jhaiisiin

Plan to add when I can afford it: 2x Veyran, Voice of Duality

I had a comment detailing a near maximum result from this build assuming stacked enchantments and the like. I had to redo it because the math was off. Here's the corrected version.

Starting life: 20
Creature: Serra Avatar (20/20)
Enchantments/bonuses:
* Holy Mantle x2 (+4/+4)
* Celestial Mantle x2 (+6/+6) (M1 and M2)
* Ethereal Armor x2 (+12/+12)
* Loxodon Warhammer x2 (+6/+0)
Total bonuses:+28/+22
Total starting P/T: 48/42

In play are the following:
* Cradle of Life
* 2x Rhox Faithmenders
* 2x Boon Reflection.
* True Conviction
This multiplies all life gain by 16.

Restriction: Only adding counters 1x per life gain. With enough mana could do this 2 or 3 or more times per gain, and that makes the numbers below even MORE insane.

Single combat round starts:
Avatar attacks unimpeded, doing 48 First Strike Lifelink damage to the player. This likely kills them, but for argument's sake, let's say it doesn't.

This 48 lifegain is multiplied by 16 for a total of 768 life gained, bringing your life total to 788.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 768 counters to the Serra Avatar.
P/T: 1584/1578
M1 triggers and this doubles your life total. This counts as life gain. So you don't gain 788 life. You gain 788 x16, for 12,608 life gained.
Life total now at 13,396.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 12,608 counters to the Serra Avatar. Total counters is now 13,376.
P/T: 26,800/26,794
M2 Triggers, adding 13,396 x16 life for a total of 214,336 life gained.
Life total now at 227,732.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 214,336 counters to the Serra Avatar. Total counters now is 227,712 counters.
P/T: 455,472/455,456

Double strike damage hits for 455,472 Lifelink damage. Whoo boy, here we go.

This damage results in 16x that in life gained. Total life added is 7,287,552 life bringing the total life to 7,515,264 life.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 7,287,552 counters to the Serra Avatar. (
P/T: 15,030,576/15,030,570
M1 triggers again, adding 7,515,284 x16 life (120,244,544) life for a total now of 127,759,828 life.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 120,244,544 counters to the Serra Avatar. Total counters is now 127,759,808.
P/T: 255,519,664/255,519,658
M2 Triggers, adding 127,759,828 x16 life for a total of 2,044,157,248 life gained.
Life total now at 2,171,917,076.
2 mana for Cradle of Life adds 2,044,157,248 counters to the Serra Avatar. Total counters now is 2,171,917,056 counters.
Final P/T: 4,343,834,160/4,343,834,154

Through this single round of combat you gained over 2.1 BILLION life, and did a whopping 450k+ of damage to your opponent.

Congratulations, you now have the largest creature in MTG history (without using an Infinite Combo) and have reduced your opponent to mist while having more life than a god. Yeah, this is insane.

Oh hell. Well done. Love that addition.

Here are my additions to this:
Minotaurs: http://www.mtgvault.com/jhaiisiin/decks/bull-run/
Satyrs: http://www.mtgvault.com/jhaiisiin/decks/xenagos-partiers/
Centaurs: http://www.mtgvault.com/jhaiisiin/decks/ponies/

Updated the name because a few of my fellow players have gotten quite upset at this deck for its surprising effectiveness and very much "Mother May I?" style of play.

Really am considering Ajani's Chosen in here because of all of the enchantments. Free creatures is hard to object to.

My other Sphere of Safety deck is listed here: http://www.mtgvault.com/jhaiisiin/decks/indomitable-sphere-of-safety/

Nicely done. Glad it performed well, despite the Battlemage hiding from you.

Most of the time, they're offensive tricks, but thankfully they can go both ways. This deck is meant to overrun the enemy fairly quickly, so it's very offensive minded. Also, with as small as the creatures tend to be, this is about quantity, not quality, so they aren't gonna be able to block big things easily.

The bident is there to facilitate card draw every time I do damage to a player. I rarely use the activated ability. Domri would certainly be a badass in here, though as you noted, you need the Caryatid or maybe sub in a few unknown shores or Transguild Promenades to get you the red mana you need.

Though not standard legal, one of the Garruk's for creature generation couldn't hurt either. No matter the choice, I use my planeswalkers as nifty backup/support ideas, rather than focal points of a deck (hence only the 1 of each).

There really aren't any set in stone win conditions on this one. The deck seems to just go for a general buildup and overrun. The core idea was Launch the Fleet + Battlemage Thaumaturge to hit all of your creatures for just a single white mana, triggering heroics like crazy. Follow that up with an Hour of need and you end up having all the tapped 1/1 soldiers suddenly turn into 4/4 sphinxes. It's enough to dizzy your opponents as your battlefield explodes.

That said, beware removals like Ratchet bomb.

I know. I usually manage it, but there are a few of my decks that peeked over 60, and I couldn't really justify removing things to fix it. In this case, the singles of this deck keep my opponents guessing. Given I consistently end up with situations where someone needs more mana than they have in their whole deck to attack me, it's proven fairly reliable. :-)

You may want to consider Celestial Mantle as an enchantment for this. Also, tossing in a Rogue's Passage or two to make the occasional unblockable creature wouldn't go amiss.

I would also recommend swapping one of the new Ajanis for Caller of the Prides version.

Also, Skullcrack is good for slowing down those lifegain decks for a turn.

It's slightly on the pricey side for this deck, but spidersilk armor works well too. All golems gaining reach would pretty much fix the lack of fliers issue.

Really, the whole Theros Block is just riddled with enchantments. This deck isn't designed to deal with them very well, but it's a good idea to have tear in there.

I use Diabolic Tutor myself. Between that and 4 Masters, it's a decent chance I can find one.

It would be worth a couple of Necrobites in there, just to regenerate the Obliterator. Plus deathtouch, so that doesn't hurt either.

Thanks. Your deck was quite the inspiration.