raizieldragon

-Spear of Heliod, +Mass Calcify

Thanks. Finally got around to fitting those in :)

Be that as it may, that was the intentional design of this deck: to steal all the good stuff everyone else brings to the table. Most of my decks are just theory-crafting, though I would like to make all of them one day. If everyone else stops playing good stuff so I can't steal it, I just beat them with what I have.

True. I tried to limit the number of cards I included that picked on just one player. I also was looking for things that have continuous, static effects, rather than one-off temporary effects. If a creature is too big, I just need to play more -*/-* effects until the creature I want dead is dead.

Except that they require attacking and connecting in order to draw cards, so their usefullness depends on the board state. If attacking would be disadvantageous, or if they have plenty of blockers, I'm stuck not being able to draw any cards. Harmonize is a guaranteed 3 cards.

Good call on True Conviction.

Rogue's Gloves, Coastal Piracy, Dragonlord Ojutai, Bident of Thassa, Arbiter of the Ideal, Consecrated Sphinx, Drogskol Reaver, Isperia, Supreme Judge, Medomai the Ageless, Sphinx Ambassador, Sturmgeist, Thieving Magpie, Windreader Sphinx, and Isperia the Inscrutable herself all provide card advantage. I'm not sure what I would cut to make room for other draw effects.

I haven't got to play the deck yet. Just finished building it yesterday. Hopefully will play it sometime this week/weekend. I also see him as an instant kill target, but we will see.

Tiny leaders is a much quicker format, and I feel like you wouldn't have enough time to enjoy charging up your fungi with lots of counters. Also, you wouldn't have access to Doubling Season, Contagion Engine, Sporesower Thallid, Sporoloth Ancient, all of which help charge your fungi up faster or turn counters into tokens faster.

If you drop: Mana Reflection, Rhys the Redeemed, Elesh Norn, Vorinclex, Fetid Heath, Twilight Mire, Wooded Bastion, and Volrath's Stronghold, you cut the deck cost in half without really eating into the theme of the deck.

I like Myriad Landscape in almost any EDH deck. Even if it's not a mono-color deck, it still thins two lands from your deck. That's a good deal to me. Only time I wouldn't run it is if I just have so many non-basics that there aren't enough basics to make it worthwhile.

Vesuva and Thespian's Stage aren't bad, and as you said, making more Cabal Coffers is nice. However, they are practically useless without first finding Cabal Coffers, and once you have Cabal Coffers, you don't really need another one. I find that unless it's super late game or you have Urborg out, it's not good to have too many other non-basics when using Coffers. Maybe if I were to switch it up as you recommend, all the extra mana would be worth it, since Drana is a bottomless mana dump.

On that front, Drana was of course a contender, being another Legendary Vampire. However, I went with Anowon for a couple of reasons. For one, he FEELS more "Vampire Tribal", which is what I was going for. For the second (and this will go against your main argument for Drana) his ability is more symmetrical and fair to the board. I'd much rather each person lose a creature of their choice than have a way of picking off their choicest targets. Anowon keeps the token population in check and makes people delay playing big threats until they have enough fodder to keep it alive for a couple turns. Lastly, Anowon is more interesting to build around. Drana say "play lots of mana pump and kill everything, then fill in with good stuff". Anowon strays a bit from black good stuff by not wanting to run a lot of non-vampire creatures. Sheoldred is pretty much a given in any EDH deck that runs black, but it ended up not making the list when I knew she would probably just get sacced.

That all having been said, I have not played the deck yet, but I imagine our metas aren't exactly the same either. And if a commander draws a lot of hate (and honestly, what doesn't?), then that must mean they are a good choice for a commander.

Everything looks pretty good. The only thing I'm not sure about is Kemba. You have a decent number of equipments, but I feel like the chances of drawing Kemba AND enough equipment to make her worth it is low. Your mileage may vary though. You've been playing the deck, so maybe she works for you when you get her. You don't have much mana acceleration, but that's ok because, surprisingly, you've kept your mana curve fairly low. With all of the bombs you have in here I was surprised that your curve drops so steeply after 4. Still seems like it would take a while to get Avacyn out, and most opponents would likely be saving their scalpel spells for her by then. Though you also have plenty of other juicy targets that likely pull a lot of attention. Maybe by the time you can cast Avacyn, they've already had to use all of their answers on the rest of your stuff.

I see you mentioned that card advantage is sometimes an issue. Scroll Rack might help with that, especially since you have Land Tax. Those two together are amazing. Land Tax is an extra 3 cards per turn, and after you drop your land for the turn you've got extra lands you can trade back into your deck for 2 more "draws".

Thanks. Check out some of my other decks. I have a few mono white ones that might give you ideas for your Avacyn deck as well. I've considered making an Avacyn deck, but I feel it would be a bit frowned upon in my playgroup. People hate to see her hit the board because it becomes such a pain to remove anything. I have a Jareth deck that has "indestructibility" as the theme, and she is in that. I've been meaning to post lists of decks I actually have instead of decks I want to make. I think I'll start today and start with the Jareth deck, so keep an eye out for it.

Your point about lack of instants and sorceries seems pointless without specifying what instants and sorceries, and what capabilities they provide. I prefer permanents with repeatable abilities over one-off instants/sorceries, though certain instants/sorceries, if powerful enough, are of course worth the inclusion.

I don't have many draw engines, but the ones I do have are repeatable and abusable.

As for counter magic, it's really just not my style I guess is the only thing I can say. For every counter spell I DONT include, there's another potential bomb for my opponents to worry about.

Getting rid of Marchesa would, of course, slow this deck down a bit, but in my local meta, tuck spells like Hinder aren't very common. The worst you usually have to worry about is a normal counter or near-immediate destruction. Countering would of course require me to re-cast Marchesa, but I have ways of dealing with destruction once she is in by ensuring I can get a +1/+1 counter on her as soon as possible.

As for your board-wipes every 2-3 turns, the whole point of this deck is to be able to recover from board wipes (assuming Marchesa is out). Many of the creatures come in with their own +1/+1 counters, and I have ways of getting them on the ones that don't. The same would be true for spot removal.

Graveyard hate is also a potential problem. Once board-wiped, all the creatures have to spend the rest of the turn in the graveyard before coming back, so obviously any way of clearing a graveyard would clear my potential of getting those creatures back. This assumes that the opponent is saving their board wipes for when they ALSO have a graveyard wipe handy.

I'm not trying to insinuate that the deck is perfect in any way, but my meta consists of casual EDH players, most of which tend to use either the pre-made EDH decks or only make "good stuff" decks with things they have on hand, rather than building focused decks by cherry-picking specific cards.

If you have any specific recommendations for additions of cards that would work better than existing ones, or for cards that don't quite synergise with the theme of the deck, I would love to hear about them.

This wouldn't go infinite because the saprolings that are made on the second casting of Whip Silk won't be druids, and so, won't be able to make mana.