Dreadhorde + Pyromancer Ascension

[mistercakes]

Will propose some things a bit later, but had this idea and didn't want to forget it.

[mistercakes]

Dreadhorde Arcanist
Pyromancer Ascension


I understand that this won't be in general as effective as a typical delver deck, but I think it could be worth taking a look.

Arcanist can trigger Ascension extremely well given that you have 2 copies of a card.

I'm hoping to crowdsource this a little bit. The first cards that come to mind are intuition and gamble.

[Mr. Safety]

Just off the cuff, I think cards like Manamorphose will be incredible here, along with cheap burn spells like Bolt and Chain Lightning. Thought Scour and Faithless Looting seem like a really good ways to feed synergies as well, and once you have dig like that and Manamorphose I think you could look at Arclight Phoenix. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do, but it basically looks like Pyromancer's Ascension is your 'Tarmogoyf'; it's a threat that closes out the game by doing what you would already want to do anyways. I think the Arclight Phoenix route could be super fun and spicy.

[mistercakes]

Just off the cuff, I think cards like Manamorphose will be incredible here, along with cheap burn spells like Bolt and Chain Lightning. Thought Scour and Faithless Looting seem like a really good ways to feed synergies as well, and once you have dig like that and Manamorphose I think you could look at Arclight Phoenix. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do, but it basically looks like Pyromancer's Ascension is your 'Tarmogoyf'; it's a threat that closes out the game by doing what you would already want to do anyways. I think the Arclight Phoenix route could be super fun and spicy.

oh yea arclight is pretty funny there. again i'm not sure if this is any good, but i think there's a balance somewhere between losing to FoW decks and really optimized decks. this deck is definitely using worse cards, but can catch people off guard because it's abusing the stack and not just the graveyard.

[Reeplcheep]

I think this deck would really want Claim // Fame.

It gets your arcanist back with haste, and is cast twice for 1 card. Letting your arcanist cast manamorphose also seems like cooking with gas. If you have Arcanist plus this in your gy, plus ascension with 0 counters, and you top deck this you go from nothing to winning the game.

[Clark Kant]

Just 4 cards that enable Ascension seems inconsistent. Does Krack the Thumbless or some similar effect also trigger Ascension?

If so, the deck could work.

If not, Krack seems like a better Ascension.

[rufus]

Does Krack the Thumbless also trigger Ascension?

If so, the deck could work.

Yes. Krark works well with cast triggers. Casting spells with him out can put a counter on Ascension even if the spell is returned to hand, and, once the ascension is active, it will copy spells even if they are returned to hand.

On the other hand, arcanist and ascension might not work together as well as you like. The ability on Dreadhorde Arcanist removes the spell from the graveyard before it gets cast, so you would need to start with two copies of the spell in the graveyard in order to put a counter on the Ascension.

The basic challenge with Ascension is that it's hard to get going. It seems like Bonus round is a much easier card to work with even with the relative drawbacks that it has but that doesn't work well with Arcanist either.

Edit:

Arcanist -> Phoenix is cute, but the timing isn't right to let you take advantage of haste.

Unearth certainly fits well with arcanist.

I suppose you could try for the "instants and sorceries in the graveyard" synergy deck with Ghitu Lavarunner, Bedlam Reveler and the like.