Deck Building
The Basics
Green is the best color. None of the other colors are super far away from each other power-wise, although White has The Wandering Emperor at rare, which you will play 95% of the time that you open it.
Your curve is more important than how many broken cards you can fit in your deck. The Wandering Emperor isn't going to look so hot when your opponent killed you with 2/2s on turn 5. Ideally your deck should be the highest quantity of broken cards combined with the best curve, with a mana base that won't cause much stumbling. Dune Mover is an actively good in this format, and is much better fixing then Prophetic Prism. More on that little guy later.
Ideally:
5-6 (2) mana creatures, some 1 mana creatures can supplement this but they have to scale.
4-5 (3) mana creatures
3 (4) mana creatures
2 (>4)mana creatures
More aggressive? More 2's and 3's. More ramp/controlling? more 4's and up.
You can't just expect your cheap removal spells to carry the early game, because your opponent is going to play T3 Jace and you'll be looking at your Annoint with Affliction really depressed.
YOU MUST BE ABLE TO KILL PLANESWALKERS!!! This is not optional. 8/10 planeswalkers are varying levels of insanely strong, with Tyvar being actively good in the right shell, and also Koth existing.
Planar Disruption and Annihilating Glare are your best bets, but even Sheoldred's Edict is serviceable.
Obviously everyone with a brain is playing these cards, but playing cards like Sheoldred's Edict because of the Planeswalker clause is going to give you an edge.
Colors
Green is the best, and your average deck is going to be Green Black with a splash. Generally, play two base colors and a splash, leaning on Dune Mover and Terramorphic Expanse for fixing. Prophetic Prism is good when you have combos with it, but it really sucks to spend 2 mana on a cantrip in a format this aggressive.
Expect:
GXx
R/B
R/W (Both leaning extra aggressive)
W/B (they have Kaya or no format experience)
Defining Commons
Dune Mover looks like it sucks but is actively good. It just does exactly enough of everything, and is always castable on Turn 2. The one toughness will occasionally suck, but I'm happy to play 2 of these and I would consider a 3rd depending on my mana situation.
Contagious Vorac is a much more "obviously good" card, but sometimes misses.
These two combined make for a lot of multicolor decks that simultaneously never skip a beat while also pressuring your opponent.
Generally, people die to poison in this format. Pestilent Syphoner is more of a cheeseball card, but that's what the R/B decks you'll occasionally see want. Syphoner on 2 might warrant whatever removal spell you can spare, but thankfully on turn 12 it's pretty bad.
Tyrannax Atrocity is very close to a 6/4 haste, but in a format where most of the removal spells that can kill it are Sorceries, it shines even harder. It's non-toxic cousin Furnace Strider is also incredibly strong, just not as good as the Dinosaur.
Proliferate Loops
One needs a rare, but this is an easy way to make your deck have an insurmountable lategame with a low deckbuilding cost.
Vat Emergence Curator, Block, Vat Emergence it, Block. Also has the benefit of proliferating every turn so you can poison kill your opponent pretty easily this way, and you can't deck.
Not as good as the above, but repeatedly bring back Longlegs with Tyvar and while you can't loop it every turn, Longlegs can protect your Tyvar and give you a lot of proliferating. Unlike the other combo, this decks you incredibly quickly.
Pay Cost Window Shenanigans
Armored Scapgorger doesn't have any food? If you use the pay cost window, you can sacrifice Skullbombs and eat them out of the graveyard for an oil counter. Comes up more often than you'd think if you have Scrapgorger in your deck and puts you a turn closer to a 3/3.
Best Rares/Mythics
Most of the rares are varying levels of bananas, but here's three you might have overlooked.
Thrun is obvious you say? Thrun is third behind Wandering Emperor and Kaya for rares. So even if you thought it was good, it's actually busted.
Spelldancer is super easy to trigger and already an above rate 2. Sign me up.
Urabrask's Forge gets out of hand super fast. This card on T3 usually wins the game all by itself.
That's all for now, but maybe I'll do a part 2.
Seeya,
Kevin
