I really like this idea, but you have too many things for ramp and you don't want be stuck with a board with just ramp creatures for like the first 7 turns. Sure you have some card draw, but when I tested your deck I drew into more ramp which is not really what you want to do when you already have a lot of mana.

So I would just switch out a few ramp cards that won't really be necessary like dictate of karametra for a more essential piece like temur ascendancy for more draw and creatures with haste.

I would also take out boon satyrs for more copies of hydra broodmaster and genesis hydra. If you want more enchantments hitting the field I would bring in more copies of nylea, or put in kruphix, god of horizons to get some more ramp and have no maximum hand size so you could draw a whole bunch of cards and having to worry about dscarding.

I feel thassa could also work well in your deck with scrying what you may or may not need. Also if you want more ramp xenagos, the reveler can help you with that too. Also you can use a set of wooded foothills to filter out the land in your deck and mana fix at the same time. And evolving wilds can be a great substitute here if you want to go more budget. The land of evolving wilds may be tapped, but you have voyaging satyr and kiora's follower to fix that for you.

Thanks for feedback! I may agree that less ramp is needed, and perhaps should be replaced with either power or another Ascendancy.

Boon Satyrs are awesome. They draw cards for Eidolon of Blossoms and Temur Ascendancy, up the power level of the deck, and can bestow. In short, having them increases consistency. A second Nylea is not a bad idea. I'm not worried about too many cards or saving mana, so Kruphix is irrelevant. If I run out of gas, I would discard the excessive lands I drew.

Xenagos I could dig but I have none and he's expensive. Wooded Foothills may be a good idea. At present, there's no room but maybe I need more lands.

Final point: In excessive goldfishing, I've learned that the performance of the deck varies greatly according to how you play it. It's tricky to get right, but for example it's often good to play Eidolon of Blossoms rather than Hydra Broodmaster, and try to draw into more ramp (or even up devotion for existing ramp) to later play out the Broodmaster with advantage.

Kruphix, God of Horizons would be good for floating unused. You have the ramp to get him out early enough.

you may want to seriously consider Prophet of Kruphix it'll let you double up your ramping and attacking creatures as well as flash in big boys for blockers . Anything running ramp/big creatures should have a few. I would probably do -1 Kiora's Follower and -1 Karametra's Acolyte for 2 Prophet of Kruphix.

I would never -1 acolyte as it's so good. Maybe -1 Nylea because you're right about the prophet. Play it, usually turn 4, Pass turn, untap. They kill prophet, and in response i flash a bunch of creatures.

For your sideboard I would definitely take out swan song for a dissolve or trap essence for counter spells because they do extra things like with the scry or extra counters for a little bit more mana which you should definitely have instead of countering a limited amount of spells while still giving them a 2/2 flyer you won't be able to block.

Also I would maybe take out icy blast for plummet since you have no way to deal with flyers or add some more copies of nylea's disciple against aggro.

Main board I would maybe get rid of karametra's favor for crater's claw so you can use all of the mana ramp into it to burn all of an opponent 's life total down to 0 in one turn.

Thanks for the ideas, WhiteFang.

More Nylea's Disciple: Against aggro, this makes lots of sense.

Plummet: This would work, but I don't think I need it. Icy Blast is a way to deal with flyers, and also with aggro. I haven't tested this in an actual game but I expect it will suffice. Polukranos also deals with flyers. 9 mana for Monstrous is easy.

Crater's Claw: This is an excellent idea. Obviously I'd want it in addition to Favor because it helps with Red, so I'm not sure where I'd cut to fit it in.I actually have little difficulty squeezing through damage with Nylea and all the hydras (and Icy Blast), but I'm sure sometimes a direct damage spell will be useful.

Dissolve, Trap Essence: You haven't seen how this deck plays out. All the lands get tapped down very quickly to play green creatures. More than a single non-green color cost is bad because it will get stuck in hand. I used to have Purphoros and he was very good except I struggled to cast him.This is why I keep the 2 Karametra's Favor around so I can draw into a way to play the non-green cards I have.

I completely understand wanting to counter a creature spell, but I don't see a good option. But since this is a combo deck, it's more important to counter anything that interrupts the combo (like Anger of the Gods, Dune Blast), unless the opponent is hyper-aggro and we need to just survive. If I can protect Karametra's Acolyte and Ascendancy, I should win, no matter if I give them a Swan or a Butcher of the Horde.

It seems like you are trying to be a traditional aggro deck and elf-ball at the same time. With the number of CIPT lands you are running, I think you would be better off running Carytid over Elvish Mystic, and just accept a slightly longer curve rather than play a 1 drop that you will almost never want to block with. By the same token, I would swap your numbers between courser and Acolyte, as Acolyte shines best if you already have Devotion/Ascendancy in play, and Courser is another enchantment creature for Eidolon -- not to mention in attrition games, consistent land drops win.

If you want to go the aggro route, you might be better served looking at Savage Knuckleblade as an efficient beater / draw engine (Ascendancy), as well as Arbor Colossus and Surrak Dragonclaw for pure beats.

If you want to go more combo, Id consider retooling the deck to use Jeskai Ascendancy + Sultai Ascendancy to have that one game ending turn... but balancing the non/creature ratio might be tough.

Well, Aezuriel, your comments suggest you know a lot more about deck building than I do. I guess my aim is definitely "elf-ball" and not aggro, though I know nothing about elf-ball other than it spits out tons of elves for the kill. I probably should have fewer tapped lands.. I wonder if I should have more basics and fetch lands instead of scry lands? What makes this deck "trying to be a traditional aggro deck?" I'm trying to maximize Ascendancy and Eidolon of Blossoms and ramp. I don't know how to do otherwise.

Now, you suggest switching cards and going longer. Why would I want to do that? I mean the goal is winning, and I don't see how slowing down improves my chances. Maybe you could be specific about matchups that are better served by that strategy?

Acolyte shines with more devotion, but it's already good played turn 3 tapped turn 4. (Unless it's killed. It's a matter of planning turns to decide to play it first or later.) Even with only one other creature, it's 2 free mana, and that's not the usual. If that other is a Follower, and I use lands to play out something else first... big numbers already.

Jeskai + Sultai - not an idea I had in mind. Do you really mean 5 color, and won't that be a completely different deck focused on spells rather than devotion? Now Sultai Ascendancy + this deck could be interesting. The deck wins hard if it finds the cards, and knowing the perfect time to pull a Genesis Hydra, without guessing too high the size to make is invaluable. I already have in mind to play Villainous Wealth in here.

I will be honest and say I don't play regularly enough to give you a current standard meta-breakdown, that being said, I tend to view any mtg meta as a distribution of: Fast Aggro/Sligh/Zoo, Ramp/midrange Aggro, Tempo, Combo, and Control. Of course many decks blur these distinctions but that's the general idea.

When I see a deck using 1cc mana ramp guys, it tends to leaning aggro. this is generally because the plan in using them entails powering out a strong 3 drop on turn 2 and then going ham. once you get out a stronger creature, the 1 drop is just incremental damage and a conditional chump blocker. These decks tend to max out at 4cc and often use burn or conditional removal to help close the game. When I see 4x Elvish Mystic and 4x Boon Satyr, that makes sense to me in going for the faster beats. This deck is intentionally slowing your beats game down to set up even more ramp. this puts you in a weird place where you could be aggroing for the win, but you end up "looking" for the cards you actually want to win with.

On the flip side, green ramp has access to Carytid and Courser which is a great recipe for "slow ramp" that also provides critical blockers while setting up for bigger things. Elvish mysic is sort of out of place because you aren't using him early for much, and late he it dwarfed by the raw mana capabilities of Nyx and Acolyte. Follower is actually better because the additional cost is more than compensated by the additional use of the aforementioned cards. For this kind of combo, all you really want to do is survive until you can just puke up lethal onto the board and swing with haste/trample in 1 turn. Also, playing a slow ramp style gives you easy access to all 5 colors as you never need more than 2 of anything (except green)

Assuming you went the duo ascendancy route, you could reasonably use your early blockers and ramp to buy the time you need to set up a great big blast of mana... say Acolyte + Follower + Nyx in play + Nyx from hand. Play a big Hydra, get something else, trigger Jeskai, tap acolyte for more mana, play something else, etc.

Intentionally going for a longer gmae gives you time to set up land drops, pull more cards out of your deck, and sculpt your hand before you press the "go" button - rather than trying to switch plans halfway through the game. As long as you hit something that gives your guys haste and maybe trample, everything else in the deck doesn't matter because you will just swing for lethal in one massive turn after you dig for what you need.

Realistically, I think once you pick a direction the rest will fall into place.

Also, Villainous Wealth is kind of a special case, but its not really a combo worthy card. Wealth is sort of a fancy burn spell, where instead of burning face, you are pulling assets from your opponent's deck (hopefully creatures). This is good for recovering from Wrath of God effects, using your opponent's disruption against him, or just racking up creatures for a lethal finish. If you want to combo, you might be better served with a fireball, or the format equivalent.

P.S. I realized after the fact... I was thinking of Temur + Jeskai ascendancy... not Sultai

Thanks to hateindigital for highlighting Singing Bell Strike in KARAMETRA(CLAWS). We have a new hard combo.

Thanks Aezuriel. That makes sense. I will try Caryatids over Elves again. I lose speed (T1 elf, T2 tap land+something is gone) but gain staying power.

FNM report! I had a ton of fun even though I did not win much. I did however pull off the Bell Strike combo, and did manage to go crazy big with guys to win sometimes. I also often came very close to winning - just a different draw or a better play would have done it.

In my estimation the deck is very hard to play well, and I made mistakes in: mulliganing; the order of playing creatures; the scheme of using the big ramp (hint: tap your regular lands, then play a creature, then tap for devotion. but don't tap out of blue if you need blue.); choosing when to play Genesis Hydra and for how big; sideboarding appropriately. The deck/sideboard also requires tuning to deal with the chief problems in the metagame. Inherently it wants to do its own thing, but there does need to be a side plan to buy time when needed.

Again, tons of fun, and the most complicated deck by far I've ever played (out of 4 total. I'm pretty new at magic.)

Could someone give me an idea of what a REALLY budget version might look like? I'm think without cards like the Courser, Confluence, wooded foothills, or the Caryatid... This deck.. I playtested for like an hr straight. Jubale, as you said perhaps you have to play it right, I played almost your entire deck in 10 turns minimum! I would edit it with the Savage Knuckleblade as well (somebody else mentioned this XD) And try to find some way to form an infinite blue mana source with the green.

I'm thinking find a way to get more blue devotion to use Nykthos with the singing bell on kiora's follower AND have the Acolyte out with singing bell to continuously untap Follower and Kiora. You might need a couple more of the Followers and the singing bells..

Thanks for testing it out! Okay instead of Caryatid, Karametra's Favor. Instead of Confluence and Wooded Foothills, pick your 2-color lands. It's very possible the deck would just be better if it played more power creatures, so certainly it's worth trying Knuckleblade and such.

I don't understand why you want blue devotion? Bell Strike + Follower + Nykthos + 9 green devotion is a combo same as with Acolyte, but you only need 1 blue to play the card.

I cut the number of followers because it's only good when Acolyte or Nykthos are out. (Actually it's also good to turn Polukranos into an attacking blocking machine.) I have only 2 bells main because control decks make those useless.

Okay, so about going infinite: (a) It was easier when I had Elvish Mystic in there but sometimes I got color trouble. (b) It is a puzzle to figure out the best plan. When do you chase cards, when do you pursue mana, when do you cast Genesis Hydra, and how big? It's valuable to not tap your ramp until you play out cards to increase devotion (c) Mulligan matters. The right 4 card hand is better than the wrong 7 card hand. (d) It's not 100%. You can easily get mana screwed or flooded. (e) Infinite is not actually necessary. Devotion + Acolyte + Polukranos or Hydra Broodmaster just wins.

I'm kind of inovative with decks, the combo is hilarious, but if you dont mind, i'd like to take this, and see if i can hammer out some consistancy with it. of course ill be mentioning you in the description for credit as i would never want to infringe

Creature (30)

2x Boon Satyr4x Courser of Kruphix4x Eidolon of Blossoms4x Genesis Hydra1x Hydra Broodmaster3x Karametra's Acolyte3x Kiora's Follower1x Nylea, God of the Hunt1x Polukranos, World Eater3x Rattleclaw Mystic4x Sylvan Caryatid

Land (23)

3x Forest4x Frontier Bivouac2x Mana Confluence1x Mountain4x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx3x Temple of Mystery2x Wooded Foothills4x Yavimaya Coast

Enchantment (6)

3x Singing Bell Strike3x Temur Ascendancy

Instant (1)

1x Chord of Calling

Sideboard (15)

3x Commune with the Gods1x Crater's Claws4x Negate1x Noble Quarry2x Nylea's Disciple1x Singing Bell Strike3x Triton Tactics

This is what i came up with in just a few minutes. ill get back to it for further imrovement.

one thing that you should do if you can, is instead of putting bell strike on karametra, put it on Kiora's Follower. it does the same exact thing, but you can untap your entire board with the combo. i took comune to the side because you easily ramp into a genesis which nets the missing piece mot of the time. i playtested my changes vs your deck 5 times in a row and won all 5. i tested it vs a jeskai heroic, and an abzan midrange and won twice in a row vs both. i didnt change much but what i did seemed to vastly inprove the consistancy of it. i'd maybe even drop the pain lands for scry to help even more with setting it up. it needs to play like a control deck for the first 5 or so turns, just stalling out the game till you hit that win-con. i was ablle to nail it several times on turn 6, most of the time it was on 7 or 8, meaning you gotta last that long vs a lot of the faster stronger decks out there. i was able to win one of the games without hitting the combo, hit a genesis for 12 and didnt get bellstrike, but a 12/12 is hard to deal with sometimes.

Hey thanks for checking it out. I think you're right about stalling the game. Things I've been thinking about, and I'd like your feedback:

Maybe I want to play more Polukranos because (a) Polukranos is a good staller, and (b) Polukranos+ a bunch of mana just dominates even if the full combo doesn't show. (c) Playing vs. UB control, the combo might not happen but beating for 5 is good. (Plan: jam Eidolon of blossoms and Karametra to exhaust removal then run with it. Or jam Polukranos so I can run away with card draw and big mana. Not sure.)

I thought about scry lands and couldn't decide if it's better or worse. Question is, how many tap lands do we want? 11 means

Elvish Mystic makes the deck more explosive compared to 2-drop mana, though Rattleclaw is a nice top-deck when I'm running off devotion mana. What would you think about switching some of these cards to Elvish Mystic.

"hit a genesis for 12 and didnt get bellstrike". In fact Bell Strike is a recent addition. I found before that the deck is good at chaining plays. If Ascendency is out, or you have multiple big-ramp cards in play, it works very well to play Genisis for less than the full amount (say 8), fetch something and draw something, then play that and tap for additional mana to use. It's not unusual to fetcth a Polukranos and monstrous for a bit, or an Acolyte, tap for even bigger than before and play something, or at a certain point, keep 6 mana open so you can fetch and activate Bell Strike in one blow. It's a bit of a gamble but if you count the number of possible targets and the probabilty of getting just one of those, it's pretty good as long as X >= 4.

I played vs GR monsters plus Elspeth on Friday, and one game we both filled the board but he did even more than I with Xenagos, and was beating with dragons. I was dead on the board. At that moment it was up to the top deck. I had Bell Strike in hand, and any of these cards would have won the game through overwhelming defense: Nylea, Polukranos, Genesis Hydra, Hydra Broodmaster. Also several cards would have drawn me a second chance. Alas, I drew a land.

One more thing: I find UB control is a problem, and playing Bell Strike is nearly pointless (it did once buy me time by enchanting a Sphinx. They don't like discarding). It's the reason I only had 2 main.

The reason I would want blue devotion to ensure I don't run out of the blue mana that I need sort of a backup plan. I made one last night..

3x Savage Knuckleblade3x Kiora's Follower3x Karametra's Acolyte3x Singing Bell Strike3x Temur Ascendancy2x Dictate of Kruphix3x Eidolon of Blossoms1x Surrak Dragonclaw2x Arbor Colossus1x Kruphix, God of Horizons2x Prophet of Kruphix1x Nylea, God of the Hunt1x Polukranos, World Eater3x Mindswipe3x Genesis Hydra3x Rattleclaw Mystic1x Hydra Broodmaster

I find the mindswipe to be overkill with infinite mana combo. I also considered adding the bow as I havr come across the ability to untap anf retap EVERYTHING in the same turn over and over again. All you need are too singing bells, an acolyte, and a follower + devotion and you're golden!

With the knuckle I wad also able to continuously draw with the combo until I reached whatever I needed to win

i'm trying to keep it packed with monsters so when the combo strikes there is no interuptions due to bad luck.

Added Windstorm for the game you face a deck like mine, (Gruul monsters), and get stuck facing 2-3 stormbreaths. 5 mana and anything in the air thats 4/4 or lower dies. i also sided in Dissolve instead of a few other things for that game when you face heavy control and cant keep the board state up.

Hall of Triumph is good at keeping caryatids on the board vs Anger of the Gods

and the reason this deck does well vs abzan is abzan removes threats, you dont really put any threats out, untill you strike the combo and then there are 10 of them.

another card to consider is Defend the Hearth, but you wanna keep the deck filled with things that net a craw when played. its good when your facing threats you cant answer to, just let them though and pop that, stalled for a turn. and with this its all about taking as many turns as possible to you hit that win-con

oh and you asked about Elvish Mystic. elvish mystic is an offensive ramper, for decks that want to do damage faster, Sylvan Caryatid is a defensive ramper for stalling a game. its very good vs aggro, so its perfect for your deck, i use mystics in mine, because they lead to a turn 2 Fanatic of Xenagos. but i i use an aggressive deck where speed is important over safety. you want to be safe. mystic cant block anything, neither can Rattleclaw Mystic but the mana options are key to this so i left 2 in.