Hey, what exactly is the "new version" of the deck? I went back a few pages but can't seem to put my finger on which is the one you are talking about. Thanks in advance!
I'm assuming you are responding to GrimoireDark comment, in which case he has been posting his own list, so not effecting this primers configurations, if that's what you're thinking.
I stumbled upon your thread while brewing my own - a lot more casual - Lazav, the Multifarious deck. I really like the idea of going with artifacts, though!
I don't know if it is good enough for your liking, but Thran Turbine with your curve and being Artificer's Intuition tutorable could be a worthy include. You have 28 (including Ornithopter :P) creatures he could transform into for free with this. It's no Training Grounds, but it's something.
More a general question, but is Phyrexian Arena really worth it? My meta is a lot less competitive, and even i feel it is too slow.
Crypt Rats is interesting tech for sure. You can put the ability on the stack and then turn Lazav into an indestructible creature. But obviously this requires a fair amount of mana.
I actually played Dimir Infiltrator and Disciple of Deceit in my first build and I found them a little slow. The Dimir Infiltrator is still pretty deece, but I found myself if transmutting it going for Demonic Tutor. How is this bad? Well it's not but it ends up being like a 5 mana tutor. In which case maybe just casting Final Parting is better? This isn't entirely true, as it can just go to your graveyard naturally through mill, etc, to get the unblockable ability.
I did find the Disciple of Deceit was a bit slower than I was hoping. Of course I had designs of changing Lazav into Disciple of Deceit just before my turn to get a tutoring effect going on. But a few things do need to line up. As I was pointing out in the original post trying to get value from from creatures is actually mana intensive. If you're having to make Lazav unblockable to get him tapped and spending mana to make him Disciple of Deceit then it's actually a lot of mana to spend, and is a slow way to search for cards, that are still conditional on the converted-mana-cost in your hand.
Thran Turbine is an interesting one. It could be good, but can't quite wrap my head around how often it'll be good.
Tolarian Winds is something that I should look at, pretty close to Frantic Search. The instant speed is quite good I'd imagine as you can setup before your turn to get the surprise on opponents.
I fully endorse Artificer's Intuition. It is a great card that does very heavy lifting if you are using artifacts.
For your build I would suggest Nether Traitor and Meekstone. The traitor is another very good unblockable creature that offers some self reanimation and the ability to give Lazav haste later in the game. Meekstone can be searched with Artificer's Intuition and is pretty effective at slowing down any battle cruiser creatures your opponents may have.
Nether Traitor is a good one, the haste is a relevant feature. It's good to be able to potentially have one of each creature ability to pull from if need be.
I'm currently playing Lazav, the Multifarious on Magic Online, and with Training Grounds in play, I can change him into any two mana creature or less in my graveyard, without using any mana.
This confuses me as Training Grounds says 'This effect can't reduce the amount of mana an ability costs to activate to less than one mana.'
Is this a bug, or is there some funky interaction that occurs that allows this to happen within the rules?
Also some number of Assassin's Trophy to deal with threats in a mana efficient manner.
The point of having Anticipate and Opt is that you have cards that you can dig for to deal with what opponents are doing.
Otherwise statiscally you're probably going to have an Omniscience and a Mastermind's Acquisition by the time you get up to 10 mana, so what is all this card manipulation for?
I've been contributing ideas to the "Let's Brew" thread for this commander, and I finally put a deck together and been going through quite a few different iterations since, trying all sorts of different cards and themes.
It took me a while to even start with a theme, as there are really quite a few different ways to tackle this commander.
When I make and post deck lists, I'm not always trying to present "the best" deck that you might be able to build, but rather unique angles or themes, so that it gives potential deck makers a take that they might not have seen or thought about before.
My first brew I was really hoping to do a lot of different things each game. But what happened is that I ended up always winning the same way.
It was turning Lazav into Vector Asp and Phyrexian Dreadnought, along with some evasive creature, mostly Invisible Stalker.
You can give Lazav infect until end of turn, and then change him into a 12/12 trampler, and that is usually enough to kill a player.
So why did it end up being this most of the time? Well it's super mana efficient firstly. But thing with competitive games of commander, is that somebody is usually going off and getting ahead, and you don't have time to setup necessarily your own card advantages. I just found myself pressured enough to try and eliminate at least one player who is threatening to win, and this is a very efficient way of killing that player.
So what's the problem? Well no real problem, just became a bit linear and frankly boring. You do the same thing 5 games in a row and it feels like just about time to shelve the deck.
What ended up being "meh"?
I will give you some insight into additional themes I was trying to play into, so that it might help with what you might have planned with your build of Lazav. The first one was "value creatures". The idea was to get to copy some creatures to gain some card draw, etc.
For me these included Maralen of the Mornsong, Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, Sygg, River Cutthroat, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Disciple of Deceit. Copying these creatures from your graveyard, you can wait for example until end of opponents turn to make Lazav into Maralen of the Mornsong to tutor for a card, and then turn Lazav into something else so that opponents don't get the same benefits.
I really liked the idea of turning Lazav into Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, and then casting Silas Renn from your graveyard as an artifact (from the trigger of the first one), and then you'll get two versions in play, as Lazav is still unique. It's not often that you can get two of the same type of legendary creatures in play.
So what's the problem? Well, the thing with spending mana to make Lazav different creatures is that it is mana intensive, even if the converted-mana-cost of the creatures is only 2 or 3 mana. The fact of the matter is that you can never have enough mana to bounce around different creatures the way you'd like to in your head. If you're being aggressive with Lazav, trying to attack with some sort of big hit combo, then it's unlikely that you can look to also get value from him as well, or for the matter protect him. By protect I mean leaving up enough mana to turn him into a hexproof, indestructible or undying creature.
So in the end you need to pick a lane, if you're lucky two lanes, but you can't look to do everything. It turns out that the lane that gets you the least ahead is medium value, so turning him into something like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is fine, but you'll find on average that games are pushing the action too much to have turns like that. You still need mana to cast spells as well, to further your board or disrupt your opponents.
I also was trying a number of different infinite combos, as I really like to break down commanders and their synergies with infinite's. However in the end I just found I wasn't getting them, as I already mentioned every game I just ended up doing the same aggressive 12/12 infect attacks, rather than setting up for complicated combo sequences. The other problem is that some of those combo cards, didn't really have a broad spectrum of uses, so often were fairly useless until you have the complete combo. In this regard I normally like to have cards that have cross synergies, so that I can feel the slot is warranted, and some of these I felt just didn't work out.
These included Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar. Most of you will recognize these as super powerful cards in the right build, but unfortunately for my deck they ended up being too specialized to one particular combo, so much of the time were not used for any value at all. So these types of specialized combo cards were cut.
With the next iteration of the deck I played, I had been enjoying the unblockable part of the combos, so I went for a low to the ground unblockable/flying squad, with the idea that I would lean on some draw enchantments; Bident of Thassa, Coastal Piracy and Thopter Spy Network, to gain card advantage.
This was pretty short lived, it turns out if you don't draw one of those cards, your small squad sucks, lol.
Robot Spy Drones.
The current build I've gone to an idea that I was floating around in the Let's Brew thread, and that was utilizing artifact creatures and +1/+1 counters. With Lazav ability to become different creatures, you can potentially toolbox how those +1/+1 counters are used. If he is a Walking Ballista then he can deal damage. If he is a Mindless Automaton then he can use them for draw and discarding cards to your graveyard.
But the reason I've gone down the path of a heavy artifact build is for two reasons.
The main reason is Artificer's Intuition. This card is like Survival of the Fittest for Lazav, the Multifarious decks that are looking to hit with a "12/12 infect flying trampling" commander.
Around about 1/3 of the deck is artifacts, so you're likely to have the fuel for it at any given time. You can go through for Ornithopter, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Vector Asp, each pitching the other to search for the next one, and then even on the last search maybe get Mana Crypt to help with the mana costs of turning Lazav between the creatures.
On top of this I'm also using Necrotic Ooze combos. The reason is that although Phyrexian Dreadnought and Vector Asp is very efficient at killing a single player, sometimes you need to find the opportunity to kill everybody at once.
I'm using Pili-Pala in combination with a bunch of different mana producing creatures to get infinite mana; Palladium Myr, Metalworker, Apprentice Wizard. Millikin doesn't provide infinite mana, but it does put cards into your graveyard, which will find you these other cards to actually win.
You can get infinite mana with Necrotic Ooze using Pili-Pala and a mana creature that can tap for two or more mana both in your graveyard. With infinite mana you have a lot of different cards that you can win with. Walking Ballista is the main one I use, but you can also use Kefnet the Mindful or Mindless Automaton to draw into what you need.
So with a bunch of artifact creatures already for combos, it reminded me of "Affinity" themes you'd find in Modern, and I thought I'd just run with this idea a little bit more with some additional artifact creature synergies.
Graveyard as a resource.
Using your graveyard as a resource is one of the main ways to victory, so anything that can put massive amounts of cards into your graveyard is going to help you. There is Mirror-Mad Phantasm, as well as Cephalid Illusionist with Lightning Greaves that can put your library into your graveyard. With Lazav ability to copy a creature, often you can make him the Necrotic Ooze for a win.
There are lots more interactions, combos and synergies, but I'll go into more detail in the card choices section.
This is definetely early days for this commander, I'd like to hear what other people have been brewing or changes they think I could make, or cards that I should include.
Let's make this clear from the start, when you end up resolving a Buried Alive or Intuition, then your odds on winning are very high. You have a variety of different modes to choose your opponents ultimate demise.
So in this respect it can be a linear strategy. But as long as you build your deck to also be fun in other ways you can get a lot of enjoyment from any deck you base around Lazav.
In general the converted-mana-cost of the creatures, and really the entire deck is very low. Currently it has a literally average casting cost of 2.07. Which is pretty amazing for how powerful the combination of the cards actually are.
I will touch upon Artificer's Intuition again, because this really is the main reason I built this deck in the first place. This will provide you all the tools you need to start killing opponents with a huge infect creature.
I've purposefully kept a high count of artifacts in the deck, so that you are more likely to have one in hand, in addition to some that you might have played out to keep up a board presence.
So rather than playing some extra lands, you'll find the zero costing 'Mox' artifacts like; Mox Opal, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mox Amber. These help with speed, but also as I say potential fodder for Artificer's Intuition.
There is also the artifact lands in Seat of the Synod and Vault of Whispers, so these are even transferable if you're wanting lands, or maybe the combo creatures.
There are some protection creatures that you can turn Lazav into if you've manage to put them into your graveyard at some stage.
For indestructible you have Thassa, God of the Sea, Kefnet the Mindful.
For hexproof you have Invisible Stalker.
For undying you have Treacherous Pit-Dweller and Butcher Ghoul. Undying can be very good if faced with a board wipe, as you can turn Lazav into one if the undying creatures, and let him go to graveyard, to return with a +1/+1 counter.
There is also Nightscape Familiar for regeneration.
So leaving enough mana, usually between 2-3 to make Lazav some of these creatures does help to stifle your opponents plans of removing him.
The nice thing about having such low costing creatures, is that you can just simply cast them and you don't care if they get destroyed. They end up being very handy blockers against aggressive decks, buying you time.
If you have an Entomb in your starting hand then you can look to cast Lazav on Turn 1 (Mox artifacts) or Turn 2 and then look to hit with 12 commander damage (Phyrexian Dreadnought) the following turn. It can often be too much for your opponents to deal with as it presents each one of them with a two turn clock. You certainly end up killing at least one person, before they can do anything. It's pretty brutal too be honest.
Mirror-Mad Phantasm is special in that not only will it potentially put tons of cards into your graveyard by itself, but you can also use Lazav to copy it and then the rule where because the "card" it is looking for won't actually be "Mirror-Mad Phantasm", you can mill your entire deck at once. You'll need to be able to cast Lazav again to combo win with for example with Necrotic Ooze, so you just need to keep in mind that you do need quite a bit of mana if you're looking to combo this way.
You can cast Cephalid Illusionist (or use Lazav to copy) and keep swapping Lightning Greaves between this and another creature, and each time the triggered ability will happen. So you can mill as much as your library as you want.
Originally I had Laboratory Maniac and was focused on this aspect of winning, but too be honest it's a general theme I've done a million times before.
You could make a potentially more competitive build that focuses on "having no library" for wins.
You can also build them to have a Dread Return package, so that you don't even need Lazav back in play. Because Dread Return can be flashed back by sacrificing 3 creatures, you can run support cards like, Fatestitcher, Narcomoeba to help you reach that number. These can all be played from your graveyard.
In the end I'm not running these, well because I like to keep things a bit fresh for myself. But I need to be respectful that other players are looking to do this sort of stuff for the first time, or for the most competitive build, so by all means these are very strong cards and plays to put into a Lazav deck.
Even without infect the Phyrexian Dreadnought can still make Lazav hit for 12 damage, and with commander 21 damage rule, it can kill players in a couple of hits.
You can copy Crackdown Construct with Lazav and then you can copy any zero costing creature in your graveyard as many times as you want to make Lazav get infinite +1/+1 until end of turn. You just need to make sure you keep responding to making him the zero cost creature, before it resolves, so that he remains Crackdown Construct for as long as you want. Even with the creatures like Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker which are 0/0, Lazav will get the bonus of +1/+1 before he resolves into one of them, so will remain alive.
There is a combo using Jace's Archivist and Notion Thief together. With Lazav being able to copy creatures from your graveyard, you can even setup a Buried Alive or Intuition.
If both of them are in your graveyard then you can make Lazav the Jace's Archivist and use the discard draw ability, make sure you respond to it before it resolves by making Lazav the Notion Thief. Opponents will be left probably empty handed, while you will have..well a lot.
I've already mentioned winning with Necrotic Ooze. You can get infinite mana, and this normally means some other broken plays. Grand Architect can also be used with Pili-Pala in play. You can make the Pili-Pala a blue creature, so that you can tap it for 2 arifact mana and use this to untap itself for gaining the mana.
It's important to note that Necrotic Ooze cannot use the Grand Architect with Pili-Pala as the Ooze is not an artifact to start with.
So you still need one of the mana producing creature in your graveyard; Palladium Myr, Metalworker, Apprentice Wizard for the Necrotic Ooze to go infinite. The reason I like to run this is that you can have some redundancy with 3 creatures that do this, and you're happy to draw these at anytime during the game as they do provide mana in general.
If you have 4 artifacts in hand, you can look to use Metalworker and Pili-Pala with Lazav by himself to gain infinite mana. You need 5 to keep switching Lazav between the two creatures and the 2 to activate the Pili-Pala, so this will net you a mana each time.
Training Grounds is obviously one of the signature cards of the deck, allowing you to much more easily switch between creatures.
But it also opens up some infinite's with Pili-Pala, Palladium Myr/Metalworker/Apprentice Wizard and Lazav by himself as well. As it only costs 1 to switch Lazav between each creature, and then Pili-Pala activation is also reduced you can net mana each time to you rotate around Pili-Pala and one of the mana creatures.
This also means that you can use the creatures that produce at least one mana to also combo with the Necrotic Ooze and Pili-Pala to get infinite mana; Millikin, Leaden Myr, Silver Myr.
Glen Elendra Archmage is a great control card, and I've even used it with Lazav copying it, or Necrotic Ooze. You might get the infinite combos, but say not have a "win-con". I've used Glen Elendra Archmage as a pseudo win-con as opponents couldn't cast non-creature spells, as I could keep countering everything, and then removing the -1/-1 counters, with some of the +1/+1 counter creatures.
Crypt Rats is a great catch all for destroying creatures. A clever trick is to make Lazav the Crypt Rats if in your graveyard, then you can put the damage effect on the stack and then turn Lazav into another creature that would survive the effect. For example Phyrexian Dreadnought with 12 toughness, or the indestructible or undying creatures.
This also means that you can do it every turn, locking opponents out of playing creatures at all.
Although not technically a creature, Smuggler's Copter is really good in this deck with the ability to filter cards into your graveyard.
There is an artifact cost reduction creature in Etherium Sculptor.
Although not an artifact creature, there is also Nightscape Familiar for cost reduction of blue spells.
What nice about these creatures is that if they are in your graveyard then you can copy them with Lazav, and often the 2 you invest into copying one, is recouped straight away with the cost reduction of casting spells. So this feels very efficient during game play.
I have enjoyed using Hex Parasite to provide a loop with undying creatures. You can remove the +1/+1 counters, so you can even look to keep Lazav from being killed by making him an undying creature and then removing the +1/+1 to setup the process again.
I was using Butcher Ghoul with Skullclamp, and then using Hex Parasite to remove the counter. If you use the Phyrexian mana life loss portion, then it essentially works out to 2 and 2 life for drawing 2 cards. You can just keep doing it for as much mana as you want to invest in drawing.
I've even used Hex Parasite on opponents planeswalkers to kill them off. Can be used to remove -1/-1 counters, so excellent with Glen Elendra Archmage. Surprisingly versatile creature.
On subsequent non-creature artifact searches you can get Skullclamp to get further draw from the artifact creatures you are sacrificing to Arcum Dagsson.
-OR-
You can get Lightning Greaves with the non-creature artifact search, and search for Cephalid Illusionist with the Citanul Flute. This way you can put as many cards into graveyard as you want.
-OR-
Simpy go through for any of your other combo creatures, matching them up with maybe artifact mana to help the process.
Skullclamp is really amazing in this deck, you're very happy to kill off your small creatures to get them into your graveyard, whilst also drawing cards in the process.
The Universal Solvent seems like unusual removal, but there have been a number of games where I've had Artificer's Intuition and I've not been able to go for any combo cards because of some graveyard hate card. So it's a catch-all for situations like this. You can always get Mana Crypt and Sol Ring with Artificer's Intuition so getting the 7 mana for Universal Solvent is very doable.
Note that even Maze of Ith and Scavenger Grounds can be destroyed with it, as lands can pose problems as well.
What's not in the deck?
I did have Phage the Untouchable in my first few games, and I did end up actually killing a player with it. However it is 7 mana for the purposes of the kill, and there are just more mana efficient ways to win, so I just found it a little too expensive for what the rest of the deck can operate on.
I found Hunted Horror to be disappointing. It's far better to have creatures that you are happy to naturally cast, and then get killed if needing to go to graveyard. So it can get stuck in your hand, by not wanting to give an opponent 6 power of creatures, that's hard for you to block.
The only creature left in the deck that you really don't want to put into play is Treacherous Pit-Dweller. But the 2 mana undying you can give Lazav is too invaluable to pass up.
As far as Necrotic Ooze combos, there will be plenty of potential combos over what I run in particular. But I specifically stayed away from Phyrexian Devourer with Walking Ballista. The reason is that you actually need to produce 120 converted-mana-cost of spells from the rest of your deck in order to kill say 3 opponents on healthy life. So there is no guarantee of doing this. Specifically doesn't work with milling most/all of your library as well.
Also there is a Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Bloodline Keeper that could be run, but again the mana cost of these creatures just do not line up well with my very low casting cost approach, if you were cast them naturally. Plus you still need to do something with the +1/+1 counters, so need the additional win-cons.
I did have Mikaeus, the Unhallowed in the first build, but for the reasons of being expensive to cast or copy, I ended up cutting him. Therefore Triskelion is also too expensive for what we are looking to operate on mana wise.
Oh nothing really. Originally I was going to put a Wildfire in the deck, but didn't, then I didn't removed the Flagstones of Trokair. Just an alternative to a Plains, only downside would be Land Tax, but otherwise good against land destruction.
It's me..again. Sticking my nose in it as usual, but I've played a Horde of Notions deck before and the "combo" I used was Seedborn Muse, so that you could use the WUBRG each players turn, and I would specifically aim for Avenger of Zendikar and Regal Force together to draw a bunch of cards. Sacrifice outlets are good as you can just bring the Avenger of Zendikar or Regal Force back for another round of value.
entomb is a very strong tutor, no real competition.
coffers is nearly ubiquitous in mono-black, and even 2-color black with urborg.
mirrari's wake is easily the most powerful card imo, though I can see the argument made for anger given that it can cost 0 and fits into more decks.
fetches go into every non-monocolor deck, and lots of monocolor ones too. Tough to argue with that, even if they're a little boring.
seedborn muse is an easy pick in a weak set.
scourge is the only one that's tough. Decree of pain is powerful, but expensive. mind's desire is pretty niche to storm decks. temple is in a lot of decks but it's only just ok imo, early turns are important. Personally I went out on a limb and voted sliver overlord - slivers aren't a major archetype or anything, but overlord absolutely makes that deck which would be garbage without him. Mind's desire is a great card for storm but it's only one of the 99.
Yeah, agree pretty much one-horse race within each selection. The only really hard to decide pick was Scourge. Although I did pick Weathered Wayfarer over fetch lands for Onslaught. Not that this is correct, I live and die by fetch lands, but I wanted to show what would have been picked if the fetch lands didn't exist
So, I had the chance to pick up all I needed for the new version of the deck, and OMG! Whoever suggested Ashen Rider was a genius! Only got to play 1 game, but that I got so much value bouncing Animate Dead to get Rider and Magister of Worth. Between those two, I was able to lock down the board from getting too crazy. Also, I will agree with the group I was playing with, Nezahal, Primal Tide is WAY stronger than he seems and nearly impossible to stop.
Wanted to say thank you all for giving me a hand to making some recent changes! Think it is nearly done. One question: What is everyone’s thoughts on adding Twilight Prophet for the reanimator build. Can totally play off of the top deck ability with our commander while waiting to dumb it into the graveyard in the late game.
I can testify that playing against Nezahal, Primal Tide is horrible. Just by drawing so many cards off him, it's virtually impossible to waste removal on it, as that person always has excess cards to discard to save it. So you just never end up targeting it for removal in the first place. Also can avoid creature board wipes.
The more I look at Magister of Worth, the more I can see it's value. Obviously with your deck being able to setup your own graveyard with creatures the 'grace' portion can do work. I'm just hesitate as all players get to choose the outcome, so it's not always going to end up the vote that you want. I feel it would be a better card with some graveyard removal yourself, especially at instant speed from your hand. So if opponents go the way of 'grace' you can get a person on it.
Twilight Prophet is Bob's fancy cousin. The 2/4 flying is a factor as well, pretty good at blocking pesky flyers, that would otherwise attack for free. I definitely think it will be value in any Aminatou deck that plays it. I certainly could see myself playing it in any version I'd put together. Putting a Omniscience, etc on top and dealing 10 damage to all opponents, and gaining 10 life is a path to victory. Being able to continuously put that card back on top with Aminatou [+1] does mean that opponents will have to deal with Twilight Prophet and/or Aminatou, or die in 2-4 turns.
The deck is weak to sweepers and counters (like all experimental decks) but once you get the engine going, it's nearly impossible to lose. The reason why I chose the explore package is that it does two things: filters the top of your deck and gains life with walker. The lifegain is super important vs most matchups as you won't have all that much interaction. So essentially being able to ignore what your opponent is doing is bonus. It's not unusual to be able to play your entire deck over the course of a few turns. You can then banefire your opp for lethal or simply overrun them with creatures.
I'm still trying to figure out the correct mixture of creatures and spells but this is the version that i felt has been the most consistent at doing its thing.
That looks like a really solid build. How is your actual land base configured?
I do think there is a Jund build that can include Duress to try and punish decks that try to sit and wait to disrupt your Frenzy or wait for you to build up creatures to board wipe. So your land base can include 4 x Overgrown Tomb, 4 x Woodland Cemetery, and so the Black is essentially easy to splash.
For example what if there was a card that gave Rona, Disciple of Gix and additional ability to exile cards. Can't think of something off the top of my head, but lets assume you were able to add some extra text to her, like "1, Exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard."
Would this new ability be linked to her playing cards from exile ability?
Hive Mind allows you to still play instants and soceries your opponents play, so you still have extra action besides Eternal Dominion.
The copies that Hive Mind’s ability creates are created on the stack, so they’re not “cast.” Abilities that trigger when a player casts a spell (like Hive Mind’s ability itself) won’t trigger.
Planar Bridge also allows you to use cards from your library.
I actually play a Boros control deck with no creatures and I feel that there are some very powerful cards that get overlooked because it's not easy to see how they all work together at first.
First off Orim's Chant is massively underrated. This card has won me more games than I can count.
Second, Repercussion is extremely powerful. Repercussion and Blasphemous Act can literally one shot all your opponents on the same turn if you let them set up properly.
I use a strategy where I play Mana Flare, Howling Mine, Helm of Awakening, let my opponents get out a bunch of creatures tap out and then use Repercussions to one hit kill them. Or I make them draw a bunch of cards and play Molten Psyche (which is surprisingly good in Boros) with a damage doubler and hit everyone of huge amounts of damage.
If you combine Repercussion with any thing that doubles damage, you actually do 4 x damage to the creatures controllers, and kill their creatures at the same time. So if you cast a lighting bolt for one mana, hit a creature for 6, and then the creatures controller for 12. Then you fork it. And hit a second creature, you just did 24 damage for 3 mana, killing two creatures.
Æther Flash with Repercussion and a damage doubler will keep almost all creatures off the board, and do 8 damage to the creature's controller every time they cast a creature spell.
Powerstone Minefield and a damage doubler can really reduce your chances of being attacked.
Reverse Damage and damage redirection cards are highly underrated. When someone swings for 21 commander damage and you have Furnace of Rath out, and redirect it back to them, then it's a one shot. Or you gain 10 life when they thought you were going to die and then on your turn board wipe, now the game is reset.
That's just my two cents. In Boros control creatures matter very little as you should be blowing up the board all the time, so you are better off setting up ways to one shot opponents, with damage doublers, Forks and Repercussion with cards like Chain Reaction.
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I think I'm actually going to load my deck up with every red card that doubles damage. Play two damage doublers (for 4x damage), play Sunforger, play the commander and Sunforge into Warleader's Helix, do 40 damage to one opponent, then fork it. And if you know someone's holding counter spells you would cast Orim's Chant on them first, many people don't see a one shot coming in a Red White deck, and don't realize how much damage you can easily do, as no one plays Boros control.
Oh wow, Repercussion is the secret sauce I've been looking for.
The game that go the best is when opponents set up with heaps of creatures that are not necessarily pressuring you and then you do a massive Chain Reaction or Blasphemous Act and literally gain a hundred or even two hundred or more life. Then you just have this massive cushion that you can sit on. But Repercussion actually gives you a win con with that.
I know what you mean, like you are just happy that people are playing creatures out, and you start counting them, like "play more, play more please". So I can understand the hug deck style with Howling Mine and Mana Flare. But I think because the deck is so slow to start with, not helping opponents gives you some breathing space to keep on top of whats going on, rather than just getting combo winned out.
I do play Silence in the deck, but I can see having Orim's Chant as an alternative or as well of.
Blaze Commando has turned out to be actual factual terrible in my deck. Just not enough instants and soceries dealing damage to get value out of the guy at 5 mana. Young Peezy at least only cost two mana. Honestly I never got any tokens out of Blaze Commando because I couldn't cast it in a timely manner.
But you can check out GrimoireDark "new version" here => https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/796621-c18-1-4-aminatou-the-fateshifter-the-8-year-old?page=8#c176
I actually played Dimir Infiltrator and Disciple of Deceit in my first build and I found them a little slow. The Dimir Infiltrator is still pretty deece, but I found myself if transmutting it going for Demonic Tutor. How is this bad? Well it's not but it ends up being like a 5 mana tutor. In which case maybe just casting Final Parting is better? This isn't entirely true, as it can just go to your graveyard naturally through mill, etc, to get the unblockable ability.
I did find the Disciple of Deceit was a bit slower than I was hoping. Of course I had designs of changing Lazav into Disciple of Deceit just before my turn to get a tutoring effect going on. But a few things do need to line up. As I was pointing out in the original post trying to get value from from creatures is actually mana intensive. If you're having to make Lazav unblockable to get him tapped and spending mana to make him Disciple of Deceit then it's actually a lot of mana to spend, and is a slow way to search for cards, that are still conditional on the converted-mana-cost in your hand.
Thran Turbine is an interesting one. It could be good, but can't quite wrap my head around how often it'll be good.
Phyrexian Arena is a slow one, I should probably just play Windfall instead.
Tolarian Winds is something that I should look at, pretty close to Frantic Search. The instant speed is quite good I'd imagine as you can setup before your turn to get the surprise on opponents.
Added
+ Windfall
+ Tolarian Winds
Remove
- Phyrexian Arena
- Hangarback Walker
Nether Traitor is a good one, the haste is a relevant feature. It's good to be able to potentially have one of each creature ability to pull from if need be.
You should post you list sometime.
Added
+ Nether Traitor
Removed
- Siren Stormtamer
This confuses me as Training Grounds says 'This effect can't reduce the amount of mana an ability costs to activate to less than one mana.'
Is this a bug, or is there some funky interaction that occurs that allows this to happen within the rules?
Maybe try and control the board with some sweepers leading up to your combo.
Rather than Flood of Recollection and some of the draw, you need to main board (hedge) against aggressive decks.
Ritual of Soot comes to mind.
You can also play some number of Duress and/or Thought Erasure against control.
Also some number of Assassin's Trophy to deal with threats in a mana efficient manner.
The point of having Anticipate and Opt is that you have cards that you can dig for to deal with what opponents are doing.
Otherwise statiscally you're probably going to have an Omniscience and a Mastermind's Acquisition by the time you get up to 10 mana, so what is all this card manipulation for?
It took me a while to even start with a theme, as there are really quite a few different ways to tackle this commander.
When I make and post deck lists, I'm not always trying to present "the best" deck that you might be able to build, but rather unique angles or themes, so that it gives potential deck makers a take that they might not have seen or thought about before.
My first brew I was really hoping to do a lot of different things each game. But what happened is that I ended up always winning the same way.
It was turning Lazav into Vector Asp and Phyrexian Dreadnought, along with some evasive creature, mostly Invisible Stalker.
You can give Lazav infect until end of turn, and then change him into a 12/12 trampler, and that is usually enough to kill a player.
So why did it end up being this most of the time? Well it's super mana efficient firstly. But thing with competitive games of commander, is that somebody is usually going off and getting ahead, and you don't have time to setup necessarily your own card advantages. I just found myself pressured enough to try and eliminate at least one player who is threatening to win, and this is a very efficient way of killing that player.
So what's the problem? Well no real problem, just became a bit linear and frankly boring. You do the same thing 5 games in a row and it feels like just about time to shelve the deck.
What ended up being "meh"?
I will give you some insight into additional themes I was trying to play into, so that it might help with what you might have planned with your build of Lazav. The first one was "value creatures". The idea was to get to copy some creatures to gain some card draw, etc.
For me these included Maralen of the Mornsong, Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, Sygg, River Cutthroat, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Disciple of Deceit. Copying these creatures from your graveyard, you can wait for example until end of opponents turn to make Lazav into Maralen of the Mornsong to tutor for a card, and then turn Lazav into something else so that opponents don't get the same benefits.
I really liked the idea of turning Lazav into Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, and then casting Silas Renn from your graveyard as an artifact (from the trigger of the first one), and then you'll get two versions in play, as Lazav is still unique. It's not often that you can get two of the same type of legendary creatures in play.
So what's the problem? Well, the thing with spending mana to make Lazav different creatures is that it is mana intensive, even if the converted-mana-cost of the creatures is only 2 or 3 mana. The fact of the matter is that you can never have enough mana to bounce around different creatures the way you'd like to in your head. If you're being aggressive with Lazav, trying to attack with some sort of big hit combo, then it's unlikely that you can look to also get value from him as well, or for the matter protect him. By protect I mean leaving up enough mana to turn him into a hexproof, indestructible or undying creature.
So in the end you need to pick a lane, if you're lucky two lanes, but you can't look to do everything. It turns out that the lane that gets you the least ahead is medium value, so turning him into something like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is fine, but you'll find on average that games are pushing the action too much to have turns like that. You still need mana to cast spells as well, to further your board or disrupt your opponents.
I also was trying a number of different infinite combos, as I really like to break down commanders and their synergies with infinite's. However in the end I just found I wasn't getting them, as I already mentioned every game I just ended up doing the same aggressive 12/12 infect attacks, rather than setting up for complicated combo sequences. The other problem is that some of those combo cards, didn't really have a broad spectrum of uses, so often were fairly useless until you have the complete combo. In this regard I normally like to have cards that have cross synergies, so that I can feel the slot is warranted, and some of these I felt just didn't work out.
These included Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar. Most of you will recognize these as super powerful cards in the right build, but unfortunately for my deck they ended up being too specialized to one particular combo, so much of the time were not used for any value at all. So these types of specialized combo cards were cut.
With the next iteration of the deck I played, I had been enjoying the unblockable part of the combos, so I went for a low to the ground unblockable/flying squad, with the idea that I would lean on some draw enchantments; Bident of Thassa, Coastal Piracy and Thopter Spy Network, to gain card advantage.
This was pretty short lived, it turns out if you don't draw one of those cards, your small squad sucks, lol.
Robot Spy Drones.
The current build I've gone to an idea that I was floating around in the Let's Brew thread, and that was utilizing artifact creatures and +1/+1 counters. With Lazav ability to become different creatures, you can potentially toolbox how those +1/+1 counters are used. If he is a Walking Ballista then he can deal damage. If he is a Mindless Automaton then he can use them for draw and discarding cards to your graveyard.
But the reason I've gone down the path of a heavy artifact build is for two reasons.
Around about 1/3 of the deck is artifacts, so you're likely to have the fuel for it at any given time. You can go through for Ornithopter, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Vector Asp, each pitching the other to search for the next one, and then even on the last search maybe get Mana Crypt to help with the mana costs of turning Lazav between the creatures.
On top of this I'm also using Necrotic Ooze combos. The reason is that although Phyrexian Dreadnought and Vector Asp is very efficient at killing a single player, sometimes you need to find the opportunity to kill everybody at once.
I'm using Pili-Pala in combination with a bunch of different mana producing creatures to get infinite mana; Palladium Myr, Metalworker, Apprentice Wizard.
Millikin doesn't provide infinite mana, but it does put cards into your graveyard, which will find you these other cards to actually win.
You can get infinite mana with Necrotic Ooze using Pili-Pala and a mana creature that can tap for two or more mana both in your graveyard. With infinite mana you have a lot of different cards that you can win with.
Walking Ballista is the main one I use, but you can also use Kefnet the Mindful or Mindless Automaton to draw into what you need.
So with a bunch of artifact creatures already for combos, it reminded me of "Affinity" themes you'd find in Modern, and I thought I'd just run with this idea a little bit more with some additional artifact creature synergies.
Graveyard as a resource.
Using your graveyard as a resource is one of the main ways to victory, so anything that can put massive amounts of cards into your graveyard is going to help you. There is Mirror-Mad Phantasm, as well as Cephalid Illusionist with Lightning Greaves that can put your library into your graveyard. With Lazav ability to copy a creature, often you can make him the Necrotic Ooze for a win.
There are lots more interactions, combos and synergies, but I'll go into more detail in the card choices section.
This is definetely early days for this commander, I'd like to hear what other people have been brewing or changes they think I could make, or cards that I should include.
Let's make this clear from the start, when you end up resolving a Buried Alive or Intuition, then your odds on winning are very high. You have a variety of different modes to choose your opponents ultimate demise.
So in this respect it can be a linear strategy. But as long as you build your deck to also be fun in other ways you can get a lot of enjoyment from any deck you base around Lazav.
In general the converted-mana-cost of the creatures, and really the entire deck is very low. Currently it has a literally average casting cost of 2.07. Which is pretty amazing for how powerful the combination of the cards actually are.
I will touch upon Artificer's Intuition again, because this really is the main reason I built this deck in the first place. This will provide you all the tools you need to start killing opponents with a huge infect creature.
I've purposefully kept a high count of artifacts in the deck, so that you are more likely to have one in hand, in addition to some that you might have played out to keep up a board presence.
So rather than playing some extra lands, you'll find the zero costing 'Mox' artifacts like; Mox Opal, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mox Amber. These help with speed, but also as I say potential fodder for Artificer's Intuition.
There is also the artifact lands in Seat of the Synod and Vault of Whispers, so these are even transferable if you're wanting lands, or maybe the combo creatures.
There are some protection creatures that you can turn Lazav into if you've manage to put them into your graveyard at some stage.
For indestructible you have Thassa, God of the Sea, Kefnet the Mindful.
For hexproof you have Invisible Stalker.
For undying you have Treacherous Pit-Dweller and Butcher Ghoul. Undying can be very good if faced with a board wipe, as you can turn Lazav into one if the undying creatures, and let him go to graveyard, to return with a +1/+1 counter.
There is also Nightscape Familiar for regeneration.
So leaving enough mana, usually between 2-3 to make Lazav some of these creatures does help to stifle your opponents plans of removing him.
How to get creatures into your graveyard?
There are a number of cards that allow you to put cards from your hand into the graveyard; Wharf Infiltrator, Looter il-Kor, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Smuggler's Copter, Jace's Archivist, Artificer's Intuition, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds.
The nice thing about having such low costing creatures, is that you can just simply cast them and you don't care if they get destroyed. They end up being very handy blockers against aggressive decks, buying you time.
There are also a number of cards that will put cards into graveyard from your library; Lazav, the Multifarious, Entomb, Buried Alive, Intuition, Search for Azcanta, Millikin, Mirror-Mad Phantasm, (Cephalid Illusionist + Lightning Greaves).
If you have an Entomb in your starting hand then you can look to cast Lazav on Turn 1 (Mox artifacts) or Turn 2 and then look to hit with 12 commander damage (Phyrexian Dreadnought) the following turn. It can often be too much for your opponents to deal with as it presents each one of them with a two turn clock. You certainly end up killing at least one person, before they can do anything. It's pretty brutal too be honest.
Mirror-Mad Phantasm is special in that not only will it potentially put tons of cards into your graveyard by itself, but you can also use Lazav to copy it and then the rule where because the "card" it is looking for won't actually be "Mirror-Mad Phantasm", you can mill your entire deck at once. You'll need to be able to cast Lazav again to combo win with for example with Necrotic Ooze, so you just need to keep in mind that you do need quite a bit of mana if you're looking to combo this way.
You can cast Cephalid Illusionist (or use Lazav to copy) and keep swapping Lightning Greaves between this and another creature, and each time the triggered ability will happen. So you can mill as much as your library as you want.
You could make a potentially more competitive build that focuses on "having no library" for wins.
You can also build them to have a Dread Return package, so that you don't even need Lazav back in play. Because Dread Return can be flashed back by sacrificing 3 creatures, you can run support cards like, Fatestitcher, Narcomoeba to help you reach that number. These can all be played from your graveyard.
In the end I'm not running these, well because I like to keep things a bit fresh for myself. But I need to be respectful that other players are looking to do this sort of stuff for the first time, or for the most competitive build, so by all means these are very strong cards and plays to put into a Lazav deck.
Having a number of creatures that are unblockable does come in handy for alpha strikes attacks with Lazav; Blighted Agent, Invisible Stalker, Nether Traitor, Wharf Infiltrator, Looter il-Kor.
Wharf Infiltrator and Looter il-Kor are nice in that you can use them for card filtering, putting creatures, etc into your graveyard.
Even without infect the Phyrexian Dreadnought can still make Lazav hit for 12 damage, and with commander 21 damage rule, it can kill players in a couple of hits.
You can copy Crackdown Construct with Lazav and then you can copy any zero costing creature in your graveyard as many times as you want to make Lazav get infinite +1/+1 until end of turn. You just need to make sure you keep responding to making him the zero cost creature, before it resolves, so that he remains Crackdown Construct for as long as you want. Even with the creatures like Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker which are 0/0, Lazav will get the bonus of +1/+1 before he resolves into one of them, so will remain alive.
There is a combo using Jace's Archivist and Notion Thief together. With Lazav being able to copy creatures from your graveyard, you can even setup a Buried Alive or Intuition.
If both of them are in your graveyard then you can make Lazav the Jace's Archivist and use the discard draw ability, make sure you respond to it before it resolves by making Lazav the Notion Thief. Opponents will be left probably empty handed, while you will have..well a lot.
I've already mentioned winning with Necrotic Ooze. You can get infinite mana, and this normally means some other broken plays.
Grand Architect can also be used with Pili-Pala in play. You can make the Pili-Pala a blue creature, so that you can tap it for 2 arifact mana and use this to untap itself for gaining the mana.
It's important to note that Necrotic Ooze cannot use the Grand Architect with Pili-Pala as the Ooze is not an artifact to start with.
So you still need one of the mana producing creature in your graveyard; Palladium Myr, Metalworker, Apprentice Wizard for the Necrotic Ooze to go infinite. The reason I like to run this is that you can have some redundancy with 3 creatures that do this, and you're happy to draw these at anytime during the game as they do provide mana in general.
If you have 4 artifacts in hand, you can look to use Metalworker and Pili-Pala with Lazav by himself to gain infinite mana. You need 5 to keep switching Lazav between the two creatures and the 2 to activate the Pili-Pala, so this will net you a mana each time.
Training Grounds is obviously one of the signature cards of the deck, allowing you to much more easily switch between creatures.
But it also opens up some infinite's with Pili-Pala, Palladium Myr/Metalworker/Apprentice Wizard and Lazav by himself as well. As it only costs 1 to switch Lazav between each creature, and then Pili-Pala activation is also reduced you can net mana each time to you rotate around Pili-Pala and one of the mana creatures.
This also means that you can use the creatures that produce at least one mana to also combo with the Necrotic Ooze and Pili-Pala to get infinite mana; Millikin, Leaden Myr, Silver Myr.
Glen Elendra Archmage is a great control card, and I've even used it with Lazav copying it, or Necrotic Ooze. You might get the infinite combos, but say not have a "win-con". I've used Glen Elendra Archmage as a pseudo win-con as opponents couldn't cast non-creature spells, as I could keep countering everything, and then removing the -1/-1 counters, with some of the +1/+1 counter creatures.
Crypt Rats is a great catch all for destroying creatures. A clever trick is to make Lazav the Crypt Rats if in your graveyard, then you can put the damage effect on the stack and then turn Lazav into another creature that would survive the effect. For example Phyrexian Dreadnought with 12 toughness, or the indestructible or undying creatures.
This also means that you can do it every turn, locking opponents out of playing creatures at all.
Robot Spy Drones.
Artifact creatures in the deck are Ornithopter, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Vector Asp, Hex Parasite, Etherium Sculptor, Millikin, Leaden Myr, Silver Myr, Pili-Pala, Baleful Strix, Smuggler's Copter, Metalworker, Crackdown Construct, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker.
Although not technically a creature, Smuggler's Copter is really good in this deck with the ability to filter cards into your graveyard.
There is an artifact cost reduction creature in Etherium Sculptor.
Although not an artifact creature, there is also Nightscape Familiar for cost reduction of blue spells.
What nice about these creatures is that if they are in your graveyard then you can copy them with Lazav, and often the 2 you invest into copying one, is recouped straight away with the cost reduction of casting spells. So this feels very efficient during game play.
I have enjoyed using Hex Parasite to provide a loop with undying creatures. You can remove the +1/+1 counters, so you can even look to keep Lazav from being killed by making him an undying creature and then removing the +1/+1 to setup the process again.
I was using Butcher Ghoul with Skullclamp, and then using Hex Parasite to remove the counter. If you use the Phyrexian mana life loss portion, then it essentially works out to 2 and 2 life for drawing 2 cards. You can just keep doing it for as much mana as you want to invest in drawing.
I've even used Hex Parasite on opponents planeswalkers to kill them off. Can be used to remove -1/-1 counters, so excellent with Glen Elendra Archmage. Surprisingly versatile creature.
Because there are 16 artifact creatures, Arcum Dagsson can be used consistently to get non-creature artifacts. There is a mini-combo where you can get Citanul Flute. Because the creatures in the deck are so cheap, you can look to spend little mana on the searches. Of course you can go for the classic Vector Asp, Phyrexian Dreadnought. You can even just tap the Citanul Flute to get Ornithopter, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker.
On subsequent non-creature artifact searches you can get Skullclamp to get further draw from the artifact creatures you are sacrificing to Arcum Dagsson.
-OR-
You can get Lightning Greaves with the non-creature artifact search, and search for Cephalid Illusionist with the Citanul Flute. This way you can put as many cards into graveyard as you want.
-OR-
Simpy go through for any of your other combo creatures, matching them up with maybe artifact mana to help the process.
Skullclamp is really amazing in this deck, you're very happy to kill off your small creatures to get them into your graveyard, whilst also drawing cards in the process.
The Universal Solvent seems like unusual removal, but there have been a number of games where I've had Artificer's Intuition and I've not been able to go for any combo cards because of some graveyard hate card. So it's a catch-all for situations like this. You can always get Mana Crypt and Sol Ring with Artificer's Intuition so getting the 7 mana for Universal Solvent is very doable.
Note that even Maze of Ith and Scavenger Grounds can be destroyed with it, as lands can pose problems as well.
What's not in the deck?
I did have Phage the Untouchable in my first few games, and I did end up actually killing a player with it. However it is 7 mana for the purposes of the kill, and there are just more mana efficient ways to win, so I just found it a little too expensive for what the rest of the deck can operate on.
I found Hunted Horror to be disappointing. It's far better to have creatures that you are happy to naturally cast, and then get killed if needing to go to graveyard. So it can get stuck in your hand, by not wanting to give an opponent 6 power of creatures, that's hard for you to block.
The only creature left in the deck that you really don't want to put into play is Treacherous Pit-Dweller. But the 2 mana undying you can give Lazav is too invaluable to pass up.
As far as Necrotic Ooze combos, there will be plenty of potential combos over what I run in particular. But I specifically stayed away from Phyrexian Devourer with Walking Ballista. The reason is that you actually need to produce 120 converted-mana-cost of spells from the rest of your deck in order to kill say 3 opponents on healthy life. So there is no guarantee of doing this. Specifically doesn't work with milling most/all of your library as well.
Also there is a Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Bloodline Keeper that could be run, but again the mana cost of these creatures just do not line up well with my very low casting cost approach, if you were cast them naturally. Plus you still need to do something with the +1/+1 counters, so need the additional win-cons.
I did have Mikaeus, the Unhallowed in the first build, but for the reasons of being expensive to cast or copy, I ended up cutting him. Therefore Triskelion is also too expensive for what we are looking to operate on mana wise.
1 Lazav, the Multifarious
Creatures
1 Ornithopter
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Vector Asp
1 Hex Parasite
1 Blighted Agent
1 Invisible Stalker
1 Wharf Infiltrator
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Nether Traitor
1 Gilded Drake
1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
1 Dark Confidant
1 Cephalid Illusionist
1 Treacherous Pit-Dweller
1 Butcher Ghoul
1 Nightscape Familiar
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Millikin
1 Leaden Myr
1 Silver Myr
1 Pili-Pala
1 Baleful Strix
1 Smuggler's Copter
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Kefnet the Mindful
1 Grand Architect
1 Trinket Mage
1 Crypt Rats
1 Palladium Myr
1 Metalworker
1 Apprentice Wizard
1 Jace's Archivist
1 Notion Thief
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Arcum Dagsson
1 Crackdown Construct
1 Mirror-Mad Phantasm
1 Walking Ballista
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Training Grounds
1 Artificer's Intuition
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Rhystic Study
Instants and Sorcery
1 Stifle
1 Entomb
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Arcane Denial
1 Swan Song
1 Mana Drain
1 Tolarian Winds
1 Windfall
1 Intuition
1 Buried Alive
1 Frantic Search
1 Force of Will
1 Cyclonic Rift
Artifacts
1 Mox Opal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Amber
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Skullclamp
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Universal Solvent
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Citanul Flute
Lands (30)
1 Command Tower
1 Mana Confluence
1 Underground Sea
1 Watery Grave
1 Morphic Pool
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Underground River
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Fetid Pools
1 Sunken Hollow
4 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Seat of the Synod
2 Swamp
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Verdant Catacombs
The more I look at Magister of Worth, the more I can see it's value. Obviously with your deck being able to setup your own graveyard with creatures the 'grace' portion can do work. I'm just hesitate as all players get to choose the outcome, so it's not always going to end up the vote that you want. I feel it would be a better card with some graveyard removal yourself, especially at instant speed from your hand. So if opponents go the way of 'grace' you can get a person on it.
Twilight Prophet is Bob's fancy cousin. The 2/4 flying is a factor as well, pretty good at blocking pesky flyers, that would otherwise attack for free. I definitely think it will be value in any Aminatou deck that plays it. I certainly could see myself playing it in any version I'd put together. Putting a Omniscience, etc on top and dealing 10 damage to all opponents, and gaining 10 life is a path to victory. Being able to continuously put that card back on top with Aminatou [+1] does mean that opponents will have to deal with Twilight Prophet and/or Aminatou, or die in 2-4 turns.
I do think there is a Jund build that can include Duress to try and punish decks that try to sit and wait to disrupt your Frenzy or wait for you to build up creatures to board wipe. So your land base can include 4 x Overgrown Tomb, 4 x Woodland Cemetery, and so the Black is essentially easy to splash.
For example what if there was a card that gave Rona, Disciple of Gix and additional ability to exile cards. Can't think of something off the top of my head, but lets assume you were able to add some extra text to her, like "1, Exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard."
Would this new ability be linked to her playing cards from exile ability?
I have Lazav, the Multifarious in play.
I have Rona, Disciple of Gix, Deadeye Tracker, Agent of Erebos in my graveyard.
I make Lazav, the Multifarious the Deadeye Tracker, and then proceed to exile some cards from opponents graveyard.
Can I then make Lazav, the Multifarious the Rona, Disciple of Gix and play those cards from exile?
Same with Lazav, the Multifarious copying Agent of Erebos and then playing an enchantment. Then making him Rona, Disciple of Gix?
Essentially are the cards exile "stamped" with his name, and allowing for these types of interactions?
Planar Bridge also allows you to use cards from your library.
The game that go the best is when opponents set up with heaps of creatures that are not necessarily pressuring you and then you do a massive Chain Reaction or Blasphemous Act and literally gain a hundred or even two hundred or more life. Then you just have this massive cushion that you can sit on. But Repercussion actually gives you a win con with that.
I know what you mean, like you are just happy that people are playing creatures out, and you start counting them, like "play more, play more please". So I can understand the hug deck style with Howling Mine and Mana Flare. But I think because the deck is so slow to start with, not helping opponents gives you some breathing space to keep on top of whats going on, rather than just getting combo winned out.
I do play Silence in the deck, but I can see having Orim's Chant as an alternative or as well of.
Added
+ Repercussion
Removed
- Blaze Commando
Blaze Commando has turned out to be actual factual terrible in my deck. Just not enough instants and soceries dealing damage to get value out of the guy at 5 mana. Young Peezy at least only cost two mana. Honestly I never got any tokens out of Blaze Commando because I couldn't cast it in a timely manner.