Jaya_student actually, Ob Nixilis, the Fallen passes the Lightning Bolt test too.

he sure as hell does.i have to back kjartan up on this one , there is no way i'd put tasigur in place of ob nixilis. tasigur is an amazing card , but in this shell , ob nix is the right card , simply because they do different things. ob nix kills , when he comes down.if he doesnt , your opponent is facing some big trouble , looking down a 6/6 or 9/9 , with mana for countermagic up. there isnt much to about that. tasigur wants to be played for its delve cost , much earlier than this deck wants to deploy a threat. you nullify everything they do , then play your win cons with mana to protect it.

Just wondering, why no Cruel Ultimatum

What Kjartan said. And very good deck! I love the inclusion of the Ob Nixilis, the Fallen! +1 from me!

tomazinhal , glad you found your way to this gem of a deck.be sure to test it out , ob nixilis is actually nuts in this deck!Also , i guess no cruel ultimatum as it wasnt as good in the cruise era , and now it just hasnt found its way back into maver1cks deck , or he has his reasons for not including it. we'll see when he replies.

I'm not really a control player. But its inclusion alone, alongside the list, is awesome the least.
Thanks for the compliment man! Cheers!

Hey guys, just to respond. Cruel Ultimatum was always a really, really fun card. But realistically, it wasn't competitive. It's effect was naturally always awesome, but most of the cards in this deck are , and so it often made trying to get the requirement somewhat problematic. But the next best card in the deck, Cryptic Command, already has hard casting requirements. So to compromise I ran more Creeping Tar Pit. But when I needed the colors, I had to have them and Tar Pit wasn't great if I needed to dig. So I had run various mixes of Tar Pits or Watery Grave to be sought by my fetches.

The result was better, but still pretty flaky. I had to compromise somewhere, whether it be to add more cards so that it was easier to justify grabbing more earlier swamps (which then just made cards the point of contention in general, because then I lacked both sufficient mana & cards to justify the color), or just cut Cruel Ultimatum and see what's left. Obviously, I went with the latter, and that's what I feel makes it so competitive. It was just a very long time to find that sweet spot in balance. Thanks for your interest everyone!

Instead of Jace's Ingenuity, maybe Blue Sun's Zenith? At the same CMC, more mana intensive, draws one less card, but shuffles back in. For one more CMC it draws the same, shuffles back in. From their on out, you have profit. Also can be turned at the opponent as a wincon.

I'm going with no, but more because I don't think I ever want to draw it a second time. You really can't afford too many dead draws in this deck, and even Jace's Ingenuity is just a replacement for Dig Through Time until I find a better way to go about it. Jace's Ingenuity already runs the risk of being an ill timed draw because realistically I lose a turn in order to do cast it. It's not as flexible as DTT was where I could dig straight into an answer instantly. The thought of the potential of that happening twice in a game is a bit much for me, but trying to imagine top decking it again with my back against the wall would be bad. For awhile I was considering Opportunity even, but decided that 6 mana was just too much for how this deck runs. Now, if I was guaranteed to top deck USZ late game, I'd run it without hesitation. It'd be infinitely better than Ingenuity. I will playtest it to verify my logic here, but I'm fairly certain it's not the answer I need. I really appreciate the input though, and am still open to other ideas to replace with DTT offered.

Have you considered Jace, Architect of Thought instead of Jace, Memory Adept? That Jace's Ingenuity also looks a little iffy to me, maybe swap it out for a 3rd Thoughtseize or an Inquisition of Kozilek?

Love the deck though, +1.

Jace, Memory Adept over Jace, Architect of Thought?

I feel like you could run Anticipate over the Jace's Ingenuity

Nef - I like that enough to test it out, thank you.

Telling Time is the other option.

Why the Arrogant Bloodlords in the board? What would you bring them in against?

They're great for stalling against various aggro decks actually. White weenie, Naya aggro, affinity, anything that really uses 2/3 power creatures. They buy me time and the synergy with Anger of the Gods is amazing since they survive and turns it into a one sided board wipe. Then they can start swinging for 4 to the face.

awesomeguy37

I'd imagine control, maybe zoo as well.

What do you think about adding Mystical Teachings as a 1-of?

tclaw12 - I'm sorry, I don't think there's a good cut for it. 4 mana to search for an instant that I'd likely need right away anyways in a control deck makes it a pretty expensive inclusion. If this deck was more combo oriented it'd probably make more sense, but I don't think here.

Kolaghan's Command seems to be doing well right now. Have you tried it?

tclaw12 - I thought about it for a long time and I don't think it fits in the deck because I don't think there's any card I'd like to cut for this one. Every other card in this deck has a cheaper purpose, and while it offers better utility it's not worth raising my curve in the mainboard. And in the sideboard I don't think it's better than anything I have for my meta. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sideboard purpose for another player's meta.

I've always been fond of grixis. Very nicely built deck, have another +1.

Awesome deck +1

I am not sure if this has been suggested yet, but have you thought about Kolaghan's Command? Also, I really like that copy of Jace, Memory Adept. It's a pretty sick win con.

I think Keranos, God of Storms would just be a better Jace, Memory Adept for you