I'm not so sure about this one, honestly. The whole point of playing Howling Mine effects is that we already break the symmetry naturally by taking extra turns and therefore getting more draws than our opponent. Our 3 drop slot is already pretty full and I'm not sure that a 3 drop that basically only cantrips if we have none of our other pieces is really good. Sure it's great if you already have resolved mine effects and manage to then resolve this, but at that point isn't it something of a win-more?
Narset's Reversal Seems like it could work here. In some cases it's a weird Remand, but it also has combo potential to double-dip on our turn spells/interaction. Also a neat upside is that it can stop turns spells from exiling when they resolve, (because the copy is the one that actually resolves not the original card). Thoughts?
Anyways, the tappedout audience is somewhat small and Limo is on a budget, so I figured I would create this thread here to get the salvation crowd in on the deck and also provide a place for discussion more based around making the deck as competitive as possible. I didn't see a thread already dedicated to the deck, so my apologies mods if I missed it or if this is the wrong place to post this. Any suggestions/comments are greatly appreciated!
The deck is based around using Lich's Mastery and Nexus of Fate combined with mass life gain such as Sanguine Sacrament to generate card advantage and eventually deck yourself to take infinite turns with Nexus of Fate. A control shell helps us live till we get the combo going as well as protect the combo from nasty things like Cleansing Nova.
Card choices:
Removal:
For early removal I'm using cast down because it's cheap, instant speed and hits a lot of early creatures in the meta. Late game is Vraska's Contempt for single removal and Ritual of Soot for wraths. I would like to be able to play Settle the Wreckage and/or Cleansing Nova but I'm not sure the mana base can handle double blue for Sinister Sabotage, double-triple black for Vraska's Contempt and Lich's Mastery AND double white for Settle the Wreckage and Cleansing Nova. With the current removal suite I'm having some problems with Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice and her other high cmc cronies. Vraska's contempt can get the job done but I only recently went up from 2-4 so I haven't gotten to test it too much.
A few ideas to solve this: Chromatic Lantern for mana fixing and ramp so that I can play the better white wraths, or moving away from blue and just playing tons of black and white removal, (splashing blue for nexus), but then I don't have very reliable card draw early game, (pre-Lich's Mastery) adding more life gain to stall for longer while I draw into my stuff naturally may work?
Card draw: Discovery // Dispersal, Notion Rain, Chemister's Insight, Anticipate all have their upsides and downsides, I'm really not sure which combination of which cards is better. Currently I'm running Radical Idea for early game, instant speed card draw and Notion Rain because it digs deep for whatever I need, (more lands, the correct colors of lands, combo pieces, answers to threats). How much of a drawback being sorcery speed remains to be seen, I may go back to Chemister's Insight for the top-of-the-curve card draw spells, 4 mana for only 2 cards deep felt too slow when trying to find an answer for something. Surveiling also stocks the graveyard for "lich life" later on in the game. I'm also not currently usuing Search for Azcanta which is probably a mistake but I don't know where to fit it in.
Mana base:
The Standard esper mana base is pretty rough especially with the expensive spells we want to be casting. No Field of Ruins for that reason, and only 2 Reliquary Towers. So far it seems like dual taplands are better than Evolving Wilds, no Watery Graves because it doesn't work well after Lich's Mastery, but it does make the mana a bit slower - not sure if I should be playing them or not.
Combo Pieces:
Obviously Lich's Mastery and Nexus of Fate aren't really replaceable. Chance for Glory would work but that's somewhat of a different deck, and I don't like that it is dead in hand pre-lich. To get closer to decking myself to take infinite trurns with Nexus I'm using Sanguine Sacrament, (and Vraska's Contempt syngergizes nicely). I've thought about Lyra Dawnbringer as both a combo piece and a win con but haven't tested it yet. The win con is Chromium, the Mutable because it's a fast clock is in our colors and is very hard to kill. Nezahal, Primal Tide could also work but doesn't have evasion, maybe evasion is needed, maybe it's not, I don't know. The card draw certainly goes along with the plan nicely.
Teferi: Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is in there because he is in our colors and is op. Some card draw and untapping lands is nice and once we go infinite you can exile everything with the ultimate, also the minus ability is helpful for controling the board. He seems to be one of those cards that is too good to not play regardless of if he combos perfectly with Lich's Mastery, but taking him out opens spots for mana fixing, more removal, more combo pieces, more counter magic etc.
There are much better ways to win when you have infinite mana than the Temur Sabertooth, yeah, it's mostly a pet card. (Though when you can't go infinite it does help you dodge removal.)
I haven't found myself needing more untappers, I think I have enough tutors that the 8 is fine
I made a very janky devotion deck based around getting infinite mana as soon as possible. I'm not sure if I would call it exactly competitive, but it is pretty fun. Here's the list:
The deck is based around the idea of getting Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl and Freed From the Real onto the battlefield for infinite mana. This is not a new idea, however, the deck has some tech that I haven't seen in other lists. Voyaging Satyr and Weirding Wood make up our extra copies of Arbor Elf and Utopia sprawl, respectively. Drift of Phantasms can tutor up for our Reals if needed, it can also tutor for Weirding Wood if we don't find it or a utopia sprawl, or it can tutor for a Chord of Calling which can find any creature in the deck, most importantly an Arbor Elf/Voyaging Satyr meaning that any of our combo pieces are "tutorable" with Drift of Phantasms and enough mana. Primal Command also can tutor for creatures, and the Drift is a creature, meaning that's 4 more tutors for our enchantments if we need them. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can be untapped with Voyaging Satyr, while this is not an infinite mana combo, it is a lot, especially if you have a Wistful Selkie & Freed From the Real out for little bit more mileage out of your Satyr. Simic Growth Chamber forms another infinite combo with Voyaging Satyr and Freed From the Real, just in case we didn't find our land enchantments. It also provides blue mana so that we can play the Real & our Drifts to tutor things. This is the only blue source in the deck aside from the land enchantments or a Nykthos for blue devotion with a Whistful Selkie or Drifts in play.
Now we have a fairly reliable way of getting our infinite mana, sometimes as soon as turn 2! (The deck can also win on turn 2 with the right hand - more on that in a second.) So what can we do with all of our infinite mana? Well, why stop at infinite mana I ask? Temur Sabertooth + Elvish Visionary or Wistful Selkie gives you "infinite" card draw, (you still only have 60 cards in the deck to draw of course.) Acidic Slime with the Sabertooth means you can destroy all of the opponent's noncreature cards on the battlefield, including their lands. Temur Sabertooth + Thragtusk gives you not only infinite life, but also infinite 3/3 beast tokens. And finally, Majestic Myriarch is your win condition, (aside from all those 3/3s we made earlier). Not only is it going to be absolutely huge, it also has trample and haste once we play our Groundbreaker.
Turn 2:
Play forest, tap it, play Utopia sprawl on your untapped forest, calling for blue as your color.
Tap Forest with Utopia sprawl, tap Arbor Elf to untap it, then tap the forest again for a total of 2G 2U in your mana pool. Spen 2G 1U to play Freed From the Real. Pay your last U to untap Arbor Elf again.
With your infinite mana, play Temur Sabertooth and Elvish Visionary/Wistful Selkie, then start drawing through your deck. Find a Thragtusk, Majestic Myriarch and Groundbreaker, either by drawing the whole deck, or tutoring for them, whichever you want. Play Thragtusk then bounce it a bunch of times with Sabertooth to get a bunch of life and 3/3 tokens. Play Groundbreaker and Majestic Myriarch. Majestic Myriarch now has some ridiculous amount of power & toughness, trample, and haste. Congrats.
(Note, the primal commands can all be Chords if you want, I just already have the primals. Same goes for Majestic Myriarch vs Craterhoof Behemoth)
Hello everyone, I'm getting back into this deck after not playing Magic for a few years. Back in the day, I played a toolbox version of the deck utilizing Green Sun's Zenith to tutor for whatever the heck I wanted, (most cards had "enter the battlefield" effects like Acidic Slime or Kitchen Finks) then being able to bounce them with Roaring Primadox to continue reusing them. Add in Mwonvuli Beast Tracker for even more tutoring, and Soul of the Harvest with Elvish Visionary for stupid amounts of card draw and your core devotion cards, it was a pretty sweet deck.
With that out of the way I have a few questions:
1. Is a toolbox devotion deck still possible with the banning of Green Sun's Zenith, (Chord of Calling being the replacement I assume)?
2. What are the best toolbox creatures to tutor for in this day and age?
3. Is there a better option for bouncing things than Roaring Primadox? If not is it still worth running it?
4. Any general advice?
Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give!
Narset's Reversal Seems like it could work here. In some cases it's a weird Remand, but it also has combo potential to double-dip on our turn spells/interaction. Also a neat upside is that it can stop turns spells from exiling when they resolve, (because the copy is the one that actually resolves not the original card). Thoughts?
Anyways, the tappedout audience is somewhat small and Limo is on a budget, so I figured I would create this thread here to get the salvation crowd in on the deck and also provide a place for discussion more based around making the deck as competitive as possible. I didn't see a thread already dedicated to the deck, so my apologies mods if I missed it or if this is the wrong place to post this. Any suggestions/comments are greatly appreciated!
The deck is based around using Lich's Mastery and Nexus of Fate combined with mass life gain such as Sanguine Sacrament to generate card advantage and eventually deck yourself to take infinite turns with Nexus of Fate. A control shell helps us live till we get the combo going as well as protect the combo from nasty things like Cleansing Nova.
3x Lich's Mastery
2x Sanguine Sacrament
1x Nexus of Fate
Removal
3x Ritual of Soot
4x Cast Down
4x Vraska's Contempt
Card Draw
4x Radical Idea
4x Notion Rain
Counter Magic
4x Essence Scatter
3x Sinister Sabotage
1x Chromium, the Mutable
Teferi
1x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
Lands
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Glacial Fortress
6x Island
4x Isolated Chapel
1x Plains
2x Reliquary Tower
5x Swamp
1x Murder
2x Duress
3x Invoke the Divine
1x Moment of Craving
2x Negate
2x Price of Fame
1x Ritual of Soot
3x Unmoored Ego
Card choices:
Removal:
For early removal I'm using cast down because it's cheap, instant speed and hits a lot of early creatures in the meta. Late game is Vraska's Contempt for single removal and Ritual of Soot for wraths. I would like to be able to play Settle the Wreckage and/or Cleansing Nova but I'm not sure the mana base can handle double blue for Sinister Sabotage, double-triple black for Vraska's Contempt and Lich's Mastery AND double white for Settle the Wreckage and Cleansing Nova. With the current removal suite I'm having some problems with Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice and her other high cmc cronies. Vraska's contempt can get the job done but I only recently went up from 2-4 so I haven't gotten to test it too much.
A few ideas to solve this: Chromatic Lantern for mana fixing and ramp so that I can play the better white wraths, or moving away from blue and just playing tons of black and white removal, (splashing blue for nexus), but then I don't have very reliable card draw early game, (pre-Lich's Mastery) adding more life gain to stall for longer while I draw into my stuff naturally may work?
Card draw:
Discovery // Dispersal, Notion Rain, Chemister's Insight, Anticipate all have their upsides and downsides, I'm really not sure which combination of which cards is better. Currently I'm running Radical Idea for early game, instant speed card draw and Notion Rain because it digs deep for whatever I need, (more lands, the correct colors of lands, combo pieces, answers to threats). How much of a drawback being sorcery speed remains to be seen, I may go back to Chemister's Insight for the top-of-the-curve card draw spells, 4 mana for only 2 cards deep felt too slow when trying to find an answer for something. Surveiling also stocks the graveyard for "lich life" later on in the game. I'm also not currently usuing Search for Azcanta which is probably a mistake but I don't know where to fit it in.
Mana base:
The Standard esper mana base is pretty rough especially with the expensive spells we want to be casting. No Field of Ruins for that reason, and only 2 Reliquary Towers. So far it seems like dual taplands are better than Evolving Wilds, no Watery Graves because it doesn't work well after Lich's Mastery, but it does make the mana a bit slower - not sure if I should be playing them or not.
Combo Pieces:
Obviously Lich's Mastery and Nexus of Fate aren't really replaceable. Chance for Glory would work but that's somewhat of a different deck, and I don't like that it is dead in hand pre-lich. To get closer to decking myself to take infinite trurns with Nexus I'm using Sanguine Sacrament, (and Vraska's Contempt syngergizes nicely). I've thought about Lyra Dawnbringer as both a combo piece and a win con but haven't tested it yet. The win con is Chromium, the Mutable because it's a fast clock is in our colors and is very hard to kill. Nezahal, Primal Tide could also work but doesn't have evasion, maybe evasion is needed, maybe it's not, I don't know. The card draw certainly goes along with the plan nicely.
Teferi:
Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is in there because he is in our colors and is op. Some card draw and untapping lands is nice and once we go infinite you can exile everything with the ultimate, also the minus ability is helpful for controling the board. He seems to be one of those cards that is too good to not play regardless of if he combos perfectly with Lich's Mastery, but taking him out opens spots for mana fixing, more removal, more combo pieces, more counter magic etc.
I haven't found myself needing more untappers, I think I have enough tutors that the 8 is fine
1x Acidic Slime
4x Arbor Elf
3x Drift of Phantasms
3x Elvish Visionary
1x Majestic Myriarch
1x Groundbreaker
3x Temur Sabertooth
1x Thragtusk
4x Voyaging Satyr
4x Wistful Selkie
4x Freed from the Real
4x Utopia Sprawl
2x Weirding Wood
4x Primal Command
1x Chord of Calling
Lands
12x Forest
4x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4x Simic Growth Chamber
The deck is based around the idea of getting Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl and Freed From the Real onto the battlefield for infinite mana. This is not a new idea, however, the deck has some tech that I haven't seen in other lists.
Voyaging Satyr and Weirding Wood make up our extra copies of Arbor Elf and Utopia sprawl, respectively. Drift of Phantasms can tutor up for our Reals if needed, it can also tutor for Weirding Wood if we don't find it or a utopia sprawl, or it can tutor for a Chord of Calling which can find any creature in the deck, most importantly an Arbor Elf/Voyaging Satyr meaning that any of our combo pieces are "tutorable" with Drift of Phantasms and enough mana. Primal Command also can tutor for creatures, and the Drift is a creature, meaning that's 4 more tutors for our enchantments if we need them. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can be untapped with Voyaging Satyr, while this is not an infinite mana combo, it is a lot, especially if you have a Wistful Selkie & Freed From the Real out for little bit more mileage out of your Satyr. Simic Growth Chamber forms another infinite combo with Voyaging Satyr and Freed From the Real, just in case we didn't find our land enchantments. It also provides blue mana so that we can play the Real & our Drifts to tutor things. This is the only blue source in the deck aside from the land enchantments or a Nykthos for blue devotion with a Whistful Selkie or Drifts in play.
Now we have a fairly reliable way of getting our infinite mana, sometimes as soon as turn 2! (The deck can also win on turn 2 with the right hand - more on that in a second.) So what can we do with all of our infinite mana? Well, why stop at infinite mana I ask? Temur Sabertooth + Elvish Visionary or Wistful Selkie gives you "infinite" card draw, (you still only have 60 cards in the deck to draw of course.) Acidic Slime with the Sabertooth means you can destroy all of the opponent's noncreature cards on the battlefield, including their lands. Temur Sabertooth + Thragtusk gives you not only infinite life, but also infinite 3/3 beast tokens. And finally, Majestic Myriarch is your win condition, (aside from all those 3/3s we made earlier). Not only is it going to be absolutely huge, it also has trample and haste once we play our Groundbreaker.
Now for the turn 2 win that I talked about. Your hand must consist of: 2x Forest, Arbor Elf Utopia Sprawl, Fread From the Reel, Elvish Visionary/Wistful Selkie and Temur Sabertooth.
Turn 1:
Play forest, tap it, play Arbor Elf.
Turn 2:
Play forest, tap it, play Utopia sprawl on your untapped forest, calling for blue as your color.
Tap Forest with Utopia sprawl, tap Arbor Elf to untap it, then tap the forest again for a total of 2G 2U in your mana pool. Spen 2G 1U to play Freed From the Real. Pay your last U to untap Arbor Elf again.
With your infinite mana, play Temur Sabertooth and Elvish Visionary/Wistful Selkie, then start drawing through your deck. Find a Thragtusk, Majestic Myriarch and Groundbreaker, either by drawing the whole deck, or tutoring for them, whichever you want. Play Thragtusk then bounce it a bunch of times with Sabertooth to get a bunch of life and 3/3 tokens. Play Groundbreaker and Majestic Myriarch. Majestic Myriarch now has some ridiculous amount of power & toughness, trample, and haste. Congrats.
(Note, the primal commands can all be Chords if you want, I just already have the primals. Same goes for Majestic Myriarch vs Craterhoof Behemoth)
EDIT: Here's a link to the deck on tappedout if you prefer to view it there: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/devotion-combo-deck/?cb=1525496693
With that out of the way I have a few questions:
1. Is a toolbox devotion deck still possible with the banning of Green Sun's Zenith, (Chord of Calling being the replacement I assume)?
2. What are the best toolbox creatures to tutor for in this day and age?
3. Is there a better option for bouncing things than Roaring Primadox? If not is it still worth running it?
4. Any general advice?
Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give!