But in green you have Sylvan Library and Life from the Loam, both of which are just plain better (and one of which isn't even that good!).Originally Posted by Echelon
In green, you also have Elves!, lol.
Had it costed 1 it would've been probably a good, flavorful card. As it is, it need too much setup and it's way too slow. A pity really. But we all know wotc golden design rule, if it ain't blue, add 1 to casting cost.
I think that some of you guys are undervaluing this fellow. Unchecked, this guy will win the game. None of the draw spells mentioned can do that. It may be closer to Mangara than anything else. Needs a specialty land and makes card advantage. So I wish to add that Aether Vial is a card. Defector looks a lot better when it is flashing in for free on the opponent's end step.
Any deck that is going to use Humble Defector must be drawing gas or it is doomed to failure. That means no stacking its ability with elves, wasting resources on Exploration Maps, and no Brand. The card must be present in a deck that can function without it. I recommend staying as close to aggro as possible unless you are going to do something unconventional like Eidolon/Ankh control or whatever. In an aggro scenario, you can never, ever let the opponent untap with this on his side. His dream would be to chump block with this guy and tap it. So it looks like 4x H.Paths. Lovely. What are you going to do with the extras?
I prefer red/black with Pit Dwellers and Urborg.
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At 1 cc it would be pretty OP, there are silly lines of play like:
Turn1: Volcanic Island Humble Defector
Turn2: Activate Defector, Cerulean Wisps, Activate Defector, Tidal Bore Activate Defector.
Of course, there isn't much in the way of alternative creatures that would work in the defector's place.
Look, I like to see people trying out new things and I especially like to see people trying to fit card draw into a deck like Burn (my favorite deck).
In Legacy if you aren't immediately killing your opponent with a two card combo (Painter+Grindstone for example), it isn't really worth running. Especially if that two-card combo's individual cards do next to nothing on their own.
The land and the creature are not legacy-worthy cards. Sorry.
If you want to add some card draw to Burn, just run Bob and/or Sylvan Library. Problem solved.
What about putting Humble Defector in some kind of Red based Stax deck.
I was thinking of Imperial Recruiter (Painter). I was also thinking of MUD but the red versions already have Daretti for that.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
To be fair, both pieces of the combo are better than painter's ones. The creature is a 2/1, it can still draw 2 in a pinch even if you don't have a land, and it help you find that land while doing so. And the land still give you colorless instead of doing absolutely nothing like Grindstone without painter.
Also, as someone pointed out, Stark +homeward path is basically Mangara + Karakas. Maybe Red and taxes? Imperial recruiters, lavamancers, bolt in stead of StP, wasteland. Biggest problem is having no Thalia, maybe Eidolon could play the part of the anti-combo card. There's absolutely nothing you could play in place of Mom though, and nothing like Flickerwisp or SFM either.
Eidolon + Homeward + defector does look cute though.
EDIT: something like this?
4 Humble Defector
4 AEther Vial
2 Imperial Recruiter
1 Starke of Rath
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Homeward Path
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
10 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Faithless Looting
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Fire Imp
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Goblin Piledriver
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Pyroblast
1 Fireblast
SB: 2 Pyroblast + 13 other cards depending on meta
Piledriver is basically a way to have an out to TNN. Recruiter is such a nice card.
Why not replacing 4 Mountains with Grove and run the PF combo as well?
I wouldn't run it with Eidolon main. I think a much more interesting build would be a R/W control variant, using White's exile and reflection cards with Red Burn, Defector and Starke.
Humble Defector can only be activated on your turn, so no blocking shenanigans with it.
Which reflection cards?
This is a slightly more refined list. Recruiter was too slow and made for clunky hands. Defector is a really good card, homeward path not really.
4 Humble Defector
4 AEther Vial
4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Homeward Path
3 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
8 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Faithless Looting
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Pyroblast
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Forked Bolt
4 Bloodstained Mire
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Forked Bolt
SB: 4 Pyrostatic Pillar
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Pyrokinesis
SB: 3 Smash to Smithereens
What's the Faithless Looting for?
Stark/Path didn't work out?
Starke looked pretty cool, but that could be just how I feel about Mangara talking (also we could refer to him as Ned).
What about the potential to use Scroll Rack to dig in a bit more with the drawn cards you don't want? The fetches can shuffle them away for you.
Card filtering/search + grave filling for Mancers. It's cheap and in-color. Top could be an alternative with 8 fetches but not sure.
About Starke: i never played it a single time the few games i tried. It wasn't really tutorable because as a singleton, recruiter->stark->tap is 3 turns to remove a creature or an artifact, way too slow. Differently from Mangara it can't destroy lands so it doesn't really close games as well, and vial at 2 is probably stronger in this deck since defectors and eidolons are the most important cards.
The deck doesn't feel competitive but i'm liking it a lot because it play similarly to my favourite deck of all time: RDW mana denial version with tangle wires. Play small critters, burn away theirs, keep them mana strangled, win with that Jackal Pup or Monastery + burn away for reach.
I'm not convinced Humble Defector + Homeward path is better than simply playing Pyromancer btw. You have a slightly less shitty manabase, and Pyromancer don't need any combo to produce virtual card advantage. In fact now that i think about it, unless you play already some sort of tutor engine for it, i don't feel it's worth it, even if Defector is a good card by itself, more than i imagined.
This isn't enough.
Faithless Looting, as it's been discussed and proven time and time again, is not a proper substitution for your standard blue cantrips. You need it to actually enable something or else you're wasting time and wasting cards and wasting slots. Hell, you don't even have Anger in here. That kind of shell, fragile though it may be, I might be able to get behind. But Looting for the sake of Looting is a piss poor plan.
Why not both? Clearly Defector/Path goes into a control shell of some sort since it's not a combo and its not aggressive enough.
Going off your initial ideas (not YP or MM) but with a white splash:
"Draw Engine"
4 Humble Defector
3 Homeward Path
"Control Lands"
3 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
"Other Lands"
8 Fetch
6 Lands
"Control"
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 AEther Vial
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Mother of Runes
1 Forked Bolt
"SMF Shell"
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Jitte
1 Batterskull
(By running equipment you make the Defector somewhat more relevant as a creature when you don't have Path)
I guess - we can try to fit in MM or YP in there . . . but they work so much better in the blue cantrip shells.
But if you remove the "control lands" you might be able to add more burn and place YP or MM into the mix. . . .
You hear that? This deck is OVR. </deck>
Fer srsly now tho - I still think I'd rather cast Dangerous Wager than all of the cards mentioned (looting, humble D, whatever else. especially homeward path). Two cards right meow, and maybe like a land or two I don't care about in the bin to feed like a Lavamancer or a Deathrite or something. And Dangerous Wager ain't even very good, right - you have to be < 2 cards in hand to make it not terrible-awful. And I still feel like if I had to pick between Red draw spells I'd take the Wager. I'd cast it with Blood Scrivener in play.
That's the two card draw combo we deserve - Dangerous Wager, and Blood Scrivener. I play like Jund aggro, I overextend, I play Blood Scrivener and start drawing 2-3 cards or some dang and draw more burn and guys. You scoop because this matchup is lousy for you. I order a pizza and we talk about how we've been too busy to have hobbies lately because we just had babies and we work too much. You know, real talk.
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