This is a baller deck.
My friend was always wanting to make a Dragonshift deck, and I think he just found it.
It abuses token makers, it has a budget mana base, and it has very explosive lines of play.
Can't wait to sleeve this up!
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- Popertop
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Last active Fri, Jan, 29 2016 21:16:07
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The card will be fixed on the next update to the Xmage client, so unfortunately my testing will be greatly hindered until then (not having real combo turns). Of course I can still get lots of experience with the deck, since the main purpose of the testing will be to see what we need to do in order to live. But I won't know what cards really pull everything together until I can see how they affect you going off.
And yeah I wasn't really thinking instead of land search, but as a parallel. Endless one probably makes my point about Trinket Mage being a roadblock irrelevant, since he would be better at just about every stage of the game. I feel like I'm missing some way to tutor for Endless on though...
I accidentally my thoughts into a Primer
Speed
These cards get you turns ahead and allow for explosive starts.
Explore - Gotta say it again, best card in the deck.
Magmatic Insight - Interesting option for raw speed, can really help plow through the deck as you always have 3-4 lands in hand.
Nest Invader - The earliest speedbump option we won't feel bad to trade off, as he leaves behind a friend. We can also cash in the spawn to speed up a turn. Might not be enough as a creature-based option.
Sylvan Caryatid - An interesting option as a hexproof roadblock. Bad on combo turns.
Mr. No Eyes - He might actually be enough of a speedbump and ramp spell combined that he makes the Maindeck. All-Star in BFZ limited. He takes you from 4 to 6, so you can get right to Prime Time, who I will suspect becoming a lynchpin of the deck's success.
Oracle of Mul Daya - I really don't like suggesting this, because I feel like once you hit 4+ mana, you really need to be getting a lot of cards out of the deal, and she just dies to everything and doesn't leave anything else behind. In other words, she fails the "Bolt Test".
Primeval Titan - If Mr. No Eyes takes you from 4 to 6 and saves you some life, this guy takes you from 6 to 9 and is a huge stop sign. You never feel bad if he resolves because you get anywhere from 2-4 permanents off one trigger. If he gets to attack you generally win.
Efficiency
These cards are just raw card advantage and help push you over the top for Aurora.
I feel Eyeless Watcher and Big Daddy belong here as well. They are pretty flexible and just put you ahead.
Courser of Kruphix - She gets you life and is just pretty irreplacable. Playing lands from the top of your library just feels really good, and helps you know when to pull the trigger.
Harmonize - You just go +2 for 4 mana, which is peanuts in a green deck. Very important here as you just keep going on Aurora combo turns.
Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Nissa's Pilgrimage - It feels kind of weird to view these cards as strictly card advantage, but since Green Wrath of God counts lands in play, they really are. You go +1 from a Cultivate or Reach, or +2 off a Pilgrimage (though sometimes you run out of forests for it). Very decent here. I'm wondering if a build might top out on these, but it's probably the wrong play. Speaking of the wrong play, this next card might make you cringe.
Make a Wish - A card that saw little play even in Innistrad limited, Make a Wish has yet to see play pretty much anywhere. It is similar enough to Restock that I'm interested in testing it. I also just want to try it out, even though it might be horrible. Getting cards in hand is never bad in this deck though, and it does put you up +1. If there's nothing bad in your graveyard, then it's pure gravy for 4 mana.
Thragtusk - He dominated Standard and saw modern play before Rhino got printed. He gets you back precious life you lost to aggressive starts, trades with extremely relevant creatures, and leaves behind a body. Probably the best deal we are going to get for five mana.
Greenwarden of Murasa - A card many Commander players are calling "Super Witness", he's huge and get gets two things. Might be very powerful here.
Win Condition
You can win games by beating down with value guys, but really you want to cast these bombs to combo and end the game on the spot.
The Great Aurora - The reason we are playing the deck. Definitely not a budget Scapeshift, I think it's better.
Rude Awakening - A central combo piece, and can also win you the game on the spot. Nice that we have redundancy.
Avenger of Zendikar - Etb trigger that generates a huge mess of bodies, and he can just be game. Easier to deal with than the other two, but also one mana cheaper at 7.
Utility
An area we really haven't spent much ground on since the idea for the deck is so new, but I feel will be a key in carving out a spot in the metagame.
Eternal Witness - A key combo piece on turns where important cards are in the grave, and can help you just keep ramping. She would go in efficiency, but she only literally goes 1-1, and then afterward more when you cast your card advantage spells again. A key spell, but I could see builds that forgo her for other options.
Primal Command - A very good card in mono green builds, a swiss army spell of utility. It can help us live, grab a win condition or stabilization spell, deal with a random problem thing, or shuffle lands back in if we've Insighted them away. You probably want one somewhere in your 75.
Beast Within - A deck like this typically doesn't run much interaction, and probably wouldn't even run these in the main. But it's one of the few instant speed options I could think would be worth it.
Gutteral Response - Funnily enough, we actually have a decent match against control decks game one with mainboard Boseiju, but I could see this in the side if your meta has a lot of twin, or anything that runs Cryptic Command. Answering their spells that get them up on cards is yet another way we are ahead after an Aurora.
That went on way too long, but I really want to get all my thoughts out in the open.
I've flirted with deck ideas like this in the past, you definitely want to load up and max out your token dudes. I'd definitely try to go with playsets of all the r/g token bringing drones at 5cc and below.
Right now The Great Aurora is glitched so the lands don't enter untapped, so I haven't been able to have any real combo turns outside of when I can float a ridiculous amount beforehand (so I can hit awakening right after), which honestly has been fine-ish. Just annoying.
The fact that Aurora wraths is just so good. You get ahead on permanents from that usually, then you can play more and get even more ahead, or just awakening for lethal right there. Rude Awakening should totally give the lands haste :).
INITIAL THOUGHTS
I've been thinking that Explore is just the best card in the deck and that you probably want 4-of. I played back when ZEN/WWK was standard, and I was all-in on Landfall synergies, so I'm well aware of how the card performs. One of the problems it had was that you get tempted to take a line where you gamble on a land being your draw and whiff sometimes. Running 29 land I've found that almost never to be the case. If you really aren't hitting a land with this, you are just unlucky. Most times you just chain them together to ramp a few turns ahead. I really think it's far and away the best card in the deck.
Nissa's Pilgrimage hasn't impressed me too much, I might shave on that. Although casting it with spell mastery is pretty great, the lack of 1-2 mana instant/sorcery kind of infringes on that. The times that you go +2 from it seem few and far between enough that I'd like to test something else.
Magmatic Insight is a card I'm pretty interested in, although I'm concerned how it would affect our combo turns, since it bins a few lands. It might make us fast/consistent enough that it won't matter, and you are +0 from it, which might be the breaking point on running the card. You really want to be up on permanents/cards in hand and +0 in that regard (with a virtual minus concerning combo turns) may not be up to snuff. Maybe in a version that is more "all-in" and tries to be blisteringly fast at the expense of having worse combo turns?
Oracle of Mul Daya doesn't pass the bolt test, but could see play in a version that just tries to go over the top. I always remember how bad the card is when it's bad, but this deck might not care because of how fast it is.
WE REALLY NEED TO LIVE
As far as roadblocks go, I feel like there is a perfect card for us to test that I haven't thought of yet. I just KNOW something is right there, but I can't put my finger on it. Don't get me wrong, Courser of Kruphix is awesome, does everything you want it to, but she needs a friend for this deck to really get there. Sylvan Caryatid doesn't pass the card advantage test, but might save us enough life that she's worth it. She seems bad on combo turns though, Magmatic Insight problems all over again. That's a theme with me, I like cards that help you get there but don't help on the finishing turns. Might be what we need to get this deck to a more even position with the meta so aggressive.
Prime Time seems too good not to run in the main. The games where you get to cast him, fetch two Khalni Garden, then fetch two more on the attack and combo for the win are just so outrageous! The real problem with him is getting to six fast enough. Once we solve that and/or the living against aggro problem, I think he'll be a mainstay of value.
Aside from aggro, I've thought about how a tron game would play out, and it seems kind of brutal for us. Karn seems like such a problem, you really need to have 3-1 against him with token generators and such. Avenger seems like a natural fit here, as you end up with tokens to fight him off, but then they just O-Stone or Ugin -X your board and it's very awful. Tron might just be a bye, I really think it would be that bad.
CLOSING/OTHER DIRECTIONS
Overall I really like the deck. Just playing your initial lists feels really good, and I think we can take it in all sorts of interesting directions. I would be very interested in an alternate list that focused on a more controlling game, but it would be hard to become answer based while still performing well on the permanent based metric, just from a game theory standpoint. I remember just off the top of my head from Rise of the Eldrazi the card Reality Spasm being involved in some infinite combos, so that might be a jumping off point for a list more aimed at blue. Valakut is really important, but a list like that would likely stay U/G and look more at locking people out anyways. If we go too far we might just end up with Green's Sun's Zenith, a combo deck that mills them out with a huge Blue Sun's Zenith, using green for the mana ramp. Or we might just wander over to their thread for some crossplay, they seem like a deck with a similar game-plan: pour an insane amount of mana into a game-winning spell. Plus, you have lines like Zenith for 6 eot, hit an Aurora and steal a game.
EMERGENCY EDIT: After my "mainstay of value" comment, it clicked for me the card I was thinking of for courser to pair with: Swagtusk. He's outrageously good at keeping you alive when you really shouldn't be, he trades for some of the most oppressive cards in the format (Tas, Rhino, Angler), AND he leaves behind a body. If we look at our Card Advantage metric, he's off the charts, at times going 4-1 and 5-1 when we consider our opponents investment. The best part, you can cast him off a hand with 3 lands and a Cultivate, so he really stands on his own in this deck especially. Seriously looking over the list to jam him in there. If we can get enough value out of cards like him, we might be able to shave the advantage in other areas to be faster.
It costs a mana to activate, but you can land it on turn one, and it helps deal with some creatures.
Not too unlikely, maybe some type of Awakened hedron or something. High cost fits with dumb overcosted theme.
Seriously though, it was probably a combination of limited and constructed that made them design it like this.
Wizards tries to be very careful with anything "fast mana", even though I think for 6 lands this would have probably been fine.
And it does have the one-up on the first Temple anyways, since it can tap for mana by itself.
From what I saw, it was debunked because the Mirror Entity activation cost would kill everything.
I didn't also see that it was debunked because the Turntimber Ranger ability checks as it triggers, not on resolution or whatever, it wasn't that clear.
Adaptive Automaton gives your whole team a static +1/+1 bonus.
Mirror Entity's ability can be activated for zero, and thanks to the automaton, your team will still be alive.
So can't you cast Turntimber Ranger, activate Entity for zero (turning the wolf into an Ally), and go infinite with ally triggers?
P.S. I know it's three cards, and one of them is five mana, but it's an interesting angle of attack I think this deck could take. Especially if you think having an alt win like the mill is a good option.