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Sideboard - 38 cards, 38 distinct
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Notes
The key to every deck is mana and card flow. Being able to cast your spells on time reliably, mitigating flood and screw, and enough deck manipulation to be able to execute your game plan, the needed velocity of which varies from each deck. I've had many decks where people comment on how "smooth" it runs. When I play green or blue people assume it's those colors alone which provide the the card draw, ramp, and consistency. But it's not, it's the deck construction. This is the essential engine of every deck, and being able to build it is the difference between a brewer and a net decker. That's why my Mardu deck was so good, because I understood ramp and card draw are not bound by color, but imagination.
So I will build this engine, and determine what if any "gas" or enablers I need. The rest is where I get to set my power. For this manabase I'm going to explore using low CMC permanent recursion, the first part of Annie, as my main ramp as a feature. The idea is through the use of fetchlands and sacrifice I can play them for value as well as reactively. It's precarious but flavorful and fun, and allows to me to play lines in a new way, which is always the point of a new deck. It requires a critical mass of fetch, and double that of fetchable targets. And what's more it begs us to raise the ceiling, for potential power plays that "payoff" the intense restriction. I think harrow effects pair nicely with this as they are fine on face, combo with the recursion pieces, and if copied allow for explosive outcomes. For example look at the sequence of fetch land, howl from the horde, harrow, second sunrise. We go from 6 lands to 14, and we have 5 mana left over untapped. That's an insane sequence, and also fetched out 8 lands out of our deck, thereby increasing spell density significantly for Annie. And most interesting part for the deck building when you look at the sequence is that the parts are interchangeable, have broad lines of play outside of sequence and each can be played face up independently as a full card. That leaves us a very open design space for the remaining deck, which only restrictions seems to be "play good cards that aren't anemic or situationally dead". Like I have many packages already that seem to say, "I can be a core feature that synergizes and is powerful", so many that they can't possibly all fit. Hence why I have made so many sub lists, to help break down the packages and decide how I want to arm the deck, what is essential versus what is possible. It's possible I could make whole sideboards that shake up the deck from time to time, which is an exciting prospect.
With a little more thought though, the recursion spells that are dependent on timing and harrow effects that are inefficient unless busted compared to the cheaper and more reliable alternatives that are also great when duplicated seems more desirable. Like I really liked the exploration and thought it would play cool, but many times we will be "missing pieces", and although all cards function on face, it's not the face we want primarily. We want that to be switched, but unfortunately that's just not realistic. So the more reliable efficient alternatives it is.
So I will build this engine, and determine what if any "gas" or enablers I need. The rest is where I get to set my power. For this manabase I'm going to explore using low CMC permanent recursion, the first part of Annie, as my main ramp as a feature. The idea is through the use of fetchlands and sacrifice I can play them for value as well as reactively. It's precarious but flavorful and fun, and allows to me to play lines in a new way, which is always the point of a new deck. It requires a critical mass of fetch, and double that of fetchable targets. And what's more it begs us to raise the ceiling, for potential power plays that "payoff" the intense restriction. I think harrow effects pair nicely with this as they are fine on face, combo with the recursion pieces, and if copied allow for explosive outcomes. For example look at the sequence of fetch land, howl from the horde, harrow, second sunrise. We go from 6 lands to 14, and we have 5 mana left over untapped. That's an insane sequence, and also fetched out 8 lands out of our deck, thereby increasing spell density significantly for Annie. And most interesting part for the deck building when you look at the sequence is that the parts are interchangeable, have broad lines of play outside of sequence and each can be played face up independently as a full card. That leaves us a very open design space for the remaining deck, which only restrictions seems to be "play good cards that aren't anemic or situationally dead". Like I have many packages already that seem to say, "I can be a core feature that synergizes and is powerful", so many that they can't possibly all fit. Hence why I have made so many sub lists, to help break down the packages and decide how I want to arm the deck, what is essential versus what is possible. It's possible I could make whole sideboards that shake up the deck from time to time, which is an exciting prospect.
With a little more thought though, the recursion spells that are dependent on timing and harrow effects that are inefficient unless busted compared to the cheaper and more reliable alternatives that are also great when duplicated seems more desirable. Like I really liked the exploration and thought it would play cool, but many times we will be "missing pieces", and although all cards function on face, it's not the face we want primarily. We want that to be switched, but unfortunately that's just not realistic. So the more reliable efficient alternatives it is.
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Text with Printing (Arena, Moxfield etc)