Ooh wait, how about Wasteland Strangler? Gets hit by Coco, there are a LOT of things that you exile, it can even hit Flickerwisp for permanent removal, and it provides a solid body.

Tried it, didn't like it. Remember your mention about not being able to finish off players? Well, the moment I stick that in, that becomes a SERIOUS issue.

How so? It provides a two-for-one removal and beater, and you could use both of those things, especially at instant speed. If anything, I would probably take two dorks out for it, or a hunter and a dork.

Where did you get those alters? (Especially Birds of Paradise :P)

A 3/2 beater without evasion doesn't do anything to be honest. It never put pressure on my opponent because it couldn't get through anything without dying. Additionally, it is quite hard to get the exile off of him because I HAVE to play him at instant speed to get the value needed, and he requires something else that exiles which is never a guarantee. Having him just sit in my hand for a good 3-4 turns is incredibly irritating, and even when I get stuff from CoCo, if I don't have a Vial online he still doesn't do anything.

Check the sources ulamoguy.

You currently have 12 cards that exile something. I find it hard to believe that your opponent won't have something in exile at one point or another. And he never sits in your hand. If you really feel like you need to get the exile trigger off him and keep him in your hand the entire game instead of casting it, you're probably not making the best choice. It's like waiting for an elevator in a building instead of taking the stairs (if you get that analogy. If you don't, just ignore it). You don't have to play him at instant speed either. Vial in Hunter/Flickerwisp, then cast this guy during your main phase. Or just Path then cast this. Or even just cast both in the same main phase, you have enough dorks.

Also, at the absolute worst, he'll be a chump that more often then not will also take out the attacker. And I have to ask: if you never put pressure on your opponent, how in the world do you win? Cause you're certainly not going to be the last one standing if you play reactively control-style...

I played this guy when I had 16 sources of exiling and he still wasn't any good. Sorry, but the playtests showed him to be vastly underwhelming for the reasons that I stated.

And playing him as a 3/2 for 3 without evasion is probably the worst choice you can make. It will just sit on the board not doing anything. The only card I'll happily play without utilizing its ability to effectiveness is Flickerwisp.

Additionally, you do not want to be using Wasteland Strangler on something you permanently exiled because guess what, now they can bring that back with Kolaghan's Command (I should also mention that Vial is now pretty useless against a deck with K-mand, even further making Wasteland Strangler a bad card). I found the same issue with instants and Snappy when I ran Tidehollow Sculler. Sure, aggro decks don't have Kolaghan's Command, but the requirement to get both Wasteland Strangler and something exiled is too strict and I would rather be playing things that are more guaranteed to halt down the aggro player more.

You did however suggest to remove some dorks, something I didn't do during my playtests (I removed Auriok and Voice for Tidehollow and Wasteland) so I will do more playtests with that alteration instead and see how they go.

Test ran the deck on untap.in this weekend for fun,

2-0 grixis control (easy win)

2-0 Bant midrange (he dropped geist of saint taft and AEther vial pretty early but i won due to stretching out the game, bagged it by the time i hit my second CoCo

1-2 G/R Tron Only won because of Gaddock Teeg game 2, both times Karn and Ugin locked me down once they hit the board.

2-1 Izzet Dragons it was a strange build involving a lot of tempo and keeping card advantage with Remand and such, but vialing in Auriok Champion game 2 and 3 secured the win pretty easily after i dropped it

Honestly I really liked the build since i've been playing around with vial and CoCo decks for a while +1 from me.

Thanks for the test info, Sinist3r, and yeah, GR tron really does rely entirely on you getting that Gaddock Teeg down as soon as possible. Hence why it is at three.

+1 Godless Shrine
-1 Plains

I know you have Birds of Paradise, but I would still add a second fetchable black mana source for redundancy in case your first gets destroyed.

I also have AEther Vial and Collected Company, and if merfolk uses Spreading Seas my all time favourite thing to do is flicker my own land with Flickerwisp to remove it.

I have bad luck with Blood Moon when it comes to this deck.

This will sound weird, but of all your alters, the Forest is my absolute favorite. This seems like an interesting build. I have one suggestion, and it involves a question as well. Haha. If you replace two of the Fiend Hunter, or even just one with Mangara of Corondor, could you not tap him down, put that ability on the stack, the Collected Company in Flickerwisp targeting Mangara? Manager would be bounced by the wasp then the other ability would trigger, exiling their creature permanently, but not Mangara given the fact he is no longer a legal target? This seems like a good synergy in this deck...the only issue is that while he can be fetched with Collected Company his ability does not trigger immediately. So perhaps a 1-of as additional hard removal instead of multiples. I am horrible at explaining my thoughts, so if anything here did not make sense, please ask, I will attempt to clarify my statement/question for you. Haha.

Love the altered art cards in the deck. Great deck!

Instead of all these more expensive "enter the battlefield: gain 1 life" cards, can't you just use the soul sisters? They're much cheaper (cmc and actual $)

No, because they can get removed Nightdragon779, which makes them effectively useless against any Grixis, Jund or Twin deck.

Mangara of Corondor used to be a good card, Scytec back during when Junk was top deck. I used to run it in a Bant Blink control build. But now that Jund is back it is no longer of any good value because it is too easy to rmove.

This is a test comment: Urza's Factory.

Ah, that makes sense. I was wondering why the price point was low given the ability. I was looking around d I no a basic search to find suggestions, but all the cards I found were strictly worse than what you already had, or you already had them. Haha. This is normally a pretty good indicator in my opinion. My only question is about the testing itself, you said you play tested over 200 times, what platform did you use to conduct your testing?

Oh, those "200 playtests" are me doing playtests against another deck here on T/O. I don't playtest against other people anymore as it isn't economical in terms of time nor will I be able to get people playing the decks I need to playtest and nor will they be able to create a good enough atmosphere to keep going. But time is the biggest factor, as within a couple of days I want maybe 20 games against each main archetype in the format I'm playing on. That cannot be done when I'm playing against another person.

I maybe play an actual game of magic once every 2 or 3 months nowadays. It just isn't that much fun playing against someone than it is making decks and analyzing them myself through playtests I do on my own. I used to play quite a lot but I've just gotten out of it.

Thoughts on Saffi Eriksdotter?

And Saffi Eriksdotter is in!

I definitely like Saffi here. Does a similar thing, but makes your mana even better.

*to Athreos

All the altered art is amazing.

I didn't even try to find connections in the cards. I was just mesmerized by their beauty