All of these are worth consideration now the new set has been out for a while.
Also,
Profane Command - Kills creatures, brings them back, and/or makes them unblockable. Good deal I'd say. Signal Pest - I've always wanted to mix Battle Cry with Infect. Hatred - Derp derp derp. Probably not very fair though. Doom Blade/Go for the Throat - Nothing wrong with a splash of spot removal. Bonesplitter - Better than Livewire Lash. Loxodon Warhammer - Slower but gives trample. Look into other equipment that give trample also.
Mayael would certainly be a strong deck on the casual table, but play a lot like a lightning rod: generally soak up a lot of removal before she can go off unless you design around getting her activated asap. One way would be asceticism type effects that grant shroud, but unfortunately by 5 mana you're pushing your curve up quite a bit and is more set up you need to wait for. Giving haste is another option: but if you need to cast and activate Mayael on the same turn that's already 9 mana that you can be using to win the game in some other fashion.
What balances Mayael is that her ability costs 6, which is usually the cost of a very threatening creature card anyways, so she's not as crazy breakable as something like Yawgmoth's Will. However, there's still plenty to abuse: we've already got top-o-library tutors (Congregation at Dawn, Worldly Tutor) and Scry/Library manipulation (Crystal Ball,Sensei's Divining Top,Scroll Rack). I'd like to throw in mana acceleration creatures for good measure: Llanowar Elves, Knotvine Mystic, Werebear, and Druids of the Anima seem like good fits here. Also if we wanna protect our assets or give them haste, Lightning Greaves is worth a look if you got the money for it. Finally, for the things you want to cheat in play, if we go heavy on the ramp we want creatures that we could potentially hardcast in a medium to longer length game if the mayael plan doesn't gel: let me suggest at least a single Blightsteel Colossus, Progenitus, Sundering Titan, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to give us some flexibility in what we pull out.
My personal favorite is straight up U/X control decks, using stuff like Teferi, Mage of Zhafir to flash in the late game heavy hitters. Because instants are so reactionary, stuff like counterspells and removal are really going to be the centerpiece of a reactive instant speed deck; you do everything in response to your opponent or at the end of his turn when s/he can't do anything. When you can tutor for instant speed for a lot of mana, your deck becomes very satisfying to play with as you can choose what you want to do at any time.
That's a rought outline of one instant speed deck that you can run. I've got a Dranlu, Lich Lord + Teferi, Mage of Zhafir U/B control deck that could serve as a good guide, if you're interested in a hard deck list.
So I think this works, but I want to suggest 4xAwakening Zone, provided a judge can confirm the way I want this to work: make some eldrazi spawn, tap for convoke, then sac for mana? Can we do that? In any case, the zone lets us accel, chump block, control, and help accel into any other big threats we wanna ramp to.
I'd prefer Myr Reservoir for recursion and getting back flung or blown up myr. I find this stronger than using Myr Welder, which seems a bit unwieldy, slow, and unpowerful. What are you going to do with him? Use him to tap for 2? Myr Battlesphere seems like a good 2 of as a nice control finisher as your deck seems fairly more control than aggro. Fling also in your case seems much less powerful than Shrapnel blast, probably doing an average of 1 to 2 damage with the occasional 4 to 5 when pitching a Myr Enforcer. Also look into Myr Matrix, which can pump your myr even more and also make infinite tokens if you get the Galvanizer + Mana Myr combo going.
Having a fun casual deck is good, although you still have to keep in mind what synergizes with what and how your deck works. Claws of Valakut can go in a deck with fast beaters that can risk card disadvantage for powering out the beats, but is less advantageous in a deck that might be slower or rely on defenders like Aether Membrane. It may be a fun card, but not the one that you need for this deck perhaps?
Just suggesting that Tinker is what I consider "too good", and even though I own some I don't play them because its unfair for everyone else I play with. I think at this point you've got a pretty good deck without Tinker, as it really gets old for everyone else fast...
One great way to use Voltaic Key and Tezzy is untapping things like Basalt Monolith or Grim Monolith, or ramping up with things like Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, and other artifacts that give you more than one mana per tap.
Also suggest that after prerelease season if you want to cheat out a collossus (via Master Transmuter or some other shenanigan, look into Blightsteel Colossus, the new boomstick!
Since you don't have any cards to show nor do I really know what level of play you're going to be doing (heck, it could just be glorified sealed deck with no 4 copies of your best cards), I'm going to give some general advice about deckbuilding that I give a lot of new players:
- What's your deck's purpose? Without a pile of really strong cards, decks tend to be something of a "Jack of All Trades" that can maybe block and attack, but overall are not good at anything and eventually lose. Your deck has to have an overall goal. Most generally that's divided into Aggro, Control, and Combo. Does your deck want to win as soon as possible by bringing the opponent's life total from 20 to 0? That's Aggro. Do you want to be very defensive until you play something huge and powerful your opponent can't handle? That's Control. Do you want to make an infinite combo of life or mana that wins you the game that turn? That's combo. As a side note, combo decks tend to be more difficult to both play and build, and tend to require very specific cards, so focus on either aggro or control.
- What cards work well towards your deck's purpose? If you are trying to get your opponent's life total from 20 to 0 as fast as possible, does something like Palace Guard or Iona, Shield of Emeria make sense? The former for example doesn't attack very well and the latter has such a high mana cost that by the time you can cast it you should have already won. If your goal is to play big fat green creatures and win with bigger and tougher creatures, then spells like your Plated Slagwurm might need some help coming out, which means that mana generating cards like Rampant Growth and Llanowar Elves will help with your deck's purpose, since your goal is to get big creatures and you need more mana sooner to do it.
- What kind of problems do you expect your deck to face? Magic is not like Sim City: you don't sit on your side making a bigger and bigger empire of creatures, lands, and other spells. There's another guy over there casting Doom Blade on your Craw Wurm, or Shatter on your Icy Manipulator. You need to be able to handle your opponent's problems as they throw them to you: if you're playing black and the opponent drops an intimidating Terastodon, have a Doom Blade ready to kill it. If you're playing green and your opponent puts down a Meekstone have a Naturalize on hand to get rid of it. Having slots in your deck that solve issues for you makes it so you can react to your enemy.
It's very simple stuff but it really helps to think about these things when starting out. I love deckbuilding so I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. Hope that helps!
The Tokens (8) 4 Awakening Zone (You can chump block all day and accelerate mana if you need to) 4 Sprout Swarm (Good plan B, can just overwhelm your opponent. Growth Spasm works too)
You've got 12 cards that make tokens for you, 4 polymorphs with tons of card search and draw, and generally the ability to just quickly seek out your combo pieces and counter anything that would interrupt your plan. Be sure to play your counters intelligently and not tap out if your opponent might surprise you. This is just a rough sketch but hopefully should be a good idea of how I would think about U/G Polymorph.
Bloodchief Ascension could be a great card, but you then have to balance the deck between balancing out damage to set off the activation, and mill to abuse the card once it's up. Then you have something of a Hybrid deck that wants to do two things if to get Ascension and doesn't do either perfectly if you don't. However, with the Mill-Synergistic Creatures like Guiltfeeder and Nihilith you can pull it off I think.
There's a new card in Mirrodin Besieged coming out that mills, infects, and deals damage all in one card. That might be a good way to power out ascension. That plus a few tutors and you should be good.
Blue also can vary in power depending on how much money you have. If you have cash for Intuition, Force of Will, Fetchlands for Brainstorm, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor you get a real boost in power. There's some solid stuff you can get on a budget for blue like the original Counterspell that's more broken compared to some other casual staples, but it can be a bit underwhelming on some kitchen tables.
Thankfully for me it's a vicious beatdown 1v1 against my control deck, so I just wanted to say that for me, Blue treats me just fine
So some ideas...
- Vesuva costs money but can be good with the post plan.
- Don't fill up on too many creatures. Some eldrazi decks do Awakening Zone or token makers like Sprout or Khalni Garden + Polymorph, and then only run 2 creatures total. That way you don't need any of the colorless ramp lands at all. Looking at a tournament decklist then replacing the money cards with budget alternatives can be a good way to go for deckbuilding.
- Off the last note, keep in mind every Spawnspire or Emrakul that is in your hand is one card that is basically blank that you wish you didn't draw at that time.
Solid budget blue cards: Counterspell and Mana Leak, Preordain/Brainstorm/Ponder (for finding combo pieces), Jace Beleran (The first one. He's not too expensive and if you only use his -1 ability can get you about 2 cards on average or draw damage away from you to him), Into the Roil
If you're playing multiplayer, then look into cards that hit everyone, like Ruination or Tremble. Keldon Firebombers is... interesting, but subtley anti synergistic with itself. One thing I like to do is build a single player deck, then use the 15 slot sideboard to convert it to multiplayer where I can also have things like artifact/enchantment removal that become more relevant with more players.
One way to play LD is to take advantage of the land destruction keeping the other player on very low drops, and having cards that cost no more than 3 or 4 so you can kill them berfore you run out of LD cards to screw them over with. Stuff like Harvest Wurm would play well with symmetrical LD, but the trade off is that you'll also have trouble with getting out your 5cc spells like Mitotic Slime.
My legacy friend (who admittedly feeds his MTG with a 9 to 5) made a sort of legacy aggro-control build which was actually for high level play against the best decks like Fish, Belcher Combo, etc. The deck was full of money but the ideas behind his and yours looked similar; he used Cabal Therapy both as a discard spell and a sac outlet for Abyssal Persecutor and Bob, and actually ran Vampire Nighthawk on top of some of the stuff you already have, like Hippie and Gatekeeper. Basically, Duress becomes Cabal Therapy (Therapy is good when you have a really strong grasp on the metagame of legacy and memorize decklists), Arena became Bob, Extirpate I believe was SB, and there was no Korlash.
Ooooh if you have tons of scry then also look at the Pyromancer's Ascension deck too! It's also very budget friendly for a casual version, and powering up a Manamorphose with Pyro's ascension feels as good as christmas (I have another metaphor for that but I think it's inappropriate for the younger crowd here)!
In that deck, Ponder and Preordain will both be your best friends, and I think the best of the best builds don't use any creatures at all, which I always think is a tricky fun way to play Magic. I think there's also a neat way to play with Flame Jab also if you go that route (I believe Retrace will let you trigger counters on the ascension :3)
Singleton Howling Wolf sort of defeats the purpose of the card, doesn't it?
In any case the deck looks goofy (a compliment in domo-land), and at this point you want to find the best cards and move them up to 3 or 4 copies, then keep the bad ones out. Plus there are just cards you have that work better in multiples that you just don't abuse. For example, Sound the Call is best when you have all four copies in your graveyard, you only run two making it not run at peak efficiency. Some though, like Howling Wolf I feel that you're better off cutting.
So here I go: Howling Wolf, although the CA is nice, 4cc for a 2/2 in a deck with an already big curve probably isn't worth stacking four copies of unlike Sound the Call, which gets better the longer in game you go. Tel-Jilad Wolf is too narrow to run I feel (if you really care about artifacts run Krosan Grip or Viridian Shaman) and between Lone Wolf and Sacred Wolf I'd actually not run either and use those slots for something this deck might need more, like mana acceleration or early drops.
My honest advice is to stick with either wolves or squirrels, but if you insist on running both then you want to make sure there's as much cross-synergy as possible. Doubling Season is everyone's favorite token card, and also it seems a lot of your cards are extremely mana intensive. As you're putting two themes in your deck, every card should work towards one of those themes meaning stuff like Moment's Peace, which has good utility, might have to be cut for something that makes your deck work better overall. Overgrown Battlement, for example, serves a similar purpose in stalling your opponents early but also helps with mana acceleration which your deck needs very much so. I like Rhys and Chatter of the Squirrel in this deck and would try to get them up to 3 or 4 copies, as they come down early and also fit in theme, and your deck wants more 1cc or 2cc spells.
Oh, and Skithir-whatever, the however you spell it has dropped a little bit in price, although is still expensive.
All of these are worth consideration now the new set has been out for a while.
Also,
Profane Command - Kills creatures, brings them back, and/or makes them unblockable. Good deal I'd say.
Signal Pest - I've always wanted to mix Battle Cry with Infect.
Hatred - Derp derp derp. Probably not very fair though.
Doom Blade/Go for the Throat - Nothing wrong with a splash of spot removal.
Bonesplitter - Better than Livewire Lash.
Loxodon Warhammer - Slower but gives trample. Look into other equipment that give trample also.
Mayael would certainly be a strong deck on the casual table, but play a lot like a lightning rod: generally soak up a lot of removal before she can go off unless you design around getting her activated asap. One way would be asceticism type effects that grant shroud, but unfortunately by 5 mana you're pushing your curve up quite a bit and is more set up you need to wait for. Giving haste is another option: but if you need to cast and activate Mayael on the same turn that's already 9 mana that you can be using to win the game in some other fashion.
What balances Mayael is that her ability costs 6, which is usually the cost of a very threatening creature card anyways, so she's not as crazy breakable as something like Yawgmoth's Will. However, there's still plenty to abuse: we've already got top-o-library tutors (Congregation at Dawn, Worldly Tutor) and Scry/Library manipulation (Crystal Ball,Sensei's Divining Top,Scroll Rack). I'd like to throw in mana acceleration creatures for good measure: Llanowar Elves, Knotvine Mystic, Werebear, and Druids of the Anima seem like good fits here. Also if we wanna protect our assets or give them haste, Lightning Greaves is worth a look if you got the money for it. Finally, for the things you want to cheat in play, if we go heavy on the ramp we want creatures that we could potentially hardcast in a medium to longer length game if the mayael plan doesn't gel: let me suggest at least a single Blightsteel Colossus, Progenitus, Sundering Titan, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to give us some flexibility in what we pull out.
Start with 4xMystical Teachings. From there look into cheap counterspells (Force of Will on the high $$$ end, Pact of Negation on the medium $$ range, Daze/Counterspell/Mana Leak as the traditional options), or cheap/free card draw (Gush, Accumulated Knowlege, Fact or Fiction), and round it out with some cheap instant speed removal (my black deck runs Snuff Out and also wants a Slaughter Pact, red can definitely go with Lightning Bolt and Volcanic Fallout, with white you can grab Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile). With that kind of base you'll generally have some form of counter in the first few turns with counterspells, then when you hit mid-late game you can go nuts with Mystical Teachings tutoring for answers to your opponent's problems at instant speed. Splashing a few sorceries like Day of Judgement or Damnation is a good idea though, since there are so few instant speed wrath effects that are castable, and eventually you'll want a hard to deal with finisher whether it is Skeletal Vampire, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, or Iridescent Angel.
That's a rought outline of one instant speed deck that you can run. I've got a Dranlu, Lich Lord + Teferi, Mage of Zhafir U/B control deck that could serve as a good guide, if you're interested in a hard deck list.
So I think this works, but I want to suggest 4xAwakening Zone, provided a judge can confirm the way I want this to work: make some eldrazi spawn, tap for convoke, then sac for mana? Can we do that? In any case, the zone lets us accel, chump block, control, and help accel into any other big threats we wanna ramp to.
2x Autochthon Wurm
3x Dramatic Entrance
4x Natural Order
2x Favor of the Mighty
4x Awakening Zone
EDIT: Nath'd by Fio. Adding Natural Selection he suggested to the decklist
Having a fun casual deck is good, although you still have to keep in mind what synergizes with what and how your deck works. Claws of Valakut can go in a deck with fast beaters that can risk card disadvantage for powering out the beats, but is less advantageous in a deck that might be slower or rely on defenders like Aether Membrane. It may be a fun card, but not the one that you need for this deck perhaps?
One great way to use Voltaic Key and Tezzy is untapping things like Basalt Monolith or Grim Monolith, or ramping up with things like Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, and other artifacts that give you more than one mana per tap.
Also suggest that after prerelease season if you want to cheat out a collossus (via Master Transmuter or some other shenanigan, look into Blightsteel Colossus, the new boomstick!
Since you don't have any cards to show nor do I really know what level of play you're going to be doing (heck, it could just be glorified sealed deck with no 4 copies of your best cards), I'm going to give some general advice about deckbuilding that I give a lot of new players:
- What's your deck's purpose? Without a pile of really strong cards, decks tend to be something of a "Jack of All Trades" that can maybe block and attack, but overall are not good at anything and eventually lose. Your deck has to have an overall goal. Most generally that's divided into Aggro, Control, and Combo. Does your deck want to win as soon as possible by bringing the opponent's life total from 20 to 0? That's Aggro. Do you want to be very defensive until you play something huge and powerful your opponent can't handle? That's Control. Do you want to make an infinite combo of life or mana that wins you the game that turn? That's combo. As a side note, combo decks tend to be more difficult to both play and build, and tend to require very specific cards, so focus on either aggro or control.
- What cards work well towards your deck's purpose? If you are trying to get your opponent's life total from 20 to 0 as fast as possible, does something like Palace Guard or Iona, Shield of Emeria make sense? The former for example doesn't attack very well and the latter has such a high mana cost that by the time you can cast it you should have already won. If your goal is to play big fat green creatures and win with bigger and tougher creatures, then spells like your Plated Slagwurm might need some help coming out, which means that mana generating cards like Rampant Growth and Llanowar Elves will help with your deck's purpose, since your goal is to get big creatures and you need more mana sooner to do it.
- What kind of problems do you expect your deck to face? Magic is not like Sim City: you don't sit on your side making a bigger and bigger empire of creatures, lands, and other spells. There's another guy over there casting Doom Blade on your Craw Wurm, or Shatter on your Icy Manipulator. You need to be able to handle your opponent's problems as they throw them to you: if you're playing black and the opponent drops an intimidating Terastodon, have a Doom Blade ready to kill it. If you're playing green and your opponent puts down a Meekstone have a Naturalize on hand to get rid of it. Having slots in your deck that solve issues for you makes it so you can react to your enemy.
It's very simple stuff but it really helps to think about these things when starting out. I love deckbuilding so I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. Hope that helps!
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
The Tokens (8)
4 Awakening Zone (You can chump block all day and accelerate mana if you need to)
4 Sprout Swarm (Good plan B, can just overwhelm your opponent. Growth Spasm works too)
The Morph (4)
4 Polymorph
4 Brainstorm
4 See Beyond
4 Counterspell
4 Rune Snag
2 Void Slime
2 Jace Beleran
2 Into the Roil
4 Khalni Garden (Also makes tokens like a champ!)
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Yavimaya Coast
6 Island
5 Forest
You've got 12 cards that make tokens for you, 4 polymorphs with tons of card search and draw, and generally the ability to just quickly seek out your combo pieces and counter anything that would interrupt your plan. Be sure to play your counters intelligently and not tap out if your opponent might surprise you. This is just a rough sketch but hopefully should be a good idea of how I would think about U/G Polymorph.
There's a new card in Mirrodin Besieged coming out that mills, infects, and deals damage all in one card. That might be a good way to power out ascension. That plus a few tutors and you should be good.
Thankfully for me it's a vicious beatdown 1v1 against my control deck, so I just wanted to say that for me, Blue treats me just fine
So some ideas...
- Vesuva costs money but can be good with the post plan.
- Don't fill up on too many creatures. Some eldrazi decks do Awakening Zone or token makers like Sprout or Khalni Garden + Polymorph, and then only run 2 creatures total. That way you don't need any of the colorless ramp lands at all. Looking at a tournament decklist then replacing the money cards with budget alternatives can be a good way to go for deckbuilding.
- Off the last note, keep in mind every Spawnspire or Emrakul that is in your hand is one card that is basically blank that you wish you didn't draw at that time.
Solid budget blue cards: Counterspell and Mana Leak, Preordain/Brainstorm/Ponder (for finding combo pieces), Jace Beleran (The first one. He's not too expensive and if you only use his -1 ability can get you about 2 cards on average or draw damage away from you to him), Into the Roil
Hope that helps :3
One way to play LD is to take advantage of the land destruction keeping the other player on very low drops, and having cards that cost no more than 3 or 4 so you can kill them berfore you run out of LD cards to screw them over with. Stuff like Harvest Wurm would play well with symmetrical LD, but the trade off is that you'll also have trouble with getting out your 5cc spells like Mitotic Slime.
Just a thought.
My legacy friend (who admittedly feeds his MTG with a 9 to 5) made a sort of legacy aggro-control build which was actually for high level play against the best decks like Fish, Belcher Combo, etc. The deck was full of money but the ideas behind his and yours looked similar; he used Cabal Therapy both as a discard spell and a sac outlet for Abyssal Persecutor and Bob, and actually ran Vampire Nighthawk on top of some of the stuff you already have, like Hippie and Gatekeeper. Basically, Duress becomes Cabal Therapy (Therapy is good when you have a really strong grasp on the metagame of legacy and memorize decklists), Arena became Bob, Extirpate I believe was SB, and there was no Korlash.
I hope that little vignette helped >_<
In that deck, Ponder and Preordain will both be your best friends, and I think the best of the best builds don't use any creatures at all, which I always think is a tricky fun way to play Magic. I think there's also a neat way to play with Flame Jab also if you go that route (I believe Retrace will let you trigger counters on the ascension :3)
4 turntimber ranger
2 wolfbriar elemental
2 tel-jilad wolf
1 sacred wolf
1 howling wolf
1 rhys the redeemed
4 squirrel mob
1 squirrel wrangler
1 nut collector
2 sound the call
2 defense of the heart
3 overrun
4 harrow
4 howl of the night pack
1 coat of arms
1 windstorm
1 chatter of the squirrel
24 forest
Singleton Howling Wolf sort of defeats the purpose of the card, doesn't it?
In any case the deck looks goofy (a compliment in domo-land), and at this point you want to find the best cards and move them up to 3 or 4 copies, then keep the bad ones out. Plus there are just cards you have that work better in multiples that you just don't abuse. For example, Sound the Call is best when you have all four copies in your graveyard, you only run two making it not run at peak efficiency. Some though, like Howling Wolf I feel that you're better off cutting.
So here I go: Howling Wolf, although the CA is nice, 4cc for a 2/2 in a deck with an already big curve probably isn't worth stacking four copies of unlike Sound the Call, which gets better the longer in game you go. Tel-Jilad Wolf is too narrow to run I feel (if you really care about artifacts run Krosan Grip or Viridian Shaman) and between Lone Wolf and Sacred Wolf I'd actually not run either and use those slots for something this deck might need more, like mana acceleration or early drops.
My honest advice is to stick with either wolves or squirrels, but if you insist on running both then you want to make sure there's as much cross-synergy as possible. Doubling Season is everyone's favorite token card, and also it seems a lot of your cards are extremely mana intensive. As you're putting two themes in your deck, every card should work towards one of those themes meaning stuff like Moment's Peace, which has good utility, might have to be cut for something that makes your deck work better overall. Overgrown Battlement, for example, serves a similar purpose in stalling your opponents early but also helps with mana acceleration which your deck needs very much so. I like Rhys and Chatter of the Squirrel in this deck and would try to get them up to 3 or 4 copies, as they come down early and also fit in theme, and your deck wants more 1cc or 2cc spells.