!!OUT DATED!!
Bow and awe before the ever-growing mana gorging swarm of The Locust God!
At first sight it looks like a lot of text but once boiled down we can see what we're doing. We need to draw cards to get an army of 1/1 flyers with haste and swing in. This will become priority number one, to draw cards. Skullclamp is 100% auto included. For each mana available and an initial Insect token you can draw two cards thus creating two more Insects. With the amount of tokens being created you can see so much of you deck to find combo pieces or land drops, can recover quickly after a wipe or switch up from both defensively and offensive. Our win condition will most likely be overrunning the opponents with an evasive swarm or to mill them out with Sphinx's Tutelage triggers and wheel effects.
Cards like Arjun, the Shifting Flame, Mindmoil, and Teferi's Puzzle Box are permanents that wheel our hands back into our decks, Puzzle Box also has the benefit of wheeling other player's to make sure they aren't holding cards. Chandra, Flamecaller, Wheel of Fate, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall and my favorite
Flux
all discard then draw. Winds of Change and Whirlpool Warrior also wheel but are a little different.
The one shot draw spells in the deck tend to steer away from singular cantrips like Preordain or Ponder. Because of this I picked Treasure Cruise, Careful Study, Faithless Looting, Magmatic Insight,
Distant Melody
, Stroke of Genius and Brainstorm. These are nice because an extra card or two is also an extra body, remember that.
Coastal Piracy, Bident of Thassa and Windreader Sphinx require a little combat but grows the swarm. Rhystic Study, Fevered Visions, Dack Fayden, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Consecrated Sphinx stick around and residually draws cards over time, great includes and usually need to be dealt with quickly. All this drawing can also be abused by cards other than our Commander, like Chasm Skulker to grow large, Psychosis Crawler to drain 1 life per opponent or Sphinx's Tutelage to mill chunks out of somebody's library.
Once we made an army of Hasty insects we'll need a way to make them as swole as The Scorpion God shout out!
Mindwrack Liege
gives them +2/+2 or for behemoth worthy amounts of power we use Shared Animosity. After they've attacked we can squeeze a 'few' more points of damage around with Throne of the God-Pharaoh or Goblin Bombardment. We can abuse the Enter The Battlefield triggers with Purphoros, God of Forge to deal 2 damage to each opponent, Impact Tremors to deal 1 damage to each opponent or Altar of the Brood to mill each opponent by one; Seems small but each guy really adds up.
ashnod's alter
is an additional all-star for the deck that combos with Skullclamp and Laboratory Maniac while nice ramp on it's own. Other artifact ramp is kinda needed. Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Izzet Signet, Darksteel Ingot and Worn Powerstone are our ramp package. Dreamscape Artist is a pet card of mine that I like because it's repeatable land ramp in blue. He can also be clamped if need be.
Misc or niche cards are Clever Impersonatorand Phyrexian Metamorph to clone valuable permanents. Breath of Fury and either Bident if Thasa or Coastal Piracy gets out of hand for most players out of nowhere. Few cards are instants so Vedalken Orrery can help cast a wheel effect on an opponent's turn or respond in between Arjun or Mindmoil triggers. Fabricate to tutor for mostly Clamp if I haven't dug it out, besides that a nice toolbox effect. There aren't any cards in the deck to give me an unlimited hand size and we're often discarding so Kozilek, Butcher of Truth can help recycle my graveyard and deck or be a win condition if casted(Plus he draws cards have you noticed I like drawing cards) And lastly Lightning Greaves for shroud.
If you have any suggestions or questions please let me know with some feedback.Thank you
