u/Brick_in_a_sock

I've recently been having the debate if a deck can be designed to play at any power level without either being underpowered or pubstomping.

Immediately the assumption both Bracket 5 (CDEH) due to its insane power level with the maximised efficiency (and meta) and Bracket 1 for its specificity and theme requiements couldn't me made to work, but could a deck comfortably sit within brackets 2,3 & 4?

Immediately with this scheme is that "game changers" wouldn't be able to be used in the application with bracket 2 decks, but would work in the higher brackets.

I encountered the concept in a discussion of stax decks being a possible way to play at multiple levels with [[High noon]] and similar [[Rule of law]] effects can only cast one spell a turn doesn't effect lower power decks as much as higher power ones as often the stereotype is higher power often use more efficient and cheaper cards to play multiple cards a turn. Where as lower power and battlecrusier style of decks play less and higher mana cards which isn't as effected by the rules of law.

Yes I do agree hard stax [[smoke stack]] and even some of the softer stax effects [[Umbilicus]], [[Bloodclock]], [[Grand Abolisher]] might be too much for the lower power decks but could there be a build that toes the line and works in multiple Brackets, possible acting as a Police for the more higher bracket decks or as a counter to people playing in brackets they shouldn't (ie pubstomping)

The Second concept would be to playing clones [[Sakashima the Imposter]] and the like BUT to only clone creatures your opponents play, if there is more powerful decks and cards in play you too are more powerful. But if you are playing lower power your copying weaker creatures and therefor the deck itself might be weaker? The major concern with this is often mana value disparity with clones often being cheaper than the big payoffs in other decks situations may emerge where the clone player is heavily favoured just by the extra mana they might have access to.

The Third concept revolves around the idea of playing your opponents cards [[Gonti Night minister]], [[Black cat cunning thief]] both steal from the top of opponents decks and if you play only these sort of cards within a deck again its tied to the power of the other decks.

The other thought within this vein would be theft effects from the field [[Bribery]] or [[threaten]] effects which take advantage of the cards other players have cast to the field. This definitely might not work correctly within the higher power bracket 4 and up due to the variation where there isn't as many creatures in a lot of decks depending on the meta you are in.

I have a similar deck in this vein with [[Brion Stoutarm]] theft and [[Fling]] deck while i do have a couple of creatures in my own deck to play and sacrifice the majority of the deck revolves around stealing opponents creatures, attacking and flinging them. Major disadvantage with this deck is playing against non-creature decks which definitely is a weakness with this style of deck.

What do we think is this concept viable? Does anyone have a deck that could fit these limitations?

This deck is my current brew and the one I'm seeking assistance with today.

My [[Volo Itinerant Scholar]] and [[Folk hero]] deck

Currently am cutting the last 20 cards or so to get it down to 100 but had the thought to ask if there is anything I **HAVE** to add to the deck and will need to trim down some more for.

Currently the scheme is to build it mostly as a creature deck hopefully with 90% of the nonlands being creatures which would leave me with 6.2 non-creatures so this might not be the most feasible but is a scheme of trying to maximise the possibility with the Journal.

The second scheme is to try to have most of the creatures trigger Folk hero this means they either need to be Wizards **OR** Humans but because of Volo and the Journal would like their other type to be something interesting.

Some of my favorite "Interesting" cards are [[Standard Bearer]] which is a Human Flagbearer which isn't the best card but I personally find interesting and [[Thakalos Dreamsower]] which is a Wizard Thalalos another interesting and weird creature type.

The other thing that I'm working with in this deck is trying to maximise the amount of draw that can be got with [[Folk Hero]] which is limited to once per turn, the solution to this was trying to include a large amount of flash creatures and creatures that allow non flash to be played at flash [[Highfae trickster]], [[Sally Sparrow]] and [[The Blue Sprit]]. [[Heliod the radiant dawn]] was also in the list but have currently cut it trying to get the card count down and it is a slower flash enabler.

Then the lot of flash creatures lots of which are the major parts of interaction in the deck, with counter spell creatures, taping creatures.

There is also a small package of Clones to hopefully snag some weird creature types from the opponents of [[Sakashima's Student]], [[Sakashima the Imposter]] and [[Sakashima of a thousand Faces]]

Apart from that the other collection of cards currently in the deck are utillity spells un-tapping both Volo and lands to give a little options.

Current win conditions are mostly combat and damage based [[Knowledge is power]] is the primary which can pump all the random creatures with the amount of draw. Apart from that is [[Ominous seas]], [[Watcher in the water]] which are payoffs for the drawing. Then there is [[Profts eidetic memory]], [[Nerd rage]], [[Lyla holographic assistant]] which can pump any of the other creatures or [[chasm skulker]] and [[toothy imaginary friend]] which pump themselves and hopefully give a different direction to attack from.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?