you know that time we all went and got sushi with the new girl?

yeah good times.

thanks wotc

AlwaysSleepy My play group intentionally not running Fish Hulk at the moment (although that may change) and I have been on CST since we started our playgroup not that long ago... I was wondering if you were to run all 3 lab man effects what would you likely cut?

tophe6311

I think it'd be dependent on the meta and what you need at that point. Cards I would look at could be Drown in the Loch, Negate, Priest of Titania, Toxic Deluge, and Fellwar Stone.

All of the listed cards though are quite good and I would make a decision based on which cards are performing best and which are not performing as well as you need. Personally I think just in the blind it could be Negate.

AlwaysSleepy Thanks for the insight and recs!

AlwaysSleepy

I'm curious on what is the optimal number of lands for this deck. I've heard a lot of other CST lists run 29-30 lands. Also why not run all 10 fetches and 6 OG duals?

totterygrain: You generrally want to prioritise U/G mana to increase your chances to it early game. So you want more lands that can produce both of those. And with a reduced requirement for white mana you don't need Arid Mesa, as its two targets are generally going to be Savannah/Tundra to get your U/G. So in its place you're just better off with another source like Yavimaya Coast.

totterygrain

What enpc said for which lands are run and which are not.

29-30 lands is perfectly reasonable. You can cut one of the weaker rocks, like maybe Fellwar Stone or something similar, to add in a land or two.

Depends on what you would like out of your list. Optimal would depend on what you are trying to beat, how grindy your meta is, and what your opponents are doing to interact with you. That can help justify land counts between 28-30.

How come Seedborn Muse didn't make the cut? It seems like the perfect card in any Thrasis-based deck, letting you activate Thrasios on every other player's turn; not to mention it lets you untap Mana Vault/Grim Monolith too and make Isochron Scepter not dead outside of the combo.

Also why not have activated ability reducers like Training Grounds/Biomancer's Familiar?

totterygrain I am by no means an expert on this deck. I have something similar to it together but I have not played it for very long. I think the reason you don't run Seabourn Muse and ways to reduce Thrasios activation is it would take card slots away from things like tutors and counter-magic that the deck really needs to have to be consistent. Not saying that Seabourn Muse is a bad card or training grounds is a bad card but running them would slow down the deck as the ultimate goal is to get the infinite combo as quickly as possible.

totterygrain

Seedborn Muse is in the sideboard suggestions.

As far as mainboard vs. sideboard goes, don't read too much into the sideboard somehow being less optimal cards. You want to tune your list to match your meta or fight the stronger decks in the format, the sideboard is there cause we can't have more than 100 cards. Sideboard cards are all good cards, and can be swapped in if you think it is worthwhile. Seedborn is likely one of the best cards and often ends up in the 100 anyways, but not all metas are slow enough to accommodate it.

Training Grounds is perfectly serviceable. I think it's a bit lower on the priority list since it's a mini combo with your commander that is only for value and individually a weaker card, but it's an acceptable choice into a grindier meta.

Now, on Biomancer's Familiar, I think CMC 2 is a bit high for that effect, as well as it dying to wipes. I'd stick with Grounds if you want that effect/dimension in the deck.

Why not run Spellseeker? It is an easy get off of Neoform and is another tutor!

SynergyBuild

I have! - I didn't update this much during Oracle era. I'm also planning on moving the content and updates to MoxField, so I'll be updating there more and here less.