Welcome to Heritage of the Fallen, where the power of a dying creature is the hertiage of the next one in line!
This is a pretty low-to-the-ground deck with two primary goals on the path to victory. a) to generate mana and b) to draw cards; both based on creature size. Ishai (or one of the other threats of the deck) will regularly become somewhere in the neighbourhood of a 15/15 or 25/25. If you manage to get that much mana and draw that many cards, then congratulations, you win! Drawing cards based on creature size isn't too hard these days. Between other sources of card draw and smoothers such as Ponder, I find that the six effects like this I run is enough. There's plenty to choose from, and this list contains the ones I've found the most powerful for what we're trying to achieve. Generating mana is tricker (this deck has four cards for it), and I'm still experimenting with which effects like these are worth running. Heronblade elite is a new include, to be evaluated, while Selvala, Crystalline Crawler and Ruthless Techonmancer have proven again and again to be key pieces of the deck. Landing them and using them is the hallmark of a winning game. If I'm not interacted with, I can put a+b togeather at turn six pretty consistently, and sometimes threaten to do so even earlier (at which point, I'm usually interacted with ;P). An advantage of the deck is that most people who see a +1/+1 stragety on the other side of the table doesn't necessarily expect an explosive turn that kills them outright, which this deck is very capable of.
Some gameplay notes:
There's a lot of strong synergy pieces for +1/+1 counters. The most common play pattern with the deck within the first four turns is to ramp, play a synergy piece or two (Reyhan included), and play Ishai. After that, you're usually ready to rumble. An appealing example is to spend the first three turns to be spent casting a ramp spell, Reyhan and then Ishai, in that order. Therefore, I've prioritized one-mana ramp spells to the degree I can so far. This requires all four colors, so a spell like Llanowar Elves is not yet in the deck (though if you've got better lands, you might want to run it).
The death trigger of Reyhan is a key piece in achieving the above a+b goal. Getting counters on the right creature at the right time makes a huge difference. To that end, sacrifice effects are very strong in the deck - A Little Chat will never be better than when you move 15 counters to either draw that many cards or create that much mana off of casting it with casualty. With a card like Branching evolution out, the counters won't just be moved by Reyhan but also doubled. The two clones in the deck are here partly for this reason - cloning Reyhan will leave you to sac one which will then give you two Reyhan triggers and at least six counters to place. Kudos to AkaAkuma and KibaAlpha for this note; both take this much further in their Reyhan and Ishai builds if you want to see.
When it comes to targeted interaction, I've prioritized low MV spells, since the deck is not great at holding up mana. While this means the spells are sometimes not so versitile, it's better than a versitile spell that's rotting in your hand as your opponent is going off.
I have not included cards in the deck that I knew would go infinite with other cards. With that said, two rather obscure paths to an infinite combo has made its way in to the deck, which I explain below. Since they require a good amount of resouces to pull off, the way I actually play them is usually as the winning move once I've already drawn a lot of cards and generated a large amount of mana. Thus, they are not that often the synergy that wins the game, just the game-ending effect.
1) With Crystalline Crawler, Resourceful Defense and an effect like Branching Evolution (of which only the third has redundancies in the deck), you can pay five mana to move counters from the crawler to another creature, then five more to move them back. In each move, the counters are doubeled. With enough counters and mana to get this started, this will net onbounded colored mana and +1/+1 counters.
2) Ruthless Technomancer is included for its ETB ability, but it's activated ability can go infinite along with Reyhan and Phyrexian Metamorph (this works with Phantasmal Image as well, but its sacrifice trigger means you need additional pieces). Let's say you have Ruthless Technomancer and Phyrexian Metamorph in your hand, as well as Reyhan and some big creature on the board. You can cast Ruthless Technomancer, sac the big creature, get treasures and put the counters on the Technomancer. If you then cast Phyrexian Metamorph and have it enter as a Technomancer, it can sac the first one to get about as many treasures again and move the counters to the new Technomancer. Then, you can loop the Technomancers in and out of the graveyard with the activated ability, netting treasures if the original big creature was big enough.
Lastly, the fact that you naturally end up with huge creatures on the board is not that bad of a backup, if you don't draw the pieces to go off as intended. Similarly, I've killed opponents with commander damage a fair number of times with this deck.
Notes to myself:
Later cards to add: Vorinclex (KHM) [to replace what? pretty low marginal value to other finishers ATM], Culling the Weak (replace Yahenni), Phyrexian Devourer (replace Forgotten Ancient) (maybe), consider Despark -> Rapid Hybridization, Phyrexian tower, Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Caverns, Inkmoth Nexus and the rest of the fetches (inlcuding Prismatic Vista). Retraction Helix is something of an experiment right now. Fetch lands and Gemstone Caverns will replace forests. The others will first replace one plains and one swamp, then one forest while also replacing Nature's Lore with a talisman. Then I'll see. Note also that I want to go to one triome at some point. Also, consider Plaza of Heroes.
Other cards to consider: Silence (or Grand Abolisher, which can be tutored for but not used during enemy turns), more counter spells (Flusterstorm?), Dauthi Voidwalker, Mystic Remora, Concordant Crossroads, Rancor, Haunted Cloak, Doubling Season, Faeburrow Elder, Berserk and Necropotence, Deathrite Shaman, Mana Vault.
