Maralen's Agent

[FTW]

SPOILER: This is a deck built around Maralen of the Mornsong + Opposition Agent

You can play it out as an A+B combo (Agent first, then Maralen)

With Aether Vial, you can just flash in Maralen, use Maralen to find Agent, then flash in Agent before the opponent gets a draw step. The combo doesn't take much space and could fit into an Aether Vial hatebears deck.

Just tossing out ideas for discussion.

Maralen Esper Vial


//Lands: 20
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Plains

//Artifacts: 4
4 Aether Vial

//Spells: 15
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Ponder

//Creatures: 21
4 Baleful Strix
4 Meddling Mage
2 Charming Prince
3 Recruiter of the Guard
3 Soulherder
3 Maralen of the Mornsong
2 Opposition Agent



Or DeadGuy Maralen


//Lands: 21
2 Karakas
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Marsh Flats
4 Prismatic Vista
3 Scrubland
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
2 Snow-Covered Plains

//Artifacts: 6
4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

//Spells: 4
4 Swords to Plowshares

//Creatures: 29
4 Mother of Runes
2 Cabal Therapist
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Dark Confidant
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
3 Opposition Agent
2 Recruiter of the Guard
2 Skyclave Apparition



The Esper approach tries to be a Soulherder value deck outside of the Maralen combo. It has FoW and Judge counters for protection as well as Brainstorm and Recruiter to help find cards. For lifegain, if you can establish the Maralen + Agent draw lock, you can tutor up Charming Prince then Soulherder to gain 3 life per turn to negate any drawback from the life loss. Blue count requirements for FoW are a bit limiting.

The WB Deadguy approach has less card selection for the combo, but Bob still draws you extra cards through Maralen. Mom protects the combo pieces. Thalia disrupts opponents. Caverns is useful with such a high Human count. The deck can gain life through equipment or use Cabal Therapist to sacrifice Bob/Maralen to avoid death. Searching up Skyclaves can answer problems on the board, while Cabal Therapist can answer cards in hand.

[Dewm]

Wishclaw Talisman seems like it has good synergy here. And I wonder if there's a mono black version that plays Dark Ritual for the turn one, fetch land steal. Also, the agent allows you to look at your opponent’s hand afaik, so cabal therapy has a good chance of taking what you want from it.

Edit:
Scheming Symmetry is pretty mean with Agent as well

[FTW]

Yeah, instead of the disruptive Vial direction you could go harder on the combo and synergies with Opposition Agent.

With 4x Agent it's worth it to play Dark Ritual and Wishclaw Talisman, probably Cabal Therapy too (it lets you sacrifice Maralen if things go very wrong).

Scheming Symmetry is good with agent (steal their best card), but it's hard to fit otherwise because it's basically unplayable if you don't have Agent or they kill it in response. Might be too win-more when you could just play Maralen for the same effect.


Monoblack Agent


//Spells: 22
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Fatal Push
2 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Eliminate
4 Wishclaw Talisman

//Creatures: 18
4 Dark Confidant
4 Gifted Aetherborn
4 Nighthawk Scavenger
4 Opposition Agent
2 Maralen of the Mornsong

//Lands: 20
4 Wasteland
16 Snow-Covered Swamp

[Pittplayer]

Agent is actually a good card on it's own, while Mornsong is usally pretty bad on her own. I question having more Mornsongs then Agents in your deck.

[FTW]

Agent is actually a good card on it's own, while Mornsong is usally pretty bad on her own. I question having more Mornsongs then Agents in your deck.

Oh did I not explain the combo with Vial?

Vial + Mornsong = win

Tick Aether Vial up to 3 counters.
EOT Vial in Mornsong
On your draw step she triggers, tutoring for Agent.
Then you Vial in Agent on your turn.

Mornsong is a 1-card combo. It finds Agent. You get both pieces and lock out the opponent before their next draw step.
Agent can't do that on its own. You'd need to draw both Agent + Maralen naturally.

Without Vial you can't do that trick (Mornsong without flash gives opponent the tutor first), so that only makes sense with Vial.
In the non-Vial deck I have more copies of Agent than Mornsong.

[Cire]

Reposting from Spoiler Thread - IMO, the ideal play seems to be:

1 Land + Discard or Mana Dork/Accel
2 Land + Hold mana open for Opposition Agent in response to a search (Dark Ritual in hand if Mana Dork wasn't cast earlier).
3 Land + Discard/Creature Kill and if Opposition Agent in play then Scheming Symmetry for Maralen to get the lock and win.

So something like:

18 Land
6 Discard
6 Creature Kill
4 Mana Dork/ Accel
4 Dark Ritual
4 Opposition Agent
4 Scheming Symmetry
1 Maralen

That's 13 cards open, but I think the intuition is to add blue just because blue is blue and the best, so we want to have at least 18-19 blue cards, so we need to make room for an additional 6-7 blue cards in the above. Drown in the Loch can take the place of 1-2 Creature kill, so that leaves about 4-5 more cards we need to cut for blue. Any suggestions?

The blue shell being

7-10 Cantrips
7-10 Counters
2-4 Threats

IMO - vial is too slow. I think we keep this as simple as possible and just play good cards with the maximum of 9 "combo" cards i.e. Agent, Symmetry and Maralen

[Pittplayer]

Oh did I not explain the combo with Vial?

Vial + Mornsong = win

Tick Aether Vial up to 3 counters.
EOT Vial in Mornsong
On your draw step she triggers, tutoring for Agent.
Then you Vial in Agent on your turn.

Mornsong finds Agent. You have both pieces and lock out the opponent before their next draw step.
Agent can't do that on its own. You'd need to draw both pieces naturally.

Without Vial you can't do that trick (Mornsong without flash gives opponent the tutor first), so that only makes sense with Vial.
In the non-Vial deck I have more copies of Agent than Mornsong. Maybe 1-2 is better than 3, since Wishclaw can find either.

Yes I understand Magical Chistmas land when you have all the pieces in place and your opp has no answers. What I'm saying is, when that's not the case, I would rather draw Agent then Mornsong 10 out of 10 times. And because that's true, I would have more Agents in my deck.