I've seen your MAGA deck and it is wonderful. I'm very happy to see you go heavy Voltron with Feather as well. Have you considered Stonehewer Giant ?

VaalVanir Yeah I've thought about adding Stonehewer Giant But unfortunately he is a 7 mana and two turn investment for something a lot of other cards in in this deck do as well. Also with that much mana this deck should hopefully be popping off enough to where you'd be able to draw into an either cheaper/faster tutor, or just drawing the card itself. The reason Stonehewer works well enough in my MAGA list versus this one mainly falls down to the levels of card draw each deck is capable of consistently pulling off.

And yeah voltron is always fun :D

Thank you for your quick response and explanation of not choosing Stonehewer Giant . This bring me to my next idea. It seems that your win conditions are Aetherflux Reservoir , pew pew with Firebrand Archer and Guttersnipe , swing wide with tokens (buffed of course), but not Voltron. With that in mind, would you add Balefire Liege ?

VaalVanir Balefire liege also falls under a similar category as Stonehewer in that his mana cost doesn't properly represent his usefulness. Firebrand Archer for instance does 1 damage per spell for 2 mana, and Guttersnipe is 2 damage for 3, which is even better. Taking into account that there are 3 opponents then that is 1.5 and 2 damage per mana respectively. Balefire Liege on the other hand only does 3 damage for 5 mana, which falls off on its own, but it gets worse. His damage only triggers on HALF of your spells, the red ones. And only targets 1 player each time. So all in all his damage is worth .33 per mana, which is at best, 5 times as worse as the others xD

His buffing on the other cards isn't super relevant, but it is nice. Most of the tokens we create tho are FAR more useful for triggering multiple draws off of our cantrips with guys like Mirrorwing Dragon on the field. Out of the several dozen games I played so far, I only won twice by actually attacking with my tokens, and by then their power was irrelevant because they were ludicrously powerful from repeated mentor triggers.

Lastly is his life gain, which is also unfortunately irrelevant. Lifegain in our deck only matters when we have Aetherflux Reservoir on the field, and when that is on the field than more times than not it is already giving us WAY more life than we need in the first place.

All in all this makes him at best, a "win more" card. He most likely has a place in a more casual list, but in a more optimized and cutthroat environment he doesn't quite meet the status quo.

ChibiNature Okay you're blowing my mind right now. How about Pyre Hound ?

And how are you winning the other games? I am so sorry for the multiple posts and questions... if you want we can move to another format of communication.

VaalVanir no worries lol, this format works just fine. I'd say a good 70% of my victories come from Aetherflux Reservoir and Paradox Engine since you will at that point be casting enough cards a turn to start gaining 12-15 life everytime you cast a spell. So in a single round around the table you've gained more than enough life to ping every other player to death. The other 25% of games comes from Guttersnipe or Firebrand Archer since Paradox Engine is such a huge threat on the table it falls to these two dudes to close out games when my main win conditions get nuked.

As for Pyre Hound , he is unfortunately one of the weakest "Heroic" cards for sure. The upside is that the spell doesn't need to target him to get benefit from it, but it is still at the end of the day, only a single +1/+1 counter. First of all, given the previous statement, winning via combat damage only would happen at most, 5% of your games. So that means Hound is only helping you out 1/20 matches (not very good)

And secondly is how his ability compares to others. Let's compare him to Phalanx Leader since it is probably the weakest inclusion of the creatures in my deck. When I'm spawning token creatures on the battlefield I'd say I'd have about an average of 8 creatures before I either win, or get hit by a board wipe, so we'll use that to compare. Hound costs twice as much as Phalanx Leader, and ONLY hits himself. So one +1/+1 counter for 4 mana. Phalanx will hit roughly 8 people with his for half the price, so that makes it 16 +1/+1 counters for 4 mana. While this number will fluctuate up and down depending on the board state, it is fair to say that Pyre Hound is about 16 times worse than our worst creature in the deck, and even when he can be used, he is only relevant 1/20th of the time, since he caters to the least likely win condition in our deck, combat damage.

The only reason Phalanx Leader still has a spot in this deck despite combat damage being an unlikely outcome is because he helps dodge the ever popular Pyroclasm , and to a greater extent Blasphemous Act . And he combos VERY nicely with Dreadhorde Arcanist

Would cards casted by the ability of Dreadhorde Arcanist be going into your hand?

That is correct, you can choose to resolve Feather, the Redeemed 's effect before arcanist so you can get back the cards. This works extremely well when he gets buffed because then you are allowed to target the ever powerful Past in Flames with his ability.

Not Past in Flames lol, I meant Wheel of Fortune xD

What made you decide to use Aetherflux Reservoir as the main win condition? Once again sorry for so many questions, and questions that are not usual of this forum. Please forgive me.

VaalVanir No worries lol, I love sharing knowledge with people. The reason I chose Aetherflux Reservoir is because at high level EDH (cEDH) play there is a generally handful of ways you can consistently win very quickly. Every deck is tailored specifically around their single main win condition and very little else. Black decks tend to choose Doomsday as their win condition, where as blue ones tend to pick something like Laboratory Maniac . And then there are decks that work really well with Paradox Engine , aka decks that cast lots of cheap spells with a lot of card draw in them. Feather, the Redeemed works perfectly with that. And decks that use Paradox Engine blend perfectly with Aetherflux Reservoir

ChibiNature Okay I have fully bought into the idea of using Aetherflux Reservoir as the main win condition.

As I see it the only way you can win faster is to have another source of life gain so that you can pop Aetherflux Reservoir the moment it resolves. Cards like Soul Warden , Soul's Attendant , and Soul's Grace come to mind. Since you're running Soul's Fire we can consider Spirit Link and Spiritualize

And/or add Sentinel Tower to do the damage directly to the player as you play the spells (Or anyone's spells for that matter, this just turned into a huge deterrence for players to cast on your turn | okay i just ordered this card too)

Yes it is on your turn only but it will supplement Firebrand Archer and Guttersnipe helping with your 2nd win condition, this actually can become your main win condition.

Speaking of Firebrand Archer , want to consider Electrostatic Field ? Same cast cost but a 0/4 to dodge the nasty Pyroclasm .

More cards that can gain life: Student of Ojutai , Syndic of Tithes , Tablet of the Guilds , Take Heart , Tandem Tactics sorry for the double post.

I just re-read Take Heart , um... OP? Swing with 4x 1/1 tokens and cast Take Heart on Zada, Hedron Grinder ... You now have 4x 9/9 tokens swinging and you gaining 32 life!!!

So sorry I can't Math. It's gain 1 life for each attacking creature I control... so 4 x 4 = 16... you only gain 16 life. But still... you are swinging with 4x 9/9 tokens...

I really can't Math: it's 4x 3/3's attacking, and gaining 16 life.

VaalVanir First off Electrostatic Field is indeed a great addition is you feel like you've been falling back on to AoE damage as your main win condition. Let's say your play group runs a TON of artifact hate or something, than the damage you get from it is worth the card slot. the only reason I run Firebrand Archer instead is because she deals damage on more than just Instant and Sorcery cards being cast, so the little bit of damage helps.

Sentinel Tower is also a good addition as well, but I haven't gotten around to playtesting it. The main issue with it is that it ONLY works on your turn. But Feather, the Redeemed usually plays her cards on EVERY turn. Which means this card is only really working 1/4th of the time. Its effect is still strong tho, so we shall see.

And here is the reason I do not run any lifegain cards in my deck, I will try to explain as best as possible. Aetherflux Reservoir gives FAR more lifegain than we need. When it gets used, it either dies right away to removal (nothing you can do about that) or you pop off with it and win. I've never had it only go kinda halfway then peeter off, and here is why. The rest of the game I was preparing my boardstate for it, and not gaining life. When Aetherflux Reservoir and Paradox Engine aren't on the field, you'll want to be spending almost all your resources on getting several things; a bunch of mana rocks, 2-3 cantrip cards, and a field full of targetable creatures with either Mirrorwing Dragon or Zada, Hedron Grinder to back them up). If you spent that time gaining life here and there than you would have enough life to MAYBE kill someone right away if you were able to attack with enough guys. But if we are ready for Aetherflux Reservoir when it hits the field in a normal game, we can win that turn easily by cycling through our hand. It will get to the point easily where you are gaining 9-10 health a single spell without the need to attack.

Which also leads me to the second reason we do not run those cards, and it is their restrictions. I'll talk about each one individually. Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant are both ONLY good if you already have a token engine on the field, and at most they will then be gaining you only a little bit of life before we need to do other things with the board (maybe about 7-8 if we're lucky). Soul's Grace will really ONLY ever hit for 1 about 80% of the time, a 2 mana spell that only gains us one life is nowhere near good enough for us. Which means it is only SOMEWHAT decent with you have Zada, Hedron Grinder or Mirrorwing Dragon on the field, and cards that are completely useless without another in a 99 card deck are almost always a bad decision. Spirit Link , Spiritualize , and Take Heart all REQUIRE you to attack with something in order to be effective, and if you recall from earlier, attacking is almost always the way we dont play our deck. We will get maybe 1 solid attack with up to a dozen or so creatures before we either combo off with Aetherflux Reservoir or we eat a boardwipe and need to rebuild. Also Spiritualize is just WAY to heavily costed for a card that will be gaining us 1 life 80% of the time, it draws a card sure, but so do a TON of 1 mana spells in the deck. Student of Ojutai also falls under the WAY to heavily costed category, in fact, he is as expensive as our main win condition, so let us compare the two. Let's say we cast about 8-12 spells a turn when we get the ball rolling, I'll average it to 10 for simplicities sake. With Student of Ojutai on the field that means we will be gaining 20 life, not bad. But with Aetherflux Reservoir on the field that means we will be gaining 55 life, MUCH better. NOW let's say we DONT cast Student of Ojutai and instead use that mana for up to 4 more spells, since he costs 4 and we run a ton of 1 cost cards. Add that on to our already 10 cards cast and that's and extra 50 life! So investing in casting more small spells and cantrips instead of investing in Student of Ojutai is a lot better for our lifegain. Syndic of Tithes is just WAY too taxing on us. Almost all of what we do is 1-2 mana so his extort makes our spell twice as expensive, aka we will be doing half as much for only minimal returns. And you can ONLY use white mana for it, not colorless or red, and we are already stretched pretty thin for colored mana in our deck since many mana rocks tap for colorless. Tablet of the Guilds this one is probably the most "ok" of the lifegain cards so far, unfortunately tho the artifacts in our deck are all good because we can tutor for them a lot. And there is little to no circumstances where I will be tutoring for Tablet of the Guilds instead of something like Paradox Engine or Sunforger , but as a budget option Tablet of the Guilds isnt totally horrible, just not good enough to make the cut. And lastly we have Tandem Tactics for 2 mana it does very little, most of our cards do something, and raw us a card, this card does something and gains us a bit of life. That little bit of life is almost never worth the loss in card draw. Since card draw is afterall, one of Boros main weaknesses.

You also need to consider what you would have to give up for the lifegain cards. You could choose to cut into the Sunforger tools, but then you have no protection, or way to interact with the enemies board state. If you choose to cut into the tutoring creatures/cards then we no longer have any consistency in our deck, and our win percentage drops drastically. And if you cut into our card draw then we are back to square one in Boros EDH where we no longer have enough cards to win the game or combo off. In the end tho it all comes down to how unnecessary it is. Aetherflux Reservoir is more than enough for us, and cards that are being used to to its job but worse, would be better spent helping it do its job safely. "There aint no kill like overkill" is a very false statement in MTG, overkill is expensive and unsafe.

Hope that explained it well enough :)

ChibiNature 1 wave of update question: What's going to happen to your Dreadhorde Arcanist ? With the removal of Phalanx Leader the Dreadhorde Arcanist loses +1/+1 counters to pull higher CMC spells from the graveyard.

VaalVanir Dreadhorde Arcanist can still get buffs from Sunforger , since it doesn't matter who equipts the hammer. And can also get buffed from Defiant Strike . Both of these cards (especially Sunforger ) show up on our field very regularly. So he can get buffed almost anytime he wants.

Also another reason I removed Phalanx Leader which I forgot to mention is the Eerie Interlude is one of our most common tools for protection our board, and every time we use it it resets all the +1/+1 counters that Phalanx Leader gives.

ChibiNature I've been play testing your deck, with some substitutes in Mana Rocks (I can't afford Mox Diamond , Mana Crypt , and Grim Monolith ). It's an awesome deck! But I've run into problems where opponents are removing Sunforger and I end up having to rely on 'Draw a Card'. Do you have a similar problem? What is your solution?

VaalVanir My best defense for protecting my Sunforger is by keeping my Sun Titan safe, the main reason he is in this deck is because he can hit Sunforger every turn. But you cant always expect to have him on the field. Also remember that we have a LOT of equipment tutoring available, so if you want you can hold them in your hand after Sunforger hits the field in order to search for it again when it dies. Because when Sunforger dies you can shuffle it back into the deck with Mistveil Plains (this card is a PLAINS card, which means it can be fetched, it's very helpful) Also Sunforger can protect itself as a last resort by fetching out Teferi's Protection

Some other options you can include into the deck are Second Sunrise or Faith's Reward . And some even stronger options would be Hanna's Custody or Indomitable Archangel . the only problem with the last two is that they give shroud, which means we can no longer target Sunforger with Magnetic Theft

All in all tho I'd say I've been doing just fine with people destroying Sunforger by saving all my equiptment fetch cards, and combining them with the fetchable Mistveil Plains

ChibiNature Thank you for you fast response.

I've also been running a small 'flicker' toolkit in this deck with the following cards: Cloudshift , Justiciar's Portal , Momentary Blink , Stonehorn Dignitary , Zealous Conscripts .

I don't really like Stonehorn Dignitary all that much, but I haven't thought of a replacement yet.

Zealous Conscripts is great in that it steals ANY permanent (Planeswalker, Enchantment, ... and especially opponent's special lands). I pair this with High Market that I fetch with Weathered Wayfarer . Miren, the Moaning Well might work but it takes 3 colorless to activate it... too expensive.

Turns out I like the instant resolve of flicker effects better than the ones that come back at End phase such as Otherworldly Journey .

VaalVanir I would still suggest running Otherworldly Journey if you are going a more flicker approach. Since it doubles as protection. If you flicker something in response to a boardwipe, it will still die. Also running Momentary Blink is an illegal card, since it has blue in its flashback cost.

My testing with the flicker cards has been met with varying success, but I have been enjoying the interactions with flickering and Dualcaster Mage . Still not sure if flickering will make it into the final build tho.

If you are having trouble coming up with a replacement card then I always suggest more stax cards. Things like Aven Mindcensor or Suppression Field can do wonders for you.

ChibiNature What and how have your interactions between flickering and Dualcaster Mage been? (Keep in mind I started playing Magic around 3 weeks ago after a 12 year hiatus).

I will switch out Momentary Blink with Otherworldly Journey even though I thought it can double as a dodge for board wipe.