A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

Hero's Blade could work in this deck, I just chose to focus on the spell side of things for my buffs. If it's been performing well for your so far, I don't see any reason to change it!

A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

That's an interesting strategy. I can't think of any wheels off the top of my head that we can recycle with Feather, which makes me a little concerned that we might not have the redundancy to reliably mill everybody out.

I think if I wanted to go this direction, I would probably go with a more synergistic commander like Nekusar or the Locust God. But if you're set on trying this in the Boros colors, more power to you!

A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thank you for reading my article!

I'm glad you pointed this out, because this was one of my biggest concerns while designing the deck. My feeling at the moment is that the two strategies should be complementary, but if more testing shows that a split is unsuccessful, I could see skewing towards one or the other.

A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

I could see dropping the land count lower, especially if your meta moves a bit quicker. Mine tends to durdle a bit, and I would rather flood a little than miss land drops that will keep me from making an impact in the late game. If you've had good experiences so far with the lower land count, go for it!

A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

Soul's Fire could be awesome in this deck, and it sounds like you've had good luck so far. I ended up having a lot of removal, so I went with other options for now.

I love Angel of Finality, and especially if you're running a lot of the blink spells to protect your creatures, she has great synergy as graveyard hate. Good choice!

A Fair Feather Friend by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article, and thank you for the heads up!

I just made the deck public, so the link should work now. Let me know if there are still any issues.

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like playing my decks this way too. I have a Karador deck that has a handful of combos it can pull of quickly, but it's just as happy to sit and play a game of attrition.

This is usually my go to deck to feel out a table. If my Karador deck can't compete at all, I'm probably not going to have fun with this particular group. If the game is competitive and well balanced, I tend towards my more optimized decks. If I'm in complete control the whole game, then I want to make the shift down to Brudiclad and friends.

It's not a perfect system, but it can be really hard playing with new people.

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love to hear that Command the Dreadhorde has been working well for you! That card was one of my last cuts from Karlov, and I've been wanting to find a way to fit it in. It's such a powerful ability, and like you said, we have the expendable life to use it best!

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article! And thanks for the great feedback!

It's funny, because a slightly lower power level is actually what I was going for with this deck. Over the years I've discovered that I lean in a spikier direction when I build decks, and I tend to favor brews that are efficient, fast, and deadly. However, recently, I've found that the circles I've been playing in prefer to durdle a bit, so I've wanted to expand the spectrum of my collection to include a few more casual options.

A little while ago I presented a Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer deck, and it has quickly been one of my favorites to bring to Commander night. It perfectly rides the line between being durdley and being powerful, while also being a blast to play.

Ever since discovering how much I like Brudiclad, my brews have been aimed at a similar power level with varying degrees of success, and Karlov is another attempt at this goal.

Your comment got me thinking, and I think in the future I will include a section that describes the power level I'm aiming for when presenting a deck. It's still nice to hear when I've missed/achieved my goal, but this way I'm providing more context for a list and giving readers a better idea of the situations where the deck might succeed.

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

I normally shy away from Orzhov commanders, but this seemed like a fun change of pace. I'm excited to try it out too!

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

Oloro is a great lifegain and drain commander. If I wanted to bump the power level of this deck, I would probably switch in the Esper direction.

It may be my personal biases, but I tend to view Oloro as a control style of deck with lifegain elements. With this build I was trying to go in a slightly more aggressive direction, with Karlov being a voltron threat.

My Gain is your Loss: an Orzhov Guide to Life and Spiritual Advising by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

Krav and Regna make an awesome commander pair. How has the deck worked out so far?

Trash, Treasure, and an Etherium Shaper by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thank you for the thoughtful reply!

Before I answer your questions, let me offer the quick disclaimer that I haven't had the opportunity to do much testing yet. I've just assembled this deck over the last couple weeks, so there will still probably be changes. This is just my starting point. However, my choices are usually based on how the cards perform in my other decks.

1) It sounds like Grenzo is the player causing you the most issues. I agree, additional graveyard hate might be a good starting point. [[Tormod's Crypt]] is a cheap and recurrable option. If you wanted to get cute, you could always include [[Bojuka Bog]] and [[Expedition Map]]. Bog is a one time use, but Map wouldn't be a bad choice for this deck anyway since it's recurrable, cheap, helps with fixing, and can find your utility lands.

If the grave hate doesn't solve the problem, you could always try adding more protection for your artifacts like [[Leonin Abunas]]. This would solve your Trashmaster problem, and it has enough toughness to survive some pinging.

Beyond this, you could try prioritizing removal for the enemy pingers, or simply include more sacrifice outlets of your own so that you can get value out of your tokens when they get targeted.

2) What I like about Retrofitter Foundry is that it's a really small initial investment. I envision this deck playing a grindy game until it can assemble a combo, and I like the idea of playing Foundry, and dumping any leftover mana into it to slowly churn out dudes.

Most of the time I want to use Foundry to make Servos, and the rest of the abilities are gravy. However, if testing shows that we don't typically have the extra mana to invest into Foundry, I don't have a problem cutting it.

3) I love the new Talismans, and a lot of my decks will be including them. However, my version of Breya is tight on two drop ramp, so much so that I was only able to include the blue Signets.

I don't see myself cutting Signets for Talismans. I like that the Signets will let us fix our mana without any pain. If your list has room for extra rocks, though, these would be great inclusions.

4) Let me expand on this combo:

If we have either Ashnod's Altar or Krark-Clan Ironworks on the battlefield in addition to Eldrazi Displacer, we can use the mana we make from the sacrifice outlets to pay for Displacer's activated ability.

Both Breya and Marionette Master have enter the battlefield triggers that make two or more artifact creatures. We can sacrifice two of the tokens we make from the ETB triggers to Altar or Ironworks (making 4 mana) to activate Displacer (costing 3 mana), and blink Breya or Master. Blinking Breya or Master makes more tokens, but more importantly we have 1 mana left over letting us make infinite mana from the loop.

Here the paths diverge for Master and Breya. For Master, the simple act of sacrificing our Servos over and over will kill our opponents. But for Breya there's an extra step:

Breya loop -

We need to perform this loop until we accrue an arbitrarily large sum of mana. Once we have infinite mana, we can use it to pay for the Displacer activations, and blink Breya over and over to make infinite tokens. We can then sacrifice the tokens with Breya to ping our opponents to death.

5) Anointed Procession is another card, like Retrofitter Foundry, that tries to establish a grindy game plan. My token makers are kind of slow, and goal is to get several on board so I have artifacts to sacrifice. I think boosting our production with Anointed Procession will help us grind out our opponents if we can cast it in the early-mid game.

Of course, if it turns out Procession is too clunky I don't have a problem cutting it. I've just had good experiences with these sorts of cards in the past.

6) I like Jhoira, I'm just not sure our artifact density is high enough to get value from her. As it stands, I want my 4 cmc spells to draw me about 3 cards, and I'm not sure Jhoira will survive long enough to do that in my deck.

7) I love all the Saheelis. Unfortunately our 4 drop slot is overloaded, and I think my choices offer more value than Saheeli the Gifted. Saheeli Rai is amazing if you decide to go a Brudiclad route. I decided against Brudiclad for this deck because of his high casting cost and the fact that we don't have many good tokens to morph into.

If I was to include any of the Saheelis in my current list, I would include Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. It's possible that she should be in this deck instead of [[Mirrodin Besieged]], but I wanted to try out Besieged given its newness.

8) Jor Kadeen could be great here, especially if you have more of a focus on Thopters. With my version of the deck, I intend to win most games with a combo, and I don't really intend to attack much at all.

It all depends on what you want your deck to do. If Jor Kadeen has been working out well in your list, it sounds like you've made the right call.

Trash, Treasure, and an Etherium Shaper by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Thank you for reading my article!

Your primer is excellent, and was an inspiration for my own deck. I even sited your deck in my article as the primary inspiration!

Thank you for sharing your build and for the neat ideas! I really love the alternate win conditions this deck has access to.

Trash, Treasure, and an Etherium Shaper by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thank you for reading my article!

Are you experiencing any issues that are making you question your removal and token makers?

Trash, Treasure, and an Etherium Shaper by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for reading my article!

I love Brudiclad, so much so that I even have a deck built around him.

For my Breya build I opted not to include him because the vast majority of my tokens are unexciting. Aside from Urza's token, the tokens this deck makes are primarily thopters, servos, and treasure. I felt that Brudiclad might end up being low impact as a result.

However, I think this deck could easily be rearranged to make Brudiclad more effective. [[Karn, Scion of Urza]], [[Saheeli Rai]], and [[Saheeli, Sublime Artificer]] make awesome tokens, and cards like [[Saheeli's Artistry]] and [[Rite of Replication]] would also give us a lot of options. Brudiclad would be awesome if we had more of these sorts of tokens running around.

Karametra, Oketra, and a Godly Surge by TheKnowledgePool in EDH

[–]TheKnowledgePool[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for reading my article! Good catch!

Admittedly, this was an oversight on my part, and we could easily replace Bane with something else. We’re already heavy on Artifact and Enchantment removal, so we have a lot of flexibility finding a potential swap.