Teysa, Token Shenanigans
Commander / EDH*
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testing and polishing: a neverending cycle —Nov. 30, 2016
Making a few minor changes here - don't know if the cards I'm removing are gone forever or just temporarily, but that's what testing is for.
-Underworld Connections - Arena is mostly a straight upgrade - the 1 mana activation cost is generally non-trivial.
-Vulturous Aven - haven't actually tested it yet, so may come back at some point. Still, 4 mana draw spell seems a little high.
-Knight of the White Orchid - good, but a 2/2 is a little small.
+Phyrexian Arena - I've mentioned it before, but finally got one. Gold standard for extra card draw.
+Aetherworks Marvel - testing. Seems fairly powerful if it actually works - digs deep, plus free spells are good. Obviously fairly weak if it doesn't work - I think I'll be happy if I can consistently activate it twice, which means I need to have 12 things die.
+Tymna the Weaver - testing. Will hopefully be able to trigger her with some 1/1 spirit beatdown, but I'll admit that this usually isn't a particularly aggressive deck.
Also, going to make a note here regarding something I've observed about the deck: it operates best at around 6-8 mana. 6 mana is the absolute minimum it needs to function at full speed - the key mana value is 3, because that's what most of my creatures cost. So, need 6 mana to be able to cast two spells per turn. However, an extra 2 mana is ideal to be able to throw into the miscellaneous small mana sinks I have - Skullclamp equips, Mentor of the Meek triggers, etc. More than that, it will usually start going to waste - the deck isn't really built to spend more than ~8 mana per turn.
However, this desire for ~8 mana is at odds with another desire of the deck: assembling 7 plains for Emeria, the Sky Ruin. It's in the deck primarily as an insurance policy, but I occasionally wonder if it actually harms the deck. This deck has a fair number of cards that want heavy black mana - Grave Pact and Dark Prophecy especially, so I want around 4-5 sources of black mana to be able to cast them in the same turn as something else. This leads to a tension, where the deck theoretically wants 13 lands (7 plains, 5 black sources, emeria), but has no way to consistently get that many lands or spend that much mana. I almost wonder if I should refactor the deck/mana base to lessen some of the color requirements - doing something like removing Emeria would lower my theoretical ideal closer to the practical ideal - 8 lands that tap for both colors would be more than satisfactory for every case.
The reason why this question is relevant is that I often have the option of spending mana (to skullclamp or mentor) to attempt to draw more lands and hit my land drops, but have the risk of needing to discard if I miss those drops. If I set a goal at 8 mana, I don't need to spend nearly as aggressively, while setting a goal at activating Emeria means I can focus on casting spells instead of drawing into lands.
...ideally, would just run enough card draw/ramp to naturally hit all my land drops. Or maybe I should bump my land count up a bit more? Hmmmm....