Not having played with them yet, I think these are going to be very strong and will influence the way people build their mana bases in 3 color. This is, after all, only the third time they've printed duals with basic land types, which has proven to be a very relevant ability for reasons already discussed. As people have been saying, running these encourages running additional basics, which will only protect your manabase in the long run. If I were to build a 3 color deck, I'd start with:
9 fetches
3 ABU
3 Shock
3 Tango
4 Penta lands (City of Brass, Reflecting Pool, Command Tower, Mana Reflection)
10 Basics
5-8 Utility lands
----
37-40 lands
The amount of early turn fetch for CIPT Shock is huge, and replacing that line of play with fetching for the Tango lands increases the number of untapped duals you have access to in the mid to late game.
I'd personally rate these as higher than the filter lands, which have never impressed me in 3 color due to the number of times I have a basic that can't activate the filter and my curve is thrown off.
To me the only reasonable excuse for proxying is if you are testing the card or it's in transit somewhere. Personally, I don't even proxy then. I just wait until I have the card in hand. This is a hobby, and hobbies require money. A lot of money. That's the sad truth of it all. If you don't want to invest in Magic, I can't blame you. But if you want to play Magic like games, there are plenty of other options that are much cheaper. Try Dominion or Ascension or Netrunner or any other "non-collectible" card game. Plenty of people play Pauper variants, and there are plenty of decks out there that can play with the big-boys without dropping oogles of dollars. I have a Squee, Goblin Nabob Phoenix tribal deck that contends with my ultra-competitive playgroup, even after I removed powerful cards like Karn Liberated, Grim Monolith, and Crucible of Worlds. If phoenixes are possible, anything is possible.
If you proxy because the card is in another deck, maybe consider creating an EDH box that will let you build whatever deck you want on the fly. This is a good option for people who worry about "wasted investments" in Magic if you have the building itch and move from deck to deck frequently. Just pace yourself and purchase responsibly.
If you're proxying cards that are "stupid expensive", try to find reasonable alternatives and use those restrictions to build more creative decks. Consider Xenagos, the Reveler or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx instead of Gaea's Cradle. Restrictions breed creativity, after all.
All this being said, I'm not going to lecture or refuse to play with someone using proxies, I will just do my best to not let my severe judging of them show. Especially if I don't know you. But I am judging you, hard. And to those who think this game isn't pay to win: know that you couldn't be more wrong. The whole game is designed to keep you throwing money at it, so either come to terms with that sad reality or take up soccer. All you need for soccer is a ball.
Sorry for the lack of response: I'm not on these forums much these days and I missed these posts.
The BIG change I made to the deck is I changed the general to Shattergang Brothers. That change has been huge, as it opened up a couple of slots towards cards that weren't quite good enough but I had always wanted to try, most notably Bloodghast, Skullclamp, and Bitterblossom. I also found room for a Liliana of the Veil somewhere in there. I don't have the deck in front of me at the moment so I can't say what the actual changes were yet, I'll try my best to get an updated list posted over the weekend.
The great thing about Shattergang is they let you get rid of cards that stop serving you/start becoming a liability, especially our enchantments. Exploration just doesnt' have the impact turn 20 it did on turn 2, and more often then not I want to remove a problem enchantment on the board. This change also let me loosen up the removal package a bit, so I'm mostly focused on sweepers instead of spot removal (although I'll never cut Lightning Bolt, everyone who doesn't play that card is just wrong). The deck is mostly the same though, just opened up a few new avenues for attack. Good stuff.
As Twelle mentioned, this deck upgrades slowly and makes only minor meta-shifts since they don't print land-focused cards all the time. Zendikar is going to be a major change for the deck, though. My plan at the moment is to cram as many land focused cards in when the set is released, cutting a lot of removal and "good stuffy" cards to really hammer in the theme. Then, as it becomes apparent I need to put removal back in, I can evaluate which cards make the cut. There are a lot of good lands cards out there--I could almost build a deck with cards I've cut from my list, building two different versions of this deck. Maybe I'll post that list, as well.
Thanks for the continued interest! Sorry I can be a flake at times. Life just got crazy, and then I started playing WoW again... too many hobbies, not enough time for forum posts these days...
EDIT: I just tried to update the original post, but it's saying there are non-latin characters and won't post my edits. I'll have to do a more thorough comb through when I have time.
If you're looking for a deck that you'll have together for a while, my suggestion would be to find a theme you keep coming back to and find the general that best fits that theme. For me it was lands, so I build Xira Arien because I knew I wanted to go Jund. There are so many land-focused cards that I could tweak and tinker infinitely and give the deck new life. The return to Zendikar is going to be nice, as well
So find a broad theme you keep coming back to in your deck building. Like stax? Enchantress? Robots? Reanimator? All of those have endless options that boil down to preference, so you could cure your deckbuilding itch by switching up some of the key players in the deck to make it feel new.
Wizards designed Abrupt Decay to be green AND black. Wizards designed Garruk Relentless to be green THEN black. Wizards designed Deathrite Shaman to be green OR black. I'm not just trying to lump cards I like into a category, I'm trying to fulfill Wizards design intention in this format.
All of these examples fall under the unfortunate reality of creating a set of rules to govern a flavorful perspective. Intent doesn't matter after the fact, all that matters is the reality of the situation. And in order to represent the either/or flavor of a card, the mechanical reality of the card is it has to be both. The border doesn't matter, the intent doesn't matter--what matters is the card printed and how the rules interact with it.
Printing three versions of Unmake to highlight the white, black, or both nature of the card is unintuitive and creates a world of problems due to what information has to be tracked versus what information is available. If I can't find all white versions of Unmake for my mono-white standard deck, but can only find mixed/black versions, can I still cast the card? As Cryogen pointed out, how does the card handle it's other color/s in zones that aren't the battlefield or the stack? This is the definition of creating more headache for something that should be intuitive and elegant. If Wizards wanted hybrids to be a "pure" or state, they would have written the rules to reflect it. Wanna know why they didn't? Cause it's SUPER complicated to try to do so.
I disagree with the RC putting Garruk Relentless as a G/B card, but I get why they did. Am I bummed? Sure. Do I think it reasonable to upend the rules of he format for a handful of cards, most of which have alternatives that can be cast within your commander's CI? No. Mostly because there are usually color-appropriate alternatives to all the hybrid cards and yada yada.
My deck building process goes something along the lines of:
1. Think of how I want to win the game. Sulfuric Vortex? Tendrils of Agony? Craterhoof Behemoth?
2. Find a general that seems suitable for step 1*
3. Find cards that will maximize the theme of the deck. If I'm trying to win with burn, ALL THE BURN must go in the deck. All of it. Overload my deck with bad cards that are thematically on point.
4. Do a quick tightening of the deck to make sure it runs smoothly.
5. Play-test the deck, removing cards that aren't working along the way.
5.a. If I get bored during this step, I usually go back to step 1.
5.b. If the deck "feels" too much like a deck I'm already running, go back to step 1 (for example, I had Daretti, Scrap Servant built. It was a blast! Love me some artifacts. However, his +1 functions too much like Life from the Loam for my taste. If I want to dredge through my deck, I'ma just play my Loam deck. Daretti sat in a drawer for three months before I moved on to other things).
*Sometimes I find a general that is just too shiny to not use, in which case steps one and two are reversed.
The problem with this is that we're now creating distinct exceptions for cards, which is something that the Rules Committee isn't really interested in doing (see Karakas--they experimented with a format errata that made the card tap for colorless instead of white, and decided it's not worth the effort). Why is the mono-white's Unmake different from the esper deck's Unmake? The rule forces weird exceptions that require us to track different information based on who cast the spell. That seems super unintuitive to me, as my initial reaction to interact with the black nature of the card is hindered by format-specific errata.
Guessing that you haven't picked up a Tabernacle yet, despite your comment on it in the OP.
Despite believing in the card's role in EDH more than many, I'm intrigued as to what Dark Ritual is doing for you at the moment.
Also, thoughts on Dread Return? You may just have too few creatures, but it does seem like you're interacting with the graveyard often enough for it to have some potential.
Rings of Brighthearth also seems reasonable, especially given its disgusting interaction with fetches.
Blue does offer a lot for this deck, and my decision to go red over blue pretty much came down to Seismic Assault. Blue seems to offer more ways to dig for things, but green already does a stand-up job doing that by itself. Also, blue duals are WAY more expensive than red duals, so there's that.
I'm not sure which comment about The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale you're referring to. I mention that the card is the high end for this deck and can add a hefty dent to the wallet. Realistically, though, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get one. I was down when I thought the card cost closer to Bazaar of Baghdad than a new computer. I'm not one to throw nevers around too frequently, but I would have to get a serious tax refund or get it at a garage sale from some less-aware party. Tabernacle would go a long way towards helping my problem vs Radha, Heir to Keld, though.
Dark Ritual speeds the deck up significantly, and plays well with Yawgmoth's Will/Past in Flames if those are cards you run. I was testing YawgWin for a while, but didn't have a real version and my sleeves aren't dark enough to hide the non-standard back of the gold-bordered version I had. I think about YawgWin a lot, but my experience seems to be much different from other players on the boards. Time will tell. But more Dark Rit specific, the card helps me pump out earlier Ad Nauseams or Ob Nixilis, the Fallens, which given the relative speed of my group is all the more necessary. Also works well post Ad Nauseam to help cast a win con if I have to muscle out Ad Nauseam as a sorcery.
Dread Return is a great card for a different version of the deck. I would want to add Bloodghast and Bitterblossom to start, and also bring back some of the fatties from earlier versions. Right now Yawgmoth's Will is a higher priority reanimation spell. Or even Volrath's Stronghold.
I'm not really interested in Rings of Brighthearth, but that is a great interaction with fetch lands!
How is Zirilan of the Claw not casual? It's probably like, the 4th slowest tutor in the game. Way worse than Demonic Tutor, which you have no issue running.
I've only managed to play Lifegift once so far, and it was pretty okay, gaining me something like 8 life before getting destroyed in a sweeper. I honestly think it's a pretty good option for this deck with the amount of life payments/loss going on, especially seeing as it triggers for everyone's lands, not just your own. Zuran Orb Also seems like a pretty good option too tbh.
Wheel of Fortune seems like it could be good as well actually. I'm not a huge fan of Dark Confidant in EDH, but maybe it's something I should give a try in this deck at least.
I missed the openendedness of Lifegift--it's marginally better than I thought--I'll keep an eye out for one to add to my "maybe" box.
As for Bob: I usually would agree what with high average CMC cards and all, but in a deck with ~50% lands, a handful of 0 cmc spells, and a majority of non-land spells being 3 cmc or less, the average life lost from his triggers is effectively negligible. Try him out (or a Dark Tutelage) to see how you like the effect. I find as many "draw an extra card" triggers as we can get are always helpful.
Glad you like the deck! And that it's working out for you, as well.
I used to run Mulch, but cut it relatively recently. I'm constantly torn between my desire to get all the lands and take whatever non-lands come my way, or my desire for non-lands and let the lands come and go as they please. The jury is still out. I think I cut Mulch for Night's Whisper or something similar. Some games you just need removal, and Mulch does nothing to help find it. It's a really solid card, but I can't help but feel like it's since been outclassed. I think about Grisly Salvage all the time, as an example of an upgrade. I actually feel like Satyr Wayfinder is even better than Mulch, cause the Wayfinder provides a body to get a free block with. The toughest matchups for this deck, in my opinion, are dedicated aggro decks like Radha, Heir to Keld. My deck takes such a suicide approach that it doesn't take much damage to finish me off. Even if Wayfinder only nets you one card maybe, leaving something behind is always appreciated.
I kept Night's Whisper over Sign in Blood cause of the easier casting cost. I cut Sign in Blood for Dark Confidant, which is historically an all-star in this deck due to our high amount of lands and relatively low CMC of non-lands. I was re-reading some suggestions from this thread, and Wheel of Fortune is a card I started looking at again. Might give that another trial run, although giving opponents a free grip of 7 is always a mixed bag. Great if they discard a hand they love, terrible if you're giving them +5 cards. We can get more out of it on average, but the "on average" clause bums me out. My group punishes people for flipping coins like that, hence my attempts to contain some of the swingy-ness of the deck.
Looking at your list, the only question I have is Lifegift: how has that been? It seems so clunky at 3 mana, although it + Manabond could be the life-gain I'm looking for to help pad me back up to health. Although Zuran Orb is probably just better most of the time, especially since Titania, Protector of Argoth is becoming my go-to win more often than not these days.
LONG TIME NO UPDATE! And for that I'm sorry. I haven't gotten to play much Magic these last few months what with getting married, honeymoon, holidays, and the like. I have, however, been acquiring some substantial tastiness for the deck, and there have been more revisions than I know what to do with. It will be easier to just provide the updated list (list updated in the OP even if the rest of the content hasn't been):
WHAT?! Is that a Bazaar of Baghdad in there? Some OG Duals? a Dark Confidant?
Why yes, yes those all have been added. Thanks for noticing
I picked up the Bazaar with Christmas money, and that acquisition has really had me asking some tough questions about the deck. The deck has been historically "meh", a true Johnny deck in the sense that when it wins, it wins hard; but most of the time it just kinda does nothing substantial until someone else wins. Not that the win rate was terrible or anything, but it really seemed to be all pain or all gain for me (maybe it's a meta thing--who knows). With a Bazaar, however, I'm going to be public enemy number one, especially at unknown tables. If you start slamming Bazaar's and Bayous down, people are gonna kill you. Even if you do nothing with those cards.
The quest has thus turned into "How can I make my Bazaar of Baghdad proud of the deck I put it in? My meta is also really cutthroat and unforgiving, so a lot of what's going on in my deck is in response to that. I've cut down the number of ways I can win, deciding to focus on strengthening my main paths to victory. This really just means taking the higher-cost win conditions and replacing them with better removal and some additional post-Ad Nauseam umph. The removal of some of the top-end threats means that Dark Confidant is much safer than he would have been in earlier iterations of the deck.
I still need to do a bunch of testing, so I'll update the OP once I have a bit more idea for which direction the deck is going to go. Right now it's torn between a mid-rangy agro-loam deck and the Ad Nauseam/Seismic Assault deck I had built years ago. Happily taking suggestions for how to add more resiliency and stability to the deck.
This is my take on Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest. As with many builds, this deck is a voltron-style deck that tries to use tempo and cantrips to trigger his Prowess ability for profit. One of my favorite 60-card casual decks of the pre-EDH days of yore was a deck that revolved around Wee Dragonauts, utilizing cantrips and cheap draw to pump him to a one-shot kill, usually by granting double-strike via Psychotic Fury. I had tried building a Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius deck that felt similar, but it didn't have the glue that kept it all together. I believe Shu Yun to be that glue.
This deck utilizes a mix of counters, removal, cantrips, rebound effects, and suspendable cards to set up massive attacks that will turn an opponent into a spectator in 1-3 turns. However, going all-in like this against an opponent will often leave you without much of a hand to defend or re-establish a board prescence. Without a Wheel of Fortune or Time Spiral effect (or something equally explosive), it's best to let people fight it out, using your plethora of instants to create favorable blocking trades with Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest. If an opponent swings at you with two creatures while you have Shu Yun in play, you can Swords to Plowshares one creature, giving Shu Yun double strike thanks to his second ability, and favorably trade with the second creature, all for 3 mana. I just built this deck a week ago, so I don't have an exhaustive list of interactions. But here are some of my favorites:
Select Card Explanations
Lotus Bloom: In your opening hand, a suspended Lotus Bloom will come into play on turn 4, conveniently the turn after Shu Yun comes down. This still triggers Prowess, and provides a free ritual effect to have an explosive combat.
Force Away: The only good Ferocious card in my opinion (although I do plan on testing Stubborn Denial if I can find one). Shu Yun's Prowess trigger happens before the spell resolves, so any card with Ferocious will auto-trigger if Shu Yun is in play. A two mana Into the Roil is quite the card.
Pyroclasm: Again, casting this spell triggers Shu Yun, so when the spell resolves he will live on to swing through a (hopefully) clear board. 2 damage might not seem like a lot, but I have found that it wipes the majority of creatures on the board due to the large amount of utility creatures that get played. This could be a meta-call, but I would highly recommend it.
Brute Force/Reckless Charge: These cards result in a 14 damage swing with Shu Yun, all for 3 mana! Connecting with Shu Yun any additional time should take someone out of the game.
"I want to be able to cast this G/W spell in my monowhite deck because I can cast it with white mana but you shouldn't be able to cast a black spell or green spell in your monored deck because I care about color identity."
This is what you guys are essentially saying and it's really frustrating.
PREACH!
The logic behind keeping Phyrexian mana to the colors that could cast the spell without lose of life is why Hybrid will always stay multicolor: an alternate cost does not remove the color of the card. Bouncing back an Island to play Daze doesn't make Daze less blue, paying life to cast/activate Birthing Pod doesn't make it not green, and only using red mana to cast Boros Reckoner doesn't make the card not white.
9 fetches
3 ABU
3 Shock
3 Tango
4 Penta lands (City of Brass, Reflecting Pool, Command Tower, Mana Reflection)
10 Basics
5-8 Utility lands
----
37-40 lands
The amount of early turn fetch for CIPT Shock is huge, and replacing that line of play with fetching for the Tango lands increases the number of untapped duals you have access to in the mid to late game.
I'd personally rate these as higher than the filter lands, which have never impressed me in 3 color due to the number of times I have a basic that can't activate the filter and my curve is thrown off.
If you proxy because the card is in another deck, maybe consider creating an EDH box that will let you build whatever deck you want on the fly. This is a good option for people who worry about "wasted investments" in Magic if you have the building itch and move from deck to deck frequently. Just pace yourself and purchase responsibly.
If you're proxying cards that are "stupid expensive", try to find reasonable alternatives and use those restrictions to build more creative decks. Consider Xenagos, the Reveler or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx instead of Gaea's Cradle. Restrictions breed creativity, after all.
All this being said, I'm not going to lecture or refuse to play with someone using proxies, I will just do my best to not let my severe judging of them show. Especially if I don't know you. But I am judging you, hard. And to those who think this game isn't pay to win: know that you couldn't be more wrong. The whole game is designed to keep you throwing money at it, so either come to terms with that sad reality or take up soccer. All you need for soccer is a ball.
The BIG change I made to the deck is I changed the general to Shattergang Brothers. That change has been huge, as it opened up a couple of slots towards cards that weren't quite good enough but I had always wanted to try, most notably Bloodghast, Skullclamp, and Bitterblossom. I also found room for a Liliana of the Veil somewhere in there. I don't have the deck in front of me at the moment so I can't say what the actual changes were yet, I'll try my best to get an updated list posted over the weekend.
The great thing about Shattergang is they let you get rid of cards that stop serving you/start becoming a liability, especially our enchantments. Exploration just doesnt' have the impact turn 20 it did on turn 2, and more often then not I want to remove a problem enchantment on the board. This change also let me loosen up the removal package a bit, so I'm mostly focused on sweepers instead of spot removal (although I'll never cut Lightning Bolt, everyone who doesn't play that card is just wrong). The deck is mostly the same though, just opened up a few new avenues for attack. Good stuff.
As Twelle mentioned, this deck upgrades slowly and makes only minor meta-shifts since they don't print land-focused cards all the time. Zendikar is going to be a major change for the deck, though. My plan at the moment is to cram as many land focused cards in when the set is released, cutting a lot of removal and "good stuffy" cards to really hammer in the theme. Then, as it becomes apparent I need to put removal back in, I can evaluate which cards make the cut. There are a lot of good lands cards out there--I could almost build a deck with cards I've cut from my list, building two different versions of this deck. Maybe I'll post that list, as well.
Thanks for the continued interest! Sorry I can be a flake at times. Life just got crazy, and then I started playing WoW again... too many hobbies, not enough time for forum posts these days...
EDIT: I just tried to update the original post, but it's saying there are non-latin characters and won't post my edits. I'll have to do a more thorough comb through when I have time.
So find a broad theme you keep coming back to in your deck building. Like stax? Enchantress? Robots? Reanimator? All of those have endless options that boil down to preference, so you could cure your deckbuilding itch by switching up some of the key players in the deck to make it feel new.
All of these examples fall under the unfortunate reality of creating a set of rules to govern a flavorful perspective. Intent doesn't matter after the fact, all that matters is the reality of the situation. And in order to represent the either/or flavor of a card, the mechanical reality of the card is it has to be both. The border doesn't matter, the intent doesn't matter--what matters is the card printed and how the rules interact with it.
Printing three versions of Unmake to highlight the white, black, or both nature of the card is unintuitive and creates a world of problems due to what information has to be tracked versus what information is available. If I can't find all white versions of Unmake for my mono-white standard deck, but can only find mixed/black versions, can I still cast the card? As Cryogen pointed out, how does the card handle it's other color/s in zones that aren't the battlefield or the stack? This is the definition of creating more headache for something that should be intuitive and elegant. If Wizards wanted hybrids to be a "pure" or state, they would have written the rules to reflect it. Wanna know why they didn't? Cause it's SUPER complicated to try to do so.
I disagree with the RC putting Garruk Relentless as a G/B card, but I get why they did. Am I bummed? Sure. Do I think it reasonable to upend the rules of he format for a handful of cards, most of which have alternatives that can be cast within your commander's CI? No. Mostly because there are usually color-appropriate alternatives to all the hybrid cards and yada yada.
1. Think of how I want to win the game. Sulfuric Vortex? Tendrils of Agony? Craterhoof Behemoth?
2. Find a general that seems suitable for step 1*
3. Find cards that will maximize the theme of the deck. If I'm trying to win with burn, ALL THE BURN must go in the deck. All of it. Overload my deck with bad cards that are thematically on point.
4. Do a quick tightening of the deck to make sure it runs smoothly.
5. Play-test the deck, removing cards that aren't working along the way.
5.a. If I get bored during this step, I usually go back to step 1.
5.b. If the deck "feels" too much like a deck I'm already running, go back to step 1 (for example, I had Daretti, Scrap Servant built. It was a blast! Love me some artifacts. However, his +1 functions too much like Life from the Loam for my taste. If I want to dredge through my deck, I'ma just play my Loam deck. Daretti sat in a drawer for three months before I moved on to other things).
*Sometimes I find a general that is just too shiny to not use, in which case steps one and two are reversed.
Blue does offer a lot for this deck, and my decision to go red over blue pretty much came down to Seismic Assault. Blue seems to offer more ways to dig for things, but green already does a stand-up job doing that by itself. Also, blue duals are WAY more expensive than red duals, so there's that.
I'm not sure which comment about The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale you're referring to. I mention that the card is the high end for this deck and can add a hefty dent to the wallet. Realistically, though, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get one. I was down when I thought the card cost closer to Bazaar of Baghdad than a new computer. I'm not one to throw nevers around too frequently, but I would have to get a serious tax refund or get it at a garage sale from some less-aware party. Tabernacle would go a long way towards helping my problem vs Radha, Heir to Keld, though.
Dark Ritual speeds the deck up significantly, and plays well with Yawgmoth's Will/Past in Flames if those are cards you run. I was testing YawgWin for a while, but didn't have a real version and my sleeves aren't dark enough to hide the non-standard back of the gold-bordered version I had. I think about YawgWin a lot, but my experience seems to be much different from other players on the boards. Time will tell. But more Dark Rit specific, the card helps me pump out earlier Ad Nauseams or Ob Nixilis, the Fallens, which given the relative speed of my group is all the more necessary. Also works well post Ad Nauseam to help cast a win con if I have to muscle out Ad Nauseam as a sorcery.
Dread Return is a great card for a different version of the deck. I would want to add Bloodghast and Bitterblossom to start, and also bring back some of the fatties from earlier versions. Right now Yawgmoth's Will is a higher priority reanimation spell. Or even Volrath's Stronghold.
I'm not really interested in Rings of Brighthearth, but that is a great interaction with fetch lands!
I missed the openendedness of Lifegift--it's marginally better than I thought--I'll keep an eye out for one to add to my "maybe" box.
As for Bob: I usually would agree what with high average CMC cards and all, but in a deck with ~50% lands, a handful of 0 cmc spells, and a majority of non-land spells being 3 cmc or less, the average life lost from his triggers is effectively negligible. Try him out (or a Dark Tutelage) to see how you like the effect. I find as many "draw an extra card" triggers as we can get are always helpful.
Constant Mists is a great idea! I'll probably try to cut Terminate for it since I prefer my removal to be sweeping or repeatable.
I used to run Mulch, but cut it relatively recently. I'm constantly torn between my desire to get all the lands and take whatever non-lands come my way, or my desire for non-lands and let the lands come and go as they please. The jury is still out. I think I cut Mulch for Night's Whisper or something similar. Some games you just need removal, and Mulch does nothing to help find it. It's a really solid card, but I can't help but feel like it's since been outclassed. I think about Grisly Salvage all the time, as an example of an upgrade. I actually feel like Satyr Wayfinder is even better than Mulch, cause the Wayfinder provides a body to get a free block with. The toughest matchups for this deck, in my opinion, are dedicated aggro decks like Radha, Heir to Keld. My deck takes such a suicide approach that it doesn't take much damage to finish me off. Even if Wayfinder only nets you one card maybe, leaving something behind is always appreciated.
I kept Night's Whisper over Sign in Blood cause of the easier casting cost. I cut Sign in Blood for Dark Confidant, which is historically an all-star in this deck due to our high amount of lands and relatively low CMC of non-lands. I was re-reading some suggestions from this thread, and Wheel of Fortune is a card I started looking at again. Might give that another trial run, although giving opponents a free grip of 7 is always a mixed bag. Great if they discard a hand they love, terrible if you're giving them +5 cards. We can get more out of it on average, but the "on average" clause bums me out. My group punishes people for flipping coins like that, hence my attempts to contain some of the swingy-ness of the deck.
Looking at your list, the only question I have is Lifegift: how has that been? It seems so clunky at 3 mana, although it + Manabond could be the life-gain I'm looking for to help pad me back up to health. Although Zuran Orb is probably just better most of the time, especially since Titania, Protector of Argoth is becoming my go-to win more often than not these days.
Creature - 10
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Dark Confidant
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Eternal Witness
1 Hermit Druid
1 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Tilling Treefolk
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
Artifact - 7
1 Chrome Mox
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Expedition Map
1 Horn of Greed
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
Enchantment - 7
1 Aggressive Mining
1 Burgeoning
1 Exploration
1 Manabond
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Seismic Assault
1 Sylvan Libarary
Instant - 11
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Beast Within
1 Crop Rotation
1 Dark Ritual
1 Entomb
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Nature's Claim
1 Punishing Fire
1 Realms Uncharted
1 Terminate
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Creeping Renaissance
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gamble
1 Genesis Wave
1 Green's Sun Zenith
1 Life from the Loam
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Night's Whisper
1 Nostalgic Dreams
1 Scapeshift
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Toxic Deluge
Land - 49
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Barren Moor
1 Bayou
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Dark Depths
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Dustbowl
1 Evolving Wilds
3 Forest
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Grove of the Burn Willows
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Mana Confluence
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Polluted Delta
1 Raging Ravine
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Savage Lands
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
WHAT?! Is that a Bazaar of Baghdad in there? Some OG Duals? a Dark Confidant?
Why yes, yes those all have been added. Thanks for noticing
I picked up the Bazaar with Christmas money, and that acquisition has really had me asking some tough questions about the deck. The deck has been historically "meh", a true Johnny deck in the sense that when it wins, it wins hard; but most of the time it just kinda does nothing substantial until someone else wins. Not that the win rate was terrible or anything, but it really seemed to be all pain or all gain for me (maybe it's a meta thing--who knows). With a Bazaar, however, I'm going to be public enemy number one, especially at unknown tables. If you start slamming Bazaar's and Bayous down, people are gonna kill you. Even if you do nothing with those cards.
The quest has thus turned into "How can I make my Bazaar of Baghdad proud of the deck I put it in? My meta is also really cutthroat and unforgiving, so a lot of what's going on in my deck is in response to that. I've cut down the number of ways I can win, deciding to focus on strengthening my main paths to victory. This really just means taking the higher-cost win conditions and replacing them with better removal and some additional post-Ad Nauseam umph. The removal of some of the top-end threats means that Dark Confidant is much safer than he would have been in earlier iterations of the deck.
I still need to do a bunch of testing, so I'll update the OP once I have a bit more idea for which direction the deck is going to go. Right now it's torn between a mid-rangy agro-loam deck and the Ad Nauseam/Seismic Assault deck I had built years ago. Happily taking suggestions for how to add more resiliency and stability to the deck.
Creatures - 6
1 Goblin Electromancer
1 Guttersnipe
1 Mother of Runes
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Young Pyromancer
Artifact - 4
1 Lotus Bloom
1 Runchanter's Pike
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
Enchantment - 3
1 Detention Sphere
1 Jeskai Ascendancy
1 Oblivion Ring
Instant - 30
1 Azorious Charm
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Boros Charm
1 Brainstorm
1 Brute Force
1 Capsize
1 Counterspell
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Daze
1 Dig Through Time
1 Emerge Unscathed
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Force Away
1 Frantic Search
1 Gush
1 Izzet Charm
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Memory Lapse
1 Mental Misstep
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Remand
1 Renounce the Guilds
1 Shadow Rift
1 Snap
1 Swan Song
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wear//Tear
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Artful Dodge
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Council's Judgment
1 Day of Judgment
1 Distortion Strike
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Into the Roil
1 Long Term Plans
1 Past in Flames
1 Ponder
1 Preordian
1 Pyroclasm
1 Reckless Charge
1 Red Sun's Zenith
1 Rift Bolt
1 Time Spiral
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Wrath of God
Land - 35
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Brass
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Flooded Strand
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
9 Island
1 Mana Confluence
1 Mountain
1 Mystic Gate
1 Mystic Monestary
3 Plains
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rouge's Passage
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Strip Mine
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
This deck utilizes a mix of counters, removal, cantrips, rebound effects, and suspendable cards to set up massive attacks that will turn an opponent into a spectator in 1-3 turns. However, going all-in like this against an opponent will often leave you without much of a hand to defend or re-establish a board prescence. Without a Wheel of Fortune or Time Spiral effect (or something equally explosive), it's best to let people fight it out, using your plethora of instants to create favorable blocking trades with Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest. If an opponent swings at you with two creatures while you have Shu Yun in play, you can Swords to Plowshares one creature, giving Shu Yun double strike thanks to his second ability, and favorably trade with the second creature, all for 3 mana. I just built this deck a week ago, so I don't have an exhaustive list of interactions. But here are some of my favorites:
Select Card Explanations
Cards I Want to Run, but Don't Have (Yet)
Thanks for reading!
PREACH!
The logic behind keeping Phyrexian mana to the colors that could cast the spell without lose of life is why Hybrid will always stay multicolor: an alternate cost does not remove the color of the card. Bouncing back an Island to play Daze doesn't make Daze less blue, paying life to cast/activate Birthing Pod doesn't make it not green, and only using red mana to cast Boros Reckoner doesn't make the card not white.