Just reviewing your list again for the first time in a while and comparing it to mine. They are pretty close and I think you have some nice ideas. Was curious if you felt like you had enough sweepers because I have a ton and wondered if you ever wish you had more.
I'm also running Thawing Glaciers and I like it in this deck because it's another "ramp" effect that a deck list this really needs. I'm also running Liliana of the Dark Realms which is thoroughly helpful even if I'm just grabbing thoughts.
In general, I want to run as few sweepers as I can get away with, and the ones I have, I want to be uber versatile. Sweepers kill chainer, blood artist, etc and if I can kill the field without killing my own guys I tend to go for that option. With Tutors and our toolbox of creatures, I get there much of the time. Damnation is a must as a hard kill at 4 mana. After that, I probably prefer Oblivion Stone since it can send artifacts/enchantments packing as well. I have All is dust in my stack to add on my next revision. Another enchantment killing option seems like a prudent course of action.
You should test Myojin. He is surprisingly castable, and if you play partial paris he is barely even a potential problem. The discard effect is nice not against combo, but for our combo wins, ensuring that nothing can impede victory. It truly is this simple: if you resolve Myojin, you will win. If he gets countered or whatever, that's a shame. Chalk it up as a loss and move on to other things. It is incredibly worth testing, as it is debilitatingly game-breaking.
I guess I do need to buy a Myojin sometime and give him a test run before I make a final verdict. If there's smoke, there's usually fire, however the 8 CMC mana cost still hurts as I look tward trying to slot Dark Confidant in in the future.
Disciple of Bolas is very powerful. Sure its slow, sure it only draws cards if you already have a creature. It gains life though. That is pretty important. Sometimes it is pretty nice to draw extra cards without paying life.
That is a true story, as far as I know this is the only black card that draws and gains life.
The only requirement I have for draw is we get the card immediately and without too many preconditions. The Sundial is costly and a mana sink but it gets us a card now. Collective Unconscious looks like it could do something nice with token generators, but the other cards aren't what I'm looking for. Mind's Eye and Garruk Primal Hunter are close but a little behind the Sundial in my eyes
In performance, Mind's Eye is MUCH better than Seer's Sundial IMO. With Azusa we should almost always have the mana to draw as well.
Some generals just don't need to be on the field if I plan to win or have a fun game...hence they die early and often.
If no one in your play group is getting hate on their commander, it points to a combination of decks under utilizing their commander and players not understanding the importance of removing said commanders. Spot removal is the sign of a well developed meta that understands the threats they will see and what they need to do to counteract them.
It won't be bad. Even if the draft format itself is bad, it's almost impossible for them to take 229 generally-desirable cards of modern and not have folks happy with the value. Even if it's a total miss and there's only 5-10 good cards, boxes won't sell, the print run will end up smaller, and they'll slowly grow in price until the next MM is rumored.
Keep in mind Worldwake was a somewhat badly reviewed set, for both draft and overall value, and today booster boxes despite 1 in 3 box chance of pulling a $130 card, are over $400.
I'd think the bigger effect is if MM is a HIT, the print run ends up much larger than WotC stated ("a fraction of the volume already out there") and players get the sense that their collection is all but doomed with massive reprints each year.
That would NOT be good for the game.
Not true really. More cheaper staples drives more people to play and those tht are playing to make additional decks. So what if they lose 10% of the current modern base. The way the game is growing they would have MANY more players there to take thier place. These are not reserved lists cards; anyone worttying about value and investment potential shouldn't be stashing money into magic in the first place.
@DeadManSeven: I saw your list and it looks pretty sick. However, I think my playgroup would be more accepting of the version that still runs creatures because we're not really hyper-competitive and all out combo decks are kind of frowned upon. Do you have a link to the other build you were talking about that does run some creatures?
There are several versions in Bob's Tibor and Lumia thread.
Played a few games over the last week. Got Gaea's Touch a few times but we don't have enough basic forests to make it worth running in my opinion. Replacing it with Seer's Sundial. Garruk Wildspeaker appears to be an improvement over Garruk, Primal Hunter. The extra mana has been more important than the conditional draw or 3/3 token. Fauna Shaman hasn't done much, but I'll keep it in for more testing. Exploration appears to be solid. It ramps us out early and later on we'll have Oracle online to play more lands
I like running both Garruks. I watched by GF win with 26 Wurm tokens last Sunday that somehow got by as we used our resources fighting off another player that academy rectored into Omniscience and dropped a few strong cards. Primal Hunter is much stronger, but the ramp from wildspeaker is also great, especially untapping utility lands or cradle.
Seer's Sundial is some of the weaker draw we run, but its still draw. You'll be underwhelmed, but it works.
For this deck, Fauna Shaman just doesn't have the speed and versatility we need compared to Survival.
Exploration is a card I've never been a fan of in Azusa. To run exploration well here, you need more lands and then more draw to get those lands somewhat warping the deck around it. I've always liked exploration better in UGx decks where you always have a stash of lands in hand from the draw and nothing better to do with them other than discard them. In a deck like Edric or Damia, they can play exploration turn 1 and get 2 land drops every turn till its destroyed. Here however I've had very few games where I had the draw to support 4 lands per turn and If I did, it got destroyed post haste. If I only get 2-3 lands off exploration and run out of gas, I'd rather see something else that has more overall impact.
+1 for creatureless storm combo with Proteus Staff. I think it's the strongest variant of the deck that actually makes use of Melek's ability consistently.
You don't want 100% creatureless. Cards like Guttersnipe, Talrand, Sky Summoner, and Goblin Electromancer are just too good. I essentially call my T&L/Melek creatureless though, as it basically functions that way. Other than Drake Tokens, no one really swings except maybe commander + pike.
Always good to have a dude out to stop the random alpha strike... I almost want to play Darkness for the suprise WTF factor...
Pontiff is a great example of "danger of cool things" IMHO.
He just doesnt get there. I think he'll find his place in doran aggro maybe.
I cut spawning pit and never looked back. I like playing altar just as an alternate wincon for milling or digging for other people's threats.
my "off" cards won be three games this week.
Withering Boon i tutored up in response to someone worldy tutoring for a terastodon, which i countered then proceeded to blow all of their lands up with.
Dismember killed a dude out of nowhere after someone tapped out to boundless realms then swing. Sickening Shoal much of the same, bluffing I had no plays, killed a mikaeus in response to an infinite combo.
Disciple of Bolas is cool, but isnt needed. We want our sac outlets to be free so that we can loop easily. If we need to gain life Sangromancer backed by mindslicer or memory jar is an easy 21 life per opponent, koko, or Exsanguinate work fine too... I dont see the need for much more lifegain.
I prefer Oblivion Stone over mutilate, but thats really more of a meta call.
Myojin is good in high ramp decks or in metas filled with consecrated sphinx. I keep going back and forth on him.
A guy beat me once using the populate fog in a trostani deck. No one expects fog in commander, so that makes it all the more powerful. Pontiff of Blight will probably be much better in my black aggro deck as you mention. Its not bad here, but is really more anti-synergistic to our game plan than anything.
Spawning Pit is definitely weaker that the 2 altars, but its also less likely to get exploded. It may get the axe eventually, but its one of my 'pet' cards.
I need to try Sickening shoal sometime and i love withering Boon already from Korlasj. I'm playing against more and more cheap, kill-on-sight commanders that need of the field sooner rather than later. I think spot removal is part of the natural evolution of speeding up the deck to fight against other fast decks. Ideally, we have critters to do the job so we can reuse them, but wizards just hasn't printed a 2-3 mana kill everything creature yet, so we make due.
Disciple of Bolas has been better in my revamped Karador deck than in here for certain. He's a good card, but we have cards that do everything that he does better in this deck. He could be a target for a swap for Ancient Craving when it comes in.
I can't get myself past Myojin's 'from-hand' cause quite honestly. I like Entomb, I play against discard, and without that divinity counter, he's useless. Maybe in XHD where I have more cards that return to hand I'd run him, but here where we return directly to the field, he has always seemed too situational. I also don't play against heavy combo players, so the discard is not as necessary as for some of your playgroups.
Fast mana has always been an amazing thing to do in magic. That's why phyrexian altar is the best sac outlet in the deck IMO.
With Black Market I wondered why not just run a doubler instead? If I have 5 swamps and drop a gauntlet of power, then I immediately have access to 5 extra mana without 5 creatures having to die first. But maybe with 4 people enough creatures would die to outclass a doubler pretty quick. It seems really synergistic with Stax.
I think lots of nonbasics look better than they are in our deck. We run lots of doublers, and our most important land, Cabal Coffers, cares a lot about our lands saying "Swamp." High Market turned into a swamp in my list.
Black Market is usually the least offensive Enchantment when it comes out, and usually sticks around a few turns, then gets blown up after it gets out of hand (10+ counters). Black Market + Chainer'd Fleshbag or Kagemaro at the end of their last turn?
You're getting your mana investment back, and it's all black.
Why Black Market? Coffers gets Stripmine'd frequently. Crypt Ghast gets wiped out, and I already run Caged Sun. I run doublers, but Enchantments usually need to be pretty egregious to get blown away, and with Instant-speed Chainer loops, you can get Black Market from zero to hero and have enough mana during your main phase to win outright.
Here's my problem with black market: when I play it, it does absolutely nothing. With 15 lands out, I can drop Caged Sun, Nirkana Revenant, Crypt Ghast, Liliana of the Dark Realms and get immediate results. Black market would just sit there, and in an unfavorable board position, it could take several turns before it gets ramped up. With the 2 creatures, we can flash them in with Chainer for even more value. My doublers die frequently, and Black market would die the same tragic fate, except it would have less overall effect on the field. Even my GF knows to blow up big mana doublers/accelerants, and she plays like one game every 2 months. Now if no one blow up artifacts/enchantments, run black market, the abyss, etc.
Made a decent shell of Vorel last week and played 1 game with it last Friday. It uses counters alright! Everyone at the table had a slow start but I plopped out some graft guys, and used hideaway to get Triskelion in play. Then things just got nuts when I started doubling his counters. And then people started ganging up on me! (the nerve!). Especially when I used Expedition Map to fetch Minamo. I just wanted Trik to have more than 20 counters! Why won't anyone let me do so!
First takeaways were 1) that I lacked a form of evasion needed to get damage in, especially when I had a big creature. 2) I didn't get much card draw or draw into any of it. and 3) I can remove a small number of graft or 'counter matters' cards to help 1 and 2 out. Having too many things and didn't have alot of mana to do everything was holding me back. Although Iw as using 5 mana to Vorel twice with Minamo, so idk. =p
I'll put up a list when later this evening (EST).
I've been working on a preliminary list over the last few days and the thought of pushing damage through has been on my mind. So far I added in the graft guys that give flying and trample, Phantom Nantuko, and champion of Lambholt to push damage through. I'm debating of adding in my spare copy of Overwhelming Stampede as well. It doesn't add counters, but it effectively doubles our damage output and grants trample from 1 turn. I've considered Cyclonic Rift as another means for the blowout win as well, but I don't have a 3rd copy, lol.
Just sticking my list into piles, I seem to have too much card draw, but I also haven't gave it a dry run yet. I currently have 6 counter based draw engines, and 4 spell based. Prime Speaker Zegana seems like a 'draw-your-deck' type of card in this deck, but she will be fun regardless.
How much hate are you running? I have 12 pieces in my pile and that may be too much. Propaganda seems like one we want here to give us time to set up, I also have 6 counters spells, including Draining Whelk, then Krosan Grip and Beast Within, rounded out with Infused Arrows, Tumble Magnet, and Suncrusher. I know for certain the aforementioned cyclonic rift wants to be here and suncrusher is likely overcosted.
Sounds good. Triskelion doubling sounds like a blast.
I've added in the Krasis that gives all creatures with a +1/+1 counter trample... helps push through the damage.
Triskelion and his pal Triskelvus both seem like nice potential win cons for the deck, or at very least, quite solid burn/removal. I snagged a russian Triskelvus I'm interested to try.
Also, have you looked into the Avenger of Zendikar? He makes a ton of tokens that gain +1/+1 counters. He seems like he could single-handedly pull off a blowout win with some counter doubling assistance.
Sell them and buy a set of shocks. You'd never need both full sets, even in 5 color. Use the money to buy your girlfriend/wife something. Or use it to take up a second hobby where you are more likely to meet women.
tl;tr: women > magic.
If you hold on to them, they will only go up in value. Revised duals are doing better than the stock market right now. I'd only sell them if I absolutely needed the money right now.
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I taught my gf magic. You CAN have the best of both worlds. I go shoe and dress shopping with her and she returns the favor by going to the card shop with me.
I've also replaced Spawning Pit with Disciple of Gristlebrand for my last sac outlet. I did like the post-wipe 2/2s that the Pit provided, but the pre-wipe lifegain that Disciple gives is soooo good. I might replace Blood Artist with the Disciple (same CMC, same body) if I find something else worth running.
For the lols I reanimated someone's self-milled Lord of Extinction with Chainer and played it as 1BBB, Sac a creature: Gain 122 life.
Thanks, I need to update that. While I'm thinking about it, I've been meaning to add a section of other chainer builds. I still need to add Throst's decklist to it and if anyone else has anything unique from what I'm doing, point me a link and I can add a spot for you list.
I love Blood Artist; you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands, lol.
The sac on Disciple is instant speed, so you could wait on the off chance to swing with it since it should be lethal at that point.
Strands of night is an amazing late game bomb. Its a lot like a control deck's win-condition, except SoN can do some stuff earlier if you need it to. Now that I think about it though it gets a little worse when you run fewer sac outlets.
For sac outlets, I disagree that Ashnod's Altar is better than Phyrexian Altar in this specific deck. Black mana being produced from PA lets the loops happen more fluidly which is usually how we win. AA might be worth a slot though. It could act as a sort of mana-rock like Worn Powerstone with all of our recursive creatures. If you have a bitterblossom out and have gotten a couple tokens, then that card can run you ahead by 4 mana.
When strands goes on line and I don't win the game, I did something wrong. Its as good a finisher as we have. Because of the cost of Chainer and Strands, I much prefer Phyrexian Altar, although Ashnod's Altar is the stronger card overall in a vacuum.
I do play strands and crucible of worlds. The inclusion of nezumi graverobber was a meta call because im usually prime target for mass graveyard hate. What makes nezumi graverobber shine is the ability to reanimate from opponents graveyards versus jsust our own
I thought about nezumi graverobber for grave hate, but I ended up using withered wretch since he does it better. My problem with graverobber is, I don't always want him to flip. If you need the recursion and can get him to flip, graverobber is a good option, but he doesn't work so well in my meta.
So I swapped in Melek for T&L and played 2 games this weekend. Won both, lol.
I wasn't sure at first, but when he goes off he's crazy. 1st game, I got turn 3 guttersnipe and turn 4 Talrand, Sky Summoner and no one got a good answer before I blew the field away with tokens. Using Melek to double my removal really did well that game. The next game, after having a decent mana base set up, I double Wheel of Fortuned for R and then was able to double Turnabout for UU to make a ton of mana. I then activated Past in Flames in the yard, did Turnanbout again and at that point everyone just conceded since wheel and molten psyche from the yard were coming.
I definitely need to work in some top deck manipulation and maybe add in that foil Leyline of Anticipation to flash in Melek around Wraths but Melek is definitely 2 leagues about T&L, even in an unoptimized list.
In this event, I'm not usually saccing creatures I care about, while making things as innocuous as a mid-game Sol Ring turn into Sol Ring: Exsanguinate 8 with a tap of Coffers.
I guess I'm saying I withhold Damnation for when things really go sideways and I abuse Chainer and Fleshbag or similar for most of my removal needs, so I've usually got 4+ creatures on the field.
I like to have 2-3 critters on the field just due to personal preference although I have 0 issues blowing the world up. I honestly haven't got Pontiff of Blight out yet, but I'm still on the fence to if he costs too much mana.
Tangle wire's been doing really well in my list. Its an early game card though, but that's where I felt the list needed some help since our commander is insane late game. To go with this, I replaced Thawing Glaciers with Ancient Tomb to speed things up more.
My only sac outlet now is Phyrexian Altar. But there's some more subtle ones too, like contamination and trading post. I think if we're in a position to loop, then we can tutor for the altar, or just keep control to win over the next few turns instead of immediately.
In a more stax oriented build, I can see tangle wire being great. We need a few turns to get going, and it gives us a few turns that shouldn't see much going on from our opponents.
You running so few sac outlets is definitely intriguing me. I guess my hang up is I use them to prevent theft effects regularly as well prevent guys from exiling and chaining cards. I may try dropping 1 (Altar of Dementia or Spawning Pit) in my next update and see how things go from there.
What's the requirement for a turn 2 eldrazzi in here?
Anyway, I'm really liking him. I like collecting other people's stuff, and when Smokestack and Braids are online, it's fantastic.
I got turn 2 It that betrays before off of Entomb and then Exhume and Entomb and then Reanimate. Unfortunately, he either got immediately doom bladed or Swords to plowsharesed and I never got to do much with him. In magical Christmasland, I wanted to hit turn 1 Sol Ring and Lightning Greaves and then turn 2 Entomb/Exhume for hasted turn 2 eldrazi, but I never drew into it and gave up as I shifted the focus of the deck over time and the pieces got cut.
In general, I want to run as few sweepers as I can get away with, and the ones I have, I want to be uber versatile. Sweepers kill chainer, blood artist, etc and if I can kill the field without killing my own guys I tend to go for that option. With Tutors and our toolbox of creatures, I get there much of the time. Damnation is a must as a hard kill at 4 mana. After that, I probably prefer Oblivion Stone since it can send artifacts/enchantments packing as well. I have All is dust in my stack to add on my next revision. Another enchantment killing option seems like a prudent course of action.
I guess I do need to buy a Myojin sometime and give him a test run before I make a final verdict. If there's smoke, there's usually fire, however the 8 CMC mana cost still hurts as I look tward trying to slot Dark Confidant in in the future.
That is a true story, as far as I know this is the only black card that draws and gains life.
In performance, Mind's Eye is MUCH better than Seer's Sundial IMO. With Azusa we should almost always have the mana to draw as well.
If no one in your play group is getting hate on their commander, it points to a combination of decks under utilizing their commander and players not understanding the importance of removing said commanders. Spot removal is the sign of a well developed meta that understands the threats they will see and what they need to do to counteract them.
Not true really. More cheaper staples drives more people to play and those tht are playing to make additional decks. So what if they lose 10% of the current modern base. The way the game is growing they would have MANY more players there to take thier place. These are not reserved lists cards; anyone worttying about value and investment potential shouldn't be stashing money into magic in the first place.
There are several versions in Bob's Tibor and Lumia thread.
I like running both Garruks. I watched by GF win with 26 Wurm tokens last Sunday that somehow got by as we used our resources fighting off another player that academy rectored into Omniscience and dropped a few strong cards. Primal Hunter is much stronger, but the ramp from wildspeaker is also great, especially untapping utility lands or cradle.
Seer's Sundial is some of the weaker draw we run, but its still draw. You'll be underwhelmed, but it works.
For this deck, Fauna Shaman just doesn't have the speed and versatility we need compared to Survival.
Exploration is a card I've never been a fan of in Azusa. To run exploration well here, you need more lands and then more draw to get those lands somewhat warping the deck around it. I've always liked exploration better in UGx decks where you always have a stash of lands in hand from the draw and nothing better to do with them other than discard them. In a deck like Edric or Damia, they can play exploration turn 1 and get 2 land drops every turn till its destroyed. Here however I've had very few games where I had the draw to support 4 lands per turn and If I did, it got destroyed post haste. If I only get 2-3 lands off exploration and run out of gas, I'd rather see something else that has more overall impact.
You don't want 100% creatureless. Cards like Guttersnipe, Talrand, Sky Summoner, and Goblin Electromancer are just too good. I essentially call my T&L/Melek creatureless though, as it basically functions that way. Other than Drake Tokens, no one really swings except maybe commander + pike.
A guy beat me once using the populate fog in a trostani deck. No one expects fog in commander, so that makes it all the more powerful. Pontiff of Blight will probably be much better in my black aggro deck as you mention. Its not bad here, but is really more anti-synergistic to our game plan than anything.
Spawning Pit is definitely weaker that the 2 altars, but its also less likely to get exploded. It may get the axe eventually, but its one of my 'pet' cards.
I need to try Sickening shoal sometime and i love withering Boon already from Korlasj. I'm playing against more and more cheap, kill-on-sight commanders that need of the field sooner rather than later. I think spot removal is part of the natural evolution of speeding up the deck to fight against other fast decks. Ideally, we have critters to do the job so we can reuse them, but wizards just hasn't printed a 2-3 mana kill everything creature yet, so we make due.
Disciple of Bolas has been better in my revamped Karador deck than in here for certain. He's a good card, but we have cards that do everything that he does better in this deck. He could be a target for a swap for Ancient Craving when it comes in.
I can't get myself past Myojin's 'from-hand' cause quite honestly. I like Entomb, I play against discard, and without that divinity counter, he's useless. Maybe in XHD where I have more cards that return to hand I'd run him, but here where we return directly to the field, he has always seemed too situational. I also don't play against heavy combo players, so the discard is not as necessary as for some of your playgroups.
Here's my problem with black market: when I play it, it does absolutely nothing. With 15 lands out, I can drop Caged Sun, Nirkana Revenant, Crypt Ghast, Liliana of the Dark Realms and get immediate results. Black market would just sit there, and in an unfavorable board position, it could take several turns before it gets ramped up. With the 2 creatures, we can flash them in with Chainer for even more value. My doublers die frequently, and Black market would die the same tragic fate, except it would have less overall effect on the field. Even my GF knows to blow up big mana doublers/accelerants, and she plays like one game every 2 months. Now if no one blow up artifacts/enchantments, run black market, the abyss, etc.
I've been working on a preliminary list over the last few days and the thought of pushing damage through has been on my mind. So far I added in the graft guys that give flying and trample, Phantom Nantuko, and champion of Lambholt to push damage through. I'm debating of adding in my spare copy of Overwhelming Stampede as well. It doesn't add counters, but it effectively doubles our damage output and grants trample from 1 turn. I've considered Cyclonic Rift as another means for the blowout win as well, but I don't have a 3rd copy, lol.
I totally need to slot in Expedition Map. It didn't make the 1st cut, but I just picked up Minamo, School at Water's Edge yesterday (along with Doubling Season :D),
Just sticking my list into piles, I seem to have too much card draw, but I also haven't gave it a dry run yet. I currently have 6 counter based draw engines, and 4 spell based. Prime Speaker Zegana seems like a 'draw-your-deck' type of card in this deck, but she will be fun regardless.
How much hate are you running? I have 12 pieces in my pile and that may be too much. Propaganda seems like one we want here to give us time to set up, I also have 6 counters spells, including Draining Whelk, then Krosan Grip and Beast Within, rounded out with Infused Arrows, Tumble Magnet, and Suncrusher. I know for certain the aforementioned cyclonic rift wants to be here and suncrusher is likely overcosted.
Triskelion and his pal Triskelvus both seem like nice potential win cons for the deck, or at very least, quite solid burn/removal. I snagged a russian Triskelvus I'm interested to try.
Also, have you looked into the Avenger of Zendikar? He makes a ton of tokens that gain +1/+1 counters. He seems like he could single-handedly pull off a blowout win with some counter doubling assistance.
If you hold on to them, they will only go up in value. Revised duals are doing better than the stock market right now. I'd only sell them if I absolutely needed the money right now.
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I taught my gf magic. You CAN have the best of both worlds. I go shoe and dress shopping with her and she returns the favor by going to the card shop with me.
Thanks, I need to update that. While I'm thinking about it, I've been meaning to add a section of other chainer builds. I still need to add Throst's decklist to it and if anyone else has anything unique from what I'm doing, point me a link and I can add a spot for you list.
I love Blood Artist; you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands, lol.
The sac on Disciple is instant speed, so you could wait on the off chance to swing with it since it should be lethal at that point.
When strands goes on line and I don't win the game, I did something wrong. Its as good a finisher as we have. Because of the cost of Chainer and Strands, I much prefer Phyrexian Altar, although Ashnod's Altar is the stronger card overall in a vacuum.
I thought about nezumi graverobber for grave hate, but I ended up using withered wretch since he does it better. My problem with graverobber is, I don't always want him to flip. If you need the recursion and can get him to flip, graverobber is a good option, but he doesn't work so well in my meta.
I wasn't sure at first, but when he goes off he's crazy. 1st game, I got turn 3 guttersnipe and turn 4 Talrand, Sky Summoner and no one got a good answer before I blew the field away with tokens. Using Melek to double my removal really did well that game. The next game, after having a decent mana base set up, I double Wheel of Fortuned for R and then was able to double Turnabout for UU to make a ton of mana. I then activated Past in Flames in the yard, did Turnanbout again and at that point everyone just conceded since wheel and molten psyche from the yard were coming.
I definitely need to work in some top deck manipulation and maybe add in that foil Leyline of Anticipation to flash in Melek around Wraths but Melek is definitely 2 leagues about T&L, even in an unoptimized list.
I like to have 2-3 critters on the field just due to personal preference although I have 0 issues blowing the world up. I honestly haven't got Pontiff of Blight out yet, but I'm still on the fence to if he costs too much mana.
In a more stax oriented build, I can see tangle wire being great. We need a few turns to get going, and it gives us a few turns that shouldn't see much going on from our opponents.
You running so few sac outlets is definitely intriguing me. I guess my hang up is I use them to prevent theft effects regularly as well prevent guys from exiling and chaining cards. I may try dropping 1 (Altar of Dementia or Spawning Pit) in my next update and see how things go from there.
I got turn 2 It that betrays before off of Entomb and then Exhume and Entomb and then Reanimate. Unfortunately, he either got immediately doom bladed or Swords to plowsharesed and I never got to do much with him. In magical Christmasland, I wanted to hit turn 1 Sol Ring and Lightning Greaves and then turn 2 Entomb/Exhume for hasted turn 2 eldrazi, but I never drew into it and gave up as I shifted the focus of the deck over time and the pieces got cut.