Team Serious is going to start holding a Midwest Vintage tournament circuit starting in 2013. The tournaments will probably start after Gencon. What we need to hear from you leading up to these events is:
1) What state do you live in and what major city are you in closest proximity to?
2) What kind of prize support would attract you to a tournament two hours away from you?
3) What things are necessary in a venue for you?
4) How many proxies do you need to play what you want?
If you feel uncomfortable sharing your thoughts publicly, feel free to fill out the 6-question survey in this link: http://wuww.surveymonkey.com/s/VVGVTTD
We want to cater to the player base and their needs so please provide feedback. We're specifically looking to cater to WI, IL, IN, OH, MI and western PA for 2013-2014 but if things kick off strong, we may expand outside that region sooner.
Even with all the tier one tutors legal, they're still a small percentage of any given deck. Even in LennonMarx's deck, the deck with the highest concentration of tier one tutors, he only has 7 and that's if you count tutors like Enlightened Tutor, Tainted Pact and Mystical Tutor. While they undoubtedly increase his resiliency, not to the point where he could depend on them to not lose to an aggro deck before turn 4-5. I think his arguments are fine.
The point is that there are infinitely more efficient aggressive cards than playable tutors. Consequently, you'll have a greater degree of consistency in the aggro decks than the combo decks. Sure, the combo decks could still have a strong hand and blow and aggro deck out but, all things being equal, aggro decks would have a statistical edge due to the shear number of strategically similar cards printed for aggressive strategies relative to tutors.
After sideboarding, the games were all about the hate cards, which struck us as being a little unhealthy.
This is probably the only quote worth applying to this argument since it was the crux of the problem. If 1v1 EDH games revolve around silver bullet solutions to blue and black, the DCI considers that a problem in competitive settings. If the format hasn't reached that point, there isn't a problem. If it has, according to this logic, something needs to be done if you want to be consistent with this statement.
I know Choke isn't played, I was responding to the guy telling people that they should maindeck it. Even if Choke isn't played, there are still a lot of very specific answers that are played like Brooding Saurian and Vexing Shusher meant specifically for blue.
I didn't say you SHOULD play Choke. I said, since you're all bent out of shape over blue decks, you COULD play Choke.
Cards like Aven Mindcensor and Choke are excellent cards if you plan on playing against blue and black.
See?
Yeah, I don't think that changing 1/10 of the deck constitutes anything quite like "playing 2 decks." Black's silver-bullet power can be met with anti-library searching power or those cards that exile specific cards from a library. Or Order of the Sacred Torch (lol). White and green have their own share of tutoring options to nab the really hateful cards, and that's not to mention Glittering Wish.
Order of the Sacred Torch would be hilarious. How about Lifeforce?
And, the reason to force change here is two fold. First, and the one I care about most (and SC has mentioned a few times), is legitimacy. 1v1 EDH needs to look hard at why, as a competitive format, it is changing a fundamental rule of the game. Some things just break because of the extra life, and there is no reason to, other than as a holdover from casual days gone by. Secondly, is to balance the metagame. This is the "EDH Should be more like legacy than vintage" crowd, and having played both formats, I sort of agree. Zoo and Tribal decks are tier one forces in Legacy, a format with access to 4x Lotus Petal, Lions Eye Diamond, Burning Wish, Dark Ritual... the list goes on of these broken cards, but yet "Taiga, Wild Nacatl, go" is a key play in the format. Going back to 20 life allows an acutal "Meta-Metagame" of Rock-Paper-Scissors to exist, instead of either playing some kind of combo monstrosity, or something with all kinds of hateraid to stop the combo monstrosities.
I think we both know that's not true. Zoo is only good when the tempo decks suppress the combo decks. The only real tribal deck is Merfolk. Zoo and Goblins are only successful when the real decks have been neutered and the format is in a state of flux. My problem isn't with changing the starting life total to 20. It's with jumping in with cries for format warping changes over one tournament. You've heard me say there's no point in playing anything but combo-control in EDH because of the life totals but if tournament results don't reflect this yet, there's no point in changing. If there was a continued string of dominance from a certain subset of decks, something may need to be done. If you lower the life total in a format with such high variance, you probably make the aggro decks overpowered and someone cries about that.
Regarding breaking cards that use the life clause, is anyone complaining about these cards now? I thought the contention was that blue and black was too powerful, not Serra Ascendant. What cards break with the life clause? Necro's banned.
Also, the R/G beatz deck that won was during the second Gush "era". I think it was a Wisconsin player. It beat up on the Workshop decks and the life-hungry Gush decks. I don't think it was a SCG, though, unless we're thinking about different instances. I think the guy's name was something-Jamison.
It's not simply "a part of the color pie" when one aspect (Blue/black draw and tutoring) is blatantly more powerful than the other (attacking with creatures), and there are certain rules in the game that enforce this (30 life). It's possible to win without these colors, but running them simply tips the scale too much in those colors' favors. D0su points out a couple generals not in those colors that still top 8ed, but he lists the same general twice - in other words, a lot of it seems to be the product of the general choice and not the colors.
They tip the scale because they add consistency in an inconsistent format and that's why everyone wants to run them. If you could just naturally draw the appropriate threats/answers in a non-blue/black deck, you wouldn't care to add them. Players use them because they increase consistency. My point earlier was that they don't add to the flavor of a deck much, but the consistency. Other colors add the actual win condition and answers. Blue/black aid in finding them. If you choose to have an inconsistent deck, that's your problem? That's why the non-blue/black decks underachieve.
In Vintage, you have consistency in archetypes like Dredge and Workshops due to the shear number of nearly identical effects. In highlander, you can't achieve that. Blue/black is not dominating Vintage, Shops are. Stop blaming blue/black and make your deck more powerful/consistent and you'll have less of a problem.
If you're advocating that people run Choke, you're not seeing the problem here? Running specific hate cards is a really bad way of balancing the meta.
Why? According to your logic, everyone should just goldfish each other. You have to interact, not just ignore them and do whatever. If blue's doing well, play cards to beat blue. If red was dominating the format, wouldn't you start playing more basic lands or would you complain about red being too powerful then? When Standard control decks are running specific and global removal, is that an indication that something's wrong? No. You're just supposed to be playing cards that negate what your opponent is trying to do [to you].
That said, you can't just ignore what people think about a format. If enough people think there's a problem, I guess something should be done so they don't quit because the most unfun thing to do is not be able to play.
I don't think it's fair to blame blue, black, and/or blue/black. The first place list doesn't even contain much, if any, of the mechanics that define blue and black. In the Child of Alara deck, there are very few card drawing/tutoring effects. What else makes those colors so powerful? If that deck outperforms LennonMarx's deck that is full to the brim with brokenness, what's the complaint? That you picked a bad deck to play this particular tournament?
If your complaint is that drawing cards and tutoring is more powerful than swinging with creatures, that's not going to change unless you ban the elements that make this an eternal format. I think there would be a problem with blue and black if they stood alone a vast majority of the time. The reason most decks run those colors isn't because they stand alone but because they aid every color's ability to consistently execute their gameplan. That's fun to do. It's no fun when your deck just craps on itself because it's inconsistent. Blue and black help reduce the variance inherent in a 100 card, singleton deck. It's not that they dominate the format. Blue and black, particularly blue, aren't generally the best sources of game-enders. They're the best sources of engines, the backbone of any deck. If blue and black was so strong that they could stand alone without the other colors, I think there would be a problem. Outside of Vendilion Clique does this problem actually exist?
It's just natural for people to want their deck to do what they intend for it to do and blue/black helps people do that. Will a person be at a disadvantage if they don't take advantage of the deck manipulation afforded by these colors? Absolutely...but what's the problem with that. Again, it's not like these are dominant mono-colored decks. They're like the whole Magic color-pie working together to win a game. Three of the top 8 were five colored generals. I think that's a cool thing. The backbone of the Child of Alara deck wasn't even the mechanics unique to blue and black.
I think being able to count on certain kinds of decks in a tournament increases deck-builder's ability to attack blue/black strategies anyway. Cards like Aven Mindcensor and Choke are excellent cards if you plan on playing against blue and black. If everything was perfectly balanced, you, as a deck-builder would have a particularly hard time meeting all the problems you're going to face in a wide-open format.
I don't think there are many, if any, problems at this time. I definitely don't think the format should necessarily be re-structured after a loose analysis of one tournament.
In general, people hate blue because they're terrible players but don't know they are. Bad players whine when they lose because they don't know what they're doing and don't have the motivation to become better at it and get frustrated when someone that does care and gets better beats them at their "fun" game. Fun means different things to different people but I think that people that take the time to get better at something have more fun than players that really don't care enough to get better. Yeah, blue is strong but you can play any combination of colors in EDH. It's not the color blue that's the source of tension. The source of tension is between people that like the flavor of the game more than the mechanics of the game. Anyone who complains about Magic mechanics is someone that, instead of learning how to combat mechanics, would rather do what they've always done because they like the flavor of it. It's annoying to me to hear someone whine that their crappy deck that doesn't do anything doesn't have a chance against a deck that *gasp* does something relevant is beating them. I've played mono-black, mono-green, building mono-red, and several different color combinations and can honestly say all the whining I always have to hear is due to people just not knowing what they're doing regarding the game and their propensity to always do the same thing because they like the flavor of it. I wish people would ignore them already.
Functionally, I have three 0-drops, six 1-drops, fourteen 2-drops, thirteen 3-drops, ten 4-drops, nine 5-drops, one 6-drop, one 7-drop, one 8-drop and two 9-drops with 36-37 lands.
Changes
-1 Magus of the Future/+1 Scroll Rack
-1 Mind Spring/+1 Concentrate
-1 Mulldrifter/+1 Brainstorm
-1 Solemn Simulacrum/+1 Talisman of Progress
-1 Kodama's Reach/+1 Ancient Tomb or Talisman of Unity
-1 Crucible of Worlds/+1 Life from the Loam
-1 Cryptic Command/+1 Forbid
-1 Primal Command/+1 Timetwister
-1 Krosan Verge/+1 Lonely Sandbar
-1 Horizon Canopy/+1 Tranquil Thicket
-1 Forest/+1 Wooded Foothills
-1 Plains/+1 Marsh Flats
-2 Island/+1 Scalding Tarn
/+1 Polluted Delta
/+1 Verdant Catacombs
The changes in engine pieces and acceleration reflect the need to lean my mana curve in that area. I wanted something that lets me see a lot of cards to replace Mind Spring so I'm using Scroll Rack in conjunction with more fetchlands. I probably should have had them all along to improve Top and Library at the very least. With Brainstorm included now I have all the more reasons to add more fetchlands.
An interesting idea I had was to cut the Primal Command for Timetwister. Primal Command was like a swiss army knife but really only ever gained me life and wiped out an opponent's graveyard. I thought that if all I wanted to do was wipe out graveyards, why not draw cards at the same time. As long as I can create gamestate disparities (better mana than my opponent(s) or few cards in hand relative to my opponents hands) then Timetwister won't be symmetrical functionally.
Krosan Verge always sucked so I replaced it and Horizon Canopy with two cycling lands. Horizon Canopy was good when I had Crucible but since I cut it for Life from the Loam, it's pretty much a crappy cantripping Savannah.
I have 101 cards in my deck right now to find out which is weakest to add the eighth fetchland. They work great at clearing chaff off the top of my deck for Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top, Future Sight, Scroll Rack and Brainstorm, four of which are major engines of the deck.
Has anyone tried cutting Fastbond for Merchant Scroll? Unless you open with it or have it within the first few turns, it becomes useless. Merchant Scroll makes High Tide better and helps you play Intuition. I don't think you even need to add any cards to make Intuition good because you're already playing Regrowth, Recoup and High Tide. Snap would become Rushing River so you'd have two removal spells to tutor for (R. River and Fire/Ice) and Inquisition of Kozilek would become Mana Drain since you want to be able to tutor for removal and permission if the situation warrants it. That way Scroll acts like a Demonic Tutor of sorts. You can get business, mana, removal and permission with it. Without Doomsday, Meditate is unnecessary and would become Ad Nauseum. There's only about eight cards that are expensive enough to significantly hurt you. Shelldock Isle should probably be City of Brass and Swamp should probably be Gemstone Mine giving you three rainbow lands, including Forbidden Orchard.
Ponder and Preordain look pretty weak for what you're trying to do. The way this deck seems like it plays out is 1) tutor turn one for whatever you're missing 2) Ramp your mana to whatever midgame setup engine you've got going 3) Your mana explodes and you draw a million cards killing your opponent on the spot. Where do you cast Ponder and/or Preordain? It doesn't fit step one well. It doesn't do step two whatsoever and it's not particularly good at setting up a midgame engine with only about 19 in the deck. If there's a stalemate and that's all you're holding, I guess it's better than nothing but there's got to be something better than that. What if you cut them for Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library? That would up your artifact count by one and make Mox Opal better. Grim Monolith looks terrible. It only nets you one colorless mana in a five-color deck. If you can reliably get Metalcraft, Mox Opal would be strictly better. I would swap Grim Monolith for Mox Opal.
I think the Oath creatures need to serve two roles: 1) help you go off and 2) prevent your opponent from "going off". Emrakul is kind of poor at doing that unless he sticks around to attack. Iona immediately effects the game by either helping you go off by cutting key spells out of the equation or she prevents your opponent from casting spells in whatever color you name.
@Impulse - Impulse is terrible. It's terrible for finding gas in a 100 card deck. There are 19 "bombs" in the deck, not including tutors. Impulse only digs four deep in 100. When playing cards like Impulse, your ratio of business to mana to interactive spells need to exploit what is essentially a quasi-tutor or expensive cantrip. The less business you have relative to mana and protection, the more of a cantrip it becomes because the cards you want to be "tutoring" for aren't there in the numbers you need them to be for this type of effect to be worthwhile. If you're chaining tutors, quasi-tutors and cantrips, you must have a buttload of mana to make this line of play valuable. If you have a buttload of mana, why aren't you doing anything else than casting Impulse? Granted it might be the only card in your hand resembling business but it won't get you what you need the vast majority of the time. Why not just run an actual bomb? I broke down the decks curve and this is what it looks like, excluding lands: 0=4, 1=21, 2=20, 3=11, 4=4, 5=2, 6=2, 8=1, 15=1. Four, five and six are low indicating a lack of business. Zero, one and two drops aren't where you're getting action from. You can afford another four, five or even six drop bomb. Why not play something like Bosium Strip or Recurring Insight in that slot? I like the Ad Nauseam suggestion. You don't have to draw a million cards with it for it to be effective. Don't play Angel's Grace but play Ad Nauseam. If you want a quasi-tutor, why not Scroll Rack? It makes Academy and Mox Opal better while very abusable with 15 shuffle effects and it's repeatable.
@Helm of Awakening - Would Cloud Key just be better? Sure it costs one more but the opponent can't abuse it.
@Doomsday - I'm not sure I understand why Intuition was bad. Granted you were playing a weak combo with Burnwillows but since you're playing Recoup, couldn't you get something like Will/Recoup/High Tide. They give you Recoup, you Recoup Will, cast High Tide and go broken. I think you could cut the Doomsday pieces and make Intuition better with cards like Deep Analysis and High Tide. It doesn't have to encompass a chunk of your deck but Intuition is really sick.
Since I haven't been able to play much Magic in real life, I thought I'd post my deck here to get some help on a few last cards I'm trying to optimize.
The cards I'm not set on are Magus of the Future, Rampant Growth, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sun Titan. Magus of the Future is vulnerable to removal and Sun Titan is sometimes amazing and, more often, mediocre. Titan combos really well with some of my lands like Strip Mine, Horizon Canopy and fetchlands but does very little beyond that besides get back countered/destroyed engine pieces like Survival or Sylvan Library. Rampant Growth and Sakura-Tribe Elder are fine but not great and I wondered if there was something a little better out there for the cost. I want to keep these slots functionally similar, just better. The rest of the deck should be self-explanatory. It's a control/combo deck that uses the Reveillark combo or control pieces with large bodies like Iona or Sundering Titan. Thanks for any help you can offer.
1) What state do you live in and what major city are you in closest proximity to?
2) What kind of prize support would attract you to a tournament two hours away from you?
3) What things are necessary in a venue for you?
4) How many proxies do you need to play what you want?
If you feel uncomfortable sharing your thoughts publicly, feel free to fill out the 6-question survey in this link: http://wuww.surveymonkey.com/s/VVGVTTD
We want to cater to the player base and their needs so please provide feedback. We're specifically looking to cater to WI, IL, IN, OH, MI and western PA for 2013-2014 but if things kick off strong, we may expand outside that region sooner.
The point is that there are infinitely more efficient aggressive cards than playable tutors. Consequently, you'll have a greater degree of consistency in the aggro decks than the combo decks. Sure, the combo decks could still have a strong hand and blow and aggro deck out but, all things being equal, aggro decks would have a statistical edge due to the shear number of strategically similar cards printed for aggressive strategies relative to tutors.
This is probably the only quote worth applying to this argument since it was the crux of the problem. If 1v1 EDH games revolve around silver bullet solutions to blue and black, the DCI considers that a problem in competitive settings. If the format hasn't reached that point, there isn't a problem. If it has, according to this logic, something needs to be done if you want to be consistent with this statement.
I didn't say you SHOULD play Choke. I said, since you're all bent out of shape over blue decks, you COULD play Choke.
See?
Order of the Sacred Torch would be hilarious. How about Lifeforce?
I think we both know that's not true. Zoo is only good when the tempo decks suppress the combo decks. The only real tribal deck is Merfolk. Zoo and Goblins are only successful when the real decks have been neutered and the format is in a state of flux. My problem isn't with changing the starting life total to 20. It's with jumping in with cries for format warping changes over one tournament. You've heard me say there's no point in playing anything but combo-control in EDH because of the life totals but if tournament results don't reflect this yet, there's no point in changing. If there was a continued string of dominance from a certain subset of decks, something may need to be done. If you lower the life total in a format with such high variance, you probably make the aggro decks overpowered and someone cries about that.
Regarding breaking cards that use the life clause, is anyone complaining about these cards now? I thought the contention was that blue and black was too powerful, not Serra Ascendant. What cards break with the life clause? Necro's banned.
Also, the R/G beatz deck that won was during the second Gush "era". I think it was a Wisconsin player. It beat up on the Workshop decks and the life-hungry Gush decks. I don't think it was a SCG, though, unless we're thinking about different instances. I think the guy's name was something-Jamison.
They tip the scale because they add consistency in an inconsistent format and that's why everyone wants to run them. If you could just naturally draw the appropriate threats/answers in a non-blue/black deck, you wouldn't care to add them. Players use them because they increase consistency. My point earlier was that they don't add to the flavor of a deck much, but the consistency. Other colors add the actual win condition and answers. Blue/black aid in finding them. If you choose to have an inconsistent deck, that's your problem? That's why the non-blue/black decks underachieve.
In Vintage, you have consistency in archetypes like Dredge and Workshops due to the shear number of nearly identical effects. In highlander, you can't achieve that. Blue/black is not dominating Vintage, Shops are. Stop blaming blue/black and make your deck more powerful/consistent and you'll have less of a problem.
Why? According to your logic, everyone should just goldfish each other. You have to interact, not just ignore them and do whatever. If blue's doing well, play cards to beat blue. If red was dominating the format, wouldn't you start playing more basic lands or would you complain about red being too powerful then? When Standard control decks are running specific and global removal, is that an indication that something's wrong? No. You're just supposed to be playing cards that negate what your opponent is trying to do [to you].
That said, you can't just ignore what people think about a format. If enough people think there's a problem, I guess something should be done so they don't quit because the most unfun thing to do is not be able to play.
If your complaint is that drawing cards and tutoring is more powerful than swinging with creatures, that's not going to change unless you ban the elements that make this an eternal format. I think there would be a problem with blue and black if they stood alone a vast majority of the time. The reason most decks run those colors isn't because they stand alone but because they aid every color's ability to consistently execute their gameplan. That's fun to do. It's no fun when your deck just craps on itself because it's inconsistent. Blue and black help reduce the variance inherent in a 100 card, singleton deck. It's not that they dominate the format. Blue and black, particularly blue, aren't generally the best sources of game-enders. They're the best sources of engines, the backbone of any deck. If blue and black was so strong that they could stand alone without the other colors, I think there would be a problem. Outside of Vendilion Clique does this problem actually exist?
It's just natural for people to want their deck to do what they intend for it to do and blue/black helps people do that. Will a person be at a disadvantage if they don't take advantage of the deck manipulation afforded by these colors? Absolutely...but what's the problem with that. Again, it's not like these are dominant mono-colored decks. They're like the whole Magic color-pie working together to win a game. Three of the top 8 were five colored generals. I think that's a cool thing. The backbone of the Child of Alara deck wasn't even the mechanics unique to blue and black.
I think being able to count on certain kinds of decks in a tournament increases deck-builder's ability to attack blue/black strategies anyway. Cards like Aven Mindcensor and Choke are excellent cards if you plan on playing against blue and black. If everything was perfectly balanced, you, as a deck-builder would have a particularly hard time meeting all the problems you're going to face in a wide-open format.
I don't think there are many, if any, problems at this time. I definitely don't think the format should necessarily be re-structured after a loose analysis of one tournament.
4x Forest
3x Plains
Functionally, I have three 0-drops, six 1-drops, fourteen 2-drops, thirteen 3-drops, ten 4-drops, nine 5-drops, one 6-drop, one 7-drop, one 8-drop and two 9-drops with 36-37 lands.
Changes
-1 Magus of the Future/+1 Scroll Rack
-1 Mind Spring/+1 Concentrate
-1 Mulldrifter/+1 Brainstorm
-1 Solemn Simulacrum/+1 Talisman of Progress
-1 Kodama's Reach/+1 Ancient Tomb or Talisman of Unity
-1 Crucible of Worlds/+1 Life from the Loam
-1 Cryptic Command/+1 Forbid
-1 Primal Command/+1 Timetwister
-1 Krosan Verge/+1 Lonely Sandbar
-1 Horizon Canopy/+1 Tranquil Thicket
-1 Forest/+1 Wooded Foothills
-1 Plains/+1 Marsh Flats
-2 Island/+1 Scalding Tarn
/+1 Polluted Delta
/+1 Verdant Catacombs
The changes in engine pieces and acceleration reflect the need to lean my mana curve in that area. I wanted something that lets me see a lot of cards to replace Mind Spring so I'm using Scroll Rack in conjunction with more fetchlands. I probably should have had them all along to improve Top and Library at the very least. With Brainstorm included now I have all the more reasons to add more fetchlands.
An interesting idea I had was to cut the Primal Command for Timetwister. Primal Command was like a swiss army knife but really only ever gained me life and wiped out an opponent's graveyard. I thought that if all I wanted to do was wipe out graveyards, why not draw cards at the same time. As long as I can create gamestate disparities (better mana than my opponent(s) or few cards in hand relative to my opponents hands) then Timetwister won't be symmetrical functionally.
Krosan Verge always sucked so I replaced it and Horizon Canopy with two cycling lands. Horizon Canopy was good when I had Crucible but since I cut it for Life from the Loam, it's pretty much a crappy cantripping Savannah.
I have 101 cards in my deck right now to find out which is weakest to add the eighth fetchland. They work great at clearing chaff off the top of my deck for Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top, Future Sight, Scroll Rack and Brainstorm, four of which are major engines of the deck.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Ponder and Preordain look pretty weak for what you're trying to do. The way this deck seems like it plays out is 1) tutor turn one for whatever you're missing 2) Ramp your mana to whatever midgame setup engine you've got going 3) Your mana explodes and you draw a million cards killing your opponent on the spot. Where do you cast Ponder and/or Preordain? It doesn't fit step one well. It doesn't do step two whatsoever and it's not particularly good at setting up a midgame engine with only about 19 in the deck. If there's a stalemate and that's all you're holding, I guess it's better than nothing but there's got to be something better than that. What if you cut them for Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library? That would up your artifact count by one and make Mox Opal better. Grim Monolith looks terrible. It only nets you one colorless mana in a five-color deck. If you can reliably get Metalcraft, Mox Opal would be strictly better. I would swap Grim Monolith for Mox Opal.
I think the Oath creatures need to serve two roles: 1) help you go off and 2) prevent your opponent from "going off". Emrakul is kind of poor at doing that unless he sticks around to attack. Iona immediately effects the game by either helping you go off by cutting key spells out of the equation or she prevents your opponent from casting spells in whatever color you name.
@Helm of Awakening - Would Cloud Key just be better? Sure it costs one more but the opponent can't abuse it.
@Doomsday - I'm not sure I understand why Intuition was bad. Granted you were playing a weak combo with Burnwillows but since you're playing Recoup, couldn't you get something like Will/Recoup/High Tide. They give you Recoup, you Recoup Will, cast High Tide and go broken. I think you could cut the Doomsday pieces and make Intuition better with cards like Deep Analysis and High Tide. It doesn't have to encompass a chunk of your deck but Intuition is really sick.
5x Forest
4x Plains
The cards I'm not set on are Magus of the Future, Rampant Growth, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sun Titan. Magus of the Future is vulnerable to removal and Sun Titan is sometimes amazing and, more often, mediocre. Titan combos really well with some of my lands like Strip Mine, Horizon Canopy and fetchlands but does very little beyond that besides get back countered/destroyed engine pieces like Survival or Sylvan Library. Rampant Growth and Sakura-Tribe Elder are fine but not great and I wondered if there was something a little better out there for the cost. I want to keep these slots functionally similar, just better. The rest of the deck should be self-explanatory. It's a control/combo deck that uses the Reveillark combo or control pieces with large bodies like Iona or Sundering Titan. Thanks for any help you can offer.