Welcome everybody allow me to introduce you to a deck you might already be familiar with, Ad Nauseam the deck has been around for a while so I would be surprised if you hadn't seen one before.
Note: (The deck looks expensive, but that's because the prices for fetches are wrong as they've just been reprinted. You can also play the deck without fetches which is a good 70 dollars of the price, so I'd say it's buildable for around 200 dollars maybe 250 including fetches, around 150 if you're playing it without Depending on which way you wanna go with it.)
So anybody who's seen any of the decks I've put up here will understand that I love combo decks. Also if I had to describe myself in terms of magic play I'd say I'm a blue player I hate when I can't control my own game plan and have to rely on draw, luck or other such nonsense. My happiness with a deck is closely related to the amount of blue cards I can play. So why would I build an Ad Nauseam deck which arguably isn't very consistent or has much control in it? the answer is simple because it's fun to play. I kid you not it's the same over and over and over again yet somehow I've not grown tired of using it. It's game play changes very little depending on the matchup and still it remains fun. I think it's due to your opponents frustration with what you're doing to him. I mean most people use damage to kill their opponents, whether it's in the form of burn or otherwise. This deck however doesn't care about life literally we'll do your job for you if you ask nicely.
Now how does "Phyrexian Grace" work? the deck works basically off of a 2 card combo with Angel's Grace or Phyrexian Unlife and Ad Nauseam. Angel's Grace will stop Ad Nauseam from killing you while you draw your entire library no need to worry about decking yourself you cannot lose the game because of Angel's Grace and regardless if you pass the turn now you will lose anyway (try to show your opponent as few cards as possible good players will use that against you). So how does that win us the game? because we exile Simian Spirit Guide from our hand and cast Lightning Storm discarding as many lands as we need to (yes the hub says creature less but if you're casting Simian Spirit Guide you're doing it wrong he is basically a free red mana nothing else and could be replaced by rituals if you feel like it). So as you can see it doesn't matter if we have -40 life since we can't lose the game especially as our opponent just went to 0 and we won ;).
So what's the kink? We all know there has to be one! Damn you guys are good... So as is clear Ad Nauseam is 5 mana and modern is a turn 4 format how do we get around that? well we try our best using what little we can. A ton of draw fixers, scry, search and cards like Lotus Bloom and Pentad Prism are generally popular choices. Lotus Bloom for obvious reasons Pentad Prism however is more a case of being able to go off turn 4 you need that or lotus bloom in order to go off turn 4. Also if your Lightning Storm ends up getting countered you can't win and should just scoop (you could play recursion, but what's the fun in that? Don't worry we'll sideboard it). Also if a "Melira pod" deck gets a Kitchen Finks combo going we just lose right there. On the plus side however we have some pretty simple counters to a lot of the popular matchups. Example "Eggs" generally the win condition is either (as with my deck) Blue Sun's Zenith or Banefire well an Angel's Grace will take care of both and if Blue Sun's Zenith was the one used they just gave us the win. Another deck that our cards can counter sometimes is Splinter Twin since Phyrexian Unlife makes their combo a 2 turn win same goes for Angel's Grace of course. Also our combo is instant speed so if your opponent taps out or at least low we can do everything during their end step. This deck is basically all about whether or not we can cast Ad Nauseam and Angel's Grace or have Phyrexian Unlife in play.
Now I realize that looks really easy and it can't be that simple otherwise it would be more popular right? Well the truth is it's quite inconsistent sometimes you don't draw any of the cards and just end up losing outright. Also another thing you can't do in this deck is miss land drops I would generally not keep a hand that doesn't have at least 3 lands in it maybe 2 if you're going second and have draw fixers the reason is that you need 6 mana by turn 4 to go off and we want to aim for turn 4 to avoid shenanigans from our opponent this can be overruled if you have a plan with your hand (you should of course always have a plan I mean we're playing blue for crying out loud!). To give you an example
is a plan and actually quite a decent hand.
Is not a plan even though it may look like one. If you have an opening hand like this you shouldn't be thinking "I have my combo let's get going" you should be thinking "how the hell do I get enough mana to cast it", don't let the average CMC fool you. The deck only plays the bear minimum of lands for a 60 card deck and you should always be thinking ahead when choosing to keep. Arguably this hand could be on the fence, but I would mulligan this It's dangerous in my opinion to treat Scry cards as automatic lands and Lightning Storm does not belong in our hand it's a dead card until we go off and it makes it vulnerable to Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. Another thing is once you've secured your mana sources you tunnel in on getting your combo, that's all that matters if you use Serum Visions and turn over a land and say a Pentad Prism if you have the 6 mana you need, either in hand or on the field you put both on the bottom all we need is 6 mana any excess is useless (every rule has exceptions, but generally if you have 4 lands and a Pentad Prism you're golden so don't bother with anything, but combo pieces).
Of course there is also the other side of the spectrum.
This I would probably also mulligan unless I know the matchup since this hand will not give me a turn 4 win unless I top deck like a pro (though if you know the matchup is slow and you can stall you can go for the possible turn 5 or 6 win, but this is not a first game keep). We have way too much mana Peer Through Depths might end up showing you both our win conditions and throwing one on the bottom (if you see both pick Ad Nauseam it's only a four of, while there are 6 of the others statistically it's more favorable). It can be kept, but honestly don't be afraid to mulligan if you're not satisfied with your hand the deck mulligans alright and you're not forced to keep just because you lose one card though I wouldn't mulligan more than once and preferably never below 5 that we can generally not come back from. In case you're wondering though, there's also a turn 3 win possible with this deck.
With the above 4 and any 3 lands you can win by turn 3, so long as you can put 2 counters on Pentad Prism.
You just said it mulligans alright... how is once alright!.. Well in truth I've seen decks that can't afford to mulligan because they'll lose too much tempo, but since we're not a tempo deck being able to mulligan even if it's just once is often times good enough and when it's not chances are you would have lost anyway.
Let's talk about the "Pacts" we're playing 4 and the reason they fit so well in here is because we can get around their "lose the game" condition by throwing a SPARE (this is the key word right here), Angel's Grace out in our upkeep with the trigger on the stack and sometimes (though not often) it can trick your opponent into just skipping a turn because he doesn't know what deck you're playing and will assume he just won for nothing simply because you made a mistake.
Now for the sideboard you can literally do anything. There are so many cards that could go here the only ones that I would say are a must would be Leyline of Sanctity and Grafdigger's Cage for the pod, burn and Thoughtsieze decks out there especially as these are some of the hardest matchups. This is still a work in progress though.
Well that's what like 3 pages of text? Damn if you made it to the end I'm impressed and please any suggestions would be more than welcome. I tried to use the colours to make it more obvious where a point ends and a new one begins I hope it helped, I had to stop myself from writing even more it's such a simple deck yet I have so much to say regardless sorry if that was a little too much. Also if you want information on a particular matchup let me know and I'll put it in here. Hope you like the deck and if you choose to build it, that you will have great success :D.
