First of all, I apologize if this theory has been posted before. This is actually the first time I have ever posted in this thread, but I wanted to because of this theory.
Essentially, as many have heard/theorized, there will be evil angels, and there certainly seems to be a theme of madness going on (even if not directly stated.) This, and the fact that the next set is called "Eldritch Moon" (and that SOI was meant to be third in the BFZ block) leads to the obvious theory that the "shadow" OI is Emrakul.
My theory, however, is that we will barely see any eldrazi spawn, perhaps not even one. In fact, it might even be so that we might not get a proper Emrakul creature card (yet?). My theory is two parts.
1. Killing the Titans also creates a tear in the blind eternities, which is a problem because it blends planes and blind eternities together.
2. With this blend, Emrakul is able to influence Innistrad without directly being in Innistrad. This means that the majority of the populace doesn't even know he is there. This fits in with the "eldritch" theme of madness/insanity, because if emrakul was physically there, we would see him as the obvious threat, people would know exactly what is going on, etc. etc.
So, essentially it'll be up to the planeswalkers to try and fix this distortion in the blind eternities, and Sorin Markov will be there to help since Innistrad is in great trouble.
Let's hope this is the case, because it means we can get the classic Innistrad we love with a twist of Lovecraft WITHOUT eldrazi creatures.
Also, a third theory. SOI won't feature an emrakul creature card. At best, perhaps some enchantments that reference him and his effect on the planes. I believe that Emrakul will be controlling creatures themselves as opposed to using eldrazi spawn, so in Eldritch moon I imagine Emrakul will be a creature card, but he will have a different form of sorts (or not), and so he will be the only eldrazi leading an army of horrors and creatures transformed from insanity.
Here's to hoping we get a proper Cult of Cthul- I mean, Emrakul, in the set.
I'll see if I can, by the end of the month, print and sleeve proxies for me and 4 other friends to give the format a-go. We can really experiment with the deck size and what-not to see what works and what doesn't work.
More importantly, we can decide if it's fun or not.
Can I ask one favor of you? Make some mono-colored decks for us. If you can get all 5, great, if not, no problems. Reason I wish to do this is to sort of experiment with how the colors in this format do compared to other colors. Green seems to have access to most draw and ramp cards (most are colorless though), but at least blue does have access to some counterspells, and green has the least access to tutors. It'll be interesting to see how they fare.
Now, one way to remove consistency is to add cards to the deck size, and another is to remove cards from the format. You remove a lot of tutors, a lot of counterspells, a lot of draw spells, a lot of ramp cards, etc. You are getting rid of a TON of archetypes here. You've killed off a lot of infinite combo decks, ramp decks, and control decks in one fell swoop. So there is no way to plug in consistency like draw cards and tutor cards currently do in EDH. So that 100 card deck in EDH that you can tutor and draw through is now, in this format, just a 100 card deck without either of those. Cutting down the deck size to 60, 70, 75, even 80 can help tremendously.
In my opinion, having 100 cards, and 20 of them being fluff, is not variety.
Well, I think it's important we talk *in context* for a second here.
In EDH, the same exact thing could happen and does happen. I've personally seen my friend run a mono-blue lockdown EDH deck, only to have a card played on him that made it so he couldn't cast blue spells (or tap for blue mana, I forget which). I've also seen said blue player have his lands destroyed by two other players. It happens. In a casual variant like EDH, other players usually take pity on them and go after the person being the D-I to the Clark Kent. What he did, eventually, to try and save himself from being screwed over is run cards that could help him untap, such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage. You're looking too far into it without realizing that there are probably tons of ways to deal with it that we simply don't know of ourselves, but others would.
Also, I just want to say one thing. If A = Variety, B = High Mana cost, and C = Balance, it MIGHT not be that A+B=C. Sometimes there are some things that will inevitably break balance, and you end up having to choose to sacrifice one or the other.
I honestly think going 60-70 card singleton is your best bet. It allows for a lot more consistency, and takes away from the ability to splash in random cards for no reason. With 65 card singleton (middle-ground here) a deck can focus on one specific archetype. Demolish is certainly sucky to deal with, but with 65 card deck, I'd probably be pumping out better artifacts, faster. And having less cards means a guy can't stick 15-20 cards that go against a specific archetype without sacrificing a huge chunk of his deck's strategy.
What you could do is make it so that if you have less than 3 lands, you can play as many lands on your turn as you want, up to 3. So if they destroy all my islands, on my turn, I can simply play 3 islands from my hand in one turn. Though, blue is likely to be able to counter anyway, so boil and boiling seas aren't that bad.
Whether it is a sequel to a previous block, a complete remastering/rerelease of a previous block, a block inspired by non-magic fiction, or something you completely made up, describe *your* perfect MTG block.
This does sound interesting...
How does it balance so far? On one side, it gets rid of most decks dedicated towards infinite combos (B/W Teysa Combo is all <4), but still allows decks that have infinite combos that cost a bit more. It also gets rid of most tutors except for like one or two, which is awesome.
Here's my suggestions...
1. Put the life total back down to 40. Then, do increments of 10 until you find a fine line.
2. Consider messing around with the total deck size. A format like this seems like the speed would be mostly maintained (commander often uses high mana costs for important things, save for infinite combo/slowdown decks which are <4), but because the cards are ONLY CMC >4, bigger cards get put out more often. A deck size of 80 (singleton) might be the best bet, while a deck size of 200 (singleton) might be the best! You never know until you try. You could even attempt how well it would work as a 200 card deck but allowing 2 of each card to popped into the deck, or more, or less.
Me and my group would be more than happy to test this in the future.
Definitely non-budget, but you don't have to break the bank, even on a 5 color mana base. Processing is a trap, so ditch blight herder. The one exception is Void Attendant. It stops blink/suspend shenanigans and combos great with Eldrazi Displacer who might be the best eldrazi ever printed. If people complained about Siege Rhino in standard, or prophet of Kruphix in commander, prepare yourself. This thing is unreal.
Not to worry, friend. Not only am I great at budgeting decks, but I own some of the pricier cards on that list (glad I picked up demonic tutor for $16 when I could).
Do you actually own this deck? $1000 deck seems insane, haha, but it's feasible if you've been building them up over time.
I've made a 5 Color Karona deck tribal eldrazi deck when BFZ came out. I want to share some things I've discovered.
1. Eldrazi are SLOW. You need a lot of ramp AT LEAST 10 cards. A mix of green spells, artifacts, creatures and enchantments that provide/reduce/increase your mana. Cultivate, explosive vegetation, treasure map, eye of Ugin, Urza's Incubator, Prismatic lense, Gilded Lotus, Mirarri's Wake/Zendikar Resurgent
2. If you are ramping, you are behind on board, so board wipe. Especially board wipes that don't affect you All is Dust, Ugin the spirit dragon, Spreading Plague, or grant you an advantage like Decree of Pain.
3. You need card draw, try about 10 cards that draw/refill your hand.
4. You want to protect your giant tentacled creatures, so Swiftfoot Boots/Lightning Greaves are great.
I really do appreciate the help. What is the best strategy when actually playing the deck? My biggest fear is becoming a target, because people fear ramp, people fear big creatures, and people fear wipes.
As stated earlier in the thread, he isn't good for this deck. The deck doesn't need card draw (i've never had a problem of needing cards), he costs a hefty 3BB just for some card draw.
At turn 5, I'd much rather have a cheaper murder spell, or a cheaper card draw (that also doubles as a sac trigger), than a five mana extra card per turn.
EDIT: It's important to note this deck doesn't need control. Creatures with annihilator are the biggest buzz-kill, but we have ways to deal with that already, we can simply sac our creatures for triggers from annihilator to drain life and then put them back onto the battlefield to cause more massive triggers, or we can use a simple removal. Other than that, the deck easily takes a massive beating and survives. I once had a game (with the original decklist) against an aggro deck who got me to 3 life, but I was able to take a massive swing to drain/gain life, then return all those creatures to the battlefield for more triggers. At games end, I won with over 30+ life.
With the new Zendikar block, I really got excited to see some Eldrazi in action. I had fun playing with them in pre-release for OOTG, as well as some side action with them in BFZ, but what I really wanted to do was make a flavor-filled EDH deck with them. I wasn't the only one who wanted to make a 5-color Eldrazi EDH deck. At PR, I met a guy who gave me the idea to use Karona, False God as my commander, and it all sparked from there.
I need your help to polish the deck. A five color deck is something completely new to me, and my deck building skills are not up to the challenge alone.
This deck is labeled as budget only because I want to keep the initial cost of the deck as cheap as possible while achieving the goal. No, we do not need to keep it under a price range, but yes, if one card costs $30, and the other $5, and the more expensive one only gives me a slight mana advantage, i'll take the $5 one.
Here's a dump pile of the deck I made, unpolished.
Theme of the Deck:
Ah, Karona. A god(dess) who is simply a physical manifestation of energy, who can accomplish anything that an individual can believe she can accomplish. In my deck, she serves as a medium to get what I desire. The gods of Theros and other such planes are powerful in their own realm, but have no such power over other dominions. They do not deserve the title of god! We shall smite the gods, for the Eldrazi who hail from the AEther and Blind Eternities are the true gods, capable of drawing mana straight from the source of the glue that holds together the planes, capable of going wherever they please, capable of wiping entire masses and planes. When the Eldrazi devour countless planes, while the Praetors feed off the souls of the living, the stories will spread far and wide, and soon everyone will believe Karona is capable of achieving Omniscience and Omnipotence, and as such, it shall come to reality.
Goal of the Deck:
I want the deck to try and maintain flavor and fun, but still have a competitive edge. I'll give you some examples... Yosei, the Morning Star is a great card that can be of use, but doesn't fit in the flavor at all, and doesn't add to the fun (targets one, poor player). Wouldn't add. Blade of Selves is a great card that can be of use, doesn't fit in the flavor, BUT is fun to play with and play against. Might add. Spawnsire of Ulamog is a good card that can be of use, fits into the flavor, and is really fun. Would add.
Considered Additions:
Right now, I am considering adding the Praetors into the deck, as the fit the theme and serve me well. I am also considering removing some unneeded creatures and adding more spells/mana ramp.
You'll have to excuse me. I know that it's been far too long since I've updated this deck. I've been busy as of late and it's been hard to juggle things around. That being said, while I can't quite update the list yet due to a lack of proper playtesting, I will share here the cuts and additions I have made, and their reasonings. I refuse to splash in a third color, not because it isn't a good idea, but because there are already people on this thread with great color splash decks added, thanks for that guys ! My original deck was enemy-colored, and I plan to keep it that way.
Cuts -2 Bloodbond Vampire: This card was always a good piece to have because people would target it first. However, as of late, that's all it's been good for. -4 Serene Steward: Maybe it's just me, but a lot of times I have played, I either didn't have white mana, or had no need to gain a +1/+1
Additions +2 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim: Great card. Let's your sac allies to trigger, gain life, then as the game passes, we have a way to get rid of their fatties no problem. +3 Cliffhaven Vampire:Sure, most the time it's only 1-2 additional life, but sometimes it can be lethal if you make a huge swing with all your pieces with Ondu Rising in action. Plus he can chump block lowly 2-3 power flyers that nag at you. +1 Altar's Reap: Just for some additional card draw.
I'll try and end this debate with some good old compromise...
Colorless mana should be considered a SIXTH MANA. Not a COLOR. This satisfies the need for newbies to understand that it's not a sixth color, and satisfies the need for people to consider it as a sixth something when deck building.
Also, since it is a sixth mana, does this finally give use for karoo and the other lands such as that? Since it no longer taps for 1W and instead for CW.
Almost everyone who has posted on this thread has completely missed this point.
How is yours the best method? It's not time efficient. It's not high gain. It's not even the best method if you measure it as a product of the two.
Mine perhaps isn't the best all around, but it's one of the few posted so far. What I am getting at is the rules stated that, by only acting as a player and not a shop, it might be a fruitless effort to begin with, so the best option might be one that is really poor profit for a lot of effort, because there might be nothing better than this.
If something is bad, but there is nothing better than it under the context, then it is the *best*. If I decide to play an arcade game from home, and I get a high score of 2, that is the BEST high score in the house, even though it isn't good.
Anyways, the point being missed was that "most" people were calling out the method without actually providing a better one within the rules. This isn't the point of "theory crafting". The point of theory crafting is asking "what if". In this case, "what if someone actually wanted to try and do it this way?"
That's not really true. I suggested speculating on MTGO and I think that fits your demands. "Best" imo includes the time involved, and working via MTGO is just SOOOOO much less time consuming than working IRL trading.
Wasn't directed at you. The original quoted post I made was created before you even commented. You're doing exactly what the thread was intended for. This was directed at the people who are dismissing it without actually reading any of the posts I made.
ex. Someone earlier completely ignored the valid reasoning I gave for people who choose to trade $15 worth of cards for a $12 card. Someone replied "that's not more convenient than walking 10 feet to the counter", even though in the same exact post I made, it pointed out that a lot of times people don't want to spend cash when they have cards they aren't using, and that stores only offer 50% value.
Essentially, as many have heard/theorized, there will be evil angels, and there certainly seems to be a theme of madness going on (even if not directly stated.) This, and the fact that the next set is called "Eldritch Moon" (and that SOI was meant to be third in the BFZ block) leads to the obvious theory that the "shadow" OI is Emrakul.
My theory, however, is that we will barely see any eldrazi spawn, perhaps not even one. In fact, it might even be so that we might not get a proper Emrakul creature card (yet?). My theory is two parts.
1. Killing the Titans also creates a tear in the blind eternities, which is a problem because it blends planes and blind eternities together.
2. With this blend, Emrakul is able to influence Innistrad without directly being in Innistrad. This means that the majority of the populace doesn't even know he is there. This fits in with the "eldritch" theme of madness/insanity, because if emrakul was physically there, we would see him as the obvious threat, people would know exactly what is going on, etc. etc.
So, essentially it'll be up to the planeswalkers to try and fix this distortion in the blind eternities, and Sorin Markov will be there to help since Innistrad is in great trouble.
Let's hope this is the case, because it means we can get the classic Innistrad we love with a twist of Lovecraft WITHOUT eldrazi creatures.
Also, a third theory. SOI won't feature an emrakul creature card. At best, perhaps some enchantments that reference him and his effect on the planes. I believe that Emrakul will be controlling creatures themselves as opposed to using eldrazi spawn, so in Eldritch moon I imagine Emrakul will be a creature card, but he will have a different form of sorts (or not), and so he will be the only eldrazi leading an army of horrors and creatures transformed from insanity.
Here's to hoping we get a proper Cult of Cthul- I mean, Emrakul, in the set.
More importantly, we can decide if it's fun or not.
Can I ask one favor of you? Make some mono-colored decks for us. If you can get all 5, great, if not, no problems. Reason I wish to do this is to sort of experiment with how the colors in this format do compared to other colors. Green seems to have access to most draw and ramp cards (most are colorless though), but at least blue does have access to some counterspells, and green has the least access to tutors. It'll be interesting to see how they fare.
In my opinion, having 100 cards, and 20 of them being fluff, is not variety.
In EDH, the same exact thing could happen and does happen. I've personally seen my friend run a mono-blue lockdown EDH deck, only to have a card played on him that made it so he couldn't cast blue spells (or tap for blue mana, I forget which). I've also seen said blue player have his lands destroyed by two other players. It happens. In a casual variant like EDH, other players usually take pity on them and go after the person being the D-I to the Clark Kent. What he did, eventually, to try and save himself from being screwed over is run cards that could help him untap, such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage. You're looking too far into it without realizing that there are probably tons of ways to deal with it that we simply don't know of ourselves, but others would.
Also, I just want to say one thing. If A = Variety, B = High Mana cost, and C = Balance, it MIGHT not be that A+B=C. Sometimes there are some things that will inevitably break balance, and you end up having to choose to sacrifice one or the other.
What you could do is make it so that if you have less than 3 lands, you can play as many lands on your turn as you want, up to 3. So if they destroy all my islands, on my turn, I can simply play 3 islands from my hand in one turn. Though, blue is likely to be able to counter anyway, so boil and boiling seas aren't that bad.
How does it balance so far? On one side, it gets rid of most decks dedicated towards infinite combos (B/W Teysa Combo is all <4), but still allows decks that have infinite combos that cost a bit more. It also gets rid of most tutors except for like one or two, which is awesome.
Here's my suggestions...
1. Put the life total back down to 40. Then, do increments of 10 until you find a fine line.
2. Consider messing around with the total deck size. A format like this seems like the speed would be mostly maintained (commander often uses high mana costs for important things, save for infinite combo/slowdown decks which are <4), but because the cards are ONLY CMC >4, bigger cards get put out more often. A deck size of 80 (singleton) might be the best bet, while a deck size of 200 (singleton) might be the best! You never know until you try. You could even attempt how well it would work as a 200 card deck but allowing 2 of each card to popped into the deck, or more, or less.
Me and my group would be more than happy to test this in the future.
Not to worry, friend. Not only am I great at budgeting decks, but I own some of the pricier cards on that list (glad I picked up demonic tutor for $16 when I could).
Do you actually own this deck? $1000 deck seems insane, haha, but it's feasible if you've been building them up over time.
I really do appreciate the help. What is the best strategy when actually playing the deck? My biggest fear is becoming a target, because people fear ramp, people fear big creatures, and people fear wipes.
I'm very confident given previous player's success that the deck can be played competitively.
As stated earlier in the thread, he isn't good for this deck. The deck doesn't need card draw (i've never had a problem of needing cards), he costs a hefty 3BB just for some card draw.
At turn 5, I'd much rather have a cheaper murder spell, or a cheaper card draw (that also doubles as a sac trigger), than a five mana extra card per turn.
EDIT: It's important to note this deck doesn't need control. Creatures with annihilator are the biggest buzz-kill, but we have ways to deal with that already, we can simply sac our creatures for triggers from annihilator to drain life and then put them back onto the battlefield to cause more massive triggers, or we can use a simple removal. Other than that, the deck easily takes a massive beating and survives. I once had a game (with the original decklist) against an aggro deck who got me to 3 life, but I was able to take a massive swing to drain/gain life, then return all those creatures to the battlefield for more triggers. At games end, I won with over 30+ life.
I need your help to polish the deck. A five color deck is something completely new to me, and my deck building skills are not up to the challenge alone.
This deck is labeled as budget only because I want to keep the initial cost of the deck as cheap as possible while achieving the goal. No, we do not need to keep it under a price range, but yes, if one card costs $30, and the other $5, and the more expensive one only gives me a slight mana advantage, i'll take the $5 one.
Here's a dump pile of the deck I made, unpolished.
1x Karona, False God
Creatures (39)
1x Artisan of Kozilek
1x Bane of Bala Ged
1x Barrage Tyrant
1x Blight Herder
1x Breaker of Armies
1x Brood Monitor
1x Conduit of Ruin
1x Deathless Behemoth
1x Deceiver of Form
1x Deepfathom Skulker
1x Desolation Twin
1x Dread Defiler
1x Drowner of Hope
1x Eldrazi Displacer
1x Eldrazi Mimic
1x Endbringer
1x Forerunner of Slaughter
1x Hand of Emrakul
1x Hedron Crawler
1x Herald of Kozilek
1x Immobilizer Eldrazi
1x It That Betrays
1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
1x Kozilek's Channeler
1x Mindmelter
1x Palladium Myr
1x Pathrazer of Ulamog
1x Plague Myr
1x Rapacious One
1x Reality Smasher
1x Sifter of Skulls
1x Sire of Stagnation
1x Spawnsire of Ulamog
1x Thought-Knot Seer
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1x Vile Aggregate
1x Void Winnower
1x Ancient Ziggurat
1x Arcane Sanctum
1x Command Tower
1x Darigaaz's Caldera
1x Dragonskull Summit
1x Exotic Orchard
9x Forest
1x Gemstone Mine
1x Grand Coliseum
1x Hinterland Harbor
2x Island
1x Jungle Shrine
2x Mountain
2x Plains
1x Reflecting Pool
1x Rootbound Crag
1x Savage Lands
1x Sunpetal Grove
2x Swamp
1x Tundra
1x Vivid Crag
1x Vivid Creek
1x Vivid Grove
1x Vivid Marsh
1x Vivid Meadow
1x Woodland Cemetery
Enchantment (3)
1x Containment Membrane
1x Eldrazi Conscription
1x Quarantine Field
1x Loxodon Warhammer
1x Mycosynth Lattice
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Quicksilver Amulet
1x Semblance Anvil
1x Sol Ring
1x Sword of Vengeance
1x Urza's Incubator
Instant (6)
1x Adverse Conditions
1x Anticipate
1x Dazzling Reflection
1x Not of This World
1x Scour from Existence
1x Titan's Presence
Sorcery (5)
1x All Is Dust
1x Brilliant Spectrum
1x Call the Scions
1x Skittering Invasion
1x Slip Through Space
Theme of the Deck:
Ah, Karona. A god(dess) who is simply a physical manifestation of energy, who can accomplish anything that an individual can believe she can accomplish. In my deck, she serves as a medium to get what I desire. The gods of Theros and other such planes are powerful in their own realm, but have no such power over other dominions. They do not deserve the title of god! We shall smite the gods, for the Eldrazi who hail from the AEther and Blind Eternities are the true gods, capable of drawing mana straight from the source of the glue that holds together the planes, capable of going wherever they please, capable of wiping entire masses and planes. When the Eldrazi devour countless planes, while the Praetors feed off the souls of the living, the stories will spread far and wide, and soon everyone will believe Karona is capable of achieving Omniscience and Omnipotence, and as such, it shall come to reality.
Goal of the Deck:
I want the deck to try and maintain flavor and fun, but still have a competitive edge. I'll give you some examples...
Yosei, the Morning Star is a great card that can be of use, but doesn't fit in the flavor at all, and doesn't add to the fun (targets one, poor player). Wouldn't add.
Blade of Selves is a great card that can be of use, doesn't fit in the flavor, BUT is fun to play with and play against. Might add.
Spawnsire of Ulamog is a good card that can be of use, fits into the flavor, and is really fun. Would add.
Considered Additions:
Right now, I am considering adding the Praetors into the deck, as the fit the theme and serve me well. I am also considering removing some unneeded creatures and adding more spells/mana ramp.
Thanks for the help guys!
Cuts
-2 Bloodbond Vampire: This card was always a good piece to have because people would target it first. However, as of late, that's all it's been good for.
-4 Serene Steward: Maybe it's just me, but a lot of times I have played, I either didn't have white mana, or had no need to gain a +1/+1
Additions
+2 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim: Great card. Let's your sac allies to trigger, gain life, then as the game passes, we have a way to get rid of their fatties no problem.
+3 Cliffhaven Vampire:Sure, most the time it's only 1-2 additional life, but sometimes it can be lethal if you make a huge swing with all your pieces with Ondu Rising in action. Plus he can chump block lowly 2-3 power flyers that nag at you.
+1 Altar's Reap: Just for some additional card draw.
Colorless mana should be considered a SIXTH MANA. Not a COLOR. This satisfies the need for newbies to understand that it's not a sixth color, and satisfies the need for people to consider it as a sixth something when deck building.
Also, since it is a sixth mana, does this finally give use for karoo and the other lands such as that? Since it no longer taps for 1W and instead for CW.
Wasn't directed at you. The original quoted post I made was created before you even commented. You're doing exactly what the thread was intended for. This was directed at the people who are dismissing it without actually reading any of the posts I made.
ex. Someone earlier completely ignored the valid reasoning I gave for people who choose to trade $15 worth of cards for a $12 card. Someone replied "that's not more convenient than walking 10 feet to the counter", even though in the same exact post I made, it pointed out that a lot of times people don't want to spend cash when they have cards they aren't using, and that stores only offer 50% value.