For any of you who may still be around, I've officially moved over to Nexus. After all the shutdown drama and eventual community split, I kind of lost motivation to update this thread, or bother with a new one.
But! I've finally gotten around to posting the current incarnation of this deck over on Nexus, and it's entirely possible that I'll work it into a new primer in the near future. You can find that new thread here.
I just want to say thanks to all the people who followed this thread over the years, and helped serve as a sounding board as this deck evolved again and again.
I hope to see some of you over on Nexus.
I finally got a chance to play a few games with this list.
Definitely does make a lot of tokens. And a lot of mana. With the massive amount of draw in the deck, I very rarely felt like I was making more mana than I knew what to do with. That mostly only happened with Smothering Tithe on the table, because that card is bonkers. I did throw in a Comet Storm as an easy win con for when I have a ton of mana, that can be found off of either Spellseeker or Mystical Tutor, and can be cast solely off spirits if necessary.
Also, with the mass of tokens I was making, I decided I wanted a little more support for them, so I threw in an Intangible Virtue and a Divine Visitation. Made a few more changes to the deck too, to remove some stuff I was underwhelmed by or to fix some holes.
You're right about them being basically free whenever I've got Kykar on the table, but I found that after the first game people started to realize I shouldn't be allowed to keep Kykar on the table. Without Kykar on the table, they're very low impact cards. I may squeeze one or two of the better ones in at some point, I dunno.
I think I'd prioritize spiral over windfall unless you're intending to abuse the yard somehow. With no mizzix's mastery or spelltwine that doesn't seem to be the case offhand.
That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I might even swap out Wheel of Fortune for a Day's Undoing (because I'm not willing to spend thousands of dollars on a Timetwister). The downside of ending the turn isn't as big of a deal with a large number of instants, and it gets even better whenever I happen to draw Teferi, Time Raveler.
I'll link him to this post and see what he says. It isn't my intention to blow you off, I'm passing this on as best I can and attempting to give accurate responses.
Passing it on to the dev is exactly what I was looking for.
I was actually considering Time Spiral. There's a good chance that one makes it in. It'd be a pretty solid card here.
Aetherflux Reservoir was in the first draft but got cut. Impact Tremors is/was on my short list for options, so that may still come in at some point.
Aria of Flame, though. That could be a sweet idea. Completely forgot that thing got printed. Might need to find a spot for it.
There's obvious potential to the Proteus Staff and Divergent Transformations plan, with the only creatures being a couple of Eldrazi titans or something. It's possible the list may turn in that direction at some point, but for right now I don't think it's what I'm going for.
Updated the list after some changes and cuts. It's down to 100 now, and also I realized that I somehow failed to include the Creatures section in the list I'd posted previously, so that's there now.
You're not wrong about spells with generic mana costs (or R in their costs) being potentially more useful, though that depends on how frequently I'm going to be able to keep Kykar on the table and make spirits. Shouldn't be too hard to pull off much of the time, but the spells have to actually be good to be worth the swap.
Arcane Denial, Delay, and Ertai's Meddling are great cards in a combo deck. You don't care about the downsides because you're winning the game on the spot. That's not the case here. Negate, Unwind, and Supreme Will are all cards I'd play before them. But again, we're more or less on the same page, I think.
I may be in the minority here as someone who is a dev by profession and does (has done, I guess) primers, but I can easily say that no amount of BBCode customization will come close to what I could do with HTML/CSS in terms of making a kick-ass primer.
From our dev: "Pure html is a no go for security, but I think if I work with them I can add 10 bajillion optional parameters to everything, so they basically have full access and control."
Edit: Usual disclaimer that there will be a million requests and things to work on, so not everything will be an immediate priority.
As a dev, to your dev (spoilered since 99% of people in this thread won't care):
Many modern forum post/comment submission/blog post systems and the like allow for HTML/CSS to be used. Having worked on one such system previously, without going into too much detail, I can say that it's just about running post submission through a parser and having a whitelist of tags and attributes that are considered to be safe. You strip out or reject anything offending. When I did this in the past, I used sanitize-html (granted that's only particularly useful if you're running JS server-side, like via node.js or similar, but there are guaranteed to be similar libraries for other technologies).
An alternative that I've seen done for this sort of thing is to have any HTML based posts/edits go into a review queue before they can go live, but that requires dev-savvy manpower to review them, which is meh.
I don't mind chatting with your dev one on one if you/they are interested.
But, either way, if the decision is to stick with just BBCode, I will definitely have some requests. Like, just off the top of my head after having just posted a thread, a better way to manage deck block layout (columns and such). The way that's done automatically here can be frustrating sometimes with it trying to shove everything into two columns and be super long.
As Foretold is a sweet card too, especially with lots of cheap stuff to play at instant speed.
I think before a lot of the other stuff you listed, I'd probably look at stuff like Impulse, Anticipate, etc, but I think our heads are in more or less the same place.
You cannot suspend it, as the sig spell can only ever be in the command zone or on the stack. Any time it would go to another zone, it goes back to the command zone instead.
You cannot cast it, as it has no casting cost and cannot be cast.
Right after seeing the spoiler, I decided to quickly throw together a list of what I might want in a Kykar deck.
I'm currently over 100 cards, and it needs some refinement. I know there are some things that probably def need to go, and probably some stuff I missed that should def be here. I just wanted to share the quick list I threw together to maybe get some conversation going, people's creative juices going, etc.
Feel free to suggest adds or cuts, or completely different approaches, or just tell me I'm crazy. Whatever's good.
EDIT: I just realized that the list I posted before was somehow completely missing the creatures section, so that's there now. Also made some swaps, trimmed some fat, etc. It's down to 100 cards now.
I may be in the minority here as someone who is a dev by profession and does (has done, I guess) primers, but I can easily say that no amount of BBCode customization will come close to what I could do with HTML/CSS in terms of making a kick-ass primer.
Just out of curiosity, what isn't standardized about the BBCode here?
I don't remember any examples off the top of my head, but I remember running into issues when I was doing heavy primer work. There were times when certain BBCode didn't work as expected, or support for more modern tags was missing entirely. It's possible that much of this has been corrected when I wasn't looking, as I haven't really investigated it in a couple years, to be honest.
I would love it if MTGNexus were to have more standardized BBCode. Or, even better, if we would be able to format our posts using HTML/CSS. This sort of thing would be particularly useful for primers.
Speaking of primers, I think with the unavoidable community split caused by MTGSalvation staying open, it would be a good idea to have Nexus hit the ground running. It would likely be a good idea to reach out to primer creators and such and have popular content already migrated and ready to go on Nexus as soon as it goes live.
But! I've finally gotten around to posting the current incarnation of this deck over on Nexus, and it's entirely possible that I'll work it into a new primer in the near future. You can find that new thread here.
I just want to say thanks to all the people who followed this thread over the years, and helped serve as a sounding board as this deck evolved again and again.
I hope to see some of you over on Nexus.
Definitely does make a lot of tokens. And a lot of mana. With the massive amount of draw in the deck, I very rarely felt like I was making more mana than I knew what to do with. That mostly only happened with Smothering Tithe on the table, because that card is bonkers. I did throw in a Comet Storm as an easy win con for when I have a ton of mana, that can be found off of either Spellseeker or Mystical Tutor, and can be cast solely off spirits if necessary.
Also, with the mass of tokens I was making, I decided I wanted a little more support for them, so I threw in an Intangible Virtue and a Divine Visitation. Made a few more changes to the deck too, to remove some stuff I was underwhelmed by or to fix some holes.
You're right about them being basically free whenever I've got Kykar on the table, but I found that after the first game people started to realize I shouldn't be allowed to keep Kykar on the table. Without Kykar on the table, they're very low impact cards. I may squeeze one or two of the better ones in at some point, I dunno.
Looks promising.
Aetherflux Reservoir was in the first draft but got cut. Impact Tremors is/was on my short list for options, so that may still come in at some point.
Aria of Flame, though. That could be a sweet idea. Completely forgot that thing got printed. Might need to find a spot for it.
There's obvious potential to the Proteus Staff and Divergent Transformations plan, with the only creatures being a couple of Eldrazi titans or something. It's possible the list may turn in that direction at some point, but for right now I don't think it's what I'm going for.
Arcane Denial, Delay, and Ertai's Meddling are great cards in a combo deck. You don't care about the downsides because you're winning the game on the spot. That's not the case here. Negate, Unwind, and Supreme Will are all cards I'd play before them. But again, we're more or less on the same page, I think.
An alternative that I've seen done for this sort of thing is to have any HTML based posts/edits go into a review queue before they can go live, but that requires dev-savvy manpower to review them, which is meh.
I don't mind chatting with your dev one on one if you/they are interested.
But, either way, if the decision is to stick with just BBCode, I will definitely have some requests. Like, just off the top of my head after having just posted a thread, a better way to manage deck block layout (columns and such). The way that's done automatically here can be frustrating sometimes with it trying to shove everything into two columns and be super long.
Ephara, God of the Polis is sweet. You're absolutely right about her pairing well with Kykar, and of course that means she pairs well with the others as well.
As Foretold is a sweet card too, especially with lots of cheap stuff to play at instant speed.
I think before a lot of the other stuff you listed, I'd probably look at stuff like Impulse, Anticipate, etc, but I think our heads are in more or less the same place.
You cannot cast it, as it has no casting cost and cannot be cast.
Ancestral Vision would not be a good choice for a sig spell.
Right after seeing the spoiler, I decided to quickly throw together a list of what I might want in a Kykar deck.
I'm currently over 100 cards, and it needs some refinement. I know there are some things that probably def need to go, and probably some stuff I missed that should def be here. I just wanted to share the quick list I threw together to maybe get some conversation going, people's creative juices going, etc.
Feel free to suggest adds or cuts, or completely different approaches, or just tell me I'm crazy. Whatever's good.
EDIT: I just realized that the list I posted before was somehow completely missing the creatures section, so that's there now. Also made some swaps, trimmed some fat, etc. It's down to 100 cards now.
1 Kykar, Wind's Fury
Lands (34)
1 Command Tower
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Mystic Monastery
1 City of Brass
1 Mana Confluence
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Flooded Strand
1 Arid Mesa
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Plateau
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Prairie Stream
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Fiery Islet
1 Sunbaked Canyon
1 Strip Mine
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Mistveil Plains
2 Plains
4 Island
1 Mountain
Planeswalkers (2)
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Spellseeker
1 Monastery Mentor
1 Ephara, God of the Polis
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
1 Docent of Perfection
Instants (27)
1 Brainstorm
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Opt
1 Path to Exile
1 Swan Song
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tithe
1 Battle Hymn
1 Azorius Charm
1 Boros Charm
1 Comet Storm
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dramatic Reversal
1 Expansion // Explosion
1 Mana Drain
1 Negate
1 Remand
1 Counterflux
1 Disallow
1 Force of Negation
1 Generous Gift
1 Jeskai Charm
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Wear // Tear
1 Cryptic Command
1 Dig Through Time
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Serum Visions
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Vandalblast
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Winds of Abandon
1 Council's Judgment
1 Time Spiral
1 Temporal Mastery
1 Treasure Cruise
Artifacts (12)
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Azorius Signet
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Izzet Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Talisman of Creativity
1 Talisman of Progress
1 Sunforger
Enchantments (5)
1 Mystic Remora
1 Intangible Virtue
1 Rhystic Study
1 Smothering Tithe
1 Divine Visitation
Speaking of primers, I think with the unavoidable community split caused by MTGSalvation staying open, it would be a good idea to have Nexus hit the ground running. It would likely be a good idea to reach out to primer creators and such and have popular content already migrated and ready to go on Nexus as soon as it goes live.