If i would be making cuts the first to go would probably be a quicksand, then I would drop either a deprive, truth, or ninja. In my opinion daze should never be cut, and you should consider adding in a 4th. But that's just me. I really like the card so its a little biased.
I don't think theres any real rules to follow, as ninja said it comes down mostly to preference and meta. You sort of from your own rules once you played it for a while.
For instance, I keep the number of bounce spells always 6 or less. from my testing having more than that can cause some real problems turn 3 - 5 when you want to be both casting some creatures and saving 2 for a counter.
as far as lands, I would say 15 islands is the absolute minimum, no matter what you do with the rest of the deck. I count cards like quicksand as not a land but a removal spell when looking at land counts, because the colorless does very little in a deck with mostly blue in the cost, and it often pops to kill something more than tapping for mana. But look at your land count really as just islands, as the tech lands are unreliable. If you don't like aggressive mana curves than I would go 17 islands and maybe a quicksand.
My one deck building tip is to be careful with the number of cantrips in the deck. They can lull you into a false sense of security thinking that having a lot of em will automatically improve your draws. Once you hit a certain point they work against themselves are start cluttering your hand and force you to cast two before you draw a business spell when you could have just run more business spells. I personally like to keep the cantrips at 4-5 and one gush style draw spell. In legacy you usually need one specific answer right now and can use more cantrips to dig, but in pauper its much more about overall generic value of your deck. Protection is pretty rare and anti counter magic is again rare so its mostly just "do I have a counter or not".
I wouldn't get too crazy re doing that deck. the only thing i would do is maybe consider maindecking daze. that will allow you to pick off a few of their early mana dorks without slowing you down tempo wise. Thornwind faeries are decent against them however so bring them and the arrows in from the side as well.
I can agree with you there on sovereign. It's always been more personal distaste for me than thinking she was actually a bad card. I was going to recommend containment priest t fill the similar role for a half a second before I actually read the card again. If blitzing tokens is a problem then sovereign seems like a solid choice against it.
As for the primer, vryn wingmare looks solid enough as a thalia part 2 and has flying to make it more noteworthy than glowrider.
Looks like a less-controlling and more aggressive version of Death and Taxes. If you want to improve you games against combo and such, heading towards the traditional D&T builds will probably help, although I'll wager that you will lose a bit of awesomeness against fair creature decks.
I've never been a fan of imposing sovereign. It only makes your opponent have a slightly tougher time blocking, and I find that basically any other 2 drop with a decent ability like first strike or flanking or flying ends up doing the same thing while not being stuck on a 2/1 body and carrying equipment better.
yea sorry bout that. I'm a busy man these days so updates are usually slow. I usually do updates to the primer in waves when enough notable cards come out, or when some one comes along like right now and reminds me to hurry my sorry butt.
there's quite a few new additions that look good for the primer, but I'll have to go over all the card listings to make sure I didn't miss anything as I really haven't done much since Khans first came out. If anyone has any suggestions outside of the new gideon and bolster chick I'm all ears. The update won't happen all at once so I'll be doing this over the next couple days.
I'm not entirely sure why you have pariah in there, as you don't have any creatures that can abuse it so you never die until the remove the creature. guardian of the guildpact is just the first thing that comes to mind, as you could put it on that and become invincible so long as they dont find an answer to it. Anything along the same lines as that would work well with it. If you don't have that though, the card seems very underwhelming and a cheap trick to save you one extra turn before dying. You could fill the spot better with something like knight of meadowgrain which is both a tough creature and has lifelink to help keep you alive.
I think spectral procession could be better than giest as it costs the same while giving you more bodies to block with or eat removal, and get more value out of HotP.
Spirit of the lab is a very meta dependent card. If you are against a lot of blue decks packing brainstorm or heavy draw power they are fine, but if not then there are better cards to fill in that same mana cost. Even if there is a lot of draw power, the effect does nothing in multiples so you probably could do with 2-3 instead of 4.
thalia, guardian of thraben is a great card for creature heavy white decks and could do some serious work against a lot of decks. She seems like a better card than the imposing soveriegn, as the first strike deals with creatures better and the tax she has slows down your opponents a lot.
yea I agree with the limit on spells that bounce your own lands. 6 is the most I would run, although you get a little extra breathing room because you run more lands.
Upkeep's recommendation for the sb are pretty much everything I would recommend.
memory lapse is a bit of a more tempo card than leak. It sets them back more that turn, but it doesn't deal with the threat permanently. If the card is important (and if you're countering it it probably is) then many times you will wish it was just gone.
As for daze; I can understand the hesitation because of the price. It is one of the more expensive cards in pauper (although if you do some digging you could get the play set for about half of what you said, I got mine for $10) but the price in this case is some indication of its power. the fact that it is essentially 0 mana means you can tap down turn 2 for say a delver and a ponder, and still be able to counter what they play is huge in this kind of deck. the fact that you can also cast 2 counters in the same turn is again huge. You also sometimes get free timewalks because your opponent tries to play around it and waits a turn to cast their spell that they don't want to get dazed.
One thing that I see people do all the time with blue heavy decks is pack too much draw power. Having 10+ draw spells lowers the value of each card you draw, because you end up getting to the point where you draw into more draw power, not more cards that do something, which is the whole reason you run the draw power in the first place.
To give you some ideas, here's the decklist I run, that has been performing smoothly and with great results for some time now.
the 1/1 split between gush and cruise really keeps it working smoothly. gush is a lot better early on and doesn't hurt when you draw it as your "second cruise", as well as the instant speed, and costing 0 mana.
the bonsplitters turn all those 1/1 faeries into meaningful threats, and the arrows give the deck a much needed answer to stuff that gets on the board. It also has good synergy with echoing truth, as you can return it once it runs out of counters and replay it to refill it.
I run less cantrips because people tend to think there is a safety net with brainstorms that you can keep a bad hand with cantrips in it and it will somehow not suck. The ponders are enough to smooth out draws and rig for delver, and I use the other cantrip space to instead pack more value cards.
I would be hesitant about having more than two cruises in the deck. You want to see precisely one a game because I have yet to have a game where I was even close to casting a second. We don't fill our yard up fast enough for it to be as broken as it was in legacy, and from my testing 2 was the perfect number. you saw it often enough to power you through when you needed it, but not often enough that it was often in your opener or in multiples.
as for the wilds: the big difference between this and legacy is we want to use ponder/brainstorm to rig the deck, because we have so many more creatures than legacy delver decks. they usually run like 6-8 dudes where we run 18-20. they can afford to shuffle away bad cards because their odds of still flipping delver are really high, ours aren't. that and the how etb tapped can and will lose you games.
that being said, its your deck and your welcome to try it out. I am eager to hear how the shuffling away bad cards works in practice.
mainly, impulse is 2 mana, and we absolutely do not want to be spending all our mana cantriping when we could have a counterspell. That coupled with the fact that it doesn't let you put the cards back on top means you just get to draw the best card, not rig the top of your deck to force delver flips, which is the main reason we like cards like brainstorm and ponder.
We run aggressive mana bases because we don't need a lot of lands. we are A-ok seeing only two lands a whole game. 18 lands is fine, but if you go that high up in land count, you should have some techy lands in there like quicksand or desert. These provide the high mana count you like with the ability to not be complete turd draws when you get them later in the game. and they are also your only source of hard removal in this deck.
Take evolving wilds out, please for the love of god. In case you haven't heard, card thinning is mathematically disproven. There's an article going into great detail as to why, but basically the odds it does *technically* alter are so astronomically low that it offers no noticeable advantage. That coupled with the fact that evolving wilds is essentially a "ETB tapped" island, you just set yourself back a turn in a deck that specifically revolves around not doing just that. you absolutely need to hit 2 mana turn 2 or you will lose often. This deck's usual plan is to play a turn 1 delver, turn 2 cloud of faeries, then sit back on a counterspell or sprite. The first 3 turns are the most critical to your success, and in a tempo deck like this you really need to establish pressure and control early.
deprive is a good card as an extra counterspell, but the returning a land clause does hurt. usually its only run as a 1-2 of, and something more tempo-ish like daze usually fits the role better.
so changes I would make would be:
-2 evolving wilds
-2 deprive
-2 impulse
The only thing I could possibly see would be in the spot of one of the beaters like mirran or brimaz, as a sort-of psuedo-lord. It's definitely not terrible, and the synergy with karakas makes it noteworthy. The one thing I don't like is it really wants to be dropped before all your other creatures, and there could be quite a few situations where you want to play more controlling creatures first.
I believe he meant running gris as sideboard hate for show and tell. gris is useful vs show and is a reanimation target to mill yourself. worldspire is a hate against show and a way to prevnt yourself from milling.
How easy/hard is it to balance cards in hand vs cards in graveyard with the blue counter sideboard plan? Pact of Negation seems playable alongside FoW and Shoal when you don't have a pitch card.
except for the fact that we are rarely casting the counterspells on the same turn we combo off. More often than not we are attempting to stop a cage or a RIP, and these are usually coming down a turn or two before we can win.
I agree that I think prowess would synergize pretty well with our deck, but I am not sure if any of prowess cards we can run would actually be better than anything we have already. our creature are good usually because they do something non-combat related that makes them noteworthy, and the prowess guys end up being just beaters. the only cards we run in the raw beater department are spire golem and delver, and I don't think I'd ever cut either of those for the current prowess guys. If monestary swiftspear was a common I would definately consider it though.
For instance, I keep the number of bounce spells always 6 or less. from my testing having more than that can cause some real problems turn 3 - 5 when you want to be both casting some creatures and saving 2 for a counter.
as far as lands, I would say 15 islands is the absolute minimum, no matter what you do with the rest of the deck. I count cards like quicksand as not a land but a removal spell when looking at land counts, because the colorless does very little in a deck with mostly blue in the cost, and it often pops to kill something more than tapping for mana. But look at your land count really as just islands, as the tech lands are unreliable. If you don't like aggressive mana curves than I would go 17 islands and maybe a quicksand.
My one deck building tip is to be careful with the number of cantrips in the deck. They can lull you into a false sense of security thinking that having a lot of em will automatically improve your draws. Once you hit a certain point they work against themselves are start cluttering your hand and force you to cast two before you draw a business spell when you could have just run more business spells. I personally like to keep the cantrips at 4-5 and one gush style draw spell. In legacy you usually need one specific answer right now and can use more cantrips to dig, but in pauper its much more about overall generic value of your deck. Protection is pretty rare and anti counter magic is again rare so its mostly just "do I have a counter or not".
As for the primer, vryn wingmare looks solid enough as a thalia part 2 and has flying to make it more noteworthy than glowrider.
I've never been a fan of imposing sovereign. It only makes your opponent have a slightly tougher time blocking, and I find that basically any other 2 drop with a decent ability like first strike or flanking or flying ends up doing the same thing while not being stuck on a 2/1 body and carrying equipment better.
there's quite a few new additions that look good for the primer, but I'll have to go over all the card listings to make sure I didn't miss anything as I really haven't done much since Khans first came out. If anyone has any suggestions outside of the new gideon and bolster chick I'm all ears. The update won't happen all at once so I'll be doing this over the next couple days.
I think spectral procession could be better than giest as it costs the same while giving you more bodies to block with or eat removal, and get more value out of HotP.
Spirit of the lab is a very meta dependent card. If you are against a lot of blue decks packing brainstorm or heavy draw power they are fine, but if not then there are better cards to fill in that same mana cost. Even if there is a lot of draw power, the effect does nothing in multiples so you probably could do with 2-3 instead of 4.
thalia, guardian of thraben is a great card for creature heavy white decks and could do some serious work against a lot of decks. She seems like a better card than the imposing soveriegn, as the first strike deals with creatures better and the tax she has slows down your opponents a lot.
Upkeep's recommendation for the sb are pretty much everything I would recommend.
As for daze; I can understand the hesitation because of the price. It is one of the more expensive cards in pauper (although if you do some digging you could get the play set for about half of what you said, I got mine for $10) but the price in this case is some indication of its power. the fact that it is essentially 0 mana means you can tap down turn 2 for say a delver and a ponder, and still be able to counter what they play is huge in this kind of deck. the fact that you can also cast 2 counters in the same turn is again huge. You also sometimes get free timewalks because your opponent tries to play around it and waits a turn to cast their spell that they don't want to get dazed.
One thing that I see people do all the time with blue heavy decks is pack too much draw power. Having 10+ draw spells lowers the value of each card you draw, because you end up getting to the point where you draw into more draw power, not more cards that do something, which is the whole reason you run the draw power in the first place.
To give you some ideas, here's the decklist I run, that has been performing smoothly and with great results for some time now.
1 quicksand
4 delver of secrets
4 cloud of faeries
4 spellstutter sprite
4 ninja of the deep hours
4 spire golem
4 daze
1 deprive
4 snap
2 echoing truth
1 gush
1 treasure cruise
2 bonesplitter
1 serrated arrows
the 1/1 split between gush and cruise really keeps it working smoothly. gush is a lot better early on and doesn't hurt when you draw it as your "second cruise", as well as the instant speed, and costing 0 mana.
the bonsplitters turn all those 1/1 faeries into meaningful threats, and the arrows give the deck a much needed answer to stuff that gets on the board. It also has good synergy with echoing truth, as you can return it once it runs out of counters and replay it to refill it.
I run less cantrips because people tend to think there is a safety net with brainstorms that you can keep a bad hand with cantrips in it and it will somehow not suck. The ponders are enough to smooth out draws and rig for delver, and I use the other cantrip space to instead pack more value cards.
as for the wilds: the big difference between this and legacy is we want to use ponder/brainstorm to rig the deck, because we have so many more creatures than legacy delver decks. they usually run like 6-8 dudes where we run 18-20. they can afford to shuffle away bad cards because their odds of still flipping delver are really high, ours aren't. that and the how etb tapped can and will lose you games.
that being said, its your deck and your welcome to try it out. I am eager to hear how the shuffling away bad cards works in practice.
We run aggressive mana bases because we don't need a lot of lands. we are A-ok seeing only two lands a whole game. 18 lands is fine, but if you go that high up in land count, you should have some techy lands in there like quicksand or desert. These provide the high mana count you like with the ability to not be complete turd draws when you get them later in the game. and they are also your only source of hard removal in this deck.
Take evolving wilds out, please for the love of god. In case you haven't heard, card thinning is mathematically disproven. There's an article going into great detail as to why, but basically the odds it does *technically* alter are so astronomically low that it offers no noticeable advantage. That coupled with the fact that evolving wilds is essentially a "ETB tapped" island, you just set yourself back a turn in a deck that specifically revolves around not doing just that. you absolutely need to hit 2 mana turn 2 or you will lose often. This deck's usual plan is to play a turn 1 delver, turn 2 cloud of faeries, then sit back on a counterspell or sprite. The first 3 turns are the most critical to your success, and in a tempo deck like this you really need to establish pressure and control early.
deprive is a good card as an extra counterspell, but the returning a land clause does hurt. usually its only run as a 1-2 of, and something more tempo-ish like daze usually fits the role better.
so changes I would make would be:
-2 evolving wilds
-2 deprive
-2 impulse
+2 quicksand
+4 daze
except for the fact that we are rarely casting the counterspells on the same turn we combo off. More often than not we are attempting to stop a cage or a RIP, and these are usually coming down a turn or two before we can win.