dknight27

I'm not a big fan of ancestral vision in this deck. You can't snap it back and its a horrible dop deck. You might also consider throwing in fetch lands to up the grave count.

What legality and competitive level are you going for in this?

I love the idea of the shrines: cumulative passive control. I also remember being in awe of decks like this back in the day. My big smackdown-awakening was against an elf deck that produced infinite mana. Good times

Even though this is casual, the curve is still mighty high. Best case you hit a drop turn 3 or 4, then you're playing catchup the whole game which is bad for retroactive control. I would recommend green mana boys to speed things up and help fix the mana problems. Birds of paradise and sylvan caryatid come to mind.

I'm also personally not a fan of 100% retroactive decks like this that rely on fog's to buy time, but that's me. You have access to whatever colors you want, so you can run some sick and cheap removal/control cards (lightning bolt, swords to plowshares, fatal push, terminate)

Just my thoughts.

Has this seen much playtesting? I'm not a big fan of spell pierce because of how drastically low the and count is and because you absolutely need to have 1-drops on turn 1 and 2 (hopefully 2), so you can't keep the mana open to use pierce, and the longer the game goes the less effective it is. Fatal push seems like a better fit to me so you can clear out any early blockers to max out the aggro damage.

I personally always try to fit in dark confidant in decks like this, but that's me.

Riku craves mana like no other, and this deck already has a high curve with limited acceleration. I highly suggest throwing in as many 2-drop mana accelerators like gruul signet and the other usual mana producers like commander's sphere, chromatic lantern, gilded lotus, etc.

Just a thought.

If you want to play around with discarding them to pull them back, or with recursion effects with zombies, I highly recommend going red/black/green so you can use faithless looting, tymaret, rakdos guildmage, and the like, on top of the other good color interactions like lighting bolt, terminate, kolaghan's command, abrupt decay, assassin's trophy, etc.

Just a thought.

I've always seen a lot of success in Meren decks with Green sun's zenith and Jarad's orders

Red and green have some fantastic support enchantments that should be considered in here.

flameshadow conjuring
zendikar resurgent
in the web of war
rage reflection
goblin war drums


Just a thought.

This deck's curve is a bit too top heavy. Even with the llanowars, 20 lands isn't going to get you the speed you need to hit the 3-drop and above this deck currently uses.

My advice would be to nix the artifacts entirely (they are basically redundant), pull out blanchwood (again redundant), and focus on 2-drops that get you in the game faster and hit very hard like kalonian tusker, garruk's champion, strangleroot geist, avatar of the resolute.


If you don't want to go this way and want to ramp into bigger critters, you need 1 drops that produce mana and more lands so you can hopefully hit 3 mana turn 2 and 5 mana turn 3-4.

You're missing some artifact staples and mono-color EDH staples that will help this build a lot:

Thousand-year elixir, sol ring, mind's eye, swiftfoot boots, solemn simulacrum, ponder, brainstorm, trinket mage, trophy mage, caged sun, ichor wellspring, Padeem.

Just a thought

The curve on this is very, very high, and you have no consistent way to ramp into anything as you need all 3 urza lands to hit and you only have 4 maps to search. I would consider lowering the curve or working inn green (like tron decks) to up the land search.

What legality and level of competition do you want this to be?

I've had a lot of success with Kamahl, fist in my tatyova deck as a win condition

Dawn of hope and well of lost dreams are oloro's best friends

Remand is good because it does exactly what control vs agro wants, stalling for time. Control wins by grinding out a game with card advantage and taking tempo away from agro, agro wins by maxing out tempo so that it won't run out of cards in hand/on the field by the time they are top decking. Remand devastates this plan if you have it in the opening hand, and if you top deck it it's not the worst thing in the world, as you get to draw a card at instant speed even if opponent gets to replay the card. You even get the drawn card as an option to deal with the card opponent has to recast. It also helps greatly with your rune snags and mana leaks. Short version, remand turn 2 basically says "take an extra turn".

A wrath effect is a must in the side, I would even consider mainboarding sweltering suns (never a dead draw) and keeping 2 wrath's in the side.

I'm still advising against the rune snags and mana leaks. 4 negates would go a long way in here.

If you want to stick with 8 critters, I would advise swapping in 4 monastery swiftspear, as they knock up the speed, cut down the curve (giving you more mana to protect yourself with), and combo perfectly in decks that rain instants and sorceries.

Plus the 3/1 flyer flash starts a damage clock, so its control wrapped in a pseudo-win condition. Its a hell of a card

I don't think this build needs 24 lands, even with the 6 fetch and the 1-drop tactic cards. The curve is low and you can't run any man lands or tactics lands, so I would think you could easily get away with 22.

Also, I've never been a fan of thing in the ice. Its slow and vulnerable, and blue has excellent alternatives. Vendilion clique, snapcaster, torrential gearhulk, etc.

Just my thoughts.

I'm not the biggest fan of drana in here. You don't really need the attack boost or the devotion. Perhaps think about swapping it out for faithless looting, as it goes perfectly with bloodghast, combos well with bloodsoaked champion, and fixes mid/late game dead draws.

Also, worth thinking about bloodbraid elf, boggart ram gang, vexing devil, and atarka's command