Hi all, 

Just a reminder with the recent rank reset, this deck can get you to Plat w/ a positive win rate!

Firstly - do not spend Rare/Mythic wildcards on it unless you like D&T in Historic as rotation will impact this deck!  I have a positive win rate in Gold Ranked so is feasible, and did get me to Platinum.  Appropriate alternatives can be found in the Maybeboard with some suggestions as follows:

• Gust of Wind & Brazen Borrower are fairly interchangeable;
• Raugrin Triome & Gates of Istfell are fairly interchangeable;
• Watcher of the Spheres is an okay replacement for Skycat Sovereign as it fits on curve nicely and reduces risk of mana screw - but ultimately the activated is better as we hope to lock our opponents out
• You Find the Villains' Lair and Hypnotic Sprite have no anologs but both add more control elements if you're lacking Tax pieces (though then it might end up in a more Control build rather than Death & Taxes)
• The finishers can include Dream Trawler and/or Legion Angel as well as different split of Iymrith, Desert Doom & Starnheim Unleashed depending on your collection.
• I really want to try Guardian of Faith but alas the wildcards are lacking for me

Secondly - the land base was limited by what I have.  I've found that it's a reasonably forgiving list with low colour intesity so doesn't need a ton of two colour lands (read: I haven't resorted to Tranquil Cove yet).  

Thirdly - for transparency, I'm not running the following due to a lack of wildcards:

• Cave of the Frost Dragon

And am running reduced numbers of:

• 1x Skycat Sovereign (as opposed to 4x)

Instead I'm running:

• 2x Watcher of the Spheres
• 1x Doomskar
• An additional basic land.

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Game Plan

Control / Tempo the early game and restrict the opponents actions via classic taxing and stax effects backed up by bounce spells and counter spells.

Always land your tax and stax effects first where practical - (so typically try to get Strict Proctor out over Skycat Sovereign for example)

The MVP will typically be Archon of Emeria coupled with tax, bounce and counter effects.  

The deck has the following ways of breaking parity under an Archon of Emeria:

• Instant / flash speed:
  • Bouncing with Brazen Borrower / Gust of Wind (which is brutal as they don't get to recast it w/ Emeria out)
  • Countering with Lofty Denial / You Find the Villains' Lair / Hypnotic Sprite (which can also be brutal due to your opponent being unable to follow it up)
• Activated abilities:
  • Fortelling Starnheim Unleashed
  • Activating Skycat Sovereign or Cave of the Frost Dragon to add to the board
  • Land based card advantage Gates of Istfell / Raugrin Triome (which can both be activated at Instant / flash speed)

Deck wants to close the game with a control finisher otherwise you can end up in durdle town (no Rally of Wings in Standard anymore).  I've opted for 4 finishers in the form of 3x Iymrith, Desert Doom & 1x Starnheim Unleashed, 5 if you include Emeria's Call.  I think that any number of finishers from 3 to 5 seem appropriate.  I did drop one Dream Trawler for one Iymrith, Desert Doom, the difference between 5 MV and 6 MV is huge in this list.  That said I've cast Emeria's Call three times now, and I did cast Dream Trawler a couple of times before cutting it, and in some situations would have preferred the conditional Hexproof over the conditional Ward.  I'm unable to test Legion Angel due to wildcard constraints.  

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Lands

Land count is recommended to be 26 (CMC of 3.08), and I'm running 23, here's why:

In my analysis for the mana base I've assumed that:

• Emeria's Call is a Land not a 7 MV card
• Winged Words also is being counted as a 3 MV card, whereas in the final analysis I've taken it as a 2 MV card
• Similarly I've counted Brazen Borrower as both a 2 MV card and a 3 MV card

This gives an average CMC of 2.79 which is at the lower end of the recommended CMC for a 25 land, 60 card deck.  As 24 lands' cut off is 2.72, I'm only being a little bit greedy!

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Changes:

I've cut Strict Proctor / Hushbringer as ETBs aren't important in the current meta - this opened the way for a bit of experimentation with ETBs in our list.  As such I've added Skyclave Apparition & Watcher of the Spheres (back in), cutting the You Find the Villains' Lair and Hypnotic Sprite I was running due to a lack of Rare Wildcards.  I've experimented with (and then cut) Resplendent Marshal (not enough similar creature types) & Glorious Protector (too expensive/slow).  

I've also added one Doomskar because it's the best boardwipe for our deck (rebuilding after spending 3 mana is quite possible), but this is only in my 'I don't have enough wildcards' list as I'm not sure that it's better than anything else I'd want to run.  

As discussed in 'closing the game' section, I've cut one Dream Trawler for one Iymrith, Desert Doom.  

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Notes on Hushbringer / Strict Proctor:

The balance between Hushbringer / Strict Proctor vs ETB effects that you want is hard to get right.  From playing cards like Skyclave Apparition alongside Strict Proctor in other D&T lists, I've found that usually your opponent will try to remove them and have only sometimes been screwed by it (definitely outweighing the benefit of having that effect).