My historic deck

It'll get better as I win, but right now I'm 5-0 because it puts me in bronze league against starter decks, and they have no shot.

Can you get a read on how the pairing system works ?
It should be based on ranking and "card power"
Do you think card power is based on rarity or popularity?

I'm also interested in knowing if the "cosmetics" can be somehow optional, rather than applied to a whole set.
(My aim is to find out if you can have a set with 4 different kinds of art, because that would mean you could track the efficiency of individual cards like I do with my own projects)

What's the final aim here ?
Building the mill deck ?

It should be possible to develop some middle stages of it, sort of like some of the sideboard cards could start out as main.

As long as there are different sets you can put them in from different sets (You can put in 4 different shocks, but only 1 ember cleave)

Sad wdm :(
Oh well, then I guess things have to be done by playing against sparky with some cards working as a sort of proxies.

The day its possible to play a playset with 4 different art must simply be demanded.
That, or some sort of identifying marks (even if it's just a number)

From a programming view they must have had such a thing in the alpha program, to be able to fine tune the draw algorithm, and even general play.

This deck has become a bloody mess, and yet it has a number of interesting directions you could take it.
I'm pretty sure lifegain and doom whisperer will be an amazing thing. Hydroid crasis provides aggro, draw and life.
The ramp will enable doom whisperer. Brazen borrower to protect all of them (or just bouncing crasis to draw more)
I could see this become a powerfull BUG colored deck.

You cut the -1/-1 gain life x-spell. Probably to protect your ramp, but I think it could still be good in long games where you have lands enough to be damned about ramping anymore. Against aggro like monored they will bonecrush and frostbite your ramp anyways, making it playable against them. White is also fast enough that it doesn't care about your ramp and will giant kill to get through any big threats.

Aiming at a croxa/goldspan angle will demand discard, and the logical step will be to suppress ramp by bone crushing too, so you will be extremely divided in trying to ramp if you go that direction, because you will be busy with discard and burn. I can see blue as a backup color there for countering and draw.

The problem is every time I go up a league the meta completely changes, so that's why there are huge changes, right now it's a mess because that's what works, all I see are lifegain, auras, and control. I beat lifegain because I attack for to much damage by the end about 70/30, auras get one big creature, a lot of the time is smaller then one of my creatures, but most of the time is bigger about 40/60, and last is control which I manage to beat, because every time they tap out I play a creature that most of the time gives me card advantage about 80/20. It's a mess but it works against the decks I'm facing.

I've been thinking a lot about what kinds of sub meta that exists in arena, which is part of why I started on the halfdeck project. A lot of the top meta has visible foundations in the free cards, but also work in a classic cyclical meta with the usual themes.

In my experience the more rogue layers of meta are beaten by consistency, which is why the top decks are the top decks. They are consistent. Having an unpredictable deck leads to unpredictable situations, and it will sort of be random who prospers at these.

The foundation of building my halfdeck series is sort of based on discovering the patterns behind how the meta got the shape it has.

Think about how you are sliding into the basic structure of ramp, and research how ramp deals with the different kind of decks out there, because you will need some of the same tricks to be consistent, but you must also retain your rogueness to deal with the future top.

How many layers of official rank is there ?

Bronze was mainly started decks, I destroyed them with knowing how to play the game, and got my Grixis deck. Silver was slightly upgraded starter deck destroyed by the value of my grixis deck. Gold I switched to best of 3 and was anything and everything, saw starter decks and tier 1 decks, I went to best of 3 and beat people because they don't understand transformation sideboards. Platinum is where I'm at now and I described it above. Diamond I have no clue and Mythic is what is on MTGgoldfish and similair sites.

Transformational sb is pretty good to have.
Wish boards is something I think can be just as powerful, but it's dependant on drawing the three current wish cards.

2 of them are in your colours

I know :)
Technically I could use karn too.

I don’t see you playing millstone

There's other cards to get.

That was my way of saying it's useless, but I didn't realize they made sword of body and mind in historic

Also what do you think of playing shadow in historic?

It should be doable.
Losing life is easy.
Perhaps with scourge.
The important thing is to notice what can kill it, and what plays that.

There's one new hate card in strixhaven that I'm gonna try to get my hands on.
"Go blank" 2B sorcery
Makes them discard 2, then empties their graveyard.
That's a pretty neat card...

At the moment I'm deep into combo territory with my grixis project.
I got past grissleshoal and hexproof and is now up against RUW saheeli/felidar combo. It's an early model without wall of omen, but it has plenty of burn and beaters.

I think go blank will be really harsh on some types of combo, but from my games against old combo I can see there will be some combo that really won't care much about that card. This will be combo that draws a lot and has a combo not involving the graveyard.

That makes it tough to build up a sideboard.
Usually I have 5 cards against aggro, 5 against control and 5 against combo.
The cards usually overlap so that I actually have 10 hate cards against each decktype, but it is getting harder to pin down exactly how many of the decks are graveyard combo. I tend to classify graveyard aggro decks as combo, and by doing so usually have a number of cards against those decktypes, but it is often at the cost of ignoring combo that has no graveyard interaction. Maybe I need to split up my sideboard in another way in the future...

Oh, yeah, some of the learn cards and lessons are multicolor. My guess is that we'll see a weird blend of them. So far I'm not impressed, but I do tend to search for some pretty specific things. The best learncard so far is the professor of psychology.

I've also come to consider coax from the blind extremities. Sure it's an eldrazi wish, but there are some interesting eldrazi out there that I might actually find a use for, like matter reshaper and thought-knot seer or even eldrazi instigator. I think a lot of the old eldrazi have been forgotten and have become cheaper to buy, so I'm considering to build up a list of eldrazi I might want to coax/wish for.

What deck is this for?

The shrieker deck :)
Damn auto correct, I meant "coax from the blind eternities"
All in all there are 40 different eldrazi that I might let hang out in my sideboard.
The good question is which ones, but the sheer number of them makes me wonder why noone has ever taken up on building an eldrazi washboard.

Since I play with 3 mindshrieker a couple of eldrazi can actually be allowed to be big ones, so any deck without removal may be ripped quickly appart by milling my own eldrazi. I could even see the deck adapt a couple of "not of this world" to both boost and protect the bird.

A lot of eldrazi have the ingest mechanic which could be a way to defeat combo. I'm very impressed by sludge crawler which both invests but is a neat aggro card as well.

Bearer of silence is also pretty cool and there are just so many different abilities among the eldrazi that an eldrazi wish board must be possible.

I also tried to mention eldrazi obligatory but got the name wrong.

I can also see some of the eldrazi with emerge being either milled to boost the bird, or be cast of on shriekmaw to enter play.

While I'm preparing to test wishes I will also be testing the scope of an eldrazi wishboard.

I would add in a singular big one, just incase the game goes on for too long.

There are plenty to choose from :)
I'll list the 40 I've considered at the next update, which is within a few days.

I must admit that I'm being extremely tempted by kozilek's shrieked which isn't that bad in my build, and I do call it my shrieker deck.

Okay, updated my grixis deck, as always leaving 9 cards open, so I added 4 coax from the blind eternities.
I also wrote up a small article about coax being used like fae of wishes.

How else would you use it?

Yeah :) I do try to gear up on my writing. I'm preparing myself for writing some books, and need to be able to write down my own thoughtflow quickly and coherent.

Practice is everything :)

Speaking of it, have you seen results from my "lift stuff more difficult muscle program" ?

It was interesting, so far it has showed observable results after the first week and stopped there. That was better then the personal trainer I had for a month though.

I guess the trick is to take it to the next level all the time.
At some point I decided to try out the same thing with my feet, so I started to work with both arms and legs at the job. I ended up being able to lob up a euro pallet close to two meters into the air (I did have to direct it to where it was supposed to stack with my hands) I also started to push packages into place with my feet like some weird sort of kick boxer.

Unfortunately two nerves got tangled in my back, and I've been recovering ever since from a life in pain.
I used to wake up screaming because I'd slept in a wrong position and my leg just went into a cramp.
It's even partially psychosomatic, as I've sprung into a cramp at a couple of magic tournaments when I got excited from winning. It sort of ruins your attention and causes a stir. I think it's been 5 years since I've had such a heavy cramp.