Brekekekex-koax-koax
This here is my amphibious baby. The one I spend money on, the one I can't imagine cannibalizing. For a long time I was hesitant to include Dakmor Salvage or combos in general, but as the power level rose this became harder to justify, and the deck now includes Dakmor/Skirge Familiar and good old Mike & Trike.
Typically this deck ramps hard early game, and usually gets Urborg/Coffers online pretty quickly. The frog is the source of most of the deck's draw power, and as long as it sticks around, I don't run out of gas.
The joy of the deck, for me, is that the principal pieces can be combined in so many different ways to perform beyond the sum of their parts, but that also it rewards the player for doing something he normally shouldn't do, namely sacrificing his own lands. Further still, it's in optimal colors for tutoring and removal, is an extremely tough nut to track with combat damage, and has at its disposal a lovely suite of utility lands for every occasion.
If you're curious, the snow-covered basics are here exclusively to speed up Field of the Dead.
11/21/19:
More minor updates:
-Cut: Stone-Seeder Hierophant (this was a tough one, as she's something of a pet card- very hard to determine what gets to stay at this point), Wasteland (wanted more colored mana sources, and Strip Mine is easy enough to snag when desired), Tempt with Discovery (my playgroup all know better than to fall for it by now), Forest
-Added: Mana Crypt, Bayou, Sylvan Library
11/12/19:
Here's what happened in the most recent round of tinkering:
Cut: Vraska, Golgari Queen (cute, but slow and low-impact); Doom Whisperer (competition is fierce for 5-drop creatures, and this one strays far from the theme); Zuran Orb (between Maze of Ith, Glacial Chasm, and Constant Mists, there's rarely serious demand for lifegain- this one stands a good chance of reintroduction though); Green Sun's Zenith (mostly just gets utility creatures, and trails far behind Tooth and Nail and Defense of the Heart as far as creature-to-play spells go); Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar (big dumb beater, can absolutely be big but I find it rarely sticks around to make much of a difference); Tainted Aether (hilarious in some matchups but ultimately hard to justify).
Added: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed; Triskelion (a nice compact combo- decided to add these after losing one too many games to uncrackable infinite life combos); Mana Vault; Boseiju, Who Shelters All (to force through that vital Tooth and Nail or Torment of Hailfire); Skirge Familiar; Dakmor Salvage (these latter two, together with the Frog, combo to generate tons of mana and draw most of my library- since the deck contains an Eldrazi titan, there's no serious risk of self-mill).
11/13/18:
Here's what was changed in the most recent update, emphasizing improved removal and speed.
Cuts: Feldon's Cane, Ulvenwald Hydra, Pernicious Deed, Hero's Downfall, Vraska the Unseen, Putrefy, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse.
Additions: OG Ulamog, Assassin's Trophy, Doom Whisperer, Ancient Tomb, Shizo, Maelstrom Pulse, Damnation, Toxic Deluge.
5/18/18:
This is the first time in quite a while the decklist here has been updated, because I have been doing a whole lot of tinkering. I'll give the gist of the changes I have made.
-A few cards have been removed because, while they were unmistakably powerful, they did not particularly mesh with the themes of the deck. Wurmcoil Engine and Reanimate are the prime examples of this. WCE has made way for less flashy beaters with a clear land focus, like Multani and Ulvenwald Hydra.
-The few stax pieces (Smokestack, Tainted Aether) have been removed. This one I'm on the fence about. Smokestack is (was) the easier cut, because it's very situational here; if there's a token-heavy deck at the table it's dead in my hand, and it's rarely wise to tick it up past two counters, for my own sake. If I really want to be a dick to someone in particular, I can always Strip Mine his lands faster than he can play them c:
Tainted Aether might well be reintroduced, we'll see how the deck fares in its absence. Unlike Smokestack, this one performs quite well against token decks, and even in the rare situations where I'm jonesing for lands, TA will usually be hurting everyone else more.
Vorinclex remains, mostly because I just really like him.
-There's more focus now on card selection, library manipulation, shuffling, etc. I have picked up a fetchland with each of my past few online Magic orders (the only on-color ones missing are Marsh Flats and Misty Rainforest, and at that point the price compared to utility consideration is hitting diminishing returns), a small but definite improvement all around. I continue to be pleased by the performance of Sensei's Divining Top, especially in the presence of topdeck-revealers Oracle and Courser; I'm now going a step further by including a Scroll Rack. With this deck's substantial draw power and penchant for frequent shuffling, SR adds yet another layer of smoothness to the deck's gameplay.
On the raw card advantage side, say hello to Tireless Tracker! I proxied this one on a whim for goldfishing (mostly against my Mirri Enchantresses deck), and it absolutely exceeded expectations. The clues usually accumulate quicker than I can crack them, and having another source of repeatable, on-demand draw on the field is really nice; I can't always count on being able to sac or discard a land for a Gitrog trigger. It doesn't hurt that clues remain if the board is cleared of creatures.
-Related to (and arguably a subsection of) the above, there are fewer basics than there used to be. Much of this is simply the encroachment of fetches, but a couple of utility lands have wormed their way in as well: Volrath's Stronghold, Buried Ruin, and Thawing Glaciers, most recently. Swamps have gotten the axe more often than Forests, for two simple reasons. First, just about all the methods of digging for lands call for green mana, so it's better to be stuck on G than on B if confined to one color in the early game. Second, Urborg tends to be one of the very first lands I tutor for, and there's no shortage of nonbasic land tutors in here; when Urborg is around, basic Swamps become the least useful lands around by default.
