Workshop 224 - Merieke Ri Berit / Timmeh - CLOSED (EDH / Commander)

GENERAL:
Looked like the deck was lacking in ramp and draw so added some ramp and draw. The average MV of the deck sat at 3.5 which means it's a fairly mana hungry deck which in turn means that it needs some extra ramp in order to keep up. Draw is the basis of everything you do; in my personal opinion there isn't such a thing as "too much draw" so we added some draw cards as well. Land drops in a high-MV deck are super important so we added two extra lands, too.

The deck was a little bit all over the place with theft, control, blinks, graveyard matters, and cloning stuff. Pilot locked in on the theme: main theme is theft and subtheme is control, leaving clones, blinks and graveyard matters out. This helps to clean up the strategy and focus on doing one or two things really well. The problem with many strategies is that you're limited in how many cards you see. If there is a blink card but you don't see a card that pays off of it the blink card is essentially dead. If we consider deck building as a whole it's likely that one will see 15-25 cards throughout a game. As a rule of thumb if you have "seven of" a single type of a card you're guaranteed to see one, maybe two during a game. Our goal should be to maximise synergies so it's really important that we actually see the cards we want to. Hence focusing on a single plan (or a maximum of two) helps us create a more streamlined deck.

The deck has a "I win" button with Approach of the Second Sun for when we need to close the game.

ADDITIONS:
Since pilot wanted more control over the game we added more counterspells. Also added some extra synergy for Merieke in the form of untappers, ramp and draw to synergise. Each card like the Archivist synergises well with an untapper because you can draw multiple cards off of the tap-to-draw creature. Same goes with ramp: each untapper can untap rocks, lands and other mana sources so they act as slow ramp that can produce surprising amounts of mana. This is also why we added bounce lands to synergise with the newly added untappers as they produce even more mana than regular lands. In the same vein Gilded Lotus is a great card to add because it taps for so much mana. (Lotus Vale already existed in the deck.) We don't necessarily need an abundance of colourless mana so Scorched Ruins isn't an auto include. It is also expensive money wise. There is an argument to be made for Empowered Autogenerator as well because with untappers it escalates fairly quickly. Bounce lands will also help with the land drops.

We also filled a free slot with Dominate because it is an instant and often comes out of nowhere. It's perfect for stealing a utility dork but with enough mana (which the added ramp and untappers should help with) it can also steal big threats at instant speed to act as blockers or win conditions.

We added some pillowfort because the deck is vulnerable to attacks and especially go-wide strategies. Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, Collective Restraint, Sphere of Safety were the strongest candidates to be added to the deck.

Approach of the Second Sun was chosen as the "I win" button for when we can't steal enough good permanents to win with them. Narset's Reversal supplements that by being a pseudo-combo with it.

CUTS:
We cut all the nonessential cards that don't support the main strategies. Single cards: Rings of Brighthearth is expensive both in money and mana for what it does outside of infinite combos. Its exclusion is debatable but for now it remains cut. Archamage's Charm is too restrictive in its mana cost for a three-colour deck. Curse of Disturbance is a card that doesn't synergise with anything. Mystic Sanctuary is unlikely to enter untapped and we don't play that many important instants or sorceries anyway. Sublime Epiphany was chosen to be removed since it's an expensive counterspell that requires the pilot to hold up a lot of mana that may not be able to be utilised by the end of the rotation since the deck doesn't play too many instants besides other counterspells.