Oh, yeah, absolutely! This hasn't been updated since the viper came out, and it was standard at the time, so no longbow. I have a modern version I'm working on that sounds a bit more like yours, but I'll see what you have going on for sure.
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Hey Brother. I decided to give this a more in depth look for you, and here's what I think. 1) if you have any scry lands lying around that have blue in them somewhere, throw them in. 2) Warden of Evos Island is not doing you any favors; the only other flier you have is sphinx of chimes. If there's a better flier for 3, use him. 3) There are better counters than Thassa's Resolve. Syncopate? 4) Maybe only use 3 Bidents; they're great, but more than one will clutter up your hand, and since you'll be scrying/drawing a lot, you'll be able to find one. Maybe even only two? 5) I really like Crypsis and Ordeal of Thassa for this deck. Ordeals are kind of my thing, but you can have some too. It will ramp damage on hard to block creatures, and help you draw cards pretty quickly. 6) Idk about 4 Curse of Swine's. Look at other removal? Rapid hybridization, gridlock, blustersquall, disperse.
Okay, so I've been tinkering with it. One question though; Scourge of Valkas vs, Awaken the ancient. They are both effectively 5 drops. Awaken is bigger, and has haste, Valkas has flying and can pump itself up to be big. Given that I'm running a lot of burn spells that will limit the opponent's blocking options and Chandra's +1 eliminates a blocker, might not Awaken's haste be better than Valkas's flying?
This is crazy interesting; thanks for being so helpful!
So what creature, other than the Phoenix, would you run in a deck like this? I have an Izzet deck that's crazy good; it runs guttersnips, delvers, goblin electromancers, and Talrand, and the little support creatures for the massive amount on instants ans sorceries work great, so I figured I would stick to a winning formula, but try and build it around Chandra. You're saying they'll just get canned right away, so what would suit me better?
I think I'm leaning more the control route, but why are the bigger creatures not useful in such a deck? You control the game, inhibit what they can do and then BAM; you have a few big hitter in case what you have going early isn't enough. I'm not arguing, I'm just curious; I'm trying to take the next step from devoted casual player.
It doesn't get much play, but I figured it would ramp up the burn spells later in the game, when three damage wasn't going to cut it to get rid of a really troublesome creature. No?
Interesting. I know it gets like, zero play, but it still seems viable to me. Later in the game, the two drop burn spells aren't quite enough to clear the board; I figured the gauntlet would fix that, no?
And I don't like the New Prahv thing. it's like 5 mana to detain one creature for a turn.
I really like safe passage for your filibuster counters... it's like a free turn in the bank. And Divine deflection might not be as good as I thought it was, because you have to have the mana for it. And yes, I love the test subjects, because they are small, good walls, and then as time goes on (and this is a stall deck) they get ridiculous. And sleep is good, but you are, I think, focusing too much on preventing damage from creatures. All the detain stuff and defensive creatures should be able to keep them in check. Hence why I STILL like safe passage for this deck.
Ah, well reasoned! I already made the switch, but now I'm even happier with it; thank you!
I suppose getting to cast it twice would help Talrand/Guttersnipe. I wish I didn't have to go into Innistrad for a draw card; it's the only one in the deck not from 13 or Ravnica. Which is not a big deal now, but it would help down the road and keep things neat.
The Street Spasm are simply an attempt to keep the price down; the mortars have been really expensive everywhere I've looked. And as far as Amass/Think Twice goes, I have always preferred amass because drawing one card seems useless; why not just have a different card in it's place that you would have drawn instead? Is there something there that I'm missing?
Try and get it down to 60 cards in the main deck; it really helps. Also, you rarely want to go over 24 land, but I would go as high as 25 with how expensive those Leviathans are. The ratios most people swear by are 24 land, 24 creatures, 12 spells, but you can flex those numbers a bit; mine are usually about 23:22:15.
You are absolutely correct about it's needing to be quicker, and I found your Infect deck useful as well; it put me onto Contagion Clasp and the whole proliferate theme that eventually convinced me to abandon white in favor of blue. I think I have addressed the speed problem though, and think that it is now where it needs to be for a relatively inexpensive deck.