I still think that Vivisection is awesome in here. I mean, it's no Momentous Fall, but still, Wrath plus Draw 3 seems really, really good. Also recurrable via Mnemonic Wall, though that's really, really slow.
I'm also thinking that you could run the Saga cycling lands (Slippery Karst and friends), and then stuff like Tilling Treefolk and Cartographer are both card advantage and/or fixing. It might at least be better than Horizon Spellbomb?
Aftershock also seems like really versatile removal that you won't mind recurring.
EDIT: Sylvok Replica? Gets itself in the graveyard, you've got multiple ways to recur it?
I already run Deserted Temple since it gives extra copies of sacrifice outlets, mazes, and whatnot. It's fine, but not awesome. It enables you to run an infinite turn combo with Rings of Brighthearth and Magosi, the Waterveil. Temple is worth considering because it provides instant speed utility and combo potential.
Garruk is probably worse than Deserted Temple unless you're planning on winning with Blinkmoth/Inkmoth plan.
That plan seems okay if you go all in on it. It's not hard to find Blink/Ink/Deserted Temple. If you can find Vesuva/Garruk too, then you could get Inkmoth up to 6/6 or so, which is a pretty fast clock. It might be worth testing, but it does eat up a ton of slots in the deck. That said, First Striking Inkmoth Nexi seem pretty scary.
Insidious Dreams seems just worse than a generic tutor. If you already run Survival, just tutor for Survival. Or just Buried Alive/Entomb the important incarnations first.
Trade Routes is reasonable, but not awesome. Reusing Bojuka Bog is fine, and cycling through useless lands is fine. I'd rather have Treasure Hunt or Ad Nauseam though. Treasure Hunt is infinitely better in builds with Top/Library though, since you can basically wait until it's a guaranteed Ancestral Recall. It's worth noting that I consistently get 8+ cards off of the thing, so I'm biased.
I still think you're running one or two too many incarnations, and could probably stand to cut one or two manlands or tutors. Maybe the Urborg/Coffers plan is bad if you replace it with Inkmoth/Blinkmoth plan.
Marshal's Anthem doesn't do anything in this deck? Once lands hit the graveyard, they're not creatures any more?
Standstill is awful in multiplayer. Everyone gets to draw cards, which means you have to fight through more hate.
Garruk seems fine if you want to go in on the Inkmoth/Blinkmoth plan, but I'd consider Deserted Temple first, if only because it can't get attacked off of the board.
I played with a Sword in my build for a day when I lent my Jace to a friend. It was fine most of the time, pretty absurd once or twice, but not stellar.
The problem is that it doesn't actively contribute to what you're trying to do. You don't have THAT many high cost cards to play, so you don't actually gain anything from the sword hit. Sure, you animated your lands for free, but you're not actually going to use most of that mana anyway.
Besides, if there's anything the deck doesn't need it's more mana, it's a land deck; you'll frequently have 15+ lands.
I definitely recommend testing Mortarpod. I threw the thing into a budget Kemba deck, and it was awesome, so I started testing it in other stuff, and it's been pretty stellar in just about every deck I've tried it out in. Pretty sure it's one of the best two or three uncommons from Besieged for Commander.
I'm totally aware of the general zone/graveyard interactions. My primary general is Child of Alara, so I play around that stuff all the time.
But, there comes a point where you won't have to send saffi to general zone because of recursion, or you can clamp other creatures and use one of your many sac outlets.
I can't really see a use of making a bunch of 2/2s every turn, honestly. They can't be clamped or recurred, and they're not big enough to make much of a difference on the gamestate.
Clamp is already in the deck
It's a reasonable answer to wrath, which it seems like this deck fears a little, but definitely not good without the Retainers + Saffi combo, which would make infinite 2/2s and (hopefully) win the game. The combo's pretty resilient too, since you end each iteration with both pieces in play.
Totally missed clamp. I swear I tried searching for it....
Have you considered adding Dryad Arbor to the deck, especially if you run Skullclamp. You can GSZ it up to ramp early, fetch it up as a Clamp target later, or just use Windswept Heath to have an instant speed blocker.
Is Skullclamp good enough to think about adding Stoneforge Mystic? There are a ton of cool tricks you could do with that if there are enough reasonable equipment to add. Here are some that might be worthwhile:
Nim Deathmantle
Mortarpod
Sword of Light and Shadow
Mortarpod + Saffi lets you do some cool tricks, especially with a Skullclamp involved. Deathmantle is sort of like another copy of saffi, also powerful with Mortarpod and company. Sword of Light and Shadow is just another less powerful copy of the same effect.
Would you consider Martyr of Sands? I really like martyr in this recursion-based style of deck, since it gives you pretty absurd staying power in longer games, gaining 9 or more life PER casting. Clearly, it's not as good here as in the mono-white decks I tend to play it in, but I still think it's worth considering.
Factory is solid, but far from the best. It becomes a lot worse when most creatures are 6/6 instead of X/2s, and when you can't run multiples.
I'd run Nantuko Monastery before Factory, honestly, since it's twice as fast a clock, much better on defense, and the cost isn't that different.
Of the worldwake manlands, I like Colonade and Lavaclaw best, but I just can't justify Lavaclaw Reaches. It's the best post wrath, but it's the wrong colors. I don't think the X is going to be relevant often enough to be worthwhile.
Basically, Lavaclaw is awesome because it can trade with any creature on the ground. It lessens your reliance on Child and whatnot to deal with creatures, but it's really mana intensive to do it, and doesn't do anything until you've got enough excess mana to do tricks with it. The problem is that typically, if you've got enough mana to be doing stuff with lavaclaw reaches, you could be doing something MUCH more broken instead.
Wild Pair seems like it could be potentially hilarious and powerful, given all the creatures going in and out of play.
There are a pretty significant number of utility guys at 2/2, like saffi, and Primeval Titan getting Woodfall Primus and/or Sun Titan seems really powerful.
any chance Loyal Retainers could be proxied/obtained, since that makes an infinite loop with saffi, letting you gain infinite life with various Essence/Soul Wardens or Asmira, Holy Avenger.
Out of curiosity, what's the reasoning behind Horobi as the general if you're going to play mass removal anyway? Wouldn't it be more profitable to build around him somehow?
I'm thinking something like....
Buried Alive into Bloodghast + Nether Traitor, cast Mortarpod and Horobi, go nuts with spot removal.
These help set up your Coffers engine and/or make it more broken. Rings lets you make infinite mana for your drain life effects. Pretty lame, but tried and true powerful stuff.
You're only playing 36 lands, which is low for EDH in general, but especially for a control deck. Cut some of your higher end stuff for some additional lands. Consider a Snow engine, if you can afford it, then you could run:
Thawing Glaciers interacts well with Deserted Temple and Rings to be "real" ramp. Mouth of Ronom is a spell-land that's pretty reasonable, and scrying sheets helps you dig for "real" spells. You can make Sheets even better with some library manipulation like:
Most of my suggestions focused pretty exlusively on the mana base, but I think that's really where the most work needs to be done. The deck will run noticeably better if you squeeze 4 more lands into the deck.
Other than that, I think it's important to know what you want the deck to do. If you want to run a mishmash of black wraths and recursion, that'll be powerful, and it'll work out well. If you want to run something more synergistic, that can be done too.
I think the -1/-1 counter theme is a little weak, to be honest, but I haven't seen anything quite like that play out before, so I could be off base.
It depends what you're doing with it. Are you building Oath of Druids the way it's typically built in Vintage? The game plan of that deck boils down to:
In this format, step 1, the most important step, can actually pretty difficult. I mean, sure, you won't usually have to deal with Forbidden Orchard since people tend to play creatures, but it seems like it could be really hard to fine the namesake card of that kind of deck.
The second problem is that you're sort of all in on the oath plan. Once people KNOW that that's your plan, it's not that hard to disrupt, and it'll be really difficult for you to get anything going.
In a deck that's NOT built around Oath, I don't see it being wortwhile. It's a symmetrical effect, and those are usually AWFUL unless you build around abusing it and making it functionally less symmetrical.
Personally, I like Child of Alara. Add things like High Market and Miren, the Moaning Well, and it's a really, really powerful threat no matter what you choose to play in your deck.
Having the ability to wrath almost on command is really good for disrupting permanent-based combos and for keeping he board from getting out of hand. Run any kind of recursion like Volrath's Stronghold or Emeria, the Sky Ruin, and you can really lock down the board as much as you need to.
I'm also thinking that you could run the Saga cycling lands (Slippery Karst and friends), and then stuff like Tilling Treefolk and Cartographer are both card advantage and/or fixing. It might at least be better than Horizon Spellbomb?
Aftershock also seems like really versatile removal that you won't mind recurring.
EDIT: Sylvok Replica? Gets itself in the graveyard, you've got multiple ways to recur it?
Garruk is probably worse than Deserted Temple unless you're planning on winning with Blinkmoth/Inkmoth plan.
That plan seems okay if you go all in on it. It's not hard to find Blink/Ink/Deserted Temple. If you can find Vesuva/Garruk too, then you could get Inkmoth up to 6/6 or so, which is a pretty fast clock. It might be worth testing, but it does eat up a ton of slots in the deck. That said, First Striking Inkmoth Nexi seem pretty scary.
Insidious Dreams seems just worse than a generic tutor. If you already run Survival, just tutor for Survival. Or just Buried Alive/Entomb the important incarnations first.
Trade Routes is reasonable, but not awesome. Reusing Bojuka Bog is fine, and cycling through useless lands is fine. I'd rather have Treasure Hunt or Ad Nauseam though. Treasure Hunt is infinitely better in builds with Top/Library though, since you can basically wait until it's a guaranteed Ancestral Recall. It's worth noting that I consistently get 8+ cards off of the thing, so I'm biased.
I still think you're running one or two too many incarnations, and could probably stand to cut one or two manlands or tutors. Maybe the Urborg/Coffers plan is bad if you replace it with Inkmoth/Blinkmoth plan.
Marshal's Anthem doesn't do anything in this deck? Once lands hit the graveyard, they're not creatures any more?
Garruk seems fine if you want to go in on the Inkmoth/Blinkmoth plan, but I'd consider Deserted Temple first, if only because it can't get attacked off of the board.
The problem is that it doesn't actively contribute to what you're trying to do. You don't have THAT many high cost cards to play, so you don't actually gain anything from the sword hit. Sure, you animated your lands for free, but you're not actually going to use most of that mana anyway.
Besides, if there's anything the deck doesn't need it's more mana, it's a land deck; you'll frequently have 15+ lands.
If you have no basics in your deck, you can make it so that activating Hermit Druid wins the game.
Dredge your whole deck, hitting Narcomoeba and Bloodghast
Play a land, recur bloodghast, cast Dread Return targeting Necrotic Ooze
now all you need is a combination of creatures in the graveyard that wins the game. The first one that comes to mind in these colors is:
Thornling to get haste
Grand Architect and Pili-Pala for infinite mana and untaps
Acolyte of Xathrid for the kill!
But, there comes a point where you won't have to send saffi to general zone because of recursion, or you can clamp other creatures and use one of your many sac outlets.
It's a reasonable answer to wrath, which it seems like this deck fears a little, but definitely not good without the Retainers + Saffi combo, which would make infinite 2/2s and (hopefully) win the game. The combo's pretty resilient too, since you end each iteration with both pieces in play.
Totally missed clamp. I swear I tried searching for it....
Have you considered adding Dryad Arbor to the deck, especially if you run Skullclamp. You can GSZ it up to ramp early, fetch it up as a Clamp target later, or just use Windswept Heath to have an instant speed blocker.
Is Skullclamp good enough to think about adding Stoneforge Mystic? There are a ton of cool tricks you could do with that if there are enough reasonable equipment to add. Here are some that might be worthwhile:
Nim Deathmantle
Mortarpod
Sword of Light and Shadow
Mortarpod + Saffi lets you do some cool tricks, especially with a Skullclamp involved. Deathmantle is sort of like another copy of saffi, also powerful with Mortarpod and company. Sword of Light and Shadow is just another less powerful copy of the same effect.
Would you consider Martyr of Sands? I really like martyr in this recursion-based style of deck, since it gives you pretty absurd staying power in longer games, gaining 9 or more life PER casting. Clearly, it's not as good here as in the mono-white decks I tend to play it in, but I still think it's worth considering.
Also, is Skullclamp worth a shot purely because of synergy with Saffi? Rebuy a creature, draw 2 cards seems preeetty good.
I'd run Nantuko Monastery before Factory, honestly, since it's twice as fast a clock, much better on defense, and the cost isn't that different.
Of the worldwake manlands, I like Colonade and Lavaclaw best, but I just can't justify Lavaclaw Reaches. It's the best post wrath, but it's the wrong colors. I don't think the X is going to be relevant often enough to be worthwhile.
Basically, Lavaclaw is awesome because it can trade with any creature on the ground. It lessens your reliance on Child and whatnot to deal with creatures, but it's really mana intensive to do it, and doesn't do anything until you've got enough excess mana to do tricks with it. The problem is that typically, if you've got enough mana to be doing stuff with lavaclaw reaches, you could be doing something MUCH more broken instead.
There are a pretty significant number of utility guys at 2/2, like saffi, and Primeval Titan getting Woodfall Primus and/or Sun Titan seems really powerful.
any chance Loyal Retainers could be proxied/obtained, since that makes an infinite loop with saffi, letting you gain infinite life with various Essence/Soul Wardens or Asmira, Holy Avenger.
I'm thinking something like....
Buried Alive into Bloodghast + Nether Traitor, cast Mortarpod and Horobi, go nuts with spot removal.
Regardless, think about some of these inclusions:
These help set up your Coffers engine and/or make it more broken. Rings lets you make infinite mana for your drain life effects. Pretty lame, but tried and true powerful stuff.
You're only playing 36 lands, which is low for EDH in general, but especially for a control deck. Cut some of your higher end stuff for some additional lands. Consider a Snow engine, if you can afford it, then you could run:
Thawing Glaciers interacts well with Deserted Temple and Rings to be "real" ramp. Mouth of Ronom is a spell-land that's pretty reasonable, and scrying sheets helps you dig for "real" spells. You can make Sheets even better with some library manipulation like:
Most of my suggestions focused pretty exlusively on the mana base, but I think that's really where the most work needs to be done. The deck will run noticeably better if you squeeze 4 more lands into the deck.
Other than that, I think it's important to know what you want the deck to do. If you want to run a mishmash of black wraths and recursion, that'll be powerful, and it'll work out well. If you want to run something more synergistic, that can be done too.
I think the -1/-1 counter theme is a little weak, to be honest, but I haven't seen anything quite like that play out before, so I could be off base.
1. Find Oath
2. Resolve Oath
3. Forbidden Orchard
4. Win
In this format, step 1, the most important step, can actually pretty difficult. I mean, sure, you won't usually have to deal with Forbidden Orchard since people tend to play creatures, but it seems like it could be really hard to fine the namesake card of that kind of deck.
The second problem is that you're sort of all in on the oath plan. Once people KNOW that that's your plan, it's not that hard to disrupt, and it'll be really difficult for you to get anything going.
In a deck that's NOT built around Oath, I don't see it being wortwhile. It's a symmetrical effect, and those are usually AWFUL unless you build around abusing it and making it functionally less symmetrical.
Having the ability to wrath almost on command is really good for disrupting permanent-based combos and for keeping he board from getting out of hand. Run any kind of recursion like Volrath's Stronghold or Emeria, the Sky Ruin, and you can really lock down the board as much as you need to.