nostalgicbadger

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Illusions are extremely powerful throughout the first six turns or so, but afterward, their effectiveness declines dramatically. Unless you want to be mediocre in both phases, I'd recommend you refine the deck for speed and drop anything that's going to slow you down.

Drop white. In general. You need to get Lord of the Unreal in play, and if you draw two white lands on an otherwise perfect hand, you're not going to be happy. And white doesn't offer a ton of value here. Sun Titan's cool, but he'll probably never see play in this deck, unless your opponent is doing it wrong. Squadron Hawk has no synergy with the rest of the deck. Oblivion Ring is way too slow -- stick with cheap bounce effects, like Vapor Snag, Disperse and Unsummon.

In place of the white creatures, I'd recommend adding two more of each Phyrexian Metamorph and Phantasmal Image; it's hard to beat cloning your Lord of the Unreal as a 3/3 Hexproof that pumps other Illusions, and if your opponent drops a Wurmcoil Engine, what better answer than a slightly bigger Wurmcoil clone?

Another angle which you may want to consider is replacing the Adaptive Automatons with the similar costed Grand Architect. Since tapping is part of the effect itself, not the cost, he can tap for mana while he still has summoning sickness. This will help get Phyrexian Metamorph on the field, but you could also add 2-3 of your own Wurmcoil Engines. Ditch Phantasmal Dragon to fit the Wurmcoil.

Ideal hand with this configuration:
Turn 1: Phantasmal Bear
Turn 2: Lord of the Unreal (swing for 3)
Turn 3: Grand Architect -> Wurmcoil Engine for free (creatures all tapped)
On turn 4, you have a 4/4 Bear, a 3/3 Lord, a 1/3 Architect with the ability to make Wurmcoil blue (which will turn it into a 7/7). That's 15 damage on turn four, assuming you can't clone Grand Architect.

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Posted 17 September 2011 at 23:01 as a comment on Sleight of Hand

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