wickeddarkman

You can test that out by playing with unearth if you can get it.
A mix of unearth and feign death might be a good way to exploit arcanist.

I like the idea of this, but don't think it will work out as you envision it.
You lack the defence against early aggro which will start ripping you appart, to compensate you will then try destroying creatures rather than lands which is when the opponent will usually realize how to take your deck down by working on both your life and your removal engine.

I think spellskite may help you through part of that point, by both being a wall and by protecting the scepter, the monkey or the coating.

In a way this is a radical ponza deck and ponza usually pumps out aggro larger than the opponent can handle.

Your version neglects that side of the deck and that's sort of becoming a weakness.

I assume you know ponza as some parts of your deck mimic it, but in case you don't know it I could post a 2018 version of it.

You might also switch your discard so you play 4 thoughtseize and 2 inquisition so you can remove street Wraith from their opening hand.

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong.
Asmo can only be played when they discard during their turn, which means they need to draw one of their 9 self discard cards. The cookbook is only fetchable when they play asmo, so they have to draw it naturally.

The cookbook seems to be the bigger threat here, so when you discard them, I assume you discard either asmo or the book.

How about the three following cards.
[[Surgical extraction]], [[pithing needle]] and [[apostle's blessing]].

I've seen that deck in mtggoldfish, but must admit that I can't see the big deal, probably because I haven't seen it being played.

Which cards are most problematic within it ?

I'd think your mix of Trophy/maelstrom + discard would fix it, so how does it slip through ?

Super artifacty decks usually don't hang around the meta for long, how did your deck deal with hammer time?

How about engineered explosives, or sarulf for that matter ?

Welcome to mtgvault, Noobie21mtg.
I am the helpful wickeddarkman, and I can teach you many things about magic, but first I will teach you about mtgvault.

My guess is you have just taught yourself to search for decks, filtering with the number of likes.

In the old days of mtgvault people were much more schooled in being polite and upvoted each other all the time.
These days this is a rare thing, so when you search for big numbers of likes you will only find old articles.

Noctaems deck is from 2014 so odds are hes not here anymore.

You will get more recent results if you just search for decktags.
Try out the decktag: burn

If you and your friend are into very old decks we got decktags for that too: 93/94
Or: premodern

I like to proxy out cards too, but usually don't go for the power. I try to keep it cheap so I use cards that are more nontraditional.

I'm ancient and ornamental, having played the game from almost the beginning.
(I started at the end of unlimited).

I'm asperger's syndrome, which means I'm good at focusing on a single task forever, but is less good at picking up social stuff, like who's famous or who has the years best dress.

Mtgvault isn't so social anymore, and ironically I'm the one trying to pull it together again.

If you learn fast from videos there is a number of peoples whose decks can be seen here and on youtube.

Dninja89 (d-ninja89 on youtube) very active in here these days
Magicaidsyoutube who visits about once in the month
Magicbrospodcast (don't know how to find those) rarely here

Like I said earlier, I can teach you, but I'm sort of like mr miyagi from karate kid and will take you through a lot of different tasks to teach you how to fight.
The good thing is I can't make you clean my house or wax the walls, but I will be training you on the mental side of magic.

For example I might give you two decks to proxy, one which wins 99% of the time and the other deck wins 1% of the time. Your friends get to play the one that wins 99% of the time, you get to play the bad deck. And you are not allowed to concede during games...

It's a practice that will teach you several things:

1: it will teach you to get the will to win whatever it takes.
2: at some point your friends will realise the purpose and start torturing you to be helpful, and that will teach you how to play on despite the opponent being an asshole.
3: the last and perhaps most important lesson is that crap decks are harder to win with.

So, are you in for the torture :) ?

Heh, read the story.
Loved the moment where ragavan is webbed and all three of them falls uncontrollably and he just starts pilfering :)

Fresh blood might be fun :)

I was thinking of a "shared robber deck" where you stole parts before exchanging decks. The reasoning is that you want a deck that is basically useless if the leveler plan fails.
Not sure if it would work, which is why I ask :)
What's the story called ?

Sounds like fun :)
How do you think shared fate as a deck would be if it played lots of cards like robber of the rich and ragavan, the pilferer?

Arena has a decent following in here so it's not the worst thing to bet on :)

So, now that you've been here for a while, and have a bunch of posts you've probably found out that it's a tough crowd to please :)

Looking at the number of likes, I'd say your first goal will be to break the 3-likes limit.
If at some point you hit 4 likes, you know that it was a crowd pleaser.

My own current bar is 5 likes, and I have a DECKtag:wdm most likes
Which I use only on decks that reaches 7 likes or more.

It is exceptionally rare that my posts get that many likes and often I sit down and wonder, "why that post? I've written so much better stuff"

The problem usually is that people don't know it yet. And the only one who can make them see it is myself.
This is why I work so hard at linking my stuff together.

If you click on your own username and take a closer look at all of your decks, there are a couple of details visible.

Your headlines have a visibly different viewer ship.
Some of them have a lot more views than the others.

I don't think this means you should abandon any of the approaches, but you can use it to study how to please this harsh audience :)

I'd try out a couple more Let's break:

I also think it's a neat idea to create regular headlines the way you've done it, every time I see "gem or jank" I zoom in on it because I know it's you and I sort of knows what to expect.

I think the best way to run this, is to continue with a lot of "gem or jank" to get people used to your setup, and in some of those you can then promote new types of headlines.

Keep up your good work.

In the past horseshoe crab has had plenty of decks designed around it.
The majority of those people tend to not know this, so I can tell you that in the past people cracked how to increase the odds of getting the combo.

[[Muddle the mixture]] both finds a part and protects the combo.
[[Drift of phantasms]] gets the crab and protects from aggro.

I'll let you enjoy searching for the rest of the transmute cards :)

I guess this is sort of a response to mill & grief decks ?

Don't forget tombstalker or gurmag angler :)

Fetch, Thoughtseize
fetch again, thought scour yourself
Fetch again, gurmag with backup stubborn denial.

Love seeing basilisk collar in the sb. (Since karn can get it)

I was close to writing an article on how people had forgotten about the ballista-collar softcombo :)

Not a bad idea.
I think 4 obliterator would be best, and maybe you could have 1 massacre wurm.

I like the way that elvish visionary and tireless tracker can feed liliana of the veil and the eldritch evolution at the same time, though I think it might be better to have 8 cards that cost 2 and draws you cards. Dark confidant instead of the tracker perhaps, you have kalita's and ooze for the life and having confidant means 4 other cards that can kick evolution up to obliterate or kalitas

Dug deep to find something I hadn't liked already.

I've though about robber of the rich for a long time now, and I think I want to try it out with cards like mishra's bauble.
Theres also that monkey, and in general red has gained a lot of spell stealing over the last years, so there might be a deck possible in that theme.

I've kept track on the mh2 for awhile, and like you said in my bloodjund post, there is a lot of good cards to play.

I'm currently updating my prison deck so that I can test mill on it again.
Since the corona seems to be fading, I'm preparing to play mill again in a modern paper environment.

Talking of new cards, have you seen the "dungeons" from forgotten realms ?

It's a cool mechanic, but like most cool mechanics it's been tied to a few cards
(Those with "venture") it's probably going to fail because it seems like R&D has said stuff like "this creature is not nearly cool enough, let's give it a small boost and venture" at least from what I've seen so far.

From the few cards we've seen I think a few broken cards are going to get the card sharks to buy it, but it's a good question if the fanbase is going to do anything.

Since you have three mill decks listed, you might want an update on mill.

[[Fraying sanity]] (interesting but so far a failure)

[[Ruin crab]] (8 crabs didn't really move mill, but this is harder to kill)

[[Maddening cacophony]] (people haven't solved the mana)

[[Fractured sanity]] (this have actually made mill gain more wins)

[[Tasha's hideous laughter]] (not playable yet, only playable by pro players)

Ross merriman recently covered a grief build with [[Priest of fell rites]] and [[soulherder]]( which you have).
[[glasspool mimic]] was also mentioned.

The use of kaldra compleat was argued that the cost was too high unless you were sure to get stoneforger into play, but imperial recruiter was part of an incentive to play kaldra, so kaldra might be too heavy for esper.

I'm almost done at fine tuning my testdeck against mill
Search for the DECKtag: wdm prison

It's a massive project that I'm undertaking to make sure I got a deck that is extremely good at handling mill.
Once I'm done with that, I'll be ready to fine tune my mill projects.

I'm trying three different approaches:

1: speed mill, which will be rather simple and will consist of all the spells that on average mills the most within the shortest time. Search for the decktag: speedmill

2: control mill, which is rather complex, and really close to not being a mill deck.
Placed under decktag: wdm mill winter
Should be at top.

3: my usual corrigation of the most popular mill online
An older version can be seen at decktag: wdm 2018
Title is "when a tournament hits the fan"

Phew...