This deck is pretty dang sweet :D This list inspired me to build my own :) Very nice deck. Also, what about a Sun Titan ? I feel like he would be a good addition.

Right on JaceTheHeroOfTime. It's a really fun deck to play however be warned - It really annoys people. It's a slow deck but once the flicker engine gets rolling it usually controls opponents into submission.

I had considered Sun Titan but I have a fair amount of recursion in here already. Still, I'll test him out! 6/6 vigilance is nothing to sniff at.

What do you think of Safe Haven ? I was going through my cards, and completely forgot about it. I am going to play test it for a while, and see if it works out.

Just wanted to get another Roon guy's opinion.

Didgeridooda, I like it. I feel like it would be slow...However it could come in handy as a defensive move if anyone tries to target one of my dudes, coupled with the ETB goodness. I'll give it a whirl too.

That was exactly my thoughts on it. Use it to protect from removal of my dudes. Picture made me laugh.

I've played Bant Flicker for a while...since about 6 months before Roon was announced. So far, I've play tested a large variety of cards, and tuned my version to be both fast and extremely lethal. Here are a few things to keep in mind while developing your deck:

Creatures need to have very powerful ETB effects to be worth it. For me, the body is irrelevant unless it is a finisher (i.e. Armada Wurm ). Sun Titan , for example, is a 6 drop for the effect of re-animating a 3 drop. It isn't really powerful enough in my opinion. Furthermore, permanents that take time to be useful are not worth running. Brago, King Eternal is a classic example of this. I want him to be good so much, that sometimes I'll slip him in just to see if I can make him work, but he too often dies without making any impact. Also, Roon isn't very good. He's an awesome tool, but I cast him more often as a body for Prime Speaker or a creature to sac to birthing pod. Frequently, using his ability is not worth losing the open mana for a counterspell. Lastly, do not overestimate the value of flickering a creature. This is the most common mistake people make. Yes, flickering certain creatures is amazing, but usually, you might as well just play another creature.

Cards I would consider cutting:
Brago, King Eternal - too slow, dies easilly.
Brutalizer Exarch - too slow, not a powerful effect.
Craterhoof Behemoth - not relevant to flicker, and expensive.
Lavinia of the Tenth - ETB effect isn't versatile enough.
Murkfiend Liege - Not very relevant. The buff doesn't matter at all if you're playing control, and the untap is irrelevant.
Stonehorn Dignitary - ETB effect isn't versatile or powerful enough. It doesn't generate value.
Terastodon - Too expensive.
Cultivate - Should be a wood elves or Farhaven Elf.
Kodama's Reach - Should be a wood elves or Farhaven Elf.
Conjurer's Closet - Too slow.
Venser, the Sojourner - Too slow. Dies easily in EDH and makes you a target because it's a planeswalker.
Illusionist's Bracers - These are to make Roon better, but there are better things to do than buff Roon. I would argue the deck is better built without thinking about casting roon at all.
Lightning Greaves - Only relevant on Roon. See above.
Thousand-Year Elixir - See above.
Wargate - Too slow.

I would suggest the following cards (may be more here than I suggested to cut):
Portcullis - This is just insane. Can completely lock players out of the game while giving you quite a bit of advantage. Extremely abusable.
Birthing Pod - This is again, the nuts. It simply wins games if left along for a few turns.
Parallax Wave - This is highly underrated. It is versatile, and, even if they remove it, gives you value.
Survival of the Fittest - It's just...I mean...it's a survival of the fittest.
Evacuation - generates a ton of value.
Voidslime - One of the best counterspells you can run. Extremely versatile.
Dryad Arbor - Searchable with a green sun for 0.
Gilded Drake - This card is ridiculous. Hands down one of my favorite cards to see in my opening hand. Just don't be too quick to run it out onto the battlefield.
Consecrated Sphinx - one of the best card draw engines ever printed.
Nevermaker - This card trades favorably, works as a removal spell, and is nuts to flicker repeatedly.
Glen Elendra Archmage - This is good by itself, and you can flicker it for even more counterspells!
Farhaven Elf - So much land over the course of a game.
Angel of Finality - Sometimes you just need this.
Ixidron - This is just silly, but surprisingly good. It shuts down all kinds of crazy things, like Avacyn, commanders, etc.
Wood Elves - Just amazing in this deck.

Holy shit Traveler247, the best comment of all time. Thank you very much! I feel like I need to rethink everything I thought I knew about Roon, so much to consider. Here's your comment in jpg form:

Portcullis is too hard to setup effectively. It's a communism theory card, you still get your ETB triggers, but with the creature line-up you are gonna try to beat down with 2/2 chumps. Heres my Roon deck: Roonbear Wins, it wins games consistently repeating plenty of wincons.

I tried Angel of Finality but it was cut immediately for Academy Rector and a small line of enchantments to rip when it dies. Rest in Peace is a better, more cost effective and versatile substitute. Cards like this are stylized to your play group, and my groups graveyard manipulation is so weak that I don't really care about it.

Cards that will double your ETB value an abuse other players creatures: Clone , Sakashima the Impostor , Body Double , Followed Footsteps , Elvish Piper .

Parallax Wave is underrated and I had it in mine for a while, it just wasn't as powerful as I expected it to be as I upgraded the deck. With most of the cards having "Draw a card" and "Search a Land out" you can thin the deck and then draw the cards with P.Wave-- and it functions well like that. Over time, it will not make the cut as you find more ways to address your play groups decks, you would no longer depend on tricks like this to see more play of your deck... until you can fine tune your strategy plan(s).

No disrespect Traveler

@Enyeto: I took a look at your deck, and it's important to note that we have very different builds of flicker (for reference, my build: Phelddagrif Can Blink Too!). Mine is control, and yours is more tempo/shenanigans. As far as the effectiveness of my deck, it's definitely effective. I built Roon to an almost competitive tier, and then replaced the infinite combos to make it more casual, but it's still deadly.

Anyhow, when you evaluate a card like portcullis or Parallax Wave, you have to understand that we are targeting different creatures. I found that Body Double , Clone , Craterhoof Behemoth , Elvish Piper , Elvish Visionary , Grand Abolisher , Progenitor Mimic , Restoration Angel , Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant , Sigarda, Host of Herons , Terastodon , Thragtusk , Trostani, Selesnya's Voice , and Trostani's Summoner either weren't powerful enough, were too slow, or didn't go in the direction I wanted. That's nearly half of your creature base. You specifically don't run Eternal Witness , Archaeomancer , Gilded Drake , Nevermaker , Solemn Simulacrum , Wood Elves , Farhaven Elf , and Venser, Shaper Savant all of which range from insane to powerful upon entering the battlefield. So the reason those two cards were underwhelming is simply that you don't run a creature base that makes them good. This isn't to say that your creature base/build is bad, it certainly isn't, it just doesn't work for these two cards which are absolutely fantastic in many other builds. With regard specifically to Portcullis, you said that you're beating down with 2/2s, but that isn't the point. The point of Portcullis is to stop anything from happening until I'm ready for it to. And with regard to Parallax Wave, you cited ETB effects such as drawing a card and fetching a land; however, imagine destroying an artifact or enchantment, bouncing a permanent (or even better, putting it on top of their library), getting back a card from your graveyard to your hand, stopping a balefire dragon from hitting you, and searching a land. This is typically what Parallax wave does for me for 4 mana.

With regard to Angel of Finality/Rest in Peace, it depends on your deck. My deck uses a lot more graveyard shenanigans than yours, so I don't want to play Rest in Peace. For you, RIP is definitely better. Personally, my meta contains several decks with very powerful graveyard shenanigans (including my Child of Necromancy deck) and more with somewhat less powerful graveyard interactions, like this one. Graveyard hate is absolutely essential. However, it's usually just one player at a time, so Angel of Despair allows me to keep my graveyard while still having almost as powerful an impact on my opponents.

Lastly, clone effects. Clone effects are, obviously, very powerful. A friend of mine plays a deck that contains nothing but clone effects, and it is a lot scarier than it sounds. Personally, I only run the few best clone effects I could find: Clever Impersonator , Phantasmal Image , and Phyrexian Metamorph . As you get into others there are just better options of cards to run.

Anyhow, as you said, no disrespect, your have put together a solid casual list. I maintain; however, that you are right about Parallax Wave and Portcullis in your deck, but that they are amazing in other Roon decks, and that if you change your creature base you should re-visit them. And sorry this was so long. I actually enjoy writing, so my comments tend to get lengthy.

Also, here is a Roon primer I wrote a while back (it's a bit outdated): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3a7EAgT9XEXo1gg9KCkz-mBHXktK7gBpF60aRysSBM/

@Traveler247 Yup. The play group is what the decks dependency is based around. I built my Roon deck without counters for that specific reason, most of the other players either still live at home or can't keep a steady income to stock a trade binder or purchase cards for a deck. As sad as it makes me, I have nearly all but retired my Zur and Geist decks because they are very competitive builds.

The players at my LGS struggle beating the Roon deck after I have watered it down. If I were to make it more competitive, I would slide my average cost back and support it with faster cards like Parallax Wave . For my creature base mentioned, they have been tooled to play versus the 3 players that usually gun for me asap.

Bant flicker knowledge overload. Thanks fellas, great discussion.

So I've made a lot of tweaks based on suggestions made here. I'll probably cut Strionic Resonator + Conjurer's Closet to make room for Parallax Wave + Birthing Pod if I can wrangle'em.

As for Stonehorn Dignitary + Lavinia of the Tenth , I've found them both extremely useful in my experience (although they both induce fury, sometimes even tears). Likewise with Craterhoof Behemoth ...Sometimes a mighty Craterwin finish is required to put someone out of their misery. I would also argue that Craterpwn is relevant to creature heavy flicker - Trample opponent A's face into the dirt, flicker CB next turn to trample opponent B's face into the dirt etc. It's really all about trampling faces into dirt.

Lastly, I can't bring myself to remove Venser, the Sojourner from this deck. The hate draw is real, but he's just so damn handy. I agree that he's pricey to cast but his +1 is perfect for the deck & I've been able to control the board long enough to get his ultimate rolling a couple times now. Each time = insta-scoop.

Anyway, thanks again for the sage advice. I feel like new life has been breathed into the deck, I'm looking forward to frustrating people with it soon.

Academy Rector and Levitation won't disappoint. You have a few token generators, which allow you to always have blockers no matter what. Same with Pattern of Rebirth or Wonder

Enyeto, I'm curious what you target with Academy Rector . I like AR as much as the next guy, but I'm only running 5 (albeit awesome) enchantments. Seeing as AR has to hit the yard to trigger, I don't see her being relevant in a flicker deck. I run AR in my Uril build because I've got a toolbox of 28 enchantments to choose from - A legit "sure, come at me bro so I can fetch up Eldrazi Conscription " threat. She's more of a 'good stuff' card for this deck. Am I missing something?

Giving my ragtag flicker army flying might be cool. Pattern of Rebirth is conditional (again, has to hit the yard which isn't ideal for my plan here) but I do really like that card. I run it in my Dosan deck and have had success with it there.

I use AR more for board state answers. Planar Collapse , Defense of the Heart , Aura Shards and Followed Footsteps are often grabbed.

Mirari's Wake is great to grab, Doubling Season is also great as I play 7 PW's. Day of the Dragons I was thinking about putting in just for AR if Zendikar was on the board. But that was too conditional.

For Pattern of Rebirth is usually have a way to kill whatever creature its on. Most often I'll have Polymorph in hand, Avenger of Zendikar on the field. Pattern of Rebirth on a saproling token and then I'll polymorph it to snag a creature from the deck plus Craterhoof Behemoth

Pattern of Rebirth is also decent insurance for Roon. People will try to prevent you abusing his ability, at least you can net a gain from his death. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger to recast next turn...

I just want to mention that Strionic Resonator has been pretty solid for me so far. I saw that you were thinking about cutting it, and I would almost recommend keeping it. It isn't absolutely nuts, but with some of the effects out there, it can get really awesome.

That being said, Birthing Pod and Parallax Wave are both better.

Yeah, Strionic is certainly relevant...I'm simply struggling with cuts now. The obvious choice is to ditch a creature but I'm being indecisive. Your comments re. Brago, King Eternal up there are totally valid...I'm just determined to make it happen one day (also makes me want to bring the boots back for Brago haste). If my opponents freak out and use a removal spell on him, so be it. Perhaps the king will make a triumphant return, Reveillark stylee.

I've been wrestling with this deck all week. As it stands, I can make a case for every creature that's currently in here. I need convincing! Halp!

Enyeto, I see what you mean, a little insurance policy on Roon. That said, if I throw Pattern on Roon he'd have to hit the yard for it to trigger. I'd prefer Roon to head back to the CZ. Shrug.

I like the ideas you're throwing down, I just don't think I can justify them in the build I'm going for. Card spots are getting precious, difficult choices are being made!

Ended up chopping Condemn + Conjurer's Closet to make way for Wave + Pod. We'll see how it goes.

The thing to think about now is what direction you want your deck to go. Enyeto and I both have good builds and good advice, but we play very different builds of Roon.

Personally, I choose a selection of jobs that support the way I want the deck to play, and evaluate each card on how well it does one or more jobs. For this deck, those jobs are removal, ramp, win-con, card draw/selection, counters, flicker-ish effects, and protection, all for the sake of preventing my opponents from being able to kill me or disrupt a win-con. One of the biggest reasons that I typically win games is that I rarely even get 1-for-1ed, much less 2-for-1ed, because I evaluate each card expecting it to get killed immediately. Personally, I also like to stay on flavor. I try not to run powerful, off-flavor packages (i.e. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger + some way to cheat it into play) unless it's utility (i.e. Sensei's Divining Top , Scroll Rack /Fetch Lands, Mirari's Wake , etc).

With all of that in mind, to me Academy Rector is off-flavor. It's very powerful, yes, but I usually feel like it's just in a deck to be a powerful card, and this is no different. Also, I dislike the fact that it eats Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile badly.

Defense of the Heart always annoys me to play with and against because you have to play it at just the right time, and then everyone wants to kill you. Plus, you have to run targets for it.

Followed Footsteps opens you up to being 2-for-1ed. However, it is very powerful.

Pattern of Rebirth does nothing if the creature gets exiled. There is about a 50% chance that a creature will get exiled instead of destroyed in my meta, so that's a definite concern.

These are my thoughts on these cards, but they are all obviously very powerful. Also, this is based on the groups I play with. With this deck, I really emphasize consistency, and preventing my plans from being interrupted. There can be a tendency to run a bunch of effects that can be awesome, and hope one of them works. This is actually really good, and I do that in a re-animator deck of mine. In this deck, I'm trying to take out every little chink in the armor. Admittedly, the other day I was playing a game in which two people basically did nothing but counters and removal directed at me. There is simply nothing you can do if two people try to counter or kill everything you play. I did end up coming back and winning that though. Good ol' Venser+Deadeye.

Anyway, think about what you want your deck to do. Do you want big awesome, crazy plays, or do you want the thing that just stays alive and stops people from doing crazy plays? Or do you want something else entirely?

@Traveler247 Exactly. Couldn't have summed it up better. Focus on the meta of your peers and practice answering their decks and plays.

@Forkbeard My build of Roon really doesn't rely on him being on the field much. Definitely an EDH faux pas, but I am okay with him sitting in the grave, awaiting recursion -or- if graveyard gets exiled, I can return him to CMD zone at that time.

If you are struggling to find where to make your cuts, the best advice I have received was eliminate cards with 1 answer only. (Such as if you have Naturalize in the deck, you would want to remove that for Beast Within as a more versatile card; or putting in Selesnya Charm for Raise the Alarm as another example)

You're right, Defense of the Heart does paint a giant target on the caster & it doesn't have the instant benefit that Tooth, GSZ + Pod have. I still adore the card though. It's a powerful effect that forces reaction, makes things interesting. I might lose it in favour of more control, Voidslime if I can score a copy (I have 1 but it's currently in my Mimeoplasm deck).

Once upon a time I was falling in love

Now I'm only falling apart

There's nothing I can do

A total Defense of the Heart