Battleground Geist I don't think is a contender.
Dictate of heliod is a much better card, but at 5cc it was too clunky to see much play. Its also just very narrow.
If it came down to it, I think I would prefer to break singleton on
geist of saint traft rather than run
Drogskol Captain. The thing I don't like about captain is that its very narrow: the body is not impressive, and if picked early it commits you to a certain tribe, deck strategy, and color combination. U/W already has a strong main theme with flyers, and we are really just looking to promote a fun sub theme in the color combination. As a result, I don't think its necessary to try to push the spirit deck into main theme territory, especially when the support is so questionable.
Strangleroot geist is an interesting suggestion, and I am going to write a lot about it. If you look at the list, you'll notice that there are no persit or undying creatures there; and, as a result, a lot of the traditional pod support cards are missing. The reason for this is that III was a very tempo based format, where the decks could exert pressure from an early point, and it really encouraged you to spend your mana rather than sitting back and playing a more card advantage, attrition based game. Thats why the removal was conditional, the transformation mechanic punished not casting spells, and there were no cards like
thirst for knowledge or
compulsive research, despite seemingly being natural fits in a graveyard format.
When dark ascension came out, they introduced both undying creatures and
lingering souls, and the result was that the format became slower paced, and more card advantage focused, since you could chump block easily, and DA introduced better removal.
I'm not running the undying creatures currently (more on this in a moment) but I do have a number of flying token makers. However, this has not been detrimental to the format for several reasons:
1. The flying token maker cards (the good ones) are restricted to white, and are only three cards in a 360 list.
2. They are mostly conditional in some way. Spectral Procession is 4-5cc card most of the time, making it too slow to really blunt the aggro decks, and making it mana inefficent in a format where mana efficency is important. Lingering souls is much stronger, but usually those decks are splashing black, so it can be an issue flashing it back on time.
3. There are numerious ways to sweep aside a bunch of flying tokens:
thundermaw hellkite,
geistflame,
lava dart,
goblin sharpshooter,
echoing decay,
darkblast,
sever the bloodline,
forked bolt,
silent departure and so on.
4. The easiest to cast token maker is
midnight haunting, which is the weakest of the bunch.
There are three
gather the townsfolk, but those tend to be in demand by an already aggressive deck as a combo piece (humans), and are unexciting in many other shells. In addition, stromkirk noble cannot be blocked by them.
Now, its not that undying creatures are necessarly bad, but they will change the overall flavor of the format, and probably have to result in some changes to avoid board stalls: perhaps stronger removal, or a reduction in the number of white token makers. I'm not interested in running them for those reasons, but you can; just be aware that those are issues with them and adjust accordingly.
For what its worth, I do like the way that not having them has changed the pod decks. Traditional pod is focused on exploiting death effects or ETB triggers while upgrading their board. Graveyard pod is more about upgrading your board while feeding your graveyard for abuse down the line. For example, the ideal pod chain here ends with a pod fueled
Kessig Cagebreakers attack for game.
I know this is kind of a nuanced discussion, and I may not be explaining it as well as I should, especially since undying was part of a broader set of problems that DA had that made it worse than Innistrad. This exert from
this Ars Arcanum article I think helps explain the sort of circumstances where the keyword can become a problem:
There is one more thorn in the side of tempo decks; every color got good value creatures for clogging up the ground. This is mainly manifest in Undying creatures, which only come back stronger if they are killed, as well as white creatures, which leave around token creatures. Blue gained a 3/6 for 3 mana. Green also got a great spider with Deathtouch. Instead of just being able to power through your opponent’s creatures, you are forced to hold your creatures back until you can find something to tip the balance in your favor.
All of these factors together combined to make the new limited environment a much more typical format. Card Advantage became important once again, and players have to focus more on being able to maintain a board presence in the late game. Control decks are better able to stabilize and gain an overwhelming advantage as the game goes on. Overall, the format actually slowed down a little bit, which was not my expectation at all.
