Bear in mind the mana from Braid of Fire shows up during your upkeep, so it will drain out before your main phase, meaning you can only use it for Instants, activation costs and/or flash cards. I personally don't think you have enough of any of those to justify it, but YMMV.
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Depends on the meta and/or whether you literally mean plains and forests.In the event you literally meant plains and forests your meta makes a difference as to whether or not he needs more. Nobody I play with is currently running Blood Moon or Back to Basics or From the Ashes or any nonbasic land hosers. As a result I personally don't feel a need to worry a lot about having a specific number of basic lands. Only catishpokw knows whether that holds true at his table.In the event you meant he just needs more lands and/or mana sources, I tend to agree. I myself usually run 36 lands, with around 10 alternate ways to get mana (artifact rocks, land tutors, mana dorks, ramp effects, etc). I've tweaked that over time to match the speed people I play with play at. Once upon a time running less was probably fine, and in this case it may be as well.
No Verduran Enchantress?Spirit of the Labrynith seems to hurt you badly. At least in my variation on this deck (Sigarda as the Commander) card draw via enchantresses is the reason I win. Cutting that off would cripple the deck.With that many enchantments on the field I bet you'll find Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is a mana-providing beast.Command Tower > Brushland
Land-wise I'm a fan of Temple of the False God and Ancient Ziggeraut in any deck with 30+ creatures, and Arena might be useful with that many big fatties.
At least at the table I play at you'd have a hard time in multi-player without some way to deal with enchantments and artifacts. We've got a guy playing the token deck dropping Doubling Season and Glare of Subdual or the Sharuum guy with tutoring for Darksteel Forge or the Oloro deck with like 80 pillow fort enchantments making you spend like 46 mana per creature to attack.Now, your may play a lot of 1v1 so it's not an issue, or the multi-player games may not have many cards like that to deal with, so ymmv there. At my table I would advise room for at least 3-4 ways to handle indestructibles or Theros gods or pain-in-the-a$$ enchantments.Hull Breach: Two mana to kill an artifact and an enchantment. It won't deal with indestructibles but it's a good value.Deglamer: Tuck that Sharuum or Darksteel Forge or anything that's hard to deal with.Fade Into Antiquity: Exile that God or Darksteel ForgeCalming Verse: You need to tap out for it to not hit your stuff, but it's still really useable. Plus it's not targeted so you can handle anything with hexproof, etc.Lignify: Great way to lock down a problem commander, even better than killing it since it can't be recast.
Braid of Fire, while a fantastic card, gives you the mana during your upkeep which means it drains out before your main phase. You have no instants to use it on, so it probably won't do you much good.
Cover of Darkness is super solid in vamp tribal. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx generates crazy mana in mono edh.
No Conjurer's Closet? You have quite a few "enter the battlefield" effects it could abuse, it's a way to trigger evolve multiple times or refresh graft, etc. Especially if you're running Peregrine DrakeAqueous Form seems way too prone to just resulting in a two-for-one when someone Murders the creature. Whispersilk Cloak would give unblockable on top of Hexproof, and if the creature gets killed it hangs around for the next creature.Spike Weaver would give you unlimited fogs.Both Beastmaster Ascension and Archmage Ascension could get cheated into hitting their counter limit quick with Vorel.Both Pongify and especially Beast Within seem better than Snakeform.Fuel for the Cause is nice. Counter a spell AND add more counters.Inexorable Tide; make your spells add free counters passively.I'd run Deglamer over Naturalize because it'll get rid of Theros Gods, Darksteel stuff, things protected by Avacyn, etc.
Everyone's meta is different, so take the following with a grain of salt as I'm giving you advice based on how your deck would function sitting down at the tables I play at on EDH night:Not a game goes by where I don't see 2-3 of the following: Theros gods, Darksteel Plate/Forge/whatever, other indestructibles like Avacyn. The only real card in your entire deck that could handle those is Oblivion Ring, though Pacifism and Prison term would lock down Avacyn or a god (but not prevent their ability).If you were to sit at my table I would advise you to pick up at least a couple other ways to handle those cards. Condemn or Oblation or Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile would work for critters, and Deglamer and Return to Dust and Revoke Existence would work on Gods and Darksteel stuff. Additionally I've begun to see a rise in the amount of pain-in-the-ass lands as well like Yavima Hollow and Kor Sanctuary and Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth and Maze of Ith, so I've started having to run Strip Mine and Ghost Quarter.You may not see any of that, so YMMV, but it's something to consider.
I actually used it last night in my Kaalia deck. One guy had about 5 white tokens in play and a white general, one guy had Sharuum out and a white creature, one guy had Daxos protected by Lightning Greaves and another white creature and I had two big angels. I did a Brightflame for 2 (five mana to cast total). It killed 5 tokens, and Daxos who wasn't targetable otherwise and healed me for I think 26 damage. That's pretty solid. Frankly, spending five mana to do nothing more than kill a guy's shrouded general would be worth the cost.
No Brightflame? In a 4 player game I've had it kill 6-7 enemy creatures and put me up 50 life . . . and that's without Gisela in play.Probably have enough instants to make Sunforger a house, too.
Prismatic Lens wins up being just a 2 cmc mana rock that gets you 1 since you're playing mono-black. Maybe replace it with Worn Powerstone at the same cms? I'd think the comes-into-play-tapped effect would be more than offset long-term by getting 2 per tap. Coalition Relic might be worth considering too as proliferate effects could throw an extra counter onto it every other turn.I think you could replace some of your equipment with stuff that makes your guys unblockable. Bonesplitter and Viridian Claw are super cheap and nice to sacc to Throne of Geth but Prowler's Helm is also fairly cheap and it'll let you get through untouched more often than not.Suq'Ata Assassin drops poison counters and has built-in evasion.Spread the Sickness would be nice. Yeah, three more mana than Doom Blade, but you can hit black creatures, and the proliferate tag is really helpful.I like Do or Die over Devour Flesh. Why make someone saccrifice a creature when you can make them destroy half their creatures for the same mana cost?Maybe consider one of the old school land batteries like Subterranean Hangar. I'm running a few more proliferate effects than you (deck is black/blue not mono) but I've had one counter on it turn into four pretty quickly just from proliferate.Nice use of Dauthi Embrace. I run it in my infect deck and never see anyone else use it.
Totally understood. I myself am constantly fighting the battle between sentiment/theme and power/usefulness.
Master of the Hunt, precursor to Master of the Wild Hunt: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1534
It's not particularly good, but I'd have a tough time not including Master of the Hunt (Legends).
I'll keep all my suggestions under three bucks.Chromatic Lantern or Sol Ring or Worn Powerstone in place of Spectral Searchlight (unless there's some odd combo with Searchlight I'm not seeing). Lantern has the same CMC and gets you the same mana, plus it gives massive flexibility, Sol Ring is just absurd, and Worn Powerstone is excellent (and shows just how broken Sol Ring is).With that many equipment you should have a Kemba Kha Regent in there. Guy can absolutely puke out tokens, and makes for an alt win condition of Tajic gets tucked or something.Steelshaper's Apprentice and Stonehewer Giant are both pretty useful reusable equipment tutorsDisenchant can't handle indestructible stuff, and I don't know about you, but I see plenty of Darksteel crap, indestructible Theros gods, etc. Revoke Existence or Return to Dust lets you send Heliod packing, get rid of a Darksteel Forge, punt something protected by Avacyn, etc.Consider Brightflame over maybe Warleader's Helix, Lightning Helix or Galvanic Blast. I know it doesn't look that awesome, but in a 4 player game I've had it kill 5-6 creatures and gain me 60 life in one cast. It also only needs to target one creature so it can be a way to kill something with Shroud or Hexproof that shares a color with the creature you're hitting.I also really like Vandalblast in any red deck. Five mana to kill everyone else's artifacts is a pretty solid value.
Cover of Darkness is pretty great in any vamp-tribal-do-damage-get-a-counter deck.
Cover of Darkness is pretty house in vamp tribal. Evasion = moar counters. Low casting cost and it's under a buck to buy online, too. I think you may need a little more card draw. Phyrexian Arena would be good fit, but if you don't have it or don't want to spend eight bucks Hondren of Seeing Winds is cheap, as is Coastal Piracy if you think you're gonna be connecting fist to face quite a bit (like if you have Cover of Darkness in play).
Cathar's Crusade is bar none the best anthem for tokens because the bump remains after it's gone.
Leyline of Anticipation might be good, too. It'll make Felidar Sovereign and Test of endurance a lot easier to win with if you can drop them before your opponent's end step.
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