I like the look of this deck and it looks like monomania might actually have a place in here. That makes me have to test it. Normally I wouldn't consider armillary sphere in a deck, but this deck has very little going on early and needs to get double black by turn 3 or 4, so I guess it has a place in this deck. Nice work DJ.
Just an aside I used to love playing your 2 headed dragon team decklists in the last dotp. Hands down the best ones I would find were yours.
I should have mentioned: the whole point of this deck was to make monomania into a good card. The deck may still need some work btw, but I was enjoying playing it. It's very controlish.
As for armillary sphere, it's okay in decks that have extreme mana requirements. I put it in, because the thing I hate most in mtg is not being able to play my hand. However, in any deck of mine where you see a colorless mana option, you can always remove and replace. The mana basses are typically balanced correctly, even without it. You will have a slightly less consistent deck, but you will also have a place for 1-4 additional cheap cards.
Also, thanks!
is a card I feel doesn't get the respect it deserves. Most people just see it as a worse
Cultivate. To a certain extent, it is, but it also has its own advantages that Cultivate does not provide.
Cultivate is certainly better in that it costs a total of
less mana to cast, and also in that is puts that second land directly into play.
Armillary Sphere, on the other hand, doesn't require you to be running
to get a decent land fetch effect. The biggest benefit of Armillary Sphere though, at least in my opinion, is the fact that it is an activated permanent. Meaning that once Sphere hits the table, cracking it is done at instant speed.
This is the real advantage of the card as far as I am concerned. Armillary Sphere gives a deck the ability to mana fix, as well as help to consistently hit land drops, without requiring the deck to tap out to do so. This is obviously more important in certain decks, most obviously for ones that are looking to operate at the End Step the majority of the time. For example, in the majority of Control decks I would choose Armillary Sphere over Cultivate (even if I was running
to run/cast Cultivate) if I was looking for a fixing/land fetch option. This is because I can play an Armillary Sphere on T2 for example, and still be able to keep mana up on T3/T4/whatever to be able to cast removal/countermagic etc. You can save cracking that Armillary Sphere until your opponents End Step on a turn where you know you can afford to do so.
Much in the same way that a lot of decks use draw spells.
Think Twice is a good example of this. You keep mana open on your opponents turn, if they play something worth removing/countering/etc then we do so at the End Step and immediately untap on our turn. If they don't play anything worth removing/countering/etc then we have Think Twice to use at that End Step instead to draw us a card and then immediately untap on our turn.
Armillary Sphere functions much the same way in those sorts of decks, allowing you to run mana fixing/fetch without having to tap out to do so. If the opponent plays something worth removing/countering/etc then we do that on their End Step and immediately untap. If they don't play anything worthwhile, then we crack Armillary Sphere and fetch up 2 lands and immediately untap.
Sorry, I know I went a bit on a tangent, but I feel like this is a card that by and large gets ignored completely due to the existence of
Cultivate, which I can understand to an extent, but I don't believe is completely and totally warranted.
On the same page here. I use it in a lot of builds. Also, if you are stuck at two mana, armillary sphere saves you, cultivate gathers dust.
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