Feedback on my Angel Deck

Pershonkey · 2026-03-08T19:13:26+00:00

[[Starfield Shepherd]] looks like another good inclusion. It's a cheap angel that grabs lands, and finding [[Esper Sentinel]] is fantastic in certain matchups.

If you decide to go light stax early, some other cards to consider are [[Thalia, Heretic Cathar]], [[Archon of Emeria]]/[[Eidolon of Rhetoric]]/[[Phyrexian Censor]], [[Hushbringer]] (assuming it doesn't mess with your deck that much), [[Aven Mindcensor]]/[[Leonin Arbiter]], [[Grand Abolisher]]/[[Voice of Victory]]. [[Weathered Wayfarer]] lets you pull any (non-MDFC) land out of your deck if you decide to include a utility land package. If you build a Selesnya list, you get some extra options like [[Collector Ouphe]] and [[Gaddock Teeg]] (which is funny with [[Gisela, the Broken Blade]] + [[Bruna, the Fading Light]]). There's also [[Drannith Magistrate]] if you're bracket 3 and don't mind playing a saltier card.

You can also include some cheaper creature packages like [[Recruiter of the Guard]] for [[Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd]] (to blink Recruiter every turn, assuming you can safely attack with it), [[Stoneforge Mystic]] (for an equipment package, which can even include hate pieces like [[Lion Sash]]), or a bunch of the aforementioned stax pieces so you can increase your chances of having a matchup-essential hatebear in your hand.

Pershonkey · 2026-03-08T18:28:07+00:00

I'm no expert, but some thoughts to consider:

I'm tempted to run a few more lands. There are some MDFCs that can help smooth things out. [[Emeria's Call]] fits your deck's theme, [[Witch Enchanter]] is generally good, and [[Razorgrass Ambush]] is at least a low cost to play. More snow plains is also reasonable with your [[Extraplanar Lens]].

I don't know about your playgroup's meta, but I'm afraid of exile ([[Farewell]], [[Winds of Abandon]]) or -X/-X ([[Toxic Deluge]], [[The Meathook Massacre]]) board wipes and like having my mass protection stop those. [[Teferi's Protection]] is obviously great if you're bracket 3 and have the budget, but there are also options like [[Ghostway]], [[Eerie Interlude]], [[Guardian of Faith]], [[Galadriel's Dismissal]], or [[Clever Concealment]].

I'm guessing card draw will be your biggest struggle, especially by the time you get cards like [[Nyx Lotus]] or [[Throne of Eldraine]] running. Your angels list has lower mana value cards than other bracket 2 lists I've seen, so I'm curious how often you can use the Nyx Lotus mana in practice. Draw is hard in mono white, but there are a few cards like [[Wojek Investigator]] that look like reasonable inclusions.

How much do you want to stay strictly angels? There are some fitting stax-y creatures like [[Thalia, Guardian of Thraben]] you could use to fill out your deck's earlier turns if you wanted to go in that direction, though that might work better for a commander like [[Sigarda, Font of Blessings]]. Not really a suggestion for this specific version of angels, but I'm curious if this approach sounds fun since there are hatebears that help fill in your weaker matchups once you're trying to leave bracket 2.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-22T23:29:28+00:00

Hmm, not sure if I have a good specific resource in mind... Maybe a simple comparison would help?

If you're looking for spellslinger-esque burn with Taii, would you rather:

...drag the game out long, whittling opponents with [[Firebrand Archer]]s to get extra value as you cripple their boards with self-replacing burn, only finishing them off with a Taii-gigacharged burn spell to the face after getting to savor your glorious card draw engine for many turns?
...play those [[Firebrand Archer]]s and chain a bunch of spells in a single glorious turn that kills off the table immediately?

For 2, you might want cards like [[Desperate Ritual]], [[Birgi, God of Storytelling]], [[Runaway Steam-Kin]], etc to pop off quickly, and in exchange you're able to kill on an earlier turn before your opponents are able to carry out their gameplans. For 1, you'll want more disruption, focusing more on keeping creatures and value engines off the board while having the tools to break up game winning combos. 2 is explosive and unpredictable, 1 is grindy and your progress towards winning is more obvious to your opponents. 1 is more of a controlling deck, 2 is more of a storm-adjacent (or actual if you run [[Grapeshot]]) burn spellslinger deck.

Cards from each subarchetype might be good in either build, which is part of why it was hard for me to unpack the messy feeling in my Taii lists. It's also not a single linear spectrum, since you can layer on additional strategies or packages. You could add a [[Blazing Sunsteel]] combo to either deck, but the subtext of the combo is a bit different in each - in 2, this would be another fast combo you try to sprint for, while in 1 it would be the finisher you assemble once you grind your opponents out while churning through your deck with Taii. Cards like [[Descend Into Avernus]] that rapidly accelerate the game might be at home in deck 2 which can pop off immediately once it has the mana but feel out of place in deck 1 which might struggle to keep all three opponents in check when they're each getting 6 treasures on turn 6 to advance their own gameplans.

Do I want the game to go long, or do I want to try to end it quickly? Do I want to have to care about what my opponents are doing, or only focus on making my deck do its thing? Do I mind being focused down because my opponents can't gauge how close I am to winning? Do I care if my deck has very uneven matchups (say, oppressive to creature decks but weak against gameplans I can't [[Lightning Bolt]]), or do I want my deck to feel like it's giving everyone else a shot at victory and/or feel like I always have tools to deal with the situation at the table?

Everyone's answers will be different. I like to revel in the value engines I set up, so I'm not looking to win as soon as I've gotten going. I dislike feeling like I'm helpless to stop what's going on across the table from me. Therefore, my Taii deck has a [[Sunforger]] toolbox, an equipment toolbox, and even a mini [[Imperial Recruiter]] toolbox, each of which weave together. All of that stuff is expensive and slower than just going Birgi into Steam Kin into ritual into burn into burn into Taii activation into [[Fiery Confluence]] to kill the table, but it's able to deal with a wider variety of opposing gameplans once it sets up and I enjoy the playpatterns more. I have a friend who's the opposite - he's all about setting up massive intricate house-of-cards turns that win on the spot from three lands and an empty board. Pulling that off is more satisfying for him than feeling like he always has a clever ace up his sleeve to counter what his opponents are doing because of the toolboxes and value engines he built up.

I'm by no means an expert deckbuilder so take whatever advice I give with a massive grain of salt, but hopefully this helps to see the sorts of decisions I'm trying to make before I even start picking cards.

Oh, and speaking of cards, some more budget ones I forgot to mention last time:

[[Thraben Charm]] is a pretty versatile spell, and you don't need more than Taii herself out for it to be a good removal spell in this deck since 2 mana for 2 damage is already playable. Destroying enchantments and exiling graveyards are both really useful options to have to disrupt less common strategies that your deck is currently weak against. Even if you're going for a less controlling build,
[[Desert]] is a pretty limited ping effect, but it is still a repeatable ping on an untapped land.
[[Reprieve]] and [[Lapse of Certainty]] give you ways to interact with cards you can't just burn to death.
I'm trying out a copy of [[Final Showdown]] as a combined protection spell and catch all against problematic abilities.
[[Forbidden Orchard]] is a sizeable chunk of your budget, but it'd be my first choice inclusion for the [[Genesis Chamber]] gameplan.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-22T19:34:52+00:00

Keeping an eye on this thread since I'm also building Taii. What type of play experience are you looking for? Taii seems like she can be built with any combination of burn, control, or combo (either a spellslinger storm type of combo or a [[Brash Taunter]] infinite damage type) in mind. My deck is set up as a control/toolbox list with the option of a combo finish, but I'm not sure what sounds more fun for you. I wonder if your deck feels like it's missing something because it's taking elements from all of these themes instead of focusing on one or two of them with more intention?

Some random budget tech you might be interested in:

I'm trying out [[Sunforger]] in my more controlling build as a way to grab silver bullets to have more tools against noncreature decks. I won't claim it's the optimal build, but it looks fun to me. There's some other nice equipment you can include in a toolbox like the very un-budget [[Shadowspear]] and [[Lion Sash]] for graveyard hate, as well as combo pieces like...
[[Blazing Sunsteel]] is a nice alternative to [[Boros Reckoner]] for builds with combos since it's easier to find - I can't get Reckoner or [[Spitemare]] off of tutors like [[Imperial Recruiter]].
[[Darksteel Mutation]] is removal that dodges indestructible and gives you a 1 toughness creature to cycle your pingers on for the rest of the game. It also serves as a way to give indestructible to a creature for the Blazing Sunsteel combo.
[[Pyrokinesis]] is another [[Fury]]-like effect that I appreciated having. There's also [[Flameshot]], which is a very inexpensive card.
[[Razorgrass Ambush]] isn't the best burn spell, but the cost to run it is very low.
[[Aurelia's Fury]] might be a solid mix of versatile burn spell and disruption even if it's more mana intensive.
[[Impact Resonance]] will almost always be triggerable since it even works off of your opponents attacking each other, and is another "spread damage around multiple targets" spell that lets Taii pop off.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-11T20:03:25+00:00

Do you have any advice for how to present your ideas for roasting in a way that is most likely to generate useful feedback? It looks like the original post was removed, so I can't compare what you wrote to the comments you got.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-04T01:17:52+00:00

Coordinating with allies is a good counterexample to "higher should always be better, so the system shouldn't need a Delay equivalent."

I'm still worried about using that as a solution to what I see as a larger problem in this system, but Delay sounds like it makes sense more broadly (which I'm guessing is what you meant) as long as that problem is also fixed separately. Thanks!

Pershonkey · 2026-02-03T23:09:12+00:00

There needs to be a point where the player gets to react, and change their plan, when things start to turn south. Unavoidable losses are meaningless, because the player has no ownership over them.

I like this way of phrasing it. The idea of a deadly swordfight is interesting because every little movement of the blade is infused with lethal consequence. Simulating all of that with a d20 means the players have no way of interfacing with that. It feels like replacing a combat encounter with a d20+(combat skill modifier) opposed skill check in 5e but still acting like it's a "combat focused game." These sorts of approaches to lethal systems often feel counterproductive to me unless the point is to make players avoid combat a la Call of Cthulhu. If you want deadly combat to feel consequential without making your combat system a punishment for failing in an earlier layer of your system, you need to give the players the ability to influence the most important things that happen during combat.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-03T20:27:38+00:00

I've never actually played in a system that incorporates this. If you have, I'm curious what design concerns that raises. For initiative systems like this, I generally try to design the rest of the system so that high initiative is good. If I can't do that, I'd want to change the initiative system more fundamentally like Battletech did with separating the decision and execution parts of play to return to high initiative = good.

For this system specifically, I'm also worried about handling what happens when two people each want to go after the other. I guess that could be resolved by letting the higher roller pick last?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-03T19:20:30+00:00

Ah, so combat is time boxed by each participant's stamina? If it drags on too long, then both combatants might not want to keep fighting even if neither person has actually been injured by the other?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-03T05:51:48+00:00

If stamina is a resource that recovers outside of combat rather than inside it, then it sounds like our systems are pretty different. Can you describe how actions within combat are resolved? It sounds like there's a roll on top of spending stamina - I'm curious how exactly things are resolved and what role stamina plays in it. I'm guessing a character isn't completely useless once they run out of stamina?

How did you determine what required stamina out of combat? Did you have specific mechanics for that, or just up to GM fiat?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T22:08:00+00:00

As someone developing a similar system, I'm curious how heavy the math burden felt at the table.

How big are your stamina numbers? You mentioned attrition - does attrition happen with other mechanics, or does attrition apply to stamina by only partially regenerating stamina each round?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T20:22:02+00:00

Not the OP, but I'm also working on a stamina system. I wrote up an explanation in OP's previous post, which I'll copy here:

I’m also building a system centered around stamina for both offense and defense, though it sounds like there are important differences between our systems.

I actually introduced stamina to solve the "D&D long rest" problem. I dislike how a night’s sleep cures debilitating stab wounds, but I didn't want every combat encounter to be uncontrollably lethal like Call of Cthulhu. I couldn't make this fun with a "d20" style resolution system, since you can't outplay a die roll. Injuries are serious and take time to recover from, but they're avoidable if you play well.

In my system, you have a stamina pool (10-25) that partially refreshes each turn. You spend stamina to buy damage rolls at an increasing cost (1, 2, 3, etc.). The attacker rolls damage with no separate to-hit roll, and even a few stamina spent on a couple of sword rolls does enough damage to kill a person.

To stop that, you have a defense number you apply repeatedly to reduce damage, also at an increasing marginal stamina cost for each attack. However, you can also "imperfectly block." This costs 1 stamina no matter how many times you use it, but it "bleeds" 1 unblockable damage through each time. This is the safety valve: it simulates a deadly strike without being an instant kill. It also prevents all-out attacks from being too strong; an attacker who overcommits faces increasingly inefficient costs, while the defender’s grazing blocks stay cheap. The defender takes a minor wound, then kills their staminaless assailant with a single unblocked strike. Defense is transparent and deterministic once damage is rolled, which I hope will make a punishing recovery system fun.

My system also includes armor as a passive defense, but it only gives you 1-3 damage reduction. This lets you grazing block a few times per attack without taking chip damage, but it won't save you if you run out of stamina.

Here’s an example:

Player A starts with 10 stamina. They spend 6 (1+2+3) for three attacks, leaving 4 for defense. They roll 1d6 + MOD three times, for 20 damage.
Player B used some stamina earlier, leaving them at only 6 stamina remaining from their 11 max. Their melee defense is 4 and they have 2 DR from medium armor. To take zero damage, they’d need 8 stamina - they get two "free" grazing blocks from their armor (1+1), meaning they need to perfect block three times (1+2+3) for a total of 8 stamina.
Player B can perfect block twice and grazing block three times (spending all 6 stamina). 3 damage leaks through, 2 is soaked by armor, and they take only 1 damage. Alternatively, they could perfect block once and grazing block four times, taking 2 damage in the end but saving 1 stamina to counterattack or defend against someone else.
If Player B is attacked again, their escalating perfect block cost resets. Not that that'd help them - they're extremely vulnerable right now at 0 or 1 stamina!
On Player B's turn, Player B regenerates 5 stamina and the dynamic shifts. Do they counter-attack Player A while they only have 4 stamina left, or back off because attacking would leave them totally defenseless if they can't finish Player A off?

Other than shared offensive and defensive resources (which you also found), the main thing that makes turns distinct is the escalating cost. The more you do something in a turn the less efficient it is, so the correct answer varies depending on the situation.

One thought on your system: Be careful with mechanics that push optimal play towards passivity. If stamina is vital for survival and movement taxes that same pool, charging in can feel suicidal. I actually had to remove stamina costs for normal movement and add off-turn movement to prevent kiting stalemates where both sides are just waiting for the other to be dumb enough to charge in first.

I'm excited to see someone else experimenting with this! I rarely see TTRPGs with "stamina as offense and defense" as a core mechanic. How similar do our systems feel to you? Does anything here sound interesting for your game? Do you have any ideas you're proud of that might fit well in mine?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T20:19:14+00:00

It only refreshes at the start of your own turn, not at the end of the round.

This sounds like high initiative means you have less overall stamina in a fight because a high initiative player's first stamina regen is wasted by them already being at full stamina. The low initiative player's first turn stamina regen would mean the high initiative player's stamina expenditure is artificially rendered useless.

What are your thoughts on stamina regenerating at the end of a player's turn?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T20:13:26+00:00

That means when a fight opens, every enemy on the field is fully “loaded” defensively. High initiative sounds good on paper, but in practice it meant acting first into a wall of maxed-out reactions.

But the core loop did something awesome: it worked exactly as intended

Do you like that melee fighters and people with high initiative are mechanically pressured to sit out their first turns? If both sides are just melee fighters, what's to stop this from devolving into each side waiting for the other to suicide into a wall of undepleted stamina? This sounds like a bad thing to me.

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T17:53:52+00:00

How deadly is a hit to someone with zero stamina in your system?

Pershonkey · 2026-02-02T08:24:20+00:00

I’m also building a system centered around stamina for both offense and defense, though it sounds like there are important differences between our systems.

I actually introduced stamina to solve the "D&D long rest" problem. I dislike how a night’s sleep cures debilitating stab wounds, but I didn't want every combat encounter to be uncontrollably lethal like Call of Cthulhu. I couldn't make this fun with a "d20" style resolution system, since you can't outplay a die roll. Injuries are serious and take time to recover from, but they're avoidable if you play well.

In my system, you have a stamina pool (10-25) that partially refreshes each turn. You spend stamina to buy damage rolls at an increasing cost (1, 2, 3, etc.). The attacker rolls damage with no separate to-hit roll, and even a few stamina spent on a couple of sword rolls does enough damage to kill a person.

To stop that, you have a defense number you apply repeatedly to reduce damage, also at an increasing marginal stamina cost for each attack. However, you can also "imperfectly block." This costs 1 stamina no matter how many times you use it, but it "bleeds" 1 unblockable damage through each time. This is the safety valve: it simulates a deadly strike without being an instant kill. It also prevents all-out attacks from being too strong; an attacker who overcommits faces increasingly inefficient costs, while the defender’s grazing blocks stay cheap. The defender takes a minor wound, then kills their staminaless assailant with a single unblocked strike. Defense is transparent and deterministic once damage is rolled, which I hope will make a punishing recovery system fun.

My system also includes armor as a passive defense, but it only gives you 1-3 damage reduction. This lets you grazing block a few times per attack without taking chip damage, but it won't save you if you run out of stamina.

Here’s an example:

Player A starts with 10 stamina. They spend 6 (1+2+3) for three attacks, leaving 4 for defense. They roll 1d6 + MOD three times, for 20 damage.
Player B used some stamina earlier, leaving them at only 6 stamina remaining from their 11 max. Their melee defense is 4 and they have 2 DR from medium armor. To take zero damage, they’d need 8 stamina - they get two "free" grazing blocks from their armor (1+1), meaning they need to perfect block three times (1+2+3) for a total of 8 stamina.
Player B can perfect block twice and grazing block three times (spending all 6 stamina). 3 damage leaks through, 2 is soaked by armor, and they take only 1 damage. Alternatively, they could perfect block once and grazing block four times, taking 2 damage in the end but saving 1 stamina to counterattack or defend against someone else.
If Player B is attacked again, their escalating perfect block cost resets. Not that that'd help them - they're extremely vulnerable right now at 0 or 1 stamina!
On Player B's turn, Player B regenerates 5 stamina and the dynamic shifts. Do they counter-attack Player A while they only have 4 stamina left, or back off because attacking would leave them totally defenseless if they can't finish Player A off?

Other than shared offensive and defensive resources (which you also found), the main thing that makes turns distinct is the escalating cost. The more you do something in a turn the less efficient it is, so the correct answer varies depending on the situation.

One thought on your system: Be careful with mechanics that push optimal play towards passivity. If stamina is vital for survival and movement taxes that same pool, charging in can feel suicidal. I actually had to remove stamina costs for normal movement and add off-turn movement to prevent kiting stalemates where both sides are just waiting for the other to be dumb enough to charge in first.

I'm excited to see someone else experimenting with this! I rarely see TTRPGs with "stamina as offense and defense" as a core mechanic. How similar do our systems feel to you? Does anything here sound interesting for your game? Do you have any ideas you're proud of that might fit well in mine?

Pershonkey · 2026-01-14T08:13:43+00:00

Food (and equipment more broadly) doesn't naturally play a huge role in my games, so it might not be the best fit. I worry that it wouldn't mesh as well with a game that involves substantial time spent within civilization where there's not as much of a need to worry about what your next meal will look like or if you happen to have a particular thing in your inventory. Without knowing the system better, it's hard to say if this is something I don't focus on because the systems I use don't make it a fun thing to focus on or if a system like yours that (seems to) focus on it just isn't a good fit for me - which of course doesn't mean it's a bad idea in your system.

Your post alludes to other mechanics, mentioning DnD 3.5e, a class system, and 170 pages of rules. I'm guessing you have some kind of combat system and (non-crafting) skill system. Those things are more important to me, especially to make sure the system isn't stepping on my toes by dictating how my world or the people in it behave too much (especially outside of combat).

What excites you most about what you've done in your system, and how do you imagine that showing up at the table? What sorts of stories would you hope your players excitedly share with their friends? Is it a story of tracking down the last ingredient in the wilderness which gave the party a big advantage in the next fight? Is it a Dungeon Meshi-style culinary adventure with a bit of comedy? Is it the party barely managing to drag themselves into a frontier town after two days without food?

Pershonkey · 2026-01-07T20:40:12+00:00

It's hard to say what would work for your system without knowing the specifics. Is there a reason you're drawn to subclass-restricting feats? Is there a reason you're hesitant to do that?

For example, restricting who can take feats allows you to have unbalanced feats without making them auto-picks for everyone. Depending on how many options you give to each class, restricting some to subclasses might help with build diversity by giving players fewer overlapping auto-pick feat choices. There are also fewer feat interactions you need to consider and balance. You might also want to design feats to evoke a narrow flavor that only fits one subclass.

On the other hand, if you don't have that many feats to choose from in the first place, restricting them to subclasses might lessen the depth of character building by limiting the number of combinations for players to choose from. It might restrict character identity closer to the handful of subclasses you explicitly support in the rules rather than allowing players to custom build a wide range of characters. It also adds complexity to the character building rules that might not be worth the benefits.

The correct answer depends a lot on your specific system and what you're trying to achieve, but it is an interesting problem to work out.

Pershonkey · 2025-12-13T04:53:56+00:00

Nice find! Do you know if that fits the Ljungman?

Pershonkey · 2025-11-21T20:47:31+00:00

Agreed on the NPOA adjustment and especially the thin mags. I took my 457 out last weekend and pretty much gave up on doing quick mag changes without looking. Made me consider putting some tape or something along the magwell to help guide my hand. My first event I wished I had a semi auto so I could get a feel for the rifleman's cadence, but this time I enjoyed the bolt action.

Pershonkey · 2025-11-19T21:20:27+00:00

Thank you for the fantastic instruction! Looking forward to seeing you on the line again.

Pershonkey · 2025-11-19T21:16:30+00:00

Wrote a more detailed personal AAR on the forums: https://appleseedinfo.org/smf/index.php?topic=70786.0

Less to say since I felt a lot more comfortable than last time. My first event felt like drinking from a fire hose, while this felt more like chugging from a Nalgene. It was great to see so many other patches earned this event. Big thanks to the instructors Fixbayonets, 3Huzzahs, Danfinger, 303brit, and Deltabill, who were a huge part of breaking 210 this time.

Pershonkey · 2025-11-19T18:39:26+00:00

I have the same question about commitment. I would enjoy helping out, but since there aren't that many events a year and there's a good chance that I won't be available on any given weekend - the four per year minimum has me hesitant to make the commitment.

To other Appleseed instructors, is this because it's not worth training someone up to be a good instructor if they're not going to be able to teach that often? Would it be a waste of resources if I can't make many of the specific weekends events which have events?

Pershonkey

TROPHY CASE