Night Fall Chalice

EDIT!

Hey guys its been a while and I wanted to update those who were interested on the new and improved decklist so far! This list may end up evolving into a chalice-less list, but so far I like the card so much its going to be hard for me to part with. I let you guys know how this list ends up in ranked.

~Main Deck Inclusions~ EDIT

New Inclusions:

+ 1 Eye of Winter: I really want to try this card out in the deck and I think one is just fine. I feel like having more than 1 is way too many and the effect is nice to have as a way to get around big guys. At this point we still have a really bothersome time with Mr Big Daddy Mino so a kill spell might end up being better.

+1 Feln Cauldron: This card fills a similar role as Noctural Observer, but since we won't always be getting nightfall off this provides us a better late game value for cycling lands or cycling unneeded cards.

+3 Noctural Observer: Nightfall, land cycling, good stands for 3 mana and a Chalice target. Perfect

+4 Lunar Magus: Nightfall, Life Gain, great stats for 3 mana and another good Chalice target. Even better

+1 Lumen Reclaimer: Makes it impossible for Encroaching Darkness to kill us. Ill be adding another shortly.

+1 Encroaching Darkness: I've killed off quite a few people with this card. It might seem silly to allow your opponent to draw an extra card by the time this gets into play... it's totally not by this point Darkness becomes a ticking time bomb of doom for them.

+1 Azindre's Gift: A lot of decks seem to hold onto their cards when playing against control and of course other control decks are going to try and win the value race. Gift is our nope to either of these ideas and once Darkness comes down Gift limits their options of trying to hold off, build up a hand and come back.

+2 Celestial Omen: An obvious choice since I was planning on running 2 Darkness and 2 Gift. I mean.. why run 2 of those cards when I can run 2 omen and have additional options at 6 mana.

+1 Crest of Wisdom: Ill be adding another in fairly soon.


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3 Seek Power: For color fixing mainly.

-4 Amber Acolyte: Amber Acolyte... has felt very slow in a lot of my games. It seems to work fine in the traditional Chalice build, but I feel like I don't really need it when I have it in my opener and late game it just feels pretty meh.

-3 Blistering Wasp: We have better replacements for this card at this point and even though its a good chalice target it doesnt net much value early game or late game like our other cards can.

4 Temple Scribe: Still a really good 4 of in a deck where you want thinning, some life gain and a blocker/chalice target. All in all a good overall card to keep.

4 Banish: I've highly enjoyed running 4 of these babies because Dark Chalice has been a good mach up for me against standard Chalice and 4 Banish can really ensure you always have a chalice and they don't, which is really nice. The card also does fine work against mid range, aggro and is okay against minotaurs and other creature synergistic based decks.

-4 Feln Bloodcaster: I rarely ever got the ultimate off of this card. Already nocturnal observer feels better early game even for lower defense and the constant card cycling is very good.

-2 Plague: Don't need it anymore with my other 2 Harbingers. If you want to make the deck a little easier to build you can run 4 of these over Harbinger as the deck still has other sources of life gain, however Harbinger can be the winning difference against decks like Queen and Skycrag.

4 Wisdom of the Elders: This is a solid cheap card to include 4 of. With this draw effect it helps you get the lands you need early on and later in the game give you a cheap way to draw into answers. I haven't found any reason to get ride of Elders at this point.

-1 Archive Curator: This is another good blocker in the early game that you can buff with chalice. I was running three, but there aren't too many decks out there where we need to have the silence readily available on turn 4. Curator is still very valuable against Minotaurs and GW/R bigstuff.

Crystalline Chalice: This is the bread and butter of your deck that you want and need 4 of. This card turns all your late game small drop creatures into more gas and decent blockers/attackers. For it's low mana cost and ability cost chalice still proves to be a very challenging card to deal with when unanswered. At this point Ill still be running 4. I don't think the color combination can support a low creature count with what control options we have.

-3 Sandstorm Titan: Even though I don't have Rindra, The Duskblade Sandstorm Titan has been pretty abysmal against any deck running Green or Black... which is a lot of decks. He just seems too vanilla for this deck and there isn't exactly a plethora of flying based decks out there.

4 Withering Witch: Since our color combination prevents us from running Harsh Rule and our deck is still primary a control one we need viable options for clearing a board when needed. This deck is a gas guzzling engine and we won't have very many problems drawing a Harbinger or Plague to combo into this insanely power equalizer. Since a lot of our creatures naturally have lower stats this card turns bad trades into insane value.

+2 Black-Sky Harbinger: This lovely 6 drop is our preferred follow up to Withering Witch on turn 6. Since the Harbinger and Witch have a perfect curve play, if you can get this two card combo off your board state will be ahead and your life total will too!

-1 Mystic Ascendant: I wouldn't really run this card at all in the deck. I hardly ever drew him and when I did... by the time I got him in play I pretty much already won anyways.

-1 Channel the Tempest: I think 3 is just the right amount to run in this deck. 4 always feels like too many and we don't need this card to actually go face with. Since the main combo is Encroaching Darkness + Azindel's Gift + Lumen Reclaimer... albeit a slow one, it may be better to consider running some type of counter spell to make sure other control decks cant shoot us in the face with their Channel the Tempests.

I won't really go into detail on the Sigils. I think 3-4 of each basic is sort of necessary with the land searching the deck runs. 4 Primal seems to be just fine with Channel as well. I'd default to saying you will probably want at least 2 of each Crest since we don't get too much value from having 4 of each seat.

~Sideboard~ UPDATE

Potential Channel Control Deck Stopper:

Unseal: This could be a good 1-4 of inclusion. The spell negation is always great! The curse negation we may want as the new set unfolds as there are a lot of more curses showing play and it can stop us from getting Gifted in a mirror match.

Replacements:

Deadly Confrontation: Is probably going to end up replacing Channel the Tempest. We don't get card draw, but the extra 2 mana to tap one of our unseen, which we do run a few... gives us a good chance late game to have a literal 2 for 1 in our hand as needed. It's also much quicker to fire off against Big Daddy Mino and he is a pretty big problem for the deck.

Rindra, The Duskblade: This is our replacement for Sandstorm Titan. the nightfall synergies are great, so we have something to gain us our life back if needed and the stats are also good for 4 mana so it does a good overall job of being a betterish Sandstorm Titan for what we want to deck to accomplish. Sandstorm was Abysmal so I'm hoping Rindra will be a bit better since we at least get the nightfall trigger if he does get targeted by some of the many popular kill spells decks are running that will be pointed at him.

Alu, Death Dreamer: This card is just good value with Nightfall, is another flyer/good blocker, good chalice target and we get synergy with Gift and Encroaching Darkness. I'm still thinking of running 2 of her.