[[Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.]] got sucked into the Magic universe and now has no Heroes to call. What does he do? He attempts to make the ones he has access to into Heroes.

The basic idea of this deck is using Nick Furys ability to get Heroes and very importantly TRANSFORM them, but without having any actual Heroes in the deck.

So what do we need for the gameplan to work:

• A way to make creature cards in the deck into Heroes.
  • [[Arcane Adaptation]], [[Conspiracy]], [[Leyline of Transformation]], [[Maskwood Nexus]] solves that for us.
  • These are only 4 cards that are necessary for the deck to function properly, so a couple tutors for enchantments/artifacts should be included.
• Lots of creatures we want to cheat in with the commander and transform, if they have a cool ETB effect on the front side, this will trigger as well when we recruit it with Fury.
  • [[Etali, Primal Conqueror]], [[Archangel Avacyn]], [[Nicol Bolas, the Ravager]] and others are good examples of creatures with ETBs and powerful flips
  • [[Sheoldred]] and the other saga Praetors are also excellent.
  • A bunch of Final Fantasy and Avatar cards are really good here as well.
• Some select Equipment to round out what we can flip into:
  • [[Elbrus, the Binding Blade]] and [[Dowsing Dagger]] come to mind
• Activating Fury once is cool, but we want ways to reset him.
• And of course the veggies of ramp, draw and interaction. The latter two are going to be heavily supported by the stuff we flip into.

Here is a rough draft that needs a lot of cuts still.

Edit:I suggest changing to "Categories (multiple)"

Tell me what you think of this idea and any suggestions you might have.

This year I have expanded my game tracking and would like to share some results after 400 games with my personal tracking sheet.

I have gone away from caring about or even looking at the win rates of my decks much. People get very hung up on that statistic and I frankly don't care as much. As long as I have fun in the game, winning is just a bonus. I have the data though and I do have a higher win rate with my decks than the 25% expected value. While I do not track games with borrowed decks or unmodified precons in this sheet, I also have a higher win rate with those. Having a lot of practice and being pretty invested in the game just makes you more likely to win, that's all.

The mismatch in Bracket 2 games played and games played with my Bracket 2 decks is not a mistake. If I realize that the Bracket 3 game will be rather low power during the pre-game talk I often go for one of my Bracket 2 decks.

What I am tracking:

1. Which deck I played
2. Number of players
3. Location
4. Opponents commanders
5. Turn order
6. Number of mulligans I took
7. First land drop I missed (if any)
8. Who won
9. Winning turn (cutoff at 10. Anything higher was hard to track before Convoke)
10. Win condition
11. How much I enjoyed the game (1-5)
12. How my deck performed (1-5)
13. Notes
14. Game time in minutes (started tracking after the first 100 or so games)

Short introduction to my decks:

Bracket 4:

• Najeela: Fully on the Najeela plan, no alternative win cons
• Vadrik: Semi-budget spellslinger combo

Bracket 3:

• Esika (front side, not the Bridge): Only legendary non-lands
• Eleven + Will: Copying haymaker creatures and triggers
• Zurgo: Aggro tokens with a splash of aristocrats
• Vial Smasher + Thrasios: 4c Vial Smasher cost reductions

Bracket 2:

• Garth: Combat manipulation, gates without Maze's End
• Omnath (Keruga companion): Only legendary non-lands, cards that didn't make the cut in Esika

Elaboration on the most common "Notes":

• "Very Close Game": Pretty simple, a game where at least one losing player was winning on their next turn or the winning player was very close to losing.
• "Not Enough Interaction": Someone ran away with the game and no more than one piece of interaction (if any) was used to stop them over multiple turns.
• "Opponent Bad Threat Assessment": Opponents interacted with or went for the wrong person, resulting in another players win.
• "Early Scoop": Someone left the game early, no matter the reason (salt or a phone call or anything else).
• "My Misplay": A game where I lost due to my own misplay (and I realized it). There are probably just as many games where I did not realize that I misplayed.
• "Bracket Mismatch": A deck at the table was actually a Bracket higher. Something like a game where someone won or got into a winning position 2+ turns earlier than the Brackets suggest. If the deck lost in the end it was because they misplayed their combo or because a metric ton of interaction was thrown their way in a short time frame.
• "Early win": A game where the game was over a turn earlier than the Bracket suggests, but it does not feel like a Bracket mismatch. Either there was a lot of damage going out from all sides, a group hug player was accelerating the game or simply a lucky draw in most cases.

Some thoughts I had looking at the data:

Deck performance and win rates:

• While all of my decks perform well, I am constantly working on them, iterating and updating them with new cards.
• How well the deck performs on average is only a mild indicator of the decks win rate. Garth for instance has the highest win rate of my decks, while being the third last in average performance.

Correlations:

• My wins are moderately correlated to my enjoyment of the game itself and how well my deck performed. It's not surprising, but good to confirm.
• The deck price is negatively correlated to the decks win rate. This is heavily influenced by Najeela being by far my most expensive deck while also having the lowest win rate.
• There is no correlation between the EDHRec Rank of the commander and the corresponding win rate for me.
• The longer a game goes, the more I enjoy it.

Notes:

• I like that the most common note is "Very Close Game" with over a third of all games.
• The frequency of missing interaction is bothering me. I don't like winning because my opponents didn't do anything to stop me and I don't like losing in the same way. However, I don't see a way for me to change that. I already run a decent amount of interaction, but I can't force my opponents to also do so.
• The number of early scoops is annoying, but likely a byproduct of playing mostly online.
• The "My Misplay" note could be misleading. I make the notes right after a game, but often I realize I could have played it differently for a win a little later. So I estimate that the number of games that should rightfully fall in this category is actually double.

Game Balance:

• Bracket 4 having less close games than the other Brackets might be a byproduct of that Bracket being much more explosive. I am much less likely to know someone is close to a win if that win could be played completely from hand.
• Bracket 2 having the lowest "Missing Interaction" percentage surprised me at first, since I had the feeling that in Bracket 2 many players are skipping interaction in deckbuilding. However, there is also much more time to find and deploy that interaction in Bracket 2.
• Bracket mismatches often lead to non-games where it feels like I just wasted my time. The frequency of Bracket mismatches in Bracket 2 is bothering me the most. 14% of games is a lot. Granted, in many cases it is not intentional. Sometimes it's players trying out a deck for the first time and then realizing it is way faster than they thought. Sometimes it's players that don't understand the turn count expectations in Brackets. But there are also "slightly" upgraded versions of very strong precons where the 10-20 worst cards have been replaced by the best cards for the deck in Bracket 2. And there are also people playing a 1 card combo with their commander on turn 5 claiming that only having two tutors for the combo piece makes it OK in Bracket 3.

Missed land drops:

• I am pretty happy with the "missed land drop" stats. A few years ago I increased the average land count in my decks and was wondering if that actually improved the land drops. Glad I now have data to support that claim. No missed land drops in 80% of games and missed land drops only in the late game in 8% of games is good enough for me.

Winning player:

• While some people have reported that the win rate is only marginally impacted by seating in lower Brackets, my data does not agree. I expected that to normalize somewhat with more games played, but it is still very skewed. The first two in turn order have a 50% higher chance to win than the last two.

Opponent commanders:

• I love the fact that I played against over 600 different commanders in just 400 games.
• Ashling, Cloud and Hearthhull being the most common opponents is no big surprise. They are very strong commanders and headed a recent precon.

Game Length:

• Because I cut off tracking turns after 10, the data is somewhat squished at Brackets 2 and 3. The effect is not too impactful, since games rarely go for a lot more than 10 turns, but still there. Tracking this has become way easier with Convoke, so I will expand beyond 10 for next year.
• I started tracking game length in minutes only 100 games in, so the data is not complete. However 10 min to 2:40 hours is a very wide range.

Unique spells/lands:

• Uniqueness in this context is between my 8 decks.
• I try to keep my decks distinct in playstyle and key cards. Some card overlap is going to happen since I do not actively avoid it in most cases, but I am happy to see that all of my decks are at least 75% unique in the non-land cards. I have a very high color overlap between my decks, mainly because many are 4-5c, so >75% is a decent diversity in my mind.
• Omnath being 100% unique non-lands comes from the fact that it is built mainly by cards I have cut from Esika over time.
• Garth having the highest number of unique lands is no surprise, since it is the only deck with a Gates mana base.
• Esika and Najeela are my two decks with a Fetch-Shock mana base, so their number of unique lands is the lowest.
• I have a total of 466 different spells and 160 different lands across my decks.

I very much welcome any feedback and questions you might have.

I have a deck that is specifically designed for Bracket 2. I mostly play with randoms online, but also a few games locally when I find the time. The deck wins more than I am comfortable with. I am a very invested player with lots of experience, but even considering that, the win rate is not OK.

It's all about manipulating the opponents' combat steps. Some goad, some redirects, some deflecting palm effects.

I purposely run only little removal, letting my opponents do their thing for the most part and hopefully direct their creatures against each other.

I purposely run a slow manabase of Gates (no Mazes End) and little early ramp to be slow.

I purposely avoided any kind of Insurrection effect, since I personally don't like playing against them and find them anti-climatic.

There is a pretty large amount of 4+ mana ramp, since playing something on my turn and keeping 4-5 mana up to redirect attacks requires a ton of mana.

The commander is mainly to fill in a gap when the draws are bad. I have no way of resetting or untapping it.

I have won with combat damage from the the likes of [[Shivan Dragon]] or [[Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied]], burn from [[Giggling Skitterspike]] or [[Brash Taunter]] (sometimes with infect), reflecting damage, and even Commander damage.

My problem is that the deck over performs and I can't put my finger on why.

Is it the ramp? Is it the control? Is it the indestructible creatures?

What do you think?