I considered both, but cut them from consideration because A) they hit my own creatures as well as my opponents', and B) I already have enough 4-drops. I'd give them another look if I felt I was lacking sources of -1/-1 counters, but so far I seem to have enough.
I'm not sure the extra acceleration from Heritage Druid is warranted; I'd rather ensure I have a stronger board state than rush to tamp down my opponent's board, especially in casual. Elvish Archdruid is a good call, but all my copies are tied up in my other elf deck.
Won a three-player game vs. Esper angel/sphinx lifegain and mono-B zombie tribal, despite never managing to pull off the Necroskitter / Black Sun's Zenith combo. I almost decked myself drawing cards off of Dusk Urchins / BSZ, but managed to eke out a win with an empty library.
Best moment of the game: The zombie player dropped Tombstone Stairwell with Vengeful Dead on the table. There were enough creatures in all graveyards for Vengeful Dead to kill both other players when all the Stairwell zombies were sacrificed at the end of my turn. I drew Necroskitter, played it, then played Skinrender to kill Vengeful Dead and bring it back on my side of the table. Knocked off half the Esper player's life total and killed the zombie player in one go.
Pull from Eternity as an emergency measure in case multiple Hedron Alignments get exiled. We'll probably want to go WU anyway for enchantment tutoring and recursion.
On the one hand, Consuming Vapors is a bit slow, and it lacks the flexibility of Putrefy or the -1/-1 counter synergy of Grim Affliction. On the other hand, it is really strong in actual play. For the moment, I'm thinking of cutting one Consuming Vapors and all of the Kulrath Knights, and swapping in two more Flourishing Defenses and three copies of one of the cheaper kill spells. No one runs any artifacts, so Putrefy would be a waste, so I'm thinking of Geth's Verdict, Grim Affliction, or Dismember.
(I might regret pulling the Kulrath Knights if I face off against someone with lots of really big fliers, especially if the guy with the Sigarda, Host of Herons deck ever breaks it out again. But at the moment it seems like a weaker play than Flourishing Defenses.)
This is straightforward in principle: Drop some mana dorks, cast Plow Under or Stunted Growth on turn 3, then apply pressure. The rest is just elf stuff, focused less on making the best elf deck this can be and more on hanging in there while the deck's sorceries do their thing. Jagged-Scar Archers deals with fliers, and provides a solid wincon; Wellwisher helps survive in a race; Elvish Visionary digs a little; and Imperious Perfect is generally awesome.
Thoughts on how to better showcase Plow Under and Stunted Growth are welcome!
Hm. A bit of goldfishing suggests that the deck may be running slow. Maybe pull a Kulrath Knight and a couple of Consuming Vapors, and replace them with Grim Affliction?
Some years back, I built a Golgari Zubera deck around Savra, Queen of the Golgari. It was fun but janky, and I eventually dismantled it. Good to see someone making better use of these little guys.
I'm finding it hard to suggest anything useful here. Mimic Vat isn't as good for your specific strategy as Soul Foundry. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a worse sac engine than Skullmulcher. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest doesn't have many targets to actually place its counters on if all your Zuberas are getting sacrificed. I suppose Dictate of Erebos could be useful... or better yet, Martyr's Bond, which would also turn your Crop Rotations into Ice Storms.
Maybe Bygone Bishop for more card draw? (Hey, Kraul with Investigate... I may have a new deck idea here. Thanks!)
... Oh, wait, you're asking about mana sources. Whoops.
You're only running three colors of noncreature spells, and can easily get that down to two, so Ancient Ziggurat is indeed a great choice. Cavern of Souls is, sadly, far too expensive. Rupture Spire and Transguild Promenade are slower than lands like Mana Confluence, but they're also way cheaper in real money. And I guess you could run Tendo Ice Bridge and sac it to Crop Rotation after using the counter.
Now the benefit of bloodrush is spend my hand so I can use cards like Jagged Poppet aggressively to drain my opponent of resources
The problem with this approach is that when the Cerberus dies and you get your creature cards back, your opponent gets his creature cards back too. You can break this symmetry with non-targeted graveyard hate such as Leyline of the Void, Nihil Spellbomb, and the first effect of Relic of Progenitus.
A lot of the best cards will have more than one colored mana in their mana cost, so you'll probably want to focus on one color and splash the other. It sounds like you're going to focus on black and splash white (unsurprising for vampires), so I'll try and make suggestions in that vein.
Read the Bones and Sign in Blood are good for card draw, but they're even better if you're also gaining life to offset their life loss.
Divinity of Pride is a solid lifelinking beater. You'll need solid early lifegain to get the best use out of it, but it's still decent even if you don't break 25 life. Blood Baron of Vizkopa is similar; which is better depends on your metagame.
Sanguine Bond and Vizkopa Guildmage have synergy with other lifegain effects. The Guildmage has the advantage of also being a cheap body.
My opponent has future sight with clone on the top of the deck face up. I have a Scrib Nibblers. Opponent wants to play the clone, can I exile the top card of the library w my Scribs, or will the clone come into play?
Once it's your opponent's main phase, if they want to cast Clone, they get to do so because they have priority due to being the active player. If they say they don't want to cast any spells, priority passes to you. At that point, you can activate the Scrib Nibblers. Because Future Sight doesn't affect timing restrictions, they can't respond to the Nibblers' activated ability with a creature spell, so the Clone gets exiled.
If it's not your opponent's main phase, they can't cast Clone at all, because Future Sight doesn't affect timing restrictions.
Would it be different if there was an instant on top of the library?
Yes, it would be different.
If they cast the instant first, it moves from the library to the stack. A new card is revealed on the top of their library before you can activate Scrib Nibblers.
If you activate Scrib Nibblers first, they can respond by casting the instant. This happens before Scrib Nibblers' activated ability resolved, moving the instant from the library to the stack and revealing the next card in their library. It's that new card which gets exiled, not the instant that's being cast.
While I'm leaning toward Visionary to synergize with other elf cards, Harmonize is definitely worth looking into.
Wow, that's brutal! Pretty much wins the game right there. Might be too cruel for casual... but definitely tempting.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Best moment of the game: The zombie player dropped Tombstone Stairwell with Vengeful Dead on the table. There were enough creatures in all graveyards for Vengeful Dead to kill both other players when all the Stairwell zombies were sacrificed at the end of my turn. I drew Necroskitter, played it, then played Skinrender to kill Vengeful Dead and bring it back on my side of the table. Knocked off half the Esper player's life total and killed the zombie player in one go.
4 Hedron Alignment
1 Pull from Eternity
On the one hand, Consuming Vapors is a bit slow, and it lacks the flexibility of Putrefy or the -1/-1 counter synergy of Grim Affliction. On the other hand, it is really strong in actual play. For the moment, I'm thinking of cutting one Consuming Vapors and all of the Kulrath Knights, and swapping in two more Flourishing Defenses and three copies of one of the cheaper kill spells. No one runs any artifacts, so Putrefy would be a waste, so I'm thinking of Geth's Verdict, Grim Affliction, or Dismember.
(I might regret pulling the Kulrath Knights if I face off against someone with lots of really big fliers, especially if the guy with the Sigarda, Host of Herons deck ever breaks it out again. But at the moment it seems like a weaker play than Flourishing Defenses.)
Here's a first draft:
4 Elvish Mystic (1)
4 Elvish Visionary (2)
4 Fyndhorn Elves (1)
4 Imperious Perfect (3)
4 Jagged-Scar Archers (3)
4 Llanowar Elves (1)
4 Wellwisher (2)
4 Fallow Earth (3)
4 Plow Under (5)
4 Stunted Growth (5)
20 Forest
Thoughts on how to better showcase Plow Under and Stunted Growth are welcome!
It's less about the life gain and more about the rebound.
I'm finding it hard to suggest anything useful here. Mimic Vat isn't as good for your specific strategy as Soul Foundry. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a worse sac engine than Skullmulcher. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest doesn't have many targets to actually place its counters on if all your Zuberas are getting sacrificed. I suppose Dictate of Erebos could be useful... or better yet, Martyr's Bond, which would also turn your Crop Rotations into Ice Storms.
Maybe Bygone Bishop for more card draw? (Hey, Kraul with Investigate... I may have a new deck idea here. Thanks!)
... Oh, wait, you're asking about mana sources. Whoops.
You're only running three colors of noncreature spells, and can easily get that down to two, so Ancient Ziggurat is indeed a great choice. Cavern of Souls is, sadly, far too expensive. Rupture Spire and Transguild Promenade are slower than lands like Mana Confluence, but they're also way cheaper in real money. And I guess you could run Tendo Ice Bridge and sac it to Crop Rotation after using the counter.
If you're leaning on green, you can also run Abundant Growth, or maybe Joiner Adept. You could also try artifact fixers like Chromatic Lantern or Chromatic Star.
Already mentioned in the original post.
Looking at vampires, Tithe Drinker seems obvious here. Drana's Emissary isn't terrible. And Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is just ridiculous.
Read the Bones and Sign in Blood are good for card draw, but they're even better if you're also gaining life to offset their life loss.
Divinity of Pride is a solid lifelinking beater. You'll need solid early lifegain to get the best use out of it, but it's still decent even if you don't break 25 life. Blood Baron of Vizkopa is similar; which is better depends on your metagame.
Sanguine Bond and Vizkopa Guildmage have synergy with other lifegain effects. The Guildmage has the advantage of also being a cheap body.
In white, Archangel of Thune isn't really budget, but it's stupidly good. Ajani's Pridemate isn't terrible either.
Once it's your opponent's main phase, if they want to cast Clone, they get to do so because they have priority due to being the active player. If they say they don't want to cast any spells, priority passes to you. At that point, you can activate the Scrib Nibblers. Because Future Sight doesn't affect timing restrictions, they can't respond to the Nibblers' activated ability with a creature spell, so the Clone gets exiled.
If it's not your opponent's main phase, they can't cast Clone at all, because Future Sight doesn't affect timing restrictions.
Yes, it would be different.
If they cast the instant first, it moves from the library to the stack. A new card is revealed on the top of their library before you can activate Scrib Nibblers.
If you activate Scrib Nibblers first, they can respond by casting the instant. This happens before Scrib Nibblers' activated ability resolved, moving the instant from the library to the stack and revealing the next card in their library. It's that new card which gets exiled, not the instant that's being cast.