sleepy_mimi wrote: ↑4 years ago
Here's something silly but that I neglected to mention in my previous post, mostly out of embarrassment: the deck has a loose theme/flavor of "Gallia's having a party" so every creature in the deck needs to have some loose narrative tie-in of how it got there.
No need to be embarrassed! We've all done fun themes before. Heck, we just front page published an article about weird themes with the Tiger King show as the example theme lol.
Now, we do have to understand that limiting card choices because of our theme will directly affect the competitive rate at which it plays. This is just a general concept:
anytime you make a choice between card A and card B, if that choice isn't based solely on "which will make the deck perform better" than you're choosing theme/budget/whatever over function, and the function decreases. Which is fine, but you just have to go into it knowing that the deck won't be quite as good as it could be.
Are there any other obvious cuts you would suggest beyond the curve-topping fatties, especially if it feels like the deck needs more ramp?
Before we get there, we need to decide your deck's methodology and goals. We have the theme, but we still need to decide what the deck wants to do when it plays.
So Gallia does two things: she's a Satyr lord and she filters through cards when you swing wide. Since we're not going with the tribal method, her card filtering is a key place to start. Now that can go one of two ways: either you're digging for specific cards or you're digging for more cards.
In other formats, this is often a question of speed or resiliency — ie: try to win quickly — before your opponent stabilizes, or try to win inevitably —
in spite of them stabilizing. It's
extremely hard for general aggro to ever win quick enough in EDH that you want the kind of speed this looks at, so the aggro question here is: Quality or Quantity.
Quality is about effectiveness, impact, and weight. It wants the absolute strongest, most effective cards. For aggro, this means large, powerful creatures. Game changers that can crash a table by themselves if they're not dealt with quickly. It wants to drop a
Carnage Tyrant that's hard to stop, or a
Hellkite Tyrant that can give a massive board swing in one hit. It wants to stop a spellslinger in their tracks with
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, and drop a
Omnath, Locus of Rage that will win the game within a few turns. It's about playing a few powerful cards that can win the game.
Quantity is about gaining critical mass that brings the inevitable end. It wants to overrun a table with a large number of creatures that just can't be dealt with outside of some kind of mass removal. It wants to drop
Goblin Rabblemaster and
Legion Warboss to quickly build an army. It wants to cast a
Rampaging Ferocidon and a
Scab-Clan Berserker and a
Seasoned Pyromancer so that you're putting pressure on your opponents and building an army that they eventually just can't deal with. It's about playing as many cards as possible so that your opponent can't deal with them all.
Both methods absolutely have merit, and most decks aren't completely one way or the other, but the general mindset you're going for is important when you're designing your deck and deciding what you want to do. For Gallia, this means you should
either add good ramp and use her drawing ability as a digging tool to find the best creatures,
OR skip ramp and use her drawing ability as card advantage and go wide, churning out threat after threat. In the end, she'll always do a little bit of both, but the mindset determines whether you want the ramp or not.
I had based my previous comments on going wider, because that's what it appeared you were going for, and I feel that's generally the better strategy with her. BUT this is your deck that you have to play, so you have to decide what you want.
If you go with Quality and size, you'll want ramp. Land fetching, a little artifact mana, and
creature ramp. You'll have a harder time activating Gallia, but when she digs, she digs for the strong threats that are most effective against your opponent. Your curve will go higher, and your big creatures are all welcome to join the party. It's a select party with less people, but they're more interesting.
If you go with Quantity and mass, you'll want to skip a lot of the ramp. You'd then want to focus on smaller costs, card draw, and your ability to play multiple threats per turn. Your curve will want to remain low, stopping mostly at 5 with maybe a few six drops. This means running
Avaricious Dragon so you go through more cards. The mindset is that it doesn't matter what you had to discard, you played what you could and you'll have even more coming later. It's a wild party that you
want to get out of control with tons of people. Heck, you don't even know some of these people, but who cares, let's cannonball into the pool.
Now, I favor the quantity with Gallia because I think it works better with her ability. It's easier to trigger her with more creatures, and her discard is random — which can be a huge factor. If you go quality, you will find yourself not wanting to use her ability because she might make you discard one of the cards you really want to keep. She loves the idea of burning through cards to play as much as you can as quickly as you can. IE:
Avaricious Dragon is actually her drunken boyfriend that inevitably gets into a fight just to wind up becoming best friends with the guy he punched because they realize it was all just a misunderstanding. She loves him anyways, and it just makes the party more rememberable.
I think once you really decide this, a lot of the choices start to become clearer. Either
Tyrant's Familiar is the goal, or he's cut. Either
Woodland Bellower,
Borborygmos Enraged, etc, are dig target, or they cost too much. Once those start aligning, the support starts aligning. Either you need
Birds of Paradise and
Nature's Lore, which are strong noncontingent mana accelerators, to power out the big bad threat, or you need
Grand Warlord Radha and
Harvest Season, that both require mass, to make even more mass. I fear that trying to do both can give you a useless Birds of Paradise top draw or a Warlord Radha that has no army.