MTG Salvation

Finally found someone else who wants to play this game! Okay I'm totally all in on this.

Okay
Linden, the Steadfast Queen is probably our Guinnevere analog if we go with the idea that Kenrith, the Returned King is Arthur and I think we can reasonably make that argument considering he's called "the Returned King" even knowing what I know about what that really means with regards to the novel.

Considering those two are based in Ardenvale from the look of it and are white aligned I'm going to go with Syr Alin, Lion's Claw as lancelot since he's the knight closest to the king and queen.

We know pretty much without question that Emry, Lurker in the Loch is the lady of the lake.

I think Gadwick, the Wizened is Merlin.

No idea who Syr Elenora, the Discerning is.

Ayara, first of the Locthwain is one where I have no idea who she could be. I guess she most closely fits Morgana but I don't know any stories connecting Morgan Le Fey with the Cauldron from the older Arthurian tales OR the Holy Grail from the later ones.

The Cauldron of Eternity as noted earlier is probably the magic Cauldron from earlier stories that may have become the Grail.

Not sure who any of the red legends are.

Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig puts me in mind of the Green Knight/Green Man from the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight.

the last one I'm going to mention is Oko, Thief of Crowns. He's the main reason I'm not sure about my Morgan Le Fey pick. Largely because considering he brings about the misfortune and shenanigans for the Arthur analog HE could be the Morgan Le Fey character in this story as well.

Hello all. I've been trying to work up a Jeskai pillowfort deck for a long while now and nothing has seemed quite right. I tried Pramikon but found he had the same problem I had with Oloro when I tried to make a pillowfort deck with him; ending the dang game. Kykar on the other hand supports the strategy AND provides bodies that either help you play more stuff or that you can use to help end the game. It's not the most powerful version of the deck certainly but I think it meets what I'm after and I'd like some help on a few things.

Note: Tappedout is acting weird right now so I've removed the link I had here and will reestablish it when the site is working properly again.




So a few things I'm considering.
1. The deck needs more draw power. I'm not satisfied with what's here and it'd be nice to be able to draw cards more consistently because I've had a number of hands that seem to establish control well in goldfishing but if my enchantments get wiped I'm not in a great position to rebuild. Suggestions on that front would be appreciated.

2. Cards like Rule of Law are something I'm unsure about. In earlier versions of this deck, cards like those were used as part of the pillowfort to keep the opponents from getting too crazy with flurries of spells. However, as I moved to more cards that ping off of casting multiple spells myself cards like that became non-bos. I'm not sure if they're powerful enough to justify throwing in anyway and just working around but I'd be open to trying it out again.

3. Flickering Ward is in as a potential protection spell for Kykar and a card that can be played over and over again cheaply to produce tokens and trigger Sigil of the Empty Throne. I've thought about using the Red version of this card for the potential to go infinite with Kykar, it and Anointed Procession but the red version doesn't do as much on its own. Do folks think the infinite potential is worth it or should I just settle in to the consistency of protection the Flickering Ward provides?

4. The deck runs the Energy field + Rest in Peace defensive combo and I considered running Open the Vaults too but it felt like too much of a non-bo with those cards. Is this again, a powerful enough card in a deck like this that forcing myself to play around cards in my own deck like that is worth it? I'm honestly skeptical about running the Hall of Heliod's Generosity and Sun Titan considering that combo frankly. I'd appreciate other thoughts on this.

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Quote from Arwen_Spence »

I'd appreciate some thoughts on how to tweak it. I'm not really satisfied with some of my artifact picks.

Which ones? I've tried Mesmeric Orb in similar build and the effect gets pretty devastating as you get more and more tokens on board.

Mindcrank, executioner's capsule, contagion engine

I'm also finding Sai probably needs his own entire deck if I'm going to get any use out of him. This isn't really an artifact deck as much as a big mana ramp/control deck with a combo finish that happens to mill folks out. There aren't enough creatures so I'm finding the Architect and Pili-Pala aren't great here.

I'd appreciate some thoughts on how to tweak it. I'm not really satisfied with some of my artifact picks.

Really hope this doesn't qualify as thread necromancy but I'm going to post the first draft of the list.
Link to th decklist

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Quote from JuiceBOX »

I know this was yesterday, but I absolutely love this card! What are some ideas people have?

It'd be nice to do some Thantis style here i.e. token generation, which forces your opponents to fight with a bigger army and you dealing more damage as well. I heart some equipment such as Whispersilk Cloak, attack right after Sylvan Offering. With tokens you could also do Sandsower to tap potential blockers, have some token generators likes Nahiri and Elspeth (Elspeth #1 also gives out flying). You only need one hit to goad all creatures, so you only need one unblockable creature (per opponent) to entice a total war.

Needless to say, Grenzo, Havoc Raiser is perfect here.

My initial thought was to go low to the ground and as evasive as these colors can do. Basically do a Naya deck that behaves a bit like Edric, Tetsuko or Sygg River Cutthroat because focusing on little creatures is out of the ordinary for Naya.

On my end I'm actually liking

Kadena, Slinking Sorceror
Pramikon, Sky Rampart (I'm thinking of going Jeskai Pillowfort with it. At long last I think I've got a really thematic general for it if I can just figure out exactly what I want the build to look like)
Chainer, Nightmare Adept (I've never had a Rakdos deck before and if I can figure out a way to make him play differently enough for Meren I might go with him).

Not big on going wall tribal here but I feel kind of bad I forgot about good old Splinter Twin. I'll put that in the maybe pile along with Approach of the Second Sun. That said, I was leaning in the token generator direction using pillowfort to buy time to build up an army and win with tokens or just Purphoros triggers.

The new C19 may have given me a general at long last to lead a Jeskai Pillowfort deck in the form of Pramikon, Sky Rampart. I was thinking about using Kykar, Wind's Fury but now that we have this option I think it's a better choice. I'm wondering what kinds of things folks might suggest as wincons for a deck in this vein.

Honestly, I'm thinking about getting both the Morph and Madness decks (something I did not think I'd be saying when these were released), stripping the Madness deck for parts as I've NEVER had a rakdos deck and then using the morph deck either entirely precon as is or slightly upgraded to be my low power tables deck.

Well, we've seen all 4 decks now and I think I can safely say no, these are NOT at all a bust. Are there things I'd like to see improved with these? Assuredly as well as a few things I don't understand. Big one is the lack of Smoldering Marsh in the Madness deck when all the others got a BFZ land. But I think they've addressed pretty much every criticism I saw from last year.

1. The decks didn't feel like the themes promised.
That's definitely not the case this time. The decks all feel like they leaned heavily into their themes. Each of the decks has about 20+ cards actually devoted to the theme. And not tangentially like last year's but directly referencing or interacting with what the average player thinks of when they think of the theme. The Morph deck especially looks alot like what you'd expect to see in a Morph deck. In fact, minus some of the much older cards I see a lot of overlap between the morph decks for Animar on EDHrec and the Morph Precon.

2. Low value.
There were more reprints in these than last years and the reprints actually look interesting. In multiple cases there are things here I don't have in my collection and I've got a pretty nice one at this point. People need to examine the reprints that were in the original decks at the time the decks were released, not now after EDH has exploded the way it has. As another post noted, stuff like Aura Shards were 2ish dollar cards at that time. Again, as the Command Zone noted you're generally getting 70+ bucks just in reprints. Nevermind that K'rrick, Son of Yawgmoth is a 30 dollar card right now by itself. Volrath, Shapestealer is 15, Elsha of the Infinite is 20. Now, those will inevitably drop when this gets out there but these precons also always rise back up in price after about a year.

3. Power of the Decks.
Precons have never been especially powerful. We won't know how these do until we get the chance to play with them but some of the new cards alone look powerful and interesting and I think, not only will these be fun to play against each other, but it might be more feasible to sneak wins in and have game at medium power level tables than people think. Nevermind that as enfranchised players, we should be doing a better job of scaling our decks to the power level to allow a newer player to have a good time anyway. I've seen lots of spurious claims here about new players getting steamrolled against actually tuned decks but this seems to me to be an example of experienced players needing to learn to be better stewards of the game than a problem with the decks Wizards puts out.

4. Interesting commanders to build around and cards for old characters.
We got Volrath, Gerard, Marisi, Chainer, Tangarth, a reference to Yawgmoth and Greven. In addition to a new Morph commander, a new Populate/token Commander, a legendary wall commander, a monk that screams "break me," and has fantastic art, an absurd madness enabler.

Now, I'm still not sure this is a product for me personally, but it's also the first year in a long time I'm not sure I want just one of these which is what I usually do (just buy one) and have no idea if I'll actually get the decks or just buy singles. The fact it's making someone like me who was probably going to just ignore this when he heard the themes rethink that stance says something positive about the product to me at least.

I'm gonna get booed and naysayed but I stand by the fact that while this could certainly be better, I do not think it is, in any way, shape or form, a bust.

I'm both laughing and annoyed that the Naya deck (a color combo I don't really like that much) is probably the one I'm most impressed with so far.

Quote from leslak »

Quote from Arwen_Spence »

I really don't know who should lead my new Jeskai Pillowfort deck. Her or the new Pramikon sky rampart. What are you folks' thoughts.

For multiplayer the wall is better imo.
For 1v1 Eisha or Sevinne are better. Eisha is more versatile but more fragile, she probably could be fun to storm off while Sevinne could be more of a tempo commander.

Thanks for that. I've been leaning in that direction as it really hammers home the theme for pillowfort but it does exacerbate the problem of those decks sometimes struggling to close a game.

I can see the hillarity of a naya evasion/pillowfort deck that plays a lot like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, Sygg, River cutthroat or Edric, Spymaster of Trest. There aren't as many straight unblockable dudes as blue but this seems like a general ripe for playing against type and I love it. Also seems like it'd be able to close out games better than the blue commanders I mentioned.

I really don't know who should lead my new Jeskai Pillowfort deck. Her or the new Pramikon sky rampart. What are you folks' thoughts.

Quote from cyberium_neo »

What’s with people wanting expensive reprints in precons? I buy these to get new cards and ready-to-play decks in case I have new players to teach. So far the decks have served such purposes.

^ That part.