Phlight

Thanks for the input! I never really considered Prophet of Kruphix! I'll have to try them in this deck, it seems like a great idea. I'll have to see if it's better than Triton Tactics' instant speed added toughness which can sometimes surprise block a large attacker and keep it tapped down. With Dragons of Tarkir coming out, this deck will change drastically very soon. Assault Formation will be amazing for this deck!

Because she's an enchantment to trigger Eidolon of Blossoms, with the same trample effect for less of a mana commitment. Plus, this is green devotion and I wanted something to be devoted to besides Nykthos. All those reasons make her a good alternative for Surrak. Since they're legendaries having 4 copies of one of them could end up cluttering your hand.

I'm just brewing here, so I haven't tested the strength of Empty The Pits in this. What I was thinking was that if the amount of control here works like Esper Control did, you should be keeping your opponent's board clear.

For example if your turns went Thoughtseize, Lightning Strike, Hero's Downfall, Anger of the Gods + Despise and End Hostilities, you'll only get 3 or 4 (if you missed no land drops) zombies on turn 6, but it's still an alternate win con as opposed to just Elspeth. Fetches would help the delve mechanic but from what I've seen of control, you generally want as many lands as possible and thinning out too many by cracking them might mean you don't hit all your land drops.

Empty the Pits could be taken out for the Ember Swallowers, Ashen Riders, Hythonia, Indulgent Overlord, or whatever other win-con you like. Maybe a god like Mogis would work, but he won't be turning into a creature since there's no devotion here. I just like having an alternate win-con and Empty the Pits was shiny and new and an instant instead of the creatures that first came to mind.

Thanks for your opinions, let me know what you think would be better.

Hm.. Birthing Pod's a good idea. It's a great tutor, but I thought maybe with the amount of removal around, sacrificing your creatures might hold you back since each creature plays parts in gaining you life or have some sort of benefit. For example you'd have to sacrifice Fathom Mage (which is your card draw), in order to get an Archangel. I guess you don't necessarily need card draw if you get your combo though...

Thanks for the comment, I've got some thinking and testing to do.

Cranial Plating's not bad, about $3. I could definitely try equipments, but the good ones are pretty pricey. Swords, Batterskull, Stoneforge Mystic for a tutor... they would be pretty good to bring to life with Sydri as well. I'm not much of an equipment player since it always feels slow to me compared to enchantments (1 turn to cast the equipment, and then more mana next turn to equip it), but it might work well in this deck. I may have to pick up a Tezzeret as well, thanks for your suggestions!

Thanks for your suggestions! So far, running out of gas hasn't been a problem with this deck. A few of the goblins in here aren't even that great... Games have mostly been: keep a hand with a kill spell, play a couple of early goblins, then let Krenko multiply for a few turns, cast kill spell. Against multiple opponents, it's cast kill spells on as many opponents as you can, then attack with all the goblins against another.

If I do get board wiped, it's probably pretty hard to recover even with the draw spells since goblins are usually pretty small and it takes time to build up. The bigger creatures in EDH would fly over or trample me. Card draw would help though, so I'll definitely keep an eye out for the cards you mentioned, thanks again!

That's a pretty good idea, I'll definitely throw one in here! Thanks.

This is a very fast deck, with cheap creatures and cheap enchantments that allow you to draw more cards which can get out of hand quickly. Lots of +1/+1 counters and evasion allow the creatures to bypass blockers and hurt your opponent.

In terms of counters, you can usually get out a creature or two before they have the mana to counter (3 is normal for Dissolves, although it's possible for them to run Essence Scatter for creatures). Removal and boardwipes like Supreme Verdict hurt more. Once you lose all your creatures, they can counter any you try to cast and you can't draw cards fast enough to deal with control.

For control decks, I would sideboard in the 4 Gods Willing to protect your creatures alongside with the 4 Ajani's Presence (save them for boardwipes), and take out the Battle Masteries and a couple of Ethereal Armor. If you lose your creatures, it may be hard to get board presence back with only auras in hand. If you have a creature out though, you can usually keep drawing more cards than they have counterspells for.

Thanks! I'm not sure if I have any big win conditions outside of play artifact creatures and attack, but it has some fun cards like Sharding Sphinx and Myrsmith for token generation, indestructibilty and boardwipe combos.

Cool suggestion! I've never heard of that card before! That's the exact reason I have Iroas, God of Victory in the deck, so that definitely fits here.

Parallel Lives and Doubling Season are definitely staples in a token/+1 counter deck like this one, but I haven't gotten my hands on any yet. They always seem to be sold out, which is probably good for me as Doubling Season's fairly expensive. I can afford it, but I'm not sure I NEED it... I'm definitely going to pick up a Cathars' Crusade too when I pick up Parallel Lives though, thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks for the comment! It's definitely a fun one to play. In terms of dragons, Voracious Dragon is definitely the best since it is one of the kill spells you can cast (devour 14 goblins and you've dealt 42 damage!). Other dragons that have synergy with the deck are Preyseizer Dragon (devour) or Spawn of Thraxes (damage based on Mountains you control). Other devour dragons would work too.

There are definitely other Krenko decks out there (he's probably the best Goblin commander), so steal away!

Yes, kmk888 is right. That's the exactly the reason why I didn't include them. Prophet of Kruphix is a great card though, especially in situations with more card draw and less mana.

Thanks, 4 Nykthos seems like a lot to me too, but I've seen it out there so I decided to try it. I actually personally only have 1 so far and I do run Karametra's Acolytes. It's a toss up between the 4-drop that nets you X mana each turn for free, or a land where you get X mana minus 2. Previously, Voyaging Satyr made Nykthos way more beneficial than Karametra's Acolyte, but now with Kiora's Follower you can untap either. Experiment One is always a solid 1-drop and Renegade Krasis is interesting too, but I'm not sure if I can find the room for them.

Blue Devotion is still around, it was in Top 8 at Starcity Open Series (St. Louis). I do like Gruul Team though! Which has a lot of similarities to this deck (although this lacks Domri, Xenagos and Stormbreath Dragon). Black is still big, as are the Esper/Azorius Control with Sphinx's Revelation. There are quite a few decks taking prominence which makes it hard for any one deck to be prepared for everything.

Thanks, I'll definitely need to playtest more to see what I'll need in the sideboard. Right now the competetive metagame seems very mono-Blue, mono-Black or Control focused, and the deck I based this on seemed to be wary of that. However, amonst my friends there is a lot of aggro so Ratchet Bomb might work well. Currently for the aggro, I have Cyclonic Rifts, and it isn't too hard to get the mana for overloading it so I might stick with that just because I can get every creature while Ratchet Bomb might leave some stragglers with a different CMC.

Courser would definitely find a nice home here as well as Boon Satyr actually, but I was building this around my current Green/Red shell, so by the time I got to the 60 cards I didn't have room for them.

I think Prophet of Kruphix is also good, but this deck is fast enough that Prophet of Kruphix didn't seem necessary for it's mana cost. While getting an extra round of creatures out during your opponent's turn is awesome, I can't roll up Garruk during the opponent's turn so I wouldn't have as many cards in my hand until my turn anyways, and I find that usually I have enough mana to play most of the cards I draw on my turn.

Yeah I'm definitely looking forward to the remaining lesser-gods! Kruphix primarily, but Keranos for the flavor (lighting = Zeus? although Heliod has that role) and the rest are good color combinations too (Boros, Orzhov, Golgari)...

Thanks for the comments, you're completely right about the advantages of Burning-Tree Emissary comboing into Voyaging Satyr. I didn't think about that, I only thought about the colors and the fact that Kiora's Follower could untap other permanents. I think I'll switch them back.

I understand what you want to do, and it does work (it's a cool idea too!) I just meant that in terms of actually getting to play all those different Heroic abilities, you'll have to have to wait for all the other creatures to be out before it can start working the way you want it to.

For example, in an ideal situation:
Turn 1: Tormented Hero, Turn 2: Artisan of Forms, Turn 3: Karametra's Favor on Artisan of Forms, Turn 4: Elite Arcanist exiles Triton Tactics, Turn 5: Activate Combo and win.

But in this scenario, you only have Tormented Hero's ability to trigger, so you won't get to trigger all the heroics like you want. You could wait a couple more turns to play more heroic creatures, but if you have your combo ready, you usually wouldn't wait more turns to play other heroic creatures in case your opponent can kill your Artisan, Elite Arcanist or Heroic creature. In this case, Artisan doesn't do anything extra for your combo. This is just thinking from an efficiency standpoint.

But it IS fun if you don't get Elite Arcanist for awhile and you get to play all your other creatures first. Actually, what about using the Whip of Erebos instead of Grim Return? This way, if your opponent kills your creatures you can pay 4 mana to bring the creature you need back to the battlefield with haste (whenever you want instead of it having to be the same turn it died) so you can start the combo out of nowhere! (If it was Artisan of Forms or a heroic creature, you'll still need to put Karametra's Favor on it in the same turn though). Plus, you get lifelink to help you survive until you have all the combo pieces you need.