How far can you take a precon? Pretty far as it turns out..
Intro
So you want a deck that can play games without being too OP but at your table there is always the risk of a super tuned deck? This is the solution, no one will complain about Kadena and morph creatures being overpowered, but noone will win easily when you are the only one untapping.
The inspiration comes from the famous Blood Pod cEDH deck, in fact the deck runs both stax pieces and toolbox creatures. Part of our toolbox comes from morph creatures, which can be played for free with Kadena. We try to select the morphs which have disrupting effects (destroy artifacts, kill creatures, shut down activities, etc..). The current iteration doesn't run the Pod but Vannifar instead, the reason is that Null Rod-effects are so strong you should favour it over anything else at least in my meta, it's a one card to switch off all the combo-madness.
History
Just bought a Faceless Menace C19 and wanted to tune it, the objective is to play longer and interactive games.
Initially I tried a bunch of different directions, Volrath, token swarm, etc.. but after a while it became evident that this deck couldn't win early enough and it absolutely needed to slow the other players down.
In time stax pieces were added, in particular trying to break parity on the untap phase manipulation:
Precon Card Discussion
The cards I'm most willing to swap out are in the bottom of the list. The higher in the list, the better the card (I think).
- Chromeshell Crab this is stealing opponents' commander for our mana dorks, love it^^
- Sudden Substitution thanks, I'll use your Insert Powerful Spell you can have my mana dork
- Thieving Amalgam this guy is stupid strong, it is a creature so quite easy to deal with but it removes tutored cards put on top and draws you cards with the commander
- Seedborn Muse allows for reactive plays, which could be morph or counterspells + it breaks parity on Winter Orb!
- Vesuvan Shapeshifter works great with the Brine Elemental to create the lock, but it's also very versatile
- Repudiate / Replicate stopping "triggered" abilities is like super powerful, creating a token copy of a creature is versatility.
- Vraska the Unseen, she is an hard answer to permanents and an alternate wincon, she needs to be protected but looks ok
- Road of Return / Den Protector generic graveyard recursion which fits the Golgari theme. I don't really like the fact that Road of Return is for permanents only. Any experience with this card?
- Kheru Spellsnatcher, Willbender, Stratus Dancer interact with the stack, the concept is neat, the execution can be clunky
- Ainok Survavalist, Silumgar Assassin, Bane of the Living target the board, makes sense
- Sultai Charm many uses in a single card is always good
- Scroll of Fate turns dead draws into another card and a 2/2 body, it's okeish I guess
-
Apex Altisaur green one-sided board removal, I actaully quite like this card, I want to sneak it back in!
-
Biomass Mutation if you draw this on an empty board it does absolutely nothing. I want to remove from the deck all situational cards.
- Tezzeret's Gambit Not a lot to proliferate into.. either the deck needs to change a lot or this doesn't make a lot of sense
- Tempt with Discovery what if just everyone says "go"? pay 4 for a land? ew
- Hex we know it's not great, it's too easy to make it fizzle
- Thought Sponge.. wait what..?? It looked super cool but never really did anything in particular. Maybe when Birthing Pod will be in I'll test it again.
- Leadership Vacuum I am not sure this card is good, if you put them back to the command zone, do they have the tax increased? Is the tax removed? It's still in because of the "Draw one" part.
- Grismold, the Dreadsower this guy creates a lot of creatures everywhere. It blanks out sacrifice cards and in theory we could buff our tokens harder than other people at the table. Somewhat makes sense but in the end it's another direction for the deck.
- Great Oak Guardian, flash creatures with ETB effects are powerful, this one looks nice for having people miscalculate their attacks. Not the strongest card in Magic but it allows for unexpected outcomes, I may put it back when trying a more token oriented strategy.
- Grim Haruspex card draw and a reasonable morph cost, it never really drew me more than one card.. swapped out for more stax
- Ixidron this guy looks almost cool when you play it and morph all their other commanders, but in the end it's easy for them to just attack each other with the morphed commander and have they die in combat.. it's a set back, but not the end of the world for them.
Added Cards
- Prime Speaker Vannifar, it can be nice to build around this direction and add to it with high end redundancy like Survival of the Fittest, Birthing Pod, if that's the way, in a blood pod style
- Veil of Summer this card is going to be a green staple, I don't remember a table where there was not a U or B player somewhere
- Regrowth / Eternal Witness usual graveyard recursion
- Null Rod there are only 2 artifacts left in the deck (the other precon ones were really bad imo)
- Finale of Devastation nasty tutor that can sneak in a victory in the super late game!
- Stasis + Wilderness Reclamation (or Forsaken City while waiting for a reclamation), it's just too good to pass.
- Winter Orb very sweet with the Muse or mana dorks in general
- Brine Elemental morph and part of Vesuvan lock!
- Wilderness Reclamation serves the double purpose of giving us mana to morph creatures and then breaking parity on Winter Orb and Stasis
- The obvious Thassa+Consultation package because it's just the most efficient way to close a game, under the untap lock you only have to worry about free counterspells.
Intuition Pile
With a fetch ready to get Mystic Sanctuary you are guaranteed the consultation win, the Intuition targets are:
Regardless of the opponent's choice, crack the fetch land for Mystic Sanctuary and put on top of the library:
- Consultation if they gave you Thassa's Oracle
- Reanimate if they gave you Consultation
- Consultation if they fave you Reanimate
Draw for turn and procede to win accordingly.
