I would suggest losing Dark Deal. You don't really gain much from it, and with tormenting voice there is some bad ju-ju there. Other than that the concept is cool.

Display of Dominance in sideboard?

Have you thought about adding Taigam's Scheming? Helps you drop up to 5 cards in the grave, or fix up your next few draws?

Perfect! Thank you both. These are the things I am missing so far. helps with the card advantage, plus eliminates bad draws and sets up GY.

@That_One_Tall_Dude

I agree that Dark Deal wasn't the best, but I was looking for solid dig and there wasn't a bunch with dumping cards in the GY.

@FatherTime

Taigam's Scheming - This is perfect and avoided my search because it doesn't use the word draw.

Display of Dominance - Figured that Ashiok is a card to beat. This seemed like good cheap targeted removal for it.

YAY!!! Finally a Living Lore deck, haven't seen many around here :)

No Temporal Trespass?

@FAMOUSWATERMELON

As it exiles on resolution i didn't feel it was that strong. Due to the meta being 90% creature and planswalker based for wincon i felt that being able to recur Garruks Wake was essentially a timewalk. Even if they manage to drop a creature they end up having to block the 9/9 swinging at them and take the 3/2. If they manage to get a removal spell to get Alesha then you sandbag with command or fated return or umake the graves.

Voltron for this deck I guess would be Alesha brought back with Fated Return and a Lore in GY with Wake.

Dig Through Time maybe. It has a high cost with delve so its great with Living Lore and the rest of the deck.

@dragonpaint

Dig Through Time was in my maybeboard during construction. I know it has a lot of power, but I was worried about too much delve in the deck. Coupled with the fact that it doesn't add to my GY, it got cut about half way through the build.

It may seem strange but I opted for a copy of Enhanced Awareness due to the slightly lower cost, still being an instant, and the more tri-color friendly mana symbols. It has a similar effect while still feeding a choice card to my GY. There were originally going to be 2 and I cut one along the way. I didn't want to cut any more Cruises and didn't see anywhere to re-add, thus the singleton. It may get cut for something else if it doesn't perform well in paper form.

I am still building the paper version of this and it may shift after actual physical playtesting against our gauntlet of this year's tourney winners.

I swear a deck like this with maybe 2x worst fears 2x temporal trespass and maybe 2x whips to whipback living Lore's if all your aleshas die would be pretty rad. Imagine controlling like 3 turns with either a 8/8 or 11/11 being alesha'd back attacking lol

Also monistary siege is the engine of this deck. Say khans. Also consider running tormenting voice. You need to be putting your living Lore's and stupid expensive sorceries into your graveyard. The siege and tormenting voice both let you do that while drawing your other vital pieces. It's a real Johnny combo, so you gotta combo off

Saw ur running tormenting voice* my bad lol

Also they can still counter your spell from resolving after you sac living lot, so some counter main board is necessary, in my opinion. Just run like 3 negates

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/hilarious-lore/

I put finger to key and got the idea of how I would run this deck out of my head just now lol. I actually have most of these cards which is why I was considering making a build this silly, but I do think it could at least put the beat down at a fnm. Hope this helps in any way because yeah deck ideas are cool

@Ozzy4492

Thanks for the ideas hadn't seen Monastery Siege yet, but I think it is a solid idea for the deck. Not sure where to put it yet so it is now in the maybe board til I have time to rebuild.

Negates are a solid suggestion too. 3-5 slots is a lot. I will rebuild soon.

Nice usage of living lore +1

Why the singleton Goblin Rabblemaster? It seems useless to only have 1.

For more GY interaction midgame a suggestion could be to add Rakshasa's Secret; discard with GY filling.

• 1 for a deck that seems pretty cool to play !

Thank you both for the comments!

@Krysis Deck was kinda tight on resources and I wanted a planeswalker style mechanic like Eslpeth to clog the board and give a quick clock on an open board. It was the most color and control friendly option I found. He recurs off Alesha and immediately swings for 4 with 2 bodies on the field.

This is assuming I have no Lores at my disposal (as they have been exiled or whatever) and I have manually casted a Wake. I thought of him as a damage soak card that required a potentially 2for1 effort from my opponent to deal with. He is a fantastic value card but I am a combo-control deck at heart so I am just using him as a fast clock finisher or a mid-rangey board clogger.

Maybe I am overthinking the problem. Do you have an alternate suggestion?

@PartyJ

Thank you J. Please give me your opinion of the comments I left on your deck as well.

Rakshasa's Secret did show up on my search and was considered early on as a virtual card advantage card but was dismissed due to relatively low casting cost and lack of synergy with Lore. Duress made it in due to losses against control matchups in playtesting. A 2.5 card advantage < 1 card targeted hand disruption + information.

In paper form I have recently cut the Taigam's Schemings for Monastery Sieges and have been very please with the results. I am trying to shoehorn in a 3rd with how well they are performing. Once I get the numbers down I will update with the new build.

Thanks for the kind words thehat. Your comment is greatly appreciated! I will dig in deeper tonight when I have the time, but a first glance really made me enthousiastic about your suggestions... Keep an eye on the deck, as you might have feedback on my insights after those comments.

One thing that I experience and you might have suggestions for is how to deal with control/counter EDH deck active in our EDH player group. We don't use anti cards, but so far I haven't really found an answer yet on continuesly controlling/countering...

Kudos

Another thing to consider, crux of fate may be a good sorcery for this deck, seeing as how it's an ok lore target and it's not a 9cmc sorcery like wake, so you could cast it turn 5 if the combo just straight up isn't there yet, could give the push you need to go later

Don't play Negate. Play Stubborn Denial instead. It does two things. It's the best protection for your Living Lore when he's live with a wake/cut/fated/cruise exiled. Also, it's great to catch your opponents off guard. And even better, once they see it, they will wait to cast some of their spells to make sure they can beat it, which in turn buys you time whether you have it in hand or not.

That being said, while I love the Alesha combo and Kolaghan's Command combo, I don't think it's right for the deck. You need to make this an aggressive delve deck to get your big cards in the yard. What other guy loves delve? Tasigur, the Golden Fang ... I think you could run a single Alesha along 4 Lores and 3-4 Tasigurs for your creature suite. The command can be just fine as a one of as well as it can be great in a pinch.

Also, why no Dig Through Time?

@ozzy4492

This is a good idea and one I was considering after people started mentioning rotation. As I will loose Wake eventually The only color friendly boardwipe that is currently available is Crux. It makes a lot of sense as the impending rotation looms, it is much more castable.

@darthfrog

Stubborn Denial seems good to me but I'm not sure it fits well with my meta. If I were to run this in a large tourney I might switch to a mixture of the two. In my meta there are former pro-tour players who won't be psych'd out by a single Denial play. They are aggressive and cautious around my builds, but will still play into my boards as they know they can't count on consistency in my designs. Without perfect information (ala Duress or TS) they will assume that I am holding something game breaking but play into it anyways.

I want to actually counter things aggressively too and not just protect. Negate is my only way of interacting with Enchantments and Command only makes Lore a 3/3 meaning Denial's Formidable condition won't 'always' be active for me.

Also, not sure that you get the premise of the deck. The deck started with Living Lore and was built around it. The focus has always been on Lore and Alesha. Tasigur would interrupt that synergy by randomly returning things I don't want to be in my hand as well as adding too much Delve into a deck that wants to retain cards in the GY. The same can be said for Dig. Cruise was decided on above Dig as it netted more actual card advantage, increasing my handsize and allowing for a forced discard of key pieces at the end of turn in case another hand dump wasn't available. Adding Dig would add too much Delve either forcing me to remove key pieces of the strategy from the yard or cursing myself for not playing a card I could actually cast in it's place.

Lore riding a cruise is actually pretty fun, I'm sure repeating Dig would be fun too and it may end up in the Modern version of this deck. But with limited resources in the Standard version I still feel Cruise is better suited to the task.

This is so cool! +1

Have you considered Dig Through Time? It is another way to make Living Lore huge. Also, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death seems a little pointless in here, maybe add in 3 more Goblin Rabblemasters? Also, Thoughtseize over Duress any day. I love the deck though ;)

Thanx awesomeguy37. I have considered Dig and opted against it as it didn't give enough virtual card advantage to force a discard and I was avoiding too much Delve in the build. It is a solid choice and I am not against them, but I want to be able to dump cards in the GY early on. As opposed to most decks I am not casting the 1st Cruise/Dig from my hand. It is often from the GY off of an errant Lore.

Also you are not the first person to suggest that Alesha is pointless, I'm curious why people think that.

Average good game turn progression is:

• T1 fetch or tapped land, maybe duress
• T2 Land, Tormenting voice and drop a wake/cruise/Lore (if I have Alesha) in GY
• T3 Land, Command/Alesha/Cut/duress
• T4 Land, maybe duress, Swing Alesha & activate grab Lore grabbing wake/cruise
• T5 repeat

Thoughtsize is always good, except when its not. In this build I was worried about life loss as the deck doesn't play defense well and I was less worried about creatures than everything else so duress fit the bill better for me as I cant interact with enchantments or artifacts much. Getting removal and counter out of opponents hand was my only real goal.

thehat Ok, I see where you are coming from. I thought Alesha wasn't brilliant considering you don't run very many small creatures.

Why not Rescue from the Underworld, or Temporal Trespass? Other wise I absolutely love the idea +1 from me