wickeddarkman

Translate it as sweaty:)

I've been here for some months trying to busy my mind with something other than my gray dull existance.
The place is still in shambles, but I've been posting new stuff constantly while being bothered by at least one troll.
But I can't really complain. Adversity has always gotten my blood to pump.

Search for the decktag: wdm 2018
If you've been fond of my craziness in the past :)

I posted a comment, then saw an error within it, but couldn't remove it, so don't mind me :)

Yeah, sometimes a card just feels odd, while being a logical choice.
I've more or less detached myself from that problem by leaving it up to evolution which card is the best.

I think the problem with noxious revival is that people can't remember all the good things it does, but those 1 in 20 games where you need to draw anything other than noxious revival, those times we remember all too well.

I've been playing this card enough times to track it's behaviour, and in some decks it does nothing, while in others it means everything.

The simple way to measure if it's better at replacing a twiddle is to remove a twiddle from a sleeve, insert an old land and a paperstrip. Draw a line across the strip and write twiddle on one half and noxious on the other.
Then play as many games as you can get yourself to play. Each time you use it as a twiddle, your strip gains a point in the twiddle section. The same rule applies to noxious.

When you've played enough games you should have a clear picture about which card was more superior.

You could also try out a match between merchant scroll and noxious revival. In a way, noxious revival gets you a card for free as long as something else is drawing it for it.

The overall answer is draw and thassa's, or thassa's and draw depending on the hand.

I'd say emrakul isn't necessary in the sideboard against millers.
First of all, copycats have managed to cripple mill into being much slower against aggro.
Especially by using field of ruin.

Lurrus mill is by far the most popular variant and so have moved ensnaring bridge to the sideboard.

If you play clean by using kroxa, ooze and wrenn and six you can keep your graveyard clean enough that your opponent can't cast
Visions of beyond. Also ooze protects you from surgical extraction if you time it by eating the target.

Mill is also exceptionally vulnerable against discard.

And I've recently wrote an article about how there is only a small group of millers capeable of winning with mill.
The majority of millers are too inexperienced at playing it. The odds of you encountering a good miller is so low that it isn't word the sideboard slot.

However, the day that good millers DO become more widespread, your best strategy is to play two different reshufflers.
Instead of emrakul, take a look at three reshufflers from lorwyn.
Dread, Hostility, and Vitality. Use the two you find most playable and your opponent will need to cast two surgical extraction to deal with the problem. All three are actually playable against other decks, so they won't be sideboard cards against mill alone.

I can also recommend that you search for the decktag: wdm 2018
Click on the deck named "mill data you wont like" and read through it to get a deeper understanding of what's holding mill back.

If you like to go through an even deeper analysis
Search for the decktag: wdm mill guide
To read up on specific cards in mill. I've left plenty of advice on how to beat mill in there ;)

As for the rest of the sideboard, when you encounter mill it will be a good idea to side in the two pillage, and try to take out black duals, because mill rely heavily on black both before and after sideboard.
Relic of progenitus is also superior to nihil spellbomb against mill.
And as mentioned, discard owns mill, so collective brutality will both eat their hand and take out hedron crabs.

Noxious revival is sort of whatever you want it to be, including twiddle :)
In a deck that draws as much as this deck does it's basically just the card you need the most.

This is a pretty sneaky storm deck.
Took some time before arcane became usefull :)

I'm gonna suggest one of my combo evergreens.

Noxious revival. (Perhaps replacing the two twiddle).

I don't think I've ever noticed deathsprout before.
I really like the art of it, and the flavortext with vraska is golden considering that she's a medusa.

I think sinuous vermin ties into the legend about rat-kings.

How about an inspiration engine ?
In the past when I needed to come up with an idea, I'd use dice and a list of rpg words, like, druid, catapult, prison, skeletons, cloverfield or other words.

I'd then roll the dice twice and try to figure out as many interpretations of the "idea" as possible.
Take catapult and prison for example, if we roll prison first, and then catapult, then we got this prison that has a catapult. Where is it aimed at? The prison yard or outside the prison. What does it catapult ? Boulders or prisoners ? What if the catapult is the way to get into the prison ?

The "reverse" a prison catapult, is obviously a catapult that launches prisons. How large are these prisons ? Are they temple size, and launched into orbit or are they jar sized and launched against armies. What's in those prisons ?

Instead of using dice, you can sleeve some lands with strips of papers in front, and on those strips you write the inspirational words.

Now think of the other words.
Druid catapult
Skeleton catapult
Cloverfield catapult (a bit extreme, but think about how the players will react)

Then we just keep drawing into ideas:
Druid prison (a prison for druids or one runned by druids)
Cloverfield skeletons (skeletons on a cloverfield or giant skeletons carrying cloverfields around)

Just using a single idea to it's extremes can create an entire world on it's own.
Think of a world with giant skeletons carrying these cloverfields on their heads or in their hands.
The skeletons walk aimlessly around but rarely collide.
Sometimes cloverfields are carried nearby each other, sometimes for longer periods of times.
Does the inhabitants celebrate, exchange population to avoid inbreeding, invade ?
Are all cloverfields alive?

The more words you choose to put in your collection of ideas, the more ideas you will get.
Caravan aquariums (maybe merfolk trading on land)
Firefly gloves (glowing gloves or can they release a swarm?)
Trapdoor honey (a honey pitfall ?)
Fungus werewolf (does it eat the fungus or is it covered in them)

Legends tell that on rainfull nights the firefly fungus is beautiful to behold because of the many fireflies taking shelter in it.

Rumours quickly spread in the village when their crazy mayor installed a werewolf trapdoor in his office.

Once you get the hang of this, your mind will simply start to generate things on it's own. You walk down a road and suddenly you see two things that give you the idea of something totally far out.
I no longer use this tool because it's like breathing to me now :)

Some people take a bit longer to develop a sense for using this intuitively, so spend as long time as you can on each draw when trying to figure out how many ways you can use them in.

Using magic cards this way to help you create a storyline can also a way to do things.
You can build up a deck with random encounters for your dark forest, or you can create a deck with treasures.
Or a deck with additional spice to add to encounters.

You might also want to use the real cards. The art and the flavortext can sometimes be enough to trigger a new idea.

If you want it, I can make up 60 words for you to start with.

Sometimes your card pile can be determined by events in your universe.
If your universe is having an Orcish army roaming the realms, then words like knights, orcs, patrol, ambush and messenger can be shuffled into the deck and then removed when it's all over.

You can have an encounter pile and a location pile, where the location will add spice to the encounter. Does the players have to face a swarm of rats on a narrow rope bridge or in the nasty sewers, or at the side of an erupting volcanoe ?

Each paperstrip can hold up to several possible ideas so when you draw a card you have several opportunities.

You may also give your strips the ability to connect themselves with other piles.

One pile of cards can have encounters for an orcish invasion while another can have encounters from the dark forest, or the wet swamp or the boring village.

Just like magic, theres no limit to how you can combine it all :)

How about a random deck for each level of wizard spells ?
If the players encounter a powerfull wizard you just draw some spells from each pile based on his level, and perhaps you give him a couple of items from the treasure pile ?

Waste not is pretty hard to crack, despite that it was "designed" by players.
It makes every discard usefull, but also forces the deck into a direction that might end up being punished.

I've always hated this aspect of magic. Sometimes something seems to be really powerfull, and is really a hindrance, while at other times, a simple card seems innocent and turns out to be powerfull beyond belief.
And the only way to find out which is what, you have to play it all.

I think waste not might be best with ravens crime as your lands will then become discard, and raven's crime will be able to make the opponent discard everything they don't play.

From there it's hard to think out how the deck should look.
Some equipment or enchantment could abuse the BB, some cards will be needed to make sure the zombie tokens won't be blocked, while drawing cards is only usefull if you get to draw something usefull.

The main problem will be that with ravens crime the opponent chooses.

Optimally it's Turn 1 thoughtseize, turn 2 waste not, turn 3 play three discards, but how usefull is that really ?
The cards that are not going to be discard in the deck will have to be carefully thought out.

It's a difficult card.

I was thinking, surgical extraction can remove all the petitioners, which would leave lands and surgical extraction in the deck (and thassa's) with treasure hunt you could take away the lands. Since the deck will be emptied rather fast mesmeric orb could be enough to mill the rest.
Zombie hunt is much more elegant, but is glass-jawed.

I've been trying a version with rats and surgical extraction as well, where you can go aggro with the rats within few turns and from there trying to go thassa's.

Theres gotta be a way to build a hybrid :)

I didn't know we had so many roleplaying gamers :)
I'll start up a line of decks with rpg style tips.

Then eat your own words, that also costs nothing, and you would see no reason why you wouldn't do it.
Besides, if you don't do it, you can't stand by your own words.
Eat eat :)

It actually matters a lot.
Do you remember my post "the diversity threshold" ?
Search for the decktag: wdm diversity
To re-read it.

There's a new "nether spirit" in town.
A snow legend that can be played from the graveyard with 3 snow.
I think it was called
narfi, betrayer king
.

We got a user who loves to play smallpox.
He calls himself swarmer.
You might want to look at some of his work and strike up a chat with him.

Add mindshrieker.
With courser of kruphix in play you will know when to mill bad cards away, and when you get a very big bird to strike with.
You have enough high cost cards to attack with a real big bird.

If there is a way of trading commander with the opponent, your mindshrieker can be used to lock down their draw like if you were lantern control.

Stream of thought will help putting the right cards in the graveyard and will save the cards you don't want in the grave. (Especially other streams and thassa's)

Mesmeric orb will speed up the whole thing as any petitioners tapped will mill an additional card.

I think that more petitioners could be used if the deck also exploited treasure hunt.

I look to the right and have to say no.
Does that make it historic ?