This is a deck I've been working on and tweaking for some time now. The defining characteristic is its reliance on efficient creatures to slow early game aggro opponents.

The Deck

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I've only played one game with Coronet in the deck (I just bought Coronet). I picked it up specifically for this deck as a tool against Control Deception and Cutthroat Insight. More on that later. Overall, I'm a little over 60% with the deck, with control and deck-steal deception being my worst matchups.

Win Conditions

In order of importance:

1. Getting to 9 mana and playing Polyhymnia.
2. Coronet
3. Flame of the Second Shattering + Pyrrhic Knowledge for a surprise 14 damage from hand.

The deck is pretty greedy meaning that it has a lot of cards at 7 mana or higher. Poly at 9 alone is pretty greedy with today's meta. With that, I need really efficient cards early game to help me survive.

Early Game

I've started to really like time-bombs and talismans.

Against control, an effective aggro strategy is to build up multiple cards to then play all in a single turn. This is particularly true for Olympian Light and War. They can afford to go slower against control due to how many stats they can drop in a single turn.

These two cards help the deck counter this. Instead of wasting mana early when looking at an empty board, you can use it on these cards to help with future turns. Wasting mana sucks. These cards are both excellent when played onto a board your opponent controls. Both are incredibly effective at clearing early aggro boards. These are nightmares for Hidden Rush Deception with their hidden 1/1s. Right now, I'm only running 1x Talisman, but they are so important to find early I think I might decide to run 2x.

Bolt selection:

No starshard bolt! There just aren't a ton of midrange decks where you need that extra damage. Trackings are required for clearing boards full of 1/1s (especially shadow cats). Blizzard bolt just scales better into mid and late game. The sleep can be critical for clearing a large threat over two turns.

While these cards are incredibly efficient, this deck doesn't have many early-game cards. There are quite a few flexible cards in this deck, and swapping out some higher-cost cards for more early game might be a good idea.

Mid Game

Our main cards to carry us through midgame:

Where we are a little light on early game, we make up for it during the mid game.

• Crystaltechs are to help us get past the midgame mana ranges faster
• Blades of Whiteplain are fantastic of course
• Stormstress provides AOE to clear ward/protect, clear tokens, and also provides a decent body (more on her in a second)
• Shaped Blast is an auto-include of course
• We expect to be low health, and we can prevent spike damage with safeguard incantations. This means we often get to <= 6 HP and have a very cheap card to play.
• Snowshaper. Another card I'm starting to really like.

Stormstress

The obvious downfall is that she can be easily bladed. Great players like @copperpitch don't like her for that reason, and it's a good reason. However, unlike Guild Enforcers, she impacts the board when played. This means that even in the games where the opponent does run blade and does have it in hand at the right time, you get some value from her. I will say though that nothing feels worse than injuring a board full of creatures and then having Sern drop the next turn. That is actually a much bigger problem with the card, but can only happen against Light opponents.

Snowshaper

Two more mana than Nythos and 10x as good.

She is also an excellent fit for decks running frontline creatures (we have 4), because you have a better chance of using her multiple times. She can be used in the mid game out of desperation, but also plays a key role in the late game. At 6 mana, you can use GP + Snowshaper to clear any creature. Against Control Deception, this may very well be your own Polyhymnia. Lots of Magic control decks have run Ratify in the past for this purpose. In my mind, Snowshaper makes Ratify irrelevant.

• She can still be used with GP against 9 drops
• Can be used multiple times
• 0/1 snow statues can't pop protected on your Helian
• 0/1 statues can't even attack to clear themselves off the board!

Late Game

Ember Oni's because we don't have Demos. Helmna is currently in the deck because of the synergy with Ember and Serris, but I'm also playing with decks where I take her out in favor of more early game. Helian and Poly are solid end game cards that can win on their own.

Coronet

I've only just added this into the deck. Primarily because you can play around cutthroat. Against control deception, play it from hand as soon as you get it. This deck does have card draw, however, so you can find yourself where you played mana, drew the coronet, and then couldn't afford to play it. This means, against deception, you have to be very deliberate about drawing. Your poly WILL be stolen. Snowshaper handles it and then Coronet gives you a backup plan.

Of course, including Coronet has caused me to consider adding:

I have tried a few decks that remove Poly and include this card. In these, Coronet becomes the primary win condition, but those decks don't need ramp to get to 9 and wind up looking entirely different. For this deck, Coronet remains a single-card backup win con. However, there is one trick already in the deck that can support it:

Portal Wrangler can snipe good creatures from control opponents. At 9 mana you can also cast Coronet + Portal Wrangler for a second Coronet. Primarily, though, I use it to copy my own Helian and Polyhymnia. Many decks have to exhaust a lot of removal spells on these creatures (especially Poly). This means they often don't play creatures on the same turn allowing you to portal for another copy.

Flex Cards

These are the cards I've not settled on. I'd love to hear from our hive experts like @copperpitch, @meltysquid, @cautionfun and others. On these cards and really the whole deck idea. (e.g. Copper what you like better than Stormstress!)

I do have 1x Pyramid Warden that could get into this list instead of Demetrios. Portal Wrangler feels 'cute' but that spot could be better taken by more early game. The Flame + Pyrrhic feels a bit out of place. Almost like I have too many win cons, and this one is really only half-baked. Pyrrhic is also very dangerous in this list. If I obliterate my poly + coronet, I'm a dead man walking.

Possible replacements:

Gameplay

This is the game where I knew there was something to this deck. Certainly some tweaks could be useful, but the bones are good as it were. In short, Olympian light is unbelievably strong and is able to fill the board several times with real threats.

It's a long game, so I won't write up turn by turn, but instead highlight certain turns.

Mulligan and 1 Mana

Here I'm just pointing out that we have a poor mulligan. We use all our mulligans, but still end up with only one card to play. This is the primary weakness of greedy decks, and puts us on the back foot early.

3 Mana

Pip out our ramp. Using a pip here effectively gives us an 'extra' mana every turn from that point on. We don't have anything else to play, but his board also isn't super threatening.

4 Mana

Here I make a mistake not pipping out the second ramp. This makes my next turn horrible, too.

5.5 Mana

Unbound flames to the rescue. It's not a full clear, but it gives me hope.

6.5 Mana

Pallas putting in work! Transform keeps the selfless' effect from triggering. I actually think I missplay again here. There was no reason to sacrifice poor Pallas. I could have simply kept their board jammed with statues and won the game that way. I was worried about Canonize or other sources of surprise damage, though, and clearing Light boards is never a terrible decision.

I also realized this list was an earlier one that included Unnanoucned Arrival as the flex card. I have since cut that.

8.2 Mana

I think I've lost the game here, but he's actually 1 damage short! Next turn, my only saving grace is Polyhymnia. These olympian light lists aren't running the Inquisitor Informant, so it's unlikely to get orderd. If it did (e.g. Sern), that would have been game over. Instead, we take control and win.

Conclusion

So even with some missplays and a bad start, the deck was able to win against a competent opponent running a meta list. I think with some additional mods (mainly more early game), this deck could be great. Note that we never drew our Talisman and didn't see our time bombs until late. Both of these would have been fantastic against aggro light.

Eager to hear your toughts on how to make the deck better in the early game!