Can't Say Nothing

(Ed.: sorry about the delay again: I was in surgery yesterday and this slipped my mind.)

I posted Sabotage to the Magicdeckbuilding sub at Reddit and got an interesting response: that I should use Ash Barrens to help cast Amsora and contribute to Hollow One's cost reduction. That's a pretty neat idea! Especially for budget builds, Ash Barrens seems like a no-brainer. 

However, it got me thinking: Ash Barrens doesn't help me do anything faster than The Underworld Cookbook or Putrid Imp. And the downside of being a colorless source of mana is real, when part of the reason I wanted to make a R/B version instead of a RGB version was to solve mana issues. 

To really get there, I'd need something that let me cycle for free and they don't let you do that...except they do. 

The swap of Night's Whisper for Street Wraith feels like an easy one to make. Now, though, I'm concerned about my life total. This isn't a Death's Shadow deck...is it?

No no no, let's focus! (...but stiiiiiiiilllllll...)

Now I have a way to cycle a card on turn one and get out an Asmora, which can then find the Cookbook and that offers me a cheap way to keep discarding cards for value. 

That's good. 

But is it good enough?

For awhile, I was testing Bomat Courier because that was in a list. As a one drop, the card makes a strong case: it's a hasted 1/1 for one mana and it can be a discard outlet. 

However, what I found was that the hidden information aspect of the card meant that I never felt comfortable knowing when to activate the ability. The mana cost to activate the ability was also a strain on a deck that is very trim on mana sources. It might be an excellent sideboard card against a heavy discard deck but I didn't feel like I was getting the best out of that card maindeck.

That said, games have been going well and I've been finding ways to close games quickly.