The obvious thing to do with Falco Spara, Pactweaver is +1/+1 counter stuff, but I think that's boring. I feel like if you're gonna build an aggressive +1/+1 counter deck, Falco isn't the best choice. He provides card advantage but also eats counters off your creatures, which is a little counterintuitive. Instead of trying to force Falco to fit that archetype, I decided to build this pile of jank that tries to take advantage of both his counter-removing and topdeck-manipulation capabilities. We're trying to set up a situation where we can cast a bunch of spells off the top of our deck each turn, flooding the board with stuff and quickly digging to find our win conditions.
To set up Falco topdeck chains, the first thing this deck needs is, of course, a source of counters. One of the best is Devoted Druid, which allows us to remove its -1/-1 counters with Falco while also using the mana it generates to cast spells off the top of our deck. Wall of Roots accomplishes something similar, although only once each turn. Serrated Biskelion and Shield Sphere can also create counters in repeatable ways, and they get extra value when we remove those counters so they can stick around for longer. Persist creatures like Glen Elendra Archmage and Woodfall Primus can now use their abilities multiple times due to Falco removing their counters. Stonecoil Serpent provides a strong one-shot counter well, and Chronozoa actually gives us infinite counters and slowly builds itself into an army as we remove Vanishing counters. Thing in the Ice
is a timebomb, we don't have many spells to flip it normally so we're gonna be using Falco to do it whenever there's trouble. Lastly, the Lost Auramancers don't have anything crazy to look for, but we'll never complain about freecasting a Brokers Ascendancy or a Jugan Defends the Temple
.
We're also using everyone's favorite mechanic, Cumulative Upkeep! Normally, Cumulative Upkeep costs become too mana-intensive very quickly, meaning most cards with the ability only stick around for a few turns. With Falco removing the age counters, however, we can use them as a counter source and get the benefits they provide while only committing a bit of mana to them each turn. Musician can mess with our opponents' mana math, Jotun Grunt provides graveyard control, Sustaining Spirit can keep us alive in a pinch, and Illusionary Wall is just kinda hilarious. Our most powerful Cumulative Upkeep card is definitely Survivor of the Unseen, which provides tons of card draw and helps us set up topdeck chains for Falco.
Falco's biggest flaw is that while he can cast spells off the top of our deck, he can't play lands, meaning our chain always ends when we hit a land. We have a few cards that help fix this. Augur of Autumn, Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Verge Rangers can all let us play lands off the top of our deck so we can dig for spells. The Reality Chip does this too, and we can also use it to cast spells off the top without using a counter (although we often want to use a counter anyways). The spiciest way of getting past the land restriction is just taking all the lands out of our deck with Mana Severance. It's high risk and you shouldn't do it until the lategame, but it's pretty awesome if it works. You might want to cut it, but I can never resist including Mana Severance wherever I can find a use for it, I just think it's so sweet.
To be able to play a bunch of spells in one turn, we need a lot of mana and we also need a lot of cheap spells. That's why our deck is full of mana dorks and mana rocks: they fulfill both purposes. Our removal is cheap and versatile to support this: Beast Within and Endless Detour can deal with just about anything, and Swords to Plowshares is a staple for a reason. We also have Damning Verdict which can be a fairly one-sided boardwipe if we're not facing another deck that cares about counters (and in a multiplayer game it'll definitely kill at least someone's board).
Lastly, I wanted to get more use out of Falco's ability to see the top card of our deck, so I included a Miracle package. Entreat the Angels and Zephyrim can give us a big army to help end the game, and Banishing Stroke is a pretty potent removal spell. To get them on top of our deck, I included some Brainstorm effects to help set them up from our hand. Soothsaying is also in here, as is Scroll Rack. These effects are fantastic for setting up Falco chains, so even if we're not using them to set up Miracles, they still have something useful to do. Lastly, I'd like to bring up Survivor of the Unseen again. On our upkeep, we can activate Survivor in response to the Cumulative Upkeep sacrifice trigger, meaning we can use the ability before it dies to put a scaling Miracle like Entreat the Angels on top of our deck before our draw step, while also preserving all of our mana to get as many creatures out of it as we possibly can.
So yeah, this is a pretty fun deck if you like topdeck shenanigans and weird cards nobody has ever played before. It's not the optimal way to build this, but it's definitely my personal favorite version to play. If you have more money to spend and want to power this deck up, Sensei's Divining Top would be the first thing I'd put in. I personally didn't include it because I feel like it takes too long to play with and gets annoying for everyone at the table, but it does lead to an infinite combo using Falco and Devoted Druid which draws our entire deck, so that's pretty neat. I bet Counterbalance is also good here, and you could expand the Miracle package with stuff like Temporal Mastery if you wanted to. Doubling Season effects are a trap for this version of the deck because so many of our counters are negative, but they're obviously excellent if you're going for a more standard +1/+1 counter focused build, as are proliferate cards.
