War Ensemble (redux)

I really like Agent of the Fates. A 3/2 with deathtouch for three isn't a bad rate, and the ability seemed good! But like a lot of stuff from Theros, there wasn't really a home for it that seemed to appear. At least not to me.

So, I put it in my War Ensemble deck. This felt like a good idea: I have a reason to target the creature that aligns with what the deck wants to do. I'm going to be able to trade the Agent with dang near anything and when enchanted with a Rancor, the trample effect means more damage goes to the opponent. 

This means there's a chance to really make an interesting move. First, I can add Destiny Spinner as a card to help ensure that I get to play out my stuff.

But what if I could get some bonus off of replaying my stuff?

That is where Braids, Arisen Nightmare comes in.

This does two important things for me. First, this allows me to play cards that are lower on the curve; my last iteration of War Ensemble was overloaded at the three mana spot. Second, a couple copies of Braids gives me another axis to draw cards or whittle my opponent's resources down. Both of these options are good and with six possible enchantments to sacrifice, there's something legit here. 

Goldfishing hands tells me it's still not great. But it's better! I'm also, clearly, still a sucker because I decided to add in Hero of Lenia Tower. What can I say? It's a weakness.

The list I'm currently tweaking:

3 Endless Wurm
3 Troll Ascetic
3 Hateful Eidolon
3 Setessan Champion
3 Destiny Spinner
2 Braids, Arisen Nightmare
3 Hero of Leina Tower

3 Pernicious Deed
4 Rancor
2 Aspect of Mongoose
3 Rune of Might

3 Murder

9 Forest
7 Swamp
3 Golgari Rot Farm
4 Deathcap Glade

2 Night's Whisper

That still leaves me with a problem though. What do to with Agent of the Fates?

Not A Drill

Sure, I stopped playing weird decks in order to do some event stuff. But hey, let's get back on the horse. 

I have liked what's been going on with War Ensemble so far, however I haven't gotten to see Braids in action! Two copies just isn't enough, I suppose.

So I've made a couple more tweaks. 

-2 Night's Whisper (it hurt to cut this but I'm hoping the other sources of card draw will make up for it)

+1 Murder
+1 Braids, Arisen Nightmare

More card draw.

After these tweaks I was playing against Noah's zombies deck and in game one got wrecked.

Games two and three I made sure to look for Pernicious Deed, and was able to get a Braids/Rancor combo going. That does the trick.

Things felt mostly good: the manabase is still a bit tricky and I'm not sure how to amend that without just dropping the best lands ever in there. 

However, the Braids/Rancor combo is a nice one, and this is probably worth exploring a little further. 

This is what I've come up with, so far:

3 Endless Wurm

3 Troll Ascetic

3 Hateful Eidolon

3 Setessan Champion

3 Destiny Spinner

3 Braids, Arisen Nightmare

3 Hero of Leina Tower

3 Pernicious Deed

4 Rancor

2 Aspect of Mongoose

3 Rune of Might

4 Murder

9 Forest

7 Swamp

3 Golgari Rot Farm

4 Deathcap Glade

There's definitely a bottleneck at the 3 mana spot-Murder is probably going to become Abrupt Decay so I can have a bottleneck at the 2 mana spot but it is what it is. War Ensemble needs a little time to get going and run the Braids engine, Abrupt Decay will hopefully give me the time I need. 

War Ensemble

Named after the song by Slayer, I originally thought of this deck as a aggro B/G thing. War Ensemble was one of the first decks I ever built and B/G has been a favorite color combination ever since. It's never really quite come together, though and I'll talk a little bit about that after the decklist.

2 Aspect of Mongoose

3 Pernicious Deed

3 Sarcomancy

4 Rancor

3 Consume Strength

3 Odious Trow

2 Nantuko Vigilante
3 Gravedigger

3 Bramble Elemental

3 Bone Shredder

3 Albino Troll

2 Endless Wurm

3 Troll Ascetic

3 Pine Barrens
10 Swamp
10 Forest

There's a subtheme of enchantment use, with Endless Wurm there to let me recast Rancor or Aspect of Mongoose, to cast again on Bramble Elemental or to get rid of Sarcomancy, should I have no zombies. However, there's a slightly bigger issue here. If one is to take a look at the casting costs of the deck, the focus is at 1 and 3 CMC.

That isn't true though. There is a huge bottleneck at 2 and 3, with the Albino Troll and Boneshredder, due to the echo costs. This puts me back a bit and can be considered a hidden cost, bumping things up just a little bit and reducing this deck's aggro plan. In addition, the reliance on cards like Rancor, which cannot be played on turn 1, pushes the aggro element back again.

I mention this because these hidden costs are on all kinds of cards, depending on the mechanic and I think that deckbuilders tend to overlook or neglect these costs, thinking that once you've paid for the spell, it's all over! Equipment would be the simplest example of what I'm talking about, which is why the Living Equipment mechanic in New Phyrexia and Mirrodin Besieged were such a big deal.

Really, this is more of an aggro control deck, using recursive/regenerative elements to bring back creatures, weather Pernicious Deeds and eventually win the game.

So now that I've got the actual theme worked out, what's next?

Well, consistency. Unless I have an Endless Wurm, I can't reliably sacrifice enchantments. That doesn't have to be problematic but it does mean that I need to ensure I can engage in this deck's strategic theme if I have a wurm or not.

Also, less strain on the 3 CMC slot. I like Consume Strength a lot but it's not in theme and it's eating up space. The question is: What does this deck need then, after one more Endless Wurm?

Something that a) regenerates (to survive Deed activations), b) is more expensive to create a swingy-effect, c) is less expensive but can possibly be cast for free since the 2 and 3 slots are eaten, d) is disruptive in a way consistent with this deck's ideas or e) I don't know, I'll just know it when I see it.

It's times like this that having collaborators is a good thing. A braintrust to bounce ideas off of is usually more efficient and fun than just grinding through pages of cards. Sometimes, though, that's what you gotta do.

Befoul seems like a decent idea, since it's modality means I could go after a variety of troublesome permanents. Deity of Scars looks like a scary, cheap beater that I can both target with an enchantment and will create an impact on the board when it arrives. More relevant: I have those cards already.

However, that doesn't mean that they are auto includes. If I want to continue to mine an aggro-control element, something like Acidic Slime might be preferable but keeping the costs low is also relevant and I think there's space in the four slot. As of now, I'm not sure where to go but I'll make some decisions before testing (hopefully!) later this week/weekend.

Next Up

Ed. note: this was posted out of order, but it's written up and I am trying to clear some of the back catalog so I can resume a schedule again. So I'm using it, instead of just blowing it up. Sorry!

I suppose it's time to get back on track! I'm going into the wayback machine for this one but: Last time we checked in, I was thinking that this deck needed some revision and  Tipsy and high, I wrote myself a note about what to do with my changes to the War Ensemble deck. 

Agent of the Fates could be in a deck that wants to blink its creatures-Grief, etc-and be happy. Mono B? Prob. no.

That's the note I wrote, anyway.

OK. Why did I mention Grief? Because of this deck that I stumbled across. It's a Modern deck and that's fine. I don't know that anything I'm thinking of would be Legacy deck per se, unless I added in lands that would only be legal in Legacy. 

Hm. Which, actually, might be worth considering, due to cards like Phyrexian Tower. How many copies of that card do I have? Three, as it turns out. I'm as surprised about this as anyone! But hey, I'm not upset to have copies of a $30 card. 

The next question is: Do I already have a deck that wants to work these themes? Because I'm not opposed to building a new deck but if you've followed this blog for awhile, you know that I've got a LOT of decks. Most of them are subpar. C grade wondering if they will ever get called up to the big leagues. 

Don't get me wrong, I like having fun with C grade decks. But I'm also trying to turn a corner and build decks that hew to their vision. Weird decks are fine, so long as they are focused. 

Which is why when my brain was asking: Hey, could this be a blink deck and use effects like Essence Flux? 

Which, let's face it: is cool. Blue is still an incredibly strong color. 

But the deck I'm taking inspiration from gains bonuses from dies triggers. 

So let's loop back. Do I have a deck that cares about dies triggers? If I do, is it worth updating or should I just start over? 

After a review of my decks, I recognized that there was a series of decks that did mine this theme: W/B. But my W/B decks went in particular directions: there was the Omnitell deck, the Enduring Renewal deck (storm), and the tribal cleric deck. All doing very different things.

Then there was this:

Abominus

3 Adarkar Valkyrie
3 Auramancer
3 Aven Riftwatcher
4 Capashen Unicorn
2 Herald of Serra
4 Pit Keeper
4 Shriekmaw
3 Sheoldred, Whispering One

3 Haunted Crossroads
4 Promise of Bunrei

3 Orzhov Basilica
8 Plains
8 Swamp
4 Isolated Chapel

4 Skulltap

Now we're talking.  

Soldiers of Attrition

In a strange flash of inspiration, I decided to run Reclaim instead of other tools. What could be better than using a card again? Plus, it could partner with Gravedigger for a small recursion theme. With that, I played two quick games last night with War Ensemble and while the points I learned are minor, I think they're good ones.

Match One: vs stonethorn's mono-U Illusions. I had a strong start with two Sarcomancys but couldn't get another source of green to play Troll Ascetic or Bramble Elemental. In the meantime, the Illusions deck rolls out Lord of the Unreal, drops a Spellskite, which throws the whole 'cast enchantments on my dudes' plan out and proceeds to pummel me with a Phantasmal Dragon. I don't get a Bone Shredder or a Pernicious Deed and that's that.

I was stuck because I didn't have double green-there were plenty of Swamps in play-and yet my more expensive cards want more green. At the moment it's a 50/50 split for green to black mana and clearly, that has to change.

Match Two: I was up against a janky Counterbalance deck. I ought to know it was janky: I built it. My color issues don't come up and my deck rolls like it's supposed to. The best card in the two games I played: Nantuko Vigilante, because it's ability couldn't be stopped by Counterbalance.

So here's where I start to rethink things: if this is an aggro-control deck, do I want to involve myself in recursion or control? A card like Reclaim is really good if I've already drawn and used Pernicious Deed, the Vigilante or Bone Shredder but if I can't reliably have any of those things in my graveyard to recur, then it's pretty bad.

On the flipside, a card like Bramblecrush is going to be good or useful whenever I draw it, once the mana is available. Something will need destroying that's either causing or will cause a problem. So I think this deck is going to be shifted by -1 Swamp, -2 Reclaim and +1 Forest, 2 Bramblecrush.