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| Avg. CMC 1.18 |
| Card Color Breakdown |
| Card Type Breakdown |
Main Deck - 60 cards, 16 distinct
 |
Name |
Edition | $ | Type | Cost | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Rarity | Color | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Creature (19) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Alseid of Life's Bounty | $0.25 | Enchantment Creature - Nymph | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Gingerbrute | $0.11 | Artifact Creature - Food Golem | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Hateful Eidolon | $0.20 | Enchantment Creature - Spirit | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Ornithopter | $0.28 | Artifact Creature - Thopter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | Selfless Savior | $0.24 | Creature - Dog | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Artifact (4) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Springleaf Drum | $2.60 | Artifact | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Enchantment (19) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | All That Glitters | $0.49 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Curious Obsession | $0.52 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Ensoul Artifact | $0.41 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Ethereal Armor | $0.27 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | Mire's Grasp | $0.05 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Land (18) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Brightclimb Pathway // Grimclimb Pathway | $2.98 | Land // Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Darksteel Citadel | $0.93 | Artifact Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Hallowed Fountain | $8.72 | Land - Plains Island | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Hengegate Pathway // Mistgate Pathway | $4.98 | Land // Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Spire of Industry | $0.34 | Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sideboard - 71 cards, 60 distinct
Notes
The first question we find ourselves in this rebuild is Lurrus versus 4 drops. We find ourselves desiring better haymakers that provide card advantage against our black heavy opponents. Apostle of Purifying Light is an all star, and becomes the name of the game, and Hushbringer is doing a lot of work across matchups, but simply bringing in heaping amounts of these creatures is not cutting it, and still fall prey to removal heavy openers. So as useful as hushbringer is, it's not the tool we require. Nor is a little graveyard hate going to drastically change the matchup. We want apostle and increased card volume. It's akward because we cut staggering insight the most, even though it draws cards and is insane on an apostle. It's just hard to get on to any other creature profitably in my experience, and costing 2 pre-combat has been difficult at times. Both of the four drop options that entice us could help break the attrition games. Halvar can close immediately, and the equipment is not only insane with Alseid/savior, but provides the threat resiliency this deck desperately needs against decks going to 12+ removal spells. It puts us higher on the curve though, and we loose Lurrus, both seem incorrect in a springleaf drum/ornithopter deck. Lurrus is of course insanely good in all the ways it needs to be, but the problem against these black heavy decks is that they are ready for it. 4/5 times when we put it in our hand, our opponent has sand banked something like thoughtseize or valki to strip it, or rolled up a follow-up sweeper. There play patterns are usually to go 1-1, blow out the lurrus, and then pull ahead. What we need to be able to do is have a intermediate reload plan so that Lurrus can be the third thing we go to, to resolve after we are both topdecking. I think Halvar is just short of mana efficiency to fill this need, but the Antiquities war definitely does. If we build into a slightly heavier artifact version, this is a big payoff to our artifact enablers that pushes damage and card advantage through interaction. I could see post board having up to 3 copies of this with two skyclave cleric and the Lurrus (maybe two). This makes it more difficult for our opponent to line the game up how they want to while retaining our best openers. I would be worried about clunky draws though, and remember well the bad openers featuring ensoul artifact without targets.
Without loosing Lurrus as a companion we have some other shifts available to us. The easiest is trying a post board removal approach with surge of righteousness and maybe aether gust. I've been pretty low on the removal route thus far, as I would prefer for all cards to contribute to the primary gameplan. We could do this with enchantment removal (which always has a risk) and giant killer, but resolving one of the before aforementioned spells should always break a race. The problem is the black decks will always be better at the attrrition plan, and I don't want to just play into that and find myself loosing on that front.
Another few options that are enabled by the splash potentials in spire of industry and springleaf drum are ongoing investigation and skull raid. Skull raid could give us a leg up in our attrition plans, and can play across all mathes. It helps us restock when topdecking, pull ahead, or narrow opponents already constrained resources, and being able to fortell means hand disruption protection. we could even build a bigger fortell package from the side. Relooking at ongoing investigation is actually really good. Non-aura enchantments are a fairly safe type accross these matchups, provides a redundant alternative to staggering insight thats slower but more resilient. It's added bonus is fueling large all that glitters, and is synergystic with the antiquities war if played together. These matchups are well equipped for artifact hate, but we might be able to overload there capacity. A post board configuration of Ongoing investigation, skull raid, surge of righteousness, and apostle of purifying light should be powerful and allow us to retain Lurrus. This package represents a large shift in sideboard slots, and likely means loosing hushbringer, which just performs at a high floor independently in every matchup in comes in against.
The last large shift I want to consider is retaining Lurrus but upgrading Insight/stubborn denial. There matchups and situation where these cards overperform for sure, and insight is a large reason why we are so strong in the red aggro matchups, which we absolutely want to maintain. Having counter magic for black sweepers is important. So I'm hesitant to trim these, as they are in a sense correct. However, we go a different parallel direction if we wanted to shift our focus on the back based anti-aggro decks. We could instead fill these slots with Srams and Sentinel's eyes. Sram spread our opponents removal more, will more consistently cantrip than insight, and offers a recursive value engine with sentinel's eyes to stay in action. I'm not sure if this spread taxes our opponents enough to make the flip, but it's possible and worth testing. Sentinel's eyes ensures we maintain the auras for our synergies to remain intact while giving us a useful card in aggro matchups, and vigilance is a big boon to racing. An opener as simple as ornithopter with sentinel's eyes is trully difficult for red deck's to contain, and that escape option smoothes out a lot of issues across the meta. Post board, a sentinel's eyes on an apostle is really big game in those balck matchups, and without dedicated anti apostle in their sideboard (which I have seen) is going to be problematic for my opponents in the very least. It also makes ethereal armor consistently hit harder, and it's a card that we don't mine throwing a redundant copy on a secondary creature to spread our threats. Does this compensate for the loss of lifelink 5-8 and maindeck countermagic is uncertain. It also limits my sideboard a bit more as these cards are harder to cut than their current rivals. This might open up deeper sideboarding in other matchups, but thats only a benefit If I reasonably covered the matchups I've intended. I think testing this switch is worthwhile to answer this question, with an exploratory spread in the sideboard.
Another large shift would be to try to be Esper Aura's. Our deck is white hungry, and doesn't do particularly well with colorless land (hence darksteel citadel being a 2 even though we run 4 ensoul artifact, which come to think of it might really improve our attrition matchups in itself if we could increase), but we could sub the plains for a dual land with relative ease for a light maindeck splash into a third color alongside our rainbow sources. Hateful Eidolon is the best card we are not playing out of Orzhov aura's, and thoughtseize is likely the best sideboard card we could possibly want. We might be able to have our cake and eat it too. Eidolon beats out Sram a bunch due to being a 1 drop enchantment lifelink creature that can draw cards after we go all in, unlike our sram's who may net a card. This actually might give us the fail safe rate to match our vampires opponents draw creatures, and keeps us on the front foot. If our rainbow splashes plus a land conversion allow it, this actually might be a way to increase our range against mono-black while keeping our dominance of red. This version would be extremely soft to black sweepers, which I hope to compensate for by the velocity of turning our 7 most flexible spots into 1 drop enchantments. A 1 of Urborg could also help things out, but seems worse than just any dual given our single B requirements. Dead weight/ Mire's Grasp out the side is also a very tight package, and these synergies allow us to play attrition far more effectively than my base version. Even crippling blight is kind of nuts. If we can do this well and cast our spells on time without further concessions, then this is another differentiating point that validifies the ornithopter/springleaf drum package, which is a high goal of ours in the abstract. Also, now that i think about it, Darksteel citadel/ensoul artifact really should be further supported if possible, as it is one of the strongest things to be doing in pioneer, but was lackluster because this was the ceiling of izzet ensoul. Making this the floor of Esper Aura's is extremely powerful.
Without loosing Lurrus as a companion we have some other shifts available to us. The easiest is trying a post board removal approach with surge of righteousness and maybe aether gust. I've been pretty low on the removal route thus far, as I would prefer for all cards to contribute to the primary gameplan. We could do this with enchantment removal (which always has a risk) and giant killer, but resolving one of the before aforementioned spells should always break a race. The problem is the black decks will always be better at the attrrition plan, and I don't want to just play into that and find myself loosing on that front.
Another few options that are enabled by the splash potentials in spire of industry and springleaf drum are ongoing investigation and skull raid. Skull raid could give us a leg up in our attrition plans, and can play across all mathes. It helps us restock when topdecking, pull ahead, or narrow opponents already constrained resources, and being able to fortell means hand disruption protection. we could even build a bigger fortell package from the side. Relooking at ongoing investigation is actually really good. Non-aura enchantments are a fairly safe type accross these matchups, provides a redundant alternative to staggering insight thats slower but more resilient. It's added bonus is fueling large all that glitters, and is synergystic with the antiquities war if played together. These matchups are well equipped for artifact hate, but we might be able to overload there capacity. A post board configuration of Ongoing investigation, skull raid, surge of righteousness, and apostle of purifying light should be powerful and allow us to retain Lurrus. This package represents a large shift in sideboard slots, and likely means loosing hushbringer, which just performs at a high floor independently in every matchup in comes in against.
The last large shift I want to consider is retaining Lurrus but upgrading Insight/stubborn denial. There matchups and situation where these cards overperform for sure, and insight is a large reason why we are so strong in the red aggro matchups, which we absolutely want to maintain. Having counter magic for black sweepers is important. So I'm hesitant to trim these, as they are in a sense correct. However, we go a different parallel direction if we wanted to shift our focus on the back based anti-aggro decks. We could instead fill these slots with Srams and Sentinel's eyes. Sram spread our opponents removal more, will more consistently cantrip than insight, and offers a recursive value engine with sentinel's eyes to stay in action. I'm not sure if this spread taxes our opponents enough to make the flip, but it's possible and worth testing. Sentinel's eyes ensures we maintain the auras for our synergies to remain intact while giving us a useful card in aggro matchups, and vigilance is a big boon to racing. An opener as simple as ornithopter with sentinel's eyes is trully difficult for red deck's to contain, and that escape option smoothes out a lot of issues across the meta. Post board, a sentinel's eyes on an apostle is really big game in those balck matchups, and without dedicated anti apostle in their sideboard (which I have seen) is going to be problematic for my opponents in the very least. It also makes ethereal armor consistently hit harder, and it's a card that we don't mine throwing a redundant copy on a secondary creature to spread our threats. Does this compensate for the loss of lifelink 5-8 and maindeck countermagic is uncertain. It also limits my sideboard a bit more as these cards are harder to cut than their current rivals. This might open up deeper sideboarding in other matchups, but thats only a benefit If I reasonably covered the matchups I've intended. I think testing this switch is worthwhile to answer this question, with an exploratory spread in the sideboard.
Another large shift would be to try to be Esper Aura's. Our deck is white hungry, and doesn't do particularly well with colorless land (hence darksteel citadel being a 2 even though we run 4 ensoul artifact, which come to think of it might really improve our attrition matchups in itself if we could increase), but we could sub the plains for a dual land with relative ease for a light maindeck splash into a third color alongside our rainbow sources. Hateful Eidolon is the best card we are not playing out of Orzhov aura's, and thoughtseize is likely the best sideboard card we could possibly want. We might be able to have our cake and eat it too. Eidolon beats out Sram a bunch due to being a 1 drop enchantment lifelink creature that can draw cards after we go all in, unlike our sram's who may net a card. This actually might give us the fail safe rate to match our vampires opponents draw creatures, and keeps us on the front foot. If our rainbow splashes plus a land conversion allow it, this actually might be a way to increase our range against mono-black while keeping our dominance of red. This version would be extremely soft to black sweepers, which I hope to compensate for by the velocity of turning our 7 most flexible spots into 1 drop enchantments. A 1 of Urborg could also help things out, but seems worse than just any dual given our single B requirements. Dead weight/ Mire's Grasp out the side is also a very tight package, and these synergies allow us to play attrition far more effectively than my base version. Even crippling blight is kind of nuts. If we can do this well and cast our spells on time without further concessions, then this is another differentiating point that validifies the ornithopter/springleaf drum package, which is a high goal of ours in the abstract. Also, now that i think about it, Darksteel citadel/ensoul artifact really should be further supported if possible, as it is one of the strongest things to be doing in pioneer, but was lackluster because this was the ceiling of izzet ensoul. Making this the floor of Esper Aura's is extremely powerful.
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