I really liked Trinity of Elements from 2012, but the deck just sucked. So I wanted to try to recreate it, but make it a bit better. What do you guys think? I'm going to go test it out now, but if you have suggestions to improve it, let me know. I try to use as many tri-lands as I can even if I don't use some of the colors, just to keep my opponent on his or her toes, in case anyone was wondering. You could do the tap-lands like this, and it would be the same, minus the unnecessary colors:

4 x Gruul Guildgate
2 x Izzet Guildgate
2 x Simic Guildgate


EDIT: I'm already thinking about including some Ground Assaults, but not sure what to cut yet.

My first game with this deck went just as I wanted it to:
T1: Gruul Guildgate
T2: Island, Think Twice at opp. endstep
T3: Cultivate, putting Mountain on battlefield, Forest in hand
T4: Forest, Ogre Battledriver
T5: Island, Pestermite-->untapping a land, another Pestermite-->untapping another land, Hellspark Elemental, Swing for 16. At this point, my opponent has a Niblis of the Breath and a Spire Tracer that he had just attacked with the previous turn so my attack goes unblocked.
T6: Unearth Hellspark, swing for lethal.

I doubt every game will go this perfectly, but this is how I imagined it going, and I wasn't disappointed!

Wait.. Species Gorger and Archaeomancer... Surely, you can make room for a Time Warp?

A bit if back story about this deck. I set out to build the best Jalira shell I could. It started with lots of creature and seance. I knew that I always wanted to run archaeomancer as it is amazing with Jalira. From that I knew I wanted species gorger and time warp. However the 5 colour deck with seance was not consistent enough and did not assemble the combo fast enough.

I quickly realised that traumatic visions was a great mana fixer and amazing with archaeomancer so slowly the deck evolved into a control shell.



The synergy between satyr wayfinder and think twice is amazing and wayfinder also mills you to hit time warp for the combo.

Kozilek is there to re shuffle and combo pieces and obviously as a win condition. Obelisk goes without saying.

I needed another win condition that had to be a creature. Talrand is perfect as it fits not interfere will Jalira and also makes tokens to sacrifice if needed.

So far testing is proving promising but this is early days.

This is a Temur Contol deck that I'm working on and haven't really had the time to test extensively. It's a pretty simple, counter your stuff, kill your stuff, play huge guy deck. So far I'm 10-5 with it, and it seems to have some problems with Izzet Burn (although I'm not sure why, I feel the deck should have at least a 50-50, if not better). I'm hoping some of you guys could take the deck for a spin and tell me how it works out.

I think the deck is where I want it, minus a few tweaks, depending on what I'm running into; however, I am always open to critique.

You've got half the deck that wants to tap out for bombs, cultivate, sorcery speed spells.. and the other half that wants to play countermagic. The two goals seem to be at odds with each other. One way to bring the two together is Counterlash.

Personally.. I would just cut the Dissolves.. add the last shock and the other two Elvish Visionaries. This will also make things easier on your manabase since you won't need double blue until turn 5. I would keep Traumatic Visions as a mana fixer.. and a good late game counter.. or you could ditch them for 2x Counterlash and Kozilek. That would give you 2 blowout Counterlash options (Kozi and Utvara Hellkite).

Anyway.. those are my thoughts. This color combination is tough. Lots of tough mana requirements.

It would have been nice if we had gotten some instant speed ramp like Harrow but yeah, sorcery ramp and counter magic don't workout too well here.

Monk:

Your decklist is very interesting. I like the combo of Jalira digging for either wayfinders or archaeomancers, in order to mill/recur Time Warp or some other cool card. I have a similar control shell in my WRU control deck but I am interested into moving with a build with higher synergy.

I do intend to test your build, but for right now there are a few things I am curious about a few card choices:

4 Resounding Thunder. Don't get me wrong, I love this card, but 4 copies seems a little high when you are at 0 Shocks and already have 3 Ground Assaults. I do like it as a win condition in combination with Obelisk of Alara, but I was just curious if you had tried shock here. Alternatively, at 8 counterspells I think a little bounce would serve the dual purpose of protecting your threats and sticking a fatty back in your opponent's hand.

4 Traumatic Visions. Again I love this card, but there are a few things I noticed: your mana base is actually quite manageable, you have lots of UU, only one RR, and no more than G. The main thing is the 5 mana cost - if you are doing anything at sorcery speed it can become hard to cast this spell. I wonder if you tried one or two Negates to protect Talrand, Jalira, and Kozilek.

You have a full package of Trilands but only one Obelisk of Alara. I love the Obelisk, but if you cut it and switched to more Gates you could put a few Saruli Gatekeeper in your build. Great EtB which is relevant for both bouncing it and cheating it into play via Talira. 4 toughness survives Anger.

Anyway my comments are provisional, your deck is unique enough that I want to test it before saying anything more.

After a bit of playtesting I started to realize how much more control this deck has over what answers it uses due to recursion. If you are limited to drawing random cards, then you generally want cards with higher flexibility.

But with the added recursion from Archaeomancer, I think specialized cards become more attractive. For example, if you run 1 shock and 3 thunder you have more options when using Archaeomancer.

Negates would help protect Talrand/Jalira from the inevitable polymorph. But an alternative that I think would work well with this deck is Counterlash.

Obviously getting a Kozilek out would be devastating. You basically get a hasty 12/12 annihilator 4 while your opponent is tapped out, and, in theory (I haven't tested this) Counterlash would allow you to draw 4 off of him since you are "casting" him without paying his mana cost. But outside of this dream scenario, Counterlash gives you a chance to use the 4 drop creatures without losing any tempo. Simply Counterlashing into Archaeomancer can instantly return the counterlash to your hand.

bump

Been play testing a Temur dragon deck a bit. It's like the game wants to give you some cool dragons but no way to get em out quick. So, I tried to create a way to draw/stall into em. Let me know how stupid this is.

It's stupid!

Did you consider Warden of Evos Isle?

It seems like you may get there but my only concern is how you interact with your opponent. You will spend all your time working on your board state and doing nothing to theirs (or stop them from messing with yours). These sorts of decks seem to come down to draws. If your opponent can't mess with you or you draw a great ramping hand then you have a chance.

I would put this deck in the fun factor category. When it goes off.....DRAGONS!!!! With Dragons of Tarkir out, this does seem worth a spin though!


elk

So I ended up moving my main control pile over to Temur



The green is really just a splash, but the splash is totally worth it. Ground Assault is a beautiful thing.

I did not just look at the Temur card pool and decide to make a Temur control deck, rather my quest for a control deck has meandered through several color combinations.

Just from looking at the cardpool, it was obvious that blue had the counterspells and card draw, while red had the burn and Anger to help stabilize. I wanted to add a third color. I started with white mostly for planar cleansing. Reprisal was a nice way of dealing with targets too big for burn, but it was useless for certain matchups. This deck does fine in most matchups, but I decided to play around with other combinations.

Next I tried the Monkeem build, named after forum posters Monk and Hakeem, who worked on the list together. It is a four color blackless build that dips into green for ground assault, white for baneslayer and angelic edict, and both green and white for Rhox War Monk. I consider it to be a strong general control deck with an anti-aggro tilt. I think aggro with tokens is probably the most powerful deck archetype in 2015, and it is certainly played a lot on Xbox. But on Steam I wanted a deck built more against later game decks.

I have discussed a number of the card choices here in detail on the Jeskai and Ink Treader threads. Here is an overview of what has changed:
I initially thought Archaeomancer was too slow, but I usually cast her and then either hit a creature with ground assault or leave mana open for nullify.
Her primary use is to add flexibility to the type of answers. The game puts you on the mercy of the draw - maybe you keep on drawing burn when you need counters, or vice versa. Obviously she won't help you find the first anger, but once you do you can totally shut down spider spawning by repeated exiles.
Her secondary use is to provide a 1/2 body. 1/1 tokens are really the bane of this deck, usually I can kill lords but I often end up with one or two 1/1s on the board beating on me. Archaeomancer provides a big enough body to stop this, and opponents often prefer not to spend removal on her, since she is not a threat and they assume I will drop a conventional bomb.

Void snare was a late addition to the deck. It provides flexibility - the ability to deal with any target on the board cheaply. Technically speaking, it is card disadvantage to bounce a target just so you can counterspell it, but this deck has enough card advantage / draw baked in that I think it is worth it. Early on it helps to deal with bodies too big for ground assault - e.g. Ajani's Pridemate, Nemesis of Mortals - I had a 10/10 Nemesis swinging at me on turn four recently. I could use a 5 mana hard removal, but it is too slow and not flexible enough for my tastes. Later on it can be used as a tempo play or as a way of removing tricky non-creature permanents.

The last use for void snare is kinda cute - bouncing Archaeomancers so that you can replay them.

One card I tried with this deck as an alternative win condition was Masked Admirers. In combination with Archaeomancer and Void Snare, I could trigger the "when you cast a creature" clause as often as I wanted. I consider this a resilient threat that will also draw you a ton of cards - but this is a huge mana sink, 11 mana per cycle will draw you a card and get you a 3/2 body. This will give you a persistent threat / draw engine that is immune to sorcery speed removal. Ultimately though I have the Obelisks for late game card advantage, by the time I could really get the admirers rolling I usually had already won the game via Obelisk red mana activations.

If I had to cut cards, the first cards I would cut would be Inspiration #4 and Nullify #3. The Archaeomancers make all the draw a bit less necessary, and Nullify can be annoying when your opponent casts a token spell that it can't hit. I have considered a number of cards for these slots but they are all pretty specialized - e.g. Cunning Sparkmage to shoot down tokens, Sylvan Bounty as a pseudo answer to banefire (I hate banefire). But these all seem pretty specialized. Interested in any feedback.

Edit - went -1 mountain +1 island to make turn 2 nullify easier.

I'll have to try this when I get back, I've been after a true control deck for a while. Azorius just doesn't have enough wincons and Jeskai just hits problems when you don't get the lands you need. This Temur deck could be onto something, I'm at work ATM so I'll try later.

You think YOU hate Banefire? Did a match last night where I went Grixis Control vs a Juund deck that just ramped forever and played darksteel ingots. I thought "what the hell is he doing?" Until the first 12 damage Banefire came out. My rage was infinite.

I did consider Warden of Evos Isle. I just wasn't sure how much payoff it would be to put a 3 mana flyer in for only losing 1 mana off the casting cost for the bigguns especially when I was already ramping so much into them already.

But you are right. This pile is so not interactive and board wipes and removals kill it. Bad. But that perfect draw every once in a while is so cool!

Thanks for the feedback elk!

urthmage - if you want to make boring and conventional card choices, the card I would recommend is Anger of the Gods. If there is some theme-related reason you do not want to run it that is fine. It kills all their little guys while keeping your big guys alive.

I think you want a green mana and cultivate in your opening hand every game. To make this a bit easier, I would recommend cutting back on your number of islands a bit and adding 2-3 more taplands that produce green.

Young Wolf is kinda ok, I am not a huge fan. But it is a pretty big nonbo with Anger of the Gods. I would prefer Shock in that slot anyway to deal with threats like Kiln Fiend or Ajani's Pridemate.

If you add Warden of Evos Isle, I would consider Pestermite - maybe just 2 copies. You can do anything from tap your opponent's land to slow them down, tap down an enemy creature for a turn, or untap your dragon during combat to block.

BounceBurnBuff- Obelisk of Alara can easily keep you out of banefire range by gaining 5 life a turn. But it is a big enough issue that I am seriously considering running one Sylvan Bounty.

Lifelinked creatures are obviously great, but if your deck runs a small number of creatures be prepared with 2+ counterspells if you want your creature to live to your next turn. Creatures can be great, but I found that on Steam people love packing their decks with enough removal to make it difficult to run a small number, so I opted for disposable creatures (Archaeomancer).

I suffered one loss last night to a solid Raid Bombardment deck in Jund colors that ran a lot of undying / unearth creatures. I cast Anger of the Gods 3 times but in the end lost to a Kathari Bomber unearth while I had no instant speed creature removal. Obelisk would have won me the match but I didn't draw it. Suffer the Past would help in a number of matchups and give me a little lifegain when I need it, and I think with Archaeomancer giving me multiple uses out of that card I could just destroy spider decks. But this requires further testing.

Three more losses. The first was to a Naya deck that packed a lot of fat - I saw Wooly Thoctar, Inferno Titan, 2x Sigil Blessing and Terra Stomper. The Stomper is what did me in - I was able to kill it with both assault and thunder, but this tapped me out. My void snares would have helped me here but I didn't draw one. If I had shock I probably would have been able to leave mana untapped for a counterspell.

Second loss was to an actual aggro deck. I killed his first young pyromancer, but I ran out of removal spells for his second one, and couldn't draw a sweeper. Game over.

Third loss was to a GB graveyard deck, with a lot more fat than typical spider spawning decks. I countered Rune Scarred Demon 2 times, then I countered phytotitan, then when he brought his RSD back for the third time I was out of counters. Tried to hit it with ground assault but he fetched the inevitable rescue to get Griselbrand for the win.

What did I learn from this? Most people don't run Terra Stomper and I am prepared to basically fold when someone plays it. I could improve my matchup vs Aggro in numerous ways - but I don't want to, yet. This was one aggro deck out of a sample size of 10-20 games.

I included one Suffer the Past, so far it hasn't really been a big hindrance or help. I used it as a finisher in one game, but at that point I had control of the board and a fistful of cards. I used it to stabilize from a pretty low life count in another game, but I am not sure it would have mattered.

In a non-White themed control deck, anything with alot of fat that hits the board is pretty tough to win against. That is why in this environment, I use R/W as my base colors. My current control deck is American Control, with a lite splash of Green for Ground Assault. That with the 4 sweepers, 3 shocks, 8 card draw spells, and light countermagic make it pretty good against most decks.

I am fortunate I haven't faced too many Spider Spawning decks. The ones I do see are all copies of Hakeem's deck he did the video series on. I find that funny but predictable.

The greatest Beast of them all.

I wish path to exile was still a thing... that card was **** rad

I get that white removal is strong, but right now my colors are Red and Blue, with a splash of Green for ground assault and a tiny sprinkle of Black for Suffer the Past.

I feel like 20% of the decks I play on steam are spider spawning decks, or some variant thereof. I have played 3 games against these decks so far since adding Suffer.
In one game, the game dragged out for a while. My opponent appeared to run more of a green / black fatties deck with tons of good graveyard stuff - although it is possible he had a copy in hand. I stalled until I had 13 mana to cast it for 12. I think he had 4-5 copies in hand, waiting for the right number of creatures in graveyard. A 12 point suffer brought an immediate concession.

In another game I drew suffer right away and cast it for x=3 when he tried his first spawning. I was pretty much in the drivers seat the rest of the game.

The third game I couldn't get a single black mana after drawing half my deck, so I went from 6 to 7 black mana sources, including one swamp I can fetch via traumatic visions. I was just buried by his card advantage, recurring nemesis and casting spawning.

Vs. aggro suffer has been ok. It isn't a one for one removal, but I have enough of those spells that I am often facing a small handful of tokens, slowly but inexorably ticking away at my life. A five point suffer can buy me some breathing space.

Vs. ramp decks that run banefire suffer is also priceless. Only had one game so far where this happened but I answered his 14 point banefire (for lethal) with an 11 point suffer, allowing me to finish him off in a turn or three.

So since black is here to stay (for now) I am testing 2 tributes in place of void snare, which has been OK but not amazing. Being able to void snare Archaeomancer is a great play, but it isn't so easy when I am under pressure.
- Moving to the 4 color whiteless thread