Sunforger: This is a Sunforger deck minus the actual card because it's such a dramatic change to the gameplay. Sunforger makes you archenemy and removes the "wow" factor when you're tutoring your answers every turn.
Duelist's Heritage: Great card, but I want to minimize the number of decisions I have to make and I want to avoid blatantly picking on someone, especially if they're behind on board already. I want my buffs to be my opponents' choice, not my own when I can.
Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon: Great effects but I don't want to be the bad guy.
Teferi's Protection: Too meta and I have enough fogs and redirections to usually be able to skip a fog without an aikido theme, even one of the best ones ever printed. Plus, if I save my board, I immediately become archenemy, and I'd prefer to win a little bit more subtly than that.
Boros Charm
: See above about board wipes, but also I want to avoid introducing infinite loops with the reckoner creatures.
Blasphemous Act and Star of Extinction: I want to try to minimize board wipes and rely on pillowfort tools instead. Damage based wipes like these will win the game, but winning out of nowhere just makes people remember you as a combo deck and makes them need to kill you in future games.
Agitator Ant: People are way less likely to take these counters. If you're the only one taking them, you start to grow above the rest of the table and become the threat. It's also much worse for player 4 than player 2; people committing to attacking is much more difficult than them committing to NOT attacking you because so much can change over a turn or two.
Disrupt Decorum and Taunt from the Rampart: Goad is a board wipe and a win condition that makes people irrationally angry. I don't need to force people to attack if I can encourage them, and I prefer playing subtly if I can. Still, would be great inclusions
Olorin's Searing Light: It's very close to being on theme, but I don't like how it blasts everyone. If someone's working with me and taking the counters, I don't want to betray them by blasting them unprovoked. It's also harder than I expected to turn on the spell mastery.
Blazing Sunsteel and Fiendlash: There's two ways this deck goes accidentally infinite: the first one is a creature that doesn't die when it takes damage, and something that allows it to damage itself repeatedly. Example combos are Blazing Sunsteel + Brash Taunter
, Boros Charm + Boros Reckoner + Fiendlash
, Brash Taunter + Fiendlash + Gideon's Sacrifice
, etc. I'm pretty sure I've removed all of the loops from this list, but it's been intentional.
Furnace of Rath and Dictate of the Twin Gods: The second way this deck goes infinite is a way to keep doubling damage infinitely. So, same requirement of a creature that doesn't die when it takes damage, but slightly more flexible, like Furnace of Rath + Gideon's Sacrifice + Phyrexian Vindicator
or Boros Charm + Furnace of Rath + Spitemare
Crescendo of War: I adore this card. I've added it and cut it like 5 times. It's an incredibly fast clock and adds a lot of risk to a table. The reasons it's staying out of the list are that it's too likely to just hand a win to the token player with dozens more creatures than you, and the fact that it's just unnecessary to introduce so much risk when you can just take it slow and develop further.
Trouble in Pairs and Esper Sentinel: These cards are super staples. They draw a lot of cards and a lot of threat. They would definitely make my list better, but I don't want to increase the threat level that much.
Smothering Tithe: "Do you pay the two?" is super annoying and draws a ton of attention and aggro. Strong, but not what I'm going for.
Mangara, the Diplomat and Aerial Extortionist: Solid draw engines but I'm lazy and don't want to track triggers.
Jeska's Will: Red impulse draw is not great for this archetype. Most of the cards are situational and reactive, and you also don't want to be revealing cards.
Sol Ring: This is a casual deck that tries to play slightly slower than other casual decks. Sol ring leads to explosive starts that I don't really want.
Arcane Signet and other two mana rocks: two mana rocks are great, but they actually compete with the slot for Noble Heritage. I've decided to slot in 3 CMC rocks instead for the additional utility they have attached.
Ill-Tempered Loner
: I'm too lazy to track day/night and the flip side goes infinite with Brash Taunter.
Screaming Nemesis: A nuclear answer to a casual problem. It would definitely be a strong card, but it would draw way too much fear and aggro from anyone who actually wants lifegain in their lists. Not worth the attention in my list.
Chaos Warp and Tibalt's Trickery: I've been burned a few too many times to rely on these. I don't feel like I need chaos warp with my removal package already. Tibalt's has more upside as a counterspell, but also more risk by guaranteeing a hit for the opponent. Most of my stack interaction is covered by redirection spells like Return the Favor, but it could be a good fit in the right meta.
Lapse of Certainty and Reprieve: As a player, I'm bad about knowing what to counter and what to not, so these typically sit in my hand until I die. These don't even effectively counter their spells, usually meaning you'll just need to deal with the spell again on the next (or same) turn. They have their merits, but it's not necessary in my meta yet.
Frontier Warmonger, Frenzied Saddlebrute, and Skyboon Evangelist: These cards were underwhelming for me in practice. People don't remember effects like these because they're not their cards and they didn't prepare for them. It also doesn't help to remind people every combat about you existing and incentivizing people to attack each other. I've had much more luck with just +1/+1 counters just because they're easier for people to handle on their own.
Crawlspace: This card is fascinating because it both over and underperformed for me. The people most affected by it saw it as a very threatening card and went out of their way to remove it or remove me. But it also lead to weird situations where I had a lethal punish if someone had completely swung out, but not if they only swung one or two, and I couldn't capitalize on them. I ended up trimming it for more space in the list.
Take the Bait: This card doesn't play well in this deck. People usually don't attack you until you're the last one left and then it's usually just a 4-mana fog. You can do some fun tricks with things like Brash Taunter and Phyrexian Vindicator, but usually there's better ways to capitalize on an attack. There's a tech where you can use it when an opponent attacks another opponent and give them a free combat, but that's a bit more aggressive that I like to play.
