Cloudshift takes away +1/+1 counters from allies. In this deck he is running mimic vat to create something similar an unlimited number of times.

Only 59 cards, but an awesome 59 cards.

Also, I think Sundering Growth would be a better bet than Disenchant in your sideboard. Not only do you get the same effect, but if you have a token out from Mimic Vat you can populate and keep it.

good call. i was retooling the deck a little bit and must have lost my balance of 60. i threw in another Mirror Entity for now, but it could very well wind up being another draw spell. also thanks for the Sundering Growth idea. its sometimes easy to overlook cards like that because of the hybrid green in the mana cost.

I see you are running blue.

I suggest taking out 1 Mirror Entity for 1 or maybe 2 Phantasmal Image maximum synergy with allies and it can remove a legendary creature because of the ruling.

it actually cannot remove legendary creatures anymore. they changed the legend rule back in, i think, september of last year. you and your opponent can both have legendary permanents of the same name without either being sacrificed. and if you play a legendary permanent with the same name as a legendary permanent that you control, you choose 1 and sacrifice it.

as for the images, i do not feel like they do much for me. i get that they enter as a copy of any ally i want that is already in play... which is pretty nifty. but the image enters as an ally as well. and can pump all my allies with its ability to make even my clerics swing for damage. it of course also pumps itself, so while it does not get big permanently, it does get bigger faster as a mana sink.

the "image" after the "pretty nifty" phrase is supposed to be entity. dat lack of edit feature.

actually it was back in may. here is a link: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/248e

Oh I must of missed the rule change. Yeah the reason I find 3x Mirror Entity to be quite high is that it really makes for a bad opening hand drawing all 3.

i could cut them down to 2, but that is the lowest i would go. i could maybe throw in a Join the Ranks (which i kind of like as a 1-of), another loremaster, maybe another land, or an Azorius Charm , maybe mainboard a Baneslayer Angel or a Sun Titan . im all ears as to what you recommend. i just dont think image is the best way to go in this case.

Cloudshift is a nice alternative to Momentary Blink

It is an alternative. but since momentary blink has flashback, I can get more uses out of it -- which I think is better than the 1 lower cmc of cloudshift in this deck.

hi i like your deck! can you guys check my allies deck allies its quite similar but i splashed green

Always refreshing to see more people experimenting with allies in modern. Have you considered Scout's Warning? If not running AEther Vial, being able to activate Kabira Evangel at instant speed is super useful, particularly for Anger of the Gods or other spot removal.

Aditionally, I would recommend either a few Ghostway, once again to protect your board position, but also useful to get more counters on newer allies. It's also explosive with Ondu Cleric. If you don't decide to use Ghostway, I think Jwari Shapeshifter should be in any ally deck with blue. Copy an Evangel to deal with multi-color threats, copy a Cleric if your life is getting low, copy a Blademaster every other time.

The reason I do not like Jwari Shapeshifter is that is useless on an empty board... something that I really value in a deck that sometimes struggles with draw and runs 2 of its own board wipes. When brewing a deck, I take a long time in looking at a card and examining a ton of different situations where I top deck it. For this deck, I deemed the shapeshifter to be a dead draw in more situations than other cards in the deck.

As for the AEther Vial and Scout's Warning suggestions, I do not like Scout's Warning. It is kind of cute and replaces itself. But it is kind of like shapeshifter in that it has a lot of propensity to be a dead draw if I go into top deck mode and draw that. As for AEther Vial, I love it and I did consider it for a long time. But unlike merfolk, the vast majority of my creatures are not the same cmc -- which greatly lowers how useful it is. I opted for Momentary Blink as my instant speed ally trigger. It can save an ally from targeted removal, serve as a combat trick against aggressive attackers, or if I have an evangel out, save all my allies from something like anger of the gods. I used to run mimic vat, but I deemed the instant speed from my hand was more valuable than the permanent type there as it is harder to react to.

Which brings me to Ghostway. It is something I did consider at one point as well. Yes, sweepers generally mess up allies pretty hard. But I I run 2 of my own... and with the Emeria, The Sky Ruin engine, I could honestly care less if the board gets wiped. If you want to make it into a long game, I will win the long game. And the trigger on emeria is not even a cast, so it gets around counter magic. But anyways, now that I am thinking about it more, there are not a ton of situations where Ghostway does anything less than Momentary Blink. There are some rare instances where it would be less useful... and the lack of flashback hurts. But it is something that I will have to test again. Thanks!

Also JLenzen, if you are looking for another W ally deck (not sure if this 100% counts as WU) to add to your primer on top of Busse's, you are more than welcome to add mine. I know there are not a ton of refined ally decks out there.

I understand that, having every card be useful is really important in Modern. The Emeria, The Sky Ruin strategy is good, but I don't like not being able to run Cavern of Souls, and I worry about graveyard hate, especially since its such a key part of your strategy.

That being said it's definitely a great deck, more of a UW aggro tempo as opposed to all-in which avoids a lot of the problems allies typically have. I think its good enough to add to the Primer, but I'm trying to make sure the references there are as educational as possible for people trying to break into allies. If you could elaborate your description a bit, things like: How the deck plays, why did you make the card choices you did, and how does it match up against other decks, especially modern archetypes, I'd definitely put it in. (That may seem like a double standard since Busse's deck doesn't really have any of that, but I'm trying to make the primer as good as it can be.) It doesn't have to be as elaborate as my Allies of Kruphix (Competitive) deck, just something to get people excited about allies.

JLenzen All done. Needs some formatting, but I got a lot there.

Nice! I'm going to make some edits tomorrow and put it back into the feature queue, I'll make sure to include your deck.

What do you think about adding Venser, the Sojourner?? he not only procs allied triggers, but also gives you the possibility to hit unblockable though artifact matchups that screw the aggro part of Kabira Evangel

Affinity is really not horrible match up for this deck, and the sideboard has a lot of hate for it. So I really do not need another tool in the tool belt for artifact match ups. The only other "artifact" deck is Tron, and its not the artifacts in there that I have to worry about.

As for Venser himself, he is actually my all time favorite planeswalker. But he is too slow for this deck. With my current mana, I really cannot afford to run a lot of 5 drops, and the Sea Gate Loremaster can win the game much faster than Venser can. The amount of draw the loremaster gives just puts me so far ahead that other decks cannot keep up with the card advantage.