Mark_Hill_AL, welcome! I think you made some good points, although you may have missed a few nuances (which is totally forgivable since you noted you don't play Daretti).

Trimming the curve with Daretti is a good thing, yes, but we do want to make sure we have a decent number of threatening artifacts to reanimate with Daretti. These reanimation targets are often high CMC and they do pull up our curve, but we don't typically plan on ever casting these as we cheat them in with our -2. I've already made some painful cuts -- I removed all the Eldrazi, Bosh, Iron Golem and several other high CMC cards. Nullstone Gargoyle is a headache for most opponents. Generally an opponent will have to burn two spells to answer this guy, at which point I can reanimate him again the next turn. He can really create card disadvantage for our opponents similar to Possessed Portal -- a great suggestion you made and a card I am only not playing currently because I don't own one.

Myr Retriever is decent, but he doesn't do anything upon early game -2 Daretti activations to sac him when my yard is empty, or if my yard is exiled. I think if I'm looking for -2 fodder that Ichor Wellspring may be better.

Wheel effects are this deck's bread and butter for two reasons: red card draw is hard to come by, and filling our graveyard is critical to make use of our -2.

Some of the card selection spells are okay, and they do feed my yard a bit, but some of them force random discard (bad) or don't provide card advantage (bad).

Stranglehold is in to prevent combo decks from simply tutoring a wincon that I cannot interact with (I'm playing mono red after all). It also stops their fetches! Extra turns are rarely in my meta but that's just sort of a bonus effect. I agree it's a bit pricey at 4 CMC and it doesn't synergize with the deck since it's not an artifact, but again, in red we need every advantage possible to prevent people from comboing off because we usually cannot stop them once they do.

Charbelcher is much better than you'd think, particularly with Unwinding Clock and stax pieces in play.

I agree with your point on Mirrorworks and Prototype Portal. I think I'm going to cut PP because it creates card disadvantage if it's killed before I get to use it, but Mirrorworks is generally solid. Mirrorworks also goes nuts with Ugin's Nexus!

Believe it or not, Chandra Ablaze has pretty nice impact generally. Her -2, used with no cards in hand, is a straight draw 3. Alternately, she acts as a mini wheel and fuels my graveyard while wrecking the hands of my opponents! Chandra Flamecaller is pretty similar but only hits me. Chandra, Torch of Defiance usually doesn't have that much impact in the testing I've done. She seems like she should be good, but her +1 Mana ritual is almost always useless so she's basically an Outpost Siege that my opponents can swing at and kill with their hate bears.

Paradox Engine and Ruination are definitely going in! I'm just considering what to cut for them.

Again, Crucible of Worlds is much better than you'd expect because it allows me to get back lands I pitch to Daretti's +2 and it also allows me to expediently recover from my land destruction spells. There's also a little bit of tech between Crucible and my nonbasic sacrifice lands, but that's secondary.

Grafdiggers isn't bad. It does hurt Nullstone Gargoyle though. But it hoses certain decks like Meren and Karador, but they aren't really the problem decks for me in my meta -- it's the blue decks that are problematic.

Let me know if any of this makes sense or if you disagree! Thank you for your huge comment!!

ibstudent2200, yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head!

Thanks for the detailed response bimjowen! Your justification makes perfect sense. I also agree that when trimming you still need to maintain a critical mass of targets for Daretti - just looking at your curve it is more the abundance of 4 & 5 drops that could do with coming down rather than the 6+ anyway. Cheers!

Mark_Hill_AL, thank you my friend! I am taking what you said about my average CMC into consideration. I think I'm going to remove Prototype Portal and Ugin's Nexus to help lower the average CMC. I may also replace Chandra Ablaze with either Torch of Defiance or Flamecaller -- not sure yet, but probably the latter. Finally, Outpost Siege will likely become Paradox Engine.

You really think Paradox Engine fits here? I mean it's awesome w/ blue and drawing your whole deck with Mind Spring or w/e but I have put it in my daretti deck w/ Isochron Scepter, the two red rituals and Walking Ballista and it was still meh. Daretti is great at stax because he cheats everything you need in, Paradox Engine is a great combo piece but I don't think it does enough here because you don't need to combo you just need to stop others from being able to play freely. That's just my 2 cents though, I also use all 3 chandras mentioned 6 mana is so easy in an artifact deck...

You really think Paradox Engine fits here? I mean it's awesome w/ blue and drawing your whole deck with Mind Spring or w/e but I have put it in my daretti deck w/ Isochron Scepter, the two red rituals and Walking Ballista and it was still meh. Daretti is great at stax because he cheats everything you need in, Paradox Engine is a great combo piece but I don't think it does enough here because you don't need to combo you just need to stop others from being able to play freely. That's just my 2 cents though, I also use all 3 chandras mentioned 6 mana is so easy in an artifact deck...

dlamars, hey friend. I'm not sure that Paradox Engine fits here, that's why it was omitted from my original list, but so many folks seem to think it's an auto include that I feel perhaps I should test it out. Then again, I think a lot of people giving advice don't actually play Daretti! Which, of course, is fine -- I'm thrilled to get any advice and opinions -- but it can make it difficult to determine what advice is sound and what is well-meaning but uninformed.

I think the Chandras are pretty good. I do think Torch of Defiance seems the least powerful but she also has the lowest CMC. You really think it's worth running all of them?

I didn't notice it before, but Clock of Omens might be a better choice than Unwinding Clock. My experience has been that there are certain activated abilities that you want to spam as much as possible (artifacts that tap for 3+ mana, The Chain Veil, etc), but you end up with plenty of artifacts that don't do anything with Unwinding Clock. It also shuts off Static Orb and Winter Orb during an opponent's end step.

To break down Paradox Engine's utility in this deck, here's the list of cards that it aids:

Mana rocks (1-mana only): Mox Diamond, Mox Opal.

Mana rocks (2+ mana): Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Hedron Archive, Grim Monolith, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Metalworker.

Activated abilities: Goblin Charbelcher, The Chain Veil, Prototype Portal, Goblin Welder, Voltaic Key (doesn't work without other listed cards), Sensei's Divining Top (with spells at instant speed).

Based on this list, it looks like Paradox Engine will probably produce a lot of mana, but you aren't going to abuse activated abilities consistently and you don't have enough ways to draw cards to necessarily take advantage of all that mana. If you get Metalworker, Goblin Welder, or The Chain Veil+Mana Vault/Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith/Thran Dynamo, you'll probably go nuts, but untapping Goblin Charbelcher and Mana Crypt a couple times per turn seems kind of weak for a 3-card combo. It's probably worth testing, but I think you'd want to add Staff of Domination and a couple other payoffs (which I don't think is the best direction for the deck).

Mmm I think Ablaze is definitely the best but the others aren't bad includes. Magus of the Wheel w/o haste can have the same problem as Wheel of Fate in that it telegraphs to your opponents to empty their hands. So Torch of Defiance or Flamecaller could always take his spot.

ibstudent2200, I feel a little torn. On the one hand, Clock of Omens does indeed turn my stax effects off. On the other hand, Unwinding Clock has a similar effect in that it automatically untaps all my mana rocks on other players' turns. Both of these cards have advantages and disadvantages. Unwinding allows me to amass scary advantage by enabling multiple uses of cards like Charbelcher, Prototype Portal, but I agree that at this point it isn't as great. I have removed a lot of the artifacts that synergized with it. That said, I still do not think it is bad as it essentially makes Static Orb and Tangle Wire only a soft lock for my opponents. As an alternative, Clock of Omens allows me to repeatedly use Charbelcher or Chain Veil in a turn, but doing so requires fairly heavy board presence, something the deck does not always have. You make a good point though, I honestly don't think either card is great at creating value in this deck, but I do think both have good interactions with all my stax pieces (remember, Static Orb and Tangle Wire still need slots).

Paradox Engine is awesome but it suffers from the problem of requiring continual card draw to really go nuts. Think about Azami, why is she so powerful with the Engine? With just a wizard or two in play and a low Mana curve, every card cast guarantees you are drawing two or three cards per spell and just continuously slinging spells. Daretti does not have that capability. There are very few cards that we can use (outside of wheels) to ensure we can keep a Paradox chain going. It's just not consistent. It's also an insanely high priority target since all players, bad and experienced, know the capability of the card. As I said, I'd like to test it, but I'm not sure it's worth a 5 CMC slot that often literally does nothing the turn it comes out.

I agree Staff of Domination is a generically powerful card, but it really shines only with access to infinite mana and my deck has very few ways to produce that.

dlamars, true, but the planeswalkers don't provide Daretti with a 3 CMC 3/3 blocker. They cost a lot more Mana, they don't protect themselves (well, not effectively, anyway), and they don't provide the same huge card draw and graveyard feeding capability that Magus of the Wheel does.

That aside, I do think a strong argument could be made for playing two or even three of the Chandras. I'm just not sure which ones, or what to cut.

Chandra, Flamecaller gives you either a boardwipe or a stream of card advantage. If you have 2 cards in hand on average, Flamecaller's 0 is better than Ablaze's -2. As an extreme corner case, Flamecaller allows you to win the game by resolving Decree of Annihilation, since the +1 ability deals a lot of damage.

Chandra Ablaze gives you spot removal at the cost of card disadvantage (unless you discard Squee, Goblin Nabob or Avacyn's Judgment). It's worth noting that you need to discard red cards in order to deal damage with Ablaze's +1, and those are the cards that you generally don't want to discard in this deck. Ablaze's -2 is better than Flamecaller's 0 if you average less than 2 cards in hand by the time you cast a 6-mana planeswalker, and the ability can provide card disadvantage to your opponents at the cost of feeding their graveyard (I'm not familar with the competitive EDH scene, but there's enough graveyard shenanigans in my local playgroup and I'm hesitant to give them fodder).

Chandra, Torch of Defiance, unlike the other 'walkers, can come down fairly early. It provides infrequent spot removal and can act as an Outpost Siege or provide additional mana. Each of these abilities is useful, but defending it long enough to get a good amount of value is difficult.

Did I miss anything in these summaries?

Seems like an excellent synopsis to me. So the question is, which of these are worth slots in the deck? They all have their upsides and downsides. From my perspective, mono red suffers so badly from poor card advantage that it may be worth playing them all at the risk of drawing multiple Chandras at once.

Mono red definitely suffers from card draw, even with daretti's loot. That's why I include all three, they each address this issue and odds are that you will draw only one during a typical game. My views of the magus are largely based on including him and being disappointed, I hope it is more effective for you since I agree with all your points.

You could always add Faithless Looting and Cathartic Reunion

Scrap Trawler is another I'd throw out there. I use Hope of Ghirapur, Walking Ballista and am testing Bomat Courier all of which are good with the trawler. I think you have a good list already but later it is an option if you feel they might fit.

True, but those cards aren't draw spells, they're just filtering. In fact, Looting is card disadvantage on its first cast

dlamars, I'm liking Scrap Trawler with Hope and Bomat Courier. I'm not sure what Ballista does with the Trawler, doesn't it just come into play as a 0/0 and die?

Ah well trawler just returns the card to your hand, Walking Ballista is nice because it has a 0 cmc so most artifacts will return it to your hand and it's a easy wincon. Shield Sphere is cool for the same reason(0 cmc) if aggro tends to kill daretti in your meta.

Ohh, duh! I misread Trawler. Still nice advantage though. How do you win with the Ballista?

I enjoy playing with Platinum Emperion

Infinite mana w/ Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith. Nothing fancy really

MadHatter23, Platinum Emperion is an AWESOME card. If only we had some one-sided way to abuse his "can't change life total" clause! Maybe Sulfuric Vortex?

dlamars, makes sense! Likewise, Staff of Domination + Metalworker and 3 artifacts in hand will create infinite mana and draw the deck too!

So, I've been testing the deck against other competitive decks. I was unhappy with how it was performing. If people left me alone for a bit the haymaker value engines like Ugin's Nexus + Prototype Portal + Daretti's for tons of extra turns, ramping into Devastation / Jokulhaups with Daretti in play, or Goblin Charbelcher + Unwinding Clock provided great, fun, powerful win cons. The problem is, truly competitive decks seldom let any of these things happen. I've also found that while Daretti lends himself to a strong stax/reanimator theme, I'm not sure I've got the deck built as ideally as it can be. The reason I say this is, while reanimator decks tend to have a higher curve that normal, stax decks require a very low mana curve in order to be able to function under the effect of your own taxes. While having tons of 5+ CMC spells is great for the reanimator theme, it is terrible for the stax theme. Many folks have pointed this out, and it is only with all my extensive competitive testing that I am finally acknowledging this to be a problem. I do believe midrange/reanimator is not the best way to build Daretti, as he himself does not provide true card advantage with either his +2 or his -2 abilities. As such, I think stax is still our best bet, but this does mean we're going to have to change the way we're building. I will be posting the updated decklist momentarily.

Please note that the most recent deck changes drop the average CMC from over 3.5 to 2.69 and while I am not thrilled with removing a lot of the flavorful cards I really enjoyed, I think the deck may be more effective this way!

Hey bimjowen, big fan of the changes. The deck looks far more formidable in a competitive environment now. Now you have fully embraced stax there are a few other cards you might consider. No doubt you have already given them some thought: Cursed Totem, Mana Web - this combines really well with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Static Orb, Lodestone Golem. One card that looks a bit odd is Serum Powder, have you found this to be any good?

Cheers.