dknight27

I'm absolutely in love with Hard Evidence, it does what blue has had a hard time with for the entire history of the game: protect itself while not losing tempo or material. I have no idea why it doesn't see more play in pure control decks, but that's me.

Some self-mill cards would help Psychatog: [[Mental Note]] and [[Thought Scour]] are both perfect fits for extra fodder. But the big combo with Psychatog is [[Upheaval]]. You float 3 mana, bounce everything, replay the Psychatog, then next turn ditch your hand and grave for lethal damage.

I can't recommend [[Deafening Silence]] enough in a build like this. I'd consider cutting a land and 3 of the recursion cards for 4 copies, cause Silence does nothing to you and stops a good chunk of decks cold for 1 mana.

Unfortuantely Might of Alara and Gaea's Might do the opposite of what you want in here. Since you only have forests, each will give you +1/+1. They don't check the amount of a basic land you control (how many forests), they check how many types of lands you control (forests, mountains, etc).

You're better off with an oldschool [[Giant Growth]] or a cantrip like [[Audacity]].

Builds like this are all about speed. You've got weenies that get pumped by equipments, so you need the mana to cast the critters, cast the equipments, and equip the equipments. So you want cheap equipments that equip cheaply so you've got something going by turn 3, otherwise you're a step behind the whole game. Remember, you're investing time in equipping the critters, so if the critters get killed, you're further behind, it's the primary weakness of builds like this. You don't care what the equipments actually do as much as you care that they're on the field and equipped as fast as possible.

Check out (all budget):

[[Lavaspur Boots]]
[[Bonesplitter]]
[[Eater of Virtue]]
[[Open the Armory]]

Both banned in modern unfortunately

[[Glissa, the Traitor]] has several budget builds that can be built around her. Seems right up your alley.

Decks like this really, really need 'cantrips', meaning cards that replace themselves. As they ping for damage, thin the deck, and get you what you need without losing material.

[[Opt]]
[[Consider]]
[[Sleight of Hand]]

All under a buck.

That's what my mother always told me.

I'd also advise swapping out Midnight Charm for [[Vampire Lacerator]] to get that damage clock going, keep the curve low, and because you'll have plenty of life and won't care about his bleeding basically at all. And he's worth about 10 cents.

Nocturnus is 5 bucks, but the other 2 are extremely cheap and fit perfectly

There's some newer ideas that can be implemented in a build like this if you're interested in modernizing it a bit. I do miss the old Stuffy days.

I kinda like it, cause it fetches all the other critters. So if he needs land hate, he gets it. If he needs a ball, he gets it, and if he needs the awakener, he gets it. Plus it's turn 1, so between that and kozilek, you've got an almost guaranteed turn 1 positive thing to do that doesn't require anything from opponent's opening. But hey, that's me.

I'd suggest checking out:

[[Drana, Liberator of Malakir]], [[Vampire Nocturnus]], [[Defile]], assuming the deck is on a budget.

I had the beautiful dream of slapping Lashwrithe on him and swinging for a bunch of unblockable damage, but it was not to be

That's fair. I was super attracted to the affinity for swamps idea to be able to play him turn 3 and still have 1 open, but Nighthawk comes with so many benefits it probably outweighs that idea. Good call

I feel like Boggart Trawler is 1 mana high of being worth like a hundred bucks

You're definitely going to want to look into running some oldschool [[Bonesplitter]]s in here. I'd also consider [[Collateral Damage]] over Infernal Plunge. Mana is nice, but all you're going to do with it is potentially equip something (rest of the deck is so low curve you don't need it), and 3 damage to the face or to remove a threat fits a lot better and is basically never a dead draw in here (at least compared to the Plunge).

The idea is to use it with Olivia to steal vamps and ping stuff on the cheap. With the reduction, 1 red pings a critter, makes it a vamp, and puts a +1/+1 on Olivia (who is now a legit threat for commander damage death). And for 5 mana, you get to steal a critter and juice Olivia.

Maybe replace it with [[Heartstone]], which will save you a ton of mana, and is relatively cheap.

Seems like [[Chromatic Star]] would be a perfect fit here. Too bad it's not a food. This whole thing looks promising though, just the sort of build that ignites my imagination. I'm not super jazzed about the 3-drop nature of Heaped Harvest, but the back end of getting 2 lands out of it with the Cat trigger is probably worth it.