MTG Salvation

This is a Razia List that I put together with spare cards that I have. I'm planning on improving this slowly and am going to trade/buy cards to do so. Currently, the biggest problem that I have is running out of gas, so I really want to find more ways of generating card advantage.

So I played with this list for a while and discovered that my plays did not have too much synergy. Often times, I found that many of the creatures, while great in a deck designed to abuse their characteristics, didn't contribute to the success of the deck. Also, the lack of card advantage was simply too great, especially against decks that can abusively recur cards from their graveyard. My card quality wasn't nearly high enough to overcome that barrier. Also, my creatures, other than Akroma and Pristine Angel were too easily killed, and have you ever tried to pay 14 for Razia, it's pretty difficult to do so.


For this current list, I decided to remove some of the more clunky creatures in favor of more acceleration to boost the changes of powering out an Akroma of Razia earlier. Even 40 life disappears quickly when you have hasty vigilant 6 power angels beating down. So this list now has much more artifact acceleration. I'm especially a fan of how the totems have been performing, although the paradise plume costs a bit much for what it does. I'll keep it in for now and see if I can find any more to put in.

Noticeably, I cut Chandra Nalaar from my list. I played her in many games, and most of the time, she was simply an overcosted flame javelin and a fog or she pinged an opponent for one, and then subsequently fogged. Ajani Vengeant and Elspeth have both proven to be more substantial in terms of affecting the board and presenting long term staying power. Vengeant does draw a lot of attention but I have found it useful for dealing with all sorts of problematic lands. Though people generally gang up and kill it when it hits 5 or 6 counters.

Nothing else is all that notable in this verison, I did add an Endless Horizons and an Urza's Blueprints for more card advantage. I've been satisfied with their performance. Hitting land drops every turn is important in this deck with such a high costing general.
Comparitively speaking, they just aren't compelling targets to spend removal on when the format has lots of jitte[/card[, [card=Loxodon Warhammer]warhammers, and multiple [card=Sword of Fire and Ice]swords[/card running rampant.


So the next card that I'm thinking of trying out in the deck is Urza's Incubator since I'm moving more and more towards a tribal Angel theme in the deck and angels cost ever so much.

9/14: I haven't changed the list since last time other than trying out a card here and there but I haven't made any decisions on what I want to keep. In the past few games, I've been able to stick urza's blue prints a few more times and found that it's extremely helpful to refill my hand. The deck still has problems with card advantage since the colors simply can't recur and reuse resources from the graveyard like other decks can.

My biggest problems so far are decks that rely on recursion and card advantage to grind away at other decks. Simply put, they last longer than I can. Short of putting in more graveyard hate, I don't know how else to combat this. This is especially true when I play against g/b decks that have so many ways of reusing cards more than once. Against those decks, reanimation has also been a problem for me. My creatures fall really easily to their removal and their reanimation effects that can pull things out of my graveyard makes them difficult to deal with. The same problem applies to decks that steal creatures. I'm getting pretty close to running brand.

One aspect of the deck that I do want to change are the planeswalkers. I've noticed that Elspeth and Ajani are great at drawing attention away from other threats at the table and onto me. Usually, all I get for my mana is an overcosted 1/1 and a fog or an overcosted lightning helix and a fog. I'm fairly certain that I want to replace them with actual removal spells at this point. I don't think I've ever been unhappy when I've had a char or lightning helix to take care of small and pesky problematic creatures. This also allows me to save more permanent forms of removal for the more problematic or just plain bigger creatures. I've noticed a fair amount of persist creatures causing problems so I'm thinking of trying out Puncture Blast. It's certainly no lightning bolt, but it's cost is not extremely prohibitive either.

I have looked into overhauling the entire way the deck plays to become closer to Brion Stoutarm deck if only to lower the curve. But I've decided against doing so because I really want to find a way to tune this current version and make it work. I think I'm coming to close to realizing all the shortcomings of the archetype that I'm running and am slowly tuning the list to fight against those problems.

As always, any suggestions are welcomed.