UPDATE 4-30-2018It's uh- been a year and some change. The biggest change, is that the deck is now sleeker- the version displayed now is "without weights". It just does the thing it's supposed to do, at the best of my deckbuilding capability, without the regular housebans.
Time for some noteworthy stuff...
Artifact Recursion Get- While the old version featured
Academy Ruins as the primary means of artifact recursion- the newer list features
Hanna, Ship's Navigator, and the all-mighty
Trading Post as tools to speed up the Flare. When delving into more recent cardpools last year, I came across
Metallurgic Summonings... which recurs instants and sorceries while it feeds Ephara.
Helicopter Muscles-Read the Runes,
Phyrexian Metamorph, and
Proteus Staff are currently present. In the past, these enablers have gone a bit further overboard than I wanted them to. If they present a problem in future playgroups, I am planning to add a "Weightboard"- for ways to soften the deck's more brutal enablers.
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV was replaced by
Faerie Artisans for most of last year. This was a mistake in every sense. As a weight, the card failed- because when it went off, it naturally synergized in a way that was unfriendly. As an enabler, it didn't shore up anything that
Trading Post,
Monastery Mentor, or
Metallurgic Summonings don't already do for Ephara. As a political play, it's even WORSE than Arbiter, as it turns out. Newer players overreact to it, and tend to put their resources into nuking my General- to follow up with punishment results in a kindof feelbad gamecrush, to not punish is to not advance my own position in the game. For this reason,
Faerie Artisans and
Retreat to Emeria got the axe. Fantastic cards inside any build of Ephara- but not advantageous for a control deck that pivots this hard. Augustin returned, for both thematic and play reasons. Opponents are generally encouraged to deal with him, so I don't have to get them to burn high power, often expensive removal on Ephara.
Kefnet the Mindful and
Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage have proven as valuable additions- and stick to the "Portal Mage", and "Tragic Heroes and Mentors" theme. Astraea be praised! Kefnet's hidden landbounce ability sets up nasty flares, and fireballing excess mana into the hand is too sweet. Raff is a souped up
Shimmer Myr- with bonus points for the flavor dunk.
Tonal ShiftSince this build is themed around "Cosmic UW", "Portal UW", and "Tragic Heroes and Mentors"- I've shrunk the creature count from 18 to 14, emphasizing the quality of each creature spell as a play- and reducing the overall number of dedicated token cards. Land count was reduced to 36 (from 40) due to sheer filtering ability permitting it. Was 38 for a very long time, then 37. Then I realized that the deck just doesn't want
Seachrome Coast,
Calciform Pools or
Ghost Quarter- beefed up the Island count and added a
Seat of the Synod for
Trading Post,
Metallurgic Summonings, etc. Not sure about
Ancient Den- because it doesn't care the Plains type which is crucial to the biggest setup- making it less valuable as a white source. Currently on 11 1-Drops, and 14 2-Drops.
Read the Runes and
Deep Analysis help us dig in funny ways. Generally, the deck works on 3 mana (and can limp on 2), and explodes on 4 mana.
That said- with
Fractured Identity, I thought it would make sense to finally add
Stolen Identity to further build on Ephara enablers that play with the deck's overall toolset. SI, was previously a tech/enabler card, which had broken my more easy paced playgroup. As a pair, they provide Ephara enablers that fit comfortably into the theme.
Another major change was moving away from wipes, and softwipes in favor of more scalpels- also notably missing are a few of the hard-permission choices that were previously here. In the current playgroup, it would be a mistake to lean too much on permission or clumsy wipes for an active defense. Instead, we're actually playing a full suite of portal magic- much to the annoyance of my friends who hate my proclivity for cards which give my opponent some kind of resource after I seriously mess up their gameplan
Dispatch- 3rd Swords, almost added
Reciprocate as well, but it just isn't live as often as it probably needs to be
Chain of Vapor- Difficult to evaluate powerhouse- if the card has passed you by, make sure you give it a whirl
Into the Roil/
Blink of an Eye/
Echoing Truth- EC was added, because modal
Disperse is quite a bit stronger in a format without fastrocks. Roil was already present here to compliment Rift's
Disperse mode. Now, unbelievably, the second copy can now reference the closing lyrics to The Warp Riders! Looking forward to cryptically declaring "You don't age when you live out of time; a thousand years in the
Blink of an Eye!"
Arcane Denial/
Remand/
Oblation- Cards often mistaken for having a downside, but like
Swan Song, these deceptive portals allow me to manage threat levels quite easily.
Teferi's Protection- Was very on the fence about this. It's fantastic protection- but I like to build my decks to be ridiculously resilient so that I don't need these sort of things. But, it does reference one of my favorite cards already in the deck (I have a thing about not playing cards with proper pronouns without also playing something else referencing that character.)
Windfall- Not much to see here, the deck goes nuts when I load up the graveyard- this has a similar problem in terms of suspect status as
Read the RunesPrimal Amulet/
The Antiquities War- I love four drops- and these both put crazy emphasis on the interactions between cardtypes in the deck. TAW doubles as a win condition with all of the goofy eggs (while getting bits of information and filtering for artifacts.) Haven't seen these actually bust the game yet- Amulet mostly being a manarock or secondary Narset if it goes uncontested.
Feel free to ask questions, or poke fun

How do you guys think
Yosei, the Morning Star or
Admonition Angel would play out here? I tried
Phantasmal Image for a bit- found it more disappointing than I had remembered from INN standard Flare. Is
Vanish into Memory worth a whirl?