So, I got to play two games with this deck last night. The first game I was a bit slow to spin up and there were some very fast voltron decks which ended up sort of destabilizing each other because they could both attack well but not defend from each other. I ended up cleaning up the last two players after one of the voltron decks killed the other but it wasn't really that great as I really just had enough to kill off the remaining players rather than it having been a good example of what my deck can do. The second game was a lot more interesting being a 5 player game where I killed all of the players in so I will detail that one a bit more given that I didn't have a lot of take aways from the first game.
Game 2: 5 player FFA.
Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful and
Anara, Wolvid Familiar,
Solphim, Mayhem Dominus,
Phenax, God of Deception, and
Dihada, Binder of Wills are my opponents in turn order. I am well aware that my deck is susceptible to Phenax's mill tactics as I have no resuffle and am heavy on drawing my deck.
Opening hand: honestly I can't remember what exactly was in my opener other than I had some lands,
Land Tax, and
Mavinda, Students' Advocate. Given I had lands to play and some card advantage I figured it was good enough to keep.
T1: land, land tax
T2: land
T3: land commander
T4: +3 my hand with land tax and then wheel
Mavinda, Students' Advocate and
Leonin Lightscribe to play. I also bin a
Glory. On my opponents turns the mono red player does a bunch of damage to all creatures to sweep our boards because his commander is
T5: land + commander again. I fetch up three extra basics with my land tax which I bin because I have
Planar Birth in hand now.
T6: land +
Planar Birth getting I think 7 basics back to play. I pass turn keeping mana up to
Glory for protection because the mono red player has burned two damage sweepers already and I don't know how full of those he is. Its worth noting that I have an active
Emeria, the Sky Ruin at this point as I fetched up five plains and two mountains in this mix of lands I rezed.
From here I don't know that I can remember the exacts of every turn but at some point I get beat up a little from a few random attacks. The mono red player plays a
Stuffy Doll and choses me as the target which is irritating given the damage sweeper nature I have seen from him thus far. He did at some point do 8 damage to all players and I end up playing a good portion of the game hovering around 20-24 life.
I manage to get incredibly lucky and
Isochron Scepter a
Swords to Plowshares and use that as a rattlesnake. I pair with that setting up
Mangara of Corondor and
Illusionist's Bracers it as a second rattle snake which makes it a bit hard to attack me through all of that. The Isochron was really lucky as I used my commander to play it so I drew the swords in the replacement hand lol.
As the game keeps going I end up enabling getting a bit lower on my library as this deck tends to do. I go for an early alpha strike on the mill player because when he untaps next he has like a 17 powered creature he plans to mill me with so I give protection from blue and swing for lethal on him. He is a little upset because he is a more casual player but he was TOTALLY coming for me so I don't feel bad about it. He also counterspelled my
Pyroblast aimed at answering the creature so he gets to die now.
As the game starts wrapping up I kill the red player second fearing his potentially direct damage tactics and sweepers. After he dies I get wrathed but my reassembly time is ridiculous as I start with the Emeria rez into
Sevinne's Reclamation flashback getting quite the board recovered. From there I
Finale of Promise for 10 and tripple cast
Crimson Wisps and
Fists of Flame giving my three creatures haste and buffing up their size letting me get in for lethal on the last two players.
So, overall the deck was fun. I am not really sure I have many take aways from the first few games but at least some thoughts on the deck moving forward.
- The early game feels a bit slow to get going. Its possible I could use some more early ramp especially aimed more at getting my commander in faster. Unfortunately since my commander costs three mana that means one or less cmc ramp which most of that doesn't really play to my other gameplay mechanics other than being something I can wheel away when necessary. I just noticed that it was often turns 6 and beyond before I really felt like I was getting set up correctly with my current build. Its food for thought at the minimum but I will probably at a minimum consider Gemstone Caverns.
- I could consider a means to shuffle my graveyard back in. I could go for an eldrazi shuffle titan but the problem is I have a lot of resources in my grave that I like having in my grave. I could consider something like Elixir of Immortality or Feldon's Cane as well. This isn't me panic responding to seeing a mill deck that didn't kill me so much as me noticing that I might literally mill myself out with how this deck functions. I do want to fill up my graveyard though and out of control shuffling my stuff in probably isn't good which makes me lean away from the idea of an eldrazi and more towards the shuffle in artifacts if I run them.
- Relic of Progenitus probably needs to go just from the standpoint that I am filling my own graveyard too fast to really be running it lol. Bare minimum this could shift to Feldon's Cane or Scrabbling Claws.
- Illusionist's Bracers might be a bit ambitious. I did another version of this commander on hatebears and I was more dedicated to activating my commander as much as possible. I carried the bracers over from that build and while it was fine, I think that burning through my deck as fast as possible probably isn't how I need to run this version. It is good to know as if bracers was working out or not. I think by extension Thousand-Year Elixir is also probably also something I am going to think about possibly cutting as well. I think the need for haste with the mana hungry ability of my commander probably is going to be tough most of the time. I think I can probably get away with slow playing my commander and activating later in most cases.
- Purphoros, God of the Forge didn't feel very good. He doesn't fit the artifacts / creatures under 3 cmc and he really only seems to do things when my deck is firing. I am probably going to just cut him even though he gives me some reach I have to set him up and then grind and given how many things I am trying to do he felt like he is slow, doesn't hit that hard that fast, and draws a bunch of attention. Probably a little bit winmore if I am being honest and I could probably just as easily add any other big push for damage wincon like Akroma's Will or something if I really wanted it. I have no clue where I go from here but I just wanted to say it was a little weird and I don't know about it.
- Heroic Triggers - I probably do have too many heroic triggers as a whole. I knew it might be a thing because well, I can only trigger one of them at a time. The heroic token makers weren't especially impressive but I did like the heroic pumpers. It might lead me to cutting Vanguard of Brimaz given how much competition for 2cmc stuff I have. The competition for targets is on my mind and my commander does also kind of consume mana while putting bodies in play. I found that a number of my other token producers functioned better than my heroic token producers for now at least. I want more testing but its something I did observe. Tethmos High Priest did perform actually quite well for me though giving me a lot of redundancy in res as well as being something that can be rezed from a lot of sources so that was nice. I currently have five sources of heroic triggers and while that doesn't sound so bad this deck CHURNS through its deck fast so I have to keep that in mind.
- By Invitation Only - it seemed a bit odd and awkward when I drew it. The setup to get the tokens starts to come alive about when I could probably just start killing players. Its possible I could consider something that is less disruptive to my own board when not set up or when someone is beating me in board position. I think its a good card I am just not convinced that I am more explosive in expansion than other token decks necessarily. The nature of the wheels of the commander makes it hard to hold onto a sweeper for the right time as well.
I really wanted to highlight my first games with this deck and just give feedback that it was a very interesting deck. I plan to continue this one forward and I need to chew on some thoughts. I just like getting these game highlights out while they are fresh in my mind.