drop twincast. you'd be better off going for survival or extra mill with that one extra slot. the problem with mill (which i'm sure you are familiar) is being able to hold off your opponent while they get milled.... also the fact that it's inherently easier to remove 20 life than it is 60 cards (well... 53). so there's two things you want to do. first, make sure all of your mill cards are CHEAP.. one or two mana. mind funeral is doable.. the purpose here is to make sure you've still got mana spare for counters and responses (to either push your mill spells through or protect yourself) second, load your deck with cheap counters and utility. keening stone is a nice idea but ultimately it's probably too expensive unless you've got a shit-ton of counters to keep you alive until the late game (but by then your opponent should already be dead!). drop the following: -1x twincast -2x recoil -3x echoing truth -2x drowner initiate and add 4x snap 4x ponder also drop -3x dimir infiltrator -3x guard gomozoa add +4 memory lapse (pretty much a hard counter in a mill deck) +2 mana leak and there needs to be a way of fitting brainstorm in there as well. maybe drop the nemesis of reason.... i mean the cheaper the spells and the more draw tech you've got, the faster you can play through your stuff and the more that Circu can mess up your opponent's game. so -3x nemesis of reason +3x brainstorm there you go. it's less creature-heavy and it should be more consistent with the milling, from the extra card draw and cheap counters. i left perplex in there because it's really handy.
Permalink
this deck has 10 cards too many, and not enough utility. mid game, when your opponents are putting down large threats (or disrupting your spells) from the extra draw you've given them, and you've lost the one or two glaze fiends you might have played (most decks can remove or deal with two creatures, without a problem) you'll be drawing fairly useless 0-cost artifacts and losing ground. simply put; this isn't very good. however, it has some potential. so, let's add some stuff and take other stuff away. -4x the howling mines -3x the font of mythos (neither give you an effective advantage - your opponent will be accelerated into their threats or disruption spells) -4x spidersilk net -4x bonesaw (you have enough 0-cost artifacts, replace these ones with some utility to make your deck run smoother) so that's 15 cards axed straight away. you're now at 55 cards...... and seeing as your deck is mostly 0-cost spells, i think you can afford to drop a couple of each land as well (because after the first 4 land, the rest is pretty much useless) -2x swamp -2x island 51 cards. right. now let's start adding new stuff. you need some draw spells. +4x Kaleidostone (an artifact draw spell? hell yeah) +4x elsewhere flask (another one? awesome) - importantly, both of these draw effects trigger if they come from the graveyard to play. 59 cards. i think we can get this even better though. let's remove some more stuff that isn't needed. -3x hunger of the nim (with the card i'm about to add, hunger becomes pointless) 56 cards -4x spellbook (replacing some 0-cost artifacts with cantrip draw artifacts is more efficient) 52 cards -4x fountain of youth (again, only 12 0-costs are needed to get regular draws) 48 cards now for the biggy! +4x Time sieve +4x Open the Vaults this combo blows your deck wide open. when you open the vaults, your cantrip draw artifacts give you extra cards in hand for you to play, and then you can take plenty of extra turns with time sieve. you basically own the game. 56 cards. but wait! we need some white mana. ok this is easy. -2x swamp -2x island 52 cards +4x arcane sanctum +4x mistvein borderpost +4x fieldmist borderpost 64 cards. we just need to trim it down a little. -4x phyrexian walker and seeing as time sieve grants you extra turns, you may as well add in a couple of howling mines again +4x Howling mine. 64 cards -4x master of etherium (if you're saccing lots of artifacts to get extra turns, he won't be much use) 60 cards. there you go. a perfect platform for your glaze fiend. it looks like this: 4x Glaze Fiend 4x Howling Mine 4x Kaleidostone 4x Elsewhere Jar 4x Time Sieve 4x Open the Vaults 4x Counterspell 4x Ornithopter 4x Shield Sphere 6x Island 6x Swamp 4x Arcane Sanctum 4x Mistvein borderpost 4x Fieldmist borderpost your strategy would be as follows: borderpost on first turn. get a glaze fiend or howling mine out second turn. after that, focus on getting your Time Sieve engine up and running by casting the two draw-cantrip artifacts for extra cards, all the while beating with the glaze fiend. once you've got more than 5 artifacts in play and an open the vaults in hand, go for the extra turn and play open the vaults, taking another turn straight after. the artifacts that come into play from open the vaults should pump your glaze fiend by more than +10/+10 easily. it's a really solid deck. hope i was helpful. (p.s. if it was me, i would drop the ornithopters and run Ponder. extra draw for the win.) (p.p.s if you're close to milling yourself from taking extra turns with howling mine, sac the mines to the Time Sieve to save yourself some trouble)
take out the soul's fire and replace with sword of the meek for a much more survivable deck. you may not win on turn three, but you'll win more often in general. combine the sword with thopter foundry for a two-card combo that can give you X life and X 1/1 tokens every turn.... where X is the amount of mana you can produce. it's so powerful you can't miss out on it. and with the other pieces in your deck (i.e. time sieve) you've got a strong deck. more 0 cost artifacts for you to consider: welding jar zuran orb spellbook LOTUS PETAL seriously put 4 lotus petals in there for the win. it can be used for mana or to power your combo. it won't just sit there waiting to be used because it's useful in more than one situation.
oh and land grant is nice because it's free to play.
hihi i think your deck needs more mana-drop acceleration, for quicker play. cheap multi-use cards like sakura-tribe elder are a must have in a deck such as yours. you get a chump blocker, an extra land AND a trigger for your landfall monsters all for 2 mana. you need much more of this kind of thing for your deck to be any good. the trick here is making sure you can consistently drop a land (or more!) every single turn without fail. that way you're putting your opponent on the back foot. if it means sacrificing some of your more expensive cards for cheaper land-dropping cards then your deck will be faster for it. kodama's reach is another good one. azusa is a good legend. lets you put down 2 more lands a turn. those are just ideas. don't use all of them. lol. sakura tribe elder is a fantastic one though.
dude wall of frost would take the whole point out of this deck. it costs three (two of which are blue) and is therefore wayyyy too expensive a play. it's a great card, but not for this deck i'm afraid. i'd *love* another three fog banks but i can't afford to buy them. haha. all of the cards in this deck are ones that i own (which is why i only have one "opt"). thanks though.
it's had some testing over the weekend vs. loads of different types of deck. vs. aggro it works perfectly. you disrupt their tempo by bouncing their lands or just countering things, whittling away a little with black vice. and of course as you disrupt them, you're feeding the dryad. vs. weenie/lifegain weenie it was a harder matchup. the white ability to slow down the damage output made things tricky as i started to run out of my hand of counters.... but in the end all i had to do was protect my creature with a few well placed boomerangs and counters and it was an easy (but slow) win. their threats couldn't contend. vs. mill it was easy. just attack every turn regardless of how big the dryads were, and counter every mill card they play. if they get a creature down (which is fine - it's not their main win condition), steal it with legacy's allure or just bounce it. that's a whole turn of theirs wasted while you feed the dryad. vs. red instant damage decks it was a reasonable matchup. they tend to get a few early threats out. but once the dryad hits play (protected with counters for the inevitable damage spells) it's an easy win. vs. discard it was fine. counter or bounce their combo pieces (e.g. megrim) and steadily attack for a slow but steady win. vs. green stompy it was again, easy. lure them into an expensive play then deny it. let them fetch lands and then bounce them. vs. draw-punishment it was hard but doable. this deck relies a lot on drawing, so removing their combo pieces is necessary. it was close, but in the end the board advantage generated by a slowly growing dryad won the day. played loads of games. lost once. against white damage-prevention deck. got a shitty opening draw and didn't re-draw when i should have done.... rookie move! haha =D
take out the mind spring and throw 4x "Gush". Gush will help you get lands back into your hand so you can play them again... and it's free to play... and you draw two cards. it's basically the perfect card for this deck. an immediate "4 of".
i'm surprised people still consider putting traumatize in their decks..... it's too slow i tells ya! brainfreeze is also pretty useless here. there's no way to capitalise on the storm effect. ... and .... no counter spells of any kind? this deck needs some changes. - some acceleration - some control for stalling your opponent. Sanity Grinding might work in this deck reasonably well for milling. Wheel and Deal is always good. at the risk of changing the deck too much, i might suggest splashing a little black, and running spells like Mind Funeral. but of course you'd have to drop Sanity Grinding if you did this. it only really works in mono blue.
yeah, played a game yesterday against a fairly fast elephant deck, and a really annoying shadow deck. held up pretty well against both.... but rather oddly did better against the shadow deck. lost both times, lol. but only just. there was only 1 life in it against the shadow deck, and i think 3 against the elephant deck..... and it's down to the draw of the cards more than anything. we were just playing for laughs. i've made a few small tweaks to the RL version of this deck since the two games, and it performs very well. it's one of the best decks i've played for a long time. very consistent with creature drops and land-fetching. not much that could keep up with this.
drop Green entirely, in favour of Blue.... Paradox Haze does essentially the same thing as Doubling Season but for less mana. it's a far better card for this deck. this leaves you with Blue and Black. these two colours arguably have the best walls. i'd maybe run a few Wall of Tears or Wall of Souls, or go the whole hog and stick Mana Leak and Boomerang in there. you could do with some acceleration for sure, or perhaps some control/denial. either's good. but lose the green, lol. there are so many blue cards that have excellent synergy with artifact, it's crazy. you could even throw a few ornithopter/lotus petal/welding jar/myr enforcer/somber hoverguard in there, if you wanted to speed the whole thing up even more. the idea is great. just needs some tinkering.
also, another reason to include Twincast here is for some serious multiplayer flexibilty. it may actually be one of the best multiplayer cards ever printed.... you can copy any spell, even ones played by your opponents or teammates. this makes it a potential game-winning card. are they burning you for 10 damage in a last-ditch attempt to win? copy it right back at them. boom. milling your deck? copy it. boom. it's fantastic. every blue deck should have 4, in my opinion. copy an Overrun or giant growth played by your teammate, or copy a Counterspell, or a Burn spell, removal spell, steal spell, fetch spell. anything. it's absolutely brilliant and can be used in most situations to even the board out or give you an advantage.
i'd drop windfall in favour of 4x Wheel and Deal. windfall hurts your draw, and doesn't refill hands most of the time, so you can't get maximum discarding effect from "discard hand" type spells. that's what you want more than anything. also, anything which can multiply your spells gives you a huge advantage. as i mentioned in your other deck (which i think is probably a bit better than this one), Twincast and Thrumming Stone do this pretty well. Vedalken Orrery is great in theory, but realistically you won't have the mana available to really take advantage of a one-turn instant rampage, or even a two-turn instant rampage. you're better off sticking with the more situational Quicken, as it nets you some much needed card draw as well (and as i mentioned on your other deck, it's worth playing Quicken just for the draw, lol. the other effect is a very tasty bonus!). this deck has no counterspells of any kind, no attempts at board control, and no blockers or utility creatures. in effect you're just leaving yourself wide open. a simple cheap-to-cast stompy deck would own you in four turns most of the time. it's not a case of "sitting back and looking like you're floundering, so they leave you alone".... that won't work.... if you're playing in teams, they'll take you down first because you've got no defense and it makes your teammate easier to take down with no ally. even if you aren't playing in teams, they'll take you out first, becase it's easy, and to prevent you from dropping some ridiculous high-cost bomb after sitting with no defense and building mana while twiddling your thumbs. this deck is pretty poor. i rate your other one much higher, and more likely to succeed, with a few minor changes and some added control for survivability and consistency.
first card that caught my eye in this deck was Quicken. damn good card =). not sure you're getting full use of it here, but whatever, you can't go wrong with "draw a card" for one blue mana, right? most spells like that have a drawback! you need 4 of these in this deck without a doubt. play it in your opponent's turn to draw a card, and if you draw a sorcery from your library or have one in your hand, it's just a bonus! lol. it's worth it just for the instant draw. windfall and Wheel and Deal are definitely your best cards here, as you're making them discard entire hands and refilling them so you can do it all over again, for relatively small mana costs. you need to be maximising their effect as much as you possibly can. 4 of each (or at the very least, 4 Wheel and Deal, because the hand-refilling is more consistent, allowing you to really rain down some discard pain from megrim), and 4 Twincast will really lay the hurt on your opponents. a Thrumming Stone will potentially slay your opponents in a very short amount of time. imagine playing a Megrim, for it to ripple another into play, which in turn ripples another. or maybe your Wheel and Deal ripples, casting another copy, and then your Twincast ripples for another copy! it can get insane very quickly and you'll certainly be earning that aggro. Clutch of the undercity is essentially pointless here. it's far too expensive to hard cast for its bounce effect and you can't really use its transmute ability because you don't have any 4-cost spells except wheel and deal/Urza's Guilt. you're much better off dropping the 4x Clutch in favour of some decent counter magic like Mana Leak. this will give you the edge on the board, and maybe give you some extra survivability once people decide you're actually a threat. Lorebroker is a great little creature to have in play with a Megrim or two. excellent choice. Drift of Phantasms, i was initially skeptical of, but then you've got that useful Transmute for three mana.... this can fetch a Megrim, Windfall or recoil. all three are worth fetching for....... also you've got a solid blocker there for three mana. not too shabby. it's no Wall of Tears or Wall of Souls on the board, but it's useful for putting the combo together with transmute. altogether it's a pretty good deck. but it needs more of an intense discard card-base. bump up Wheel and Deal to four copies, without a doubt (it might be your best card), and add in a Twincast or something similar. this will let you lay the smack down in the late-game when you've got plenty of mana and a hand full of cheap sorceries and instants to throw. lastly. did you consider the following? - Ravenous Rats - Hymn to Tourach the Hymn is the best 2-mana discard in the game, and the Rats are a simple discard with the added bonus of being a fairly standard chump-blocker. they've saved me against 8/8 creatures before, for a turn at least. it may make all the difference.... both of these cards start to look pretty mean when combined with megrim, especially the hymn.
shit double post sorry.
played a game with this earlier and came across a very fun combo: Bloodbond march in play. phyrexian ghoul in play. - play a stinkweed imp from your hand (assuming you've drawn one.... it happens) - sac the stinkweed imp to pump the ghoul up by +2/+2 (to attack or block, whatever) - next turn, rather than drawing, dredge the imp for 5 and play it again. - chances are you've dredged another imp in the process, maybe two. - when it comes into play, all of the others do as well. - sac them all to the ghoul for mass pumpage - next turn dredge one of them back and play it. boom there's now FOUR in play. works a charm. i'm thinking of maybe taking out a few other creatures and slotting a playset of the golgari thug in there as well..... and upping my phyrexian ghoul count to 4.
purkle =).
forbidden crypt is a good card, and i've got it in a few of my other decks. i'm not sure it's fast enough for this deck though..... i don't think you'd get enough chances to use it, for it to be included here.
Underworld Dreams seems like a good idea. i'll check it out, maybe see if i can track down a playset of them. currently don't own the card, but i might be able to find it somewhere.
221-240 of 242 items