Build a better Saheeli Deck

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

Saheeli’s deck for her challenge is full of mythics. Somehow she gets 10 of these 12 (?) Cards:

Creatures (4):
Chief of the Foundry (11) U
Pia and Kiran Nalaar (15) R
Sphinx of the Final Word (19) M
Hangarback Walker (25) M

Spells (4):
Exert Influence (10) M
Foundry of the Consuls (11) U
Brutal Expulsion (12) M
Chandra’s Ignition (14) M

Supports (4):
Mirrorpool (4) M
Shivan Reef (6) C
Alhammarret’s Archive (12) M
Thopter Spy Network (13) M

So expensive!

So if you were going to build a better deck, how would you do it?

EDIT - Lets assume her restrictions are something like 5 / 4 / 9 to push the Supports then creatures priority theme.

As a reminder, her abilities at L60 are:
Put four 1/1 Thopters in play.
All your construct creatures get +5/+5.
Put the next 4 Supports into play.

2

What restrictions do you have?

Most of her cards are from Kaladesh. Given that restriction, and that only 10% of the cards from Origins were from Kaladesh, it’s not terrible.

You could do a lot better if you didn’t have restrictions like that.

Also, I’m not sure if she has mutliple options for decks, or a 12 card deck, but I’ve seen all these cards in her deck.

Exert Influence
Hangarback Walker
Brutal Expulsion
Shivan Reef
Chandra’s Ignition
Chief of the Foundry
Foundry of the Consuls
Thopter Spy Network
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Mirrorpool
Alhamaret’s Archive
Sphinx of the Final Word

3

RC
Cencer
8 other cards

4

Harness the Storm, and a bunch of stuff.

5

Agreed on this. Throw in Talent of the Telepath for fireworks.

Or else Avaricious Dragon + Day’s Undoing is another combo to build around.

edit
Actually to make Saheeli balanced and perhaps being in line with her theme, I’m predicting her deck restrictions will probably be along the lines of 5/3/10.

6

Chief
Alhammaret
Chandra ignition
Shivan reef
Sphinx

Can be easily removed.
Brutal expulsion is a candidate too but I like how it feels blue and red.

If you want to keep it focused around the thopter theme foundry and hangarback can be kept adding shrine of forsaken gods(it’s activate fuels both previous cards).
If you don’t can be removed.

Harness the storm and talent worth definitely considering.
There are definitely many ways to build her.
That’s one reason why I really want hwr(the other being she is also strong).

7

Well, here’s my thinking on it:

Exert Influence - a great card, though in decks which pretty reliably fill all 3 creature spots quickly, it’s obviously a no-go. Possible keep, could be replaced with Turn to Frog or some other removal spell.
Hangarback Walker - in Saheeli’s deck as it exists now, this is basically just a “win more” card, however if we want to keep the Thopter-theme core of the deck, we could keep it if we can build up some decent mana ramp. Possible keep.
Brutal Expulsion - It’s alright I guess, though not the best removal spell IMO. Possible keep.
Shivan Reef - Might as well keep it I guess. We’ll have to add some other mana-gaining supports, of course.
Chandra’s Ignition - Meh. Doesn’t help vs. Runaway carriage OR Gaea’s Revenge, the two big hexproof threats out there. Lose.
Chief of the Foundry - This guy does nothing for this deck except “be a construct”. Lose.
Foundry of the Consuls - You could pay 11 mana to do this, OR you could pay a trivial amount of loyalty instead. Lose.
Thopter Spy Network - This, this is the core of the deck right here. A great card and it works great with all 3 of Saheeli’s abilities. Keep.
Pia and Kiran Nalaar - In some decks, a great card. Here, unimpressive at best and potentially counterproductive if you blow up too many of your own supports. Lose.
Mirrorpool - Okay, Mirrorpool is an amazing card. It is the mythic I want most out of all the cards in this game right now. But in this deck, it is disproportionately likely to get you an additional 1/1 thopter. The other creatures in your deck are there for their abilities, not their size, and we’re not actually running many spells that you would just want to chain off. Thopter Spy Network wants supports that will stick around, anyhow. Can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but Lose.
Alhamaret’s Archive - Hmm, we don’t ever gain life with this deck and we don’t really have trouble with card draw. I’d rather have almost any other support. Lose.
Sphinx of the Final Word - Hexproof is so, so good. And our deck strategy is fundamentally about building up a gigantic stack of thopters, that giant stack is vulnerable to spot removal, or worse yet, having it get stolen. Plus I like this guy, I run him in almost every blue deck. Keep.

That gives us a deck of:

  1. Thopter Spy Network
  2. Sphinx of the Final Word
  3. Shivan Reef

as well as possibly:
Hangarback Walker
some spot removal spells (Exert Influence, Brutal Expulsion, and/or some other stuff)

and at least 4 empty slots. We need: more supports to make sure Spy Network is firing, and mana gain like whoa. Lastly we need some ways of dealing with hexproof baddies (especially carriage).
Obvious includes: Drownyard Temple, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods. With these two we can probably run Hangarback and not feel foolish for doing so. True-Faith censer is both a cheap support to benefit Thopter Spy Network, and a common way of dealing with yonder carriage. Giving your giant stack of thopters vigilance will deal with a lot of other things, too.

So now our deck is:

  1. Thopter Spy Network
  2. Sphinx of the Final Word
  3. Shivan Reef
  4. Drownyard Temple
  5. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
  6. Hangarback Walker
  7. True-Faith Censer

5 supports, which might even be more than we’re allowed to run (in which case, drop Shivan Reef, duh), 2 creatures, 0 spells. We’ll assume we’re maxed on supports (and in any case, you may want to make sure her 3rd ability is likely to pull a Spy Network if you’re not drawing it), and that we should add in some spells but not too many, as she doesn’t seem like a spell-heavy PW judging from the deck we started with.

We can leave in both our spot removal spells and still have 1 card left over just for fun. My personal pick here is going to be Barrage Tyrant, because it’ll either throw a Hangarback at our opponent, giving us 8 more thopters on demand, or it’ll throw a fat stack of thopters at them, which is probably GG right there. Obviously you could run Drowner of Hope instead and, combined with Spy Network, we’ll lock down all our opponents creatures forever, but Drowner is broken and playing it in this deck would make me feel like a jerk, whereas using a Barrage Tyrant to throw a huge thopter stack just makes me giggle maniacally instead. It’s all about priorities, ya know?

8

@stormcrow
I feel that Sphinx is too slow but I see a point in your logic so it’s viable.

You are missing a point on foundry.
You can use sahleeri first skill AND foundry and it will stack.
Not an efficient way to get 4/4 worth of stats but not “that” bad.
If you run shrine it can also get discounted.

Barrage tyrant. I think you did not read peoperly(or don’t remember well) the effect.
It sacrifices first colorless creature to deal damage to first opponent creature.
It cannot deal damage to the opponent.
So at best its activation will be as useful as fleshbag marauder.

9

Ahh, you’re right, I misremembered how Barrage Tyrant worked. Sometimes I just assume cards will be closer to their paper Magic versions than they are. Alright, scratch that, maybe Whirler Rogue or something instead.

10

I agree with most of the ideas thrown out here, specially the censer because they know RC is causing trouble, and everyone and their grandmother are running it. It even fits the deck’s theme…

I’d also speak in favor of Chandra’s ignition. Given that Saheeli’s deck is kinda slow, ally decks can get out of hand quickly if left unchecked. I’m finding many lately.

Brutal expulsion is kinda meh, given blue’s card pool. It will only be good in red decks, if at all…

11

Seeing as her First Ability creates Thopter tokens, it makes sense to build around Thopters as a deck theme.

Thopter cards:

As you can see, they are all quite expensive to cast, though Saheeli’s last ability will offset that somewhat for supports in mid-to-late game only. Without a cheap way to recursively cast the creatures to benefit from the Thopter creations, though Roil Spout + Harness the Storm does come to mind its not particularly a cheap solution, I don’t feel that the Articifer Creatures are worth including.

That leaves Foundry, Hangarback, and TSN as the core of a deck. Current deck structure: 1/1/1 (3 of 10 slots used)

As a Support heavy caster, lets look at some options. Colourless cards to consider include Drownyard Temple and Shrine of the Forsaken Gods as both provide 3 mana at the beginning of a turn. Good start. Sanctum of Ugin is a very cheap tutor for Hangarback Walker, so lets consider it at the moment. Shivan Reef may also be included, though we are getting a lot of colourless mana, so maybe it won’t be necessary. True Faith Censer is an answer to the threat of Runaway Carriage, but we’ll see what other options are also out there. Blue Supports either draw cards, drain mana, or disable creatures. Red Supports do a lot direct damage mostly, but Molten Nursery looks interesting with our goal of summoning colourless Thopters. Lets add that for sure. Harness the Storm might work if we had a lot of cheap spells, but our spells probably won’t receive the full benefit of this card.

I’m picking these supports: Drownyard Temple, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, True Faith Censer, Molten Nursery. Sanctum won’t give the spell it fetches any mana like Talent of the Telepath will, and Shivan Reef isn’t as necessary with the other mana supports. Current deck structure: 1/1/5 (7 of 10 slots used).

With only 3 spots left to divide between creatures and spells, Talent of the Telepath will take one of those spots as a net mana gain card to fetch the next best available card, leaving us with only 2 spots.

Exert Influence could help up our creature count, Chandra’s Ignition is an untargeted damage wave, and Uncaged Fury will double the size of our Thopter stack. Haunted Cloak and Helm of the Gods are also available. As a Construct Creature, Runaway Carriage is also a natural fit for Saheeli as it will bebuffed by her Second Ability, regardless of whatever adjustments are made to it in the future. Olivia, Mobilized for War could be “interesting” too (read: CRAZY) but I don’t know if the deck can handle two super expensive Mythics. Drowner of Hope is often put with TSN, but see previous comment re expensive Mythics.

Given all of that, our last two spots will go to Runaway Carriage as our second creature, and Uncaged Fury to keep our casting costs down and double our Thopter Stack for a turn.

So here’s my deck:

Creatures (2):
Runaway Carriage
Hangarback Walker

Spells (3):
Talent of the Telepath
Uncaged Fury
Foundry of the Consuls

Supports (5):
True Faith Censer
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
Molten Nursery
Drownyard Temple
Thopter Spy Network

Thoughts? Comments?

12

I’d add ‘Bring to Might’ to help witht eh casting costs of some of the mythics.

13

It’s bring to light.
It is hard to make good use of it.
Only chances are:

  • deck average cost being fairly high(but then if you do not draw bring to light how are you supposed to play cards?)
  • you have ways to put a card on topo of your library or know which is the next card on top of the library. Talent of the telepath is a way, there is also a colorless creature that puts a colorless on top i think(but if that creature and hangarback are the only two you still would have something like 50% chance of getting hargarback. You could get another copy of that creature).
  • dont know if there are others(putting your own creture from field top with spell does not make sense usually. If opponent is the one that does it you will draw it unless your hand is full. That is another(very rare) case where you can guarantee it gets something valuable.

In the past the chance to look at top cards in paper magic has been used many times.
Maybe in future we will get more in this game so it could become viable.

TLDR: bring to light is too hard to put to good use at the moment in basically any deck.
In future this could change.

14

It’s worth is for the chance to get a T1 hangerback. Sphinx becomes a lot more viable too.

15

I see hangerback as a “win more” cards. I’d rather have the sphinx to secure the endless stream of thopters from her first ability.

Focusing too much on supports to take advantage of her third ability is s mistake, imo, as I found I had most supports in play by the time I could use it so it is a very expensive “reinforce”.

Drownyard temple is enough to keep triggering network, I’d use talent pf the telepath and another card filtering spell to fetch either

16

I have Saheeli and have seen some success with this:

Support:
Part the Waterveil
Molten Nursery
Shivan Reef
Tamiyo’s Journal

Creature:
Tower Geist
Rattlechains
Statled Awake

Spell:
Avacyn’s Judgement
Rush of Ice
Pore over the pages

Doesn’t take advantage of the 2nd ability very well. It can get going pretty good with the spirit combo and Tower Geist is nice for a choice and draws. I don’t see much benefit from Waterveil very often, but the 12 damage is nice when matching 5 or more gems.

Any thoughts?