The only "ramp" card that searches a library is Fabled Passage...
All the decks seem to be using Cultivate too.
I admit I forgot about Cultivate, but at least according to MTGGoldfish it doesn't really show up in a majority of Bant Ramp lists. Certainly not to the point where you could magic bullet it with Mindcensor.
My last two Jumpstart runs have involved preposterous monocolor decks:
&
Lost a game with the gobbos due to opponent's Volcanic Fallout > Magmaquake > 5/4 Dragon that turns units into FTK, but otherwise a solid 35 wins between the two. Craterhoof top score was ~300 dmg; folks were never killing Archdruid fast enough.
I managed a double vamp pull and it was super fun. But I think I've played enough jumpstart. I've only got like 15 or so of the templates, but choosing 1 of 3 is so low that I'm not really feeling like grinding through it and instead will happily wait to play until the next Jumpstart release
Deck
4 Ajani's Pridemate (WAR) 4
11 Plains (THB) 279
2 Healer's Hawk (GRN) 14
1 Dawn of Hope (GRN) 8
4 Pacifism (M20) 32
4 Charmed Stray (WAR) 8
8 Forest (THB) 287
2 Impassioned Orator (RNA) 12
2 Llanowar Visionary (M21) 193
4 Giant Growth (WAR) 162
2 Season of Growth (M20) 191
2 Moment of Heroism (M20) 30
2 Angel of Vitality (M20) 4
1 March of the Multitudes (GRN) 188
2 Inspiring Commander (ANA) 5
1 Warbriar Blessing (THB) 204
3 Blossoming Sands (M20) 243
1 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun (THB) 9
1 Ram Through (IKO) 170
1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned (THB) 18
2 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
What do people think about this deck? It's life gain into Ajani Pridemate as the main win condition as I've seen others using, but, I use the card draw from Inspiring Commander, Lllanowar Visionary and espescially the two Season of Growths to start making every one of the instant target spells into a 'Do X and draw 2' which really helps the deck to accelerate ridiculously in situations where I see other life gain decks run out of gas. Once it gets going effectively every card starts gaining me life, drawing me cards, and hurting the opponent.
I espescially like when you can combine Moment of Heroism with Ram Through and having an ajani on the board to make you draw 4 cards, attack twice to gain life, and thus get two counters on the Ajani. Green is really only there because Season of Growth and Giant Growth make for such an effective combo to get me what I need and deliver pseudo removal (or keep my lifegain cats and birds alive) as I tick through.
You probably don't want Charmed Strays.
In that, I've never managed to make Charmed Strays work.
I'd consider adding more Hawks (more reliable life gain) or Alseid of Life's Bounty instead (sac to provide protection against colour; great for punching through similarly-coloured defenders or as defence against targeted spells).
If you have green, I'd be looking at Great Henge, because life and draw.
But that's mythic. Probably replace that single Dawn of Hope.
I'd also be considering whether you can go more counter heavy with Conclave Mentor and other green counter creatures, but I've not had so much success here.
If the deck above isn't dying to ramp into Ugin, then it's frankly doing better than what I've been attempting in WG counters.
Deck
4 Ajani's Pridemate (WAR) 4
11 Plains (THB) 279
2 Healer's Hawk (GRN) 14
1 Dawn of Hope (GRN) 8
4 Pacifism (M20) 32
4 Charmed Stray (WAR) 8
8 Forest (THB) 287
2 Impassioned Orator (RNA) 12
2 Llanowar Visionary (M21) 193
4 Giant Growth (WAR) 162
2 Season of Growth (M20) 191
2 Moment of Heroism (M20) 30
2 Angel of Vitality (M20) 4
1 March of the Multitudes (GRN) 188
2 Inspiring Commander (ANA) 5
1 Warbriar Blessing (THB) 204
3 Blossoming Sands (M20) 243
1 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun (THB) 9
1 Ram Through (IKO) 170
1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned (THB) 18
2 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
What do people think about this deck? It's life gain into Ajani Pridemate as the main win condition as I've seen others using, but, I use the card draw from Inspiring Commander, Lllanowar Visionary and espescially the two Season of Growths to start making every one of the instant target spells into a 'Do X and draw 2' which really helps the deck to accelerate ridiculously in situations where I see other life gain decks run out of gas. Once it gets going effectively every card starts gaining me life, drawing me cards, and hurting the opponent.
I espescially like when you can combine Moment of Heroism with Ram Through and having an ajani on the board to make you draw 4 cards, attack twice to gain life, and thus get two counters on the Ajani. Green is really only there because Season of Growth and Giant Growth make for such an effective combo to get me what I need and deliver pseudo removal (or keep my lifegain cats and birds alive) as I tick through.
Decks with this many 1-2 ofs are generally not good, because they are trying to be too many things at once and aren't great at any of them. You appear to be basically trying to make a GW auras deck and a mono-white lifegain deck at the same time, with some elements of GW weenies, and it feels like it's going to be generally worse at all of those. GW auras has Setessan Champion and multiple cost reducers and recursive enchantments to never run out of gas, and mono-W lifegain will threaten lethal on T4-T5 when not disrupted relatively consistently. This just looks like you're gonna see hands like, impassioned orator + pump spells + llanowar visionary and get nowhere.
Also, combat tricks are generally really, unplayably bad in Constructed unless they're 1-mana hard protection or unless they otherwise synergize with your deck.
Not knowing enough about how each of the queues "work", I presume it's worth asking where @tbloxham plans on playing that deck; is it largely a first iteration of the Stock Selesnya deck intended for just jamming Bo1 in the basic Play queue? Or are there greater ambitions afoot?
That said, milski's advice pretty much covers my initial impression of the list. Certainly modern deckbuilding philosophy has resulted in a greater incidence of 1-ofs (etc...), but that's often reflective of highly tuned lists reacting to a hyperspecific event metagame OR suggestive of greater format "velocity"(i.e. Modern), such that the relative probability for drawing those "bullets" is much higher.
Some bullets or one-ofs are appropriate, but those are usually highly specific answers, hedging engines, or unanswerable/deck hosing threats. So the 1x Dawn of Hope is fine, but like 1x Heliod makes little sense because he's so clearly a thing you always want in lifegain aggro
I ate an engineer
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
Some bullets or one-ofs are appropriate, but those are usually highly specific answers, hedging engines, or unanswerable/deck hosing threats. So the 1x Dawn of Hope is fine, but like 1x Heliod makes little sense because he's so clearly a thing you always want in lifegain aggro
Yeah Heliod is an ideal 3-of candidate because you don’t really want to draw multiples but you do want to draw one every game
Thanks for all the good feedback Lots of ideas I hadn't thought much about 'Purpose' of the deck is primarily trying to win in Bo1 Standard 'Play now' games, which is where I play like 95% of my games. I also have like 99% of these cards in the real world, so that explains some of the one offs being there, to mimic a real deck I can build. Well, other than the Commander, who is a big part of how the deck works online.
However, as I can no longer play magic in person, I am less attached to the fact that the deck is like my 'real' one. So, I was wondering what could be improved.
What the deck does more than anything when it wins is either...
1) A great opening hand with Hawk, Ajani, Pacifism, Daxos, Plains, Plains, Blossoming Sands. -> This leads to a 4-5 power creature on turn 3 (depending on cast order), and your main creature threat disabled against it. Cumulative damage at that point tends to mean they can only be reactive to what I do, or they will die. What tends to happen then is that even if the other persons deck starts turning on, everything in my deck is so ridiculously cheap that I just have creatures pouring down so it doesn't really matter what they do. Win is very quick.
2) A moderate opening hand with Cats, Orator, Season of Growth Some buffs, some lands. In this case, the cat, orator combo looks harmless, but, the Season of Growth synergizes nicely with the cats and orator as targets for the buffs. This starts me drawing cards, and because all my stuff is so cheap I can just play everything that comes down. Win conditions are either the Heliod, or the Commanders being down when Ajani or the Angels are also down.
The thing I like about it, is that if my great hand gets messed up somehow by deathtouch creatures, counterspells, quick removal or some kind of nasty effects I can transition to plan 2, which is to draw and cast as many cheap things as possible. If I have the Season of Growth down, every creature scries for me, and there are many ways to turn creature arrival into card draw which means I just whip through my deck to find answers.
The deck seems to hold up against most ramp decks which rely on creatures to kill me, because it gains such a large amount of life that if you are summoning creatures and relying on them just 'being great creatures that you get super early' I tend to have gained like 10 life by turn 3-4, which often means that what was supposed to be your lethal hit just doesn't work, and I'm still alive, and you're out of gas. Sure, you've got some horrible beasty, but, lifegain tends to slow that down enough that I can catch up with card draw or pacifism it. It also tends to always beat other lifegain decks, because I have card draw and they typically don't.
Punching through is usually only an issue against deathtouch creatures, especially cheap ones since typically my board is so wide. I can usually just send over my swarm of nonsense creatures without the Pridemates's and use combat tricks to thin your ranks enough to get through next turn. They are a huge weakness, and tend to make me have to wait for Heliod, or rely on the angels, hawks and lifegain to get around you. Cheap, flying deathtouchers are an enormous problem. I often have to waste pacifisms on them.
Decks which really mess me up are those which can achieve cheap unsummon hits on my creatures, cat/oven sacrifice decks if they get started (because those bounce out of the grave cats also mess up my aggression), and decks which can ping me or my creatures directly when their creatures die. They tend to just pick me to pieces unless Heliod is down.
One thing I had been valuing in the deck is 'cheapness' of the casting costs for everything other than the commanders. The more cards I cast, the more life I gain and cards I draw. By making everything cheap, I avoid stalls early game, which is one reason I was using pacifism rather than the other alternatives there.
orzhov lifegain Vito decks have become my obsession. I am tinkering at Vampire Tribal, White Devotion, Black devotion bombs.
All for Vito, praise Vito, Thorn of Dusk Rose
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
the most fun with Vito I've had so far is in a GB Bolas's Citadel deck. The green is for lifegain and extra land plays from Asuza and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, which also turns all your lands into Swamps and makes Dark Presence a machine gun. Once you get the Citadel going you can churn through your deck so fast and the incidental lifegain becomes a killer with Vito on the table. There's also Planar Celebration, which with Citadel and Vito reads "Pay 7 life: Gain 16 life, gain 16 mana, smack opponent for 16 life."
Ha, spoke too soon on that Ugin deck, I had been doing well, but just had two absurd games in a row where they went on for like 15 turns and I had an array of gigantic ajani's and all the lifegain, and their Ugin's were useless and they couldn't do anything to just stop me pouring more creatures down but in the end I couldn't deal with all their planeswalkers. Teferi's just kept on stealing just enough of my momentum by like, phasing things out and bouncing them back to my hand until finally they both overwhelmed me with bloomin shark typhoons.
I was always short on card draw in both games because they had some enchantment hate, so I was actually keeping up with them for a while with the creatures coming from castle ardenvale. So many human tokens dying to 3/3 creature lands... I think I would have beaten both decks if they hadn't had the new cat token making lady. She could always churn out a chump blocker, and I could never get 3 big ajanis at the same time.
So, all the things people were commenting would go wrong went wrong I really needed Heliod but he didn't show up because card draw didn't work, and I couldn't get the pridesmates through because they were always being chump blocked. Usually this isn't an issue, because token decks are rare, and if you are chump blocking without tokens I'm eating your cards using my 2 drops, but, both these Uro decks had just the right balance of token making and annoyance that things never quite turned on properly.
edit - why did I write Uro so much after spending like 35 minutes cursing those Ugins and their card draw
What I expect to happen is T3 boardwipe, T5/6 Ugin to wreck you honestly.
Otherwise I should play in Play Now
Well yes, you always lose sometimes Board wipes are pretty darn effective clearly as the deck doesn't do much other than, "Look at all these creatures I have and cards I have which mean I have more!". T3 is often too early to boardwipe me though, because if I've been lucky I'll have a Season of Growth down or in hand, and a creature and a buff in hand. That can be enough to restall the game and let me come back. T4 boardwipe is pretty much uniformly a catastrophe, because I'll hopefully have played out lots of cards on T4 and will likely have prioritized getting stuff down. Also, its usually just too late for me to recover if their deck starts working at that point.
edit - And yes, play now does seem to be a little bit 'gentler', because the lack of a sideboard means you can't just swop in a board wipe or two to deal with my nonsense like you can in best of three
No, it's more the Ugin comes down after disrupting my board, exiles all the cheap stuff, and then does it again and again.
And that's been all the decks in ranked diamond.
So I should play in Play now if it's not so much an issue there
No, it's more the Ugin comes down after disrupting my board, exiles all the cheap stuff, and then does it again and again.
And that's been all the decks in ranked diamond.
So I should play in Play now if it's not so much an issue there
Frankly, isn't this this same strategy as Kaya.dek or your proposed unmoored-ego deck, just better executed? Tap-out control is a thing and you've gotta adapt to it, either by playing permission, playing faster, or playing bigger (not that you can play bigger than Ugin, really)
Uro is who I lost to last night in the drawn out games. My ability to remember magic names is a big problem I feel i got this name wrong like a dozen times even with correcting it back and forth.
Ugin is clearly an issue, but, he's kind of an issue for everything right? Other than red direct damage decks or something. I cant see any way to beat him with a deck like mine that isn't just kill the player before he arrives.
No, it's more the Ugin comes down after disrupting my board, exiles all the cheap stuff, and then does it again and again.
And that's been all the decks in ranked diamond.
So I should play in Play now if it's not so much an issue there
Yes, I'm terrible at names. Uro I can fight, Ugin is just 8 mana - win the game.
No, it's more the Ugin comes down after disrupting my board, exiles all the cheap stuff, and then does it again and again.
And that's been all the decks in ranked diamond.
So I should play in Play now if it's not so much an issue there
Frankly, isn't this this same strategy as Kaya.dek or your proposed unmoored-ego deck, just better executed? Tap-out control is a thing and you've gotta adapt to it, either by playing permission, playing faster, or playing bigger (not that you can play bigger than Ugin, really)
Kaya can be beat by playing faster than it.
She relies on removing key pieces until she can wipe, and then eventually generating card advantage for more answers.
As far as I can tell, playing faster than Ugin is next to impossible.
Unmoored Egos largely relies on guessing Ugin, and hoping the other deck has no other wincons.
It would also be the counters/permission solution you suggested.
I really shouldn't be forced into playing blue by the meta either.
Please ban blue to fix this.
Unmoored Egos largely relies on guessing Ugin, and hoping the other deck has no other wincons.
It would also be the counters/permission solution you suggested.
I really shouldn't be forced into playing blue by the meta either.
Please ban blue to fix this.
You can run the new zombie version in M21 if you don't want to run blue. Giving them a zombie or two should be a small price to pay?
Ugin has fallen a bit out of favor currently in the meta. He isn't well positioned against the current top dog of temur reclamation and you were already going to win the long game anyway with Uro/Nissa. The best decks seem to reclamation, some low to the ground agro specifically targeting reclamation, sacrifice decks which wreck the previous aggro decks but lose to temur or bant decks with all the mythics and ugin which lose to everything above.
Ugin has fallen a bit out of favor currently in the meta. He isn't well positioned against the current top dog of temur reclamation and you were already going to win the long game anyway with Uro/Nissa. The best decks seem to reclamation, some low to the ground agro specifically targeting reclamation, sacrifice decks which wreck the previous aggro decks but lose to temur or bant decks with all the mythics and ugin which lose to everything above.
So your saying the solution is I need to play two decks at the same time to win reliably
so signing up for any of the gencon online mtgo tournaments lets you turn your account into a fully stocked one for the weekend and wow it's been like 6 months since I've played legacy and so far I am bad and have also skipped attacks like 3 times because of bad arena habits. I'd probably play so much here if you only had to pay for tournaments this is great.
Ugin has fallen a bit out of favor currently in the meta. He isn't well positioned against the current top dog of temur reclamation and you were already going to win the long game anyway with Uro/Nissa. The best decks seem to reclamation, some low to the ground agro specifically targeting reclamation, sacrifice decks which wreck the previous aggro decks but lose to temur or bant decks with all the mythics and ugin which lose to everything above.
So your saying the solution is I need to play two decks at the same time to win reliably
If you can figure out how to win reliably at MTG, there's a whole bunch of pro players who would like to know your secret
I'm just going to stick to playing phoenix because it's fun.
Ugin has fallen a bit out of favor currently in the meta. He isn't well positioned against the current top dog of temur reclamation and you were already going to win the long game anyway with Uro/Nissa. The best decks seem to reclamation, some low to the ground agro specifically targeting reclamation, sacrifice decks which wreck the previous aggro decks but lose to temur or bant decks with all the mythics and ugin which lose to everything above.
So your saying the solution is I need to play two decks at the same time to win reliably
Keep in mind that winning "reliably" in Magic means reaching a certain rank and then winning 50% of your games. If that hits at Platinum you're doing pretty well!
I completely ignore the meta and fight it like a bad cold. Fuck these Uros and Ugins and Teferis and Aggro Red. They're all fucking assholes, the lot of 'em.
Black/White Vampire Tribal and/or Lifegain is my stubborn hill to die upon in this absurd, stagnant, repugnant Standard meta.
And yeah, the 'Play' option is better than the dark murkmire that is upper diamond-low mythic. IT SUCKS THERE. Full of cheese and turn 4 GG.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Stop with this 50% pain. Everyone come play commons jumble decks. Keep it casual and ignore the absurd meta that Wizards have created.
In other news I won a full on box of magic 2021 booster cards and I dont.... know what to do with it. I don't want to open it, I've gone digital for a reason.
Posts
All the decks seem to be using Cultivate too.
I admit I forgot about Cultivate, but at least according to MTGGoldfish it doesn't really show up in a majority of Bant Ramp lists. Certainly not to the point where you could magic bullet it with Mindcensor.
2 out of every 3 times I see Ugin it's from a mono-green deck that uses Arboreal Grazer, Cultivate, and Nissa to slam him down on like turn 4.
&
Lost a game with the gobbos due to opponent's Volcanic Fallout > Magmaquake > 5/4 Dragon that turns units into FTK, but otherwise a solid 35 wins between the two. Craterhoof top score was ~300 dmg; folks were never killing Archdruid fast enough.
4 Ajani's Pridemate (WAR) 4
11 Plains (THB) 279
2 Healer's Hawk (GRN) 14
1 Dawn of Hope (GRN) 8
4 Pacifism (M20) 32
4 Charmed Stray (WAR) 8
8 Forest (THB) 287
2 Impassioned Orator (RNA) 12
2 Llanowar Visionary (M21) 193
4 Giant Growth (WAR) 162
2 Season of Growth (M20) 191
2 Moment of Heroism (M20) 30
2 Angel of Vitality (M20) 4
1 March of the Multitudes (GRN) 188
2 Inspiring Commander (ANA) 5
1 Warbriar Blessing (THB) 204
3 Blossoming Sands (M20) 243
1 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun (THB) 9
1 Ram Through (IKO) 170
1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned (THB) 18
2 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
What do people think about this deck? It's life gain into Ajani Pridemate as the main win condition as I've seen others using, but, I use the card draw from Inspiring Commander, Lllanowar Visionary and espescially the two Season of Growths to start making every one of the instant target spells into a 'Do X and draw 2' which really helps the deck to accelerate ridiculously in situations where I see other life gain decks run out of gas. Once it gets going effectively every card starts gaining me life, drawing me cards, and hurting the opponent.
I espescially like when you can combine Moment of Heroism with Ram Through and having an ajani on the board to make you draw 4 cards, attack twice to gain life, and thus get two counters on the Ajani. Green is really only there because Season of Growth and Giant Growth make for such an effective combo to get me what I need and deliver pseudo removal (or keep my lifegain cats and birds alive) as I tick through.
Also you can potentially add 1-2 Lurrus to bring back Pridemates. I'm not sure what you'd cut though
Edit: also consider swapping the Pacifism for Dreadful Apathy or Banishing Light
In that, I've never managed to make Charmed Strays work.
I'd consider adding more Hawks (more reliable life gain) or Alseid of Life's Bounty instead (sac to provide protection against colour; great for punching through similarly-coloured defenders or as defence against targeted spells).
If you have green, I'd be looking at Great Henge, because life and draw.
But that's mythic. Probably replace that single Dawn of Hope.
I'd also be considering whether you can go more counter heavy with Conclave Mentor and other green counter creatures, but I've not had so much success here.
If the deck above isn't dying to ramp into Ugin, then it's frankly doing better than what I've been attempting in WG counters.
Faith's Fetters is another option for a lifegain trigger plus removal
Decks with this many 1-2 ofs are generally not good, because they are trying to be too many things at once and aren't great at any of them. You appear to be basically trying to make a GW auras deck and a mono-white lifegain deck at the same time, with some elements of GW weenies, and it feels like it's going to be generally worse at all of those. GW auras has Setessan Champion and multiple cost reducers and recursive enchantments to never run out of gas, and mono-W lifegain will threaten lethal on T4-T5 when not disrupted relatively consistently. This just looks like you're gonna see hands like, impassioned orator + pump spells + llanowar visionary and get nowhere.
Also, combat tricks are generally really, unplayably bad in Constructed unless they're 1-mana hard protection or unless they otherwise synergize with your deck.
That said, milski's advice pretty much covers my initial impression of the list. Certainly modern deckbuilding philosophy has resulted in a greater incidence of 1-ofs (etc...), but that's often reflective of highly tuned lists reacting to a hyperspecific event metagame OR suggestive of greater format "velocity"(i.e. Modern), such that the relative probability for drawing those "bullets" is much higher.
Yeah Heliod is an ideal 3-of candidate because you don’t really want to draw multiples but you do want to draw one every game
However, as I can no longer play magic in person, I am less attached to the fact that the deck is like my 'real' one. So, I was wondering what could be improved.
What the deck does more than anything when it wins is either...
1) A great opening hand with Hawk, Ajani, Pacifism, Daxos, Plains, Plains, Blossoming Sands. -> This leads to a 4-5 power creature on turn 3 (depending on cast order), and your main creature threat disabled against it. Cumulative damage at that point tends to mean they can only be reactive to what I do, or they will die. What tends to happen then is that even if the other persons deck starts turning on, everything in my deck is so ridiculously cheap that I just have creatures pouring down so it doesn't really matter what they do. Win is very quick.
2) A moderate opening hand with Cats, Orator, Season of Growth Some buffs, some lands. In this case, the cat, orator combo looks harmless, but, the Season of Growth synergizes nicely with the cats and orator as targets for the buffs. This starts me drawing cards, and because all my stuff is so cheap I can just play everything that comes down. Win conditions are either the Heliod, or the Commanders being down when Ajani or the Angels are also down.
The thing I like about it, is that if my great hand gets messed up somehow by deathtouch creatures, counterspells, quick removal or some kind of nasty effects I can transition to plan 2, which is to draw and cast as many cheap things as possible. If I have the Season of Growth down, every creature scries for me, and there are many ways to turn creature arrival into card draw which means I just whip through my deck to find answers.
The deck seems to hold up against most ramp decks which rely on creatures to kill me, because it gains such a large amount of life that if you are summoning creatures and relying on them just 'being great creatures that you get super early' I tend to have gained like 10 life by turn 3-4, which often means that what was supposed to be your lethal hit just doesn't work, and I'm still alive, and you're out of gas. Sure, you've got some horrible beasty, but, lifegain tends to slow that down enough that I can catch up with card draw or pacifism it. It also tends to always beat other lifegain decks, because I have card draw and they typically don't.
Punching through is usually only an issue against deathtouch creatures, especially cheap ones since typically my board is so wide. I can usually just send over my swarm of nonsense creatures without the Pridemates's and use combat tricks to thin your ranks enough to get through next turn. They are a huge weakness, and tend to make me have to wait for Heliod, or rely on the angels, hawks and lifegain to get around you. Cheap, flying deathtouchers are an enormous problem. I often have to waste pacifisms on them.
Decks which really mess me up are those which can achieve cheap unsummon hits on my creatures, cat/oven sacrifice decks if they get started (because those bounce out of the grave cats also mess up my aggression), and decks which can ping me or my creatures directly when their creatures die. They tend to just pick me to pieces unless Heliod is down.
One thing I had been valuing in the deck is 'cheapness' of the casting costs for everything other than the commanders. The more cards I cast, the more life I gain and cards I draw. By making everything cheap, I avoid stalls early game, which is one reason I was using pacifism rather than the other alternatives there.
Seriously though, thanks for all the great ideas
All for Vito, praise Vito, Thorn of Dusk Rose
I was always short on card draw in both games because they had some enchantment hate, so I was actually keeping up with them for a while with the creatures coming from castle ardenvale. So many human tokens dying to 3/3 creature lands... I think I would have beaten both decks if they hadn't had the new cat token making lady. She could always churn out a chump blocker, and I could never get 3 big ajanis at the same time.
So, all the things people were commenting would go wrong went wrong
edit - why did I write Uro so much after spending like 35 minutes cursing those Ugins and their card draw
Otherwise I should play in Play Now
Well yes, you always lose sometimes
edit - And yes, play now does seem to be a little bit 'gentler', because the lack of a sideboard means you can't just swop in a board wipe or two to deal with my nonsense like you can in best of three
And that's been all the decks in ranked diamond.
So I should play in Play now if it's not so much an issue there
Frankly, isn't this this same strategy as Kaya.dek or your proposed unmoored-ego deck, just better executed? Tap-out control is a thing and you've gotta adapt to it, either by playing permission, playing faster, or playing bigger (not that you can play bigger than Ugin, really)
Ugin is clearly an issue, but, he's kind of an issue for everything right? Other than red direct damage decks or something. I cant see any way to beat him with a deck like mine that isn't just kill the player before he arrives.
Yes, I'm terrible at names. Uro I can fight, Ugin is just 8 mana - win the game.
Kaya can be beat by playing faster than it.
She relies on removing key pieces until she can wipe, and then eventually generating card advantage for more answers.
As far as I can tell, playing faster than Ugin is next to impossible.
Unmoored Egos largely relies on guessing Ugin, and hoping the other deck has no other wincons.
It would also be the counters/permission solution you suggested.
I really shouldn't be forced into playing blue by the meta either.
Please ban blue to fix this.
You can run the new zombie version in M21 if you don't want to run blue. Giving them a zombie or two should be a small price to pay?
So your saying the solution is I need to play two decks at the same time to win reliably
If you can figure out how to win reliably at MTG, there's a whole bunch of pro players who would like to know your secret
I'm just going to stick to playing phoenix because it's fun.
Keep in mind that winning "reliably" in Magic means reaching a certain rank and then winning 50% of your games. If that hits at Platinum you're doing pretty well!
Black/White Vampire Tribal and/or Lifegain is my stubborn hill to die upon in this absurd, stagnant, repugnant Standard meta.
And yeah, the 'Play' option is better than the dark murkmire that is upper diamond-low mythic. IT SUCKS THERE. Full of cheese and turn 4 GG.
Yeah it's more like 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain.
In other news I won a full on box of magic 2021 booster cards and I dont.... know what to do with it. I don't want to open it, I've gone digital for a reason.
The 50% pain is from keeping it casual.
I wouldn't be hurt if I just copied the meta and was a soulless husk.
That 50% is the only thing that keeps me going.
This is why I want Pauper to get added to Arena
Pauper Pauper or Standard Pauper?