Now after rotation if it is still popular, Honor of the Pure will be rotated out, so will ratchet bomb. So you will be stuck with a bunch of 1/1 flying spirits that have a black flashback, you could get to esper flying and add in Favorable Winds if you want, but Rain of Blades is a problem, so white decks will have an easy meta choice to kill tokens.
In other words, it's just a lot of work to make a deck around tokens powerful enough to get the job done. You have to overextend a bit to become a real threat without a god hand, and by that time, a board wipe isn't far.
This seems to be very efficient. The deck seems solid, it wins around 66% on cockatrice atm. Starting to run into some interesting mirrors, it's certainly not a cement list. Similar Grixis control is running all sorts of spells.
Overall, the deck is good, it just lacks protection at times and can be extremely frustrating wishing you had more card advantage instead of having to play a bunch of 1 drops to rip that dryad. It's definitely on my list of "I might build this in the coming days," but with the SCG this weekend, I'm hanging for now.
I was thinking about it a bit yesterday, it feels like there's a few paths this deck can take, one where you just can trip everything, and another where it's a little more tempo based.
I'm 99% sure rewind doesn't really belong in here, another course of action you can take is playing cards like more pikes with mind sculpt, this way one way or another your creatures are getting pumped, whether is dredging a bit or casting low cost spells.
I suppose if you take that route, you want to have spells with inherit flashback costs so you don't feel like you're constantly losing value just by milling yourself, especially in a game 2 or 3 where people will bring in artifact hate to break your advantage by having a pike.
The dryad feels good here, but it needs some overall deck choices changed, and I think it can outrace other delver archetypes based on some luck, but it can still hang. Is it a bit of an uphill? At times yes. Something like Talrand can be used optimally from the sideboard to deal with the mirror.
The creature count, at times does seem a little low for the spell archetypes you're playing, and at times it doesn't feel incredibly wrong to consider the thought to play devastation tide as well.
Today I'm going to be doing about 6-7 hours of testing on cockatrice against t1 decks, making some changes, trying to add some tech to the mix.
I think a 1 of ranger's guile could be a very appropriate addition, perhaps more. It won't make a dryad "grow" but it will keep it on the board, which is questionably better depending on how many counters are persisting on it already, and I could see myself snapcasting it back to keep a real threat.
Other cards that can pump creatures in the process is something like spectral flight. It's a card that doesn't look like it adds a ton of value but it gets you over the time for cheap, even if it doesn't retain it's card value once a creature is snagged or killed.
The nuts in the deck right now is a turn 2 delver flipped with rancor with a pondered mana leak on the way for turn 3. It does leave you open for a turn, but the game hits a 4 turn clock extremely fast and you still have a toolkit of utility that can make things work very well for you with smart plays.
So far this deck has been practiced in about... 50 matches of cockatrice, it does fairly well. Curious to know other's thoughts on how it would fair competitively, at least until rotation (it will lose a good amount of it's toolkit at that point.)
I think berserker is a hard 2 slot. What do you do when your champion is matched by a mana dork? You know your opponent will take that trade if they have it figured out, and you'll be sitting with a 1/1 berserker turn two, which doesn't bode well for turn 3 and 4.
That manabase is plain horrendous, you have about 10 white sources on turn 1, really?
23 lands and 8 creatures that cost 4 or more?
Why is this list any better than the lists that have had success in the latest SCG open? Your deck looks like an unrefined block deck with Heroes thrown in.
I'm inclined to agree with this statement. We already saw what Boros can do, and it seems to have potential. The mana curve of this particular deck seems pretty high. I would take a look at the r/w humans from the scg-o, the one that didn't utilize swords. The mana cost is low and it plays a lot faster than most decks. It also utilizes gideon's lawkeeper which makes it exceptional in the mirror.
Except that's not the point. The point isn't that people are getting upset because "that man is hurting that women! SEXISM!!!11!". They are getting upset because Wizards should have really noticed that the art was probably not what they were aiming for, and maybe they should have changed it. And clearly enough people think the piece is sexually-charged enough to have this sort of discussion on it.
And the whole "this isn't sexist because you're reading to much into the sex of the subjects" argument ignores pretty much everything except the one very specific context of the piece. It ignores the much larger context of female depiction in fantasy art, and even female equality is society. Judging a piece of the society that created it is perfectly valid way of exploring ideas in the piece, even (and some would say especially) in a fantasy piece like this.
Look like what exactly? Look like a female about to get pounded in by a cursed male with bladed wrist guards? Are you saying.. that the clothing she has on is too provocative for fantasy? That's the main argument? Shouldn't that have been addressed... sets ago by now?
Now after rotation if it is still popular, Honor of the Pure will be rotated out, so will ratchet bomb. So you will be stuck with a bunch of 1/1 flying spirits that have a black flashback, you could get to esper flying and add in Favorable Winds if you want, but Rain of Blades is a problem, so white decks will have an easy meta choice to kill tokens.
In other words, it's just a lot of work to make a deck around tokens powerful enough to get the job done. You have to overextend a bit to become a real threat without a god hand, and by that time, a board wipe isn't far.
1 Phantasmal Image
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Olivia Voldaren
3 Augur of Bolas
Instants/Sorcs: 22
4 Desperate Ravings
2 Doom Blade
2 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Go for the Throat
3 Mana Leak
1 Despise
1 Devil's Play
3 Pillar of Flame
2 Slagstorm
1 Sorin's Vengeance
2 Whipflare
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Land: 26
4 Island
3 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Dragonskull Summit
2 Drowned Catacomb
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Shimmering Grotto
4 Sulfur Falls
2 Batterskull
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Manic Vandal
2 Phantasmal Image
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Dissipate
2 Negate
1 Mind Rot
1 Whipflare
1 Ghost Quarter
This seems to be very efficient. The deck seems solid, it wins around 66% on cockatrice atm. Starting to run into some interesting mirrors, it's certainly not a cement list. Similar Grixis control is running all sorts of spells.
I'm 99% sure rewind doesn't really belong in here, another course of action you can take is playing cards like more pikes with mind sculpt, this way one way or another your creatures are getting pumped, whether is dredging a bit or casting low cost spells.
I suppose if you take that route, you want to have spells with inherit flashback costs so you don't feel like you're constantly losing value just by milling yourself, especially in a game 2 or 3 where people will bring in artifact hate to break your advantage by having a pike.
The dryad feels good here, but it needs some overall deck choices changed, and I think it can outrace other delver archetypes based on some luck, but it can still hang. Is it a bit of an uphill? At times yes. Something like Talrand can be used optimally from the sideboard to deal with the mirror.
The creature count, at times does seem a little low for the spell archetypes you're playing, and at times it doesn't feel incredibly wrong to consider the thought to play devastation tide as well.
Today I'm going to be doing about 6-7 hours of testing on cockatrice against t1 decks, making some changes, trying to add some tech to the mix.
I think a 1 of ranger's guile could be a very appropriate addition, perhaps more. It won't make a dryad "grow" but it will keep it on the board, which is questionably better depending on how many counters are persisting on it already, and I could see myself snapcasting it back to keep a real threat.
Other cards that can pump creatures in the process is something like spectral flight. It's a card that doesn't look like it adds a ton of value but it gets you over the time for cheap, even if it doesn't retain it's card value once a creature is snagged or killed.
The nuts in the deck right now is a turn 2 delver flipped with rancor with a pondered mana leak on the way for turn 3. It does leave you open for a turn, but the game hits a 4 turn clock extremely fast and you still have a toolkit of utility that can make things work very well for you with smart plays.
----
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Quirion Dryad
Enchantments: 3
----
3 Rancor
Artifacts: 1
----
1 Runechanter's Pike
Instants/Sorcs: 24
----
4 Vapor Snag
4 Mana Leak
3 Rewind
2 Think Twice
4 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Thought Scour
1 Revenge of the Hunted
----
4 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Alchemist's Refuge
9 Island
So far this deck has been practiced in about... 50 matches of cockatrice, it does fairly well. Curious to know other's thoughts on how it would fair competitively, at least until rotation (it will lose a good amount of it's toolkit at that point.)
Writing up a primer as well today.
EDIT: 164 is the current marker.
The marker is for my playgroup so we know when we last updated our lists
I'm inclined to agree with this statement. We already saw what Boros can do, and it seems to have potential. The mana curve of this particular deck seems pretty high. I would take a look at the r/w humans from the scg-o, the one that didn't utilize swords. The mana cost is low and it plays a lot faster than most decks. It also utilizes gideon's lawkeeper which makes it exceptional in the mirror.
Look like what exactly? Look like a female about to get pounded in by a cursed male with bladed wrist guards? Are you saying.. that the clothing she has on is too provocative for fantasy? That's the main argument? Shouldn't that have been addressed... sets ago by now?