theBonesaw

23 cards out of 99 is a little bit better than 1 out of 5, so at a glance you might think that she should hit every time. Unfortunately, due to variance she will still miss a good chunk of the time at that percentage. My calculations, which are probably wrong but are certainly optimistic (assuming 93 cards in deck when you activate her on turn 6 off of 6 land, leaving 23/93 threats in-deck) still has you whiffing over 20% of the time. You also would have drawn and played some number of cards so of course that will introduce some more variance, and you can also activate her earlier than turn 6 using ramp which will actually increase the likelihood of whiffing. If you really want to get into odds we can sit down and do this but the good news is I don't think you'll have to up your threat count TOO much to virtually guarantee (say 95%) the likelihood of hitting a threat her ability. Also, if you're running ramp to get her online faster you will be able to hard cast them often as a pleasant side effect.

I haven't read this yet but here's TCGPlayer's resident commander expert Cassidy Silver on Mayael for more info:

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10421

Looks pretty good. The thing with Mayael is I don't really know how to exploit her. Her ability just helps you pump out a lot of individually powerful cards. So the most important thing in optimizing is probably making sure that the creatures you include are the most powerful, or that they're the correct choices for your playgroup.

The two major things I would consider when optimizing this deck are

1) is 35 lands enough? I usually run closer to 40, especially in a deck with a "big creatures" theme. Mayael will help you cheat out some crazy big ones, but her ability still costs 6. You probably want to be playing a land every turn and also ramping early. I don't think this deck can have too much mana available. If you can activate Mayael for 6 AND cast a spell, that's pretty much where you want to be in the mid to late game.

2) Make sure that you have a critical mass of creatures with power >=5. You have a lot but many of them are small ramp or utility creatures. Basically the worst thing that can ever happen would be Mayael whiffing on her ability (which used to happen in my friend's Marath deck). 6 mana for nothing is pretty backbreaking. So basically I think the deck should be almost entirely land, ramp and huge creatures. There's not a lot of room for much else unless it's so insanely powerful that it demands to be played. You can use creatures that have powerful ETB effects to make up for your lack of flex slots for spells (you do this pretty well with some of the angels you picked).

It basically looks good though, and there's a lot of cards in here that will wreck face if they're cheated in or remain unchecked for long. If you want to dig through my bulk rares and see if there's anything you could use let me know. I'm also around to test, and I have a few decks of varying competetiveness.

Actually I overlooked Dreadbore. I was kind of using Doom Blade as a stand in for whatever kill spell I ultimately went with. Thanks!

Basically I just mean what your potential lines of play are given any hand and board state. I find this deck can be played in a lot of different ways and it makes it harder for me to figure out which play is "correct" at any given time.

All your burn spells deal with Shimian Specter...also no one runs it, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. And if you're looking to play Standard here, it's rotating.

Counterspells are always an issue but I think the plan for this deck is to just have more threats than they can handle.

Underworld Connections might also be a good idea. Also I would probably trim this down to 60 cards and try and find the exact right balance of card numbers to make this thing run smoothly.

It seems like with so many 1 and 2 mana spells you'll play out your hand really quickly. Maybe you'd benefit from some card draw. Faithless Looting will let you dump extra lands and works well with Guttersnipe or Young Pyromancer. If you want to throw in a couple of more expensive cards (manawise) in case a game goes long, I like Fire Servant and Galvanoth here.

I'm actually considering a lot of similar choices at the moment. I'm trying to tweak a similar idea (check out my decks Trollgari 2.0 and 3.0) for a budget standard deck (I already have a lot of the Golgari cards and some green beaters so that brings my costs down a little).

Splashing in a third color is tricky but its actually pretty easy with all the nonbasic lands currently in Standard. Farseek can find shocklands, and Arbor Elf can untap them if they're green. Gatecreeper Vine and Axebane Guardian can also combine for a lot of color fixing if budget is a concern, but the gates are much slower and will definitely hurt the performance of the deck.

I'm also currently considering Rubblebelt Raiders. I'm not really that tempted to get into Red, so I'd probably do the same thing as you and cast it on 3 forests. I'm still deciding if I want to use it, because I feel like if I do I should make my deck more green and cut some black spells.

I think mostly you should focus on cutting the deck down to a cool 60 cards. Find a core interaction that you really like and focus on making that pop. If you find that adding a third color would help that core's performance and there's room for all the cards you need in the deck (functional pieces like removal and whatever you'd sideboard in) then go for the third color. If you're looking for cards to cut, I might suggest Urban Evolution. Is it really that good? I know its a lot of card draw but its also a 5 mana spell. Is there a reason you're not running Experiment One?

This is to an extent true...I have a Thragtusk, Silverheart, Jarad and the Vorapedes, who are sort of peripheral to the strategy of the deck but tend to mostly just be good 5 drops. Vorapede's undying has some minor synergy with Corpsejack Menace. I'm not super attached to using them...if you can think of better role-players that won't break the bank i'm all ears.

Budget concerns, mostly. Most of the expensive cards I actually own. I'm proxying versions of this deck until I settle on some reasonable compromise between price and quality. I'm definitely open to suggestions.

Evolved is a difficult mechanic to make work. I would consider splashing black for Corpsejack Menace and other Golgari counter tricks. Also, some of the most synergistic creatures for this deck are ones that have a bigger difference in their power and toughness (things like Elusive Krasis or Adaptive Snapjaw). They're more likely to evolve other things when they come into play and to be evolved when you play more creatures.