Honestly, you're probably better off going with a merfolk shell instead of playing janky other small dudes. Merfolk lords do an amazing job of getting your blue devotion up and they're a hell of a lot stronger and more resilient. Cursecatcher > Judge's Familiar Silvergill Adept > Sage of Epityr
Every lord > Sejiri Merfolk
Plus, lords pump your master, still get pumped by your Architect, are fantastic targets for your Phantasmal Image, etc etc.
I'm not saying give up on the Master of Waves idea, I just think you'll be a lot more successful if you fit it in to an already powerful shell instead of playing suboptimal creatures. I realize you're going for the "try and search for the master ASAP" idea but playing such small creatures and not actually drawing extra cards (see the Silvergill vs Sage above) is going to prevent you from surviving / having a big enough impact once you drop your big guys. It ALSO lets you stay one color, which is nice for a ton of reasons.
EDIT:
If you're looking for an example list, I'd maybe do...
Although Im not entirely sure the vials are necessary when you're playing so little permission, they make your bombs uncounterable and allow for so many invaluable combat tricks when you're playing lords.
Hey, I've been testing the deck a bunch over the past few days, and it's pretty awesome. I've played against Jund, 4 color Jund, Grixis control, Elves, Goblins, various delver decks, and some random brews and all those matchups seem fine. Some things I've noticed while testing:
Chandra, Pyromaster is insane in this deck. The ability to stick her and then never run out of gas is fantastic. She can also occasionally pick of Bobs, Snapcasters, and Cliques.
Boros Reckoner is actually pretty bad in the current meta. That said, I am still playing him as his synergy with Skred is pretty good.
I am still unsure which 5 drop hasty finisher is best (Thundermaw, Demigod, or Stormbreath). I have been messing around with splits of them, but i feel like 6 overall is a good number.
For reference, here is the current list I am running (no SB as of yet)
This looks pretty fantastic. How are you finding it in testing? I really want to play this but I don't own hellkites or chandras and don't want to drop dollars on em to test if the deck isn't performing, and 'performs fine' doesn't sound incredibly promising =/
Has anyone given any thought to Purphoros, God of the Forge? I think that as a one of in Goblins, since we are spamming the board with creatures, the take two damage effect and even the firebreathing could be really powerful. I dont like his CMC though, but still
He costs 4. This deck does not want the game to still be going by the time you can cast something that costs 4. And you certainly wont still have creatures in your hand to trigger him. And he'll never be a creature in this deck.
It's a good card, but certainly does not fit at all here.
I like what Gobs have to offer and think they are ripe for a an artifact shell. This deck is in its infancy stage as it has not been play tested before, but the Gob cards have been ordered. The deck is supposed to explode onto the field turn 1 establishing support. Turn 2-3 creatures hack life off the opponent and switch to burn spells turn 4-5 as the deck runs out of steam (creature are dead or are no longer a threat). If you like the blend please take it for a spin as it will be a while before I get to field it since another deck of mine needs a field run.
Quick Notes:
I tested this for about an hour today. Its really sweet, pulls off some nuts stuff, and has infitely more reach than traditional affinity. That said;
- Your list has too many lands 16 lands + 4 mox + 4 springleaf is 24 mana sources. This deck wants damage, not mana, and everything cost 2 or less. I cut 4 mountains
- The problem with this "Half our deck wants goblins out and the other half wants artifacts but we're saccing both" is that once you vomit your hand and enter topdeck mode, if you draw the wrong half, it's 100% dead. Im often holding a grenade or 2 waiting for a goblin, or a galvanic blast or two with 2 artifacts out, or there's a lonely signal pest sitting on board with a hand full of burn.
Haven't had trouble casting the thoughtcasts so far and they're my favorite thing to topdeck. You just have to be a little careful of Shrapnel Blasting too early but they keep your steam going well. Im considering cutting the bolts and thoughtcasts for thopters and Cranial Plating. We'll see how that goes.
You're right about Scrying Sheets, it's huge here. Banefire looks a little too cute. I like the rest of the list though, Anger of the Gods is just nuts. No Mouth of Ronom?
I don't want too many colorless sources with Reckoner. Its important to drop him early to slow down faster aggro decks and being late because you're dropping colorless lands is not worth the small chance that Mouth can do something game-changing. I think? That was my reasoning when I was putting the list together at least.
This deck looks like a ton of fun. Beating faces with big dragons? Sign me up.
It seems like a lot of you are opting to drop the whole scrying sheets thing. It seems really powerful, especially in a deck with otherwise no access to card advantage; has testing proven it that weak? Its obvious weakness is it effectively eats 3 mana, but "3 mana - draw a card" on a land that can otherwise tap for colorless? I dunno. I think if I were to try and build this deck right now it would look something like:
It seems like skred + reckoner is insane, Coldsteel means you get your dragons out a turn faster, Reckoner+Anger kills anything, Koth+Banefire = lol. There's lots of synergies here, and this deck will destroy most late-games, I think. The issue is if we're fast enough to not lose to burn/goblins/aggressive tempo decks. I haven't had time to test yet, but my feeling is that we may need to MD more sweepers if we're too slow.
Curse of swine + echoing truth? thats a lot of slots for a tech. I would just play more bounce spells than play curse of swine. on a tempo note. aetherize is much better than swine.
That seems... pretty untrue. Aetherize doesn't answer, its tempo, and MUC (at least most of the lists I've seen so far) doesn't really care about tempo. It wants to be able to answer everything, force them to run out of steam, then win. Curse answers everything. Deathrite Shaman, Dark Confidant, all CIP creatures, all guys can't (because they dont swing) / don't want to (because they will CIP again) bounce instead of just kill.
Also, Curse of the Swine and Echoing truth are fine cards on their own. Each one I would be happy to see without the other.
I don't know if it's worth it but its certainly not worth dismissing so quickly.
Just to get things flowing a little bit:
I've been messing around on MTGO with the following list. I've won a couple 8mans and am about 60% win rate in 2mans. It's a solid list that beats on non-teir decks consistantly.
This is kind of creature-tempo-aggro. Remand is absolutely fantastic with Aether Vials and Thoughtseizes, and it helps gives you game vs combo. The deck plays a little bit like merfolk, with bigger and stronger lords, but being slower. I think its a ton of fun to play and is so much stronger than you would expect.
One big question I have is whether it's worth it to splash white for Tidehollow Sculler. I really want to play him, because he is so incredibly strong. But adding another color is going to probably mean no Mutavaults, which are also solid, and more pain, which weakens our already kind of weak matchup vs burn. Sure sculler eats a burn spell, but you paid more life for the fetches and potentially pain land.
The only thing I'm having consistent trouble with is well-piloted jund. If they save their removal for the right times to counteract deathtouch and just slowplay with goyfs and deathrite shamans, I have a hard time drawing enough to get through. I'm always like one zombie short of taking control of the board. I'm thinking maybe Liliana of the Veil may help here, but she doesn't fit with the deck's gameplan overall really. Maybe if we were to cut lords for her, tidehollows, manaleaks or something, we could be more permission-y. Not sure if that's the correct direction to go.
Gotta be careful of procession + confidant. I also don't know if you play quite enough tokens to make virtue playable, since you can't really run procession. Id do maybe:
Or something like that. Maybe Helixes. Going too tokeny means you're a bad W(x) token deck, imo. No point in trying to enter an archtype that's already pretty peaked.
How good are you finding Champion? I can't help but think that cutting the champions and maybe a lavamancer for some more disruption (MD thoughtseizes, Lightning Helix, maybe a planeswalker (liliana, elspeth, ajani, I dunno) ) would be more consistant. He's a little bit of an odd man out in your current list.
It seems like I am very much in the minority here, but let me explain my thinking. I agree that this is a synergy deck, and if it's not, then you should just play junk. However, affinity synergy causes their cards that are "otherwise bad" to become 3 mana protection from everythings, 2 mana equips that give +10+0, 1 mana draw 2, etc. The "otherwise bad" cards we are playing in some of our lists do not become that good no matter how much we build our deck around them, save possiblyFalkenrath Aristocrat and maybe necromancer (not sure about him). I was simply trying to keep our synergy while adding disruption and trimming cards that, while enhancing the synergy, were never going to be good enough to let this deck be tier.
For example, people really like playing Cartel Aristocrat because it's a sac outlet. However, even given ultimited sacs, he's a 2/2 bear protection from one thing at a time (and never artifacts). That's not even that good. There's nothing in this deck that WANTS to be sacced (save possibly doomed traveler but then you're just playing suntail hawk), it's just that we have a lot of cards that making saccing something lower cost than it is for other decks. I just feel like it's not a strong enough synergy to play cards that simply enhance that "we can sac creatures if we want and it doesn't hurt us" if we're not actually doing something really powerful with it (which, atm, we unarguably are not). We're currently kind of a combo deck who's combo doesn't kill and an aggro deck that's a turn or two too slow. We need to find something we can do better than everyone else and go for that, because otherwise we're forever stuck in no-man's-land. My opinions is that we can make that 'virtual card advantage' - every card you play serves multiple purposes and has multiple 'phases'. It comes back a couple times as a token, or as a +1/+1 counter, or creates a token when it hits play, or draws you a bunch of cards, or whatever. This CA enables you to play a decent amount of 1-for-1 disruption, as well, because you have more 'cards' than your opponent so trading 1for1 is winning.
This was a little rambling, but just to summarize, I'm on your side, I want the deck to be good, but we need to take it in a direction that makes it better than the competition rather than trying to be a bad aggro combo deck that doesn't do anything, because that's just not viable in the current modern metagame.
I want this deck to work, I love LD. I don't have too much to add, and I would probably play something a little similar to what you posted NessOnett, but have you considered Ghostly Prison? It seems like it would perfectly counter a lot of your troubled matchups, as traditionally an early couple of creatures (or god forbid, a Garruk of some sort, or an elspeth, etc) blow out LD decks. Its also basically an auto-win against tokens, goblins, kiki-exarch (kind of), and a few others. Has it been tested? At least in SB? It just slows down pretty much the whole format so much that you have time to go for lethal.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it appears you ignored everything about my post except the list.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
Not to be a buzzkill, but this is a four-card combo vulnerable to graveyard hate and artifact hate and creature kill. That's pretty much as fragile and vulnerable as it is physically possible for a combo to get. Everything is relatively cheap, but you're still talking a land drop and 4 CMC at the minimum (assuming you already got fatestitchers in to your graveyard somehow), and not a single of the cards do anything on their own. I don't see a whole lot of potential here =/.
That said, if you find some redundancy in some of the elements such that you are effectively playing a bunch of all of them, there's your consistency I guess. Nothing springs to mind though.
I think this archetype is really cool. I think its main problem right now is you guys are running bad cards to try and pump up the "flavor" of the deck. Here's a general gameplay guideline, spanning separate archetypes, that I think might help us: Play dudes that force your opponent to answer them or lose. Doomed traveler is one mana for two sacs, but he doesn't do anything after those sacs, and we dont have anything super valuable to sac him for. Even the aristocrat is a glorified wall in many cases (in my experience). She's a sac outlet, but this deck doesn't do anything valuable enough to warrant bad cards purely so we can sac our dudes for mediocre effects.
That said, I think we're close to something viable. FuneralOfGod's list was getting there, but I think the sac outlet / "dude I play just so I can sac them" is still bringing us down. Here's what I would play:
Sideboard for this deck is extremely meta dependant, you can take some cues from WB token lists online, but in general we play threatening dudes that typically have giant targets on their forehead, who force our opponents to answer them, and then we punish them for doing so. Late game we have enormous indestructible fliers, the opponent is likely low/out of removal, and we have amassed huge card advantage through bob, tokens through pyromancer / necromancer, and have tons of removal of our own to clear the way. The curve is a little high for bob, hence the helixes to offset it a little, but he synergizes just way too well with the deck not to play.
The worst part about this direction is we can't call the deck "the aristocrats" anymore, which was a hilarious name. Ill probably keep doing it anyways.
My main questions:
- I really really want to find room for Orzhof Pontiff. He is so good with pyromancer/necromancer tokens, is human, etc etc. However, I cut a lot of our sac outlets, so its harder to get him dead early, and he's not so great until you can sac him instant speed / the turn he hits for a double effect. So I don't know.
- Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Slow, easy to kill, hugely powerful if she gets going. Maybe too gimmicky, maybe not?
- Young Pyromancer is such a powerful creature and screams to be included in this deck. The trouble with her is you end up having to up your instant/sorcery count to make her useful, which can lower your creature count for necromancer / aristrocrat / Teysa. Lingering Souls is a way to help with this balance, but it's still a pretty delicate equation. I think the payoff is potentially worth it if we get it right. Do you?
Cursecatcher > Judge's Familiar
Silvergill Adept > Sage of Epityr
Every lord > Sejiri Merfolk
Plus, lords pump your master, still get pumped by your Architect, are fantastic targets for your Phantasmal Image, etc etc.
I'm not saying give up on the Master of Waves idea, I just think you'll be a lot more successful if you fit it in to an already powerful shell instead of playing suboptimal creatures. I realize you're going for the "try and search for the master ASAP" idea but playing such small creatures and not actually drawing extra cards (see the Silvergill vs Sage above) is going to prevent you from surviving / having a big enough impact once you drop your big guys. It ALSO lets you stay one color, which is nice for a ton of reasons.
EDIT:
If you're looking for an example list, I'd maybe do...
4 Grand Architect
4 Master of Waves
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Cursecatcher
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Slate of Ancestry
2 Eldrazi Monument
4 Aether Vial
Permission (4):
3 Mana Leak
1 Dismember
19 Island
3 Mutavault
Although Im not entirely sure the vials are necessary when you're playing so little permission, they make your bombs uncounterable and allow for so many invaluable combat tricks when you're playing lords.
This looks pretty fantastic. How are you finding it in testing? I really want to play this but I don't own hellkites or chandras and don't want to drop dollars on em to test if the deck isn't performing, and 'performs fine' doesn't sound incredibly promising =/
He costs 4. This deck does not want the game to still be going by the time you can cast something that costs 4. And you certainly wont still have creatures in your hand to trigger him. And he'll never be a creature in this deck.
It's a good card, but certainly does not fit at all here.
Quick Notes:
I tested this for about an hour today. Its really sweet, pulls off some nuts stuff, and has infitely more reach than traditional affinity. That said;
- Your list has too many lands 16 lands + 4 mox + 4 springleaf is 24 mana sources. This deck wants damage, not mana, and everything cost 2 or less. I cut 4 mountains
- The problem with this "Half our deck wants goblins out and the other half wants artifacts but we're saccing both" is that once you vomit your hand and enter topdeck mode, if you draw the wrong half, it's 100% dead. Im often holding a grenade or 2 waiting for a goblin, or a galvanic blast or two with 2 artifacts out, or there's a lonely signal pest sitting on board with a hand full of burn.
Changes I made:
- 10 Mountain
- 4 Ornithopter
- 4 Goblin Wardriver
+ 4 Steam Vents
+ 4 Goblin Guide
+ 3 Thoughtcast
+ 4 Arid Mesa
+ 3 Lightning Bolt
Haven't had trouble casting the thoughtcasts so far and they're my favorite thing to topdeck. You just have to be a little careful of Shrapnel Blasting too early but they keep your steam going well. Im considering cutting the bolts and thoughtcasts for thopters and Cranial Plating. We'll see how that goes.
I don't want too many colorless sources with Reckoner. Its important to drop him early to slow down faster aggro decks and being late because you're dropping colorless lands is not worth the small chance that Mouth can do something game-changing. I think? That was my reasoning when I was putting the list together at least.
It seems like a lot of you are opting to drop the whole scrying sheets thing. It seems really powerful, especially in a deck with otherwise no access to card advantage; has testing proven it that weak? Its obvious weakness is it effectively eats 3 mana, but "3 mana - draw a card" on a land that can otherwise tap for colorless? I dunno. I think if I were to try and build this deck right now it would look something like:
4 Scrying Sheets
19 Snow-Covered Mountain
Creatures (12):
4 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Demigod of Revenge
3 Boros Reckoner
Other Permanents (12):
4 Koth of the Hammer
4 Blood Moon
4 Coldsteel Heart
4 Skred
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Banefire
3 Shattering Spree
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Anger of the Gods
3 Defense Grid
2 Torpor Orb
3 Relic or Progenitus
2 Magus of the Moon
It seems like skred + reckoner is insane, Coldsteel means you get your dragons out a turn faster, Reckoner+Anger kills anything, Koth+Banefire = lol. There's lots of synergies here, and this deck will destroy most late-games, I think. The issue is if we're fast enough to not lose to burn/goblins/aggressive tempo decks. I haven't had time to test yet, but my feeling is that we may need to MD more sweepers if we're too slow.
Whatdya all think?
That seems... pretty untrue. Aetherize doesn't answer, its tempo, and MUC (at least most of the lists I've seen so far) doesn't really care about tempo. It wants to be able to answer everything, force them to run out of steam, then win. Curse answers everything. Deathrite Shaman, Dark Confidant, all CIP creatures, all guys can't (because they dont swing) / don't want to (because they will CIP again) bounce instead of just kill.
Also, Curse of the Swine and Echoing truth are fine cards on their own. Each one I would be happy to see without the other.
I don't know if it's worth it but its certainly not worth dismissing so quickly.
I've been messing around on MTGO with the following list. I've won a couple 8mans and am about 60% win rate in 2mans. It's a solid list that beats on non-teir decks consistantly.
3 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gravecrawler
4 Blood Scrivener
4 Diregraf Captain
4 Death Baron
4 Cemetery Reaper
3 Geralf's Messenger
Not Zombies (12):
4 Aether Vial
4 Remand
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Mutavault
3 Watery Grave
4 Darkslick Shores
3 Marsh flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Swamp
4 Lifebane Zombie
4 Phyrexian Crusader
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Hurkyl's Recall
This is kind of creature-tempo-aggro. Remand is absolutely fantastic with Aether Vials and Thoughtseizes, and it helps gives you game vs combo. The deck plays a little bit like merfolk, with bigger and stronger lords, but being slower. I think its a ton of fun to play and is so much stronger than you would expect.
One big question I have is whether it's worth it to splash white for Tidehollow Sculler. I really want to play him, because he is so incredibly strong. But adding another color is going to probably mean no Mutavaults, which are also solid, and more pain, which weakens our already kind of weak matchup vs burn. Sure sculler eats a burn spell, but you paid more life for the fetches and potentially pain land.
The only thing I'm having consistent trouble with is well-piloted jund. If they save their removal for the right times to counteract deathtouch and just slowplay with goyfs and deathrite shamans, I have a hard time drawing enough to get through. I'm always like one zombie short of taking control of the board. I'm thinking maybe Liliana of the Veil may help here, but she doesn't fit with the deck's gameplan overall really. Maybe if we were to cut lords for her, tidehollows, manaleaks or something, we could be more permission-y. Not sure if that's the correct direction to go.
-4 Champion
-3 Lavamancer
-4 Gather the Townsfolk
+4 Deathrite Shaman
+3 Tidehollow Sculler
+2 Thoughtseize
+1 Zealous Persecution
+1 Boros Charm
Or something like that. Maybe Helixes. Going too tokeny means you're a bad W(x) token deck, imo. No point in trying to enter an archtype that's already pretty peaked.
For example, people really like playing Cartel Aristocrat because it's a sac outlet. However, even given ultimited sacs, he's a 2/2 bear protection from one thing at a time (and never artifacts). That's not even that good. There's nothing in this deck that WANTS to be sacced (save possibly doomed traveler but then you're just playing suntail hawk), it's just that we have a lot of cards that making saccing something lower cost than it is for other decks. I just feel like it's not a strong enough synergy to play cards that simply enhance that "we can sac creatures if we want and it doesn't hurt us" if we're not actually doing something really powerful with it (which, atm, we unarguably are not). We're currently kind of a combo deck who's combo doesn't kill and an aggro deck that's a turn or two too slow. We need to find something we can do better than everyone else and go for that, because otherwise we're forever stuck in no-man's-land. My opinions is that we can make that 'virtual card advantage' - every card you play serves multiple purposes and has multiple 'phases'. It comes back a couple times as a token, or as a +1/+1 counter, or creates a token when it hits play, or draws you a bunch of cards, or whatever. This CA enables you to play a decent amount of 1-for-1 disruption, as well, because you have more 'cards' than your opponent so trading 1for1 is winning.
This was a little rambling, but just to summarize, I'm on your side, I want the deck to be good, but we need to take it in a direction that makes it better than the competition rather than trying to be a bad aggro combo deck that doesn't do anything, because that's just not viable in the current modern metagame.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
That said, if you find some redundancy in some of the elements such that you are effectively playing a bunch of all of them, there's your consistency I guess. Nothing springs to mind though.
That said, I think we're close to something viable. FuneralOfGod's list was getting there, but I think the sac outlet / "dude I play just so I can sac them" is still bringing us down. Here's what I would play:
2 Swamp
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Blood Crypt
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa
2 Plains
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Mountain
3 Godless Shrine
4 Young Pyromancer
3 Teysa, Orzhov Scion
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Xathrid Necromancer
4 Dark Confidant
// Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Path to Exile
3 Lightning Helix
4 Lingering Souls
Sideboard for this deck is extremely meta dependant, you can take some cues from WB token lists online, but in general we play threatening dudes that typically have giant targets on their forehead, who force our opponents to answer them, and then we punish them for doing so. Late game we have enormous indestructible fliers, the opponent is likely low/out of removal, and we have amassed huge card advantage through bob, tokens through pyromancer / necromancer, and have tons of removal of our own to clear the way. The curve is a little high for bob, hence the helixes to offset it a little, but he synergizes just way too well with the deck not to play.
The worst part about this direction is we can't call the deck "the aristocrats" anymore, which was a hilarious name. Ill probably keep doing it anyways.
My main questions:
- I really really want to find room for Orzhof Pontiff. He is so good with pyromancer/necromancer tokens, is human, etc etc. However, I cut a lot of our sac outlets, so its harder to get him dead early, and he's not so great until you can sac him instant speed / the turn he hits for a double effect. So I don't know.
- Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Slow, easy to kill, hugely powerful if she gets going. Maybe too gimmicky, maybe not?
- Young Pyromancer is such a powerful creature and screams to be included in this deck. The trouble with her is you end up having to up your instant/sorcery count to make her useful, which can lower your creature count for necromancer / aristrocrat / Teysa. Lingering Souls is a way to help with this balance, but it's still a pretty delicate equation. I think the payoff is potentially worth it if we get it right. Do you?
- What do you all think?