Marionette Apprentice
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Freeform Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Marionette Apprentice

Creature — Human Artificer

Fabricate 1 (When this creature enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it or create a 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature token.)

Whenever another creature or artifact you control is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, each opponent loses 1 life.

A_Strangled_Catfish on Empty Husks of a Blackened Throne

5 months ago

clayperce

Hello there. Thank you so much for your long list of suggestions, and no this is not spam. I deckcycled it for this exact purpose. Your knowledge of 5 being Ayara's second casting never even occurred to me which is crazy. Now that two people have suggested a Pitiless Plunderer, I'll probably put it on the next order. When I made the deck, this card was upwards of 20, and not all reprints I can keep up with.

Regarding 5-drops. Right now I'm thinking of cutting Banshee of the Dread Choir, Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief, Sauron, the Necromancer, Rescue from the Underworld, Syr Konrad, the Grim, and Open the Graves. Gray Merchant of Asphodel has won me too many games and I love him too much. Girder Goons is not 5 mana, because of blitz, and the double draw double ping has been really nice. Great Unclean One has also won me games (and for some reason is now the most expensive card in the deck tied with Lord Skitter, Sewer King?) Ogre Slumlord has been pretty good, especially since I can start pinging on opponent turns if any of their nontokens die. And I haven't seen Witch of the Moors in action enough to think about cutting it.

Open the Graves is the one I am most hesitant about but Ghoulish Procession looks like a good, cheaper alternative. Same with Syr Konrad, the Grim to Marionette Apprentice.

Decree of Pain is my only board wipe in this deck right now and I want at least one.

I like the addition of Ophiomancer especially since the price has plummeted, which i did not know.

Whenever I update decks, I always look at the cards I own, so I'm thinking a Xathrid Necromancer could fit in here pretty well, as well as Victimize as an alternative to Rescue from the Underworld. I also was thinking about cards like Josu Vess, Lich Knight, Grima Wormtongue, Beamsaw Prospector, Reassembling Skeleton, and maybe something like Starving Revenant or First-Sphere Gargantua as a replacement for Phyrexian Gargantua. Was also looking at Haunt of the Dead Marshes and Curse of Disturbance, though I'm not sure about the curse in a ping deck lol.

These are just my original thoughts. I'd love to hear what you think clayperce. I really enjoy this deck and want to keep working within it until I'm super happy with it.

P.S. Mortuary Mire has been really good but im down to switch out some other tap lands. I know I didn't touch on that much in this response.

clayperce on Empty Husks of a Blackened Throne

5 months ago

OK, here's some thoughts ...

Manabase

  • Are you familiar with Salubrious Snail's Manabaase Tool? If not, it's a GREAT tool for tweaking a deck. The basic idea is we plug our decklist in and it'll give us a report on our manabase (including mana rocks and mana dorks, where applicable), and then we can iterate until we find the cards and consistency we like. As I type this, it shows your current manabase as "inconsistent, playing your spells 0.61 turns late on average", with your 8-drops not coming down until Turn 12 ... which even in Bracket 2 is probably too late to matter. As you tweak the deck, I recommend aiming for "functional, playing your spells [~0.50] turns late on average" ... and if you can get it to "strong, playing your spells 0.40 turns late on average" I think you'll find the deck will feel amazing.
  • I honestly kind of hate Tapped Lands in Mono- and Two-Color decks .... the utility we get from them just never seems to be worth them slowing us down soooo much. I mean. we HAVE to use them in budget Three-or-more-Color decks, but if we've only got one or two colors, I really think we're almost always better off just using a Basic.

Thoughts on Cuts

  • When trying to cut cards, I really like asking myself "What would the Commander want me to do?"
  • For example, I recommend taking a VERY hard look at your 5-drops. They compete directly with Ayara's recast, so for every 5-drop we kind of have to ask ourselves, "Would Ayara rather I cast this or put her back on the battlefield?" With that in mind, shifting as many of our 5-drops as possible to "similar" 4-drops (or maybe even up to 6-drops) would be A Good Thing for Ayara (and so almost certainly a good thing for the deck).
  • We can also kind of do this with any card, asking "What does Ayara want in a card"? IMO, she wants Black Creatures to ETB and she wants to draw cards off them. So any card that does that is probably good for her (and by extension, for the deck).

Some specifics:

Budget cards I would consider adding:

Spendy Cards Maybe Worth Considering: I'd probably try to add one of these. Just one though.

  • Skullclamp: Every time I play this card I'm surprised all over again that it's not a Game Changer)
  • Pitiless Plunderer: I'm with NV_1980 on this one; it's a great card.
  • Gisa, the Hellraiser or Liliana, Dreadhorde General: Yeah, I know they're high mana value cards, which goes against a lot of what I wrote above. But I honestly think Ayara would absolutely LOVE to see one of these ladies in the deck with her!

Hope something in there was helpful; very sorry for the spam if not!
Cheers!

clayperce on Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier

7 months ago

Ryski3 -
Ok, I'll throw some thoughts at ya. PLEASE take all this as "brainstorming" though, not as "recommendations", as I'm still very new to Sephiroth, my deck is definitely not "there" yet, and we're almost certainly building for different playstyles and metas.

Looking at my deck (sorry I haven't transferred it over to TappedOut yet) and comparing it to yours, a few general things stand out:

MANA CURVE: My mana curve is quite a bit lower (total mana value 152 and average mana value 2.38, with the peak of the curve at 27x 2-drops) than yours (total mana value 180 and average mana value 2.77, with the peak of the curve at 21x 3-drops). I built it this way partly to make the deck faster, but mostly because I generally want to cast Sephiroth as soon as I have three mana … and every other 3-drop kind of “competes” with him. Depending on how fast you want to go and when you want to play Sephiroth, shifting your mana curve lower might be worthwhile.

MANA BASES: Our manabases are VERY different (I have more lands despite my lower curve, and you have a bunch more mana rocks and utility lands), but the end result is very similar. If we plug our deck lists into Salubrius Snail’s manabase tool, we can see they’re both “Very strong” and we both have a ~60% chance of casting our 6-drops on curve. That may be something you want to keep an eye on though, as you make adjustments to the deck.

“PILLARS” OF AN ARISTOCRATS DECK (SAC FODDER, SAC OUTLETS, DRAIN EFFECTS):

  • I have my sac fodder spread across a few areas: 3x like Fleshbag Marauder in “mass disruption”, 2x like Greedy Freebooter in “ramp”, 5x like Gravecrawler in “recursion”, and of course 12x like Bitterblossom in “tokens”, for 22 total. As for the other pillars, I have 5x free sac outlets and 7x drain effects (3x like Marionette Apprentice in “direct damage” and 4x like Blood Artist in “drain”).
  • In your deck, I think it’s 15 total pieces of fodder (3x in “mass disruption”, 1x in “ramp”, 1x in “recursion”, and 10x in “tokens”), 3x free sac outlets, and 6x drain effects (1x in “direct damage” and 5x in “drain”). You mentioned your deck feels like it could use some more token generation, but we’re actually pretty close there (12 vs 10). But raising your sac fodder in some of the other areas could perhaps make a big difference … maybe start with the “recursion” area (both in my main deck and in the “considering” tab)?

STAPLES (CARD ADVANTAGE, CARD SELECTION, MASS DISRUPTION, PROTECTION, TARGETED DISRUPTION, ETC): We’ve got different priorities here (I think mostly because of our different metas), and that’s cool.

THOUGHTS ON BRACKET 3 VS BRACKET 4:

  • My deck is honestly in a REALLY awkward position … it’s too fast for Bracket 3 but it's generally way too grindy/not consistent enough to compete at Bracket 4. So I need to either tune it down (by removing some infinite combos) or tune it up (by adding either more combos or more tutors to make the current ones more consistent, plus maybe adding some more fast mana sources).
  • As for your deck, adding some infinite combos would definitely be a way to increase the power level. The challenge is it’s very easy to build an Aristocrats deck that can go infinite on Turn 3 (or even earlier with fast mana or a Dark Ritual), and even if it doesn’t happen often, once it does, folks will think we’re playing a Bracket 4 deck at a Bracket 3 table.
  • You may already be using it, but if not: The Find my Combo page, over at Commander Spellbook is a GREAT tool, whether we want to add combos to a deck or keep them out.

A FEW ACTUAL RECOMMENDATIONS:

Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk. Hopefully something in there ^^ was useful, and if not I’m very sorry for the spam. Good luck (and good skill!) with Sephiroth!

Cheers!

SniperFrog on The Reunion At Last - Sephiroth V1

1 year ago

Love the list. +1

Have you considered things like Reanimate and Unearth as ways to reset Ol' Sep-Daddy?

Also, cards like Marionette Apprentice, Reassembling Skeleton, Weaponcraft Enthusiast and Chthonian Nightmare have felt really good in playtesting for me so far.

Decks like this are my favorite. Sephiroth seems like he could be the best option for mono black in the architype, which has me very excited.

Beebles on Mazirek's Blood Bank | V-SOS

1 year ago

Hey 8netherwind8,

These are all great evasion options indeed, but in my experience the deck doesn't need such pieces. What I find when playing it is that combat rarely is the way that I win. I mostly win through combo. Then there are some other ways to win, like sac shennanigans with Marionette Master, commander damage, and lastly through a good old fashioned beating. But these are functioning more as contingency plans rather than the primary game plan. If I wanted another piece to win with I'd probably go for Marionette Apprentice over an evasion piece. But if you'd like to play more towards combat I can totally see you add those cards instead.

Cloudy2024 on Suicide Cult (Aristocrat Board Wipes)

1 year ago

cool deck! love the use of Dark Confidant. I think you should consider the use of Marionette Apprentice instead of the Vengeful Bloodwitch as it makes a guy!

Cloudy2024 on Stereotypical Profiling Ritual, Vicious & Obscene

1 year ago

I think that Marionette Apprentice would work well in this list.

Crow_Umbra on Thought I Was Dead? [Primer]

1 year ago

Thanks Sungod, I could see the need for another Gary-esque effect. I have Marionette Apprentice as a potential addition, also since I have Treasures as a slight support theme. In that vein, Whip of Erebos could be cool with some of the different pingers in the 99.

I've also been considering adding Sheoldred, Whispering One as a swap with one of my 5 or 6 drops. I could see Whip of Erebos being a potential swap with The Ozolith.

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