The bold is what I would cut. I'd keep Coilbug, Poacher and take Mutual Destruction. I could see dropping a coilbug to keep either Dead Weight or Capture Sphere, but it keeps you with 4 2-drops and plays nice with Poacher in the long games.

Keeping in the second Coilbug is reasonable; it is a good roleplayer and makes quite some of your cards better. Hard agree that in that case Poacher absolutely must be in as well.
I'd wonder whether I still need the Springjaw Trap though; having another small creature lessens both the need to small removal and the need to play Mutual Destruction at instant speed (which are Trap's main selling points) and would consider running a bigger card (Dark Bargain, second Capture Sphere, Of One Mind, maybe even Gust of Wind) over it.
That said, I don't have the most experience with either Trap or the archetype, so I'm not sure whether cutting the first Trap is a huge mistake.

Full disclosure: I've never played with SpringJaw trap before. I figured it was only useful in Flash or Obosh decks. But dont forget, it can target players.

Thanks for the fixes guys! I did this:

1 x Dead Weight
1 x Mutual Destruction

2 x Boot Nipper
2 x Durable Coilbug
1 x Mystic Subdual

1 x Wingspan Mentor
1 x Slitherwisp
1 x Farfinder
1 x Of One Mind
1 x Mythos of Netrhoi

1 x Cystacean
1 x Bushmeat Poacher
1 x Reconnaissance Mission
2 x Capture Sphere

3 x Dreamtail Heron
1 x Voracious Greatshark

2 x Blitz Leech

8 x Swamp
8 x Island
1 x Zagoth Triome


And went 7-1, first 7-win streak in quite a while. The deck functioned surprisingly well. The ability to play mostly at instant speed was amazing, and I outvalued a lot of opponents.

Overperformers:

- Voracious Greatshark. No surprises there, this is a bomb.
- Blitz Leech. When you play at flash speed all the time this increases in power, I think. If the -2/-2 is ineffective, I can play one of the other flash cards. It's also surprisingly relevant as a combat trick - my Herons now block their Herons, for example, and 3/3 Menace Deathtouch Grimdancers suddenly are no longer 2-for-1s if I have to block.
- Mythos. Who knew unconditional removal was good?
- Wingspan Mentor. It's already a good card, but being able to threaten a mentor activation if opponent does nothing against my untapped mana was a very nice perk.
- Mystic Subdual. It's possible I should've maindecked the other Mystic Subdual. The big thing about this card is that it stops abilities, which includes mutate abilities. The one game I lost, opponent had Dirge Bat into Boneyard Lurker rebuying the Dirge Bat; Subdual would've completely stopped those shenanigans. Even better, I can actually cast it in response to opponent mutating, effectively getting a 1.5-for-1 (since a lot of the value of mutate is from the ability). If this were BO3, one thing for sure is this needs to be boarded in against mutate decks.

Underperformers:

- Cystacean. It's good at holding the ground, but many games I didn't need it. It's still a flash card in that case, but 1/6 means it's virtually entirely a defensive body and if I don't need defense then it's not useful. Still, I can't tell if I just lucked out and not played against many aggro decks, or what. Certainly in the games against aggro decks it's good. There's a chance that this should start in the sideboard and bring it in vs. aggro decks.
- Reconnaissance Mission. Maybe I expected too much from this card, and certainly when it works it's amazing, but other times it's a 4-mana do nothing enchantment. At least it has cycling.

One of the most surprising things was I had a Dead Weight in the sideboard. I'd never have imagined this card not being maindecked, but I started Mutual Destruction on the vague theory that diversifying removal is good, and indeed Mutual Destruction was quite good. I didn't have tokens from Commando to sacrifice to it, but later in the game many bodies aren't relevant anyway, sometimes my cards get targeted by opposing removal and I can MD in response, it defeats Capture Sphere / Pacifism, and Coilbug is OK as a sacrifice target too.

As for the other cards in the sideboard, I can certainly see them working, but never used them, so can't say.

I'm very high diamond now, don't think I'll make it to mythic, but I'm happy to have gotten this far

Just curious: in the dark do you guys put reach or vigilance on Flycatcher Giraffid? What about deathtouch vs. lifelink on Boot Nipper?

Default Nipper counter is deathtouch unless I mutate it to either have deathtouch or be very large; there's enough big scary monsters outside to almost always warrant Deathtouch over a few points of life.

Default Giraffid counter is Reach unless I'm in a vigilance matters deck; the card's purpose is to stal the board state more than anything else.

I've never played Giraffid. I guess it would depend on what I planned to mutate on it.

Boot nipper is almost always death touch. With 1 toughness hes just there to harass your opponent, or to be mutated onto. Theres the corner cases where your low on life, can mutate a Heron on it and opponent has no flying or reach. Maybe that's worthy of lifelink

You almost never mutate Giraffid; it's too expensive for that.
And I agree it's filler at best, I'm never happy playing more than one Giraffid while I'd play 3 or even 4 Nipper no question.

Hmm, I might be taking the comparison with Child of Night too literally then. Child of Night is fine on turn 2, and there probably won't be anything to deathtouch on turn 2 either, but it is banking for the very late-game. As for Giraffid, it should be playable! After all it's strictly better than Mammoth Spider which was okay in Dominaria. I agree though that in this format it's filler. I tried to play it once after P1P1'ing the GW vigilance rare, and it worked out awful

On another note: after P1P1 Kogla, P1P2 Essence Scatter or Flourishing Fox? Fox is obviously a bomb in the cycling archetype, but Kogla is also a bomb and does not slot into cycling.

Giraffid’s playable but not as important as Mammoth Spider has been at times in other sets. The fliers deck isn’t particularly notable this set and there’s a ton of spot removal for the fliers that do see play.

Giraffid is playable, but there are enough other better late-game cards that it very rarely makes the cut for me. It also tends to not apply enough pressure for me to really love it - this is not really a format where you need big-butt-blockers to weather a go-wide storm and much more a format of going over the top.

I guess its Vigilance mode works well with that white Flash enchantment.

Eh, not really. The white enchantment is really mainly for the Serval, giving you a turn 3 5/5. A turn 6 6/6 is much less impressive.

Jeskai Lukka in Ikoria limited lol. Went 5-3, 4-2 before the companion change and 1-1 after.

I do think the deck was pretty bad. Yorion is just very hard to include; even if I get enough playables I am diluting my deck. Cards like Blade Banish and Wingfold Pteron aren't unplayable, but they are mediocre, and by including them it decreases the chances of drawing the best cards. The deck still went 5-3 probably because I'm in the platinum brackets right now, and opponents are even worse. But it was funny! Literally just-banned Jeskai Lukka!

The one nice thing about 60-card decks is that Lukka can tick up without fear - won one game with Lukka ultimate that way. For some reason I always thought Lukka ultimate did damage equal to the number of creatures you control; that's not the case, it does damage equal to the total power of creatures you control. Also, Zirda has an activated ability, I lived very dangerously one game by forgetting it. Live and learn!

From another thread:


I saw an opponent play Song of Creation once in a draft game. He plays song T4 and discards 2 other spells. He proceeds to draw land for 3 turns in a row and quits. By discarding your hand, there's always a 33-40% chance you're going to wiff and draw a land. Hope you have some activated abilities.

Hmm, makes sense. I was under the impression that Song makes you draw two cards during your draw step for some reason.

Not an easy card to build around, off the top of my head the only good card castable if one bricks during the draw step is Uro.

We need more graveyard payoffs. Buyback or Jump Start type stuff. Discarding your hand every turn isn't an issue when everything in the deck can be played from there.

Tormod's Crypt makes this conversation pointless though.

Anyone know how to draft B/W humans? First time I'm drafting it, and I have this pile:

I made a lot of choices I'm not sure about, e.g. I took Farfinder over Nightsquad Commando, Stprmwild Capridor over Patagia Tiger, and Coordinated Charge over Divine Arrow. Main concern for me is that I have three mentors but not many nonhumans. How does it work anyway - the mentors are humans so you want them, but since they can only mentor nonhumans, they have intrinsic anti-synergy (??)

Guidance on how to draft this archetype would be appreciated

^ Above deck went 2-3. Was terrible. Can't tell how to draft humans because I genuinely don't know. Playing against it, it feels like the deck is mediocre unless they get the mythic rare, or possibly if they have multiple copies the uncommon enchantment payoffs (Sanctuary Lockdown, Bastion, Weaponize the Monsters).

Also this deck went an easy 7-1. Not sure if it's the right build, but it worked out really well in practice.



- I wasn't sure if I could go down to 15 lands. I potentially could, given the 1-mana cyclers and the relatively low curve. But I decided to play 16 because I have ways to loot away excess lands. Never flooded in the run.
- The deck just worked really well. I'm not sure what more I could've asked for.
- Channelled Force was the card I was least certain about. Certainly there was one game where I drew it but couldn't cast it because I only had 3 cards in hand. Two turns later I had four cards and was ready to cast it, but didn't have four lands to discard, and I lost some good cards that way. Still, it works well with Ominous Seas (that interaction won one game) and is a reason I played 16 lands.
- Never actually cast Startling Development, only cycled it. Wasn't that bad when cycled; it at least buffs Wolverine and I had three.
- Cloudpiercer looks a bit weird but it worked quite well as top-end: it mutates onto Forbidden Friendship's token, it loots away lands, and there was one game where a double-striking Cloudpiercer (thanks to Wolverine) destroyed the opponent.

Has anyone tried drafting Ikoria since M21 limited came out? If so, how long were the queue times?