Why do you play trinket mage over fabricate? In your list fabricate appears to just be superior and it avoids your anti-creature stax cards. Also have you considered mystic remora as a draw engine? It is very powerful in the early game against competitive decks because they can deploy early. Low cost to deploy, and it's cumulative upkeep can also be ignored with sundial

XtremeManaFlood I've never thought about replacing trinket mage, probably because I have a cool altered card, the mage can carry jitte and can be reanimated with sun titan. In the beginning I had stuff in the deck to bounce and blink permanents but they are gone now. Fabricate could indeed replace it now as it has no mana cost limitation...or I could play both, but then there's again the problem of cutting something else. What do you think, replace or play both?

As for mystic remora, I already had it in the deck and it didn't do as much as I had expected. I could give it a try again, but instead of what? At the moment I play the deck as described in the last updates, with the additional combo and with one less land. The problem with mystic remora is that is has to be an all competetive table to draw as much as desired in the early game. I think now it's probably better than some months ago when the newer players haven't pimped their decks as much as they have now.

Any ideas what might not be so important in the deck? Maybe something about the choice of counterspells and removal?

Coalition relic (seems out of place) and pithing needle, since it is very narrow and, more importantly, you can't reliably bounce it for repeated use.

XtremeManaFlood I've already removed needle and a land for the rings/monolith combo, at least I'm currently testing that change. I'll make that change in this list when I think it will stay as it is.

Why do you think the relic is out of place? It's a great colour fixer because it can save mana for a turn and then produce two coloured mana...for example when I only get three colourless on turn one it enables Augustin on turn 2, no matter if I have coloured mana from lands. I'd rather not cut any of the mana rocks at all because that's what makes up most of the reliability. If any mana artifact really has to go, I'm more inclined to remove Mind Stone because it doesn't help over color screw and doesn't accelerate either.

What's your opinion on the counterspells Negate and Swan Song and the removal Revoke Existence? Is a normal Counterspell better than one of these even though it costs double blue? Maybe Mana Leak instead one of these?

colton815 thx, changed the title!

I'd cut wasteland tbh. Honestly I don't know if mana leak or Counterspell is a better choice. If you are having mana color issues, then Counterspell isn't ideal. Mana leak or disdainful stroke could fulfill that role with a simpler mana requirement.Finally, I prefer disenchant because it is instant speed- but in my list the card is slightly better because I can hit my own winter orb esq spell. Honestly it is a card that I want to cut too, but every time i drew it I was always happy to have it.

Wasteland? Then I would only have 29 mana producing lands left (adarkar wastes already went out for the rings combo, along with pithing needle)...also I think it's really important because it can ruin certain decks here just like a strip mine, because they play no or very few basics. With crucible it's a sort of hardlock against some.

I'm not even sure about revoke existence, I had Fragmentize there instead...I took the exiling effect now to get rid of Purphoros. Maybe I don't need a targeted artifact/enchantment removal at all (There's still Aura of Silence which can be brought back with sun titan for repeated removal), that would clear one slot for something else.

The counterspells are all relatively new in the deck, I only used mental misstep once and it's hilarious. People usually don't think anyone reacts to a t1 sol ring and then I can say "wait! In response..." and they are just like wtf is this shit now? Swan song and negate can't do this trick so I'm not sure yet how much they really matter.

I think my problem is I am still looking at the old list, which lists 32 lands. I totally missed your newest section, so my bad about that. I still think wasteland is weak though. Rings and Basalt/grim is a very powerful combo and definitely deserves being added into your list. Negate is also very powerful, and helps protect your more potent pieces while being versatile enough to effectively disrupt other powerful cards. Swan song is more narrow, but is very good at disrupting storm like deck and of course protecting your stuff. Leak might be better. It is really meta dependent, i'm not sure what you are trying to beat or are struggling with.

Disenchant is basically fragmentize with arbiter out, just fyi. But it might warrant cutting.

I think I can make the change with the additional combo in the list because it's indeed too good to leave it. I'll tag you when I have corrected it!

My main opponents are a 5c hermit druid deck and arcum dagsson, which are both combo decks and just as fast as I am, Purphoros, Teferi and a lot of not competitive but still well built decks that can randomly win when the top decks on a table struggle with each other. I don't have such a big problem with the decks and players that are actually good because I can predict their plays better and my deck is built to combat what they try to achieve. What's annoying is midrange aggro when the player can't be convinced that I am the only one who keeps him from losing immediately against a combo deck, which often happens when that player simply has no understanding of how exactly said combo works and how it could possibly be disrupted. In such cases I need to wipe all lands, then it's usually over.

Alright XtremeManaFlood, now the list shows how I play the deck at the moment. Fabricate might arrive just in time before my next commander session on wednesday because I've ordered it yesterday. It would replace trinket mage then, unless I cut something else to play both.

I think about cutting Revoke Existence and Mind Stone for Mystic Remora and Windfall or something else on the maybe list or to play fabricate AND trinket mage. By now it's really just fine tuning the deck and some exchanges won't even show in most games. It's mostly stuff like Academy Rector or Tezzeret the Seeker , which show me when something is missing in the deck because when I have the option to put something on the board for free and I can't find a solution for the current situation or set up a kill it means I need to change something.

Makes sense. I also recommend testing on cockatrice, which gives you a wider test meta and helps you play more games.

I've been playtesting a similar deck for quite some time now with many keycards u also run, but no combos ;) and also no counterspells, because they are very meta dependant.

So, I wanted to show you some cards:I know i already told you about him, but Clever Impersonator is a really versatile card. It can copy a staxcard or a planeswalker. I think planeswalker always benefit from having a lock on the game and i find it really hard to get rid of them when an opponent controls one. And with a manland in play you can almost me sure the cast the ult before you opponent can.

Other cards I consider playing are Balancing Act, I dont own it yet, but i think it can be really strong and i will playtest it in the near future.

Then there is Damping Engine. I think its too costheavy, the effect is too weak and it often will target yourself because you floot the board with artifacts thus have the most permanents.

Yeah, then there is of course Sculpting Steel almost always nice, cheap card and it can become a second Smokestack for really fast Stax.

I also think about getting Paradoxical Outcome because my playgroup plays alot of shit like Vandalblast and other artifacthate. But i dont know yet..we'll see how good this card does.

Inspiring Statuary is also a really solid card. It itself taps for the improvise effect and every nonmana artifact does mana now, yay. so casting GAAIV for the 3rd time is with this card not really that hard anymore;)

Oh, and i have one more question:

How do you play World Queller? Every time i play it, it feels clumsy and slow. Is there anything I'm missing? How do you play it?

VitalisStacs I'll start with the last one because it's easy: world queller can name anything I don't control at the moment, effectively killing planeswalkers a turn after they come into play...if there's no need to name something else, it's always a land sacrifice. It's basically a second smokestack, which forces everyone to sac a certain card type instead of just any permanent and it comes with a solid body.

I have removed all the clone and copy cards because they need something useful to copy. These cards seemed like must plays at first but now I am more inclined to play mostly cards that are good on their own, even if nothing else is in play. I already have some cards that I don't ever want to see in the opening hand and clones are part of that category too. I only use mechanized production because it has an inbuilt win option and it can help reaching that goal when copying a taxing sphere.

Balancing act looks interesting but I think counting all permanents will hurt me more than every other player because I'm usually the one with the largest board. The discard aspect is cool though.

Inspiring statuary is basically a mana rock but only for nonartifact spells and it only provides colorless mana of which I have plenty. It's exactly doing the wrong thing...mana for artifacts would be great or coloured mana for nonartifacts. I think I've even tested it in the deck when aether revolt was new.

how do you keep up with Smokestack's ability without wiping your board?

I also decided to switch to a grand arbiter deck, so thanks.

Wurmlover there's crucible of worlds to keep up a constant sac of 1, 2 without any losses if there's Flagstones of Trokair and I play Sundial of the Infinite for the complete lock. I could also use Mechanized Production to generate tokens. But there's not even the need to play a smokestack with now downside...it usually is a great way to grind the resources of the opponents after a halfway decent start. The opponents always sacrifice before me, so they lose 1, then 2 while I have only sacrificed one permanent. It's often enough to let the smokestack run for two or three turns and then sac it again.

ok. that makes sense. so the lock is that everyone sacks stuff and you just sundial on your turn so you don't have to?

Yes exactly Wurmlover, even better: I add a counter on the smokestack and end the turn before the sac ability resolves. With Mystic Remora I might even keep drawing cards...ending the turn can really be abused well

now do you think that could work in brago, since I can blink off the counters whenever I want?

Of course, that's even easier to play than in my deck

sweet. Maybe thats how I'll keep the aggro decks under control. make them sac everything and then just blink with brago so I don't have to.

There's only one problem, Brago has to attack and ending the turn with sundial must happen in the upkeep to avoid the effect of smokestack. You can keep mystic remora without paying the cummulative upkeep in the same fashion but to blink with Brago you have to let that one turn pass as normal. I'd rather just use the remora and let the smokestack lock be. What works better with Brago is Tangle Wire.

I don't really have any experience playing such an evil deck, but I wouldn't put As Foretold in here as you don't really have enough instants to take full advantage of it.

Schuesseled that's exactly what I am unsure about. I play it in my Jhoira deck and there it's really good, also because I can blow up the lands and still keep playing. This would be possible here as well, but there are two problems: firstly, the taxing spheres will make the spells cost at least something, with trinisphere the effect is completely gone and secondly, I have only 10 instants so the value would mostly be casting free stuff in my own turn.

There's Ethersworn Canonist or Whir of Invention (triple blue though!) that could go in the deck instead of the 31st land...