and counterspells
You want to win as fast as possible
You can't stop yourself from spending resources to protect everything
You think Planeswalkers are a mistake and should not be in the game
You are impatient and can't handle your stuff dying
1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Lands (39)
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Canyon Slough
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Fetid Pools
1 Interplanar Beacon
8 Island
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Mana Confluence
6 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
9 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Watery Grave
Instants (11)
1 Commit
1 Counterspell
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dig Through Time
1 Disallow
1 Evacuation
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Fuel for the Cause
1 Mana Drain
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Dack Fayden
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
1 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Liliana Vess
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
1 Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy
1 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
1 Sorin Markov
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Tezzeret, Artifice Master
Sorceries (11)
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Command the Dreadhorde
1 Damnation
1 Deliver Unto Evil
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 The Elderspell
1 Timetwister
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Yawgmoth's Vile Offering
1 Archaeomancer
1 Archfiend of Depravity
1 Burnished Hart
1 Deepglow Skate
1 Flux Channeler
1 Grave Titan
1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
1 Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Spark Double
Artifacts (7)
1 Bolas's Citadel
1 Dimir Signet
1 Heart of Kiran
1 Izzet Signet
1 Mana Crypt
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Sol Ring
Enchantments (2)
1 Inexorable Tide
1 The Eldest Reborn
The suite of Planeswalkers is likely ever evolving as we only have so many slots for them and we get a lot of new ones each year. Also, the ones listed in this list are certainly not the only, or necessarily the best, for every build so this can play out differently for everyone.
Lands
Creatures
Instants
Sorceries
Artifacts
Enchantments
Planeswalkers
The main strategy is to build up an army over the course of the game. Since planeswalkers are high costed, and tough to protect (at least, this many are tough to protect) we need to focus on spending our resources wisely. We need to realize that we can't just flood the board and win. We will encounter resistance and we will often have to make a decision of letting a planeswalker (or two) die at certain points of the game.
And this last point is very important. We can't protect all of our planeswalkers, especially early on. We can try to protect them but it generally a bad idea to spend removal or resources trying to save just one or two planeswalkers. We are usually better off letting them die and get new ones on the field to try again. Sometimes it is hard to just let your planeswalkers die if you usually only play a couple in your deck, but with the sheer numbers we have here, we need to be aware that some will die and we need to let them die. In fact, in some cases, you may want to throw out a walker just to let them die so our opponents use their removal on a "lesser" Planeswalker so the path is clear for a better one.
Early Game
While we are not an overly aggressive deck, we still need to play aggressively. Our early game will generally focus on trying to ramp out our general. So, we want to get a mana rock or two, cast Bolas (to get a card out of everyone's hands) and then hopefully have him around as a blocker as we start casting Planeswalkers.
He is still a 4/4 flyer so this will often be enough to protect Ral or Jace as we try to tick them up. Each turn, from turn 4-7 should be about trying to cast a planeswalker (hopefully with our general on the board) and forcing our opponents to interact. We want to get a number of planeswalkers down at this time and focus less on truly protecting them. Some may die, and some may go lower on loyalty, but that is fine.
Mid Game
Here is where we hopefully have 4+ planeswalkers so we want to start to protecting them. Any of our wraths will usually get cast around turn 8 to clear up the boards and leave our Planeswalkers intact. The next couple turns after that should be about casting a planeswalker and leaving up mana for counter magic if needed. We still want to cast Planeswalkers, but we want to start focusing on not over-extending and accepting that our opponents will really start trying to interact with our board. Casting a couple wraths here is not necessarily out of the question.
Late Game
After 12 or so turns, we really want to start putting the pressure on. We have hopefully caused our opponents to either overextend into a wrath in hopes of killing our Planeswalkers in combat or we have successfully taken control of the board with any Planeswalkers that have survived to this point.
This is where we want to have 6+ Planeswalkers and we want to keep ticking them up for value. Hopefully, there is at least one that is close to ultimating that we can fire off to really do damage to at least one opponent. We still want to keep mana up for a counter spell if possible but, otherwise, we want to be aggressive in trying to close out the game with anything we have left.
Generally, this is where Deepglow Skate will come down to end things or even using The Elderspell to sacrifice some of our weaker walkers (or ones with lower loyalty) to get an ultimate off. Generally, one of the Bolas ultimates is what we want here but there are a few that will take over, or outright win, the game.
We are also not hindered by almost any mass removal spell. Beyond things like The Elderspell and Merciless Eviction or "destroy all" like Planar Cleansing) we can escape unharmed. While these spells are played, most spells are going to be mass removal for creatures which we don't care much about.
The deck can also be fitted to basically any meta. If you find that too many players are playing the mass removal spells that deal with Walkers, just add more counterspells. If you find players are more aggro, pack in your own, cheap mass removal spells. If certain Walkers just don't match up against other decks well, take them out and replace them with something that will. Our list is ever evolving and ever flowing and I doubt any two lists would ever look identical. Our deck is not locked into a certain list or even a specific play style by virtue of what we can do with Planeswalkers so there is an inherent freedom to the deck that allows for tinkering and experimenting as one wants to do.
In the same vein, combo can be tough to deal with. Our plan is to make our opponents focus on our board and focus on our Walkers to run them out of resources. A combo player doesn't care about us as they just need to get to a point where they feel they can combo off. While we do have counter magic for this reason, it also means that we haven't affected their resources as much as we have the other players.
As said in the Strengths section though, these issues can be mitigated with the inclusion of more specific hate cards. Even if we need to reduce the quantity of Planeswalkers, we can still be a Superfriends deck. We will just be one that has adapted to the meta.
We also need to be aware of when to protect that one walker we absolutely need to win. Generally, we are fine with most of our Walkers dying if it means others survive to carry on. But, sometimes we need to evaluate the board and make the decision to put a large number of resources into one Walker. Making you think and strategize is not necessarily a weakness, but learning the deck and learning these situations may take some time which could cause frustration in the first few games as you figure things out.
Obviously we are getting a lot of new planeswalker cards coming up in WAR and after seeing what Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God does (assuming it is a real card), I thought I would like to try my hand at another Superfriends deck with Transform-Walker Bolas at the helm. I used to have an Atraxa Superfriends deck and I really didn't like it due to a variety of factors. Being green meant Doubling Season was a big deal and, while I made sure it wasn't super easy to get to DS, it did tend to make things easier when I got to it. Deepglow Skate as similar but as a one shot that needed the walkers already out, it wasn't as a big a deal.
With creature Bolas, there is at least a theme that could be built around whereas Atraxa just didn't have that. Sure, Proliferate works great, but she wasn't really thematically linked to planeswalkers. Bolas on the other hand is a planeswalker (when transformed anyway). He doesn't have green so the game is less about getting to DS to just Ult everything and more about the build up to Ultimating walkers.
With Bolas, I envision this to be more about commanding an actual army. I want to play it as more of a controlling type of build. That is, slam a few walkers, let them do their stuff, and work to protect them as I can. Since players will inevitably go after my Walkers, I have to make decisions about who is expendable and who I need to save. It seems like a fun idea to try anyway. I don't necessarily want a ton of Walkers but I do want a fair amount. The initial list has 25+ in the main. I have a feeling a number will get cut as things go on and I work to find which ones work and which ones don't. There are a number of questionable inclusions that I stuck with mostly on the merit of one ability. There are also a number of cards I have here that are from WAR that are either just to fill out the numbers or because they seem cool and I want to try them.
So, here is the initial deck list I am working with.
1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Lands
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Canyon Slough
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Fetid Pools
1 Interplanar Beacon
8 Island
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Mana Confluence
6 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
9 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Watery Grave
Artifacts
1 Bolas's Citadel
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Dimir Signet
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Heart of Kiran
1 Izzet Signet
1 Mana Crypt
1 Meekstone
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Sol Ring
1 Burnished Hart
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Deepglow Skate
1 Flux Channeler
1 Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
1 Kiora's Dambreaker
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Thrummingbird
1 Viral Drake
Instants
1 Counterspell
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Cryptic Command
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Disallow
1 Evacuation
1 Fuel for the Cause
1 Mana Drain
1 Mystical Tutor
Sorceries
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Damnation
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Yawgmoth's Vile Offering
Enchantments
1 Inexorable Tide
1 Smoke
1 The Eldest Reborn
1 War Tax
1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Dack Fayden
1 Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Liliana Vess
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
1 Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Sorin Markov
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Tezzeret, Artifice Master
I don't really want to go through the card choices too much in depth as I think most speak for themselves. Though, I am willing to discuss any specific choices I have made. I have a few Proliferate cards because they obviously work well with Walkers. I have common mana ramp and artifact ramp to make sure I can actually cast things.
I am sure I have forgotten some easy/obvious includes and I am sure there might be a few cards that really won't work out as well as I want them to. I am hoping to proxy up some of the newer cards and try it out this week.
I do know The Chain Veil is missing. This is for 2 reasons:
1) It combos easily with a few walkers and I have a feeling it might make the deck more powerful/oppressive than I really want it to be. Superfriends decks tend to be on the overpowered side due to the difficulty in interacting with them or the ease in keeping the board clear to keep them alive. Certain decks can obviously deal with them better than others, but I am not sure I want or need the card in the deck for my meta.
2) It is expensive. Right now it is about a $65 foil. It is also a card they might be willing to reprint in M20 (along with The Immortal Sun) since a lot of walkers only have 1 or 2 abilities (though that might be a bit optimistic).
On a final note, even if the new Bolas card we see isn't real, I like the idea of the deck and will end up putting whatever Bolas card they print into this deck anyway. The only major thing I might change is to remove Jace, Cunning Castaway if the real Bolas has different abilities though the token it creates is still relevant.
1 Jace, Cunning Castaway
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Chandra, Flamecaller
1 War Tax
1 Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
1 Sorin Markov
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
1 Heart of Kiran
1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Cryptic Command
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Kiora's Dambreaker
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Thrummingbird
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Command the Dreadhorde
1 Deliver Unto Evil
1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
1 Spark Double
1 The Elderspell
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
1 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
1 Viral Drake
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Dig Through Time
1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
1 Commit // Memory
1 Smoke
1 War Tax
1 Archaeomancer
1 Grave Titan
1 Meekstone
1 Archfiend of Depravity
The first game basically took way to long to build a board state. For the majority of the game, I didn't have more than 2 Walkers on the board. I spent most resources trying to keep the board clear of creatures or sending walkers to their death just to give me one use out of them and using them as meat shields so I didn't take damage. The latter only worked so well as I was still losing quite a but of life. By the time I finally stabilized and got more than 2 walkers, I was at 2 life. And another player just cast Sorin Markov and dealt 2 damage to me to finish me off.
The next game went much better. I was able to keep control of the board using Ob Nixilis, Nicol Bolas, the Arisen, Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver, and a few others. A big part of this game was that I had Bolas's Citadel. That got me the 8 drop Bolas for "free" as well as one other spell. Beyond that, it basically ensured I hit my land drops which it did very well. Karn, Scion of Urza was actually instrumental in this game as it created 4 tokens which ended up being 8 power total due to my other artifacts. Dack Fayden stole a couple super important artifacts; the main one being Basilisk Collar to keep my life total high since I just had to swing with a token to gain a bunch of life.
I did get to ultimate Nicol Bolas the Arisen and killed one player that way. I then got it back with The Eldest Reborn, transformed it, and just kept up the value with it. I didn't ultimate it again since I ended up not needing to. I did get Deepglow Skate down once to help keep walkers alive. And I found Koth of the Hammer is actually really good if I use him for ramp. I don't think there is even a need to try to get his ultimate off.
A big issue with both games is that with walkers it is tough to put up a good defense right away which means I lose life pretty easily early on. Most effects stopping creatures from attacking only stop them from attacking me. I do have Smoke and Meekstone to help with this, but they may not be enough. The only other card I can see that will do well is War Tax so I think I will try to slot that in.
The other issue with life is that Bolas's Citadel takes a lot which is why I only got a couple spells off of it. I think a solution to both issues is to find a way to consistently gain life as I need to. Though, gaining life is generally Green and White's domain. I will try to search through some cards to see if I can find a way to gain life in these colors in a way that is meaningful and impactful.
Another possible solution is to try to find cards that will let me build up a small army of creatures that can be used to protect my walkers. Archetype of Imagination or even Gravity Sphere can be good to ensure things can't just fly over my blockers and then I just need to find a way to create a bunch of tokens to allow for better blocking. Again, I will have to run through the different cards to see if anything stands out as I want the CMC to be low enough to be able to get them out early.
One possible answer to your defense issues could be Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, as he can pump out blockers every time you're attacked unless your opponents want to sink a bunch of mana.
Alternatively, cards like Goblin Diplomats, Disrupt Decorum, or Maddening Imp could help to send creatures in other directions, especially if combined with War Tax and the like.
Another good blocker you could employ is Heart of Kiran as having a walker lose one counter is better than losing multiple.
magicjudge.tumblr.com
GWU Angus Mackenzie's Fog of War GWU / B Sheoldred's Sleepless Cemetery B / R Ashling's Purifying Pilgrimage R
U Unesh's Sphinx Storm U / R Ib's Goblins: What It Says On The Tin R / UR Okaun & Zndrsplt Flip Out UR
Oathbreaker: UB Ashiok's Persistent Nightmare UB
I think Diplomats, Decorum, and Imp are a little too narrow or limited in scope. I like the Decorum the best as it ensures my walkers don't get hit by anything but that is still only for one turn cycle. I am going to try War Tax mostly because I can repeat its effect. I am not sure if the mana investment will be a problem, but I do think it is one of the better, repeatable ways to prevent my walkers from getting attacked.
Heart of Kiran is another that I thought of and maybe I am too skeptical with it, but I didn't think it did enough as a single blocker. However, as I think about it more, it does kind of handle a few things, especially early on. It comes down sooner than any walker, is cheap enough that it isn't the worst thing later on when I am trying to bring down walkers every turn, and is big enough to handle a fair amount of creatures.
Other cards I have been thinking about are Sorin Markov for the life gain and, maybe, the minus ability to put me back to 10. I really do despise the card in EDH though because it always feels bad to just set someone's life to 10. I can always avoid that ability if I want and use it only if I need to.
I am also thinking of adding in Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast. This is mostly because he is a 3 drop that spits out blockers. His -2 can be relevant but his ultimate is hit or miss since I don't run artifacts. Since it copies opponents' stuff too, it might come in handy. But, I really want the tokens for blockers.
Crypt Incursion is grave hate as well as life gain and it can be a large amount of life gain when I need it. Even hitting someone's graveyard with 6 or 7 creatures in it gets me 18 or 21 life which can be a huge swing when I need it. Druidic Satchel is ramp and life gain though both can be inconsistent. However, since the bulk of my deck is noncreatures, the 2 best options on the card are very likely to hit so I am willing to give it a try.
The next issue with the 7 includes talked about above is trying to find out what to cut. With the 2 lands from WAR, I am at 41 lands so I can probably drop that down to 39. Especially since I have 5 mana rocks. I might be able to go down to 38 but my curve is high enough that I don't want to go too low. The two lands I would cut are a Swamp and an Island. I actually have the fewest red spells, but I want to keep Mountains to help make Koth more effective.
I think getting rid of Jace, Cunning Castaway, Liliana of the Veil, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Jace, Memory Adept, and Chandra, Flamecaller make the most sense.
Pirate Jace is mostly here because of his interaction with the new Nicol Bolas (and it isn't even confirmed that is a real card) but his first ability isn't all that great and his second puts him at serious risk of just dying. So, I think it is fine to just cut him for now.
Liliana is great in Modern (or, she has been in the past) but in EDH she is a bit too weak. Even her ultimate is barely a set back for people. I ultimated her against a player that had one creature and 9 lands and I got rid of a few lands. Basically, I got rid of Needle Spires and it wasn't really worth it. At best, she might be a one sided wrath.
Ugin is powerful but potentially hits my walkers as well when I want him to wrath the board. His Ultimate is great but, at 8 mana, it is just too much for mostly just bolting each turn. Plus the foil is ridiculously expensive so I have just been using my normal copy which means he just isn't as good as he could be since he is not foil
Jace, Memory Adept is really weak until he ultimates. 5 mana just to draw a card isn't really worth it. And his mill ability really doesn't do enough. Maybe with adding in Crypt Incursion, his Mill is more powerful, but it is still slow and potentially fuels graveyard strategies so I wouldn't use it all that often. His ultimate is great but, even then, I can only do so much with 20 cards and it is unlikely I can actually kill anyone by doing it.
Finally, Chandra, Flamecaller doesn't quite fit. I am not trying to be super aggressive so the tokens don't do much. Discarding my hand to draw X+1 cards can be useful, but probably not as much as I want. And her -X only goes so far. I had her in hand one time in a previous game and spending 4 counters (since that is all she had) killed 0 of the 5 creatures on board. Which meant she was basically useless. For a 6 mana walker, that is not good. Maybe if my meta ran more token strategies I could see her value but I am not sure as she is a bit slow to come down.
So, with that long winded write up, here are the changes I am thinking of for now:
CUTS
ADDS
Just curious, as I have been wanting to brew some nonsense with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and Teferi, Time Raveler from War of the Spark.
THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
I also don't really want to go too far into stax elements. I have a few of course because this kind of deck does need some, but there is a limit which means adding white wouldn't really give me much more I would actually want to add.
With all of that being said, I can certainly see the desire to add white as there are some good walkers and a few good support spells. It just isn't a direction I want to take this deck.
It is worth nothing that I did a bit of this without access to Blue mana and the early game showed a distinct lack of blue for a while. I got my first Island when Karador used Field of Ruin on my Badlands. They actually ended up blowing up 3 of my lands but it worked out pretty well as I was able to get the necessary blue mana I needed.
Karn ended up dying so I had Koth and Angrath on the field. I cast a Blasphemous Act to clear out the board of about 4 creatures on Animar's side. I actually stole Rashmi from them first with Angrath so I could try to get a free spell of B Act. I ended up revealing a Disallow which wasn't as good as I wanted, but I needed it anyway. I cast Nicol Bolas after the Act resolved. I ended up transforming him next turn.
Karador got down a Sun Titan (which allowed for the Field of Ruin again) but it wasn't enough. I got down a Deepglow Skate, ultimated Koth (with only 2 Mountains) and I ultimated Angrath as well. 2 turns later, after Progenitus used Scapeshift to get all their guildgates and Maze's End, I ultimated Angrath again to win the game.
Deepglow Skate was huge and Nicol Bolas was actually pretty instrumental as well. I also ended up tutoring for Yawgmoth's Vile Offering off Mystical Tutor to kill Sun Titan and get back Jace the Mindsculptor. This was a big tempo swing and I went with Jace since I only had 1 card in hand. But Bolas helped that out and Dack Fayden helped once as well.
Overall, I felt the deck performed very well and I didn't see anything that stood out as needing correction. Hopefully I am just as successful during the next outing.
GWSelvala and the Return to HumanityGW
UWDragonlord Ojutai, Control's Elder DragonUW
UBGTasigur, the God-Pharaoh's Gift to EDHUBG
UBRNicol Bolas and his Super
friendsPawnsUBRModern
UWUW Control/Midrange/Bad JundUW
WUBRGHumansWUBRG
BGMidrangeBG
The main issue is what happens when she comes down later. Her ultimate is backbreaking so the longer the game goes on, the harder it is to protect her so maybe I will find that if she comes down after turn 6 (for example) she doesn't do as much. Hopefully I can play some more with the deck and actually get a game where she lands so I can see how difficult it is to get her ultimate.
The game was exceptionally slow for me and Ravos having access to Bounty Agent kind of set me back a little as I could not get Nicol Bolas to stick around. He isn't the most important element of the deck, but I want him to transform if I can. I ended up finally getting rid of it with Crypt Incursion (and gaining 6 life in the process).
There actually wasn't much for interaction in the game as everyone was kind of slow. I did get a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets to the point I could ultimate him, but he got killed before that could happen. Luckily, the Vial Smasher player didn't realize the Smasher trigger could hit Walkers so Jace survived a little longer than he should have.
Beyond that, I got down a Chandra, Torch of Defiance which got me a Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast. I also had a Rowan Kenrith that allowed me to kill off some opposing creatures. At one point, Ravos got down Razaketh, the Foulblooded at which point the board was wrathed. They were able to tutor up two cards though. They also had a Black Market that ended up with 14 counters on it. My board was kind of scary with those 3 walkers (I ticked down Daretti at one point to kill a creature) but still not terrible. Karador tutored off of Protean Hulk for a creature and got...something. I actually don't even remember what it was. What I do remember is that it was *not* something that could blow up an enchantment. As such, Ravos untapped and just cast Torment of Hailfire for X = 21 which just killed us all.
I kind of forgot about the tutoring they had done but I was super surprised that Karador left the Black Market alone which ultimately allowed the game to just end. It was pretty disappointing for it to end that way. Mostly because it wasn't like it had to end that way and the Black Market should have been blown up.
As to my deck, Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs got me a few tokens but not many. I wouldn't say it was an issue with Kazuul though as there was very little attacking going on overall. War Tax did help stop some attacks but I was very light on blue mana early on so it wasn't as useful as it could have been. I like both cards though and I think War Tax is pretty good. I don't think this game gave Kazuul the opportunity to really shine but I see the potential.
I started the game with 2 lands, Sol Ring, Mystical Tutor, and Liliana of the Last Hope. Liliana came down turn 2 and I just slowly ticked her up. I ended up tutoring for a Twister effect and then realized I didn't have any in the deck. I grabbed Toxic Deluge instead and just bided my time. Unfortunately, Freyalise blew up my Sol Ring so Liliana died shortly thereafter (she was at 7 counters twice). And I missed about 37 land drops (give or take 30). I was at 2 lands for the longest time and I just struggled to be a relevant player in the game. But, because I was doing nothing, nobody paid me any attention.
On one play, Vaevictus attacked Kira with a huge Deathbringer Thoctar. They tried to stop it and I countered their spell with Fuel for the Cause and then added a counter to the Thoctor just for good measure. This killed Kira and Vaevictus now had a 22/22 Thoctar. I finally got to 5 mana and slammed an Angrath. I ticked him down fully expecting to just die from the Thoctar. Instead, they let me take him. I attacked the Freyalise player then removed all the counters to kill the Vaevictus player.
The next turn, I played a land and cast Bolas’s Citadel. This got me some free walkers. I then cast Jace the next turn and drew 3 cards (3 lands) but I put Rowan Kenrith and Deepglow Skate on top. I cast Rowan and then cast Deepglow Skate. I ultimated Rowan. I then activated Citadel and Rowan copied it so it caused Freyalise to lose 20 life total while they were at 14.
I ended up winning a game I had no business winning due to a misplay on the part of an opponent. But it was nice to actually use Bolas's Citadel and I really like that card.
I already wasn't sure if excluding Twister and Wheel effects was correct and I now think that I definitely want at least 2. Timetwister is the obvious inclusion and I might add in Wheel of Fortune. I might go with Day's Undoing but I don't like it as much for this deck since I want to be able to continue my turn after it resolves.
1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Cryptic Command
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Kiora's Dambreaker
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Thrummingbird
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Command the Dreadhorde
1 Deliver Unto Evil
1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
1 Spark Double
1 The Elderspell
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
Here are my comments on the cuts:
How is Bolas at the helm? I don't own a copy personally. I'm starting with Vial Smasher the Fierce and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus as my generals at present. Partly because they're what I have, but Vial Smasher is nice disruption, and sort of plays well with walkers in that a fair number of them are reasonably costly to cast. Kraum I'm not super happy with, but he's better than Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist who's just terrible or Silas Reen, Seeker Adept who is a bit too niche for me. At the least Kraum cantrips for opponent interaction, so that's not nothing.
I don't have a list up as of yet, I've still got lots of stuff to pick up from the LGS, as well as a couple of higher cost walkers I'd like to add (Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and Will Kenrith are the big tickets), but I'm pretty keen to get some feedback as to how Grixis superfriends plays as a general archetype.
I don't want to run it (though this would give me a reason to run one of my Masterpiece copies). I kind of folded on whether to include Deepglow Skate but I figured being a one-shot was fine. Rings just seems like it would be a little too over the top for what I want. I used to have a Superfriends deck with Atraxa and another person in my meta has a The Ur-Dragon Superfriends deck and I just feel those decks are less fun because they either try to win in one turn (with Doubling Season) or go out of their way to grind too much value in a single turn. In other words they seems more "combo-esque" than I like. It is why I stayed away from The Chain Veil. I think Rings is a good choice from a power and synergy standpoint though if you chose to include it.
I hadn't thought about her but that doesn't seem like a bad idea. I also play a few artifacts that would trigger her. I might have to give her a try (if I can find the room).
I haven't looked at a lot of the new walkers in depth since there are so many. I saw a couple that stood out and I went with those. Saheeli is probably better than Daretti as Daretti is mostly in here for the tokens also (and because I have the Mythic Edition version ). I might just swap them.
That is a good question. I don't know that I have ever gotten it onto the field. It is here mostly because it is a good way to reanimate walkers but it also can get other creatures from people at worse. I don't have anything good or bad to say about it yet but I think the ceiling is fairly high on it and it does kind of help protect my walkers by keeping the board clear and keeping cards out of people's hands. I might try to monitor that a little more to see how much it really does when I get it down.
I am not sure why I don't run Will Kenrith. I know I looked at him at one point and maybe just being 6 mana hurt it. But his -2 is really good and his +2 can help protect walkers. I might give him a second look.
Overall, the deck plays amazingly (for me anyway). I was hesitant to build superfriends because it is almost overdone at this point but I thought these colors, and having Bolas at the helm, would make for more interesting, and more grindy games. Rather than just racing towards ultimates (though some support cards do speed that up) the games tend to be about resource management, giving up one walker to save another, and strategy. Which encourages you to pay attention to board states. One thing I really find interesting, and it kind of fits with the Bolas theme, is waiting to wrath the board. That is, giving up some walkers or letting them get attacked in order to get more use out of wraths. Rather than just always trying to keep the board clear to tick up walkers, you can allow for them to take hits (and some to die) to turn the tides in your favor later on.
I'm likely to stay away from creature Bolas purely based on price - just checked and he's up to $51 NZD post WAR. Yikes. I actually haven't played partners before anyway, so it'll be interesting to see how they play out.
Rings of Brighthearth is the one of super strong legacy staples I own from prior to my first hiatus from MtG, so I feel like I ought to use it somewhere - if I trade it now I'll never see it again, and it's unlikely I'll get my money's worth from it. I'm specifically against running Monoliths with it, and hopefully I'll be able to avoid too much grossness otherwise. As it is, I definitely don't have the coin to pick up any of the other big counter boosters (Deepglow Skate, The Chain Veil (holy crap did that get expensive), Inexorable Tide), so I figure it's reasonable to include this in lieu of busting ultimates out left right and centre and just get value from abilities where I can.
I sort of feel the same way about superfriends. A lot of the games get pretty eye-rolling and stally; I wouldn't even mind if they end quickly, but a lot of the time the win con is a lockout, and the archetype is new enough that, in my experience anyway, there's not many people out there who know how to manage a walker-heavy list and win against it. Grixis is usually brutal enough to hopefully avoid the grind, at any rate. Vial Smasher immediately puts the table on a clock anyway, so there's that
That's an interesting observation. I'd always assumed you fort out as hard as you can, but this almost sounds a lot more strategic than that. I'm really looking forward to some playtime in this area, sounds like fun. Thanks again for your thoughts!
You're welcome. I found this deck to be much better (in terms of my playstyle) than I thought it would be so I am glad to see others taking an interest.
As to your comment about trying to fort out hard: that honestly might be the "right" way to run this type of deck. I do have War Tax and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs that help deflect attacks by creating Propaganda effects, but I purposely stayed away from doing too much in that space (though Grixis doesn't have much anyway that would help Walkers). That is because I don't really want the games to become these things where I sit and durdle while everyone does nothing against me. Granted, some inclusions are mostly for creature tokens to help protect walkers, but the game still "works" for everyone where they still attack, try to get through defenses, and there is a lot of back and forth. It is possible that it still isn't as fun for everyone since there is still a pretty high focus on walkers, but I haven't gotten that impression from my group.
I look forward to hearing about the way your games go if you end up creating a thread for your list.
That's good to hear. I think Kraum is a reasonable partner - he's in the colours I want, but also gives me incremental draw and he has evasion. Worst comes to worst, he's a decent body to block out threats.
That's what I'm going for too. I don't want the feeling of me meting vengeance from on high while my opponents try to storm the castle. There's gotta be some back and forth. I'm a little short on Propaganda effects, but there's a couple of options I've given myself. I'm thinking of running Efficient Construction, I've got Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs and Heart of Kiran to pick up, and a few of the walkers I'm going to run will reanimate to some extent too. It might or might not be enough, I'll probably have a full 100 in the next couple of days, and I'm definitely going to be posting a list shortly. It'll go into the random deck discussion thread, tstorm is running, too. It'll likely be more budget than what's possible, but that shouldn't matter too much - work in progress and all that.
Basically, I started off with Nicol Bolas from the Command Zone followed by Ral Zarek. Bolas was enough to protect Ral and I got his ultimate off. This allowed me to kill a variety of things that I needed to as the game wore on and kept my hand full. I then got Bolas's Citadel down shortly after that along with Teferi, Temporal Archmage and just ran away with the game. I ended up spending about 12-15 life to cast things off the top of my library and my favorite was casting a Mana Drain for free to counter someone's Atarka so I got 7 mana. That is when things really got going as I used that mana to transform Bolas and I also cast a Spark Souble off Citadel to copy Teferi so I could untap even more things.
Inexorable Tide made an appearance so I was able to keep beefing up my walkers. I stole a few things from Progenitus using Dack Fayden and Bolas, God-Pharaoh. Daretti was able to keep pumping out tokens but they didn't do a lot since they don't fly so I never blocked with them. I ended up letting a couple walkers die due to this and my Spark Double copy of Teferi went away when Progenitus cast Urza’s Ruinous Blast which hit Spark Double and Sol Ring and that was about it.
In the end, I was able to ultimate Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh to exile everything and then immediately follow it up with the ultimate from Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God to make everyone lose since no one had any creatures or planeswalkers any more.
At one point, I got Heart of Kiran down and was able to use that to protect one of my walkers. It died but even that small tempo play was enough to save my walker and give me time to deal with the attacking creature on my turn. So, while not super impactful, it shows that just having flying blockers is important for the deck.
All in all, it seemed to play exactly how I wanted with Inexorable Tide and Bolas's Citadel being the stars of the match. I did use Blasphemous Act at one point to clear the board (mostly to get rid of Vaevictus) and I had a Toxic Deluge in hand if I needed to wrath the board again. That is the one thing that I didn't have to deal with: nobody beyond Beckett Brass had a board state and that went away when I cast B. Act and nobody was able to rebuild. Progenitus had a Kefnet the Mindful that was finally able to attack because I cast Windfall to give everyone 9 cards. That is what killed a couple of my walkers but it was worth it to get a new hand as I really only had Sorin Markov in my hand I didn't want to cast him.
I also finally got The Eldest Reborn down and this was with Inexorable Tide on the field. This is actually how I got rid of Kefnet and then I just proliferated twice with the Tide, had everyone discard and I got back my Teferi that Kefnet had killed earlier. The Eldest Reborn worked out very well in that particular instance and, even without Proliferating, I think it would have been fine too just to get a Walker back a turn or two later. But being able to proliferate to get everything back right then worked out well.
I am looking at Bolas's Citadel as potentially being a bit *too* powerful for my liking. I knew that going in of course (free spells are always powerful) but it just creates this situation where it propels me so far ahead of everyone else that it becomes a bit less fun to use those free spells. I don't know if I really need to cut it as it can be dealt with fairly easily and it is 6 mana. I am going to keep an eye on it for now and see how other games go.
Sorin Markov, Clever Impersonator, Viral Drake, Contagion Clasp, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, and Jace, Architect of Thought might be on the chopping block.
I haven't felt I really need the Drake and Clasp for Proliferating and, as shown with Inexorable Tide, repeatable Proliferate can be on the annonying side. Clasp is probably the worst anyway since it only works once per turn cycle. Drake is good since it just requires mana to keep using it but I don't think I need it with Tide and Flux Channeler. And I wouldn't mind cutting down on some of the proliferate stuff anyway to make things a bit more "fair". Karn's Bastion gets a pass mostly for being a land so it doesn't really take up any room in the deck.
Sorin and Daretti aren't doing as much as I thought they would. Sorin is one of my few sources of life gain and (as I mentioned before) I really do hate his -3 ability. It would be cool to take someone's turn with him, but generally he will be a 6 mana to drain 2 and that isn't good enough. And I am finding Daretti did basically nothing during the game I had him out and he got up to 12 loyalty. There were no Artifacts anywhere I wanted to make copies of and I didn't need his -3 ability. So, I just ended up with a bunch of 1/1 tokens that couldn't block anything relevant and they couldn't attack. Now, for Daretti, I am willing to admit that the game I was playing was a bit out of the ordinary in that no one really got any creatures and the creatures that did land were flyers. But, I would rather get flying blockers to cover more situations and Daretti doesn't do that.
I do agree with toctheyounger77 that Saheeli is good and I am starting to believe that she is better than Daretti due to being able to make more than 1 token at a time. It sucks hers don't fly either which means I may not end up with either one, but I think Saheeli, in this deck, is likely the superior card as her tokens can at least attack.
Clever Impersonator is an inferior Spark Double as I can't really copy my own stuff due to the Legend Rule. I did play it in the game last night and ended up copying an opponent's Utvara Hellkite to protect my walkers, but I don't think I really need this effect since Spark Double is so much better for the way this deck functions.
And, finally, Jace is questionable. He does "draw" me cards and he does sort of protect walkers, but I saw him a couple times last night and not once was I excited to come across him. I never did cast him because I didn't need to. Not many people are playing 1 power creatures so his plus is a mild annoyance for people at best and doesn't effectively stop anything.
I am certain I will include Jhoira in this list so she will take the spot of something. As things evolve, the list of cards above will likely be the first cuts I make.
I’m surprised Jace, Architect of Thought isn’t pulling weight. His ultimate is something my deck would very much like to take advantage of, purely as a way to play blowout spells and get some extra damage from Vial Smasher here and there. That being said, I get that his first two abilities are a little bland. I like the pseudo-FoF for a way to fill our yard with things to resurrect. Command the Dreadhorde and such play nicely into it.
Pleased to hear The Eldest Reborn is putting in work. I feel like it’d be nice to have a couple of ways to reuse it, but if you’re able to run through the lore counters quick enough it seems like it’s good value. As an aside it’s a great flavour point for a Bolas-themed deck too.
Regarding Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, how would Saheeli the Gifted suit as a replacement? Her thopters have a bit more value than a ground-bound defender, and her 2nd ability gives you a big boost to your curve if you’re able to lean into it. My deck is very much for artifact laden than yours, but that’s not hard to tweak, especially if you’re casting non-creature spells with Saheeli, Sublime Artificer on board.
In terms of considerations for my build, you’ve got a lot of walkers here I can’t afford, but there’s a couple I could consider for my list. How have Ob Nixilis Reignited, Ral, Izzet Viceroy and Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver worked out? They seem pretty versatile, and I like that Nixilis has a non-conditional creature destruction on him. Ral seems built for a more spellslinger build though, I wonder whether his original iteration would be preferable. I can’t afford a copy, but also wondering how Liliana, the last Hope has worked out thus far? Her emblem is nuts, but I’ve always wondered how well she scales to this format outside of that.
I guess that is my issue; his ultimate is great and is one of the bigger reasons I put him in here, but I don't care for the other two abilities. And, generally, if I am using him at all it is for the mini-FoF which gets him further from the ultimate anyway. I think I have other, better, forms of card draw that he isn't needed for that. I accept that it might be a mistake to put him on the chopping block (and I am not cutting him yet) but maybe as I play with him more I will see if anything skews him to one side or the other.
I am definitely starting to think Saheeli is the better option. I likely won't put her in for a while as I am kind of waiting to see where the prices end up for the foils. Though, if I open a regular one of her (and maybe I did in the box I bought), I might slot her in sooner.
Ob is pretty decent for the versatility. I did get him down in the game I was playing last night and he "just" drew me cards, but being able to deal with a threat is important as well. I almost got his emblem off but I won with the Bolas ultimates first.
Ral is pretty good card advantage (and also works with Command the Dreadhorde) but his minus is something I don't think I will generally use. His ultimate is pretty sweet and drew me a lot of cards and dealt with a lot of threats. I think he is worth keeping in the deck. I have 19 spells that trigger the emblem and that seemed to be enough for the game last night to get a lot of use out of him. I looked at his original card and wasn't all that impressed. I think for the 1 mana more, the new Ral is a lot better. The original is another that would basically revolve around his ultimate and even that isn't guaranteed to be that great and will likely be tough to even get to.
I was actually really close to including Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver in my list of cards above as ones that might get cut. His plus is basically useless. It is +3 so after 3 turns I can ultimate but even his ultimate is kind of underwhelming compared to everything else. His minus is probably the best ability. The main issue is that he is just mediocre I feel and mostly because he is 8 mana. The main reason I have not looked at cutting him yet is because he is still a Bolas. But I may decide that isn't important enough and end up cutting him.
Liliana is a honestly a bit tough to evaluate. Her first two abilities are kind of terrible (her second is borderline useless) but her ultimate just wins games. The problem is that she takes 5 turns to get to that ultimate so a lot of resources are needed to ensure that happens. She only kind of protects herself, but against 3 other people, someone is going to get an attack in at her. Her main appeal is being 3 mana so she comes down early which potentially allows for the ability to get to her ultimate before opponents have a good board but you are looking at turn 8 in general for that and I just can't see a situation where turn 8 rolls by and nobody has attacked into her or killed her yet without a lot of focus on keeping her alive. I don't think she is worth it but I have been close to her ultimate a couple times so it is hard to just outright cut her.
To be fair, I have the same reservations about him. A mini FoF is a far cry from the value of Fact or Fiction. The ultimate is great in either of our shells, but I do try to make a point of not including walkers in any build purely based on ultimates - if they don’t provide value in multiple ways there’s a good chance they don’t make the cut. My big consideration at present is considering which walkers to actually add, as I’m currently at a fairly low count by comparison to your list.
That’s a fairly decent endorsement, in all honesty. My take is that all of his abilities are reasonable, and while he’s not well costed to cast, he’s fairly costed. He’s got advantage, board protection and a strong ultimate, plus he’s reasonable in terms of price to pick up.
I hear you here. I’m on the fence with either one in all honesty. There’s a fair number of instants/sorceries to theoretically include to get value from his second and third abilities, I’m just not sure they’d be worth it for any other reason. I like that he plays well into Command the Dreadhorde, and I guess his first ability is reasonable value filtering. I’ve used Azor’s Gateway in similar ways in other builds. The original Ral is pretty niche, and extra turns have a ‘feels bad’ vibe, so I get why you’d not want him here. I guess for me I’m going to really struggle to even find a Teferi, Temporal Archmage, let alone afford him, so Ral’s similar first ability to Teferi’s second makes him a consideration. I’m definitely going to be better off with Teferi, but he’s just that much harder to track down.
Yeah, he suffers from the same overcosted, undervaluable problems that all planeswalker theme deck walkers suffer from. I guess it depends how tired you are to that theme, but he seems an obvious cut to me for any other reason. He pales in comparison to any other walker iteration of Bolas.
Yeah I get this. Her ultimate is nuts, and it’s important to have value along your curve. I think in terms of CMC, there’s probably better inclusions at this point of the curve (Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, Saheeli Rai are my picks) but there’s undeniable value in that last ability. Purely for price alone I won’t be adding her personally. At this point in my curve I have Liliana, heretical Healer (as well as the above Saheeli’s), which has its own hoops to jump through needing to flip, but I think I can work around that. And again, her ultimate is savagely good, much like Last Hope.
I got Ral's Emblem fairly early after being able to protect him with Toxic Deluge and Blasphemous Act. I had 2 Nicol Bolas creatures thanks to a Spark Double and both died to the Deluge. I never cast Bolas again in the game. After getting the Emblem, it triggered 2 or 3 times and that was it. It likely would have been more except for a couple other plays that made my instants and sorceries matter very little
I did land a Jace AoT and his +1 mattered basically once. The Jhoira player had a few tokens so it helped stop them from attacking but B. Act killed them the next turn anyway. So, it did matter but not by a lot. I used his mini-FoF about 3 times so I got some decent cards that way, with Bolas, Dragon-God being one of them later in the game. I never got to his Ultimate as I wanted the card draw. I am still on the fence about him but this showed he isn't terrible.
I dropped down a Dack Fayden and stole and opponent's Worn Powerstone. I never used it since they bounced it to their hand before I got to untap with it. But, I was able to use his card filtering to get rid of excess lands which kept me moving. At one point, I stole Jhoira's Unwinding Clock and then, later, their Panharmonicon. This will be important later.
I had a Bolas, Planeswalker down and slowly blew up noncreature permanents. I got to his ultimate and had the Omnath player sac and discard stuff leaving them with 3 lands. I also got down Saheeli (I swapped Daretti for her) and she pumped out 4 tokens. I never used her ability since I don't have good enough creatures. I also had a Karn that created a Construct that kept growing bigger thanks to Saheeli. I did end up dropping down a Meekstone which kept the 2 big hydras Omnath still had tapped down but also tapped down my Construct. Luckily Saheeli's tokens could still attack if I wanted.
I then dropped down a Deepglow Skate. Since I had Panharmonicon, I got two triggers so I doubled everything and then doubled everything again. Tamiyo went to 32 counters, Karn to 24, Dack went to 6, Jace went to 12, Bolas went to 16 and so on. I ended up ultimating Bolas again and having Jhoira sac and discard. And I Ultimated Jace, Unraveler of Secrets so everything my opponents cast would be countered if it was their first spell of the turn. They decided to all pack it in at this point. I realized later, I could have made a copy of Panharmonicon to get another trigger from the Skate but that was probably overkill at that point anyway.
Overall, I like the way Saheeli played and she did pretty decent. Ral's Emblem wasn't too important as I didn't cast many Instants or Sorceries but i did have a Wheel in hand along with 2 counters but I never needed to cast them since Bolas's ultimate slowed the others down a lot.
I did realize after I started that I did not put Jhoira in the deck yet and that is something I want to do. I will do that before the next time I play the deck.
I've decided to give Ral, Izzet Viceroy a punt for my list - picking him up in the next few weeks as well as a Deepglow Skate, Mizzium Mortars, Dig Through Time, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh and Tezzeret, Artifice Master. Haven't really had an opportunity to play mine in a little, but that's fine in terms of making some changes before I put it through its paces any further.
As far Mortars goes, it's really just to make sure I have options offensively and defensively to protect my walkers.