Originally the deck was supposed to be mono white so I haven't really researched so much what the deck might be like if I did UW or WB. Actually the very very first version of the deck was all over the place. It was WBRG. Who knows though, it might be worth looking into other colors I might run instead of green.
Ya know, I know I everybody loves running 4 of the Thalias but I just can't stand running 4 copies of a legendary card. Having the Sissay toolbox in there though let me run less of Thalia, and replace the Champion of Lambholts with a single Odric to be able to get some unblockable.
Duskwatch recruiter might make an ok replacement for Mentor of the Meek. Duskwatch's draw ability is much more expensive, but is repeatable and doesn't have a required trigger. Mentor costs less to draw a card but I can only draw when I play a creature.
Originally I was running Knights of the White Orchid because it can provide an extra land drop on turn 2 assuming you were on the play instead of the draw, which is sweet to be one land ahead. Or it can help make up for a missed land drop. The downside is that if you were on the draw and not the play, it's not going to be any help to you if your already making your land drops and so are your opponents. It is a 2/2 First Strike though which is good. The reason I picked Weathered Wayfarer instead though is because it costs less and can tutor up special lands like Karakas, Gaea's Cradle, and Nykthos. Nykthos and Cradle make for a huge mana ramp source of both green and white when together and Wayfarer makes it so easy to get it consistently. Of course it has the same downside in that it can only do it's thing if my opponent has more lands out than me.
The early versions of this deck used to run Aether Vial but with the extra ramp provided by Wayfarer and Noble Hierarch I felt it wasn't really necessary anymore.
As you point out, this decks biggest weakness is super fast combo decks. It doesn't have a crazy way to go off on turn 2 or turn 3, so I am going to need to try to find more ways to stop combo decks from going off early. I have no idea what I would take out but I have been thinking about adding in some Thorn of Amethyst to try to drive the non creature cost increase agenda because it screws with so many different agendas. Thoughts?
PS: Sorry it took me so long to respond. I have been sick for like a week.
So, for a while now I have been working on a particular creative project. That project is to make 14 legacy decks and 14 commander decks that are all Tribal. The idea behind this being that for each format there will be two sets of 7 decks. Each set will have 1 deck for each of the 5 colors, 1 that is colorless, and 1 that is 5 color. Although most of the colored decks aren't actually mono color, the tribe chosen to fill that slot is one that predominantly represents that color. In this case Humans for White, even though the deck also has green in it. So, since the feedback I got recently with my Elfsplosion deck was so helpful in making it better, I plan on posting each of the decks up here as I work on them.
Color | Set 1 Tribe | Set 2 Trible
White | Humans | Angels |
Blue | Merfolk | Wizards
Black | Zombies | Demons
Red | Goblins | Dragons
Green | Elves | Fungus
Colorless | Artifact Creatures | Eldrazi
5 Color | Slivers | Allys
Obviously most of the tribes I'm making decks for are not tribes that actually see play in Legacy. For tribal you only really see Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins. Although Death and Taxes is kind of a Tribal Humans deck, and the Eldrazi aggro decks are semi-Tribal Eldrazi. So there will likely be a large gap in the power of the decks, but I would still like to make each of them as good as they can be within the construction limitations of Legacy. So without further ado, I present the 13th iteration of my Tribal Humans deck, called HUMANAUT.
Ok so basically I'm attempting to do some reshaping of my Merfolk deck which is based around tapping/untapping and unblockable attacks, including lowering the number of colors in the deck, and one of the primary cards I am trying to find a replacement for is Quicksilver Dagger. This card is very very central to my best infinite combos but it is the only red card in the whole deck and I am already trying to run too many colors as is. As of yet I have been unable to find a replacement for it, maybe like an enchantment that allows me to tap an untapped creature to draw a card like Azami, Lady of Scrolls but not wizards specific, because most of my merfolk aren't wizards. Overall, what im looking for are cards in the U/G/W color range that allow you to tap a creature for a helpful effect that is not tribe specific unless its merfolk, which im pretty sure I would have found so far.
@dOsu, yeah that's the just of it. I actually really enjoyed the quote because it was nice to see someone articulate a very similar viewpoint to what goes on in my head when I go back and forth about land counts. Let's face it, lands, for the most part, are boring. Some utility lands can be quite interesting but the majority of lands are just there to provide mana to fuel your spellcasting. They are not interesting, or exciting, nor something that anyone spends more than 2 seconds looking on someone else's decklist. The spells are the interesting and intriguing part. They are what really defines a deck. Lands are simply the necessary fuel. The dont usually add to the flavor or overall feel of a deck. Hell most of the time the land choices in a deck are 100% purely made because of the rules. This seems like a "well duh", however for me, I enjoy building decks that are not only strong, fun to play, and fun to play against, but also have a flavor and fluff that makes me happy. That is why I make tribal decks both in Commander and in Vintage. I love the flavor of a whole species fighting together, I love the synergy, and these days there is actually solid support for many tribes. So I guess for me personally, that is why my instinct is to push my land count down to the lowest playable amount. As much as I hate being mana screwed occasionally, I hate being mana flooded just as much. Too much or too little is equally unplayable, but for some reason, I think I almost get MORE annoyed when I get flooded. All that mana and nothing to spend it on. Idk, I'm weird, either way I have been convinced to step up my land count starting point from 33 to roughly 40, deducting 1 land for every two viable mana ramp/cost reduction/play cards for free options in my deck. Although I may instate a rule that each of those options needs to be cmc 3 or less as well since having something like a caged sun, while amazing, is really only any good if you have big cost late game spells and a deck that can last that long, or you can ramp it out early to take advantage of the mana doubling effect. Obviously, depending on the curve and other details of the deck, this will shift lower or higher, but I think its a solid starting point. Annoyingly it is going to make the painful phase of deckbuilding that much worse, but it's part of the hobby. Now I need to go try to find 5 more cards to cut from my Odric deck.
@mehungary, it's very solid reasoning, and very similar in this form to how I've been choosing my land type breakdown myself. Choosing the mana color production based off of your devotion to the individual colors represented in the spells of the deck, then packing it with as many dual, or triple lands as possible, an appropriate number of fetch and utility lands, then filling in the remaining gaps with basic lands. After a fair amount of thinking I am going to change up my current Odric deck to a 36 lands and 10 Mana Acceleration (Extraplanar Lens)/Cost Reduction (Urza's Incubator)/Free Casting(Preeminent Captain) cards build and try it out for a bit. I'm still working the kinks out in testing with it but I think with some cmc lowering and the additional mana production the turn to turn casting should pick up a bit. It is a Mono color deck which means I dont need to load up on too much, especially in the way of mana fixers which I dont need at all, but a few more lands and some tweaks in my ramp choices can't hurt. I do have to admit though, it does mean cutting more cards that I would have loved to see played, which is always the most difficult part of deck building, but hopefully it will help with consistency.
It has been a very very interesting discussion thus far. I dont know if anyone else is going to chime in but I know I will certainly be checking back in on this thread. Thanks to everyone who's given their 2 cents so far
Wow. I have to say, i knew this topic would get a fair amount of responses, because its only the most asked question in this format, buty I am still surprised by the huge number of responses in a 12 hour period. It's nice to see that this discussion prompt has yielded some very very intriguing results. Obviously, although apparently it was stated anyways, there is no magical universal formula for land count/mana rocks/mana dorks/etc, however it is interesting to see the wide range of different opinions on this topic. Even taking into account the obvious major differences between individual decks, such as high/low mana curve, cost/importance of reliable general drop, etc, it would seem that the trend is fairly consistent, and yet also surprisingly erratic on some points.
Anyways, in order to keep the discussion going I have yet another addition to the prompt.
- I have seen many people posting specific numbers for how many lands they tend to run, and that they do indeed use mana rocks/dorks/etc, but I haven't seen many specific numbers for those. Although the starting at 40% and dropping one land for every 2 non land mana sources is one general rule that I have heard before.
definitely some interesting perspectives. Well here are some additional questions to pose to the boards for this discussion.
- Do you tend to run less lands in Mono color decks. It would tend to make alot of sense but I'm seeing very consistent trends in the numbers of lands even in mono decks.
- When running fetchlands and the like to help out multi color decks, do you tend to run all the available fetchlands? If not, than how many do you average?
- How many utility lands do you tend to run in different types of decks (Mutavault, Strip Mine, Etc.) ?
Happy to see the input so far. Very interesting core principle topic I think.
Personally I have always run the 1/3 land rule since I started playing magic back in 94. It has seemed to serve me well. However these days I see so many people running 24 lands and the like in vintage, or in EDH, running 37 lands. It seems like damn near every single deck I see runs 37 lands. What is it with the 4 extras over 1/3? I mean although it would increase the odds of 5 out of your first 12 cards being lands so that you can get your land drops every turn 1-5, it also increases the odds of not drawing into your actual spells that you cast. I realize that it is all random when it comes down to it, but do those 4 additional lands really make all that much of a difference and are they really worth the odds of overdrawing land and not having enough to cast which stalls you out? I mean if I wanted to mirror the optimal number of lands I want to draw by turn 5 percentage wise in an edh deck I should actually be running 41 lands, however this seems like crazy overkill to me. Not only does it drain your deck of all that extra flavor (spells) that could have been in there and replaced it with boring lands, but it drastically increases the odds of drawing into long streaks of increasingly useless lands, because nobody cares how much mana you have if you have no spells to cast.
Idk. I'm not convinced myself, so I'm curious to see what the community thinks. Also I think it's a bit odd that even though one format runs 60 card decks and the other runs 99 they both seem to run around 4 cards over 1/3 of the total deck. Opinions?
@EnglishBoi, thats pretty cool man. Very similar to how I was picturing that kind of a deck or one led by Gisa as well. A single demented yet powerful human raising an army of the dead just seems to fit to me. You know what though. I am definitely going to be putting both of them into my zombie deck since with Sidisi I have access to all the relevant colors. They are just oozing with flavor.
@Vandar and Runnin, Yeah ok I can see where people went with that one. It makes sense. I figured if people were actually making decks with him at the helm they must've found a way to make him useful consistently. Thanks for the info
lol omg that's so funny. I only now just realized that I posted the wrong version of this deck. Thanks for point out the obvious error. Can't believe I didnt notice that I posted the interim version when I was still fleshing out ideas. Here is the correct version.
@Runnin, I am very very curious and interested to hear about any tactics you might have to alter the exile part of sedris's ability. I can think of many applications for any ability like that.
idk, he didn't really strike my fancy. 3 mana for an activation ability is a bit high if its something I want to be doing all the time, and it only brings the creature back for a single turn before it is exiled completely. Idk it just didn't really strike my interest. Now if he brought them back from the GY for good that would be another story. Even with a higher activation cost he would see major play. The way he his now he's really for building a deck that's filled with ETB effects. He's not bad but not what I'm looking for. I'm more the building an unstoppable army faster than anyone can respond type. Sidisi will fit in nicely with that and will allow me to play a great deal of the other legendary zombies and their makers as well. I wont get Thrax or Nekusar but oh well.
@LITHL, I have played Ezuri in a version of my vintage elf deck but no I have never seen him in play in Commander. I'm not arguing that his ability to mass produce overrun isn't good, because it totally is. All I'm saying is, he would force me to play mono green, and his abilities aren't as powerful imo as Momir Vigs. With Vig as my general I can tutor Ezuri to the top of my deck nearly any time I want. I can run Ezuri in a Vig deck but I cannot run anything thats not mono green in an Ezuri deck. The point about the creatures who can gives all your others flash is a good point though. It does open up opportunities to leave all your casting until right before its your turn so as to leave you mana open for potential ability activations. It is something I will heavily be keeping in mind for me decks that rely on ability activations being open on other players turns.
As far as Selvala is concerned, it would be a good card for your 99 in a GW deck but its just not powerful or theme making enough to be my general. Also the fact that they have to reveal the card is helpful yes. Another factor I have to keep in mind for my building is that due to scheduling issues with my friends who play, I will more often then note be playing commander with only myself and 1 other player. So I need to make decks that function well against both MP and 1v1.
Lastly Rofellos has been banned as a commander for quite a while but yeah I see they updated again and now it is completely banned even in your 99. How lame.
@MCR, I am making a tribal elves deck, so whether or not Nath would give me access to good black humans isn't really a factor. What I primarily looked at is what he would give me in the way of black ELF related cards. What I saw wasn't as impressive as blue. I'm not saying Nath is trash or that you cant build around him but he would need a deck focussed on discards built around him to really really make him shine.
@SCOERTI, You friggin rock man. Being able to queue up this information is so crazy to me and so helpful. Thanks again :). LOL looks like im not the only one who was drawn to the allure of Ghoulcaller Gisa. Three decks made for her already and she wont even be released for two more months. Now that's some character love right there. Only one sidisi deck though. Well she is brand new. I guess my Sidisi deck will make two.... The color spread is just really nice and her self mill/token creation ability is beautiful. Especially since it will work with other cards milling myself as well. Self Mill and GY return along with as many zombies and as much tribal support as I can squish in. The only downside is that I wont get access to white. If only to play Necromancer's Covenant. That card would rock in this deck for a final push. I mean I kind of wish the character herself were more interesting but you cant have everything you want.
@LONK, ya know what man, you just convinced me right there. You just reminded me of several different cards that would already ramp up the power of this deck, and this is just a basic discussion atm. Vig is the superior choice and is far more my playstyle. With a fair amount of draw mechanisms, especially ones that let me draw on creature spawn, the tutoring for green creatures ability becomes nothing short of amazing. Edric is interesting as he motivates other players to attack eachother instead of me but he wouldn't be as useful in 1v1 which I will be playing sometimes. Also he could be used in a Vig deck. Although the reverse is also true. If you have any other ideas for tactics to check out for this deck I would love to hear about them.
@GESHNAW, yes there are no mono blue elves or mono red elves etc, doesn't mean that the mix color cards don't make it worth it. Also yes I will obviously be playing master biomancer as it is far too good to not use in this deck. Also yes I will probably run Edric in this Vig deck as he is still very good, I just think Vig is better.
Ya know, I know I everybody loves running 4 of the Thalias but I just can't stand running 4 copies of a legendary card. Having the Sissay toolbox in there though let me run less of Thalia, and replace the Champion of Lambholts with a single Odric to be able to get some unblockable.
Duskwatch recruiter might make an ok replacement for Mentor of the Meek. Duskwatch's draw ability is much more expensive, but is repeatable and doesn't have a required trigger. Mentor costs less to draw a card but I can only draw when I play a creature.
Originally I was running Knights of the White Orchid because it can provide an extra land drop on turn 2 assuming you were on the play instead of the draw, which is sweet to be one land ahead. Or it can help make up for a missed land drop. The downside is that if you were on the draw and not the play, it's not going to be any help to you if your already making your land drops and so are your opponents. It is a 2/2 First Strike though which is good. The reason I picked Weathered Wayfarer instead though is because it costs less and can tutor up special lands like Karakas, Gaea's Cradle, and Nykthos. Nykthos and Cradle make for a huge mana ramp source of both green and white when together and Wayfarer makes it so easy to get it consistently. Of course it has the same downside in that it can only do it's thing if my opponent has more lands out than me.
The early versions of this deck used to run Aether Vial but with the extra ramp provided by Wayfarer and Noble Hierarch I felt it wasn't really necessary anymore.
As you point out, this decks biggest weakness is super fast combo decks. It doesn't have a crazy way to go off on turn 2 or turn 3, so I am going to need to try to find more ways to stop combo decks from going off early. I have no idea what I would take out but I have been thinking about adding in some Thorn of Amethyst to try to drive the non creature cost increase agenda because it screws with so many different agendas. Thoughts?
PS: Sorry it took me so long to respond. I have been sick for like a week.
Color | Set 1 Tribe | Set 2 Trible
White | Humans | Angels |
Blue | Merfolk | Wizards
Black | Zombies | Demons
Red | Goblins | Dragons
Green | Elves | Fungus
Colorless | Artifact Creatures | Eldrazi
5 Color | Slivers | Allys
Obviously most of the tribes I'm making decks for are not tribes that actually see play in Legacy. For tribal you only really see Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins. Although Death and Taxes is kind of a Tribal Humans deck, and the Eldrazi aggro decks are semi-Tribal Eldrazi. So there will likely be a large gap in the power of the decks, but I would still like to make each of them as good as they can be within the construction limitations of Legacy. So without further ado, I present the 13th iteration of my Tribal Humans deck, called HUMANAUT.
2x Captain Sisay
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Hanweir Militia Captain
1x Mangara of Corondor
3x Mayor of Avabruck
3x Mentor of the Meek
4x Mother of Runes
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Odric, Master Tactician
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3x Ulvenwald Tracker
3x Weathered Wayfarer
4x Cavern of Souls
2x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
2x Karakas
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2x Plains
4x Savannah
4x Windswept Heath
3x Containment Priest
3x Grand Abolisher
2x Rest in Peace
2x Return to the Ranks
2x Riders of Gavony
3x True Believer
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
This version of the deck underwent some rather severe changes from it's previous iteration but I think this version is closer to being on the right track. I was previously running [Champion of Lambholt](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/champion-of-lambholt/) to provide mass unblockable, that in this version is provided by [Odric, Master Tactician](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/Odric-Master-Tactician/). I was also previously running [Somberwald Sage](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/somberwald-sage/) for extra ramp, [Pentarch Paladin](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/pentarch-paladin/) for removal, [Thraben Doomsayer](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/thraben-doomsayer/) to make more tokens, [Descendant's Path](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/descendants-path/) for more draw/free play, and [Coat of Arms](http://tappedout.net/mtg-card/coat-of-arms/) for busting out huge P/T increases. This new version however is more focused on being able to tutor up answers I need and try to slow the enemy down. Anyways, I realize this deck is still pretty rough, but I'm hoping that with some help, it can become a deck that can hold it's own and reach it's full potential. Thank you in advance for any help.
Some examples that I've found so far that have potential although they wouldn't be good replacements for quicksilver dagger.
Cryptic Gateway
Earthcraft
Opposition
Drowner of Secrets
It has been a very very interesting discussion thus far. I dont know if anyone else is going to chime in but I know I will certainly be checking back in on this thread. Thanks to everyone who's given their 2 cents so far
Anyways, in order to keep the discussion going I have yet another addition to the prompt.
- I have seen many people posting specific numbers for how many lands they tend to run, and that they do indeed use mana rocks/dorks/etc, but I haven't seen many specific numbers for those. Although the starting at 40% and dropping one land for every 2 non land mana sources is one general rule that I have heard before.
- Do you tend to run less lands in Mono color decks. It would tend to make alot of sense but I'm seeing very consistent trends in the numbers of lands even in mono decks.
- When running fetchlands and the like to help out multi color decks, do you tend to run all the available fetchlands? If not, than how many do you average?
- How many utility lands do you tend to run in different types of decks (Mutavault, Strip Mine, Etc.) ?
Happy to see the input so far. Very interesting core principle topic I think.
Idk. I'm not convinced myself, so I'm curious to see what the community thinks. Also I think it's a bit odd that even though one format runs 60 card decks and the other runs 99 they both seem to run around 4 cards over 1/3 of the total deck. Opinions?
@Vandar and Runnin, Yeah ok I can see where people went with that one. It makes sense. I figured if people were actually making decks with him at the helm they must've found a way to make him useful consistently. Thanks for the info
3 Ashnod's Altar
3 Skullclamp
//Creature (29)
4 Carrion Feeder
4 Death Baron
4 Diregraf Captain
4 Gravecrawler
3 Grim Haruspex
2 Noxious Ghoul
4 Shepherd of Rot
4 Stronghold Assassin
3 Aluren
//Enchantment Creature (2)
2 Athreos, God of Passage
//Land (20)
4 Bayou
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Scrubland
4 Thran Quarry
4 Underground Sea
As far as Selvala is concerned, it would be a good card for your 99 in a GW deck but its just not powerful or theme making enough to be my general. Also the fact that they have to reveal the card is helpful yes. Another factor I have to keep in mind for my building is that due to scheduling issues with my friends who play, I will more often then note be playing commander with only myself and 1 other player. So I need to make decks that function well against both MP and 1v1.
Lastly Rofellos has been banned as a commander for quite a while but yeah I see they updated again and now it is completely banned even in your 99. How lame.
@MCR, I am making a tribal elves deck, so whether or not Nath would give me access to good black humans isn't really a factor. What I primarily looked at is what he would give me in the way of black ELF related cards. What I saw wasn't as impressive as blue. I'm not saying Nath is trash or that you cant build around him but he would need a deck focussed on discards built around him to really really make him shine.
@GESHNAW, yes there are no mono blue elves or mono red elves etc, doesn't mean that the mix color cards don't make it worth it. Also yes I will obviously be playing master biomancer as it is far too good to not use in this deck. Also yes I will probably run Edric in this Vig deck as he is still very good, I just think Vig is better.