TheGodofUndead Beast Whisperer is almost always going to be worse than Vizier, due to the fact that it can't start the combo chain on it's own, and you need to spend more mana and another card to actually start comboing. The only time it's better is when there is a grafdigger's cage on the board, but that is too much of a niche case for it to be worth it. Heart Warden is a fine card to be playing anyway, so it's almost always going to be worth it to play Vizier over Whisperer.

@AverageDragon:

As an oddball question, what would the price threshold have to be on a deck like this, where Spellseeker becomes viable enough to run inatead of Merchant Scroll, or (at the least) side by aide with Merchant Scroll?

$500? $220?

Also, what would you swap out for Spellseeker? I cant really see a 1 for 1 swap for Merchant Scroll, as the deck needs its hacks in order to go off.

T.I.A. +1 on the deck.

simondiamond2012 spellseeker is never really worth the slot unfortunately. Merchant scroll is pretty much always better than it, and if you need another hack to replace say, Glimpse of Nature because of budget reasons, Crystal Spray is going to be the better option. At lower budgets you really want to be leaning more heavily on Vizier of the Menagerie and big ramp rather than finding more budget hack alternatives.

sickrobot, thanks for the explanation. My only contention with Crystal Spray is that it gives you one card as opposed to Glimpse of Nature (which is a house in the deck).

Speaking of Crystal Spray, since you're already spending 2U for Crystal Spray, would it be better worth running Beast Whisperer instead of Crystal Spray since the card draw is helpful for the deck?

simondiamond2012

The only real reason that Glimpse of Nature is good in the deck is because it combos. However, the reason Glimpse is omitted in favor of Crystal Spray at lower budgets is not JUST because Glimpse carries a decent price tag. There's a problem (we dubbed the Glimpse Problem) where Glimpse will deck us out, and we can't make enough mana/mill enough to kill people before we mill out. We could add other cards to the mix to fix this problem, but it'd just be adding more cards, which defeats the purpose of having very few suboptimal slots. Thus, Crystal spray stands in as the replacement.

Beast Whisperer has been talked about in the Hackball community, but we've decided against it. It's more expensive than Crystal Spray, which is a pretty big downside, and it also doesn't start a Tutor Chain in the way that Vizier of the Menagerie does. I wouldn't recommend running it in place of Crystal Spray in budget.

Thanks again AverageDragon for the explanation. I figured that the required forced draw could be a problem, even though I personally never ran into that issue in playing the deck so far. That being said, that doesn't mean it's still not a reasonable concern.

You can only shuffle your graveyard back into your deck so many times before you lose your reshuffle pieces with Winds of Rebuke, which meams you'd need at least two flex spots to make sure your deck doesn't mill your reshuffle pieces into your yard (Gaea's Blessing and Elixir come to mind).

simondiamond2012

You shouldn't be running into the Winds issue? Our primary and secondary recursion pieces (Nantuko Tracer / Riftsweeper + Scavenging Ooze ) are either in hand or on the battlefield, so they'll never be milled.

In addition, the Glimpse of Nature problem is unavoidable through conventional means. The infinite mana loop detailed in the primer WILL result in decking out, and you will have about 100ish mana to work with once you deck out. This means you can't truly go infinite and win the game.

I'd encourage giving the primer a good parse-through to see the planned lines.

simondiamond2012

In addition, the Glimpse Problem is detailed earlier in the comments in my response to Wurmlover.

I have seen the above comments with Wurmlover, but will review them again AverageDragon.

The GSZ/Crop Rotation line seems akin to Memory's Journey loops in 4C Breakfast Hulk budget lists in that you're looping a couple select cards over and over from a near empty library. Namely, Cradle and a forest via Nantuko Tracer.

Were those the comments you were referring to, or something else?

+1 Love the deck have you thought about Orochi Leafcaller to fix the blue mana problem. You can convert any amount of your G to U at will.

MadScientist

We already have Birchlore Rangers to fix us into blue mana. It has the massive added bonus of being a backup Heritage Druid for purposes of building mana during the combo. Otherwise, there's also Vizier of the Menagerie as a backup option for casting Phantasmal Image, and a relatively complicated loop involving Chrome Mox, Riftsweeper, and Nature's Claim.

Great Primer! :) I'm already playing budget-ish FCT, but this makes me wanna swap commanders haha :D

Purely out of curiosity, is there a reason not to run Hinterland Harbor? I'm in the process of putting together a budget version and I noticed that it wasn't included in any of the lists, so I wanted to check.

[Sachiela]

You can run it if you want. The reason that we usually avoid it is because it can't produce both colors of mana on turn 1, which is pretty unfortunate. It also really wants fetchlands in the deck, but you'd only really play it in a budget deck which doesn't have fetchlands. You'd probably be okay running it, if need be.

Sachiela whoops misquoted you in the last one

AverageDragon Awesome. Thanks a bunch. Yeah, I don't have any of the Fetchlands just yet, and it's mostly a placeholder.

Hello AverageDragon,

Sometimes I play your cEDH Momir Vig Hackball's list with my playgroup and I find it pretty cool, thanks! I'm still wondering how would you play Momir if Prophet of Kruphix was unbanned ? (which is in my current meta). I mean, would you play it and if so, which direction would you take ? thanks for your expertise !

If I'm not mistaken, there is a way to use Glimpse without Gaea's Cradle that uses only core cards available even to the budget builds. Apologies if somebody already posted a solution. I'll outline my thoughts. Let me know if I'm missing something here.

Given that you are generating mana and drawing through your deck, let's assume you reach the point where your library is empty. Let's further assume that because you've seen your library that you have played out the subset of permanents necessary to combo (all with summoning sickness), and you have destroyed or bounced any taxing effects. You have at least Green Sun's Zenith in hand, floating, and once-per-turn resources that could be activated have already been used.

In play:

• Momir , tapped
• Nettle Sentinel , tapped
• Phantasmal Image , copying Nettle Sentinel, tapped
• Heritage Druid , tapped
• Birchlore Rangers , tapped
• Wirewood Symbiote , already activated for the turn
• Temur Sabertooth
• any 1-mana Elf ,tapped

(starting with mana floating)

1. Pay and Temur-bounce Wirewood Symbiote. ( mana floating)
2. Put GSZ in the library for net zero mana. ()
   • Pay
   • Play GSZ for X=0.
   • Two Nettle Sentinels untap; Birchlore-tap them to add .
   • Fail to find. Shuffle GSZ in.
3. Play Wirewood Symbiote for net zero mana (regain via Sentinels/Birchlore). ()
   • Draw GSZ
4. Put GSZ in the library for net zero mana (see step 2). ()
5. Symbiote-bounce mana elf , targeting and untapping Heritage Druid. ()
6. Play mana elf for . (0 mana)
   • Two Nettle Sentinels untap
   • Draw GSZ
   • Resolve mana elf.
7. Heritage-tap mana elf and Sentinels for . ()
8. Repeat steps 1-7, except at step 5, untap Birchlore Rangers. ()
9. Birchlore-tap Heritage Druid and Birchlore Rangers for (or ). ()
10. Repeat all steps, gaining one mana for each full cycle.

In this way you can generate arbitrarily large amounts of and . Now you execute the rest of the plan, making sure to play/reshuffle GSZ only after you play Winds of Rebuke and before you replay Nantuko Tracer .

Drathro

You solved it! I have never thought of using GSZ to untap the Nettle/Phantasmal Image!

@AverageDragon Might be best that you revisit the primer abith since some of the text isn't correct anymore... I also see Elvish Visionary appear in your comments to where as in the primer you clearly state that Heart Warden is just plain better. Also in Exclusion you state why not to use Grim Monolith (and I find it a superb reason), the card has somehow made it into the decklist... Small error or ?

Other then that all I can say is I build myself a copy wich a few minor changes (preordain replaced with opt) and rapid hybrization instead of pongify but rest is near identical.

bntjah

Hey just addressing concerns here:

Elvish Visionary was in the decklist when that comment was made

Grim Monolith was slotted in a while ago as a push toward an idea that we should focus more on generating big mana to either be able to cast Momir and win in the same turn, or recast Momir more easily. We do have plans to eventually make additional updates to the list and primer in the same vein, but haven't gotten around to it yet, thanks for the reminder!

So came up with this "package" due to not having Winds of Rebuke of all things.

Leveler Symbiotic Deployment Brain Freeze GSZ

A Joraga Treespeaker max level. Nettle/Image

Cast leveler, exiling library.

Tap Nettle/Image duo for 4. Cast GSZ for 0. Suffle in. Untap duo. 3 mana. Tap Nettle/Image duo to draw GSZ. 2 mana.

Repeat loop, netting 2 mana per loop. Cast brainstorm to mill out opponents.

Moraff

You know, you already can draw your deck and generate infinite storm and recursion without Leveler and Symbiotic Deployment. Any spell which, if looped, kills opponents would work. In fact, you can make infinite bird tokens with Swan Song and pass turn with a full grip of counterspells in order to win, without adding anything to the list.

What are your thoughts about Walking Ballista in this deck. Acts as an additional wincon with infinite mana and can be tutored for. Also it can be used as a pseudo kill spell if games start to go longer or if you need to kill something early on. BTW, nice deck.

hellhole3927

We already have two infinite mana outlets in the deck (looping either Winds of Rebuke or Swan Song ), so there's no real reason to run a dedicated infinite mana outlet.