I totally understand groups not liking combos. I even keep a few cards handy to swap in just in case I sit down with a group that doesn't like them. That said, Mirror Entity is pretty awesome on its own as a second Craterhoof Behemoth style alpha strike, if nothing else. One of the problems Roon can have is a lot of our creatures are relatively small for their cost, and 2/2's only get you so far late game. As you have noticed, Behemoth is great for a final finisher, but Entity can do the same thing - letting you turn your army of 2/2's into an army of 12/12's. It's also not all that prone to an "oops I win" with the combo unless you are actively fishing it out with Survival, so you can safely put it in there and still keep to the spirit of your group's rules.
The other option, which I admit is highly dependent on your playgroup's acceptance of such things, is to add in a few faster kill-cons that can wipe the table out on turn 8 or before, instead of turn 12. When playing against a tax deck, time is not on your side. You are already running Eternal Witness and Archaeomancer - why not add in Time Warp? Or add Palinchron to pair up with your Deadeye Navigator. A slightly more pricey option is to add in Mirror Entity (which is already pretty awesome on its own), and Survival of the Fittest. Evoking Reveillark with Mirror Entity, Karmic Guide, and Venser, Shaper Savant in the yard is pretty much game. Sure, it might get some groans from the rest of the table if you do it too often, but if the group hates the tax cards as much as you indicate, you might be able to play the politics to come off as a hero. Someone's got to win, but at least it wasn't >that guy<.
p.s. The Mirror Entity/'Lark/Karmic Guide win is a bit complicated if you've never seen it before, so here's how it works:
Get Survival of the Fittest online, and use Survival to fish out Mirror Entity, Karmic Guide, any of the many powerful cards that Reveillark can return (say, Venser, Shaper Savant), and Reveillark. It doesn't matter that Survival throws everything but the Reveillark in the bin, because that's where you need it to be. Evoke Reveillark, and use its ability to return Karmic Guide and Mirror Entity. Karmic Guide's ETB ability then returns Reveillark. Then, put an arbitrarily large number of Mirror Entity's ability (at X=0) on the stack. Let the first one resolve, wrathing yourself. Reveillark's ability goes back on the stack, getting Karmic Guide and, say, Venser (or Acidic Slime , or whatever) this time. Karmic Guide brings back Reveillark, Venser's trigger bounces any of your opponent's permanents, and then the whole thing repeats. Another Mirror Entity wrath, followed by recursion, followed by another bounce. On the last bounce, when your opponents have no permanents at all, return Karmic Guide, Mirror Entity, and Reveillark, and you're all set up to do it again on a whim at instant speed. At this point you could kill everyone one turn at a time with a Dryad Arbor if you wanted to, because no one else gets to play anything ever again.
Nice to see your updated list Outcry. I've made a bunch of changes to my Roon list as well since our last posts over on my "Goodnight Roon" thread, so if you wanted to compare notes, probably the best place to check would be my Tappedout list - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/goodnight-roon/
I've gone a bit more combo-tastic since my first build, but even if you don't want to go that way (and I totally understand if you don't - it's highly group specific), there are a few things I'd recommend from my experience. Champion of Lambholt is really good, and probably merits a spot. The sad reality is that because we're playing ETB creatures, at any given point in the curve our creatures tend to be smaller than the big dumb creatures of our opponents. Champion turns our army of 2/2's-stapled-to-Vindicates into legit kill cons even on a stalled board. Sometimes you just need to get in there for a few extra points, after all. I'd probably take out Courser of Kruphix if I had to decide - I'm not sure Oracle of Mul Daya minus the ramp is worth it, but then again I haven't playtested it.
I know with a competitive list the idea is to keep the curve low, but Venser, Shaper Savant is enough better than Man-o'-war that it probably merits a straight 1-for-1 swap. Sometimes the difference between "creature" and "permanent" is game winning, and in a pinch it's a bad Remand that can also hit Supreme Verdict.
Speaking of Verdict, is there a reason you're running Wrath over it? I know Verdict is harder to cast in a vacuum, but you're not likely to be the guy who wants to blow up the world on turn 4 anyway. For this deck, Wrath effects are a tool of last resort when the board has gotten out of hand. We're pretty creature-heavy, after all. I find that most of the time I pull the trigger on a mass creature destruction spell, it's turn 7 or later when someone has just dumped their hand on the field and is threatening to 1-shot half the table. Turn 7, you should be able to cast whatever 4 mana spell you want, and uncounterability can really matter. More than regeneration, at least.
Arcane Denial has always seemed like a card that you only run because you already have Mana Drain and Counterspell in the deck, and you just need one more hard counter to fill out a permission suite. I don't think I'd ever run it before those others though. Mana Drains are expensive, but Counterspells are cheap - it seems like it'd be a pretty easy swap.
I know it's already on your list of "I'm testing this," but I can't recommend Gilded Drake enough. You're already running it's bigger cousin Perplexing Chimera, so you know how much fun stealing things and blinking can be. Pull the trigger. They're kinda pricey, but totally worth it.
All in all though, I really like how the list is shaping up! Hope you are having fun with it!
I would also be wary of running too many clones, since they are in essence blink creatures if your opponent's don't have anything valuable to copy, and are similarly useless if you have a hand full of blinks and clones. Remember that clones don't kill opponent's generals anymore, so they lost a lot of their utility that way. Personally I feel that the only clones that are worth running are Progenitor Mimic, Body Double, and Phantasmal Image if you are running Sun Titan. Too bad Evil Twin isn't in our colors.
I definitely agree with the thought that you don't want to run too many clones, but I think there are at least two - Phyrexian Metamorph and Sakashima's Student - that make my list over the ones mentioned above. In worst case, when you're straight up paying 4 mana for them, these two are both solid straight-up clones; in the best case they are 3 or 2 mana, respectively, with no weird qualifications attached. Progenitor Mimic is stupid powerful, yes, but it's also much more expensive. Body Double depends on creatures already being in the graveyard, which means that even though it's cheap, it's not probably getting you much value until later turns. Finally, Phantasmal Image is a full-on nonbo with Roon - any ability that targets the Image, even to blink it, forces you to sacrifice before the blink can happen.
Also, if you decide to keep an expensive removal+clone in your deck, I'd say probably switch to Duplicant over Phyrexian Ingester. Both basically do the same thing, but Duplicant is easier to cast and a mana cheaper.
In the end though, like Mvidmaster suggested, what I've learned it's really hard to go wrong with a Roon build. Take ETB creatures, add some tutors and blink engines, and season to taste.
As a big fan of the old Time Spiral block "Pickles" decks, I really like this list. Since you're already running Vesuvan Shapeshifter, and are on a card draw insanity plan, do you think Fathom Seer might deserve a spot? It was an all star in the block constructed version. I don't know your build nearly well enough to know what I'd suggest to pull to bring one in, but I think it merits consideration.
Your version of the deck is a bit less single-mindedly blink/ETB focused than a lot of the builds that have been making the rounds, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean though that cards like Vigor and Liege of the Tangle don't interact with your general in the way that, say, Soul of the Harvest or Craterhoof Behemoth might. Again, not a bad thing, but just a different build.
On obvious straight-up upgrade would be replacing Quirion Trailblazer with Ondu Giant. Same card basically, but bigger stats. I recommend looking over the other threads running around on the first few pages. There's some good ideas bouncing around in both of the ones I've been reading.
One thing I do want to point out - you can definitely add really powerful cards like Defense of the Heart and Tooth and Nail without creating infinite combos. Leave out Palinchron and Time Walk effects and you're probably good. Anyway, look forward to seeing where you go with your build!
Nice list! I also was going to build Roon but in testing every time he hit the board he got ate removal so it got discouraging. Do you not have that problem in your meta? Maybe it was just cause he was brand new?
I find with my build (and let's be honest, most Roon builds are probably 15 cards off of identical from each other), it doesn't matter >too< much if Roon himself is a lightning rod. At worst, the deck is still chock full of great value-on-a-stick cards anyway, and sometimes you win just by dropping creature after creature and stacking up incremental value. Sometimes, in my build's case, you give up on the Roon/blink plan all together and just Defense of the Heart/Tooth and Nail up either an auto-win (if you feel the group is tired of the game and wants to move to the next one) or an almost-certain win of Avenger of Zendikar+Sylvan Primordial or something similar.
In short, in my experience, the deck, if built correctly, isn't too dependent on Roon, or even "blink" as such. Your mileage may vary, as always.
On the Sea Gate Oracle>Vendilion Clique thing, I'm not quite sure it's exactly true that I have >no< counterspell ability. I mean, I have Glen Elendra Archmage, which is pretty broken with blink to reset it, and I've got Venser for soft counter. That said, I totally agree that I want to find a way to fit in a more traditional counter effect or two in here. That's why I used to pack the two "tuck" counters before I ran out of space. Clique may take a while for me to test out just for budget reasons (I sold off my few when I sold >sniff< my legacy deck a few years back).
Galepowder and Resto Angel used to both have spots in the deck, and I made a decision to cut Resto because I was already starting to realize I had a few too many blink effects. That said, maybe it's right that the two creatures fit the same gap in the deck, and maybe Resto is the better of the two in certain situations. Dunno.
Sudden Disappearance/Wash Out again are a situation where I used to run both in my deck. I felt with Wash Out, Ghostway, Sudden Disappearance, Evacuation, >and< Cyclonic Rift, I probably was pushing it too hard at the time, and Wash Out got cut out of the batch because of my table's meta - lots of people playing colors that resulted in me having to hit my own creatures to hit theirs. Maybe the better swap would be Wash Out over Evacuation. At least Wash Out has some discretion, whereas Evacuation hits everything no matter what.
Regal Force is definitely looking like it's on the way out, but the question will be for what. As I mentioned above, I really want to see Aura Shards in the deck, but I will admit that Rhystic Study would be nice too. I guess I haven't done Study thus far because it feels a little too "goodstuff" and not enough on theme. But maybe that's a personal bias and should be pushed aside.
Maybe I could try -Force, -Evacuation, +Aura Shards, +Wash Out, and then keep Sudden Disappearance on my watch list for future cuts. As I said above, I'm definitely up for continuing to consider the Asceticism/Predators swap too.
Another benefit of the Qasali Pridemage addition that Outcry recommended is that it gives you a bit more resilience from Torpor Orb. That's somewhat of a meta-specific issue, but if you start winning a ton in your playgroup (which Roon can definitely do), they will wise up and start packing heat against you. I might also exchange Harmonic Sliver for Aura Shards. Neither of these work around the aforementioned Torpor Orb, but there are two benefits of Aura Shards over Sliver. First, it turns all your creatures (that already have built-in value) into super-Harmonic Slivers. Second, and this is subtle but easy to miss, Aura Shards is a >may<, while Harmonic Sliver doesn't give you a choice. If you need a blocker, and Sliver is the only creature in your hand, and no one else has an artifact/enchantment out, well, guess you're going to have to destroy your Sol Ring.
Sorry I haven't been around to reply for a bit - long work week. Anyway, so far I've gone with the following changes from my original list: -Pilgrim's Eye, -Deadwood Treefolk, -Turn to Mist, +Ondu Giant, +Seedborn Muse, +Wall of Blossoms (or maybe Wall of Roots, depending on testing). I decided that as much as I'd like the extra counter, Seedborn Muse seemed stronger than Mystic Snake. However, I really, really, really, want to find a spot for Aura Shards, and I feel like I'm in a spot where I need someone to yell "Kill your darlings!" at me. On first glance it would make sense to put it in the spot of one of my other artifact/enchantment kill spells - Qasali Pridemage or Austere Command. However, these two are my only outs to Torpor Orb, and Shards is blanked by Orb.
So what to cut? Of my high-cmc cards, I feel like Regal Force is almost always weaker than the cheaper Prime Speaker Zegana, and as such it's kind of on the edge of being cut. But on the flip side, it's probably the 2nd or 3rd best CA spell I have in the deck. Someone have any insight? Is that the right card to cut, or is there something that would be better?
Way ahead of you Outcry! Both Tooth and Nail and Defense were in my OP and I even commented about Defense in a crazy palinchron infinite mana trick. No worries though. There are a ton of these Roon threads around these days, and it's easy to miss things in 100 card lists.
Pemmin's Aura seems good on the voltron side, but as untap effects go it seems like it's pretty solidly in 3rd place behind Kruphix and Seedborn Muse (which I already can't find space for). I think if I wanted to add a voltron angle I'd probably be better off adding Stoneforge Mystic and some swords (as I have seen in at least one more list on MTGS). Dunno. Again I guess it all comes down to space.
Sinis, I'm glad at least one person got a laugh out of my parental nonsense. I have tried flickerwisp, but recently I'm actually moving in the direction of fewer spots dedicated to blink enablers. For instance I just cut mistmeadow witch. There are a lot of one-shot creature blinks I have considered, but they suffer from the same problem as the turn to mist type of spells: a lot of times they sit in my hand because I always imagine there is some "better" use for them around the corner. I can't just play them put for later blinking value either, because blinking a blink creature seems...redundant.
While Mystic Snake can't be really used with Roon, I guess the question is: if I do want a slightly higher counter count in the deck, is the extra utility it has from a) having legs and b) locking down the game pretty fully with Deadeye Navigator enough to make it worth the extra mana over spells like Hinder/Spell Crumple, or two mana more than a plain Counterspell? I mean, it's pretty obvious that I'd almost always rather have Venser for creature "counter" (yes, I know Venser doesn't hard counter) since worst case scenario, I can always use it as an expensive Man-o-war. But, even without much Roon synergy, Mystic Snake seems like it's at least worth testing.
While the early defense+ramp option of Wall of Roots is something I'm up to test, something tells me I'd almost rather have Wall of Blossoms if I wanted to add a 1G Wall, if only because Blossoms gives me another draw engine once I get Deadeye Navigator online. Maybe I can test -Turn to Mist, +Wall of Roots, +Wall of Blossoms, or +Noble Hierarch, and see which I'd rather have in real games.
p.s. The Mirror Entity/'Lark/Karmic Guide win is a bit complicated if you've never seen it before, so here's how it works:
Get Survival of the Fittest online, and use Survival to fish out Mirror Entity, Karmic Guide, any of the many powerful cards that Reveillark can return (say, Venser, Shaper Savant), and Reveillark. It doesn't matter that Survival throws everything but the Reveillark in the bin, because that's where you need it to be. Evoke Reveillark, and use its ability to return Karmic Guide and Mirror Entity. Karmic Guide's ETB ability then returns Reveillark. Then, put an arbitrarily large number of Mirror Entity's ability (at X=0) on the stack. Let the first one resolve, wrathing yourself. Reveillark's ability goes back on the stack, getting Karmic Guide and, say, Venser (or Acidic Slime , or whatever) this time. Karmic Guide brings back Reveillark, Venser's trigger bounces any of your opponent's permanents, and then the whole thing repeats. Another Mirror Entity wrath, followed by recursion, followed by another bounce. On the last bounce, when your opponents have no permanents at all, return Karmic Guide, Mirror Entity, and Reveillark, and you're all set up to do it again on a whim at instant speed. At this point you could kill everyone one turn at a time with a Dryad Arbor if you wanted to, because no one else gets to play anything ever again.
I've gone a bit more combo-tastic since my first build, but even if you don't want to go that way (and I totally understand if you don't - it's highly group specific), there are a few things I'd recommend from my experience. Champion of Lambholt is really good, and probably merits a spot. The sad reality is that because we're playing ETB creatures, at any given point in the curve our creatures tend to be smaller than the big dumb creatures of our opponents. Champion turns our army of 2/2's-stapled-to-Vindicates into legit kill cons even on a stalled board. Sometimes you just need to get in there for a few extra points, after all. I'd probably take out Courser of Kruphix if I had to decide - I'm not sure Oracle of Mul Daya minus the ramp is worth it, but then again I haven't playtested it.
I know with a competitive list the idea is to keep the curve low, but Venser, Shaper Savant is enough better than Man-o'-war that it probably merits a straight 1-for-1 swap. Sometimes the difference between "creature" and "permanent" is game winning, and in a pinch it's a bad Remand that can also hit Supreme Verdict.
Speaking of Verdict, is there a reason you're running Wrath over it? I know Verdict is harder to cast in a vacuum, but you're not likely to be the guy who wants to blow up the world on turn 4 anyway. For this deck, Wrath effects are a tool of last resort when the board has gotten out of hand. We're pretty creature-heavy, after all. I find that most of the time I pull the trigger on a mass creature destruction spell, it's turn 7 or later when someone has just dumped their hand on the field and is threatening to 1-shot half the table. Turn 7, you should be able to cast whatever 4 mana spell you want, and uncounterability can really matter. More than regeneration, at least.
Arcane Denial has always seemed like a card that you only run because you already have Mana Drain and Counterspell in the deck, and you just need one more hard counter to fill out a permission suite. I don't think I'd ever run it before those others though. Mana Drains are expensive, but Counterspells are cheap - it seems like it'd be a pretty easy swap.
I know it's already on your list of "I'm testing this," but I can't recommend Gilded Drake enough. You're already running it's bigger cousin Perplexing Chimera, so you know how much fun stealing things and blinking can be. Pull the trigger. They're kinda pricey, but totally worth it.
All in all though, I really like how the list is shaping up! Hope you are having fun with it!
I definitely agree with the thought that you don't want to run too many clones, but I think there are at least two - Phyrexian Metamorph and Sakashima's Student - that make my list over the ones mentioned above. In worst case, when you're straight up paying 4 mana for them, these two are both solid straight-up clones; in the best case they are 3 or 2 mana, respectively, with no weird qualifications attached. Progenitor Mimic is stupid powerful, yes, but it's also much more expensive. Body Double depends on creatures already being in the graveyard, which means that even though it's cheap, it's not probably getting you much value until later turns. Finally, Phantasmal Image is a full-on nonbo with Roon - any ability that targets the Image, even to blink it, forces you to sacrifice before the blink can happen.
Also, if you decide to keep an expensive removal+clone in your deck, I'd say probably switch to Duplicant over Phyrexian Ingester. Both basically do the same thing, but Duplicant is easier to cast and a mana cheaper.
I do agree that you need to move away from mana rocks toward land ramp (except for Sol Ring, because it's just that good), but I personally prefer to use ramp "on a stick" over spells like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach and Search for Tomorrow. In my Roon build, I'm running Coiling Oracle, Farhaven Elf, Wood Elves, Ondu Giant, >and< Solemn Simulacrum, and any of these plus any of your blink engines is nuts.
In the end though, like Mvidmaster suggested, what I've learned it's really hard to go wrong with a Roon build. Take ETB creatures, add some tutors and blink engines, and season to taste.
On obvious straight-up upgrade would be replacing Quirion Trailblazer with Ondu Giant. Same card basically, but bigger stats. I recommend looking over the other threads running around on the first few pages. There's some good ideas bouncing around in both of the ones I've been reading.
One thing I do want to point out - you can definitely add really powerful cards like Defense of the Heart and Tooth and Nail without creating infinite combos. Leave out Palinchron and Time Walk effects and you're probably good. Anyway, look forward to seeing where you go with your build!
I find with my build (and let's be honest, most Roon builds are probably 15 cards off of identical from each other), it doesn't matter >too< much if Roon himself is a lightning rod. At worst, the deck is still chock full of great value-on-a-stick cards anyway, and sometimes you win just by dropping creature after creature and stacking up incremental value. Sometimes, in my build's case, you give up on the Roon/blink plan all together and just Defense of the Heart/Tooth and Nail up either an auto-win (if you feel the group is tired of the game and wants to move to the next one) or an almost-certain win of Avenger of Zendikar+Sylvan Primordial or something similar.
In short, in my experience, the deck, if built correctly, isn't too dependent on Roon, or even "blink" as such. Your mileage may vary, as always.
On the Sea Gate Oracle>Vendilion Clique thing, I'm not quite sure it's exactly true that I have >no< counterspell ability. I mean, I have Glen Elendra Archmage, which is pretty broken with blink to reset it, and I've got Venser for soft counter. That said, I totally agree that I want to find a way to fit in a more traditional counter effect or two in here. That's why I used to pack the two "tuck" counters before I ran out of space. Clique may take a while for me to test out just for budget reasons (I sold off my few when I sold >sniff< my legacy deck a few years back).
Galepowder and Resto Angel used to both have spots in the deck, and I made a decision to cut Resto because I was already starting to realize I had a few too many blink effects. That said, maybe it's right that the two creatures fit the same gap in the deck, and maybe Resto is the better of the two in certain situations. Dunno.
Sudden Disappearance/Wash Out again are a situation where I used to run both in my deck. I felt with Wash Out, Ghostway, Sudden Disappearance, Evacuation, >and< Cyclonic Rift, I probably was pushing it too hard at the time, and Wash Out got cut out of the batch because of my table's meta - lots of people playing colors that resulted in me having to hit my own creatures to hit theirs. Maybe the better swap would be Wash Out over Evacuation. At least Wash Out has some discretion, whereas Evacuation hits everything no matter what.
Regal Force is definitely looking like it's on the way out, but the question will be for what. As I mentioned above, I really want to see Aura Shards in the deck, but I will admit that Rhystic Study would be nice too. I guess I haven't done Study thus far because it feels a little too "goodstuff" and not enough on theme. But maybe that's a personal bias and should be pushed aside.
Maybe I could try -Force, -Evacuation, +Aura Shards, +Wash Out, and then keep Sudden Disappearance on my watch list for future cuts. As I said above, I'm definitely up for continuing to consider the Asceticism/Predators swap too.
The tweaking, it is never done!
So what to cut? Of my high-cmc cards, I feel like Regal Force is almost always weaker than the cheaper Prime Speaker Zegana, and as such it's kind of on the edge of being cut. But on the flip side, it's probably the 2nd or 3rd best CA spell I have in the deck. Someone have any insight? Is that the right card to cut, or is there something that would be better?
While the early defense+ramp option of Wall of Roots is something I'm up to test, something tells me I'd almost rather have Wall of Blossoms if I wanted to add a 1G Wall, if only because Blossoms gives me another draw engine once I get Deadeye Navigator online. Maybe I can test -Turn to Mist, +Wall of Roots, +Wall of Blossoms, or +Noble Hierarch, and see which I'd rather have in real games.