Luzifer

as with all my decks I try to make them Extended legal, so Red Elemental Blast isn't possible

@ jahal: I considered clout and I would certainly side board it and even main deck it if the metagame was such as to expect lots of spot removal, but with my play group its not necessary. He will generally live long enough. Also, shroud means I can't cast curiosity on the Nivster so if I shroud him he looses that combo potential.

Flame Jab, in the current deck, is generally more efficient than flame jav... if you have a River Kelp out you can turn each jab into R discard a land, do one damage and draw a card. If you have a gelectrode it becomes R discard a land Shock. With more combo pieces it just gets better and better. Sadly, flame Jav does not have the synergy and while it is powerful its lack of synergy makes it less desirable for the deck, especially in place of flame jab. Flame Jav has the one use and then its gone, once Jab hits the grave it can turn any land i draw into burn with synergistic benefits.

Beacon might be good and invincible is indeed nice however, they are both a far too slow. I want all my life gain sources to be things I can use early on to stem the tide and then later could still be valid life gain sources. Beacon comes down AFTER cradle (due to mana cost) so that means if I'm having mana problems and can't get my cradle up the beacon can't be cast at all meaning it will often be dead weight in my hand. Likewise with the Invincible but more so since it costs an entire 8 mana there will be many many games where I never accrue the mana to play it. Further, when I can play it (very late in a game I will probably have already stablized) I more often than not, will already have lots of life, possibly even more then the amount of cards in my deck, meaning the 8 mana might only net me a less than stellar amount of life, or worse, actually cause me to loose life.

Already have Boon reflection, I'd include more but, again, I don't want to risk having two of them in my hand at once

Also, I already included a variant on essence warden in my Auriok champion. She is an essence warden that is also pro black and red making her more useful if I need to block some black and red critters early on and makes her less susceptible to spot removal.

The Martyr, however, is indeed a good suggestion and I should probably slip her in somewhere.

lets see here... might want to look at Barrenton Forgetender because one of your greatest foes will be pyroclasm which will murder all your little 1/1 tokens.

Either of the white planeswalkers Elspeth or Ajani goldenmane would be good as well, Elspeth makes more tokens and can angelic blessing things while ajani can give everyone a +1/+1 token and vigilance.

I'd honestly take out To Arms! as its kind of meh in most situations, if you wanted a card you can get a card back with Angelsong would probably be a bit better. Also, Kjedorn war cry might not be efficient most of the time, given that it wants to have some copies in the graveyard and you have no way of facilitating that. There are probably better variants of that effects (Ajani's -1).

Also, try Reveillark and Ranger of Eos

Sadly this deck is Extended legal so I can't put Folk Medicine in, however, if you want to make a legacy variant it is indeed good. However, I would suggest Divine Congregation instead since it basically heals for the same amount in a single installment (which is always better with the cradle since you won't have to pay twice) The reason i left that off is that once I get my mycoloth down and he's churning out saprolings I've pretty much already won. So both Folk and Divine are at their best in situations where I have things under control and using them would be overkill. They won't help me in that frail period of turns 1-6 when I really need the life gain to offset damage.

Hmmm... I might main deck a Cranial extraction, but I'd probably slip it in the side board. Most of the decks I play against aren't going to crumple with the loss of a single card so this deck is somewhat gears to my own play group's meta game.

I thought about that, the problem is mot spell like that (Nightmare Incursion etc) are rather expensive, and I'd be at my opponents mercy for too long in the process of setting it up

Considered Ajani... my only problem was I felt he was slow of the bat. His second ability is good, but I didn't feel any particular synergy with my deck thought his 'ultimate' is indeed good. Making Serra Avatars is always great. I might put him in the place of the knight or the auriok depending on how my play testing goes.Or possibly put him in for Renewed Faith. I'd need to test this deck more, and while I may not include Ajani I acknowledge that I certainly WANT to

I'm Luzifer. I play casual synergy-focused decks. Thank you.

Oh, and Thunder thrash elder. He's useful against slow decks

Turn 1: Land pass
Turn 2: Dragon fodder pass
Turn 3 swing for 2 sac the gobs to the elder
Turn 4 swing for 7

it not the best curver but its not shabby, not to mention he's the cheapest devour creature you can get.

Which now that i think about it is your biggest problem right now. Your curve is just off... you don't cast to much before turn three and even then most of your real stuff doesn't kick in until 5 or six. This can be a real problem, especially against the fae.

Might i recommand pyroclasm or volcanic fallout for keeping the weenie decks at bay while you accrue mana? you could also just drop high end stuff and move the curve down a bit.

Nantuko husk! Nantuko husk!

Also... grave pact... every time you sac something your enemy does to!

The fact you don't run a full four of Sprouting thrinax sadden's me, as well as the distinct lack of algae Ghariel's. I've seen entire decks crumple because all they have is spot removal to combat an ever growing Ghariel.

Also, Hunting triad and Gilt-leaf ambush can provide tokens or be combat tricks so they will provide more flexibility in token generation

I would take out the goblin assault in favor of bitterblossom or something else because you won't always have a sac engine reading, and watching your goblin (or worse goblins from dragon fodder) futily heading into your opponents army isn't fun.

Might also want to slip in some spot removal, Lash out's good, but shriekmaw is tops, it casts terror and sac's itself for great synergy with anything that cares if something died (Kresh, Ghariel, Grave pact...)

Master transmuter is amazing... I run a deck basted around her. However, I would definately go the full four of on the Schullers. If you bounce them in response to them coming into play with a master, the card you take with the schuller is removed permanently.

however, if you run a transmuter, you will find that Thousand Year Elixir is a necessity as she attracts burn like nothing else.

I would also take out the mana cylix's. They will all to often end up sitting there doing nothing since they cannot produce mana in and of themselves. Instead, if your worried about mana, I'd go with Vivid lands.

Might I also recommend Grim poppet? He is a wonderful guy to have with a transmuter as well.

Also, Parasitic strikes has good synergy as well with its come into play ability.

in response to Kung-fu: I was making this Extended legal so Solitary was off the table.

And I considered Form but it would require a more extensive red commitment than I was willing to make. also, I don't like hovering at five life in a meta-game that will be swarming with banefires

I disagree... my main problem with the deck is the first 1-8 turns or so before I drop my Ideal. As long as I can drop the ideal, my angel will be so numerous it doesn't matter (it's not uncommon for this deck to make 7+ 4/4 flyers in a turn.). Creature enchants would just be overkill at that point.

For a deck like that Wraths are a necessity. They allow me to hold back large groups of monsters and my Peace of Minds are often the only thing that gets me to my Ideal.

Also, I'm not sure if you know this, but Soaring hopes does not synergize well with Ideal. Since Ideal prevents you from casting spells for the rest of the game, I can't bounce it and replay it after I drop the ideal, meaning its giving a small stat add and flying to creatures so numerous and powerful that the stat adds are meager and flying is what they already got.

As it stands if I were to get rid of someting it would definately be the porphyry nodes, as i mentioned, as the tend not to be as useful as they could be (though they tend to be great in games where my wraths aren't).

I considered that but... it ends up with me milling the very cards I'm trying to set up in such a way that my opponents have the unfun proposition of drawing. I've made some mill decks in the past, and I considered going with some milling, but ultimately it wasn't with the flavor of deck I wanted. Plus there's the argument that, as long as my opponent can't play a spell does it matter how fast the milling happens?

Elder Dragon Highlander, also known as commander. 100 cards, one of each card save basic lands and one card (the Commander, in this case Niv-Mizzet) is removed from game and can be cast from the removed from game zone