Spyrechild

I do like the Excalibur a lot! It alone can be lethal with our commander. The challenge comes down to finding a way to cheat it into play. Cheating casting costs of our equipments seems more difficult than cheating equip costs. It helps a lot that our equipments are artifacts, which fits the historic category.

Haystack is nice. Reminds me of Mother of Runes, but cannot protect itself or provide evasion. Keep in mind that it cannot target our creatures that have protection from white since it’s considered a white artifact, and with it not being a creature, it cannot be equipped. There is the advantage of having the ability to use it the same turn it comes out. I can see a common play pattern of playing Haystack prior to playing the threat, and leaving up the additional two mana of course. I know we were also trying to keep our artifact count down and I am curious what we would take out for it. I do like that it can make one of our creatures dodge practically any board wipe. Phasing has some advantages over hexproof, indestructible, and color protection. Timing can be a bit of a challenge not having our threat return to defend us until our next untap rather than the end of the turn we use the Haystack. Not a fan of having to keep up mana up when there’s things like Giver of Runes, which can activate for free (and also did not currently make the deck). I would probably recommend adding Haystack if your playgroup is removal heavy, otherwise it’s a bit too defensive to speed up our game plan of taking out our opponents. I am personally more of a fan of spells/abilities that I can use that can protect our commander without interrupting a lethal attack, like a new card I pulled yesterday Flare of Fortitude