I had another solid game with the deck this weekend but it was a close game. I like how the deck is performing so far but man it was brutal watching an abzan deck resolve an
Aura Shards and then eat every target in play that wasn't his and still be there. The rest of us got annoyed and killed him by us combined but it was somewhat brutal. I had some amazing turns off the back of a T5
Jeska's Will that let me play
Rain of Riches and then cascade a
Double Vision (can't remember what the cascade hit). The Abzan deck shoved me into a corner shortly after that with the aura shards but he died off and I managed to limp along without all my sweet sweet value but I did manage to spawn treasures and loot twice while cascading the turn after and then triple bolt his creatures in response to his chain starting so he was feeling the heat. The game really came down to a
The One Ring trigger that protected me from an unlockable double striking 7 powered commander which killed the other player and then I managed to barely burn out the last player. I am still wanting a few more blockers and maybe even a maze effect for opposing voltron (somewhat undecided still on that still).
Moving forward, I do want to defend myself a little more and make it a little less important to go off faster. That isn't to say I am trying to make myself into a control deck but I want to actively defend a little more often and make it less free to hit me or put my defense as literally just my commander. My commander feels like he has been taking some heat already and if it continues I might consider indestructible or shroud equip but I want to wait and see a little more before I jump to that sort of a conclusion.
CHANGES:
- Torbran, Thane of Red Fell → Crackling Spellslinger I wasn't that excited for Torbran as an enabler. A bolt would go to 5 damage to a creature and 7 to a player but it wasn't enough damage to really go for the win nor was he a good blocker. I want to play with a little more of the spell copy stuff and just feel some stuff out. In an ideal world it would be fun to use this with a Unexpected Windfall but that is a bit of a 9 mana pipe dream. I think more realistically just casting it on someone else's turn as someone is popping off to 4x+ bolt and just get some removal and chip damage in. I have a lot of people who push for some big draw effects and chain stuff so this is me just trying something out. I don't really know how its going to go as how opponents play is going to be a big part of how this performs.
- Basilisk Collar → Thaumatic Compass just changing up some defense measures. My commander gets pressured a good bit already and so I wanted to shift some of my defense off of my commander and equipping them. I like the backside of the compass for defense and on the front it can accumulate cards in hand for discarding to the discard / draw effects.
- Batterbone → Magma Phoenix moving some of my defense around a little. I am not really sure about the Phoenix but the idea in my mind was that it can trade with a 6/6. It blocks with flying. And in a pinch I could bolt it to get a pyroclasm type effect that doesn't kill my commander. It could be fun to hold up a bolt to kill it and do in response to something premium like someone trying to swords it.
- Dictate of the Twin Gods → Insult // Injury to me this feels less all in in that if I can't kill everyone in the turn I don't leave such a problematic enchantment behind. Insult being a spell also opens it to being COPIED which sounds spooky as all hell so as I add a bunch of copy spells in it seems like something fun to try.
- Return the Past → Storm King's Thunder return felt like it took too much to get it going being six mana to do nothing. I like what Storm King for six mana would do and set up in the same situation so to me it feels like a fun swap. I like the idea of throwing bolts rapid fire like I am zeus.
- Burst Lightning → Galvanic Blast I think this is mostly just an upgrade. Assuming neither is enabled its the same effect but I don't want to pay 5 mana to boost it so the idea of hitting metalcraft seems easier to achieve and with all the treasure gen it seems more likely to happen.
- Faithless Looting → Electric Revelation I am dropping faithless because it copies poorly in that it doesn't net draw on a copy it just digs more. I didn't know Electric Revelation was a card but its a lot of what I was looking to do.
- Rile → Demand Answers Rile is..... fine it just doesn't really do much and I have been enjoying the discard and draw cards in here. With adding a few more spell copies in here I found myself wanting a little more density of copy targets and I felt while I can copy Rile I am not as excited to do it.
- Spitting Earth → Increasing Vengeance cutting a little more of my slow control sorcery speed burn and I want more copy mechanic stuff. I like that the vengeance is cheap the first time and later the double copy still seems viable and useful.
- Sweltering Suns → Skyfire Phoenix with some of the spell copying stuff I might be able to handle some of what suns can do for me. I really want to avoid running damage sweep stuff because its not what my deck wants to do. With all the discard + draw stuff I felt the Pheonix and the nature of my commander and them getting answered might pair together here. Discard a free creature that comes back later for blocks.
- Urza's Saga → Fomori Vault cutting down on some of my equipment and Urza's was... ok but with all the treasures in the deck I feel like Fomori Vault could be interesting. I often do have a handful of treasure on reserve.
I was also thinking about
Cleansing Wildfire and
Geomancer's Gambit in this deck. They aren't amazing necessarily but with spell cloning it would be really fun to target a
Cascading Cataracts or
Darksteel Citadel of my own for some ramp. I didn't go into this though just because I felt like I wouldn't have enough land support to pull it off reliably.
CONSIDERATIONS:
Cleansing Wildfire /
Geomancer's Gambit and by extension I would be considering
Cascading Cataracts and
Darksteel Citadel as targets for them so I could ramp off of them. I thought it would be fun with some of the spell copying as multi casting them and drawing cards while ramping could be sweet. My biggest concern about them though is assembling the indestructible lands is harder in mono red.
Valakut Awakening - Not sure if I need to get rid of my whole hand much given the discard / draw effects but its a thought.
Stonecoil Serpent - I like it on defense as even a one mana serpent can block a lot of multicolored voltron concepts. The problem is like..... its an artifact creature which makes it like maximum fragile to removal.
Rekindling Phoenix - Reusable blocker that can be discouraging to run into repeatedly. The problem is I have a decent bit of grave reliance already and killing the token it makes or getting trample / protection / unblockable all get around it.
Loyal Apprentice - its cheap and makes potentially multiple blockers assuming I don't use them each turn. I am not excited about it but it could maybe get me some blocks.