I'm not sure where you'd find other pieces to make things worthwhile, but - in combination with the defector, Cerulean Wisps and Tidal Bore are comparable with Ancestral Recall and Gush respectively. Defector still seems like a card with potential in Jeskai Ascendancy decks.Originally Posted by TsumiBand
Yes, but Wisps and Bore are terrible cards without Defector. And even with Defector, you've got a good chance of drawing more Wisps and Bores instead of good cards.
I don't think you want to go combo with him. He's way too fragile to make a deck around him, but a 6-7 slots for a drawing engine? Imho it's the better proposition.
I think there's some potential - for example wisps isn't terrible in combination with cards that tap for U, but yeah, they're contextual at best.
Cerulean what-now? Gaah
I know I started by saying Blood Scrivener, but fuck.
Let us not forget how the stack actually works; you will not draw any cards from Humble Defector until its ability actually resolves, by which point you have to have figured out just what you're going to do with the little bugger. So anything that's going to like "draw into more untap effects" is going to be bad, until you can either take control of Defector again, or plop down a new one without summoning sickness. In fact, if you did regain control of it after it switched sides twice in a turn, is it sick again? I know it's been in play since your last upkeep but you didn't control it continuously. I think I will nees to check on that.
But in any case, the problem of drawing into untap spells still remains. They won't do anything cromulent until you regain your Defector, so they have to already be in-hand, which makes it clunky.
Obviously you draw into Homeward Path (that's why you're running 4), play it, then regain control of your Defector, THEN use the untap spells. C'mon now!
Summoning sickness language specifically states that you must control it continuously. And I hope we are all in agreement that you must be drawing into useful stuff. Don't bother with any of that other foolishness. The rest of the deck has to be business. Though I must admit that I would prefer something to find the land. You could Loot for it. But then I want to use the grave for something.
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Right, that's why I started thinking Jund but then I think there must surely be more advanced draw, especially when you start moving into Black. Though Jund provides a staple in Abrupt Decay which would be a fair oh-shit handle if you draw two off of HD and then start losing to it because you drew nothing relevant.
Like, that's one thing about this spell that seems real bad too - I know people are not used to this idea because the best card drawing is in Blue and is therefore abundant and littered with deck manipulation and so on, but - when you don't draw anything good, you just gave your opponent a dude. A small dude, to be sure, but you're giving your opponent a card and they aren't exactly obligated to return it (if you don't draw your Homeward Path or whatever). In that event, you're just better off casting Words of Wisdom or some shit - I use one card to get two cards, you get one card. Only it's Blue, so therefore has Awesome.
The untap trickery is just bound to bite you in the butt. And I get that people want to stack the effect but again, again -- here's what it'll look like -
- Activate Humble Defector
- Respond by untapping it with Cerulean Wisps I guess
- Activate HD again
- run out of tricks, draw 4 cards and HD bounces to the other side of the table
- If lucky, Homeward Path it back to your side. If unlucky, have grip of cards that do very little by themselves. In either event, you're probably waiting until next turn to actually do anything.
If decks are engines, then this is going to be roughly akin to popping the clutch every turn. You're gonna stall, a lot, and it's gonna be awkward, like "i can't believe i'm losing my virginity to an alien species" awkward.
The bottom line is, this is just a draw engine, nothing more.
A two card engine that can net +2 cards per turn, which, if not dealt with, will turn the game in your favor in short time.
I think a good shell for Humble Defector + Homeward Path would be some kind of Naya deck with Knight of the Reliquary to search out Path when you need it and maybe 1 or 2 Scryb Sprite for drawing 4 cards in one turn when you feel like it.
Possibly Naya Maverick or something.
It's not a strategy to go all in with bad cards like Cerulean Wisps or Crop Rotation etc, but it is a nice non-blue draw engine for those kind of decks.
...Punishing Naya?
But... If you get a Knight of the Reliquary out you are already in a good position.
Without haste this engine is just not good enough! So I thought damn Survival of the fittest is banned so you cant search anger and him and do tricks. But then I realized if I had a Survival out I wouldn't need to draw 2 cards... Same logic applies to Knight, why play a bunch of bad spells instead of just do normal Knight stuff!
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Sweet guys lets play a mono red deck that gets pooped by wasteland and creature removal. There are much better CA engines in every other color except red and white. Card advantage engines have to be really good to be played nowadays, hell Bob sees practically zero play :(.
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Path does not work with the Hunted's or any other effect that put tokens into play under someone else's control.
I think that's the point . . . this is a CA engine to be used in mono red and boros or maybe even in naya or mardu.
No one is saying this is replacing blue draw spells.
Someone should play it in a burn deck with Mass Hysteria.
3 Humble Defector
2 Perplexing Chimera
3 Homeward Path
4 Brainstorm
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Force of Will
1 Counterspell
3 Dig Through Time
4 Ponder
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Forked Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Young Pyromancer
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Baleful Strix
4 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
Sideboard:
2 Flusterstorm
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
1 Hydroblast
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pithing Needle
1 Forked Bolt
3 Thoughtseize
1 Sudden Demise
1 True-Name Nemesis
Played this list for fun in a small local tournament. Obviously Perplexing Chimera is bad, but making opponents read cards is always fun. He's quite good vs Combo as well (if you can survive long enough to play him), so I main decked him.
Went 2-1, losing to some aggro deck that dropped a large KotR w/ Mother of Runes that he resolved with Pyroblast through my FoW that finished me off with him at 4 life.
The "combo" of HD + HP was easy to assemble with DTT, and fit well into the shell of YP + cheap spells. I doubt it'll be a real "thing", but definitely took over a few games by itself.
Note: Humble Defector also has a weird interaction with Tabernacle of the Pendrall Vale we discovered -- judge ruled I can tap it and draw with Tabernacle trigger on stack and it will still die under opps. control. Opp. was tapped out so I'm left curious if they'd be able to pay and save him.
Land (21)
3x Ancient Tomb
4x Homeward Path
3x Island
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Volcanic Island
Enchantment (6)
3x Illusions of Grandeur
3x Puca's Mischief
Planeswalker (2)
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Instant (18)
4x Brainstorm
2x Curfew
4x Force of Will
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Stifle
Creature (10)
4x Humble Defector
2x Imperial Recruiter
2x Snapcaster Mage
2x Starke of Rath
Sorcery (3)
3x Donate
Sideboard (15)
2x Curfew
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Liquimetal Coating
2x Pithing Needle
2x Red Elemental Blast
1x Starke of Rath
4x Teferi's Response
1x Volcanic Fallout
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a bit more of a control/combo deck I've been thinking about. I'm going to try it out tonight at our weekly legacy.
Puca's mischief seems good with homeard path. You give them your creatures in exchange for their noncreature permanents then take back your creatures. It would be better if your creatures didn't have activated abilities, but oh well. Also good with illusions of grandeur. Stack the tiggers with puca's first then illusions cumulative upkeep. Resolve puca's to give them the illusions and then don't pay the cost.
Curfew seems really good as well.
Embargo could work as an alternative to Illusions of Grandeur. It fits a little better with the tap ability critters, and is probably a little more effective at buying you time to get mischief on line.
Glad you're testing it, but at the same time disappointed at the result. The hope of HD + HP was to have a draw engine outside blue. If it fits in blue then I think the next question is going to be what's the point? BS + Ponder + (Git) + DTT are already such a powerful engine that using them to assemble a draw engine instead of a combo win or other win con, seems kinda circuitous.
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