The deck contains 5 lotus petal because of the way I work.
This time however I got 3 suggestions that can replace it.
There were 5 cards that were 1 point away from being picked for the deck.
Break asunder, living airship, merchant scroll, ray of command and rites of refusal.
Just pick the one you like or roll a d10.
It took a while, but here are the 9 cards that got inserted in the end.
Acorn harvest:
The interaction with foil and rites of refusal is basically the reason behind its presence, but during the 51 games against testdecks it was useful against decks with many sweepers.
Cathodion:
A decent beater that has some synergy with firebolt during attacks or defences or other situations where cathodion dies and you got a firebolt in the graveyard and a red mana available.
Choking tethers:
Against aggro it serves as a staller that has synergy with betrayal. Against everything else it's just a cycle card.
Deep analysis:
The deck gains two more of these and now has a total of 3. It's synergy with foil and rites of refusal is basically what got it this far, but against control it has been a nice way to compete against their card draw.
Firebolt:
This makes the deck go up to 2 of these. This was the first card to exploit the synergy with foil and rites of refusal, but it also turned out to have some unexpected synergy with cathodion. This synergy adds to the aggression of the deck.
Foil:
Finally the first foil has entered the deck. The synergy with acorn harvest, deep analysis and firebolt is what has probably gained it this slot, but merchant scroll has been used to fetch it.
Merchant scroll:
This compliments the overall theme of thinning out the deck and helps against aggro by fetching repulse or choking tethers, and fights combo and control by fetching a counterspell. The choice of counterspell is down to wether or not your hand contain any flashback spells that may be discarded.
Mountain:
The deck now has 2 mountains, 4 lotus petal, 2 lay of the lands and a tinder wall to support the 3 burn spells in the deck. From my 51 games against the modern testdecks from a 2018 meta there is a number of decktypes that can lock down the mana of this red part, several tax builds using leonin arbiter and ghostquarter for example, ponza and lantern control are also pretty uphill, but in the end it has to be asked. Is it worth to try to take out the red mana of the deck when it's only supporting 3 burn spells ? During games I play against an omnipotent opponent, my hand is always revealed to give of information so that my deck can meet the fiercest conditions. This means that my opponent knows which mana I need, and this often results in my forests getting hit a lot more because of howling wolf and it's 2GG cost.
Longterm any weakness against landdestruction will be breeded out, but so far the best gamble is to hate on the forests.
Now my great evolution will rest for a little while.
The goal was to get to generation 3 before beginning work on a white and an artifact halfdeck, but I've gone a little curious about how well the halfdeck project will work against pauper.
So I'm lining up for some test games against the current topdeck, burn.
Since I'm a sucker for having a work order, the plan is to go through all of the combinations in this order:
Black and blue:
The blue halfdeck with its counterspells and capacity to draw stuff will be coupled with the black halfdeck that has its focus at discard and forcing the opponent to sacrifice creatures. The combined couple will be a pretty control based deck with the means to gain life. It will have a very few creatures, but the combined removal will probably let it take the lead by beating one or two lifepounts out of the opponent at a time.
Blue and red:
In this case there will be plenty of burn to go around, and the blue half will ensure that it's drawn that much faster, while countering key spells. In this case there will be a lot more creatures around, especially ghitu slinger which will make a shooting gallery out of the opponents creatures.
Blue and green:
I've just evolved this to generation 2 and has it fresh in my memory which wont mean a thing because I got the work order arranged long ago. (It's based on the color wheel) but to sum up. The couple thins itself out of lands at a high tempo which means I can basically play a land each turn, which is pretty cool. The couple takes some time to gather momentum, so at first howling wolf and the burn deals with aggro. Then the card drawing and the ramp kicks in and the deck starts to throw a lot of tricks into play. Fast early aggression is dealt with via fade away.
Black and red:
This couple was coevolved, so it will be exceptionally nasty to face. It's discard, burn and removal and a really grindy slow death. The main advantage against aggro is the sheer number of flashback removal and control and combo suffers against the discard.
Black and green:
I'll have to speculate on how this couple is going to interact, but the start of the game will likely be lots of sacrifice effects and discard to weaken up the opponent. During this the green half will be thinning out itself which means that sacrifice effects and discard will be drawn a lot faster. Then howling wolf will start to be played, taking advantage of a clean battlefield. Against combo and control the green half possesses some immunity against sweepers and the discard is more important.
Red and green:
The fact that the green half is now a little more gruul will be turned into an advantage. The red half is geared to burn the field and eventually howling wolf will roam the battlefield. I suspect this couple will be able to do very little against combo, while it might be better against aggro and control.
I will be updating my "compleated" decks the next couple of days. Go to my front page, click on the decktag: compleated