[Standard] My First Deck, Help me out?

[Snolem]

https://deckstats.net/decks/18889/109425-my-first-deck <----Opinions woluld be greatly appreciated,

Well, I'm aiming for control, counter, with a tad of land fetching. Blue/White/Green. Anyone want to help me out?  I have an Aetherling I can use, I'm almost tempted to remove the elspeth's, add another Jace and Thasa for the scry/unblockable. The deck revolves around three mana, Should I toss in some 2mana creature counters? I'm also trying to stay at 60 Cards..

[Simbala]

Well, I'll give what advice I can, but you likely won't be happy with it.

First off, take out the green in this deck. Mana Bloom isn't good enough to add in a whole nother color just for that one card - think about it, all it does is give you (potentially) one extra mana each turn. If you had more green ramp that would start to make a difference but by itself it's insignificant.

Of course, if you really do want green to stay in this deck, you can do that - but what you need then is more green mana sources, and more things to spend green mana on. I suggest going down to two colors - two color decks run a lot easier then three colors, and considering it's standard, you want a deck that runs smooth as butter. Also considering it's your first deck - you're gonna save yourself a lot of headache by making this blue/white.

If you want this to be tournament legal, you MUST remove absorb. This card is not standard legal - not even modern legal. Kinda threw me off cause every other card you have here is in standard except this one haha.

You've got a good amount of instant-speed counter spells. A good replacement for absorb that pairs nice with negate would be essence scatter.

with banishing lights and detention spheres in this deck, banisher priest becomes a bit redundant. Also keep in mind creatures are more easily killed then enchantments (as a rule of thumb) - so you risk losing your creature while also giving them back their stuff - so that card can go.

You dont seem to have enough sorceries to justify running Pull from the Deep. I can envision you using that card and only ever pulling an instant out of your graveyard for lack of sorceries. I'd say that can go too.

Let's talk medomai the ageless, resolute archangel, and sphinx's revelation. These are all very expensive, mana wise - you'd be better off running less copies of those and using the freed up space to put in some 1 or 2 drop creatures. You don't need to play rush - this is clearly not a rush deck. But there are players who make the entire game happen for the in the first 3 turns - before you even have a chance to get your mana set up. Having some 1 and 2 drop creatures will help you establish some early-game presence and keep you from getting facerolled in the beginning of the game.

But aside from those mana issues, think about those three cards themselves. Lets say you get to six mana easily, and drop medomai the ageless. Then cast sphinx's revelation and draw two more Medomai's. The legend rule makes those extra medomai's worthless. not to mention he's almost the most expensive card in the deck. You should expect to only ever play one of him in any given game, so personally I'd only run one of him. If you really want to see him crop up more often then by all means run 2 - 3 would be too much as is, and 4 is just ridiculous.

Sphinx's revelation is a good card to have multiples of, but I'd likely drop that down to just 3 copies. You want to make x = 3 or more in order to make this card frightening, so it's kind of like a six drop. (not to say don't cast it as x=1, do that when you need to, but set your sights on x=3 or more)

Resolute archangel is great - if you're losing. But you don't wanna be losing right? and 7 mana for an effect that can't push you above your life total? There are better life-gain effects for a similar or lesser cost out there in white. I'd definitely only run one of those.


So so far I've told you to cut a lot of cards but what can we put in to help the deck flow better?
I don't like to tell people specifically what cards to use as replacements if I can help it - half the fun of this game is looking through cards that have similar effects to find the right one for your deck - but I'll give you some ideas of what to look for.

Definitely throw one or two more thassas in there. Screw the legendary rule, you want to see thassa as often as possible for the scry and unblockable effects. That said, look for creatures that like being unblockable - think creatures like medomai, that have effects that trigger when they deal damage. One or two more effect like that will give your deck an aggressive edge while holding onto the defensive counter play.

Elspeth could stay - or go. She kinda helps any white deck out, but doesn't really synergize here. Keep it at just two Jace's, that's a perfect amount of him.

As I said before, cheap casting creatures, but find some that help your deck because they are out there. Any cheap guy that could potentially counter a spell, or gives you a repeating effect like life gain or mill, or anything that has the power to stick around and bolster your defenses. In fact, something with Defender wouldn't be bad at all.

Azor's Elocutors. Run one or two of him FOR SURE.

Not sure what else I can offer. Good luck with the deck man!!

[Snolem]

  Thanks for the response, I actually Started with blue/white and the deck is just missing something. I tend to get mana screwed a lot and when I begin to add more I overflow. My blue/white was mainly control. My goal "and still is, to not allow someone to have jack. already removed some of the fetch lands cause I found Evolving Wilds to aim towards thinning the deck out. I originally thought "If I add green, I can just fetch mana I need to play the larger creatures with op abilities while the rest of the deck is removal. Thanks for the help and im taking some of your advice and removing green.

  I was browsing a deck builder and I saw absorb was labeled incorrectly after you mentioned it.