MTG Salvation

Ok, that's a pretty elaborate setup, well done for catching that interaction. May make for some fun mind games as you attack with a Zada variant out and see if people block. I'm still writing this off as too conditional, but it's something to keep in mind as a potential thing to do with Feather.

Quote from Rumpy5897 »

Ok, that's a pretty elaborate setup, well done for catching that interaction. May make for some fun mind games as you attack with a Zada variant out and see if people block. I'm still writing this off as too conditional, but it's something to keep in mind as a potential thing to do with Feather.

I think it's much less elaborate than it seems. All instants are fetchable by Sunforger which is fetchable by a ton of stuff, Zada is fetchable Matron which is fetchable by both Recruiters. Not to mention the shenanigans that ensue with Zada, Sunforger and Magnetic Theft.

With the amount of cards this deck can draw, it should be relatively easy to encounter most if not all of the above. Boros is inferior in most things tutor or card draw oriented, and this deck seems like it has both covered, so I'd still hazard a small test if I were you.

Heh, I'm not running Magnetic Theft anymore This seems like it'd be a similar card - situationally good, often just plain bad. Call me a coward, but I have skirted away from very situational stuff since I'd draw clunker half-combo hands in my Purphoros, God of the Forge back around 2014/2015. And I got that same exact feeling staring at an opener with Magnetic Theft, no equipment or way to get any in an early iteration of this list. There are still some conditional cards in here (Paradox Engine, Phyrexian Altar, Unwinding Clock), but they require far fewer pieces to get online. This needs a Zada variant and being on the highest life, one of which we can't really do much about. I'm not even going to count the indestructibility here

Quote from Rumpy5897 »

Heh, I'm not running Magnetic Theft anymore This seems like it'd be a similar card - situationally good, often just plain bad. Call me a coward, but I have skirted away from very situational stuff since I'd draw clunker half-combo hands in my Purphoros, God of the Forge back around 2014/2015. And I got that same exact feeling staring at an opener with Magnetic Theft, no equipment or way to get any in an early iteration of this list. There are still some conditional cards in here (Paradox Engine, Phyrexian Altar, Unwinding Clock), but they require far fewer pieces to get online. This needs a Zada variant and being on the highest life, one of which we can't really do much about. I'm not even going to count the indestructibility here

I really want to try out Magnetic Theft, but as you say you need to play a threshold of equipment otherwise it can be a dead card.
Can you think of other equipment that would be beneficial to move around at instant speed? Skullclamp is fine as you can move it to a creature getting killed. Actually that's pretty good right you get to draw two cards at instant speed, which has a slight edge to doing it as actual equip at sorcery speed. The thing is a lot of the equipment is better when attacking.

How has Isochron Scepter been going?

I wasn't even that perturbed about instant speed equip. I have a couple mana swords in here, even more at the time of the Theft, and just slightly cheating equip cost felt like a sensible non-Sunforger bit of utility. But it turned out to be unpleasantly dead in testing and the saga ended. How have you been finding Skullclamp actually? I hit capacity far too easily in this deck to consider it, given it has Phyrexian Altar tier synergy requirements to really do its thing. And as for Isochron Scepter, it's not too shabby. Its floor is putting on one of the standard suite of instants to not worry about losing it to a response blowout, allowing me to pop it with the remnant of my turn cycle mana with impunity. Its success case is Swords/Path/Enlightened Tutor, i.e. anything that now becomes reusable for its primary purpose. Its nut case is Boros Charm. It also helps that in my shell it's a gateway to infinite mana, or just an instant win, if combined with enough rocks and Pengine.

I ended up cutting Skullclamp, simply because I never needed it with plenty of draw. Not to say that it's not a good backup plan, but literally end up discarding it to hand size two games in a row, so that was a good enough sign for me to replace it.

No love for Coalition Relic with this setup? Goes disgustingly well with Unwinding Clock/Paradox Engine, and if they're not on board it allows you to stock a little mana away for next turn.

*Edit* Also has anyone tried Veilstone Amulet yet?

Nor surprised Skullclamp got ultimately binned. It did seem like overkill in a list that's as draw-happy as this one.

I acknowledge your Coalition Relic scenarios, but realistically you'll be using the Unwinding Clock mana for instants, and the Paradox Engine setup means you don't really care that much about banking anything either. Veilstone Amulet is pretty ok, I've never gotten around to testing it. A ton of the deck's instants are already various forms of protection, so this would probably end up largely redundant, occasionally doubling an indestructibility spell or off-target flicker for spot removal blanking.

The initial primer work has finished, to match the timing of me papering the list out. Check out the snazzy new OP with far too many words, and the chart thing. I believe I state my case pretty sensibly. If any of you have any feedback, it'd be much appreciated

As is typical for me when scraping one of those primer things together, I looked at some cards I wasn't running while writing up options. I may have had a weird, situational Karn, Silver Golem thought that didn't go anywhere, but I spotted an easy way to spruce up my mana base.



Both of these lands tap for both colours. That's pretty handy in the deck, given its penchant for casting cheap, coloured-heavy stuff. The list should be fast enough so that the life loss won't be too much of a bother. Two basics took the hit, bringing me down to seven of each. That should still be enough.

I haven't seen this discussed, but Sunglasses of Urza is pretty much a second Chromatic Lantern for us should we want it. That kind of effect can be very solid for us since we want more white mana anyway (more white for Feather, more white instants).

Sorry, but that's a couple of tiers of jank beyond even meriting consideration. I'm already not running Chromatic Lantern

I got to play Feather against some different decks recently, including braving a Cockatrice pub. Turns out the lack of board state worries are not altogether unfounded - one game saw The Mimeoplasm generate 50+ untargetable flying power and beeline my face, leading me to barely scrape by with an indestructible Feather on defensive duty against the biggest swinger as some lesser beefslabs snuck by. The whole game was a circus of blunders (ate an unnecessary Toxic Deluge as I got greedy and cantripped, wanting to get maximum value off a scry that made Feather work on defence) and questionable focusing (how was I on nine with no board or meaningful spells in circulation when the Intet with a mountain of mana, Swarm Intelligence and no blocking power was absolutely untouched?). I managed to topdeck Scroll of the Masters on my last turn and went out in a blaze of glory, scoring enough counters on there to take the Mim over halfway down to a voltron kill in one slam. When facing various stereotypical EDH go-wides, even having a defensive 1/1 chump army often feels like trying to plug up cartoon-style leak springs. The story's a bit different if the 1/1s are monks or you have Phalanx Leader, but this is nevertheless a valid concern for most Feather board states. The list is also quite light on wincons, and could use a smidge of souping up in that department.

Two birds, one stone!



There's no denying that in all scenarios where the level of you doing stuff is of some importance (there's no point comparing how hard you're winning if you're ripping 10+ spells a turn), Guttersnipe is better at chewing life than Aetherflux Reservoir. Even if you're not particularly shredtastic, an unattended gobbo is gonna end the game in about four turns on an average mid-game setup. In the same scenario, Reservoir's going to gain you about 20 life per turn cycle, translating to ~1.5 people dead in the same time frame. However, it does gain you life. As such, you can stem the bleeding a bit, and the Reservoir is still a sensible game ender, particularly when you go off the rails a bit later on. It also allows for some interesting political tricksiness. In that Mim game, had the topdeck been the Reservoir rather than the Scroll, I'd have managed to churn enough life in the turn to hold the threat of a 50-damage lazor over the Mim and get him to not touch me again. Oh yeah, and screwing with the stack to get maximum benefit from it is also a blast. I was considering Intimidation Bolt, but that's just a panic fog of sorts by comparison. I have nothing against other people killing each other May work it in at some point going forward if I still feel troubled on this field. I'm also starting to examine rocks for a potential Thought Vessel slot.

In terms of cuts, I ended up doing the unthinkable and actually going after my protection suite. Valorous Stance may be modular, but gets used as removal infrequently. Plus, the toughness clause does limit it to some extent. All other indestructibility is one mana (Ajani's Presence, Sheltering Light) or effectively free (Ephemeral Shields). Spending two mana on it does not feel super good. At two mana, you get end-of-turn flickers, and plain indestructibility is nowhere near the same ballpark as that. Was considering offing Faith's Shield as well, but ultimately decided to keep it in for protecting the artifact haymakers. Especially as there's a new one in town.

Hi,
I posted this in another thread, hope i'm not violating any forum rules, but the deck i'm planning to build is more like youre's so...
Since you blink and you haste a lot with all those cantrip,
What do you think of abusing Mangara of Corondor???

Different thread, different deck, fair game by me

That's not that shabby an idea, but without haste/flicker Mangara feels inferior to Meteor Golem. That thing comes in, boom, thing is kill. If you draw flicker later - cool. This needs to live a full go of turns around the table, and if you choose to use him for removal before you land flicker he's gone. True, he costs less, but I feel we can stomach the overhead here.

But we have take in consideration that Mangara of corondor exile,and he can hit land...
I think i'll try it, and come back with my experience... in a few week!

I won't lie, the exile is pretty good. I'll eagerly await your report. There are times I wish I had more interactivity in the list.

Firstly, great thread. Thanks for all the work and updates. I've been following since Feather, the Redeemed was spoiled.

Secondly, I don't know if anyone is still on the fence about Soul's Fire but the card is a house. Very versatile, easy creature removal, planeswalker removal or burning down players. Burning players may not seem important but you can rack up a ridiculous amount of damage when you have Zada, Hedron Grinder / Mirrorwing Dragon + token producers like Monastery Mentor and friends. Plus any pump spell, even small stuff, like Defiant Strike or Ajani's Presence start really ticking things up. I've domed people for > 40 for 5 mana and that's before attacking. Not to mention you can do it again and again. It also serves as one-sided board wipes if you're feeling particularly malicious. The beauty is it doesn't ask for any specific package (I'm looking at you Sunforger et. al), just the normal cards you'll be running in any Feather, the Redeemed deck. Highly recommended!!

Feelings on Balefire Liege? been trying it out in a similar build on magic online and have had good results so far, helping close out with damage or get to the death star levels.

Also Sentinel Tower?

Thanks. I'm sorry to pop the bubble here, but Soul's Fire variants don't work with Zadas. The spell only gets spread around if it targets only the Zada variant. So yeah, you could use it to have your board punch itself in the face, but that doesn't seem like something you'd want to do Balefire Liege does a lot of stuff here, but given the deck's white skew this thing will mainly gain life rather than dispense bolts. It's not a bad include by any means though. Sentinel Tower would best be a Sphinx-Bone Wand instead, the fact this only tracks your main phase spell spam and resets each time seems a bit suboptimal.

Speaking of Sphinx-Bone Wand, actually...



When adding Scroll of the Masters, I A/B'd it against the Wand. I admitted the Wand is objectively better (if you count to 18, the Scroll makes Feather a one shot for extra mana, while the Wand ended the game), but pointed out the merits of a cheaper option that can be worked in easier. I think a lot of those parallels carry over to Mangara of Corondor vs. Meteor Golem. I've already compared pure card quality when it was first brought up in the thread, discussing Mangara's drawbacks. However, I forgot some important upsides of his - cost and the rattlesnake factor. The Golem is the lone card above 5CMC (Blasphemous Act doesn't count) left in the list, and chasing him out is a similar tempo hit to setting Wand down. By contrast, I can play Mangara whenever and just let him sit there. Don't do anything too spooky or I'll eat it. Show some flicker and people will be on edge even more. The threat of interaction is something that my Daxos the Returned uses to good effect, and I imagine it'll also be fine in this build. I don't tend to bomb removal heavily here, Duergar Hedge-Mage has ended up as Chrome Mox fodder more often than on the battlefield. However, I'm not quite irresponsible enough to strip this list of all interaction.

Mangara's major drawback is that he taps to do his thing. This is an occasional upside, as he turns into a board chainsaw with Paradox Engine, but overall it's a flaw. I'm still not super stoked about that, as removal should preferably come here and now. As such, I've started actively considering Samut's Sprint, and narrowed it down to three proposed cuts - Panic, Titan's Strength and Stand Firm. However, none of those seem worse than the Sprint - even the crappiest cantrip is still a cantrip, the +1 power from Titan's Strength speeds up Feather's clock, and the double dig of Stand Firm is phenomenal for finding things to do. As such, for now I didn't add it. However, I did also swap out a basic because of the whole white-leaning thing.

Oh man, you're right! Oops, looks I've cheated a couple wins. You live and you learn haha

Thanks so the insight! I see what you mean about Balefire for sure. Sentinel Tower I was testing in place of the Wand myself due to the cost restriction, and tbh its fairly non threatening once it drops as ppl know it does nothing on other turns. a few games now its closed them out for me once single-handed, and the other times with guttersnipe out. When I was making the play for the kill I would wait till end step to replay the spells I had earlier so it keeps racking up the count on tower and I mowed down the other 3 players all at 25-30ish life before i was done. Still have yet to try it while Pengine is online...

Definitely useless 3/4 the time though lol.

One of the recent Command Zone episodes linked to a "competitive" Feather primer. It was quite cool to look at it - the guy runs the same Paradox Engine + Isochron Scepter gib, gets to back off the protection in a number of categories because of how cEDH tends to operate, shaves most cast payoff as he doesn't need it and adds various meta cards/hate pieces in their place. Not bad then, my list takes a similar base idea but tunes it to your stereotypical EDH slog rather than cEDH.

But yeah, it's MH1 time. Never before in my five year EDH career has a fresh set deposited so many new cards into a single deck. In fairness, you can tell a lot of this was made with Feather in mind, and a few are fleshed out cycles from way back when that Boros happily absorbs. The ease with which all these swaps came together leads me to believe that there's still room in the list to tune it up.



All of these are essentially 1:1 swaps, so let's present them as such.

• Aria of Flame is like WOTC listened to me complaining about Sphinx-Bone Wand costing an arm and a leg. The life gain actually doesn't even matter that much, Aria needs you to count to 17 to take out a four-man pod from full health while the Wand charges you a surplus of 4 to accomplish the same feat in 15 spells. Sure, this doesn't hit creatures, but I don't tend to do that anyway. Taking out Tenth District Legionnaire. This is a card I really wanted to like, but ultimately she's quite low on the target priority list and often ends up ignored or stuffing a Chrome Mox. The fact Burning Prophet doesn't hog targeting ends up making a surprising amount of difference.
• Ephemerate is a Cloudshift with rebound. In it goes as a replacement. I don't think I want more insta-flicker in the list, my other 1 cmc protection options are a pretty good spread of potential value and emergency non-creature shielding.
• Fists of Flame may cost two, but also scales quite nicely with cards drawn. Adds yet another redundant layer of game winning to Zada setups, and if you force a Rift with this in your combat then you can chase out any potential combos sitting in your 80 card hand in main 2 with marginally less disruption. In a vacuum, paying 2 for +2/+0 and a card is probably a bit better than paying one for +3/+1 and a scry. Titan's Strength out.
• Generous Gift is a white Beast Within and an obvious include. Mangara of Corondor has been working somewhat ok in his threat of activation state, so for now taking out Chaos Warp. I might swap the Warp back in for Mangara at some point.
• Sunbaked Canyon is just a City of Brass variant in here. Don't think we'll be cashing this in too often. Still, we run all the other City of Brass variants, so in this goes. The nonbasics are pretty tight, so a Mountain gets the kick.
• Talisman of Conviction immediately becomes the best two-drop rock in the list, and ousts the worst two-drop rock in Star Compass. Coldsteel Heart survives on early game flexibility. Some irresponsible part of me wants to swap it out for Thought Vessel.

Apart from some potential swap musings upstream, I'm considering decreasing the volume of the protection suite a bit more. The fact I was just gifted a second Cloudshift and chose to only run one leads me to believe I could consider trimming it down a bit. We'll see.

Something was brought to my attention that's actually making me tempted to run Akroan Conscriptor.. Cloudshift can permanently steal threatened creatures because it puts them under YOUR control! Probably not enough to make me want to run the Conscriptor, but just thinking about how disgusting it could be..

I noticed you never mentioned Gamble in your updated primer post, any particular reason? Do you think it's unnecessary now that Sunforger is in the deck? (I still haven't bitten the bullet and added it into mine.. And I HAVE had games where I Gamble for Paradox, lose Paradox.. lol. But that's the name of the game! ;P)

I must admit, that Mangara tech is SUPER spicy! I'll be sad to lose Meteor Golem though, as it's basically been my MVP in almost every Feather game I've won.. Nothing like having a Cloudshift and a Meteor Golem to make the table feel helpless. <3 But 7 Mana IS a lot, and potentially win-more/useless early-game, whereas Mangara can come out early (not to mention get disgusting w/ Paradox, yikes I didn't realize he could be used like that! :O)

I'm still not convinced about Chrome Mox, though; Feather needs all the early-game options it can get to solidify her game-plan, and while you might sometimes have redundancy in hand (it's still always nice to have options.)

I wish I could fit Thought Vessel in somehow as well.. Discarding to Hand-size (in a Boros deck of all places!) isn't fun.. (Though it can potentially be circumvented by abusing EOT casting w/ Feather.)

PS. Isn't Aria just a less tutorable and more expensive Guttersnipe redundancy (and you weren't even running any of those, like Firebrand.) Seems you've come to the realization that the deck needs more win-cons?

PSS. I'm tempted to cut Psychotic Fury for Reckless Rage, as it's the weakest and most expensive Cantrip and it can only target Feather (besides, if we really need Double Strike, Boros Charm is still in the Deck.)

PSSS. What do you think about Mox Tantalite? Assuming you "drop" it T1 (for free mind you,) it'll be online around the time you'd normally be deploying Feather anyway, maybe a turn later. But I guess a 2-Drop Rock is probably better, as it lets you T3 Feather w/ Protection.

Nice to see you back around these parts Yeah, that works, but it's not enough for me to run the Conscriptor. Meteor Golem is better.

I need to add Gamble to the primer, yes. I also need to add a note about Gemstone Caverns. There's a finite amount of cards one can recall while typing this stuff up, thanks for the catch.

Meteor Golem is better than Mangara of Corondor in most situations. Mangara fits my rattlesnake'y play style more, whereas I'd often keep the Golem back for various reasons. I don't feel particularly comfortable chainsawing removal with this build - I'm already pretty untouchable given the protection options and constant draw (just had a game where I was archenemy'd by two of my meta's stronger decks, eating tons of removal to various pieces and all the combat swings, and I barely noticed and won the game through all the disruption), if I start crapping on everybody else's stuff too reliably everybody's going to escalate from grumpy to mad.

Seriously, just try Chrome Mox. It's perfectly fine. The other Moxen that are not in here, not so much.

Aria of Flame is solid, it takes less spells than Guttersnipe to maul a four-man pod. I have been bumping my win cons a bit, as the whole draw/scry apparatus is efficient and this way I spend less time stalling in dig mode, trying to find something. Also I'm less boned if someone interacts the wincon out.

Reckless Rage is a very good include, I'm straying from it for the whole "don't maul people while being unmaulable yourself" reasons. I've quite liked Psychotic Fury, but I can see your reasoning. Can't spread it to the team with Zadas, for one.

The new Mox is not of relevance here, yes.

Congrats on the [Primer] Rumpy.

darrenhabib - Getting me to write up the primer swiftly to slide under his multi-primer emporium, and offering solid formatting assistance.

This cracked me up, and oh it's true you had a one month window
Simply because Feather is the real deal. It really is everything in a unique card we've wanted for Boros to change things up.