[Deck] T.E.S - The EPIC Storm

[sunshine]

Chant is more important than swarm.

I'm on board with this, that being said...

Having both in the deck will only dilute the color ratio and require more five color lands.

Having done literally no testing with Xantid Swarm I'll disagree with this. Supposing you bring in 3 Xantid to go along with 4 Chant effects you'll have a total of 7 spells that are realistically only getting played off of rainbow sources - of which we run 10 (out of a total of 21 intitial mana sources). Those feel like some reasonable ratios, I'm not sure if more five color lands are really necessary (and I have no real interest in boarding a Trop).

If an opponent wastelands you, you'll be unable to cast either.

This is doubtful. Or at least I have a hard time imagining a situation where I'd commit my only rainbow land to the board against an opponent running Wasteland and not try to either resolve Xantid, resolve Chant, or win immediately - when I otherwise wouldn't have played that land.

Assume that you do play your rainbow land a turn early to try and get Xantid to stick before going off. Regardless of what happens you're no worse off than saving the land drop and chanting on the next turn. If Xantid is countered that counter would have been aimed at Chant instead and your land gets Wasted anyway. If Xantid sticks and your land gets Wasted, the net effect is essentially that of tapping your land to play Chant on the next turn (except now you have another land drop available).

You can't tutor for a green source that isn't a tropical. I've already explained why tropical is bad.

Granted. I have no interest in playing a Trop.

If you want to make wasteland better against us feel free. But it's a mistake.

As I said above I don't feel that the manabase would have to change to accommodate Xantid, and against decks boarding our their removal or not running any at all - namely Merfolk - resolving the creature is very strong. Playing a Xantid early and getting your land Wasted does not put you any farther behind on manasources than saving that land to play Chant later.

Personally, I haven't been playing Xantid as I like the flexibility of Pyroblast - which also can be played off fetchable lands. Given that the last local tourney we had was 25% Merfolk (I was told) I'm thinking about trying it out though.