To be honest, I was rather surprised that I didn't see anything on this deck already posted. I feel like it's one of the two strongest decks in the format (the other being 12 Post) as it's a consistent combo deck with inevitability in the long game. Perhaps the format is just too new and people hadn't really considered the possibility, I don't know. I do know that this listing is still kind of rough (haven't done a lot of testing with it and parts of it are in flux) but it's incredibly strong. Once it's tested and tweaked??? It should easily be a tier 1 deck.
The combo, for those of you that haven't been paying attention to the release of Melira, is this: With Melira in play, your persist creatures can't have -1/-1 counters placed on them when they return to play with persist. You thus have a creature that will return from the graveyard any number of times. You combine this with any sort of recurring sacrifice outlet and you have an arbitrarily large amount of life (Kitchen Finks) or damage (Murderous Redcap). Viscera Seer is the preferred sac outlet, as sacrificing Finks to Seer repeatedly lets you dig until you can find Redcap, put it on top and kill them the next turn. Jinxed Idol works just as well, however, since when you sacrifice a persist creature to it, the Idol ability goes on the stack, the persist goes on the stack, the persist resolves and you can respond to the Idol ability by sacrificing the creature again. In this way, you can still gain an arbitrarily large amount of life and while Idol isn't generally as good as Seer, it has a role in the matchup against counter heavy control decks that can't dump as many creatures into it as you can, putting them on a not insignificant clock.
One thing that modern is absolutely flush with is tutors for creatures. Between GSZ, Pod and Fauna Shaman, you've got 11 spells to ensure that you find all 3 combo pieces each game. While it's not as consistently fast as a storm deck would be (3 card combos are inherently a little unstable, even with this much tutoring), you're still going off by turn 5 most games and you don't suffer from the weaknesses normally associated with combo decks (MB Trap, Cannonist, Chalice, etc.) and with the heavy amount of redundancy, an opponent can't just stop your 'go off' turn once and expect to have a few turns to rebuild. At any point after the first few turns you can land a threat that will end the game.
Originally, the deck ran Squee, Goblin Nabob and Heartmender. Squee was to give me an engine with Fauna Shaman to provide some card advantage against slow control, but with the amount of creatures this deck runs, proved to be unecessary. Heartmender gave me a tutorable option in case I was forced to chump with persist creatures before I had Melira online but again, seemed to generally be unecessary.
The weakest point so far, from the standpoint of a Legacy player, is that the deck is just balls slow. It goes off consistently on turn 5 with a reasonable number of turn 4 kills, but without a Birds or a GSZ in the opening, you're almost never going to see turn 4. The other issue that I'm looking to solve is the lack of protection. Witness does a good job of getting back cards that have been countered, but 4 Thoughtseize just doesn't feel like enough disruption. I had been considering Tidehollow Sculler (which can be fetched out with Shaman or Pod and can sac to Pod when no longer needed in order to fetch out a Finks for the combo) in place of Thoughtseize, hoping the tutorability would make up for the lack of slots dedicated to disruption. However, the deck's slow speed is almost entirely because of the large amount of mana you need to go off (best case scenario, 2GGGB, often closer to 8 or 9 mana total).
So, let the discussion begin. What can be done to improve this listing's speed and resiliency?
I'd rather run bloodthrone vampire or another creature with a sac ability over jinxed idol. It gives you an extra way to win if your opponent exiles all your redcaps but leaves your finks.
I saw something like this played when my LGS had its testing tourny. It was amazing the first match it played but ran into decks that could just keep your redcaps and finks off the board. It left just Melira and Fauna to win which rarely happened.
The guy who played it said he was thinking of splashing white or blue to give the dudes some protection. It seems to be lacking a back up plan of removal. No Gftt's or black zeniths would seem to rock with a deck like this. Voids are nice for merfolk or elves (small butt dudes) but once some beef hits the board it seems to cause a problem for this deck. Maybe a Glissa or 2 (1 main,1 side).
I think Blasting Station looks excellent. When I was digging for sac outlets, I used the Gatherer filter for Extended, which left me with a fair amount of ground uncovered. I'm not sure how often it would be superior to Jinxed Idol but it's a very clean fill for the slot. I've been tinkering with a Vengevine package out of board against burn heavy decks.
Edit: Update on my current decklist. I've moved the Vengevine package to the main just so I'm not giving up game 1 to Punishing Fires decks.
Losing Thoughtseize out of the main (and I had recently added Tidehollow Sculler) hurts a little against other combo decks. But with CotV and Grip out of board, I feel like I still have game against other combo decks post board. You can't beat everything all the time.
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Green Sun's Zenith
Dig
4 Birthing Pod
4 Fauna Shaman
Sac Outlets
4 Viscera Seer
2 Jinxed Idol
Combo Pieces
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
2 Murderous Redcap
Protection
4 Thoughtseize
2 Eternal Witness
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Twilight Mire
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Obstinate Baloth
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Qasali Pridemage
The combo, for those of you that haven't been paying attention to the release of Melira, is this: With Melira in play, your persist creatures can't have -1/-1 counters placed on them when they return to play with persist. You thus have a creature that will return from the graveyard any number of times. You combine this with any sort of recurring sacrifice outlet and you have an arbitrarily large amount of life (Kitchen Finks) or damage (Murderous Redcap). Viscera Seer is the preferred sac outlet, as sacrificing Finks to Seer repeatedly lets you dig until you can find Redcap, put it on top and kill them the next turn. Jinxed Idol works just as well, however, since when you sacrifice a persist creature to it, the Idol ability goes on the stack, the persist goes on the stack, the persist resolves and you can respond to the Idol ability by sacrificing the creature again. In this way, you can still gain an arbitrarily large amount of life and while Idol isn't generally as good as Seer, it has a role in the matchup against counter heavy control decks that can't dump as many creatures into it as you can, putting them on a not insignificant clock.
One thing that modern is absolutely flush with is tutors for creatures. Between GSZ, Pod and Fauna Shaman, you've got 11 spells to ensure that you find all 3 combo pieces each game. While it's not as consistently fast as a storm deck would be (3 card combos are inherently a little unstable, even with this much tutoring), you're still going off by turn 5 most games and you don't suffer from the weaknesses normally associated with combo decks (MB Trap, Cannonist, Chalice, etc.) and with the heavy amount of redundancy, an opponent can't just stop your 'go off' turn once and expect to have a few turns to rebuild. At any point after the first few turns you can land a threat that will end the game.
Originally, the deck ran Squee, Goblin Nabob and Heartmender. Squee was to give me an engine with Fauna Shaman to provide some card advantage against slow control, but with the amount of creatures this deck runs, proved to be unecessary. Heartmender gave me a tutorable option in case I was forced to chump with persist creatures before I had Melira online but again, seemed to generally be unecessary.
The weakest point so far, from the standpoint of a Legacy player, is that the deck is just balls slow. It goes off consistently on turn 5 with a reasonable number of turn 4 kills, but without a Birds or a GSZ in the opening, you're almost never going to see turn 4. The other issue that I'm looking to solve is the lack of protection. Witness does a good job of getting back cards that have been countered, but 4 Thoughtseize just doesn't feel like enough disruption. I had been considering Tidehollow Sculler (which can be fetched out with Shaman or Pod and can sac to Pod when no longer needed in order to fetch out a Finks for the combo) in place of Thoughtseize, hoping the tutorability would make up for the lack of slots dedicated to disruption. However, the deck's slow speed is almost entirely because of the large amount of mana you need to go off (best case scenario, 2GGGB, often closer to 8 or 9 mana total).
So, let the discussion begin. What can be done to improve this listing's speed and resiliency?
GBW Teneb EDH
BW Titan control
The guy who played it said he was thinking of splashing white or blue to give the dudes some protection. It seems to be lacking a back up plan of removal. No Gftt's or black zeniths would seem to rock with a deck like this. Voids are nice for merfolk or elves (small butt dudes) but once some beef hits the board it seems to cause a problem for this deck. Maybe a Glissa or 2 (1 main,1 side).
4 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
2 Blasting Station
Creatures
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Kitchen Finks
2 Eternal Witness
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 River Kelpie
4 Preordain
4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Edit: Update on my current decklist. I've moved the Vengevine package to the main just so I'm not giving up game 1 to Punishing Fires decks.
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Llanowar Elves
Dig
4 Fauna Shaman
3 Birthing Pod
Sac Outlets
4 Viscera Seer
2 Blasting Station
Combo Pieces
4 Vengevine
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
2 Murderous Redcap
Utility
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Juniper Order Ranger
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Temple Garden
2 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Dryad Arbor
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Twilight Mire
1 Murmuring Bosk
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Extirpate
2 Vexing Shusher
1 Qasali Pridemage
Losing Thoughtseize out of the main (and I had recently added Tidehollow Sculler) hurts a little against other combo decks. But with CotV and Grip out of board, I feel like I still have game against other combo decks post board. You can't beat everything all the time.