Bloodcast is just Warcall, but taken much too far in terms of power level.
The Recruit abilities are exceedingly powerful. Bloodbraid could only cascade one time, and just that was enough to dominate Standard. Getting free spells (creatures even), is just too good.
As for Battleraise, I think it's pretty cool, but I'm not sure whether or not we should be swapping to a graveyard mechanic on the combat realm.
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- Balefire
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Other win conditions you might consider are Worm Harvest+Life from the Loam if you want to get suuuuper grindy, or Corpseweft/Svogthos as less fragile but non-evasive threats.
We have to get one by the end of the block, right? Wizards wouldn't leave us hanging that, right guys? Guys?
But Viscera Seer always works :/
But what's your endgame? We can't Dread Return off of Narcomoeba/Anger, so you can't reanimate Lord of Extinction/Sutured Ghoul and swing unless you have a second Footsteps of the Goryo, and that doesn't solve your haste issue. Svogthos is also not exactly an insta-kill given it's lack of evasion, thought at least you can grab it with Life from the Loam. I suppose that if you play Prized Amalgam, you can get four 3/3s into play off Narcomoebas, but that's also not terribly impressive. A hasty Splinterfright off of Hall of the Bandit Lord might be your best bet, but even that seems only ok...
Also gets the first Captain (and the second, and all your critters) outside of Kozilek's Return range, which Rattlechains can't do anything about.
Trade Routes/Life from the Loam is in my opinion one of the most powerful engines in modern without a home. You pitch a land, dredge Loam, cast Loam, and repeat for as much mana as you can make. Moreover, if the one of the lands you're pitching is Dakmor Salvages, the entire process gets 5 dredges and a card in hand (or more dredges) for every cycle.
If nothing else, you'll have the deck with the best name without much of a contest.
It is somewhat neat in that if you can't trigger it the first time, you can tell it to tick up or down to get your opponent closer. I'm curious as to whether or not there is a critical mass of life manipulation spells for the opponent such that this doesn't get wrecked by shocklands/phyrexian mana, but at least Wall of Shards and Extort cards have homes now.
If you're going to go the tempo route, why would you drop Aether Vial? The fact that it lets you cast your creatures for basically no cost at instant speed is half the reason that Merfolk is successful, since it allows to leave up counter mana and still get a threat in play if nothing of note happens. I know that Rattlechains gets you the flash anyway, which is nice, but getting two EOT creatures, or an EOT creature and a sell is always gonna be better than just a single action. Plus, it's a Kolaghan's Command magnet, which can keep Drogskol safer later on.
Really the biggest difference is that let's you have flexibility in when you play it. By letting you flash it in EOT, you allow yourself the window of opportunity that comes with getting a protective spirit into play via Vial/casting since depending on when cast it, you can retain priority in between Hikori coming into play and your follow up. It'll never be Mistbind Clique, but it has its own benefits since it has a continuous effect (which we can hopefully play under while protecting it).
Against the majority of decks, nothing. But any decks that play reactively will wait until your EOT to cast things in order to untap right away, or will try to kill Hokori when you're tapped out. By giving Hokori flash, you can have a "gotcha" moment against reactive decks, and against kill spells, you cast Hokori EOT and immediately follow up with Captain or Rattlechains after your untap step (since nobody gets priority in between).
Flash doesn't change what Hokori does, but it changes when you want to play it on order to maximize the effect and reduce it's fragility.
Hokori, Dust Drinker with flash is actually insane. I don't know of any decks that could fight that off properly (especially if Drogskol Captain is protecting it). Meanwhile we continue to Aether Vial and cast our cheap spirits to flying beats. Plus, Hokori basically turns bounce into removal, so we don't even have to go into black. And I don't know how well the Hokori plan meshes with Geist of Saint Traft, but it seems like a pretty hard spot to lose from if you get both in play. Personally, if I had to put up a list, I'd probably go with what I have below as a test run. I don't know if it would be enough turn on Topplegeist's delirium, and maybe a more controlling version with Remands might be better, but I like the idea of a semi-lock with tokens/Geist swinging underneath.
3 Topplegeist
4 Rattlechains
2 Phantasmal Image
3 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Eidolon of Countless Battles
4 Drogskol Captain
3 Hokori, Dust Drinker
4 Aether Vial
3 Lingering Souls
4 Path to Exile
3 Azorius Charm
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
2 Moorland Haunt
3 Plains
2 Island
3 Kataki, War's Wage
3 Survival Cache
3 Rest in Peace
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Drowned Rusalka
2 Repeal
Tallowisp can't search for them, since even the ones that actually become Auras only do so once you bestow them, so there isn't really any huge advantage to playing tons of them. If anything though, I like Eidolon of Rhetoric against Burn, Living End, Storm, Bring to Scapeshift, etc.
The trouble with Kira is specifically that it makes Eidolon or Steel of the Godhead really bad. I think that the Tallowisp version of the deck would probably play a more controlling route, dropping tokens and running counters since Rattlechains lets you keep everything up all of the time.
As far as a token version is concerned though, I definitely think Eidolon is better. Not only does it make a mean Geist, you can throw it onto just about anything. Unfortunately it's not uncounterable and it doesn't get hexproof while it's an aura, but effectively requiring two removal spells more than makes up for the cost I think.Figure of Destiny seems really good as an additional 1-drop in either case. Not sure it will ever reach it's level cap since it's so white intensive, but adding another cheap threat can't be bad.
One card someone else mentioned in the other thread was Spirt Bonds, which combines really well with Aether Vial, essentially getting you a token each turn just for "playing" your spells.
Kira doesn't seem that good compared to Drogskol Captain since it stops your own targeting, and doesn't pump. Captain's lack of self protection can be dealt with via Rattlechains, as well as Phantasmal Image.
Anyway, I started a new thread for this so we can concentrate discussion: UW Spirits.