It's not everyday you come across a deck with 4x Rites of Flourishing, so +1 for that alone! The deck looks quite fun to play!

I think you could use some minor life gain so you don't die to Inferno Titan, things that aren't combat damage, etc.

my mate made a deck pritty much the same quite a while back and with still tweaks being made the deck is'nt half bad :P

@Strangelove

For Inferno Titans, I have some sideboard options: 2x extra Blunt the Assault, 1x Elixir of Immortality, and 3x Witchbane Orb. Or I can Beast Within or Tumble Magnet them. So I have a -little- breathing room.

But truthfully, I don't expect to win much against burn. Red Deck Wins, for example, is probably not going to be losing much to me, you know? Too fast, and too many options for getting around combat damage. Shrine of Burning Rage = ouch. Again, I have Witchbane Orb to try to fall back on, but there isn't a huge amount I can do.

Any suggestions for matchups aginst red? I don't have many delusions, but if there's something that will help me live a little longer against them, I'll gladly listen.

Mental Misstep can give you a little protection against mono-red. Tree of Redemption can also give you some fallback space as well as a basically invincible blocker.

Good idea on the Tree, I'll put a couple on the sideboard. I've also increased my main deck Blunt the Assault count from 2x to 4x, so maybe that'll help a little.

Mental Misstep is pretty narrow in its use. It protects against Goblin Grenades and things, but I'm more worried about Shrine of Burning Rage. I'll keep it in mind for now.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I know it's a 4 drop, but you gotta have 4 Blunt the Assault, the life gain is great. A Karn Liberated solves alot of problems and is often time unseen coming in advance. Noxious Revival will bring any card in your graveyard back as next card you draw, which is great. Blue Sun's Zenith on your opponent + Sphinx + Erasure = 3x power.

I -completely- forgot about Blue Sun's Zenith! Thank you, that is perfect!

I live to serve...

The threat of red burn should be possible to avoid if you could lock down or disrupt their mana in some way. Since your wincon can be pulled off on a small manabase it shouldn't affect you nearly as bad. Not sure there's a good way of doing that in standard though.

You might want to consider Grafdigger's Cage though, to deal with all the Gravecrawlers, flashbacks and other grave-based decks out there.

I shouldn't have to worry too much about Gravecrawlers or anything with undying, because I plan to never interact with the opponent's creatures, ever. Ignore them until I die, that's my motto.

For graveyard hate, I'm currently running Surgical Extraction because it does two different things for me: it can kill entire playsets of Mana Leak and the like, which are bad news when I'm trying to cast an absolutely crucial Fog, and it has the potential to thin the opponent's deck by a small margin, so there are fewer cards to mill.

My original list did include Grafdigger's Cage, because that card IS fantastic. I may end up including it if the metagame calls for it, but right now I'm just really concerned with rooting out enemy countermagic.

Dude, Sword of War and Peace... Perfect with all of the card draw against RDW. You gain life, they lose extra life.

Garruk Relentless/Veil Cursed could give you some extra removal and tokens for blockers to save a fog or two.

Acidic Slime is a great toolbox card and a titan killer (great to get rid of those Shrines...)

Sword of Body and Mind gives you extra mill AND wolf tokens.

Mindshrieker and/or Trepanation Blade wouldn't be a bad idea either...

Hilarious though! +1

Just added: Blasphemous Act

Blasphemous Act is a fog, hahahaha.

This may only be a temporary change. At least as a sweeper it's more easily splashed than Day of Judgment or Black Sun's Zenith.

Thoughts?

hey, i use Gideon Jura as a Fog so why not BlasAct?

You lost some card draw adding Blasphemous Act

Pending your meta, keep it mainboard, but I see it as a sideboard card for mass removal of tokens and tribal decks. Definitely a GREAT card, but not something you'd use until late game.

Maybe 1x Rolling Temblor or Whipflare

My current meta is fairly aggro-intensive at the moment, so I will be keeping the Blasphemous Act s main deck for now. I can switch them out for game 2s against control decks and the like, of course.

Also, I prefer the Act to smaller fare like Rolling Temblor and Whipflare, simply because it kills a much wider variety of creatures. For smaller creature hordes, I'll just keep Fogging away, but I like the option of a total board wipe if my opponent's army is starting to get out of hand and I'm running out of fog effects.

Since Rites of Flourishing will be providing both myself and my opponent with lots and lots of cards, using a Blasphemous Act to take out a dozen or so threats at once should be fairly commonplace, generating some pretty massive card advantage.

The fact that the Act is such a big, meaty sorcery means I will be more likely to hold it back for as long as possible, which not only increases the amount of potential card advantage, but also increases the likelihood that I'll draw one of the 4 red sources in the deck. And using Snapcaster Mage on one in an emergency shouldn't be too difficult to pull off either.

Excellent points.

Have you given any thought to adding the Swords?

You need a graveyard recurring effect in case a game goes longer than you want it to, or just vs. ub drownyard decks.

Elixir of Immortality is cheap enough that you can sandbag it or play it turn 1 vs. aggro, Archangel's Light you'd have to splash for, and the lifegain wouldn't really be relevant vs. the matches returning your graveyard would be important in.

Praetor's Counsel costs roughly 1 billion, so is vulnerable to counters, but you can flash it back with snapcasters at last resort, and if you want a big-hand effect play Venser's Journal. That card is truly frustrating for aggro.

@Goldenpineapple I should totally grab a copy of Praetor's Counsel, that is an excellent suggestion. I'll try to update my deck list when I get my hands on one. I've got two copies of Elixir of Immortality on the sideboard already. I figured they'd help me against both mill and a little against burn (hooray for small amounts of lifegain!).

@aeonstoremyliver The problem with swords is that I'm barely running any creatures, and don't really have any plans to ever actually use my combat step. I mean, if I'm in a situation where I can win by attacking with my Consecrated Sphinx for 5 turns, I will, but it's not a mainline strategy. With only six creatures total, I'm just afraid it would mostly be a dead draw.

@Goldenpineapple - Venser's Journal is also genius. I'm going to have to procure myself some sideboard cards, haha. Thanks!

Whoa I love this deck so much. I playtested it against some really fast decks, like my deck:rw-tempered-steel-3 and most of the time I won, but you still managed to get 2 wins out of 6 games. Either way, I think this could be a really good deck.

I feel like any aggressive strategy that includes counterspells (like Delver) or burn (like RDW) is going to pretty much destroy me, even with me siding in hate. It's just a bad matchup. Unfortunately, this comprises a lot of decks, haha. But I should have a lot of fun against pure aggro and maybe even some control decks. I mostly just want to do something weird and unexpected, regardless of win percentage.

Still, though. Might as well try to make it as competitive as possible.

Considering that many pro's are strong believers in the philosophy of fire I don't recommend lambasting red mages as unintelligent, especially if you happen to be losing to the deck.

Praetor's Counsel Is far too expensive to be using, especially as the decks where you would need it against are going to be beating you well before you can cast it.

For you maybe you should simply maindeck Surgical Extraction as that can rip counters and key burn spells from a deck, drastically slowing your opponent.

Cut the Blunt the Assault to two and perhaps even the other fog effects to three each and fill the space with Mana Leak/Negate

Oh, I wasn't lambasting red mages at ALL. I was speaking as an in-character blue-green mage! I'm speaking purely from a flavor perspective, where an actual in-game blue mage would probably talk about an actual in-game red mage in that way, due to the opposing intelligence vs. emotion philosophies of the two colors.

I mention it because it's a strength of red decks. They don't have to do all their damage from combat, and no matter what ridiculous tomfoolery some random blue mage is trying to do to lock down the board, the red mage can just shake his or her head and Fireball them to death.

I thought I was pretty clear, almost obnoxiously so, that this deck isn't meant to win any sort of "professional" competition. It's an FNM troll deck! For fun! I have no delusions about winning!

As far as Praetor's Counsel is concerned, it would only be a late game card, it would only be a one-of, it would only be sided in against opposing mill (which means pretty much never), and it would to be easy to cast considering all the copies of Rites of Flourishing that would be floating around. But think about how fun it would be, holding 30 cards!

I'll do what you suggested re: countermagic when sideboarding, but I probably won't main deck my Negates. It would too often be a dead draw when I'd rather have a fog or a finisher.