soulknife

I don't think this works the way you want it to work. You can only sacrifice a single creature to culling the weak so its not like you can cast a single copy of the spell and pick up 48 black mana.

As a result I'd suggest using ashnod' altar.

May I suggest that rather than Dream Twist that you could instead try running Chronic Flooding? Rather than spending three mana and to mill six cards you could theoretically use Chronic Flooding to mill three cards anytime you cast a spell after turn two.

I disagree! It works wonderfully in the flavor of the dimir. The dimir will happily ruin everybody's day just to ruin your own. Also consider.

If your opponent would like to interact with you at all they will be tapping their lands themselves. If they Don't tap their lands they will be at a significant disadvantage and you are Totally ok with that.

Food for thought.

If you can get your hands on it, I would heartily recommend Gauntlet of Power.

Food for thought. Consider Flagstones of Trokair.

Imagine for a moment playing flagstones turn one along side a Steppe Lynx. Then dropping another flagstones on turn two. And finding another two plains (like say, shock lands)....and triggering landfall three times. Its hardly a game ender right there but a six point life swing on turn two is nothing to sneeze at either.

Alright. Well, you want to swing with the marit lage token and kill your enemy right? For that purpose Vampire Hexmage, Dark Depths, and lightning greaves makes sense.

What do you want to do with the rest of the cards though? Summoner's Pact can only find elvish spirit guides, and the guide isn't necessarily that useful. After all, why worry about making one green mana to try and take a counter off of dark depths when the Hexmage just takes all the counters off anyway?

I'd suggest thinking about cards that do the following:
1. Find Dark Depths.
2. Find Vampire Hexmage
3. Survive long enough to do so.

For example: Expedition Map and Reap and Sow. Both can find nonbasic lands such as Dark Depths. While you Can play cards such as diabolic tutor to straight up find your combo pieces having too many tutors can lead to a weak board position that can be run over by other super fast decks. I would suggest cards that cantrip that also help you survive. Such as Dark Confidant (a blocker and an extra card per turn), wall of blossoms (draws a card, is a 0/4), or even elvish visionary. Cards that help you survive are usually the cards that prevent your opponent from getting too far ahead. Doom Blades, Victim of Night, Beast Within, Discard effects to remove threats from your opponents hand, any of those are usually good.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth could also create some disturbingly fast plays. Turn one Urborg, Turn two Dark Depths, tap both for hexmage, enjoy your 20/20 indestructible token.

Typo I suppose?

Nefarox is a charming card, but I feel it actually is too expensive for a deck like this. The curve tops out at 4 (I don't know why it says five, there really isn't anything in there that costs that much)

Blood Artist is frankly the strongest card in there because a deck like this has a natural weakness to mass removal. But with even one on the field than that mutilate or day of judgement could be a serious setback for your opponent.

In some respects the exalted angle of this deck isn't all that strong, but it does give options if it is dangerous to trade too many creatures or impossible to get through with anything other than a tormented soul. But it plays much like a goblin deck would otherwise. Play creatures, attack.

As a note, when scars block rotates I'll be removing the obliterators, metamorphs, and go for the throats in favor of 4x Falkenrath noble, 4x Demonlord of Ashmouth, and 4x Butcher Ghoul to reinforce the blood artist side of the deck.

Well. I can see how your strategy works. And I imagine it would be quite consistent. However I'm afraid that with a price range of about forty two thousand dollars that its firmly out of my price range.

Perhaps you could try making a similar sort of deck that is just as consistent that I'd be able to acquire and play while still making good on my mortgage payments?

I think my conceptual problem with paying eighteen life to boost the immolating souleater is the phrase "in response to you paying the cost to pump the creature I shock you for two, you die"

There's just a lot of stuff that deals two damage. It feels too risky.

Looking at your deck, I see no sources requiring blue mana whatsoever. If that's the case than wouldn't the boilerworks coming in tapped just slow you down?

If you are running a deck which is based around the theory of controlling multiple artifacts at a time than running Fling is sort of counterproductive. My own metalcraft deck makes use of Dispense Justice an I've never not been happy with it.

In theory Gaea's Anthem would work out fairly well here so that pyroclasm won't be able to destroy your own lands. Both to avoid accidentally killing yourself, and to put yourself in a hugely powerful board position.

Bazaar trader sadly really wouldn't work in this way. It says "Target player gains control of target artifact, creature, or land you control."

Note the part that says :YOU CONTROL"

I had a deck like this. It usually didn't work out so hot because it was very susceptible to targeted burn spells. But, as a technique you could use Wall of Blood, or Blood Celebrant to drop your life very quickly. You can also use Ad Nauseum.

So, you want to use land cards. That's great. But in this case, the everflowing chalice does nothing because you have all of six cards that actually cost mana. And the likelihood of you even drawing them is very small. I pretty much guarantee that by the time you can play the oracle of mul daya then you'll have the mana already to be able to play it.

Other than that....I dunno. Valakut, and Prismatic Omen? Scapeshift is a ridiculously easy card to build around.

I don't plan to actually block that often so Smite's out.

Thanks for reminding me to streamline the land though. How I forgot Inkmoth Nexus I don't think I'll ever know.

That's fine, but that's a pretty big caveat of "with no other mill" I understand you're looking for the sum of their parts but I'm suggesting that you could create a stronger deck by focusing on one of the strategies rather than being less good at all three.

For example. Let's say that you drop a crab on turn one. You're deck run's counter magic so you keep the crab alive for five turns. The card gods favor you and you drop a land each turn and mill a total of fifteen cards. Add the twelve minimum that your opponent will have drawn and traumatize ends up milling for sixteen. Except now you have no mana left to keep open for more counters and you feel that you'd rather wait another two turns. Then traumatize will hit for 12....

My issue with Traumatize is that is has diminishing returns. By the time you are able to safely cast it, often times it would be more profitable to hit something like archive trap. This is also in a situation in which you aren't using something like fetch lands to make the crabs even more effective. Or say, Cloudstone Curio to ensure you Always get a landfall trigger. I imagine you are trying to stick to a budget yet you're running ravnica dual lands. Glimpse the Unthinkable is for all intents and purposes a better tome scour (which I never really liked either. But that's neither here nor there.) Building around something like the Hedron Crab allows you to make the rest of the deck better at protecting them.

Building around Jace's Erasure is to my mind even more effective. The Erasure pairs pretty well with Leyline of Anticipation. Allowing you to cast the really efficient sorcery speed draw spells in response to your opponent's end step. It's draw go, but most of what you're doing is building up a very large card advantage and gradually milling away before trying to cast something like a Lethal Blue Sun Zenith. If you go that route then it'd be worth it to also look into mitotic manipulation (a land drop at the worst, potentially another erasure).

Regardless of that I've found that in the three drop spot that Guard Gomazoa outperformed wall of frost almost all the time.

I think you're going to have to pick between the erasures or the crabs, because you aren't really supporting either strategy at the moment.


And traumatize isn't very good. Do the math on it.

if you are aiming to be consistent then the first step is to limit the card selection of the deck. It should be a simple jump from a to be to realize that having four of a card will increase the chances of you drawing said card in any given game. With that out of the way, let's talk shop.

Clearly the win conditions in this deck are the kiln fiend/spitfire package, and red sun's zenith. Quest for pure flame is a way to try and get more mileage out of your burn spells and the zenith. Lust for war and the two chandra's on the other hand seem lackluster in comparison. Don't get me wrong the planeswalkers are strong cards. But with only one each they won't show up very often.

Thirdly, Cunning Sparkmage is a great card. But he can do a lot more with cards that support him better. Such as basilisk collar. Since you aren't running that then maybe you can find something that will help make the rest of the deck more consistent. The Zenith is a strong card, but by itself and with only basic mountains as mana production you aren't likely to ramp up to a fullout burnout with it in the couse of a game. Since your kiln fiend/spitfires will only benefit from the zenith once than when you have the opportunity to cast more cheap spells you probably will want to.

My suggestion for that would be the lowly crystal ball. You want those kiln fiends, and those spitfires. So Find them. Now you've got your creatures out but just can't create an opening to do some real damage. You attack! Maybe he'll fall for it, but he assigns a blocker. Oh well, too bad for him you just cast fling and your kiln fiend just turned into a high scale warhead. Or another situation. You have a fist full of burn spells and a kiln fiend/spitfire on the field but your opponent has a lot of blockers. What to do....hmm. Maybe give them the choice of damnations by equipping them with an infiltration lens. If they let the creature in you potentially blast them for lethal. If they block you draw three cards and drop even more threats/burn etc.

tl'dr.

-1 Chandra Ablaze
-1 Chandra Nalaar
-2 Lust for War
-3 Red Sun's Zenith
-4 Cunning Sparkmage

+4 Crystal Ball
+4 Fling
+3 Infiltration Lens.