[EDH] Cromat

[Amon Amarth]

Cromat

Lands: 38
Bloodstained Mire
Windswept Heath
Wooded Foothills
Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
Scalding Tarn
Marsh Flats
Arid Mesa
Verdant Catacombs
Misty Rainforest
Tropical Island
Bayou
Underground Sea
Plateau
Tundra
Taiga
Scrubland
Savannah
Badlands
Volcanic Island
Island
Plains
Swamp
Forest
Command Tower
Exotic Orchard
Reflecting Pool
Path of Ancestry
City of Brass
Mana Confluence
Barren Moor
Secluded Steppe
Lonely Sandbar
Tolaria West
Strip Mine
Academy Ruins
Maze of Ith
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Ramp: 6
Exploration
Sol Ring
Darksteel Ingot
Chromatic Lantern
Coalition Relic
Gilded Lotus

Card Draw/Quality: 9
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Mystic Remora
Sylvan Library
Search for Azcanta
Rhystic Study
Phyrexian Arena
Fact or Fiction
Future Sight

Tutors: 9 (10)
Vampiric Tutor
Imperial Seal
Mystical Tutor
Personal Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Grim Tutor
Idyllic Tutor
Intuition
(Tolaria West)

Countermagic: 7 (8)
Counterspell
Mana Drain
Disallow
Forbid
Voidslime
Cryptic Command
Force of Will
(Bant Charm)

Spot Removal: 6 (7)
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Unexpectedly Absent
Abrupt Decay
Bant Charm
Vindicate
(Maze of Ith)

Mass Removal: 7 (8)
Oblivion Stone
Pernicious Deed
Supreme Verdict
Wrath of God
Austere Command
Merciless Eviction
Terminus
(The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale)

Bombs: 6
Moat
The Abyss
Humility
Stranglehold
Global Ruin
Collective Restraint

Recursion: 5 (6)
Regrowth
Life from the Loam
Crucible of Worlds
Yawgmoth's Will
Replenish
(Academy Ruins)

Planeswalkers: 3
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Karn Liberated
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Utility: 2
Tormod's Crypt
Phyrexian Metamorph

Kill: 1
Approach of the Second Sun


Deck History: I really wanted to play Keeper. When I was first interested in Vintage way back in 2000, Keeper was the default best deck and had been for quite some time. I'd never seen anything like it. Why were there so many 1-ofs? Where are the win conditions? The incomprehensible decklist and difficulty in piloting the deck turned me off but it never lost that magic (sorry) from when I first read an Oscar Tan article. Flash forward to mid 2012. I was considering what five color deck I wanted to play and I came upon a slower Cromat control deck. This interested me and then I remembered Keeper... and that was that.

Strategy: As previously mentioned, the genesis of this deck were the control decks that existed in the first five or six years of Magic's existence. This deck was created with this strategy in mind: Don't worry about winning, just don't lose. To that effect nearly every card in the deck is either a control based card or a way to find and manipulate cards. This ensures that you will be able to take whatever is thrown at you, never cold against any particular strategy. You will want to judge what kind of hand you'll want to keep and what cards to play and tutor for based off what commanders or archetypes you're playing against. Politics are extremely important too. If you can leverage other peoples spells to answer threats without having to commit on your turn, all the better. Still, there are some things that I've learned that hopefully you can apply to your games, regardless of the your commander, that you can make use of.

1. Ramp or set up card draw engines early. However, when the fourth turn rolls around you want to have your counterwall up if at all possible. An exception would be if you're dropping one of your lock pieces. The fourth turn is when most decks can start to get crazy and some decks can combo out this early, earlier with a great hand. You want to make sure your hand has three lands or two and a Sol Ring. Don't feel bad about throwing away a good hand with not enough land. Being able to play your spells through out the game is more important. Aggressively tutoring for Crucible or Loam isn't a bad idea either.

2. Leverage your life total as much as possible. Be sure that when you wrath it's at the last possible moment. Forty life is quite a bit even against three or four other players.

3. You want to hit your land drops every turn. Fortunately, our card advantage engines all do a pretty good job of enabling this, incidentally.

4. Setup Future Sight in the late game and roll over everyone with card advantage. This card gets really nutty when combined with Exploration.

5. Cast Approach of the Second Sun at the end or... the beginning or whenever. Then do it again.

Strengths: Immunity to creature removal, robust card advantage engine, diverse answers, able to interact with all zones of play.

Weaknesses: Glacially slow, non-Basic land hate, few win conditions.


Commander:

Cromat: I have chosen Cromat over the other various five-color Commanders because it is the most versatile and resilient. Given enough mana, Cromat can dodge all mass and spot removal, fly over blockers, pump, kill things when blocked or when it's blocked and regenerate from damage or destroy effects. No other commander can boast that and sport a three turn clock as well. Even with all these impressive abilities it is usually relegated to Plan F. F for "when all else has fails jam this guy onto the battlefield". As a control deck, it's very useful to always have an out, at the very least a roadblock, in any situation.

Lands:

Staples: Ten Duals, ten Fetchlands, all good five-color lands, Barren Moor, Secluded Steppe, Lonely Sandbar, Strip Mine, Academy Ruins, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Duals and fetches aren't optional. Neither are the rainbow lands. The rest of the multicolor lands can be whatever lands you prefer, there are a ton of options. Ditto for utility lands as well.

Other options: Wasteland, additional cycling lands, Basics, shocks, filters, trilands, etc.

Ramp:

Staples: Exploration, Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern, Coalition Relic, Gilded Lotus

You want some ramp, perhaps even more than what I'm playing, and these spells also fix your colors too. The traditional green ramp spells also work, specifically the ones that care about land types. With the new win condition stuff like Thran Dynamo looks better too.

Other options: Carpet of Flowers, Skyshroud Claim et al, more artifact ramp a la Darksteel Ingot, etc.

Card Draw/Quality:

Staples: Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, Mystic Remora, Sylvan Library, Rhystic Study, Phyrexian Arena, Fact or Fiction, Future Sight

You want a lot of card draw and it's even better if it's permanent.

Other options: X-Draw spells, additional cycling lands, etc.

Tutors:

Staples: Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Personal Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Intuition

Tutors give us some sort of consistency so we want all the best ones. Tutors that cost more than three mana are much worse because we might not have enough mana to cast the card we just searched for, a significant downside.

Other options: Idyllic Tutor, Fabricate, Expedition Map, Sterling Grove, Realms Uncharted, etc.

Countermagic:

Staples: Counterspell, Mana Drain, Forbid, Cryptic Command, Force of Will

So many good counterspells! Really, outside of a few that are mandatory there are a ton of cheap efficient ones or more expensive counters that can draw cards or are uncounterable themselves.

Other options: Spell Crumple, Voidslime, Dissipate, Spell Pierce, Negate, Red Elemental Blast, Flusterstorm etc.

Spot Removal:

Staples: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Vindicate

There are a shitload of very good options for spot removal, so many I haven't even tested all of them.

Other options: Unexpectedly Absent, Abrupt Decay, Bant Charm, Utter End, Maelstrom Pulse, etc.

Mass Removal:

Staples: Oblivion Stone, Pernicious Deed, Wrath of God, Austere Command

The tension here is between expensive, versatile sweepers vs the cheaper, bare-bones wraths. You'll want some of both. Fortunately, there are quite a few good ones.

Other options: Supreme Verdict, Merciless Eviction, Terminus, Damnation, Rout, etc.

Bombs:

Staples: Moat, Humility, Stranglehold, Global Ruin, Collective Restraint

These cards more or less don't affect us but can cripple the rest of the table.

Other options: The Abyss, Armageddon, Meekstone, Torpor Orb, Mind Twist, etc.

Recursion:

Staples: Regrowth, Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds

Pretty much all of these recursion spells have different uses: doubling up on disruption, card drawing engines or building up your mana base. But they all let you abuse your graveyard; we like that.

Other options: Yawgmoth's Will, Replenish, Eternal Witness, Volrath's Stronghold, etc.

Planeswalkers:

Staples: Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Karn Liberated, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

These guys have all sorts of different uses so they get their own category. If you can protect them for a couple turns you can really get ahead very quickly.

Utility:

No staples here, these are flex slots devoted to whatever is floating around in your metagame though I do highly suggest playing at least one piece of graveyard hate.

Other options: Tormod's Crypt, Phyrexian Metamorph, Pithing Needle, Bribery, Acquire, etc.

Kill:

Staples: Approach of the Second Sun

This is the best, most compact, most resilient wincon.

[Offler]

When one girl on our playgroup decided to stop play Child of alara as her general Cromat was the next choice.

The decklist is almost identical. Just there is also Isochron scepter with Orim's chant or similar effects, and overall its more budget oriented...

[Amon Amarth]

Isochron Scepter is awesome but it opens you up to card disadvantage or it's just a dead draw. Too high variance.

[Amon Amarth]

Gatecrash Update:

-Memory Plunder

+Stranglehold

I really like Memory Plunder. It's fun and powerful and did cool things at instant speed that people aren't expecting. It's also difficult to cast and occasionally sits in my hand doing nothing. Stranglehold, on the other hand, is easy to cast, especially brutal against competitive decks and helps secure my board position. Good luck trying to find an out to Humility now. Hehe.

I'd really like to try out Alchemist's Refuge. It turns your sweepers into Routs, makes Humility even more of a headache and lets you keep mana up for countermagic at all times. Even better, it lets you play any number of cards at instant speed, provided that you have the mana, of course. It might make it in over Volrath's Stronghold.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-Blue Sun's Zenith

+Wargate

BSZ was slow, redundant and made it more difficult to combo out with than Stroke, the deck also has a large number of Regrowth effects making a second, third actually, X-spell unnecessary. Wargate is good throughout each stage of the game, ramping, Tinkering out a lock piece or a card drawing engine. It can even fetch removal in Maze of Ith or Pernicious Deed. Wargate's modest mana cost and flexibility do enough to earn it a spot in the deck.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-Hallowed Burial

+Merciless Eviction

I'm not sure if Eviction is an out-and-out upgrade. Burial's main advantage is it's one mana cheaper as well as tucking generals. Eviction is a better stopgap for creature spam decks, like any sliver deck. It's also a Shatterstorm, Tranquility or a buncha Dreadbores targeting Planeswalkers. It's a much more flexible card and I don't think it being one more mana to cast is going to affect it's playability.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Nice list Amon! I see Sensei's Divining Top and Future Sight. Doesn't Etherium Sculptor with those two cards let you draw your deck?

Global Ruin is another card worth mentioning, but actually using it depends largely on you/your group. It is pretty lop-sided if the table is full of 2 color decks =)

[Amon Amarth]

Nice list Amon! I see Sensei's Divining Top and Future Sight. Doesn't Etherium Sculptor with those two cards let you draw your deck?

Global Ruin is another card worth mentioning, but actually using it depends largely on you/your group. It is pretty lop-sided if the table is full of 2 color decks =)

Thanks! Been working on this list forever.

You can already draw your deck(when you get infinite mana) via Stoke or Top + FS. Sculptor is also a bad draw every time you aren't comboing out.

Global Ruin is sweet and is on the short list of cards that I'd like to test out. I'd probably already be playing it if I played against more monocolored/ramp decks but that does little to diminish it's awesomeness.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-Dwarven Blastminer

+Rhystic Study

Unfortunately, I don't really need Blastminer. I already have Strip recursion via Loam/CoW. It's not good enough but it will always be cool in my heart! I've never played with Rhystic Study but it seems like a great card here. It's a cheap draw engine or it slows your opponents down acting as a sort of Sphere of Resistance. I like the idea; I'll try it.

[r3dd09]

Love the deck, I might have to take some ideas and apply them to my 5c deck.

[Amon Amarth]

(Serious) Update:

-Snapcaster Mage
-Dissipate
-Mystic Snake
-Entreat the Angels
-Eternal Witness
-Batterskull
-Identity Crisis
-Trinket Mage
-Volrath's Stronghold

+Alchemist's Refuge
+Sterling Grove
+Fabricate
+Idyllic Tutor
+Mana Reflection
+Exsanguinate
+Replenish
+Global Ruin
+Muddle the Mixture

This is a fairly significant list of changes, a revamp really. I got rid of all the creatures. There are better analogs in non-creatues, compare Fabricate to Trinket Mage. Global Ruin is another powerful, mostly asymmetrical bomb that I've been wanting to (ab)use and with lots of duals and easily accessible land recursion, it's got a slot here. Mana Reflection was a card I had in an earlier build but I thought I'd try it again. With this in play we can 'geddon and not miss a beat and it's an additional way to go infinite too. Exsanguinate is the new main kill condition. This seems like the most efficient way to kill people. Muddle the Mixture is a tutor/counterspell split card. It also fetches any of the cards for the infinite kill too which is just too sweet. Replenish is another way to gain silly value and it recurs your combo pieces too! The deck has quite a few enchantments and I'm usually dredging pretty hard with Loam so this is just synergy city.

There are a few more cards that I want to try out.

Hallowed Fountain
Watery Grave
Celestial Colonnade
Creeping Tar Pit
Rupture Spire
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Bojuka Bog
Praetor's Grasp
Mindbreak Trap
Holistic Wisdom
Pithing Needle
Legacy Weapon
Jester's Cap
Basalt Monolith
Thopter Foundry
Sword of the Meek
Door to Nothingness

[Oiolosse]

(Serious) Update:

.
.
.

There are a few more cards that I want to try out.

Hallowed Fountain
Watery Grave
Celestial Colonnade
Creeping Tar Pit
Rupture Spire
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Bojuka Bog
Praetor's Grasp
Mindbreak Trap
Holistic Wisdom
Pithing Needle
Legacy Weapon
Jester's Cap
Basalt Monolith
Thopter Foundry
Sword of the Meek
Door to Nothingness


I have a 5c deck as well. It plays nothing like yours but uses some of the same card choices. I can say from experience that Mana Reflection + Legacy Weapon is super fun. Legacy Weapon is fun anyway, but late game, 10 lands + MR + LW = 4 exiled permanents. EDH madness! My play group is not cut throat though. Strong decks, fun decks, but not very broken decks, so it passes for playable.

I am a fan of Thopter/Sword combo. It's compact, makes great blockers, makes life, kills people, easily recurable.

Also, depending on your group speed, Conflux is awesome. 8 mana is steep but you tutor for 5 cards, which is nuts.

[Amon Amarth]

I have a 5c deck as well. It plays nothing like yours but uses some of the same card choices. I can say from experience that Mana Reflection + Legacy Weapon is super fun. Legacy Weapon is fun anyway, but late game, 10 lands + MR + LW = 4 exiled permanents. EDH madness! My play group is not cut throat though. Strong decks, fun decks, but not very broken decks, so it passes for playable.

I am a fan of Thopter/Sword combo. It's compact, makes great blockers, makes life, kills people, easily recurable.

Also, depending on your group speed, Conflux is awesome. 8 mana is steep but you tutor for 5 cards, which is nuts.

Yeah, that was one of the reasons I wanted to play Legacy Weapon. After a Global Ruin There won't be a ton of permanents in play and with Mana Reflection you can really go to work on the table. At that point, I can see it earning concessions from the table, locking up the game like the Domain decks during Invasion block.

I really like Thopter/Sword too. Not only is a great wincon that works even with both Moat and The Abyss in play(!!) and dominating under a Humility but it is also great when your behind on board gaining life and having a ton of expendable blockers. When both parts are also artifacts it makes it easy to recur with Academy Ruins.

Conflux is sweet but 8 mana is probably too much. I'll keep it in mind, though.

Thanks for the advice!

[r3dd09]

I like the idea of holistic wisdom. I might have to try it myself.

[Amon Amarth]

I like the idea of holistic wisdom. I might have to try it myself.

I've played it before and had mixed results but most often it didn't come up at all. I'd like to test it more thoroughly.

[Amon Amarth]

Cut:
Grim Monolith
Power Artifact
Mana Reflection
Exsanguinate
Muddle the Mixture

Add:
Aetherling
Dissipate
Jester's Cap
Thran Dynamo
Door to Nothingness

I got rid of the combo stuff. I'm rather lukewarm on running Grim Monolith and Power Artifact since they just aren't good on their own. All of the cuts were combo cards. Mana Reflection is pretty sweet but we'll see if it lands a spot back in.

Aetherling is pretty cool. It gives you the ability to take advantage of players low life-totals and and is pretty dang hard to kill. It also has damn cool art. Dyanmo is actual ramp, which is nice. Cap is awesome against combo decks and, of course, is brutal in tandem with Academy Ruins. Door to Nothingness just kills people. Just one card. So nice. I switched up the countermagic because Muddle is much less useful now.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-1 Aetherling

+1 Abrupt Decay

Aetherling was almost always dead. Yuck. Abrupt Decay is awesome against the competitive decks of the format and uncounterablility is clutch. Hero's Downfall could also be considered because you don't want to have to deal with an active Nicol Bolas/Karn/Tezzeret/etc.

In other news, Door to Nothingness is super slow but it gets the job done regardless of the board state. I haven't really needed another wincon at all. Jester's Cap is often the coup de grace against threat-light/combo decks so it can function as a secondary wincon. I still want to test out Thopter/Sword though.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

- Merchant Scroll
- Sterling Grove

+ Imperial Seal
+ Grim Tutor


Not much to see here. Both are pretty much strict upgrades.

[Eric Petracca]

I play 5c Cromat control. I was searching for other 5c control decks to get some ideas when I came across your deck. I did a double-take. We play an eerily similar list!

Needless to say, nice deck. :)

I made a quick spreadsheet and put our decks side-by-side using your card groupings. I had a couple of questions / comments I was hoping to get your thoughts on.

Lands:
Same list, except I play more basics and Land Tax. I'm only running the 4 blue fetches with 2 blue shock lands. I'll bet that more fetches and dropping Land Tax is the way to go, but have you given this configuration a try? I run into Back to Basics and Blood Moon quite a bit, so it may be a metagame choice.

Ramp:
I run Nature's Lore, Farseek, and Explore over the artifact ramp (except Gilded Lotus and Sol Ring). I don't have trouble with land destruction where I usually play, so it could just be a metagame choice again.

Card Draw/Quality
I run the same cards you have listed except Mystic Remora over Brainstorm. I usually end up with 4-8 cards over 2-3 turns and then stop paying the upkeep. You probably already know this, but in case someone else is reading this I'll just mention that Mystic Remora has errata to trigger on any opponent casting a non-creature spell.

Tutors:
The tutors are the same except I don't own Grim Tutor or Imperial Seal. Instead, I have Lim-Dul's Vault and Scroll Rack in these slots. Land Tax is in the Intuition slot. I haven't tested Intuition. What do you get with it?

Countermagic:
Same counters except Arcane Denial over Cryptic Command and Negate over Voidslime. Where I play, combo is rampant. I need faster countermagic. I am considering Pact of Negation, possibly even over Force due to the relatively low count of other blue cards. Have you done any testing with this?

Spot Removal:
I have the same count with slightly different card choices. Swords, Charm, and Pulse are the same. I have Mortify, Putrefy, and Beast Within over the others. I went for instant speed over versatility, but it's not set in stone. Have you considered Hide//Seek? It's limited, but I like the option of ripping Mind Over Matter out of a combo player's deck. Like I said, I run into a lot of combo where I play. Have you tested Chaos Warp?

Mass Removal:
I have 6 spells in this section. You have 7. I think you have the right count, but I put Basalt Monolith in one of these slots because it combos with Rings of Brighthearth. It also lets me float mana between turns. (I'm running sword/thopter.) I have Curse of the Swine here. I am thinking of going up the curve and running Hallowed Burial and Final Judgment along with Terminus. Most of the time, when I cast a sweeper, I want those creatures gone. Like, gone, gone. Tucking Commanders also randomly beats certain decks. Do you find that you need more sweepers at 4cc?

Bombs:
My bombs are way less "bomby." When I played Vintage (Type 1) back in the day, I played Keeper. I am fortunate to still have Moat and The Abyss, but I don't run them. Against one opponent, yes. But against multiple opponents, I usually just get ganged up on when I drop these enchantments. So, instead I run Aurification, No Mercy, and Forcefield over Humility. These enchantments encourage everyone to seek greener pastures. I run Sylvan Library over Global Ruin. While this is an awesome land destruction spell, especially in this deck, by the time I am casting it I am usually winning. Sylvan Library is awesome with the fetches. Top #2.

Recursion:
I run the same cards except I have Rings of Brighthearth over Replenish. I mentioned the combo with Basalt Monolith before, which is one reason. The other reason is that Rings doubles your fetches. Have you tested this?

Planeswalkers:
I am only running Bolas here. I need room for sword/thopter, so it eats up the other slots. I use this combo to put up a wall of flying blockers. This could easily be walkers, though.

Utility:
Same. I will echo that Jester's Cap is awesome against combo.

Kill:
Same. Knock, knock. :)


Individual Cards:

I have one way to make arbitrarily large amounts of mana with Rings/Monolith. Even so, I usually end of casting Stroke of Genius for 2-3 cards. Is a different draw spell better in this slot?

You mentioned that you use Life from the Loam aggressively. I tend to hold onto it. It's actually on my list of cards to consider cutting. Do you think this comes down to me running less fetches and Land Tax? Maybe I'm not using Loam right. Any advice is appreciated. What's a typical play? What turn?

[Amon Amarth]

That's a very thoughtful, interesting post. Before I get into it, thank you very much for the input. It's certainly appreciated!

Also, to preface things, this deck is pretty metagame dependent. There are a lot of things you will never drop like Pernicious Deed or Mana Drain but there are quite a few slots that are dependent on what you're facing. This has influenced quite a few of my choices. Alrighty!

Re:

Lands:

I'm confident that 10 fetches and 10 duals are the optimal configuration of lands in 5 colors decks. Depending on what you're playing you might want some shocks or maybe not. I do play the 3 basic lands because I respect the powerful non-Basic land hosers and it's fairly simple to slot them in, almost no opportunity cost. If there were more of these cards in my metagame I'd play probably slot in one or two more basics. I never tried the configuration you're running but I'm certain it's suboptimal especially if you're trying to win via Door-ing players. Land Tax requires far too many basics to make it effective.

Ramp:

The Rampant Growth-effects are really underpowered because they don't ramp as well as Dynamo or fix as well as Ingot or Relic. They also don't offer up any protection against LD either, like you've noted, which is especially useful since I'm running my own.

Card Draw/Quality:

A friend of mine inquired, a few days ago, as to why I never ran Mystic Remora. Mostly, I don’t have any room currently and I felt I had enough permanent sources of card advantage. Remora would be a welcome addition to my card advantage suite, though. I do like Brainstorm over Remora because it can dig for mana immediately, is really good with fetches and can set up Terminus turns.

Tutors:

Intuition is awesome. Usually you want to start up your Loam engine by tutoring for cycling land, cycling land, Loam. Sometimes it's better to replace the second cycling land with Strip Mine or Academy Ruins, depending on the board state. The other common cards you want to get are artifacts you want to recur with Ruins or enchantments to recur with Replenish. Other times you just want to get 3x of a counter or board wipe though these situations are rather rare. I think these are the only piles I've made. I don't recommend Scroll Rack because it's just bad. Yuck.

Countermagic:

Since this is a control deck I can never advocate for something like Arcane Denial due to the way the deck functions. Denial isn't a bad spell but it's ill-suited to our purposes here, for running people out of cards, attrition-ing them to death. I don't think Cryptic is bad per se but it's obviously a bit on the slow side so I can see not running it if you need your spells to come online earlier. I think Negate being included is fine, especially since it is quite good against combo decks, but I don't like it over Voidslime because the utility of a Stifle and Counterspell is just too great to ignore, in my opinion. Flusterstorm, Spell Pierce or Mindbreak Trap are solid replacements for Cryptic Command or any of the more expensive counterspells. Again, a metagame dependent decision since there are few combo decks I play against and they tend to be pretty fragile and fold to minimal disruption. I'm not sure I'd ever not play Force but Pact of Negation is great card. I played it a bit in this deck but my meta is less combo-y so the free-ness of it is less appealing. Certainly a good card to consider.

Spot Removal:

Mortify, Putrefy and Beast Within are all excellent removal spells. I played the former two in earlier iterations of this deck. The spells I run over them are just a bit more efficient of flexible. Hide//Seek is a spell I've considered playing because it's nature as a split card makes it versatile and it's also very cheap to cast. Incredible against the new god commanders and the Extract half is very good too because it's fucking EDH man! So many decks rely on clutch one-ofs to shift games into their favor or outright win that it's too good to ignore. If I saw more gods I'd probably try and find space for it. Chaos Warp is great. I like it in my Krenko deck but the drawback is too much in a deck like this. It can backfire on you and put you in a bad spot if they flip over something good and you can't deal with it.

Mass Removal:

I dislike Curse of Swine. There isn't any reason to run it over something like Hallowed Burial which will realistically tuck more creatures for less mana. I am considering running Supreme Verdict because uncounterability is pretty nuts against a lot of decks and it even pitches to Force too. If my meta gets faster or Edric shows his face then Verdict absolutely find a place maindeck.

Bombs:

There aren't a ton of of cards by themselves that can shut down a table like Humility, The Abyss and Moat. These cards are so powerful and disruptive that they can shut down decks by themselves. EDH is so creature-centric that said cards are almost always absurd. It's difficult for most decks to mount an offensive because they're dorks are dying and they get no value out of ETB triggers. From my experience, enchantments are the most difficult permanent to deal with as well as being the most disruptive. I don't think there is a lot to say here. Just try them out and then get back to me. :)

Global Ruin is awesome. Easy for you to play around due to mana rocks, recursion and being a five-color deck. It's not just win-more, it's very Stax-ish because it can lock up games and put you so far ahead and interacts on an axis most players are ill-prepared for. Sylvan Library is very good. I used to run it but felt it was redundant with Top but that's hardly a condemnation since Top is extremely good. I might play it again at some point.

Recursion:

Rings of Brighthearth is nice. Good with fetches and planeswalkers and a few other cards. I'd like to test it out at some point.

Planeswalkers:

I'd go as far to say that Karn is damn near mandatory. He is so hard to deal with. He super Vindicates things or sometimes acts as hand disruption. Excellent card to Drain into. Jace 2.0 is only good if you have all 10 fetches. He's usually just a Brainstorm-on-a-stick. That's his main use. The +2 is good when you are 1v1-ing someone and the ultimate is pretty sweet in that situation too. The -1 is pretty sweet if you want to run a couple of good value creatures like Eternal Witness. Sometimes Unsummon is a spell you want too. I'm pretty into Jace in this deck.

Other spells might be better in place of Stroke. It might be a relic in this deck from when I ran infinite mana combos and I'm affected by nostalgia too. I can't remember when the last time I cast it. It's rather inefficient unless you're casting it for 5+. I could see something else taking it's place.

I don't think I'd ever consider cutting Loam. It's too good. Sometimes you need to Strip Mine problematic non-Basics or dredge away crap from Top or recur Academy Ruins or recur lands from (mass)LD or hit your land drops or recur cycling lands... a shit load of uses. I use Loam early and often. I'd change up my play if I expected a lot of GY hate but that is non-existent where I play for some reason. Loam is sooo money when you run all 10 fetches. They're auto-includes. You can get Basics or duals when needed which allows you to play around Moon/B2B pretty easily. I cast Loam when I need to recur lands to hit land drops for the next couple of turns or late game when I'd rather draw cards with cycling lands. Being able to take advantage of all the dredged cards with GY recursion is gravy.

[Eric Petracca]

That's a very thoughtful, interesting post. Before I get into it, thank you very much for the input. It's certainly appreciated!

Also, to preface things, this deck is pretty metagame dependent. There are a lot of things you will never drop like Pernicious Deed or Mana Drain but there are quite a few slots that are dependent on what you're facing. This has influenced quite a few of my choices. Alrighty!

{snipped}



You rock! Thank you for taking the time to respond. Also, thank you for the great info on Loam/Intuition (and all of the other card choices). I'm going to switch things up and try it out.

[Amon Amarth]

Lemme know how it goes. Also you can go ahead and post your list if you'd like, other cards you want to test out, random musings. Whatever.

How is Thopter-Sword working out for you, by the way?

[Baumeister]

Have you thought about adding either Overburden or Spreading Plague as more control versus tokens?

Is Hull Breach good enough to run?

[FTW]

Have you thought about adding either Overburden or Spreading Plague as more control versus tokens?

Is Hull Breach good enough to run?

Spreading Plague is a nonbo with either commander. EVERYTHING kills it.

Overburden sounds amazing for a creatureless deck though.
Ward of Bones? Pretty brutal to resolve this and then drop a Wrath effect. It doesn't count Planeswalkers, so it's just plain unfair.

[Baumeister]

Spreading Plague is a nonbo with either commander. EVERYTHING kills it.

Overburden sounds amazing for a creatureless deck though.
Ward of Bones? Pretty brutal to resolve this and then drop a Wrath effect. It doesn't count Planeswalkers, so it's just plain unfair.

Or you can flip your commander back onto your deck in response to the creature being cast and wrath again next turn. I think the pros of the card as a continual wrath for 4B outweigh the small con. It's somewhat similar to Humility in the way it controls the board.

Ward is a nice find, especially because our board is usually pretty clear.

[Amon Amarth]

Have you thought about adding either Overburden or Spreading Plague as more control versus tokens?

Is Hull Breach good enough to run?

Overburden is nifty but only good early. Plague is nice but not really something I'm looking for. I've never had a problem with durdly token decks. Plague has been unreliable too because your opponents can play around it. The only real lock type effects that I'm considering atm are Torpor Orb or Cursed Totem

Hull Breach is good. The only problem is it's the two colors I use the least and sorcery speed. Not bad but a little clunky for me. YMMV.

@FTW Ward of Bones isn't very good because of the way it's worded. They can still get creatures out after you wipe the board with it in play. 6 mana is too much for something that doesn't lock the game out or even do much of anything, really.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

- Wargate
- Stroke of Genius

+ Mystic Remora
+ Unexpectedly Absent

The X-spells were too slow. When they came online they were almost always redundant: either I had my board locked up already or a CA engine already active, respectively.

I haven't played Remora in EDH but I suppose it should be good. We'll see.

On the other hand, Unexpectedly Absent is freakin' nuts. It tucks all sorts of problematic permanents or barring a shuffle effect it can act as a pseudo-Time Walk. Or just run it out EOT and jam something so fucking far down their library they won't see it for the rest of the game. Did I mention this is also a two mana instant? More like Unexpectedly Awesome.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

+ Forest
+ Tolaria West
+ The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
+ Exploration
+ Mindbreak Trap
+ Tormod's Crypt
+ Supreme Verdict

- Alchemist's Refuge
- Crumbling Necropolis
- Seaside Citadel
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Damnation
- Bant Charm
- Dissipate

The land package got switched up a bit. With my curve getting smaller and smaller, I don't need as many lands. Refuge never did much and Tabernacle is broken. The added basic is for protection. Mindbreak Trap is just a better counter than Dissipate where it has many more applications and is occasionally free. Verdict because uncounterability is clutch and regeneration is mostly irrelevant. Crypt for Spellbomb so it can be tutored with Tolaria West. Exploration powers up so many cards it's silly to list them all. I wanted to fit another mana rock in here for some time now but nothing was really that appealing. Should have been lookin' at enchantments...

...what? Oh, right the opening post looks a little different. It's more of a [Primer] now. I'll be editing it constantly to try to keep it relevant, clean up my terrible grammar, etc.

[Eric Petracca]

Update:

- Wargate
- Stroke of Genius

+ Mystic Remora
+ Unexpectedly Absent

+ Forest
+ Tolaria West
+ The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
+ Exploration
+ Mindbreak Trap
+ Tormod's Crypt
+ Supreme Verdict

- Alchemist's Refuge
- Crumbling Necropolis
- Seaside Citadel
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Damnation
- Bant Charm
- Dissipate

{snipped}

Thank you for keeping the list and changes updated and for the re-worked primer!

Stroke of Genius / Mystic Remora
I'm with you on Stroke of Genius. I was never casting it, so I put Mystic Remora in that spot. Sometimes, I would pay upkeep for a couple of turns and get nothing. Sometimes, I would draw 3+ cards before it even came around to my turn. Sometimes, I would drop it just before a counter war and come out ahead. It's not perfect, but it's something.

Wargate
I only get to play a couple of a games per week, so my testing is limited. But, replacing Wargate? It's come in handy for getting Academy Ruins directly into play, for example. With the Tabernacle in your list, this would be another good target. Do you find that it is too many intensive? Or that there aren't enough targets?

Unexpectedly Absent / Bant Charm
When I did a side-by-side comparison of the changes, it looked like Unexpectedly Absent replaced Bant Charm. I've put Zur on the bottom of a library several times, always to great (soul-crushing) effect. The other modes for Bant Charm are occasionally useful, too. How often are you targeting something other than a creature with Unexpectedly Absent? I'm still looking at Hide//Seek. Exiling Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, or Mind Over Matter (with Seek) seems too good to pass up.

Lands:
I don't like lands that come into play tapped. I am usually able to play around the tri-lands drawback, but I think you are on the right track with more basics. I run into Ruination, Blood Moon, etc, more often than I would like. If they catch me at the wrong time, it's game-breaking. Using Tolaria West for tutoring sounds like a good plan. I'll have to give that a try.

I was also thinking about the Tabernacle and meant to ask you about it. Token strategies get stymied by it. And even if they have a way to destroy it, between Loam and Crucible, it'll be back. I was never using Alchemist's Refuge to great effect, so the Tabernacle seems like a good replacement.

Supreme Verdict / Damnation
Yes! In the first 4-5 turns, I found that I was looking for double-blue (UU) for counterspells, and then had to make a choice of going for double-white (WW) or double-black (BB). Several important spells in this deck require WW, but in a few games I was stuck with a Damnation in my hand without a way to make BB when I needed it. Swapping for Supreme Verdict reduces the need for BB, especially in my list since I don't have Grim Tutor.

Exploration
Also awesome. Not much to say here.

Nihil Spellbomb / Tormod's Crypt
I don't run into many decks with heavy reliance on the graveyard, but being prepared with an easy way to deal with it when it does come up is important. Finding it with Tolaria West is gravy. You know, Wargate for zero finds Tormod's Crypt. ;)

Dissipate / Mindbreak Trap
Would you mind sharing some examples where Mindbreak Trap has exiled more than one spell and impacted the game? (I respect your commentary and card choices. I'd like to know more about how / when to play Mindbreak Trap over Dissipate.)

[Amon Amarth]

Thank you for keeping the list and changes updated and for the re-worked primer!

Stroke of Genius / Mystic Remora
I'm with you on Stroke of Genius. I was never casting it, so I put Mystic Remora in that spot. Sometimes, I would pay upkeep for a couple of turns and get nothing. Sometimes, I would draw 3+ cards before it even came around to my turn. Sometimes, I would drop it just before a counter war and come out ahead. It's not perfect, but it's something.

Wargate
I only get to play a couple of a games per week, so my testing is limited. But, replacing Wargate? It's come in handy for getting Academy Ruins directly into play, for example. With the Tabernacle in your list, this would be another good target. Do you find that it is too many intensive? Or that there aren't enough targets?

Unexpectedly Absent / Bant Charm
When I did a side-by-side comparison of the changes, it looked like Unexpectedly Absent replaced Bant Charm. I've put Zur on the bottom of a library several times, always to great (soul-crushing) effect. The other modes for Bant Charm are occasionally useful, too. How often are you targeting something other than a creature with Unexpectedly Absent? I'm still looking at Hide//Seek. Exiling Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, or Mind Over Matter (with Seek) seems too good to pass up.

Lands:
I don't like lands that come into play tapped. I am usually able to play around the tri-lands drawback, but I think you are on the right track with more basics. I run into Ruination, Blood Moon, etc, more often than I would like. If they catch me at the wrong time, it's game-breaking. Using Tolaria West for tutoring sounds like a good plan. I'll have to give that a try.

I was also thinking about the Tabernacle and meant to ask you about it. Token strategies get stymied by it. And even if they have a way to destroy it, between Loam and Crucible, it'll be back. I was never using Alchemist's Refuge to great effect, so the Tabernacle seems like a good replacement.

Supreme Verdict / Damnation
Yes! In the first 4-5 turns, I found that I was looking for double-blue (UU) for counterspells, and then had to make a choice of going for double-white (WW) or double-black (BB). Several important spells in this deck require WW, but in a few games I was stuck with a Damnation in my hand without a way to make BB when I needed it. Swapping for Supreme Verdict reduces the need for BB, especially in my list since I don't have Grim Tutor.

Exploration
Also awesome. Not much to say here.

Nihil Spellbomb / Tormod's Crypt
I don't run into many decks with heavy reliance on the graveyard, but being prepared with an easy way to deal with it when it does come up is important. Finding it with Tolaria West is gravy. You know, Wargate for zero finds Tormod's Crypt. ;)

Dissipate / Mindbreak Trap
Would you mind sharing some examples where Mindbreak Trap has exiled more than one spell and impacted the game? (I respect your commentary and card choices. I'd like to know more about how / when to play Mindbreak Trap over Dissipate.)

@Stroke of Genius/Mystic Remora: I like Remora so far. It draws quite a few cards for little/moderate investment. Stroke was too dang slow. Perfectly fine late game but it doesn't help us to get there.

@Wargate: Wargate was a bit too slow and unwieldy for me. It is fine late game, of course.

@Unexpectedly Absent/Bant Charm: The last card I cast UA on was a Future Sight. So a few times, at least. This shouldn't be seen as a criticism of Bant Charm; it's still very good. Certainly a card very much worth playing. More on Hide // Seek later.

@Lands: Agreed. As I'm trying to reduce the CMC of Cromat further and further down I started running into a few issues with being unable to cast my spells due to ETBT lands. So I replaced the last triland (still, probably, worth running) and Tolaria West (still good, didn't test it much but these were the only possible land slots to replace) with the UW/UB shock lands. More fetch-able lands is nice and more of the colors that we use the most. The only lands that always ETBT are the Cycling lands, which we don't play if we can get away with and Grand Coliseum which is nonnegotiable.

I haven't seen Tabernacle since I've added it but it has synergy with your other lock effects and slow down other peoples decks a bit. Oh and it does crush token decks too. The theory behind it is good. I don't think I'll be disappointed with it. It compliments Maze well because Maze covers you when there is one fatty and they can't swarm Maze because Tabernacle is lolz.

/aside

I played Cromat last week at a local shop. It was me against mostly new players who I hadn't played against before. I lost the roll and went last and of course the guy that went first dropped a Burning Earth on turn four, the turn before I draw my countermagic. OK, unexpected. Everyone thinks I'm boned but I fetch into my Esper Basic lands to go on with my business. I drop a Humility and then a Moat later on. And the table is locked up more or less after taking some beats. I try and find a way to deal with the non-Basic hoser in play that is also backed up by Karmic Justice. Right around here is where I fuck up. For whatever reason I don't tutor up and drop a Karn Liberated and end up crafting a more complex, and disruptable, endgame. I end up losing to a bunch of pumped tokens from an Akroma's Memorial. Pretty dumb way to lose because I wasn't paying enough attention to what was on the board and when I was tutoring. So, there are a few things to take away from this.

1. This deck is hard to play. With so many tutors, you can screw up pretty easy if you choose the wrong card. As you can see, obviously it can be the difference between a win and a loss. Stay calm. Collected and be sure to recognize what's in play and don't be dumb like me. :P

2. The Basic Lands are really, really good here. I've been pretty happy with the Forest so far and it even has sweet Beta art too. Double win! They let you, in addition to artifact mana, play around all those old, brutal hosers.

3. Karn Liberated is so very, very good. It would have easily locked up the game by exiling (not destroy!) the few relevant permanents in play or for even more obnoxious board states just restart the fucking game. It would have let me win an obvious 3v1 scenario. sitting behind a couple lock pieces. It is interesting; I believe I've been underrating how good his ultimate is but I'll be sure to pay more attention to that option in the future.

4. I never feel like any part of the game was out of my control, so to speak. I spent a couple hours after the game, at home, trying to figure out what happened, why I lost. I go back through my decision trees and figure out where I made the wrong play. I really like that. It helps me get better as a player because it's important to recognize when you've made a mistake. Otherwise, how would you improve?

/end aside

@Supreme Verdict/Damnation: I removed Damnation for those reasons, lessening the strain on my manabase.

@Exploration: Ditto.

@Nihil Spellbomb/Tormod's Crypt: I've been happy with Crypt because you save one or usually two mana off the cost/activation of Spellbomb. Pretty sure this is just a preference thing.

@Dissipate/Mindbreak Trap: Oh man, I don't think I can even come up with a stock scenario. The most plausible one revolves around blue players casting a lot of instants at EOT i.e. Player A FoFs and Player B responds with his own and then you trap them. There are a lot of different Flash enablers from the very new and very good Prophet of Kruphix or Teferi or even something like Vedalken Orrery or Winding Canyons. I'm sure there are quite a few situations where it will come up but most will probably come up against blue decks. If you want an example where I've used it to counter more than one spell sadly I have not. I didn't get to play too much this last couple weeks. Once I get more experience with it I'll be sure to put it in the opening post. :)



So I've made a few changes recently including the addition of Cunning Wish. I've spent the last few days trying to come up with a good list of cards to wish for and I believe that Hide // Seek would be excellent here. A Deglamer/Extract split card is pretty damn good. Taking a combo piece at instant speed, blanking their just cast tutor, or tucking any of the new gods is amazing. Especially since the gods of Theros are actually pretty good. Purphoros, God of the Forge does some degenerate things. Other cards I've included are Cyclonic Rift (get outta jail free card!), Pact of Negation, Trickbind and Ravenous Trap. I also considered moving Mindbreak Trap to the side too but it seems like a card I'd want main deck. Needs more testing.

Thanks for the comments. :)

[Eric Petracca]

{snipped}

So I've made a few changes recently including the addition of Cunning Wish. I've spent the last few days trying to come up with a good list of cards to wish for and I believe that Hide // Seek would be excellent here. A Deglamer/Extract split card is pretty damn good. Taking a combo piece at instant speed, blanking their just cast tutor, or tucking any of the new gods is amazing. Especially since the gods of Theros are actually pretty good. Purphoros, God of the Forge does some degenerate things. Other cards I've included are Cyclonic Rift (get outta jail free card!), Pact of Negation, Trickbind and Ravenous Trap. I also considered moving Mindbreak Trap to the side too but it seems like a card I'd want main deck. Needs more testing.

Thanks for the comments. :)

Thank you again for the commentary. When you get a chance, please post the wish board and what you took out for Cunning Wish. :) My old Keeper deck worked like this.

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker - how often does Bolas end up being the card that pushes you to victory instead of simply winning more? The reason I ask is that I haven't had a game where I cast him. It's always too much mana. When I have that much mana at my disposal, there are lots of things I can do and things are looking pretty bad for the other players already.

Assemble the Legion - Have you considered this card? Doesn't work well with the Tabernacle, but it has inevitability, is an enchantment, blocks, attacks, etc. It gets better with a long game, like this deck plays.

[Amon Amarth]

Thank you again for the commentary. When you get a chance, please post the wish board and what you took out for Cunning Wish. :) My old Keeper deck worked like this.

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker - how often does Bolas end up being the card that pushes you to victory instead of simply winning more? The reason I ask is that I haven't had a game where I cast him. It's always too much mana. When I have that much mana at my disposal, there are lots of things I can do and things are looking pretty bad for the other players already.

Assemble the Legion - Have you considered this card? Doesn't work well with the Tabernacle, but it has inevitability, is an enchantment, blocks, attacks, etc. It gets better with a long game, like this deck plays.

Sure.

I'm testing wish in place of cap.

Cunning Wish stuff:

Memory Plunder
Blue Sun's Zenith
Hide // Seek
Terminate
Pact of Negation
Ravenous Trap
Cyclonic Rift
Trickbind
Constant Mists
Ruination

This is just a preliminary list of targets that I'm using at the moment. No real philosophy behind it so it looks just like a lot of random stuff. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a better draw spell than BSZ, SR is slightly better but they're both expensive and clunky.

@Nicol Bolas: I find that the board often gets stalled and Nicol Bolas is a good way to blow open the game. Or there are the rare times when you ramp into him super fast; that's pretty sweet too.

@ASL: Too slow to do anything relevant. It's not really that great at playing defensive since it takes too many turns to get your manas worth out of it. It's also pretty bad way to win since it's just worse than Door. And it's really bad with Moat or Tabernacle in play.

[Baumeister]

I haven't seen anybody post here in a little while, but this has become one of my favorite EDH (Commander... whatever) decks to play since it plays out as sort of a history of format-defining cards. Not to mention the value of the deck has almost doubled since I put it together.

I have a few comments:

The Abyss seems weak as a creature solution. It's very slow, and the fact that it's the opponent's choice on what creature to ditch means it almost never hits what you want. The only time it's really useful is when you're ahead on board and it's one of the worst top-decks in the entire deck when you're behind. This is the definition of win-more, no? Do you have examples of games where The Abyss saved you? It seems like a sweeper like Damnation would be more useful.

I know the mana base is very tight, but have you thought about adding any more utility lands to form a more solid Tolaria West package? Tabernacle is a great target, but there may be others if this avenue were explored.

I've added Mystical Teachings because it meshes well with the idea of being a reactionary deck. You already have a fairly solid instant package in the deck and Teachings gives you a way to tap into that. It's fairly poor early game, but after turn 7 or so, it becomes an incredible trump card. It may be worth finding an instant-speed sweeper, although I'm not sure what would work best.

Lastly, I've been looking for one more piece of inexpensive counter-magic to hold for answers. The deck tends to drop lock pieces to create security against the other decks at the table, but well-timed sweepers can undo your hard work. I was thinking of running Negate, but its restrictions make me wary.

If you have an update to the deck, that would be appreciated. Otherwise, let me know your thoughts.

[Amon Amarth]

I haven't seen anybody post here in a little while, but this has become one of my favorite EDH (Commander... whatever) decks to play since it plays out as sort of a history of format-defining cards. Not to mention the value of the deck has almost doubled since I put it together.

I have a few comments:

The Abyss seems weak as a creature solution. It's very slow, and the fact that it's the opponent's choice on what creature to ditch means it almost never hits what you want. The only time it's really useful is when you're ahead on board and it's one of the worst top-decks in the entire deck when you're behind. This is the definition of win-more, no? Do you have examples of games where The Abyss saved you? It seems like a sweeper like Damnation would be more useful.

I know the mana base is very tight, but have you thought about adding any more utility lands to form a more solid Tolaria West package? Tabernacle is a great target, but there may be others if this avenue were explored.

I've added Mystical Teachings because it meshes well with the idea of being a reactionary deck. You already have a fairly solid instant package in the deck and Teachings gives you a way to tap into that. It's fairly poor early game, but after turn 7 or so, it becomes an incredible trump card. It may be worth finding an instant-speed sweeper, although I'm not sure what would work best.

Lastly, I've been looking for one more piece of inexpensive counter-magic to hold for answers. The deck tends to drop lock pieces to create security against the other decks at the table, but well-timed sweepers can undo your hard work. I was thinking of running Negate, but its restrictions make me wary.

If you have an update to the deck, that would be appreciated. Otherwise, let me know your thoughts.

The Abyss is a prison card. It's meant to run your opponents out of creatures and it also works really well with board sweepers and Tabernacle. Unless there are a lot of tokens in play you aren't very concerned with what it hits. I think your looking at the card the wrong way. It's not a get out of jail free card. Think of it more like an asymmetrical Smokestack

I don't think there is any utility land in particular that I'd want to make room for currently. I could be forgetting something. Did you have something in mind?

Mystical Teachings isn't a bad card; it's instant, card advantage and a tutor but it's far too slow making it worse than pretty much all of the expensive black tutors. Only being able to fetch out instants is really where it gets bad. There are too many important cards that you want to get that are non-instants.

The deck has changed. Ill update it when M15 comes out. Thanks for the comments. :)

[Baumeister]

The Abyss is a prison card. It's meant to run your opponents out of creatures and it also works really well with board sweepers and Tabernacle. Unless there are a lot of tokens in play you aren't very concerned with what it hits. I think your looking at the card the wrong way. It's not a get out of jail free card. Think of it more like an asymmetrical Smokestack

I understand what it's trying to do, it just does it soooo slowly that I'd almost rather have a vanilla sweeper to get me out of a tight spot. At least Smokestack scales as the game progresses and can hit more vital resources than just creatures. If you have Tabernacle out, you're already in a good spot against creatures. If you have a sweeper, The Abyss seems superfluous. The card is good in ideal situations, but that can be said about any other card in the game. I'm not saying, "Don't run it," (actually, I am) - just think about it next time you play the card and see how much work it actually does.


I don't think there is any utility land in particular that I'd want to make room for currently. I could be forgetting something. Did you have something in mind?

You were running Alchemist's Refuge for a hot second. That seems like it could be randomly good, especially for surprise sweepers. Maybe Tower of the Magistrate? You don't want to dilute the amount of color-producing lands in the deck too much.

You could also run a 0cc tutor package by adding Engineered Explosives to the Tormod's Crypt that is already in the deck. There have to be other good options for this, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

I assume you've already added Mana Confluence.


Mystical Teachings isn't a bad card; it's instant, card advantage and a tutor but it's far too slow making it worse than pretty much all of the expensive black tutors. Only being able to fetch out instants is really where it gets bad. There are too many important cards that you want to get that are non-instants.

I haven't pulled the trigger on buying the pricier black tutors so I get to play with worse versions of the cards. That being said, Teachings has not disappointed yet and I've even managed to surprise a fair share of players who didn't realize I had access to a flashback-able, instant speed tutor.

[Amon Amarth]

M15/KTK Update:

-Tolaria West
-Arcane Sanctum
-Thran Dynamo
-Maelstrom Pulse
-Jester's Cap

+Island
+Mana Confluence
+Sylvan Library
+Bant Charm
+Collective Restraint

The changes from the last two sets aren't too interesting, another City of Brass and that's mostly it. I like the instant speed of the charm, edging out Pulse. I'm trying Sylvan Library out again. Cap isn't important in my meta and Dynamo was unimpressive. I've wanted to play with Collective Restraint for awhile. It seems like a functional Moat most of the time and has good synergy with Maze and Tabernacle.

Even though these last two sets aren't amazing for us there are a couple cool cards.

Utter End: A (most of a) Vindicate at instant speed, definitely something I'd be willing to try out. Probably an upgrade over Pulse.

Sultai Charm: This charm is reminiscent of Bant Charm which is a great thing. It's never dead because, hey, Catalog! My gut tells me it's not as good as Utter End though.

Clever Impersonator: A Clone for every permanent! Now that's exciting. Metamorph is in over it because it can be cheaper, easier to tutor up and recur. Still, a strong contender for a slot.

EDIT: Derp. I forgot about Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time as potential additions. Draw 3's are good as is digging deep for Moat and friends. Haven't tested but I do like them a lot in at first glance.

[Baumeister]

M15/KTK Update:

-Tolaria West
-Arcane Sanctum
-Thran Dynamo
-Maelstrom Pulse
-Jester's Cap

+Island
+Mana Confluence
+Sylvan Library
+Bant Charm
+Collective Restraint

The changes from the last two sets aren't too interesting, another City of Brass and that's mostly it. I like the instant speed of the charm, edging out Pulse. I'm trying Sylvan Library out again. Cap isn't important in my meta and Dynamo was unimpressive. I've wanted to play with Collective Restraint for awhile. It seems like a functional Moat most of the time and has good synergy with Maze and Tabernacle.

Even though these last two sets aren't amazing for us there are a couple cool cards.

Utter End: A (most of a) Vindicate at instant speed, definitely something I'd be willing to try out. Probably an upgrade over Pulse.

Sultai Charm: This charm is reminiscent of Bant Charm which is a great thing. It's never dead because, hey, Catalog! My gut tells me it's not as good as Utter End though.

Clever Impersonator: A Clone for every permanent! Now that's exciting. Metamorph is in over it because it can be cheaper, easier to tutor up and recur. Still, a strong contender for a slot.

EDIT: Derp. I forgot about Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time as potential additions. Draw 3's are good as is digging deep for Moat and friends. Haven't tested but I do like them a lot in at first glance.

I'm not sure if I agree with cutting Tolaria West. It's a second copy of Tabernacle, which can be huge in some matchups. Yes the "comes into play tapped" sucks, but we're extremely slow anyway, so I think it doesn't matter quite as much.

I agree with all of your other cuts except for Maelstrom Pulse - it's almost another Vindicate which is more than good enough. I've also been seeing more clones running around, which makes Pulse even stronger. I've had good results and probably wouldn't cut it. I think I might remove Wrath of God instead as your other wrath effects offer more versatility or power.

Utter End has been quite good so far for me. I nailed a Purphoros, God of the Forge in response to the Marath player playing his general which saved the table and bought me between two and three turns to establish control of the game. I'm almost always happy to see a Vindicate-variant in my hand at all points of the game, and one that I can play at instant speed is very nice.

Treasure Cruise is probably worth playing, although cards in the graveyard can be useful, so it warrants testing. Late-game, it's obviously a bomb to allow us to refill our hand with answers.

[Amon Amarth]

I'm not sure if I agree with cutting Tolaria West. It's a second copy of Tabernacle, which can be huge in some matchups. Yes the "comes into play tapped" sucks, but we're extremely slow anyway, so I think it doesn't matter quite as much.

I agree with all of your other cuts except for Maelstrom Pulse - it's almost another Vindicate which is more than good enough. I've also been seeing more clones running around, which makes Pulse even stronger. I've had good results and probably wouldn't cut it. I think I might remove Wrath of God instead as your other wrath effects offer more versatility or power.

Utter End has been quite good so far for me. I nailed a Purphoros, God of the Forge in response to the Marath player playing his general which saved the table and bought me between two and three turns to establish control of the game. I'm almost always happy to see a Vindicate-variant in my hand at all points of the game, and one that I can play at instant speed is very nice.

Treasure Cruise is probably worth playing, although cards in the graveyard can be useful, so it warrants testing. Late-game, it's obviously a bomb to allow us to refill our hand with answers.

Hey, thanks for the input! (Edit: again, even! You da best!)

I could definitely see running Tolaria West, again, instead of the second Island. Indeed, it is very good and I haven't the second Island really do anything other than coming into play untapped and makes me slightly more resistant to non-basic hate. I'll probably switch back.

I like Bant Charm's additional modes over Pulse, not that I don't like Pulse; it is very good. I think more tuck is a more powerful effect than just nuking anything though I'm not 100% sure if that's always true. I don't think I want to drop Wrath of God because I like cheaper wraths and I have a beautiful Beta copy as well, making me not eager to give it up. :P Anyways, I still like Maelstrom Pulse and would like to fit it in or at the very least find a slot for Utter End, especially since you have had good results with it so far. Exiling, instant speed nearly-Vindicates are pretty great.

I'm not sure which is better, Dig or Cruise. Cruise is better midgame but Dig is really, really good in the lategame. Dig-ing seven deep and at instant speed is awesome and it's like a FoF that always gives you the two best cards. There is a surprising amount of cards to test out from Khans. A good problem to have, I think. ^_^

[Baumeister]

Hey, thanks for the input! (Edit: again, even! You da best!)

No problem. This is, hands down, my favorite EDH deck. I was attempting to put together something like this before you posted this primer and I found myself agreeing with every card decision you made. It fills the void I was missing in my decks and approaches the game from such a different angle than the typical jam-ramp-spells-and-fatties-OMG!!!! Plus, when played correctly, it answers everything.


I could definitely see running Tolaria West, again, instead of the second Island. Indeed, it is very good and I haven't the second Island really do anything other than coming into play untapped and makes me slightly more resistant to non-basic hate. I'll probably switch back.

It's good opportunity cost and another tutor in a deck full of answers. Really, though, Tabernacle puts it over the top; you get to find the best wrath in the format.


I like Bant Charm's additional modes over Pulse, not that I don't like Pulse; it is very good. I think more tuck is a more powerful effect than just nuking anything though I'm not 100% sure if that's always true. I don't think I want to drop Wrath of God because I like cheaper wraths and I have a beautiful Beta copy as well, making me not eager to give it up. :P Anyways, I still like Maelstrom Pulse and would like to fit it in or at the very least find a slot for Utter End, especially since you have had good results with it so far. Exiling, instant speed nearly-Vindicates are pretty great.

I'm not saying cut Charm for Pulse. Just run them both. I cut Wrath a while back and I can't say that I have missed it. Generally, I don't play out wraths all that early, so I have not missed Wrath of God. Here's what I've been running:

(Maze of Ith)
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Unexpectedly Absent
Abrupt Decay
Maelstrom Pulse
Vindicate
Bant Charm
Utter End

(The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale)
Austere Command
Terminus
Pernicious Deed
Supreme Verdict
Merciless Eviction
Oblivion Stone

Looking at that, I don't really feel the need for a generic Wrath. All of the sweepers, while they cost more, provide additional value over just sweeping the board. And Oblivion Stone can be recurred, which makes it highly dangerous.


I'm not sure which is better, Dig or Cruise. Cruise is better midgame but Dig is really, really good in the lategame. Dig-ing seven deep and at instant speed is awesome and it's like a FoF that always gives you the two best cards. There is a surprising amount of cards to test out from Khans. A good problem to have, I think. ^_^

I'd say that Treasure Cruise is immediately, obviously strong. Dig deserves testing, but it seems like a combo-enabler. The comparison to Fact or Fiction does make me think it's better than I originally thought, so I will definitely try it out.

I had some other thoughts for cards to add. If you're having good luck with Phyrexian Metamorph, you could try Sculpting Steel and maybe even Copy Enchantment. I'm not immediately sure what value they provide, as they require you to have some sort of board state to be maximally effective, but they could be worth testing.

[Davran]

I'd say that Treasure Cruise is immediately, obviously strong. Dig deserves testing, but it seems like a combo-enabler. The comparison to Fact or Fiction does make me think it's better than I originally thought, so I will definitely try it out.

I had some other thoughts for cards to add. If you're having good luck with Phyrexian Metamorph, you could try Sculpting Steel and maybe even Copy Enchantment. I'm not immediately sure what value they provide, as they require you to have some sort of board state to be maximally effective, but they could be worth testing.

I'm unfortunately missing a bunch of the key cards to make a list like this one a reality, but I do have some experience with the cards you're discussing I'd like to share.

I recently slotted Treasure Cruise into my (admittedly) more casual Lazav deck, and I've loved it so far. I've been finding that much like Goyf in constructed it just gets better as you play the game. I haven't managed to get it down to Ancestral Recall levels in terms of cost, but I routinely cast it for 2U, and have even been able to flash it back off of a Snapcaster.

In terms of a list like this one that's full of bullets, Dig Through Time might be a worthy inclusion. It seems great in a situation where you really need to find a counterspell or wrath, as going 7 cards deep is a great way to get there.

If Metamorph has been good for you, what about Clever Impersonator over Scuplting Steel or Copy Enchantment? It does cost one more mana, but paying 4 for a copy of the best non-land on the board seems like a much more versatile option than limiting yourself to just an artifact or just an enchantment. If Impersonator is too expensive CMC wise, surely Copy Artifact is better than Sculpting Steel? It's a blue card for force and costs 1 mana less.

[Baumeister]

In terms of a list like this one that's full of bullets, Dig Through Time might be a worthy inclusion. It seems great in a situation where you really need to find a counterspell or wrath, as going 7 cards deep is a great way to get there.

The more I look at Dig Through Time, the better it seems. It ticks off all the boxes for a good draw spell: instant speed, digs deep, and it will generally cost between 3 and 5 mana to cast. I'm not sure why, but originally I didn't realize it could be cast at instant speed. Dig is essentially two Brainstorms stapled together and should be quite excellent mid- to late-game.


If Metamorph has been good for you, what about Clever Impersonator over Scuplting Steel or Copy Enchantment? It does cost one more mana, but paying 4 for a copy of the best non-land on the board seems like a much more versatile option than limiting yourself to just an artifact or just an enchantment. If Impersonator is too expensive CMC wise, surely Copy Artifact is better than Sculpting Steel? It's a blue card for force and costs 1 mana less.

Clever Impersonator is one of the best clones ever printed and it's blue which is good for Force of Will, but I've found that getting the most mileage out of your cards is the optimal way to play this deck. While Impersonator may give you additional options of what to clone, there are more tutors for Sculpting Steel and it can be repearedly recurred off Academy Ruins if necessary (why is there not a land like this for enchantments?!). I'm not sure what the best option is without testing, but that's my gut reaction. Also, artifacts tend to be the best target for a clone effect in this deck since many of our enchantments don't get better with more copies on the field.

[Davran]

The more I look at Dig Through Time, the better it seems. It ticks off all the boxes for a good draw spell: instant speed, digs deep, and it will generally cost between 3 and 5 mana to cast. I'm not sure why, but originally I didn't realize it could be cast at instant speed. Dig is essentially two Brainstorms stapled together and should be quite excellent mid- to late-game.

Yeah, I've got a copy I'm trying to find room for in my Intet deck for exactly this reason. It does almost everything I want my draw spells to do, especially with otherwise useless fetchlands and random ramp spells to feed to it.


Clever Impersonator is one of the best clones ever printed and it's blue which is good for Force of Will, but I've found that getting the most mileage out of your cards is the optimal way to play this deck. While Impersonator may give you additional options of what to clone, there are more tutors for Sculpting Steel and it can be repearedly recurred off Academy Ruins if necessary (why is there not a land like this for enchantments?!). I'm not sure what the best option is without testing, but that's my gut reaction. Also, artifacts tend to be the best target for a clone effect in this deck since many of our enchantments don't get better with more copies on the field.

I didn't consider the Academy Ruins angle, that's a good point. I'd love a land like that for enchantments but ultimately I'm not sure how they'd swing it flavor-wise. Seems like a missed opportunity out of Theros block, though it would have probably been way too good in limited. The other thing to consider is the stuff in your meta that's worth copying. I mean, 2 Moats is kinda useless...but cloning some other guys Karn is probably a pretty nice feeling.

[Baumeister]

I played a pretty interesting game with Cromat over lunch and I thought I'd share. It highlights some of the unique ways the deck controls the game:

The players were me on Cromat, the player to my left playing Marath, Will of the Wild, the person across from me on Child of Alara, and the person to my right playing Karn, Silver Golem.

The Karn player went first and essentially dumped his hand first turn into... Howling Mine. I had to start pitching cards since most of my first few turns were, "Land, go," but I had Replenish in hand for late game shenanigans. I made a decision to hold Spell Crumple for Karn since he already had about half of the pieces to make infinite mana. The Marath player and the Child player developed their mana with Mine helping out quite a bit.

Around turn 5, the Marath player attempted to run his general out onto the board with Purphoros, God of the Forge in play. I cast Utter End to get rid of the god and to buy myself a little time to set up. The Child player seemed to be running some sort of token themed deck and aimed an attack at the Marath player to stabilize the board. Karn kept dumping mana onto the board, but I was still holding countermagic, just in case.

Child got pitched after a couple more turns to reset the board due to the Marath player having a ton of goodies like Doubling Season, Mana Reflection, and Martyr's Bond. I took advantage of the clear board to run out Door to Nothingness. The Karn player attempted to get cute with Spine of Ish Sah, but I burned the Spell Crumple to be able to untap with Door and enough mana to use it.

You'd think that having an active Door would make me a huge target, but the other players actually started pounding each other in order to avoid being put out of the game. The Marath player eventually launched a huge attack (involving Craterhoof Behemoth) at both the Child player and the Karn player. The Child player played four or five removal spells to save himself and we all watched the Karn player eat about 150 damage. The Marath player attempted to resolve Goblin Bombardment and I Door-ed in response, taking enough damage from Marath's ability in response to put me at 14 life. The Child player attempted to enter combat to finish me off, but I shuffled a Terminus to the top and miracled to save myself.

I recurred Door with Academy Ruins and played it back out, holding both Cryptic Command and Force of Will in hand. The remaining opponent attempted to Oblivion Ring the Door, but I countered with Cryptic. He countered back, which I stopped with the Force. Door finished him off the following turn when I untapped.

It was pretty fun. I'm pretty surprised how the other players reacted to the Door to Nothingness, although maybe they all assumed they could take out another player and then deal with it. I never felt like the game was very far out of my control even though my board state was usually just a bunch of lands with a full grip of cards. The removal was definitely key as it allowed me to interact with almost every zone of play and make smart decisions that would keep me in the game.

[Amon Amarth]

Thanks for the replies guys! Still wondering how I'm going to fit in TC and Dig in this deck. Probably cutting a sweeper of some sort and something else. If I only had room for one of the delve spells it would probably be Dig since it digs (zing!) deep and instant speed can offset the high casting cost.

Clever Impersonator is good but for the reasons already mentioned I prefer Metamorph. Impersonator does get better, though, if your meta has a lot of PW decks and/or decks with lots of enchantments to copy.

@Baumeister

Door seems to have a funny effect on people. Sometimes it makes them target you before you can untap, some people try diplomacy and want you to take out the strongest player on the table. Your games are pretty similar to how most of mine play out. The board can change a lot but due to the flexibility of our cards it allows us to react and play politically as well. The games tend to be fun and skill intensive and just a little nerve-wracking. :)

Looking at the new Commander 2014 cards nothing jumps out at me as being playable, for us, except for Malicious Affliction. It shouldn't be difficult to trigger morbid when things are dying all the time. Probably too narrow but something to consider. I really like the design of the card. The decks themselves are awesome and the best Commander product released so far. Really excited to jam some the stock decks against each other.

[Baumeister]

The games tend to be fun and skill intensive and just a little nerve-wracking. :)

Yup. A lot of my wins feel dangerously close to loses, although, a lot of my loses feel like they could have been wins if I had read the board more carefully and adjusted my line of play.

I think I cut a removal spell for Dig Through Time. I've only drawn it a couple of times, but it feels powerful and it fits right into the theme of the deck as I've never had to tap out on my turn to cast it. It's also fantastic at digging for answers in a pinch. I haven't been able to find a spot for Treasure Cruise yet as it's not as flexible as Dig. It would require that I cut an answer to something, and I'm not sure what that is. The deck plays really well for me right now, so I'll probably just leave it and get a dozen or so more games in before I figure out what the weakest slot is.

By the way, good call on Collective Restraint. It's so easy to power that card up and nobody wants to pay 5 to attack through it. It's bought me between 3 and 10 turns to sit and turtle every time I've landed it.

Any thoughts on Council's Judgment? It will usually hit the two most problematic permanents on the board (that aren't yours). Sorcery speed is rough, but it's a two-for-one in a deck that thrives on value.

[Amon Amarth]

Yup. A lot of my wins feel dangerously close to loses, although, a lot of my loses feel like they could have been wins if I had read the board more carefully and adjusted my line of play.

I think I cut a removal spell for Dig Through Time. I've only drawn it a couple of times, but it feels powerful and it fits right into the theme of the deck as I've never had to tap out on my turn to cast it. It's also fantastic at digging for answers in a pinch. I haven't been able to find a spot for Treasure Cruise yet as it's not as flexible as Dig. It would require that I cut an answer to something, and I'm not sure what that is. The deck plays really well for me right now, so I'll probably just leave it and get a dozen or so more games in before I figure out what the weakest slot is.

By the way, good call on Collective Restraint. It's so easy to power that card up and nobody wants to pay 5 to attack through it. It's bought me between 3 and 10 turns to sit and turtle every time I've landed it.

Any thoughts on Council's Judgment? It will usually hit the two most problematic permanents on the board (that aren't yours). Sorcery speed is rough, but it's a two-for-one in a deck that thrives on value.

Yeah, that's typically how I cut cards: play a ton of games and then maybe make a decision. There are so many moving parts in the deck that it's hard to pinpoint what is currently working and what is not.

Restraint has been pretty damn good to me so far. There are occasions where you're getting swarmed by tokens or multiple dorks and Humility isn't enough. Better yet, that damage often goes somewhere else: it encourages your opponents to wear each other down.

Council's Judgment is great. The only reason I'm not playing it is I'm paranoid of collusion/politics against me and it doesn't hit what I want. It doesn't help there are infinite, excellent spot removal cards that I need to test out as well. An embarrassment of riches.

[Baumeister]

Restraint has been pretty damn good to me so far. There are occasions where you're getting swarmed by tokens or multiple dorks and Humility isn't enough. Better yet, that damage often goes somewhere else: it encourages your opponents to wear each other down.

I'm definitely putting it in the Core Cards pile. It's funny that all of the haymaker enchantments in the deck are from Legends or Invasion. It seems like it took Wizards a while to understand how powerful global effects are when they scale to multiplayer games...


Council's Judgment is great. The only reason I'm not playing it is I'm paranoid of collusion/politics against me and it doesn't hit what I want. It doesn't help there are infinite, excellent spot removal cards that I need to test out as well. An embarrassment of riches.

Those are fair points. It's an interesting card because it's often worse when you are ahead on board (does that make it win-less?). It's a good sign when we have to cut cards not because they're bad, but because they aren't as good as Card X or Card Y.

I noticed you're still playing Phyrexian Metamorph. How has it been holding up? Do you tutor for it often? What's your favorite target when you play it? Do you find yourself copying other players' creatures very often?

[Eric Petracca]

Hello! It's been a while. Glad to see that you are still updating the deck list in this thread.

Have you considered the following cards? I'm interested to read your thoughts on them.


Monastery Siege

Pick the best of the top two cards and/or fill up your graveyard for other interactions.


Thassa, God of the Sea

Thassa is almost never going to be a creature in this deck, so it's all about the indestructable scrying.

[Baumeister]

Monastery Siege

Pick the best of the top two cards and/or fill up your graveyard for other interactions.


Thassa, God of the Sea

Thassa is almost never going to be a creature in this deck, so it's all about the indestructable scrying.

While these cards are both solid, they suffer most from not being able to operate at instant speed. Monastery Siege digs you deeper, but competes with the slots for Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora, both of which will draw more cards in a shorter amount of time. It also has almost no immediate impact on the board and requires that you tap mana on your turn for a mediocre effect.

Thassa, God of the Sea is extremely slow and, while difficult to remove, doesn't really affect the board in a significant way. Yes, scrying at your upkeep is nice as a passive ability, but it would be infinitely more playable if it cost :1: and was an artifact. Her second ability does almost nothing for us outside of corner-case, Plan F win condition strategies of making Cromat unblockable.

What you are looking for is a bomb to dig deep into your deck to find answers. Dig Through Time is phenomenal. Future Sight is the high water mark. I was playing Treasure Cruise for a while, but it's not an instant and only (I know, only...) digs three deep so I'm trying out Stroke of Genius again because I often found myself with mana leftover right before my turn came back around. Plus, it gets quite absurd late game and actually has the possibility of being a win-condition in slow, grindy, four hour games.

[Amon Amarth]

While these cards are both solid, they suffer most from not being able to operate at instant speed. Monastery Siege digs you deeper, but competes with the slots for Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora, both of which will draw more cards in a shorter amount of time. It also has almost no immediate impact on the board and requires that you tap mana on your turn for a mediocre effect.

Thassa, God of the Sea is extremely slow and, while difficult to remove, doesn't really affect the board in a significant way. Yes, scrying at your upkeep is nice as a passive ability, but it would be infinitely more playable if it cost :1: and was an artifact. Her second ability does almost nothing for us outside of corner-case, Plan F win condition strategies of making Cromat unblockable.

What you are looking for is a bomb to dig deep into your deck to find answers. Dig Through Time is phenomenal. Future Sight is the high water mark. I was playing Treasure Cruise for a while, but it's not an instant and only (I know, only...) digs three deep so I'm trying out Stroke of Genius again because I often found myself with mana leftover right before my turn came back around. Plus, it gets quite absurd late game and actually has the possibility of being a win-condition in slow, grindy, four hour games.

I've been meaning to post here again with an update but now I'll have to change things up quite a bit with tuck losing most of it's functionality. Thanks for posting I'll try and get back and update this thing when I get time again. Kinda excited and annoyed at the same time. New slots opened up but also cutting cards I really like. Thems the breaks!

[Baumeister]

I've been meaning to post here again with an update but now I'll have to change things up quite a bit with tuck losing most of it's functionality. Thanks for posting I'll try and get back and update this thing when I get time again. Kinda excited and annoyed at the same time. New slots opened up but also cutting cards I really like. Thems the breaks!

Indeed, there are a ton of cards I want to play but can't. I am very curious to see what you've cut and added to the deck over the last few blocks.

I will say that some of the tuck cards we run like Terminus and Bant Charm are still pretty useful for dodging graveyard shenanigans. The new ruling probably makes Hinder and Spell Crumple not quite powerful enough at 3 mana, though. I'll probably swap those for better countermagic.

[Amon Amarth]

Dragons of Tarkir Update:

-1 Hinder
-1 Island
-1 Dig Through Time

+1 Dissipate
+1 Tolaria West
+1 Hedonist's Trove

The nerf to tuck has made the mechanic significantly worse in EDH. All the tuck counterspells are much worse now. Dissipate is just better now than it's tuck equivalents. The Island was never important so the Transmute land is just much better. Dig was OK but you could rarely cast it early and Trove just does so much and is castable around the same time Dig normally is too. It is one part card advantage engine, one part GY hate and one part wincon. It is basically a fixed, improved Yawgmoth's Agenda where you don't have any restraints on what you can cast.

Dragons of Tarkir also had some interesting planeswalkers that I wanted to try out but I don't have the space.

Narset Transcendent: The plus ability hits 60% of the deck and the -2 is similarly good. Even rebounding a Wrath is basically a Time walk. That's pretty good. It gets much better when you can Rebound tutor effects, draw spells or even just spot removal. Starts off with with a decent amount of loyalty, has synergy with Top, Jace, BS and has a gamebreaking ultimate.

Sarkhan Unbroken: This guy is a far cry from his previous versions. For starters, he's actually good. Card advantage and produces mana, for a plus ability, that's crazy. The minus makes a 4/4 Dragon, good for defense or offense. This guy is good.

I'll also update the opening post soon (TM).

[Baumeister]

The nerf to tuck has made the mechanic significantly worse in EDH. All the tuck counterspells are much worse now. Dissipate is just better now than it's tuck equivalents. The Island was never important so the Transmute land is just much better.

I agree with both of these changes. Why does Spell Crumple get to stay in the deck? Are there better counters we could run now - perhaps something like Swan Song that costs less?


Dig was OK but you could rarely cast it early and Trove just does so much and is castable around the same time Dig normally is too. It is one part card advantage engine, one part GY hate and one part wincon. It is basically a fixed, improved Yawgmoth's Agenda where you don't have any restraints on what you can cast.

This honestly surprises me especially because Trove was never even on my radar as viable for this deck. I'll test it out, but I have reservations; namely: 1) It's expensive enough that resolving and using it in the same turn is only viable extremely late game; 2) If it gets blown up before you can generate value, you just paid 7 for a Tormod's Crypt; 3) You cannot target your own graveyard so you are dependent on another player having enough good stuff to make this card worthwhile. But I don't know how it will play, so I'll try it out first.


Narset Transcendent: The plus ability hits 60% of the deck and the -2 is similarly good. Even rebounding a Wrath is basically a Time walk. That's pretty good. It gets much better when you can Rebound tutor effects, draw spells or even just spot removal. Starts off with with a decent amount of loyalty, has synergy with Top, Jace, BS and has a gamebreaking ultimate.

This planeswalker seems extremely synergistic with the deck and I'd rather play her over the Trove. She's not quite as good as the other planeswalkers we have because she requires other cards to function, but she generates crazy card advantage with both the plus and minus ability and, like you said, can function as a soft time walk a good portion of the time.

I look forward to seeing the updated list.

[Amon Amarth]

Spell Crumple is going to get replaced by another counter or Merchant Scroll. It's probably just worse than Faerie Trickery now. Such a big downgrade with the recent changes. Swan Song is good but the drawback might be too harsh if they decide to just swing at us. I think I'd rather play Negate

Trove: When you cast it the very least you will get is a land of some sort before it get's blown up. You do bring up a good point though, it does require some setup but I feel that is accomplished by this decks strategy and just the natural progression of the game. Also, you can cast instants and cards with Flash each turn as well. Plus you can steal things like Seedborn Muse which would be hilarious. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Narset: I like her a lot but she does require, I think, other cards to make her good. Fortunately, those other cards are also good and we're playing a lot of them. I'd like to try her out sometime.

I'll update the opening post this weekend. I'm also changing up the format a bit to make it a bit broader and not focused on specific cards.

[Baumeister]

I got to test out Narset Transcendent yesterday and it turned out to be a pretty interesting game. I feel like she's fairly powerful, but it'll probably require more testing. Here's what happened:

I got a pretty quick start with Sol Ring and no missed land drops. Just before my turn three, I cast Intuition for Humility, Collective Restraint, and Stranglehold with Replenish in hand. Restraint was sent to my hand and I recurred the other two on my turn three to soft lock the board. Narset came down next turn and generated card advantage by dumping cards into my hand (I think it actually helped for the other players to see the cards as they played much more timidly when they knew I could kill their stuff). The combination of Humility, Stranglehold, and Collective Restraint on board allowed me to slowly grind up to Narset's ultimate which essentially hard locked the board until I was able to find Door to Nothingness and kill the table.

Looking back, I probably was quite lucky as I tapped out a couple of turns in a row with some must-answer cards in play, but the table seemed answer light so I went for it. Narset proved to be very valuable and helped close up the game, but I'm not sure it will always be like that. She plays a little like Jace, but her CA adds counters which is nice. I never used the rebound ability, but I could see where it would be good if you were behind on board. I think when you play her, the goal should always be to tick up to that ultimate because it is so good. This probably makes her a bit weaker than the other planeswalkers since getting to that ultimate can prove difficult. I'll definitely keep her in the deck for the time being.

@Amon: I never saw you post your updated list. Any thoughts on recent changes to the list?

[Eric Petracca]

Just a couple of notes and thoughts.

Monastery Siege

I've been testing this out and I like it. I realize that this sounds crazy, but I swapped it in for Phyrexian Arena.

I'm not having issues casting Phyrexian Arena, but Monastery Siege is blue for FOW, lets me throw things into the graveyard, doesn't cost me life, and is easier to cast early.

I don't have a problem getting cards - or even the right cards - with this deck. It's all about setting up lines of play and grinding out value.

Mirri's Guile

With all of the fetch lands, this is another great card selection engine. I'm not saying that I would play Mirri's Guile over Sensei's Divining Top, but the effect is very similar without the additional mana cost to activate each turn.

Supreme Verdict

This might as well be Day of Judgment. I can't think of the last time that being uncounterable mattered in a real game, and Day of Judgment is easier to cast.

Hallowed Burial/Terminus

The tuck sweepers aren't nearly as potent as they were before the rule change. Toxic Deluge might be better here. It is slightly easier to cast, comes online sooner, and can still handle indestructible creatures.

RAMP

Nature's Lore and Three Visits both come online sooner than the artifact ramp and put a dual land into play untapped. I rarely have issues with casting costs. The mana base is solid.

These cards make Collective Restraint and Global Ruin better, sooner.

Farseek and Explore are similarly worth considering.

It looks like there are only a few of us who actively play a deck like this, so I appreciate you guys taking the time to consider these posts and respond.

[Amon Amarth]

OK, so I finally updated the opening post. Secondly, my only change recently has been to add Personal Tutor in place of Hedonist's Trove. Not sure how I've missed that card for so long. It gets you Loam early, wraths midgame and Will, Global Ruin and Replenish late.

@Eric:

I'm not a fan of filtering but Monastery Siege is certainly playable. Not losing life is nice too.

Not a fan of Guile but mostly because I'm not looking for another Top/Library effect.

What wraths you run are personal preference or metagame considerations though I can't really see myself playing Deluge. I'd rather pay the extra mana for WoG and I never see indestructible dudes.

I do like the green ramp spells and I've been wanting to test them for awhile. I do like Farseek and Skyshroud Claim.

@Baumeister: I don't think you got lucky, that's a brutal opening that would be difficult to come back from, Narset or no. They probably couldn't do anything at all so it's hard to gauge Narsets worth in the situation though I do agree with your assessment of her strength. I don't have one yet but her price is trending downward so I'll pick up a copy soon-ish.

[Baumeister]

OK, so I finally updated the opening post. Secondly, my only change recently has been to add Personal Tutor in place of Hedonist's Trove. Not sure how I've missed that card for so long. It gets you Loam early, wraths midgame and Will, Global Ruin and Replenish late.

Personal Tutor seems kind of slow and narrow. At least with Mystical Tutor you can fetch at the end of an opponent's turn and find an instant or a sorcery. I'll try it out but I generally reserve slow tutors like that for finding win conditions.


I do like the green ramp spells and I've been wanting to test them for awhile. I do like Farseek and Skyshroud Claim.

This. I have been wanting to change the ramp package for a while, but I really didn't have a good idea what to do with it. The functional CMC on these green ramp spells like Nature's Lore and Three Visits is quite low and they find your duals (albeit, the green ones). I'm probably going to run a ramp package like this for the time being:

Exploration
Nature's Lore
Three Visits
Skyshroud Claim
Sol Ring
Chromatic Lantern
Coalition Relic
Gilded Lotus

It's compact, powerful, and none of these cards are really dead at any point in the game. Exploration is probably weakest late game, but that card is so absurd with Future Sight that it probably is worth it.


@Baumeister: I don't think you got lucky, that's a brutal opening that would be difficult to come back from, Narset or no. They probably couldn't do anything at all so it's hard to gauge Narsets worth in the situation though I do agree with your assessment of her strength. I don't have one yet but her price is trending downward so I'll pick up a copy soon-ish.

Yeah, that game was pretty awesome. It was probably the quickest I've killed the table with this deck. Narset requires more testing but so far has been pretty good for me. Not bonkers, but she provides a good deal of value.

I've been having issues with Door to Nothingness as the only kill in the deck. After people wise up to it, they will generally hold removal and jam as much as they can through my counter wall. The card is just so freaking slow. I saw in the primer on the first page that you suggested the Thopter-Sword package as an alternative win. This seems pretty interesting as it's much less mana intensive and gives you both life and a board presence. Any advice? Did you ever try this out in the deck?

[Eric Petracca]

I've been having issues with Door to Nothingness as the only kill in the deck. After people wise up to it, they will generally hold removal and jam as much as they can through my counter wall. The card is just so freaking slow. I saw in the primer on the first page that you suggested the Thopter-Sword package as an alternative win. This seems pretty interesting as it's much less mana intensive and gives you both life and a board presence. Any advice? Did you ever try this out in the deck?

I've had the same experience with Door. It's is a one-card win condition, but I've been caught before by someone removing it from the game. Eating a Bojuka Bog at the wrong time sucks.

I used Thopter/Sword for a while. It's two cards, so you already have to give something up to run it. Each half doesn't do much on its own. And even if you pump out 7 or 8 thopters per turn, it can take a while to close out the game.

Compare this to Assemble the Legion where as long as the game drags on, you will spit out more and more hasty tokens for no additional cost. You can leave up mana for counters and removal. The tokens don't fly, but under a Humility is doesn't matter anyway.

Or, consider Luminarch Ascension. It's relatively easy to find and cast early with some protection. Pumping out a swarm of angels will usually get the job done.

There's Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood. It's also two cards, but it closes out the game when it triggers.

I have an Esper build of this deck that closes out the game with Test of Endurance. (It's more resilient and much faster, but it's not nearly as cool as the 5c deck.)

Planeswalkers
FWIW, the more I play this deck, the more I feel like we don't "need" quite so many tutors to get the job done. Planeswalkers are very powerful. Even running something like Elspeth, Sun's Champion gives us an alternative win condition. You make tokens. You ult. You fly over. Sarkhan Unbroken is no joke, either. You draw cards. You make Dragons. You beat down.

Dack Fayden, Liliana of the Veil, and others are value engines that work really well in the slow, controlling shell we are using for this deck.

[Baumeister]

I've had the same experience with Door. It's is a one-card win condition, but I've been caught before by someone removing it from the game. Eating a Bojuka Bog at the wrong time sucks.

It's good to hear this from someone else. I love Door-ing people out of the game, but it requires so much protection to successfully run it that I almost wouldn't consider it a one-card kill. Realistically, you need to protect it for three of your opponents' turns, untap, pay 10 mana, and then find a way to recur it to kill more than one person. I'll have to test to see if there's a way I can play differently with the card.


I used Thopter/Sword for a while. It's two cards, so you already have to give something up to run it. Each half doesn't do much on its own. And even if you pump out 7 or 8 thopters per turn, it can take a while to close out the game.

Compare this to Assemble the Legion where as long as the game drags on, you will spit out more and more hasty tokens for no additional cost. You can leave up mana for counters and removal. The tokens don't fly, but under a Humility is doesn't matter anyway.

Or, consider Luminarch Ascension. It's relatively easy to find and cast early with some protection. Pumping out a swarm of angels will usually get the job done.

These two cards are pretty interesting. I'm glad you've also thought about alternate win conditions. AtL is kind of exciting so I think I will test.


FWIW, the more I play this deck, the more I feel like we don't "need" quite so many tutors to get the job done. Planeswalkers are very powerful. Even running something like Elspeth, Sun's Champion gives us an alternative win condition. You make tokens. You ult. You fly over. Sarkhan Unbroken is no joke, either. You draw cards. You make Dragons. You beat down.

I think the new Sarkhan is pretty cool. He seems like a slightly better Garruk Wildspeaker. I've trimmed down the tutor package a bit to just run the most flexible and powerful versions. I have supplemented with draw engines, though. I feel like we run so many copies of similar cards that the tutors should be used to find our bombs. I'd rather have a card that generates card advantage over several turns in order to keep my hand stocked.

[Baumeister]

I apologize in advance for the double post, but it's been a while since anyone posted here and I have relevant information for the thread.

I've been testing alternate win conditions for the deck to see if there was a way to make it more resilient. This included Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, additional planewalkers to give the deck more of a super friends vibe, and, lastly, Assemble the Legion. Thopter/Sword was kind of a bust. The parts do nothing on their own and it forces the deck to win with creatures which is pretty contrary to the bombs you want in play. It also takes two slots in the deck list. Assemble the Legion is probably better than Thopter/Sword because it's an enchantment and has synergy with Replenish (how did this card make it through R&D?), but it's extremely slow and suffers from producing creatures.

The planeswalker plan worked out pretty well because they are permanents that are difficult to deal with and have synergy with the sweepers and lock pieces we are playing. I tested Sarkhan Unbroken, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Vraska the Unseen, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Narset Transcendent, Ajani Vengeant, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury, Garruk, Apex Predator, Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, and Tezzeret the Seeker. The ones that played best with the deck were at the 4 or 5 CMC point and interfered with the board in some way. Ugin was quite good - I will most likely add him to the deck as another sweeper/source of spot removal. Narset has continued to test well, although she needs slight support. Ajani was interesting because he could control the board, provided life gain (somewhat important), and his ultimate always shut a player out of the game. Both versions of Sarkhan were okay with Unbroken being better although the ultimate was completely useless. The card draw and additional mana was good, I just wish he cost 1RUG instead of 2RUG. The planeswalkers that made tokens were not great because this deck hates creatures. Tezzeret was sadly lacking. I mostly used him to tutor for Crucible of Worlds.

I'm not suggesting the deck become a super friends deck because it would lose flexibility, but the planewalkers add a lot to the deck and fit with our theme. I'd say Ugin, Narset, and something that provides support like Ajani need to find their way into the deck.

I have been vigorously testing Cromat for almost a month now to figure out how to take it to the next level and I feel like I have reached a moment of clarity or something cliche like that. The deck is substantially different than many other EDH decks because it not so much lacks a game plan, but the game plan is highly dependent on what your opponents are doing. I thought the deck needed card advantage, however; that's not exactly the case. The deck actually thrives on turn advantage. I played a game recently where I managed to get Exploration and Crucible of Worlds into play on turn two with a fetch land and proceeded to generate so many extra "turns" that I ran away with the game.

I've been so fixated lately on trying to make the deck win that I forgot that really isn't important with Keeper. While other players will try to generate board or card advantage, we should strive to generate turn advantage. The goal is to find a line that will generate some many extra "turns" that your opponents will not be able to keep up with you. This can be accomplished through mana advantage, sweepers to set your opponents back on turns, lock pieces to restrict mana advantage, and disruption to dismantle game plans. Door to Nothingness is a perfect win condition because by the time you play it, the winning portion of the game should be incidental.

I think the changes to this deck should be to find ways to "out-turn" our opponents by setting up advantage engines. That's my next testing phase.

How great would Balance be in this deck?

[Eric Petracca]

<snip>

I think the changes to this deck should be to find ways to "out-turn" our opponents by setting up advantage engines. That's my next testing phase.

How great would Balance be in this deck?

Keep the posts coming!

Like I said before, we travel in a pretty small circle. I've searched the web for 5c control EDH decks, and while there are some, I haven't found anything like what we are doing here. Due to a combination of cost to build, experience to understand, and difficulty to play, it's not surprising. There also might not be that many people who like to play slow control. It's not flashy.

It is, however, the $5,000 solution.

New cards are being spoiled for Origins, but we are using some of the best, most efficient, cards ever printed in this deck. It's a tall hill to climb to make it in.

That said...

Planeswalkers are flexible and efficient. They do several things, but take up only one card slot. And they don't require an ongoing infusion of mana each turn to gain incremental value. For a deck that plays the long game, the walkers are very powerful.

Ugin is a beating.

But so is Bolas.

And yes, Balance would be awesome to run here!

How awesome would it be to play our decks against /each other/? Woah. I got a chill.

[Davran]

Like I said before, we travel in a pretty small circle. I've searched the web for 5c control EDH decks, and while there are some, I haven't found anything like what we are doing here. Due to a combination of cost to build, experience to understand, and difficulty to play, it's not surprising. There also might not be that many people who like to play slow control. It's not flashy.

It is, however, the $5,000 solution.

I've been lurking on this thread forever for exactly this reason. The deck interests me highly as a veteran player, but my collection (and wallet) aren't deep enough to support it.

[Baumeister]

It is, however, the $5,000 solution.

I didn't realize how much the price of this monstrosity has jumped in the last year-and-a-half. I bought into it when I knew someone who was selling their collection, so I only had to pay a fraction of what I probably should have. It is kind of nice to know that very few people will/can build this deck. Keeper was challenging to play in Vintage against one person; I never thought it could be made more difficult.

Davran, if you really want to build the deck it's probably a lot more within reach than you think. A lot of EDH playgroups are very tolerant of proxies as well - we have a 10 proxy limit per deck as long as they are high-quality with the actual printed oracle text within easy reach. I don't want to presume to tell you how to play or collect, but this deck literally brought me back from quitting Magic altogether. It's that much fun to play in a format where every game can become ramp->Prophet of Kruphix->Consecrated Sphinx->WINNNN!!


Planeswalkers are flexible and efficient. They do several things, but take up only one card slot. And they don't require an ongoing infusion of mana each turn to gain incremental value. For a deck that plays the long game, the walkers are very powerful.

This is pretty much my line of thinking at the moment. My 'walker package is:

Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Narset Transcendent
Ajani Vengeant
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Karn Liberated
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

I've been taking a hard look at Ajani whenever I play him but so far, he's been fairly solid. His +1 will lock down mana artifacts, utility creatures, lands, and Eldrazi while the -2 gains life which is usually relevant. Three life is three more fetch lands I can play. The ultimate is rude and ridiculous. It does allow for me to focus attention on the rest of the table so it makes my spells a little more powerful.

Let's keep this thread alive. This deck is the most interesting Magic deck I have and, like you said, there is nowhere else on the internet that it exists. What cards have you been trying? What synergies have you found with the deck? Is there any card you would want printed for the deck that doesn't exist? I don't know, but if we can keep this at the top of the EDH page, we can probably get more feedback to make the deck tighter.

[Eric Petracca]

What cards have you been trying? What synergies have you found with the deck?

I'd have to take another look at my deck, but the one card I've been testing that comes to mind is Rings of Brighthearth in the Phyrexian Metamorph slot.

Rings is great.

It puts you way ahead on fetch land activations and gets better with the more planeswalkers you run.

You talked about a game where you had an early Exploration+Crucible? It's like that. If you get Rings+Crucible or Rings+Life from the Loam, you can ramp with your fetches. This gets out of hand quickly.

[Davran]

Davran, if you really want to build the deck it's probably a lot more within reach than you think. A lot of EDH playgroups are very tolerant of proxies as well - we have a 10 proxy limit per deck as long as they are high-quality with the actual printed oracle text within easy reach. I don't want to presume to tell you how to play or collect, but this deck literally brought me back from quitting Magic altogether. It's that much fun to play in a format where every game can become ramp->Prophet of Kruphix->Consecrated Sphinx->WINNNN!!

Call me weird or whatever, but proxies really bother me outside of play testing. I totally get that Moat is an expensive magic card, and speaking as someone who doesn't currently own one and wants to that definitely sucks...but printing one off and sticking it to a basic land just feels like cheating to me. Having spent my hard earned cash and/or trade fodder on the high dollar staples I do own it sort of feels bad to have some guy roll up with his "$5,000 solution" that's actually about $1.50 worth of printer paper and a little arts and crafts time. To me, it ignores the "collectible" part of the game when you start skimping on the collecting and just run whatever the hell you want to, physical cardboard be damned.

To get back on topic - is Myth Realized a thing this deck might want? I count zero creature spells in the OP at a quick glance, so it seems like a relatively reliable game ending creature with very little effort expended. Also, it's a nice mana sink if you don't end up blowing that counter mana, dodges The Abyss (and maybe Humility? Yay layers!), and any random Wrath of God effects.

[Baumeister]

Call me weird or whatever, but proxies really bother me outside of play testing. I totally get that Moat is an expensive magic card, and speaking as someone who doesn't currently own one and wants to that definitely sucks...but printing one off and sticking it to a basic land just feels like cheating to me. Having spent my hard earned cash and/or trade fodder on the high dollar staples I do own it sort of feels bad to have some guy roll up with his "$5,000 solution" that's actually about $1.50 worth of printer paper and a little arts and crafts time. To me, it ignores the "collectible" part of the game when you start skimping on the collecting and just run whatever the hell you want to, physical cardboard be damned.

I think that's a fair assessment. It's actually interesting enough as a topic that it could be its own thread.


To get back on topic - is Myth Realized a thing this deck might want? I count zero creature spells in the OP at a quick glance, so it seems like a relatively reliable game ending creature with very little effort expended. Also, it's a nice mana sink if you don't end up blowing that counter mana, dodges The Abyss (and maybe Humility? Yay layers!), and any random Wrath of God effects.

Layers:

1 Copy Effects: Any effect which would copy values onto the object you’re evaluating. If you can spot the word ‘Copy’ in the ability/spell text, then it’s fairly safe to say that the effect needs to live here.

2 Control-Changing Effects: Any effect which would change the controller of the object you’re evaluating. Any ability or spell that generates this type of effect should contain the word ‘Control.’

3 Text-Changing Effects: Any effect which would change the text of the object you’re evaluating. To be included in this layer, the effect has to specifically state that it’s changing text. Effects such as “Target creature loses all abilities” should be placed in Layer 6.

4 Type-Changing Effects: Any effect which would add, change or remove types, subtypes or supertypes from the object you’re evaluating. These should be easy to spot, but they’re often thrown in as part of a larger ability.

5 Color Changing Effects: Any effect which would add, change or remove color from the object you’re evaluating.

6 Ability Adding or Removing Effects: Any effect which would add or remove abilities to an object you’re evaluating. (Humility goes here along with Myth Realized)

7A Effects from Power/Toughness affecting CDAs: All P/T CDAs. Other CDAs just apply first in their relevant layer.

7B Any Power/Toughness setting effects: All P/T effects that set either P/T or both to a specific number or value. (Humility sets P/T in this layer, but so does Myth Realized)

7C Any Power/Toughness changing effect that doesn’t set: This covers all effects that modify Power/Toughness so long as they don’t set P/T to a specific value.

7D P/T changes from Counters: Any counters that affect P/T.

7E Effects that switch P/T: Any effect that switches power & toughness.

I think the card would function based off time stamp order and since you activate Myth Realized after both permanents are in play, the Myth "wins" because it's the most recent. I think it functions like Man-Lands under Humility.

@Eric: Rings of Brighthearth is definitely interesting so I'll test it and let you know

[Eric Petracca]

Is Myth Realized a thing this deck might want? I count zero creature spells in the OP at a quick glance, so it seems like a relatively reliable game ending creature with very little effort expended. Also, it's a nice mana sink if you don't end up blowing that counter mana, dodges The Abyss (and maybe Humility? Yay layers!), and any random Wrath of God effects.

Every slot in this deck is precious. If I was going to evaluate Myth Realized, without actually testing it, my thought process would be to compare it to what other cards we have available.

Myth Realized, in this deck, would be a finisher. That's its job. We use it to close out the game. So, it's competing with Door to Nothingness directly and some of the planeswalkers indirectly. That's tough competition.

The other thing I would compare it to is what other cards are available if I wanted a similar card in that slot. In other words, what other finishers do I have access to?

Luminarch Ascension is an enchantment, like Myth Realized. But, if I can protect it (and myself) for a few turns, I can pump out a squadron of flying 4/4 angel tokens. They can kill my angels, but the enchantment sits around to spit out more of them. Myth Realized is vulnerable to creature removal when activated.

Another comparison might be a card like Helix Pinnacle. It's a low-cost enchantment that outright wins the game if the condition is met. It might take a dozen turns to meet that condition in the end game, but it just wins. Compare this to Myth Realized where I have to make it big, and activate it, protect it, attack, get damage through, and hope my opponent doesn't have a ton of life or some other way to nullify a non-flying creature. My own Moat is a problem.

You rock! Keep the suggestions coming. I'm not saying Myth Realized is bad. It just has a high bar to clear to make it in a card pool this big.

[Davran]

I think the card would function based off time stamp order and since you activate Myth Realized after both permanents are in play, the Myth "wins" because it's the most recent. I think it functions like Man-Lands under Humility.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, but I wasn't 100% positive about it.

**EDIT: @ Eric Petracca - Makes sense, though as a control deck I think the "dies to removal" angle is a little less relevant since you've got countermagic to keep the thing alive if needed.

[Amon Amarth]

Hey guys! Been busy being lazy. Sorry for not updating as much; my local play group fell apart so I only tangentially keep up with EDH. Origins looks like it has some pretty cool stuff though.

Day's Undoing Probably not. We can already play Timetwister if we want so...yeah. Pass.

Jace's Sanctum I like this. Pseudo-ramp and card quality! I'll find room for this card, most likely.

Talent of the Telepath Spell Mastery is easy for us to achieve but this card is hit or miss depending on the decks you play against. Could be money against spellslinger-style decks.

Thopter Spy Network This would be sweet if I had more artifacts. I don't think I run enough to play this guy. Another good reason to run Tezz 1.0.

Dark Petition Hm. Not sure about this card. Midgame it's basically a DT if you can funnel the black mana into what you tutor for or something in your hand. Otherwise it's a five mana tutor which isn't particularly good.

Starfield of Nyx: This card is pretty hot. One part card advantage and one part wincon. I've always wanted an Academy Ruins for enchantments but this might be better. It changes the way you evaluate cards. Aura of Silence(which adds to the prison subtheme as well as being removal) looks pretty hot as does Seal of Doom. Deed? Yep. That magic fish that you didn't pay the upkeep on comes back for free! And on turn 12 you have an army of enchantments to beat down with. Sweet. Also re: layers and such if you have five enchantments out I think that Humility turns off Moat, The Abyss, etc. so you can attack but they're not 1/1's. Something to be aware of so if you're enchantments are holding everyone at bay and you haven't Global Ruin-ed everyone yet.

With that out of the way...

I would love to play Balance. A sweet Beta, NM copy for maximum awesome. Gift's Ungiven would be the other card that would be extremely good here.

Half the reason I made this thread is because there was nowhere else I saw this this type of strategy being discussed. This deck scratched that itch of playing those archaic-looking decks from the mid 90's.

I like Ring's but it occasionally sat around doing nothing. Boo. I don't like Myth Realized because it doesn't do much but it is a good finisher though.

I also don't like proxies.

I think that's most everything. Oh, I'll clean up the opening post a bit. Some ugly formatting issues.

[Baumeister]

Starfield of Nyx: This card is pretty hot. One part card advantage and one part wincon. I've always wanted an Academy Ruins for enchantments but this might be better. It changes the way you evaluate cards. Aura of Silence(which adds to the prison subtheme as well as being removal) looks pretty hot as does Seal of Doom. Deed? Yep. That magic fish that you didn't pay the upkeep on comes back for free! And on turn 12 you have an army of enchantments to beat down with. Sweet. Also re: layers and such if you have five enchantments out I think that Humility turns off Moat, The Abyss, etc. so you can attack but they're not 1/1's. Something to be aware of so if you're enchantments are holding everyone at bay and you haven't Global Ruin-ed everyone yet.

I'm very excited about the possibilities for this card in this deck. It's half recursion engine and half win condition for us so it works very well with the theme for the deck. I'm going to pick up a copy to test with.

In other news, Ajani Vengeant is not testing that well. About half the time, he's great, but his +1 requires that the permanent already be tapped. I think Tamiyo, the Moon Sage might be slightly better because she does functionally the same thing but is blue for Force of Will. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon has been pretty great so far. He (it?) works well when we are behind because he is such a good sweeper. The only problem I've encountered is that is can blow up our own lock pieces.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I think Molten Vortex from Magic Origins looks pretty good as far as inclusions for the deck. I think it's much more playable than Seismic Assault because it only costs R and it's quite good as both a means to control the board and a win condition with Life from the Loam. What does everyone here think?

EDIT 2: I went looking for enchantments that might work well in this deck and came across a few that have potential.

Aether Flash - kills creatures as they enter the battlefield with Humility out.
Aura of Silence - already mentioned by Amon above.
Dream Tides - disruption piece?
Font of Fortunes - this works pretty well with Starfield of Nyx for repeated card draw.
Greed - more card draw? Do we need this?
Land Equilibrium - this card is nasty, but does it come down soon enough? It's quite dead late game and I think we are trying to avoid dead cards.
Night of Souls' Betrayal - also good with Humility.
Parallax Wave - we can do the trick where you remove four creatures and then the Wave for a super Swords to Plowshares if Starfield of Nyx is out and active.
Seal of Doom - mentioned above.
Solitary Confinement - we can sacrifice it on our upkeep, and then recur it with Starfield of Nyx.
Soul Snare - similar to Seal of Doom
Suppression Field - I don't think this effects us too much and is a nice speed bump.
Wild Research - if we have a handful of cards, this can turn them into answers. I saw a Zedruu deck use this very effectively and want to try it out.

[Eric Petracca]

I'm very excited about the possibilities for this card in this deck. It's half recursion engine and half win condition for us so it works very well with the theme for the deck. I'm going to pick up a copy to test with.

Starfield of Nyx also jumped out at me. I think it is worth testing. It's grindy and adds inevitability. That said...

It's a slow Replenish, a card we already run.

It also makes our enchantments vulnerable to creature removal (eventually). Enchantments are typically powerful because in addition to doing game-breaking things, they are not as vulnerable to removal as are creatures. We don't always have the counterspell.

Moat and Abyss, two enchantments that are difficult for many decks to play around, don't play nicely with Starfield of Nyx when the animation condition is met.

[Baumeister]

It's a slow Replenish, a card we already run.

It also makes our enchantments vulnerable to creature removal (eventually). Enchantments are typically powerful because in addition to doing game-breaking things, they are not as vulnerable to removal as are creatures. We don't always have the counterspell.

Moat and Abyss, two enchantments that are difficult for many decks to play around, don't play nicely with Starfield of Nyx when the animation condition is met.

I'm going to go ahead and argue with you on this one. You made three pretty good points, however; I think the subtle synergies with the deck make it much more powerful than you mention here.

Yes, it is like Replenish. It functions differently enough over the course of the game, though. Replenish is a one-time bomb akin to Fact or Fiction while Starfield of Nyx is more like Future Sight. Both cards are good and generate absurd card advantage, but do so in different ways. If you think of Starfield as a slow Replenish then of course it looks bad. The strength lies in the repeatable effect.

The other point you made is that the second block of text potentially doesn't play well with the other enchantments in the deck. True, but, again, the power lies in the subtleties. The fact that we can control when to activate the second line of text is absurd. If the opponent had control, the card would be unplayable. But that's not the case. It's similar to how Heliod, God of the Sun functions. Do I want him to be a creature? Most of the time, no. But occasionally it's useful to be able to pop devotion and swing for the win.

I would say most of the time we only need a couple of enchantments on the board to keep a nice lock on the table. It's just a matter of careful play after Starfield hits the board. Testing has been generally positive so far. It can do some absurd things and is a beefy CA engine. The biggest problem is that it becomes a huge target when people realize what I'm up to and Starfield does not recur itself. Oh man how I would give my left ovary for it to self-recur.

Wild Research has been interesting as well. It's essentially Survival of the Fittest for instants and enchantments. I'm fairly certain it's borderline win-more as it gets really good when you have a full grip of cards, but it does function at instant speed. It also repeatedly pulls bombs out of the deck. I'm going to keep testing.

I added Wargate back into the deck solely because of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and it's been quite good. Late game, it's been pretty great about finding Humility and its ilk, so that's just icing on the proverbial cake.

[Eric Petracca]

I'm going to go ahead and argue with you on this one. You made three pretty good points, however; I think the subtle synergies with the deck make it much more powerful than you mention here.

It's all good!

Amon has done an incredible job of describing this deck. I play less spot removal and more manipulation cards, but the mix of other cards is very similar. We are to the point where we are slotting in specific cards based on our experience, our metagame, and individual lines of play.

That's a pretty cool place to be.

I haven't playtested Starfield of Nyx yet. I have an open mind. Keep the information coming. :)

As long as you are testing, don't forget about these cards. Sterling Grove seems like it would be especially nifty if I could replay it every turn with Starfield. The best part is, the first Sterling Grove gets you Starfield!


Sterling Grove
Privileged Position
Sphere of Safety
Serra's Sanctum





Yes, it is like Replenish. It functions differently enough over the course of the game, though. Replenish is a one-time bomb akin to Fact or Fiction while Starfield of Nyx is more like Future Sight. Both cards are good and generate absurd card advantage, but do so in different ways. If you think of Starfield as a slow Replenish then of course it looks bad. The strength lies in the repeatable effect.

What did you take out to test Starfield?




I added Wargate back into the deck solely because of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and it's been quite good. Late game, it's been pretty great about finding Humility and its ilk, so that's just icing on the proverbial cake.

A while back, when Amon posted that he took Wargate out, I posted something similar: But it puts Tabernacle directly into play from your library!

I still run Wargate. Putting Tabernacle, Strip Mine, or Maze of Ith directly into play is strong. It looks like Amon is using Personal Tutor to setup Global Ruin or some other bomb instead. I see merit in both lines of play.

Like I said, we are to the point where we are swapping in and out a dozen or so cards depending on factors that probably aren't universal.

[Baumeister]

As long as you are testing, don't forget about these cards. Sterling Grove seems like it would be especially nifty if I could replay it every turn with Starfield. The best part is, the first Sterling Grove gets you Starfield!


Sterling Grove
Privileged Position
Sphere of Safety
Serra's Sanctum


I so badly want Grove and Position to be good, but they don't do anything to further our gameplan. Grove is a tutor, so I suppose there is that. Half the time, I don't really have a board to protect anyway since I'm playing out of my hand.

Sphere is a bad Collective Restraint. I think I only need one effect like that in the deck, and Restraint is cheaper, bluer, and easier to get to an activation cost of 5.

Sanctum is good, but it dies to everything. I know that's not a good argument, but it's not high-impact enough to warrant the risks as the deck currently stands. I once played a game where someone hit my Sanctum (which tapped for one at the time) with Acidic Slime because he was "Aware of what that card could do," even though there were half a dozen better targets on the board. If the enchantment count gets above 25 or so, then I think this gets included, but it's kind of hit or miss right now.


What did you take out to test Starfield?

From the list on the first page? No idea. I'm not running the sorcery speed top-of-library tutors and Phyrexian Metamorph is not currently in my list. Here's the deck breakdown.

36 Lands
6 Mana Development
13 Card Selection (tutors, Library, Top)
6 Card Advantage
6 Recursion
27 Disruption (includes Tabernacle and Maze)
5 Planeswalkers

If I were to pull cards from the deck, it'd probably be from the disruption suite.


A while back, when Amon posted that he took Wargate out, I posted something similar: But it puts Tabernacle directly into play from your library!

I still run Wargate. Putting Tabernacle, Strip Mine, or Maze of Ith directly into play is strong. It looks like Amon is using Personal Tutor to setup Global Ruin or some other bomb instead. I see merit in both lines of play.

Like I said, we are to the point where we are swapping in and out a dozen or so cards depending on factors that probably aren't universal.

At the very least, it's a ramp piece when necessary. Thanks to the variable cost and high quality targets we run, it's pretty much stellar at all points of the game. Three mana to put Tabernacle in play feels like cheating.

[Eric Petracca]

Sphere is a bad Collective Restraint. I think I only need one effect like that in the deck, and Restraint is cheaper, bluer, and easier to get to an activation cost of 5.



This is essentially what I am saying about Starfield of Nyx.

Starfield is a bad Replenish. I only need one effect like that in the deck, and Replenish is easier to cast, immediately impactful, and doesn't shut off lines of play.

A couple of things:

1) I haven't tested Starfield of Nyx. It might be brilliant.
2) I respect the time and attention you have taken with this thread. I value your opinion. And thank you for articulating your thought process about your card choices.
3) It's possible that our deck lists and metagame are dissimilar enough that evaluating individual cards will lead us to opposite conclusions.

I remember reading Oscar Tan's Control Player's Bible. At one point, he was running Ivory Mask main deck in Keeper (The Deck) because it wrecked people in the small metagame that was his workplace (school?) lunchroom.

We have a deck that support (and get) just about any card on demand. How awesome is that?

[Baumeister]

This is essentially what I am saying about Starfield of Nyx.

Starfield is a bad Replenish. I only need one effect like that in the deck, and Replenish is easier to cast, immediately impactful, and doesn't shut off lines of play.

Simpy put, I'd play a bad Replenish in this deck. The effect is so bonkers that I'm willing to make a slot for it.

Sphere of Safety and Collective Restraint combat the same problem in the same way but Sphere is slightly less optimized for the deck. They also both compete with the sweepers in the deck meaning we have far more redundancy against creatures than we have utility to further our board state.

Starfield of Nyx functions differently from Replenish by generating value over time, especially with enchantments that can be sacrificed for value. I understand the power of Replenish and love the card to death, but these games go loooong and effects that reiterate every turn for no mana investment beyond the original cost should not be underestimated.

Needless to say, I'm quite excited and will test thoroughly. Maybe it will just be a huge let down, but it'll be interesting figuring it out. The deck feels about 95% optimized, but there is just something missing in some games and I'm trying to perfect the balance of the different components of the deck.


I respect the time and attention you have taken with this thread. I value your opinion. And thank you for articulating your thought process about your card choices.

No problem! As long as you keep attacking my ideas and not me personally, I don't take any issue with how you come across. Lively interaction is the best way to force one's head out of one's ass.

[Amon Amarth]

Privileged Position I want to be good but it feels like Danger of Cool Things and it doesn't really affect the board too much. I probably won't even test it. Sterling Grove on the other hand is recurrable with Starfield and also provides protection from spot removal. A very solid card.

Re: Wargate I think I took it out before I even had Tabernacle in the deck. I could see playing it again solely because of that. Tabernacle is sweet.


The comparison between Starfield and the Gods is a pretty good one. You can control when your enchantments animate so you can beatdown when appropriate.

[Baumeister]

Sterling Grove on the other hand is recurrable with Starfield and also provides protection from spot removal. A very solid card.

@Amon & Eric: what are you thinking about cutting in order to fit these new cards in? My changes from the opening post are:

- Brainstorm
- Imperial Seal
- Personal Tutor
- Dissipate
- Forbid
- Unexpectedly Absent
- Wrath of God
- The Abyss
- Phyrexian Metamorph

+ Jace's Sanctum
+ Sterling Grove
+ Wargate
+ Dig Through Time
+ Starfield of Nyx
+ Aura of Silence
+ Utter End
+ Narset Transcendent
+ Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

[Eric Petracca]

@Amon & Eric: what are you thinking about cutting in order to fit these new cards in? My changes from the opening post are:

- Brainstorm
- Imperial Seal
- Personal Tutor
- Dissipate
- Forbid
- Unexpectedly Absent
- Wrath of God
- The Abyss
- Phyrexian Metamorph

+ Jace's Sanctum
+ Sterling Grove
+ Wargate
+ Dig Through Time
+ Starfield of Nyx
+ Aura of Silence
+ Utter End
+ Narset Transcendent
+ Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

I am probably going to break this up over a few posts so that I don't get timed out. :)

My short answer is that if I absolutely had to run Starfield of Nyx, I would also run Sterling Grove. To make room for those two cards in my deck, I would swap out Phyrexian Metamorph and Fabricate.

Like in Amon's write-up, Phyrexian Metamorph is in my "utility" slot. Unless I was ready to make Starfield of Nyx my win-con, the utility slot is the first slot where I test out a new card. Fabricate is the tutor I least want to see. I only use it to get Door to Nothingness, and there are other, more flexible ways to do that.

In the next post, I want to take a closer look at the swaps you posted. I have some thoughts and questions.

[Eric Petracca]

My changes from the opening post are:

- Brainstorm
- Imperial Seal
- Personal Tutor
- Dissipate
- Forbid
- Unexpectedly Absent
- Wrath of God
- The Abyss
- Phyrexian Metamorph


Brainstorm is one of those cards that makes this deck "smaller." Similarly, Ponder and Preordain, for a very low mana cost, will fix weak draws. Can you tell me more about cutting Brainstorm?

I don't own Imperial Seal, but if I did I would run it. Sometimes I use Lim-Dul's Vault here. Sometimes I use Merchant Scroll. Merchant-->Mystical-->Demonic-->Win! is a totally reasonable play from back in my Type 1 days. Cruel Tutor is more mana, but in the ballpark for mid-to-late game.

Personal Tutor has been Wargate for me as well, but I do see the allure of PT. Merchant Scroll could go in this slot as well.

You took out two counterspells. I have them, but I have less spot removal cards. I think this is a metagame choice. When I am losing to fast combo, the cheaper counterspells come back in.

It looks like you swapped Unexpectedly Absent for Utter End. It seemed to me that UE was too much mana at 4cc. Are you having any trouble with it? Amon has disagreed with me in the past about spot removal, and I respect that. I would say that Beast Within, Chaos Warp, and Oblation all solve a lot of problems at instant speed, low cost, and gentle mana requirements. I have not had a problem with the drawbacks. That said, UE is pretty crazy. :)

Wrath of God gets the job done. I would take out Supreme Verdict before WoG, but it is a close call. In my experience, the creature sweepers are where we reap massive card advantage. Many decks are trying to win with creatures. Are you finding that you have too many sweepers sitting in your hand?

The Abyss is game-breaking. Since we don't have any creatures in our deck, the effect is completely asymmetric. Most creature decks cannot recover when this card hits the table after a sweeper or early in the game.

Phyrexian Metamorph is in the utility slot, so no questions here. When it's sitting in my hand, I'd much rather have something like Monastery Siege or Ponder. I've been running Rings in this slot recently.

[Eric Petracca]

+ Jace's Sanctum
+ Sterling Grove
+ Wargate
+ Dig Through Time
+ Starfield of Nyx
+ Aura of Silence
+ Utter End
+ Narset Transcendent
+ Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Jace's Sanctum jumped out at me from Origins. The curve on this deck is pretty tight, but spending less mana is always nice. I'm not sure that I am cranking out enough spells to make the repeated scrying activate regularly. There are a lot of turns where I play a land and pass. That's why I was looking at Thassa, God of the Sea a while back: cheaper, indestructible, guaranteed scry every turn.

Grove and Wargate, yep.

Dig and Cruise don't work for me in this deck. I have a strong aversion to exiling cards, so I am biased. But I'd rather have Skeletal Scrying if I had some run a similar effect. Even Impulse gets me halfway there with more consistency. How many times does Dig sit in your hand vs. win you the game? (I am genuinely interested!)

The great thing about this deck is we can reasonably run just about any card ever printed. So, I like to ask myself, "Does this card do something better than a card I am already running?" In other words, does the card stand up and demand to be played (Humility, Moat, etc)?

The next question I ask myself is, "Does this card do something entirely different than a card I am already running?" Stranglehold is a good example of this type of card. It's generally disruptive to many EDH decks and cuts off decks that try to take extra (or infinite) turns.

The last questions I ask myself is, "Does this card work well because of some other card I am already running?" Demonic Tutor is a good example of this. If we ran a bunch of crap cards, Demonic Tutor would be terrible. But because we run the most broken cards ever printed, Demonic Tutor is a spectacular card!

So, is Aura of Silence good enough on it's own? Does it do something different? And is it only good because of some other card we are already running?

Aura of Silence is generally disruptive, like Stranglehold. Many decks ramp with artifacts. And it can be used as limited spot removal. It gets better if you can replay it every turn. Would you run it without Starfield of Nyx? (Same question for Sterling Grove.)

I mentioned Utter End in the previous post.

You've talked about Narset in previous posts. The other cards in this deck are so incredibly strong, I'd rather have Sphinx's Revelation or anything else that puts cards directly into my hand. Thirst for Knowledge gives us a couple of cards in hand for less mana. I haven't tested Narset, so I may be missing the boat on this one.

Ugin is sweet. The sweep effect is awesome. I'm going to have to test him out.

[Baumeister]

Wow, lots of stuff from you. I'll try and go over everything one by one. Keep in mind that this is a metagame deck so some cuts and additions are to take advantage of strategies my playgroup is soft to.


Brainstorm is one of those cards that makes this deck "smaller." Similarly, Ponder and Preordain, for a very low mana cost, will fix weak draws. Can you tell me more about cutting Brainstorm?

Brainstorm is absurd, no doubt about it. I'm trying more of a brute-force card drawing approach at the moment, but I think you may be right about adding this and Impulse back into the deck over some of the obtuse card advantage engines. I've discussed strategy with a friend and once your deck hits a critical tipping point of powerful spells, cantrips may be the way to go. I'll probably end of sliding back towards a more efficient card manipulation package.


I don't own Imperial Seal, but if I did I would run it. Sometimes I use Lim-Dul's Vault here. Sometimes I use Merchant Scroll. Merchant-->Mystical-->Demonic-->Win! is a totally reasonable play from back in my Type 1 days. Cruel Tutor is more mana, but in the ballpark for mid-to-late game.

Yeah, I don't own a Seal. If I did, it would probably be to flip it. I don't like that it's a sorcery AND a one-shot effect that doesn't put a spell in my hand. I'm trying some of the effects that repeat to see if I can milk value out of them.


Personal Tutor has been Wargate for me as well, but I do see the allure of PT. Merchant Scroll could go in this slot as well.

Merchant Scroll is okay, but it's so narrow that it only hits a very small portion of our deck.


You took out two counterspells. I have them, but I have less spot removal cards. I think this is a metagame choice. When I am losing to fast combo, the cheaper counterspells come back in.

I know, but cuts had to be made and I usually hold counterspells until there is something I can't deal with by other means. So I went down in order to have fewer potentially dead cards.


It looks like you swapped Unexpectedly Absent for Utter End. It seemed to me that UE was too much mana at 4cc. Are you having any trouble with it? Amon has disagreed with me in the past about spot removal, and I respect that. I would say that Beast Within, Chaos Warp, and Oblation all solve a lot of problems at instant speed, low cost, and gentle mana requirements. I have not had a problem with the drawbacks. That said, UE is pretty crazy. :)

Utter End is almost always cheaper than Unexpectedly Absent when you need something gone. Plus, with the Commander rules update, I think it's just a direct upgrade since you can't bury an opponent's commander in their deck.


Wrath of God gets the job done. I would take out Supreme Verdict before WoG, but it is a close call. In my experience, the creature sweepers are where we reap massive card advantage. Many decks are trying to win with creatures. Are you finding that you have too many sweepers sitting in your hand?

Supreme Verdict can't be countered and is blue. The mana has never been an issue since I always search for lands that can produce blue and white. I found myself not needing a ton of wrath effects in the deck. I think I am at 6 or 7 at the moment and it's a good balance. A lot of the sweepers I want to run are either extremely flexible (Austere Command) or pull double duty (Ugin, the Spirit Dragon).


The Abyss is game-breaking. Since we don't have any creatures in our deck, the effect is completely asymmetric. Most creature decks cannot recover when this card hits the table after a sweeper or early in the game.

The Abyss is really good, yes... when you are ahead in the game. It does almost nothing when you need to answer more than one creature and is a bad topdeck later in the game. Amon and I have had this argument. I think the card doesn't do a lot and draws the ire of other players at the table. Plus, the majority of the time a player would pitch a Wood Elves that they had already gotten value out of and then windmill slam their Terastodon and proceed to get back at me for ruining their fun. I'd rather have Humility every single time.


Jace's Sanctum jumped out at me from Origins. The curve on this deck is pretty tight, but spending less mana is always nice. I'm not sure that I am cranking out enough spells to make the repeated scrying activate regularly. There are a lot of turns where I play a land and pass. That's why I was looking at Thassa, God of the Sea a while back: cheaper, indestructible, guaranteed scry every turn.

It's half mana ramp and half card manipulation, so I think it's worth a test slot. I'll have to play more games before I pass judgment.


Dig and Cruise don't work for me in this deck. I have a strong aversion to exiling cards, so I am biased. But I'd rather have Skeletal Scrying if I had some run a similar effect. Even Impulse gets me halfway there with more consistency. How many times does Dig sit in your hand vs. win you the game? (I am genuinely interested!)

Dig Through Time has been Fact or Fiction number two every time I've drawn it. It's not quite as powerful, but it only costs UU (at the cost of your graveyard), digs really deep, and is an instant. I've been very impressed.


So, is Aura of Silence good enough on it's own? Does it do something different? And is it only good because of some other card we are already running?

Aura of Silence replaced Maelstrom Pulse since they hit similar targets. Aura is really, really good with Starfield of Nyx in play. Again, this is a test slot and may come out.


It gets better if you can replay it every turn. Would you run it without Starfield of Nyx? (Same question for Sterling Grove.)

No, no, no, no, no. Synergy > Flexibility > Power (at least in EDH).


You've talked about Narset in previous posts. The other cards in this deck are so incredibly strong, I'd rather have Sphinx's Revelation or anything else that puts cards directly into my hand. Thirst for Knowledge gives us a couple of cards in hand for less mana. I haven't tested Narset, so I may be missing the boat on this one.

She draws attention away from me while generating card quality and card advantage. She has been very good as a sort of "glue" that helps maintain my game position. It's hard to explain, but I've been happy to draw her every time I have.


Ugin is sweet. The sweep effect is awesome. I'm going to have to test him out.

I think he's better than a sweeper since you get targeted removal that builds towards a threat or a variable sweeper that you can tune to garner favor from some of the other players.

[Eric Petracca]

Ramping
I did some testing (10 games, 1vs1) with different configurations of ramp cards, swapping out the artifact ramp for the green ramp spells: Nature's Lore, Farseek, Explore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim.

Ramping lands directly into play was good. This often boosted the count for Collective Restraint by one or two earlier than normal. It also created less targets for opposing removal. I see more artifact removal than land destruction. YMMV.

Then this happened. My testing partner swapped decks against me and started a B/R deck. Turn two, he dropped Blood Moon. Game over. Next game. Turn two, Demonic Tutor. Turn three, Blood Moon. Game over.

So, if Blood Moon is in your meta, mix it up: Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim, Chromatic Lantern, Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic. Something like that.

Other Cards
There's a high bar to clear for a card to make it into this deck, but a couple of other spells from Origins caught my eye.

Shadows of the Past - There are plenty of turns where 6-12 creatures die at once. This enchantment is a conditional, repeatable scry effect for no additional mana. It's decent against a lot of decks and great against token decks.

Tragic Arrogance - This is a reasonably costed way to get back in the game when things are out of hand. It does leave threats on the board, but you choose which ones. I'm not sure what I would swap out for this, but I can imagine situations where casting this all but locks up the game.

Other Testing
Did you get a chance to try Starfield of Nyx, yet? I'm interested to know how that turned out.

[Baumeister]

Nature's Lore, Farseek, Explore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim

Ramping lands directly into play was good. This often boosted the count for Collective Restraint by one or two earlier than normal. It also created less targets for opposing removal. I see more artifact removal than land destruction. YMMV.

Then this happened. My testing partner swapped decks against me and started a B/R deck. Turn two, he dropped Blood Moon. Game over. Next game. Turn two, Demonic Tutor. Turn three, Blood Moon. Game over.

So, if Blood Moon is in your meta, mix it up: Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim, Chromatic Lantern, Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic. Something like that.

I was running this ramp package for a while but eventually moved away from it back to the mana rocks for a few reasons: 1) The spells wanted to be played early game, however; we really don't want green mana early game so it skewed the mana base in an odd direction; 2) The mana rocks tap for more colors; 3) You mentioned Blood Moon - I will usually try to hold removal for the player I expect to be packing the Moon and will float mana in response to them playing it; 4) The deck honestly doesn't need a ton of ramp and these spells felt like I was trying to pound in a nail with a sledgehammer.


Shadows of the Past - There are plenty of turns where 6-12 creatures die at once. This enchantment is a conditional, repeatable scry effect for no additional mana. It's decent against a lot of decks and great against token decks.

I actually tested this card and eventually cut it for not doing enough. Scry is a good ability, but this is a deck full of powerful cards and this just does not quite make it. For 100 mana, you can kill the board though.


Tragic Arrogance - This is a reasonably costed way to get back in the game when things are out of hand. It does leave threats on the board, but you choose which ones. I'm not sure what I would swap out for this, but I can imagine situations where casting this all but locks up the game.

I tested this briefly, but have not seen it in a game yet. It's essentially a fixed Balance, but it doesn't wipe as much. I like that you get to choose the cards that stay in play, though.


Did you get a chance to try Starfield of Nyx, yet? I'm interested to know how that turned out.

Yeah, the card is quite good, although very skill intensive to use. It makes for a phenomenal late game/kill condition. Also, it's absurd with Sterling Grove (good suggestion) in that you can basically win the game if no one can do anything to the Starfield. I think that interaction alone is worth running it, but the incidental value you get out of recurring enchantments is very strong. It allows your counterspells to go a bit further by not having to burn them on protecting important lock pieces.

I also tested Jace's Sanctum and I don't really like it. It's slow and doesn't do all that much over the course of a game, sadly. This slot could be better utilized with something more high-impact.

In other news, transmuting Tolaria West into The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is still one of my favorite plays ever.

[Ace/Homebrew]

I personally like Skyshroud Claim, but otherwise I agree that mana rocks are where it's at. :wink:


Shadows of the Past - For 100 mana, you can kill the board though.
How? You don't run creatures and the life loss requires 4 in your graveyard...

[Eric Petracca]

I was running this ramp package for a while but eventually moved away from it back to the mana rocks for a few reasons: 1) The spells wanted to be played early game, however; we really don't want green mana early game so it skewed the mana base in an odd direction; 2) The mana rocks tap for more colors; 3) You mentioned Blood Moon - I will usually try to hold removal for the player I expect to be packing the Moon and will float mana in response to them playing it; 4) The deck honestly doesn't need a ton of ramp and these spells felt like I was trying to pound in a nail with a sledgehammer.



Agreed. The 5-color fixing of the artifacts is probably more useful than the slightly faster green ramp spells. I guess it depends on how quickly you want certain spells online.

There were quite a few games where I felt like I was ramping, but not for any particular reason. Yes, having access to more mana is good in general, but I wasn't specifically able to take advantage of it the way a proactive deck might.

As for floating mana to deal with Blood Moon, that's usually my plan. I simply wasn't in the position to do that in those specific games. And I don't like losing randomly to one card that might show up in a wide range of decks.


I actually tested this card and eventually cut it for not doing enough. Scry is a good ability, but this is a deck full of powerful cards and this just does not quite make it. For 100 mana, you can kill the board though.


Good to know that you tested with Shadows of the Past already. I'll probably skip it. And yes, as someone already pointed out, we can't activate the ability with this deck because we can't meet the condition. So we aren't able to get full value anyway.




Yeah, the card is quite good, although very skill intensive to use. It makes for a phenomenal late game/kill condition. Also, it's absurd with Sterling Grove (good suggestion) in that you can basically win the game if no one can do anything to the Starfield. I think that interaction alone is worth running it, but the incidental value you get out of recurring enchantments is very strong. It allows your counterspells to go a bit further by not having to burn them on protecting important lock pieces.


Are we to the point where trying to put the puzzle together to use Door to Nothingness as the win condition isn't worth it? Does Starfield replace Door? Are the planeswalker ults enough of a win condition to not deal with Door anyway?

Would you describe some games where you used Starfield effectively? I'm still interested in how you strategically play around animating your Moat. Or maybe that's not how you are using it.

[Baumeister]

How? You don't run creatures and the life loss requires 4 in your graveyard...

Really, I was being facetious, but you are 100% correct. I played this card more in my Chainer deck where the second criteria is so incidental, that I didn't even bother to remember it was on the card. Jesus, that conditional text is terrible.


There were quite a few games where I felt like I was ramping, but not for any particular reason. Yes, having access to more mana is good in general, but I wasn't specifically able to take advantage of it the way a proactive deck might.

There is definitely a fine balance to make sure you have the right cards at the right time. I usually feel more comfortable holding removal and hitting land drops every turn instead of ramping.


Good to know that you tested with Shadows of the Past already. I'll probably skip it. And yes, as someone already pointed out, we can't activate the ability with this deck because we can't meet the condition. So we aren't able to get full value anyway.

Scry is much better in a deck where you have redundant copies of cards because it allows you to filter to the answer more easily. It's just not as good in a singleton format unless you have something like Scry 7 - an argument can be made that Fact or Fiction and Dig Through Time do that much better.


Are we to the point where trying to put the puzzle together to use Door to Nothingness as the win condition isn't worth it? Does Starfield replace Door? Are the planeswalker ults enough of a win condition to not deal with Door anyway?

Door is still the best at what it does because it is so compact, however; it's extremely fragile especially when there is a red player with removal at the table. I don't think we should remove it because it straight up wins if the other players can't interact and that in itself is worth a slot in the deck. The planeswalker ultimates are incidental to the other abilities. In conjunction with our lock pieces, the planeswalkers simply take over the game and direct attention away from our life total. Starfield functions similarly as a way to generate repeated card advantage. Yes, it can win you the game, but that's not really why I'm playing it.


Would you describe some games where you used Starfield effectively? I'm still interested in how you strategically play around animating your Moat. Or maybe that's not how you are using it.

Games with Starfield are typically quite grindy. It's at its best when you can prolong the game and get the other players to pass their turns without doing much. You have to change your thinking a bit with the card in the deck, but it does reward you for that. It's like if you see Exploration in your hand. You know if you can find Crucible of Worlds, your odds of winning go up a lot.

The last game I played, I slowly built up my land base and cracked Sterling Grove EOT for Starfield of Nyx to build an advantage engine. It was important to keep a full grip of removal to keep the Starfield in play, but I was able to hit Stranglehold, Collective Restraint, Future Sight, and Pernicious Deed turn after turn to soft lock the board. With Grove/Deed in play, I had an instant-speed way to nullify creature removal by binning the Grove/Deed in response to shenanigans from my opponents. I ended up attacking into players on my turn by popping Deed when needed to clear the ground and then playing out Grove to turn my enchantments into beaters.

It was unconventional, but the fact that the second ability on the Starfield allowed me to win was pretty sweet because I essentially got double value from the card. It's not immediately obvious how powerful the card is, but I suggest you try it to see if it works for your play group. I will say that it doesn't play well with Moat or Humility but those cards are so heinous that it hardly matters. Remember, you can pop your own stuff with Deed to sculpt your board to play around the Starfield. Also, Starfield doesn't turn itself into a creature which can be important in a sticky situation.

[Eric Petracca]

Here's a quick list of cards with comments from Battle for Zendikar that might work in this deck. I haven't tested any of these yet, but I'd be interested to read your thoughts.

Ob Nixilis Reignited
His -3 ability destroys a creature (Murder), then his +1 ability turns him into Phyrexian Arena. I'm not sure this guy better than other planeswalkers we already have access to.

Quarantine Field
I don't like effects like this, because it always seems like they come back to bite me. Inevitably, the Quarantine Field gets destroyed and releases all the nasty things inside. That said, this one scales. So, that's interesting.

Retreat to Coralhelm
With all the fetchlands in this deck, the blue Retreat means that we can scry a couple of times. I don't think this card is nearly strong enough to make it in this deck, but being able to hold back a fetch land to tap down a creature is interesting.

Prism Array
I want this card to be good, but I don't think it is. Best case scenario, you can tap down a few creatures and then way overspend to Scry 3.

Scour from Existence
Unconditional, instant speed, universal removal. We already have Utter End at 4cc, though.

Bring to Light
It's a tutor that also casts the card you find. Are you guys testing this? We run enough instants and sorceries that we have good targets all of the time. You can spend 5cc mana to cast Bring to Light, get Demonic Tutor, cast DT for free, then get whatever you want and end up with the final card in your hand (instead of exile). In other words, as long at DT is still in your deck, Bring to Light gets you any card you want.

What other cards did I miss from BFZ? (I left out the Eldrazi because this is basically a creatureless deck and we already had access to the original Kozilek and Ulamog.)

[Amon Amarth]

I'm super bad at keeping up with this thread but I will quickly comment on BFZ.

Bring to Light is probably the only thing I'd want to consider playing from BFZ though the new Ob isn't half-bad. BtL seems pretty awesome; it's a WoG/FoF/Ruin/Replenish split card. That seems worth testing.

[Baumeister]

Ob Nixilis Reignited

Quarantine Field

Retreat to Coralhelm

Prism Array

Scour from Existence

I have found these cards to be okay, but not great. Unfortunately, they would compete with slots for cards we already have that function better in the deck. Ob Nixilis is the most interesting, but is slightly overpriced. Retreat is best in a combo shell. The others are just bad removal.


Bring to Light
It's a tutor that also casts the card you find. Are you guys testing this? We run enough instants and sorceries that we have good targets all of the time. You can spend 5cc mana to cast Bring to Light, get Demonic Tutor, cast DT for free, then get whatever you want and end up with the final card in your hand (instead of exile). In other words, as long at DT is still in your deck, Bring to Light gets you any card you want.

You and Amon both pointed this out and I think it's pretty exciting. This card is legitimate. It's not great early game, but our late game tends to be all over the place and this finds bombs for us to stabilize the board. Early testing has been favorable as a flexible slot for recursion, card advantage, and disruption. The fact that you don't have to pay for what you find is really nice. Also, I don't believe you need to cast the card you found right away? Somebody correct me on this if I am wrong.

There will be some trickiness with what you use to pay for the card and knowing what you want to get from what's left in your deck. Still, skill intensive cards are generally better for this deck.

EDIT: Crap, you have to cast the card you find as part of the resolution of Bring to Light. That makes it worse.

[Eric Petracca]

You and Amon both pointed this out and I think it's pretty exciting. This card is legitimate. It's not great early game, but our late game tends to be all over the place and this finds bombs for us to stabilize the board. Early testing has been favorable as a flexible slot for recursion, card advantage, and disruption. The fact that you don't have to pay for what you find is really nice. Also, I don't believe you need to cast the card you found right away? Somebody correct me on this if I am wrong.

There will be some trickiness with what you use to pay for the card and knowing what you want to get from what's left in your deck. Still, skill intensive cards are generally better for this deck.

EDIT: Crap, you have to cast the card you find as part of the resolution of Bring to Light. That makes it worse.

Yes, you cast the card you find right away. The DT thing I mentioned is a way around that restriction, sort of.

Amon's comment, that BtL acts as a split card for different effects that we run, is an interesting way to think about what this card is doing for us in this deck.

Thank you both for the insight.

[Baumeister]

I've been able to test a few games with the newly added Bring to Light and I have more thoughts to add to the conversation about it.

I think it is slightly above average on the power scale. Of course, the better the quality of the cards you have, the better it is so it tends to shine in decks like this. That said, it's still just a tutor. It helps that it doesn't cost anything to cast the spell you find which puts it on par with the other tutors in the deck. However, you can't hold the card you find which matters sometimes. I did have a pretty spectacular game with it recently:

It was late game and it was down to just me and one other player, the other two having been eliminated. I cast Bring to Light finding and casting Yawgmoth's Will. I cast Replenish from my yard getting back Exploration, Stranglehold, Moat, Humility, and Future Sight. I cast Crucible of Worlds from my graveyard and put Strip Mine into play. Starting on the other player's upkeep, I was able to Strip-Lock them out of the game over the course of a few turns.

It wasn't so much that Bring to Light did what no other card could - I'm sure any tutor could have done that for me. It was more that it's a solid tutor in a deck full of high-quality cards. This helps cement the idea that in decks of higher power level, it's more important to have consistent tutoring power than raw draw power. I'd like it more if it were an instant or if it found any permanent or spell, but it's still pretty good. I will continue to run the card for the time being.

[Eric Petracca]

It wasn't so much that Bring to Light did what no other card could - I'm sure any tutor could have done that for me. It was more that it's a solid tutor in a deck full of high-quality cards. This helps cement the idea that in decks of higher power level, it's more important to have consistent tutoring power than raw draw power. I'd like it more if it were an instant or if it found any permanent or spell, but it's still pretty good. I will continue to run the card for the time being.


So, did you swap out a tutor to test BtL? Or a card drawing spell?

If you were just to compare BtL vs Wargate, how would you evaluate which of those cards to run?

[Baumeister]

So, did you swap out a tutor to test BtL? Or a card drawing spell?

If you were just to compare BtL vs Wargate, how would you evaluate which of those cards to run?

Our decks are slightly different, but I cut Dig Through Time as there are now a good deal of cards that interact with our graveyard and the delve is becoming more and more difficult to pay for. That puts me to 14 card selection cards (tutors, Brainstorm, top, etc.) including Bring to Light and five raw card advantage spells like Phyrexian Arena. I'd like to be at 20 total cards that manipulate my hand/library, but cuts are tough. My justification for cutting a CA card is that BtL lets me find Fact or Fiction if I need it.

Wargate is a beast of its own. First and foremost, it's the best tutor for Tabernacle and it will probably take a lot for me to cut that card simply for that reason. Secondly, for between three and eight mana, we can put card selection, card advantage, disruption, recursion, and removal engines directly into play. It also ramps us for the final colors we need for Door, not to mention being another tutor for Door itself.

If I had to pick between Wargate and Bring to Light, it would be Wargate simply because it is synergistic with more of the deck. I am currently running both though.

[Amon Amarth]

I'd say Wargate is better because the lock down enchantments are the lynchpin of the deck. BtL can't fetch those too easily outside of tutor chains.

[Eric Petracca]

Did you guys see anything good for us in the new Commander 2015 set?

http://mythicspoiler.com/c15/index.html

[Baumeister]

Did you guys see anything good for us in the new Commander 2015 set?

http://mythicspoiler.com/c15/index.html

Unfortunately, this was a set with a lot of cards that just didn't hit the power level we look for in this deck. I didn't really think there would be anything though, since the deck functions on an obscure tangent. There were a few of near misses:

Righteous Confluence, Mystic Confluence, Wretched Confluence, Fiery Confluence, Verdant Confluence - Cards designed with multiplayer in mind can be quite powerful, but I feel like Wizards held back on purpose. None of these cards are much better than the Commands and they don't really do anything for the deck than cards we already have access to.

Magus of the Wheel - Interesting and cool, but it's a creature and must be tapped to activate. This isn't how we want card advantage anyway.

Centaur Vinecrasher - This is probably my favorite card from the set. It's a creature, yes, but it's extremely resilient and can get quite large to end the game quickly. Having trample is the thing that pushes him into the playable realm. I will probably test this guy because it gives us a weird form of inevitability. The fact that it lines up nicely with the Crucible/Strip/Fetch engine that is already in the deck is fantastic.

[Eric Petracca]

Unfortunately, this was a set with a lot of cards that just didn't hit the power level we look for in this deck.

I'm with you.

As for Centaur Vinecrasher, how does it compare to Worm Harvest?

[Baumeister]

As for Centaur Vinecrasher, how does it compare to Worm Harvest?

It seems to be pretty similar with Worm Harvest perhaps being more resilient. The only negative I can see is that Harvest needs a land card to discard for the Retrace while Vinecrasher can be recurred from our board state by utilizing Crucible of Worlds. So instead of holding lands for a potential Worm Harvest, we can play them out normally. They are both slow and great late game, but I think Vinecrasher messes with our mana development less in the early game while still being able to be used to its fullest potential late game.

That being said, they may not be good enough either way. I'll certainly test both. Harvest was not a card I thought could work for this deck, but it's pretty great especially if we can control the board while we beat down. Good find.

Centaur has the additional benefit of being fetchable with Wargate. Both cards can be found with Bring to Light though, so that's pretty nice.

EDIT: Wow, I forgot Life from the Loam is a thing... Oops. Definite testing is needed on both of those cards.

[Baumeister]

I have a few updates on the deck that I figured would be good to share. Extensive testing has been done to try and nail down a win condition that I'm happy with and, while I haven't gotten to a point where I'm comfortable, I have gained a lot of insight. I'll go over what I've been using and pros and cons.

Door to Nothingness

The classic. It's nice because it is a self contained win condition that requires no support beyond simply developing our mana base. That said, it's incredibly slow and fragile.

Worm Harvest

This has been both interesting and fun to play. It's incredibly resilient due to basically having the spell version of reanimate built directly into the card. You have to play around graveyard hate, but that's not terribly difficult to do. Whenever I play with this card, I usually get to the point of the game where I have exhausted my opponents' resources and can begin casting Harvest once a turn to develop a large army of beaters. It pairs naturally well with our fetch-enabled mana base and it's great with Life from the Loam. There are issues with some of our lock pieces like Moat, so you have to be aware of how to play around that and plan for the late game. It also doesn't kill as cleanly as Door once you get stabilized.

Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek

I like this win condition because it also doubles as a defensive wall and can be played out early game. The biggest downside is that it is two cards that do almost nothing on their own - that's huge in a deck like this. The synergy of the cards can put you into an unbeatable position and I've had games where the incidental life gain mattered, but it can be hard to assemble.

I'm not entirely pleased with any one win condition at the moment. Nothing really stands out to me as perfect so I've been swapping between the three. They have all won me games, so I think they are all viable.

The new tutor from Oath of the Gatewatch, Call the Gatewatch, that grabs a planeswalker to your hand for 2W seems pretty good and may warrant testing.

[Ace/Homebrew]

The new tutor from Oath of the Gatewatch, Call the Gatewatch, that grabs a planeswalker to your hand for 2W seems pretty good and may warrant testing.
Isn't any :b: tutor better? Like Diabolic Tutor for example... Isn't that better?


Extensive testing has been done to try and nail down a win condition that I'm happy with.
Have you tried winning with Cromat? The tuck rule changes have made him more reliable as a finisher. He can kill in 3 swings and he flies over Moat.

[Baumeister]

Isn't any :b: tutor better? Like Diabolic Tutor for example... Isn't that better?

I think you're right. I'm not sure if saving one mana is worth the loss of flexibility.


Have you tried winning with Cromat? The tuck rule changes have made him more reliable as a finisher. He can kill in 3 swings and he flies over Moat.

I've had to win with Cromat on occasion, but not recently. I'll try pushing for a win with the commander more aggressively in the next few games I play to see if we can cut the other win conditions from the deck.

Thanks for the input. It's really easy to get stuck on little things when you put a lot of time into tuning.

[Amon Amarth]

I like Worm Harvest as a secondary wincon. You can just run it out and get value and it plays really well with Humility too. Sucks with Moat but you just have to plan around it a little and it's pretty sweet. Also the hate for it is different than the hate for Door so that's nice too.

[Baumeister]

I like Worm Harvest as a secondary wincon. You can just run it out and get value and it plays really well with Humility too. Sucks with Moat but you just have to plan around it a little and it's pretty sweet. Also the hate for it is different than the hate for Door so that's nice too.

Interesting. I was thinking of it as a one-or-the-other type of thing, but they do attack the game on different tangents which should make our win more resilient.

Do you have an updated list?

[Eric Petracca]

Other than Anguished Unmaking, is there anything of note for this deck in SOI?

In other news, I've been playing a 5c "Pauper" Commander deck that uses Child of Alara as the Commander. All other cards are commons. It is alarmingly similar to the deck we've been talking about in overall structure and how it plays, except it costs 100x less. For anyone reading this thread that wants an alternative view of how to build a 5c control deck on a budget, Google "Pauper Dreamcrusher" and check it out.

[Ace/Homebrew]

In other news, I've been playing a 5c "Pauper" Commander deck that uses Child of Alara as the Commander. All other cards are commons.
I thought "pauper" commander used an uncommon as a general... Why not Fusion Elemental? Or one of the 5 color knights from Conflux (I think Dragonsoul Knight is superior to Paragon of the Amesha).

[Eric Petracca]

I thought "pauper" commander used an uncommon as a general... Why not Fusion Elemental? Or one of the 5 color knights from Conflux (I think Dragonsoul Knight is superior to Paragon of the Amesha).

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I appreciate the question. Let me tie my earlier statements in better to what we are talking about in this thread and why I brought it up.

Child of Alara fills a similar role to the spot removal, mass removal, and powerful enchantments that this deck runs. Because it is available from the Command zone, Child of Alara represents an always available Oblivion Stone, (almost).

Definitions of pauper when applied to Commander differ, with using an Uncommon creature as being one of the definitions that I've seen. What I was referring to was how a deck of otherwise all commons leverages Child of Alara to play a very similar control game to what the deck in this thread is trying to accomplish.

I would go so far as to say that swapping in Child of Alara for Cromat in this deck, and then swapping out some of the removal cards to take advantage of having ready access to a board wipe, would give the deck we are talking about in this thread a strong alternative build.

Note: Child of Alara has to go to the graveyard for the board wipe effect to happen. The replacement effect of putting it in the Command zone makes it not work. So, you need some support cards to continually bring it back. This is similar to Academy Ruins+Oblivion Stone, for example. You also need ways to trigger Child of Alara, so it isn't quite that simple.

[Baumeister]

Other than Anguished Unmaking, is there anything of note for this deck in SOI?

Anguished Unmaking has tested well as another piece of almost unconditional removal. The instant speed is very nice, and the loss of life is almost negligable. I've been running Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry lately as I have enjoyed being able to play it out earlier in the game to buffer my life total and deter attacks.

I think the proper place to start the removal package is with:

Vindicate
Anguished Unmaking
Utter End
Abrupt Decay

These have proven themselves over and over as the best and most flexible removal spells we have. I've always been happy to see them in my hand.

The only other card I saw from the new set was The Gitrog Monster. I know it's a creature, but it allows the deck to do some pretty degenerate things in conjunction with lines of play we already want to make. Seeing as Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam are already in the deck, the Monster supercharges fetchlands, Strip Mine, cycling lands, and Crucible/Loam. I think it might be worth a test slot.

[Ace/Homebrew]

These have proven themselves over and over as the best and most flexible removal spells we have.

For context, do you typically play in pods of 3/4 or 1v1?

Also, how did using Cromat as a win-con test for you?

[Baumeister]

For context, do you typically play in pods of 3/4 or 1v1?

Also, how did using Cromat as a win-con test for you?

I play in pods of 3 or 4. A few 5's, but not so much anymore.

Cromat actually functions quite well as a win condition now that it can't be tucked. It's absurdly slow, but so is the deck. That's one of the reasons I cut Door to Nothingness and added the Thopter/Sword package. It also represents a win-condition, but it's more important as a piece to help me stabilize and develop a board presence when necessary.

[Amon Amarth]

Anguished Unmaking has tested well as another piece of almost unconditional removal. The instant speed is very nice, and the loss of life is almost negligable. I've been running Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry lately as I have enjoyed being able to play it out earlier in the game to buffer my life total and deter attacks.

I think the proper place to start the removal package is with:

Vindicate
Anguished Unmaking
Utter End
Abrupt Decay

These have proven themselves over and over as the best and most flexible removal spells we have. I've always been happy to see them in my hand.

The only other card I saw from the new set was The Gitrog Monster. I know it's a creature, but it allows the deck to do some pretty degenerate things in conjunction with lines of play we already want to make. Seeing as Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam are already in the deck, the Monster supercharges fetchlands, Strip Mine, cycling lands, and Crucible/Loam. I think it might be worth a test slot.

Anguished Unmaking is really sweet. Definitely an auto-include. We have many other cards that can take care of problem lands so it's almost all upside.

The only other cards I saw from SOI that were interesting were Behold the Beyond and Seasons Past. The former offers mass tutoring as well GY shenanigans. Nice, but probably better suited for monoblack. Seasons offer's a lot of card advantage but I'm not sure it's better than something like Will for recursion.

[Baumeister]

The only other cards I saw from SOI that were interesting were Behold the Beyond and Seasons Past. The former offers mass tutoring as well GY shenanigans. Nice, but probably better suited for monoblack. Seasons offer's a lot of card advantage but I'm not sure it's better than something like Will for recursion.

Seasons Past is very interesting. I totally passed right over that in the spoiler. I can see where it would be able to hit a card all the way from 0 to 6 CMC pretty consistently mid- to late-game. That's a lot of advantage for one card. The only question in my mind is if we are already playing something at 6 CMC, would it be that much of a stretch to jump to Praetor's Counsel?

Either way, I'm going to test Seasons Past this weekend.

[Amon Amarth]

Seasons Past is very interesting. I totally passed right over that in the spoiler. I can see where it would be able to hit a card all the way from 0 to 6 CMC pretty consistently mid- to late-game. That's a lot of advantage for one card. The only question in my mind is if we are already playing something at 6 CMC, would it be that much of a stretch to jump to Praetor's Counsel?

Either way, I'm going to test Seasons Past this weekend.

Could be but it could be difficult to get GGG consistently though it's not like you're trying to curve out with it or anything. I just prefer cheaper cards though.

[Baumeister]

I managed to test Seasons Past and it actually worked fairly well. I got a pile of:

Tormod's Crypt
Sol Ring
Demonic Tutor
Anguished Unmaking
Replenish
Door to Nothingness
Austere Command
Karn Liberated
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Seems decent, although this pile is almost ideal. The deck is almost perfectly set up to have a good number of targets between 0 and 6 starting in the mid-game. Replenish recurred a bunch of lock pieces which gave me enough time to Door the last player out of the game.

Also of note: Starfield of Nyx continues to pull its weight as a recursion engine and a win condition. I actually killed someone with a bunch of enchantments. It's great that it can be turned on and off by enchantments that sacrifice themselves and is usually one of my first tutor targets. Sterling Grove has been stellar in conjunction with Starfield to consistently set up a resilient lock.

[Eric Petracca]

I managed to test Seasons Past and it actually worked fairly well.

Just wanted to echo this feedback about Seasons Past.

Every time I play against a GBx deck and they start looping Seasons Past with Demonic Tutor, it's nearly impossible to beat. Mid-game, a successfully resolved Seasons Past puts 4-6 cards in hand. That's already a very strong turn. But, what really pushes it over is that if one of the cards you get back from the graveyard is a tutor, you can go get Seasons Past again, cast it, then put the tutor and all your utility cards back into your hand. Rinse. Repeat.

Have you guys seen anything exciting in Kaladesh that jumps out at you for this deck?

[Baumeister]

Every time I play against a GBx deck and they start looping Seasons Past with Demonic Tutor, it's nearly impossible to beat. Mid-game, a successfully resolved Seasons Past puts 4-6 cards in hand. That's already a very strong turn. But, what really pushes it over is that if one of the cards you get back from the graveyard is a tutor, you can go get Seasons Past again, cast it, then put the tutor and all your utility cards back into your hand. Rinse. Repeat.

It's earned a spot in my deck. The card is extremely solid and bolsters our late game by acting as another "win" condition.


Have you guys seen anything exciting in Kaladesh that jumps out at you for this deck?

The pickings are pretty slim for us. I didn't see anything that really jumped out since we are basically just running the best spells we can. I'd say these three cards warrant inspection:

Dovin Baan - Stifling attacks, drawing cards, and gaining life are all things we like. I believe Narset Transcendent is better for the same cost, though.

Cultivator's Caravan - This is a stretch, but it taps for mana and if you're playing Thopter/Sword, I think you can play around your own Humility. We may need to clarify the rulings on Vehicles.

Aether Hub - Probably the best card for us out of the new set, but we are not playing Tendo Ice Bridge and this is virtually the same card. If we have a way to generate Energy on a card that we want in the deck, this probably becomes something we include. I picked up a couple of copies just in case something great that plays with Energy comes out in the next set.

[Eric Petracca]

Spoiler Warning! for Aether Revolt


So, we get two copies of Voidslime, now. Alternatively, we get a slightly easier to cast version of Voidslime, now.

Disallow
1UU
Instant
Counter target spell, activated ability, or triggered ability.

[Baumeister]

I think it's good and Voidslime is really good because it's so flexible. I will likely try and find a spot for both in the deck.

As a side note, it's weird that Wizards has been pulling back the power level of counterspells for a long time now and then we get an objectively better Voidslime all of a sudden.

[Eric Petracca]

Any new tech out there you guys are trying?

Who's tested Painful Truths or Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast?

In other news, it looks like we have some sick Invocations to look forward to in Amonkhet, if that's how you roll.

[Eric Petracca]

Have you guys tried out Approach of the Second Sun, yet? It's alarmingly easy to set up the win in this deck. Door to Nothingness is hella sweet, of course, but Approach is probably a better win-con than everything else in a wide variety of situations.

[Amon Amarth]

Have you guys tried out Approach of the Second Sun, yet? It's alarmingly easy to set up the win in this deck. Door to Nothingness is hella sweet, of course, but Approach is probably a better win-con than everything else in a wide variety of situations.

This is a bit delayed, haven't been playing much Magic until recently. My bad! As weird as this may seem, I was looking through my token cards and an Approach was shuffled in there, so weird. Then it reminded me of this post. Better late than never!

I agree Approach of the Second Sun is a much better wincon than Door. I've always wanted to use one of the "win the game" cards but none were really that good. Approach is that good. We wanna get out Future Sight ASAP and that makes it very easy to dig for. Or even just ramp into tutor + Approach.

I'll try to update the decklist soon soon but not much has changed. Maybe I'll even get a bit of testing in!

[Amon Amarth]

Updated the deck. Kind of want to play Memory Plunder again to steal your opponents tutors EOT and then cast Approach again. There are a few things I'd like to test out. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is pretty good as is the new Karn though the latter is probably too weak. Like to get around to testing Starfield of Nyx. Might fiddle with some of the removal and draw a bit. Dig Through Time might be nice. Pretty happy with everything overall.

[Eric Petracca]

Updated the deck. Kind of want to play Memory Plunder again to steal your opponents tutors EOT and then cast Approach again. There are a few things I'd like to test out. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is pretty good as is the new Karn though the latter is probably too weak. Like to get around to testing Starfield of Nyx. Might fiddle with some of the removal and draw a bit. Dig Through Time might be nice. Pretty happy with everything overall.

I never got the update email for this post! Thank you for posting an update.

It looks like these are the changes you made:

Grand Coliseum --> Path of Ancestry
Fabricate --> Search for Azcanta
Dissipate --> Disallow
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker --> Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
Door to Nothingness --> Approach of the Second Sun

Grand Coliseum --> Path of Ancestry

This swap makes perfect sense. Good call.


Fabricate --> Search for Azcanta

With Door being swapped out for Approach, this swap makes sense, too.


Dissipate --> Disallow

More modes!


Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker --> Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Wait, what's happening here? Does this have something to do with the game state when you cast Bolas? I've won on the back of Planeswalker Bolas enough times that I had not considered making a swap.


Door to Nothingness --> Approach of the Second Sun

I'm with you on this one, too.


Have you considered Assassin's Trophy?

I am running Dig Through Time in the Brainstorm slot. It's a trade-off, but Dig looks at a lot more cards.

Is Bant Charm still your jam? It does a lot of things, but I put Anguished Unmaking there and never looked back.

Memory Plunder looks spicy.

[Amon Amarth]

I never got the update email for this post! Thank you for posting an update.

It looks like these are the changes you made:

Grand Coliseum --> Path of Ancestry
Fabricate --> Search for Azcanta
Dissipate --> Disallow
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker --> Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
Door to Nothingness --> Approach of the Second Sun

Grand Coliseum --> Path of Ancestry

This swap makes perfect sense. Good call.


Fabricate --> Search for Azcanta

With Door being swapped out for Approach, this swap makes sense, too.


Dissipate --> Disallow

More modes!


Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker --> Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Wait, what's happening here? Does this have something to do with the game state when you cast Bolas? I've won on the back of Planeswalker Bolas enough times that I had not considered making a swap.


Door to Nothingness --> Approach of the Second Sun

I'm with you on this one, too.


Have you considered Assassin's Trophy?

I am running Dig Through Time in the Brainstorm slot. It's a trade-off, but Dig looks at a lot more cards.

Is Bant Charm still your jam? It does a lot of things, but I put Anguished Unmaking there and never looked back.

Memory Plunder looks spicy.

You're welcome! I'm slow to make updates but I'll try not to let it go for a year or so again :p

I'm would like to still play Nicol Bolas 1.0 just because it's been so strong that it often takes multiple cards to deal with it or it just runs away with the game. I'd definitely play it still. Overall, Bolas 2.0 is stronger in a vacuum in multiplayer but I still want to play the original in one of the flex slots.

I'm going to replace Bant Charm with Assassin's Trophy since its a cheaper and hits more permanents. Lose the narrow counterspell part but its worth it overall.

I'll probably test out Memory Plunder, switching out Replenish. Replenish is one of the flex slots and it's great when it works but it can be dead too often because there really aren't that many enchantments in the deck.

I wouldn't test out Dig in the Brainstorm slot because Brainstorm is a lot better in the early and mid game. Still, would like to work it in somewhere.

[sjones220]

Hi Amon Amarth,

Thank you for posting this list. I think this combines a lot of powerful cards in an interesting way that I haven't seen before.

-Scott