Mmmmmk. I see that reasoning. I think my absolute FAVORITE plan is to run 2x Uncovered Clues , but I've always been a high risk/reward player.

Also, can we plop some lands into the mainboard?

I'm lazy and just want to playtest on here instead of copy-pasting elsewhere.

@Prevailed if our opponent's have any sense, they wont use Clear a Path mainboarded, and if they have one and side it in against us, they'll know at that point what to use it on (a cyclops). If we just the phastasm, it should be to stall further, which I don't necessarily think we need.

Can each person's next comment contain their vote for Riot Piker vs Murmuring Phantasm ? Taking a vote for these kind of things is going to be the easiest way to decide.

+1 Phantasm for me

I'm on the defender train.

+1 Phantasm

+1 Riot Piker

With Hidden Strings he can be effective after turn 4 and lead a double-activation attack without using Weapon Surge

+1 Neither

I'm at work, I'll have a more detailed response after.

Would rather use Beetleform Mage as a grizzly bear in place of either. Even if we don't activate it he's a better more useful creature.

Given the choices, +1 Riot Piker

Remember that this is a slow format, so getting this guy out on turn 2 can actually mean some pretty meaty damage. I can see him getting in for 4 without too much effort. Murmuring Phantasm is straight-up a bad card. We're aggressive, and should stick to those roots.

The key to aggro is putting our opponents in an uncomfortable place early, and then applying constant pressure. Murmuring Phantasm does neither of those things.

We're currently at 38 definite mainboard cards, with 2 open slots. I move that we each vote for the two cards we want to see in those slots, and let the 2 best cards win.

I'm thinking
+1 Riot Piker
+1 Uncovered Clues

I would favor a second Uncovered Clues before I would consider running the Phantasm. It's just so mopey in our deck.

For me, it's pretty cut and dry. I like our sorceries. They're not getting nearly enough credit for what they can do, so here's my reasoning for why we should just stick with the maximum Skyclops route.

1x Give / Take - I actually really like Give. Those counters are an easy way to beef up one of our creatures, plus it triggers our cyclopses. Slapping Give onto a Fluxcharger is terrifying--that's either a 8/3 or a 3/8 flyer. Even if we have no green, we can cast Take solely for an emergency Cyclops trigger. Heck, we can even use it as a slightly worse Opportunity even if we stall out somehow. The only downside is that it requires green, but I'm not too worried about that.

2-3x Uncovered Clues - This is the other one that I really like, and that's because it's such a good turn 5 play. If we drop cyclopses on turns 3 & 4 (which is pretty easy to do), a turn 5 win is easy with Clues. By turn 5, we've drawn 12-13 cards. If we use this to dig 3 more cards, we're about 2/5 of the way through our deck--more importantly, that means we should have an average of two out of out five of our Hidden Strings in our hand. It was very, very consistent for me in testing.Sample Game
Turn 3: Nivix Cyclops Turn 4: Nivix Cyclops Turn 5: Uncovered Clues , dig for 3. Hidden Strings : Untap land. Hidden Strings : Tap 2 Blockers. Swing in for 20 with two 10/4 Cyclopses.

And here's my reasoning for cards that didn't make the cut in my eyes:

Beetleform Mage - A decent choice. Can be either offensive or defensive, and is a large, evasive body. However, it does nothing to contribute to our primary combo Skyclops plan, so I don't think it makes the cut.

Runner's Bane - Another semi-decent choice. However, it doesn't trigger cyclopses, and it's very situational. I see it being a dead card in hand--particularly when we have so many Hidden Strings to handle blockers anyway. Plus, it couldn't handle an opponent's bomb even if it tried to.

Maze Rusher - Two 6CMC creatures is one too many, and he's way too susceptible to chump blocks.

Murmuring Phantasm - We have a ridiculous number of creatures that act as walls. There is no reason why we would ever want to play this turn 2, only to follow it by 2-3 Cyclopses/Fluxcharger s the next few turns.

Riot Piker - Sure, he's part of a combo with Cipher spells. He's also insanely suicidal in this format. Weapon Surge should be plenty good enough for our combo purposes, and Surge is an instant speed combat trick and an enabler. Piker is none of those things, and I'd rather just have another Instant/Sorcery enabler in hand than having to rely on Piker to get though each turn with a Cipher or two. He's cute, but he's not good.

Wind Drake - A flying bear that dies to nearly every other flyer in the format? I'd only use him if we were desperate for evasive creatures. Our deck is full of evasion, so there's no point. Beetleform Mage is very nearly a strictly better version of this anyway, so I'd take the Mage before I took the drake.

What are your guys thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

I disagree with the Wind Drake bit. A 2/2 Flyer for 3 is always relevant, even if it's just to chop an opponent's bomb flyer. It may lose to other flyers in the format, but it also comes out harder and faster than those cards.

The thing about our deck, though, is that we're consistently swinging for over 20 somewhere between turns 5-7.

The Wind Drake do nothing to help our primary strategy, and they aren't aggressive at all. Additionally, until we hit 6 mana, each turn we have to decide between dropping a Drake and one of our other, much better, creatures. After we hit 6 mana, we should have a quality board state of Fluxchargers and Cyclopses, and we should be getting ready to combo off. It's also worth nothing that by turn 6-7, there isn't really a way that any opponent can put us that low after fighting past our wall of quality blockers.

Honestly, in any other draft deck, I'd be all over a 2/2 flyer for 3. However, in this deck, we just have so many better options to play that I genuinely don't think the Drakes are worthy of a slot.

My picks for the slot are
+1 Murmuring phantasm +1 uncovered clues. Let us vote and be done with it

TiredTofu you're suggesting we cut Riot Piker , Murmuring Phantasm , 2x Wind Drake s and just run ONLY the 7x Nivix Cyclops , 2x Fluxcharger and 1x Maze Glider leaving us with 10 creatures in the deck? Just making sure I'm following here.

Gah, guess he's offline. I'm fine cutting the phantasm and piker but I think keeping the drakes makes sense. 10 creatures seems like dangerously few to me. Fill in the gaps with uncovered clues.

Sorry, I forgot to address Give / Take - I like it better than Uncovered Clues so I'd go 2 clues and 1 give/take and the drakes.

It's not dangerously few at all. We only need maybe 2-3, and at least in my tests, I've had what I needed. I'd advise that everyone make a test deck or two and play with it. If you find that Wind Drake s are useful there, then by all means, I'll listen. However, from what I've seen so far in my own testing, they're just too slow and unsynergetic for this deck. Swinging for 2 flying is nothing compared to swinging for 10 or so per Cyclops.

I wouldn't get too hung up on normal draft strategy for this deck. Heck, this is closer to a constructed Storm deck than a draft deck. We don't need a to stick to the draft formula, and we don't need ton of creatures--we need to maximize our deck's potential, and that means playing the best, most synergetic cards.

If we build this deck into a constructed deck that consistently kills people by turn 6-7, we can do that. If we want to play a draft deck where we play cards just because they're good in the average draft deck, then we can do that.

We have all week to test this, but I strongly encourage people to playtest before jumping to conclusions! We've got the full week to finalize stuff, so it's no skin off my nose.

Fair enough, plenty of time to make this decision. Just ran about 10 solitaire games though and quite frequently was discarding activators waiting to draw more than the first Cyclops. Probably just my bad luck, but then again we have 24 nonland cards and realistically only 7 of those we NEED to make the deck work. It's a shame we don't have anything like Beast Hunt in this set...

Really? I found that I could keep pretty much any hand with 3 lands, and I'd draw into something. When nearly 1 out of every 4 cards is either a Cyclops or a Fluxcharger , I had no issues at all.

By the time turn three comes around, you've drawn 9-10 cards, and in there, you should average 2 of those creatures (2.025 & 2.25, technically). I rarely if ever had issues missing my turn 3 and turn 4 creatures, and then the next turn or two was used setting up the win now that I had blockers up. It worked like clockwork--I played 8 games and got screwed only once (got stuck on 2 lands).

I'm with TiredTofu's build actually. It looks hella fun to play, if anything. I agree that drake is really lackluster, although I do like the beetle . . .

Balls to the walls I guess?

We can always have 2 "mainboards" (a transform sideboard instead of situational sideboard) and we'll game depending on speed/endgame of the opposing deck. More creatures vs. aggro and combo out vs. Debt to the Deathless and lategame strats.

I don't think Give / Take is worth a mainboard. We'll be ending way before it can make a different. We have way better activators.

Agreed.

Also agreed. Not worth the green. And casting Take for no value is a waste of mana. I'd rather brick on Uncovered Clues than airball half a fuze card.

I was looking at it as something of a permanent Giant Growth for two more mana. It's not ideal, but it's decent, and it's an activator. But yeah, it's all still up in the air.