Finally posted up my version: Trump's Paradise

I’ve had a really high win rate with this build, surprisingly so. When I built it, I figured it was probably a Tier 3 deck, but it does extremely well against higher tier decks. I think at least partially because of the disruption it runs and I don’t rely only on the combat phase to win, the deck has performed consistently well. It also may just be due to my meta, and that this style does well against it, who knows. But it’s been a ton of fun!

In regards to your question about Trostani, I’ve never had issues with mana colors, so far. I see her in maybe a third of the games I’ve played. Also, I play a lot of five color edh, so three colors seems easy to me sometimes! But these cards help a ton: Noble Hierarch, Axebane Guardian, Chromatic Lantern, Exotic Orchard, Seaside Citadel, Reflecting Pool, City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Command Tower, Farseek, and Nature’s Lore. And there are also all the fetchlands which I don’t currently have in my list.

There’s another card I noticed you dismissed already that I think is worthy of additional consideration because it’s been such an all-star: Mentor of the Meek. It triggers on literally every creature in our list except Arcades. And because the average CMC is so low for us, we’re playing out our hand constantly, especially once you get past turn five or so and you’ve tutored out either Axebane or Overgrown. This deck LOVES the extra gas from Mentor. I can’t say enough good things about him. Panharmonicon is great, but it requires Arcades. Mentor works regardless. Of course, having both is even better for the consistency of the deck.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your list, it gave me a number of good ideas that I’ve used to tweak my list.

Two other thoughts: Meekstone is pretty effective for us, and since you like the pump spells, Solidarity. Higher cost than Tower Defense but might be worth it.

not sure if its been discussed at all, but have you considered adding some equiptment in here like Slagwurm Armor or Ensouled Scimitar?

Mitrian Very nice list! I'm happy that you're successful with it! I made the same experience like you did, it performs very well even against high Tier decks and is a noteable competitor. Sure, your deck offer some more wincons than just beating down the opponents, but I haven't noticed any downsides yet. As you said, it all depends on the own meta :)

I'm glad to hear that about Trostani, I'm probably thinking too much and I almost run the same lands as you. Shouldn't be that hard to cast.

Mentor of the Meek is a cool card, but I'm not too sold on it yet since there is a lot of creature hate in our group and less artifact hate. On the other hand our M19 draft is still due, maybe we'll pull him.

Meekstone is good and I'll probably add it in the future, but at this time there are a lot of token decks with 1/1 and 2/2 tokens in our group making it useless. I put my eyes on Noetic Scales but haven't gotten a copy yet.

As you said Solidarity has a real high cmc but I have to admit I wasn't aware of this card. I will atleast buy one, maybe I'll add it some day.

Thanks again for your comments and I'm glad I have given you some ideas. I wish you all the best with your own Arcades list :)

mattmccrackin Thank you for your suggestions. Personally I think that the overall costs for the equipments is way too high for their benefits. I could get a defender with 13 toughness ore more smaller ones for 4 mana which also allow me to draw additional cards. The cost is not justified by their utility in my opinion.

Thoughts on Enlightened Tutor for your Assault Formation just incase Arcades got stolen/commander taxed out of the game?

+1

hey buddy, great deck!

I don't have the card hyperlinks, because i'm a bit of a noob, but have you considered putting in crucible of worlds and the destroy all lands combo? with creatures of such little mana cost, you can really screw over your opponents mid-game and draw two lands to play a creature very easily; or have creatures on the field who tap for mana. lmk what you think!

Enral Thank you for the +1 and the suggestion. I'm currently observing my games if I need more tutors to enhance my turns.

kani7796 Thanks bud! I have to admit that this is an awesome idea and I'd love to try it. Unfortunately we have a gentlemens agreement in our playgroup that we won't run a lot of land mass-/destroy. There are a lot of good mana rocks and dorks supporting Bant. You find some suggestions in the "Fast Mana Base" tab. They would support your theme a lot. If you ever try your strategy, please let me know how it performed.

Have you considered running boosts like Monstrous Growth, Overrun, Titanic Growth, or Might of Oaks? I know they are all green, and all your boosts seem to be white. I just figured for the cost, they may be a viable option. I know the first 2 are at sorcery speeds, and the last 2 are instants, but overrun maybe worth it especially if you have a lot of walls out.

mattmccrackin thank you for your suggestions. Your comment gave me some ideas and I did some research for similar cards. Overrun along with Triumph of the Hordes could have a slot albeit their high cmc. I don't like the single creature buffs because I think that if I attack with a buff it should be lethal. In a multiplayer game 4 or 7 more strength on a single creature often isn't enough. They would fit better in a Voltron deck.

What about Chord of Calling to sneak Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive in on the declare attackers step? Or someone else's end step if you want to save the mana for the turn you go all out.

Aligned Hedron Network is a niche, global O-Ring that has the ability of not pissing off everyone at the table. Might be good if you have one or two Zoo players at the table that the low-power token decks won't mind you neutering.

You mentioned that there are a lot of token decks in your pod. For that, I recommend Suture Priest. It gives you a bit of lifegain from your creatures hitting the battlefield, and also gives you some defense against opposing token decks. Sure, they can make 40 1/1 Saprolings, as long as they don't mind losing 40 life for them. (:

One other card to consider is Blade of Selves. The Myriad token copies coming in to play should trigger Arcades' draw trigger, not bad if you want to draw some extra cards.

Conjurer's Closet can also re-trigger Arcades's draw and any other ETB effects, and flicker an attacker into a blocker at end step. Edit: On a second look, the closet might be weak for this deck. Very few of your creatures have ETB abilities that can be exploited, essentially all this does for you is give you an untap and a draw trigger at your end step.

Since it's quite dependent on the commander, you may wish to consider Myth Unbound (C18).

@UndeadSpider1990 nah, rather Command Beacon and maybe some form of land recursion. Then maybe also a Gaea's Cradle to go along with Crop Rotation, but cradle only if you run some dorks I'd say.

KongMing Thank you for your suggestions. Aligned Hedron Network is really a niche card. Could be good against some decks in my group but would be a dead card otherwise. It really depends on your meta but it is not bad. I run Suture Priest in my Trostani deck and it didn't helped much yet. It hasn't prvoked the big life loss or token stop, yet. Mostly it got countered or destroyed right away when someone plays tokens. I'll consider Chord of Calling, but semms a bit too situational at the moment. Blade of Selves is expensive mana wise but could bring an opponent down in a swing. I will test it for sure! Conjurer's Closet reads good, especially with a defender who also has card draw like Wall of Blossoms or Axebane Guardian.

UndeadSpider1990 Thank you for your suggestion, but like HobbyGamer007 said, Myth Unbound isn't that good of a card and reads a lot better than it is. Sadly Command Beacon wasn't reprinted with C18, so it's still expensive and I wan't to keep this deck budget friendly.

I think that Guardians of Meletis should be replaced with Wall of Nets or Wall of Resurgence. The reason to do that is that Guardians can be killed by artifact removal in addition to creature hate and both options are straight upgrades to it. For now I've been covering best 3-drop walls and later I'm going to evaulate the best 2, 1 and 0 CMC cards, so I'll let you know if I've found anything worth there :)

Hey Vlasiax, I initially choosed Guardians of Meletis because it is easy to cast and it's not bound to colours. Sure, Wall of Nets is a nice card and I try to fit it in since the beginning, but it could also be hard to cast because of the early. Sure it has 1 toughness more but don't get too carried away by it's ability becaus most of the time you are attacking with your walls. Also, I'm not quite sure if someone would use an artifact removal on this card, there should be more valuable targets out. Nonetheless a good suggestion and I'll keep it in mind! Can't wait for your other discoveries :)

I've done my research in form of a list in my deck's description here: Impenetrable Shield. My deck has a little lower mana curve but works very similarly to yours :)
Also what are your thoughts on Wall of Shards and Wall of Mulch? I play both in mine deck one as a strong beater with little downside and the other as steady card draw for each turn with Wall of Kelp but it sometimes works as combo extender or emergency draw in case someone tries to exile my defenders or take control of them.
And finally I'd consider swapping less optimal cards like Remove Soul and Steadfastness for Heroic Intervention and Lightning Greaves because Arcades is the most important card in the deck and should be protected by any means

I run with Ensnaring Bridge

Vlasiax Very nice Deck and also nice overview of all defenders. Wall of Shards is a nice beater but I don't like his upkeep since I don't want to have my opponents to gain life. I know it wouldn't be that much in a multiplayer game or have a big impact but it could be the one life you are missing to remove from them later (besides it's not just one life cummulative upkeep goes up every turn).

Fun Fact, I've never drawn into Wall of Kelp. I also think it's a very bad card and could be replaced by a far better defenedr, but people here wanted me to try it and so I put it back in the deck. I have absolutely no idea how it performs. Heroic Intervention will probably be added in the future.

thcue thank you for your suggestion, but I probably go with Noetic Scales, since I mostly have around 3-4 cards in my hand.

Akroma's Memorial or Eldrazi Monument might be worth concidering. Wall of Kelp's token would work well with the monument. I am not sure if there are any other cards that create defenders/walls right off hand.

Wall of Kelp when you get to use each turn helps a lot. I've played some games on Forge platfrom for now an I'm convinced that it's worth giving it a shot.
Best example is a situation when you run out of Defenders... then what? You throw 0/1 Kelp each turn and dig a little deeper to find some combo pieces or another defender and rest of the crew just smashes opponents. And since most creatures in EDH don't fly you can block with these tokens.
Also I'm glad you like my build, tried to make it a little more competitve

mattmccrackin you are absolutely right but I'm quite unsure it it would fit in and both have a relative high cmc. But you gave me some ideas for one of my other decks with Akroma's Memorial, thank you!

Vlasiax I know, but i've never came into such a situation ^^' For now it will stay, since it reads very good and you and the others are probably right. I'll keep trying in having it on the battlefield one day!

Your "MassDestroy" category should probably be renamed boardwipes - do you have a reason for calling it that?

Good name for a deck. Also I like Tetsuko Umezawa in this a lot. Nice!