dknight27

Such is life. Mind stone would also be a good consideration, as it accelerates then you can sac it off when you don't need it.

I'd highly recommend cutting some 5-drops to lower the curve here. Rootgrapple can be cut pretty easily and replaced with Heartwood Storyteller (which I'd max). Lure can also be cut, as it's more of a luxury than a necessity. I'd go for Heroic Intervention (if it's in the budget) or something along those lines.

Are you going for budget casual here?

Is there a reason you make 70 card decks?

Made some updates

What are we looking at here? Modern competitive?

I've been pondering that, the 23 1-drops skewed my vision. Cutting one Skelemental in favor of another Blood Crypt might go a long way to fixing the problem.

Are you going for casual budget here?

Here's my line of reasoning, for what that's worth.

Blue's only weakness is not being able to control the field once things actually resolve. There's no good blue removal, blockers, or nukes (within reason). You can get around this by hybridizing color, of course, but there are some bad color matchups for these purposes. Green has no consistent removal, for example.

HE goes a hell of a long way to solving this problem while still retaining all the best things blue does. It's basically a sorcery/instant combo, as you get the blocker up front and draw at instant speed later. It's a 0/3, so it survives as a blocker against all the annoying weenies. It preserves both tempo and material, protects you if you need protecting (under like 80% of circumstances), is almost never a dead draw, ups the sorcery count (delirium and goyf), and works as a deck thinner.

Plus, the more I stick with magic, the more I see speed eclipsing anything else in the game, and dropping a 0/3 turn 1 to shut down those annoying little 1-drops that would otherwise eat me alive or cost me a material and tempo that I can turn into a material bonus in a few more turns is just too good to pass up, at least to me.

Maybe I'm off base, my experience in practicality is close to a decade removed from competitive play.

Run me through Overwhelmed Apprentice again.

I've been tinkering with that myself, its a fantastic idea. That and Reforge the Soul/burn stuff

Ideally, at least from my standpoint, the variables a deck should communicate are as follows:
1- format
2- level of competition
3- budget (if that's not already communicated via number 2)
4- theme (if it's not obvious from the title)

I don't see this happen very often.

Urza's Saga seems like a natural consideration right?

Abundant Growth comes to mind.

Is there a reason you want to play this in legacy when it's modern legal?

No Mox Opal?

This build confuses me. Half ponza half burn, no acceleration, high curve, and equipment thrown in.

Mystic Forge feels like a must in here.

That's wildly surprising to me, but then again, I'm hardly a pro these days. I haven't seen a card that I thought was more D&T than Sentinel since Stoneforge hit.

No Esper Sentinel?

You're missing some classic 1-drop zombie options. Gravecrawler, Stitcher's Supplier, Dread Wanderer, Carrion Feeder.