pi wrote:
I must have been unclear, sorry, I meant that you could go for a beatdown version, let others play the mass removal if they want to stop you. Cards like
Woolly Thoctar,
Hunted Lammasu and
Emperor Crocodile that all have a pretty good power to mana ratio. A Mayael deck like that could come out of the gates pretty quickly and Mayael would make sure you don't run out of threats. I'm not sure there is a workable strategy there, but I've always thought there might be a reasonable Mayael build in that direction.
I see what you're saying. Unfortunately, because I have so many decks (currently 21 in paper) and I don't get to play in the competitive meta often enough, I don't get to play this deck as much as I'd like, but since the reduction of fatties to the current number (with the addition of Scroll Rack (and tutors for it), Worldly Tutor, etc), the deck has been way more powerful.
I'm not sure about adding lower CMC creatures that aren't nearly as powerful as the ones in the deck now, only because I'm afraid of dropping lackluster creatures when people have 8+ mana. I cut lots of lackluster 4-5 CMC creatures from the build a while ago because they didn't 'do enough'. With the amount of ramp I have, I hard cast a surprising number of these guys (or Tooth and Nail) fairly early - sometimes I don't even need Mayael.
Quote:
I would play the Tusker over the Dragon at least.
Perhaps. I do like that the Dragon has flying, which is pretty key, and that it can search for my shocklands. I also admit bias since I paid $5 or so for the Dragon, so I'm motivated to play it. :p
Quote:
Have you kept track of how often you miss?
This is a big joke in my group ever since cutting down the number of fatties. As I mentioned, I had something like 28 fatties in there at one time, and was happy. Of course I still whiffed sometimes, but it worked well enough. Since I've dropped the current amount I've still whiffed, but it hasn't been as bad as I'd have hoped. Again, I may have a smallish sample size on the number of games played with the current build (15 or so).