Why not board in Infest for those pesky mages against Gro-a-Tog? They’d just name Swords anyway and you have a possibility of cleaning up some Dryads too if you get them early enough. They are kind of mana intensive against a counter deck but they’ll have to have it and even possibly 2f1 them selves. Idk maybe this doesn’t make sense. Just a thought.
Awesome! Hopefully it works out as well for you as it has been working out for me! I'm really excited about this deck, and I love that it's extremely budget friendly!
This deck wins by amassing mana superiority, which turns into card superiority. It makes sense that a deck with Winter Orb and Armageddon could be problematic, so I'm not super surprised about it.
I think adding utility lands is a really significant cost. The mana base of this deck is built to try to be able to cast your spells as reliably as possible. I think if I were to add utility lands I'd probably add Dust Bowl #3 to the main deck before anything else, and if I did I would play them as extra lands, not replacing lands currently there.
Enemy colors' mana bases suck, and are very often quite poorly built in Premodern (see regular DeadGuy Ale, as the most blatant example). This deck was built specifically to have good mana and be able to cast its powerful spells reliably. Factory detracts from the deck much more than it adds (I'd main deck the 3rd and 4th Dust Bowl before playing the first copy of Factory, for example).
The difference between 2 and 3 mana is quite significant, but I think it could certainly be worth testing! Especially against a deck like Enchantress it could be a legitimate way to slow them down enough for us to be able to take over. Awesome suggestion!
I think Specter is straight up unplayable in the format. Arena is good, but this deck manages to entirely blank Disenchant effects. Also being able to get a bunch of cards immediately whenever you need to refuel with Skeletal Scrying (just like Landstill plays FoF, for example) is extremely strong. You also have complete control over how much life you pay, which is key.