Some good stuff in this deck, I had completely forgot about Nicol Bolas as a Grixis option. Very solid. Thanks for the ideas!
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Both good suggestions, thanks! I'll playtest a bit online tonight and post back with how it goes. Appreciate the input!
Other cards that would work well (main or side): - Liliana of the Veil - Slaughter Games - Sever the Bloodline - Mizzium Mortars I'm also looking to add 2-3 "bombs" to the deck, hopefully without messing up the control elements. My previous version ran an Inferno, Wurmcoil and Massacre Wurm, and it worked great. Thinking about one or two of these options: - Necropolis Regent (6) - Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (6) - Moonveil Dragon (6) - Hamletback Goliath (7) - Utvara Hellkite (8)
Thanks KJ, I've tried Cockatrice before, it's pretty good for being free, but I'm so used to MTGO that Cockatrice drove me nuts with how cumbersome I found it to be. Bonfire is bound to come down in price eventually, right? :)
A couple questions I have: - Is Bonfire of the Damned a good mainboard card for this deck? I don't have them to test with online (too pricey), but I have paper copies -- just not sure what to remove. Ideally with as much control as I have, opponents won't be overrunning me with creatures, but Bonfire is just so good regardless. Not sure. - Full playset of Dreadbore mainboard? I'd like to go with four, just not sure what to remove. - Full playset of Snapcaster Mage? Same as above. It seems a lot of players don't like Rewind, but I feel it is perfect for this style of Draw-Go deck, since it's basically a free spell, and leaves you with mana for pinging with Olivia or Forbidden Alchemy on the opponent's end step, rather than having to choose one or the other. If an opponent is able to somehow nullify those six cards (3x Olivia, 3x Guttersnipe), there is no alternate win condition. Ideally, your control elements should be enough to prevent that from happening. If not, Bonfire, Rakdos's Return, and/or Talrand can be boarded in for additional offense in those rare cases. The other main weakness is a fast aggro deck that is able to play a lot of creatures in the early game. For these, board in Cyclonic Rift, Bonfire, Stab Wound, and/or the Staticasters. Shrieking Affliction is also a surprisingly effective win condition against those fast aggro decks since they empty their hand out so quickly. Combined with Exquisite Blood, it's a great delay tactic! But I don't know what to take out for it, so it remains out of the deck.
Ok made a few more tweaks in addition to the recommendations I made above. I moved the Rootborn Defenses to the mainboard and replaced the Gatecreepers with Farseeks. Also reduced Virtue and PLives to one of each, and went to four Farseeks to make the deck a little faster. These made big differences. Had a funny game against a Hamletback Goblin, which got up to about 600/600 due to all my tokens, but fortunately he didn't have a way to give it trample, so I was able to chump block for a few turns until I could attack for the win with about 40 tokens. After the tweaks, my winning rate went to around 60/40 in my favor. Will post the updated version of the deck in a few days after I playtest a bit more.
After playing this deck online, I went 10-20 after 30 games (no side-boarding). Here's my self-review of the deck. First, when it works, it's amazing, and it's a blast. The goal of getting Trostani, Feed the Pack, and Tree of Redemption is not that hard to achieve, and when you do, you can almost always win. This is a deck that makes it so you don't really care what your health is because once you can get your primary combo on the board, you can ratchet your health back up in no time. When the combo works, it's a super fun deck to play and surprise your opponents. More than a few times, opponents would be impressed by the synergies and offer compliments on a creative and fun deck. Unfortunately, the deck as it is, has too many weaknesses, and if you can't get the primary win condition to work effectively, the secondary win conditions are too slow or too easy to overcome for most decks in the current format. Here are what I found to be the weaknesses, and the specific changes I'd make to help alleviate them. Weakness to burn or counter decks. The early defenders you're able to play don't usually draw out their burn or counter spells. Which means when you finally do get a chance to play creatures like Trostani or the Temple, they get targeted in a hurry, leaving very few remaining turns to re-establish board position with attackers to kill them before they kill you. Fast aggro decks with either removal or counters. Because there's very little interaction of our own in this deck -- none aside from the 4 Charms -- you usually have no answer for their onslaught. The exception to this is the Tree of Redemption, which is very important in this deck. I will add that the charms are great in this deck, and I used them as an exile spell almost exclusively. I wish you could run more than four! Spirits and token decks. Or any aggro deck with a lot of fliers. Angelic Wall is a good card for this matchup but there's only two of them. The Restoration Angel helps with fliers as well, but I discovered that in these matchups I usually had to use the Angel before I was ready to leverage it's flicker ability. Still good, but it generally wasn't enough. And if they were populate, it didn't really matter as you'd quickly be overrun with no real ability to prevent it. And any token deck with Intangible Virtue and/or Parallel Lives generally was too fast for this deck as well. Fast Humans decks also performed well, because of the speed, and number of creatures was just too many to keep blocking. Cards that I got very little value from include: - Wayfaring Temple: in 30 games, I never populated with them once. A couple times they got pretty large, 8/8 or so, but most of the time they ended up just trading with a removal card or being held back for blocking because I was already low on life and needed to stabilize. - Geist-Honored Monk: This is a great card, but most of the time it didn't fit what the board needed when I had it in hand. In the 30 games, I can only think of one time where it helped me stabilize enough to win, but a number of other cards probably could have done the same. - Chalice of Life: I have an unusual affinity for this card as I love it in other decks, but in this deck, it was essentially a "win more" card, in that, when I got to 30 life, I was on my way to winning already. There were times when the incremental life gain helped keep me in a game longer and gave me time to stabilize, so it wasn't a worthless card by any means, but I believe we can do better with those three slots. Cards that were excellent: - Tree of Redemption: As an early blocker it's awesome. It's ability to swap life totals is also under-rated, although not for the reason you might think (see below). The synergy with either Trostani or Feed the Pack is awesome. And when both are out, it's nearly an instant win, barring a board wipe, Detention Sphere or Sever the Bloodline. My favorite thing to do was, with Trostani and Feed the Pack already out, play the Tree, gain 13 life, swap my high life total with the Tree, then feed the Tree to the pack for 30-ish tokens, gaining back a ton of life in the process. So much fun! - Rhox Faithmender: As an early blocker and an amplifier for Trostani, this guy definitely earned his slots in the deck. Often times, players would simply not attack because they didn't want me gaining life with each attack. - Feed the Pack: Gives you such a powerful creature advantage when you can turn your cheap casting Defender cards into high volume tokens and swap the power position on the battlefield. My recommendation for changes is to remove the 7 cards I mentioned earlier, and add a 3rd Feed the Pack, a 4th Trostani, 2 Intangible Virtues, 2 Parallel Lives, 1 Restoration Angel. One of the strengths of this deck is that so many of the creatures are high value targets for counter or removal, and these new cards help to leverage those creatures even more. I'd also replace the two Angelic Walls for 2 Oblivion Rings to give you more options for interaction with your opponent. Last, I'd replace 2 Forests with 2 Gavony Townships.
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