Great write up! Deck looks very solid. Being part of your playgroup, I'm sad I haven't been able to sit down against this one. Hopefully it's still around by the time I get back (except for Sadistic Sacrament, hope I don't get to see that being kicked in my direction).

Now my suggestions:

You mentioned you can often get to a very low life total, have you considered Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip? It's a second copy of Greed (kind of) and it's a sac/heal land later in the game, which seems to be something the deck wants.

You mentioned dealing with fast combo, maybe some targeted discard can be helpful? Thoughtseize or Duress or Cabal Therapy?

Your ramp package seems solid, but why no Cabal Ritual?

One little correction: In the Gameplay Suggestions section, you mention discarding to hand size on turn 1 by not playing a land and then using Animate Dead on turn 2, did you mean Reanimate?

Again, very solid work.

thanks jeacaveo

Arguel's Blood Fast used to be in the deck but I felt it was too mana intesive (1B) for the deck. After consideration I replaced it with Ad Nauseam which could give me a bigger boost of card draw for less mana. As comparison, although Greed costs more to cast, it's more efficient on the long run due to it's B activation cost. Regarding Arguel's flip side, it wasn't particulary easy to flip because most of the time you go under 5 life during your turn, so you'd have to wait a whole turn to flip it. Also, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim comes with her own Temple of Aclazotz included.

Cabal Ritual is my 101 card, will probably end in the deck. Right now I don't have a way to consistently meet the Treshold requirement during the first 3 turns but the card is definitively playable.

I don't include targeted discard spells because I want to reduce targeted interaction with opponents as not to draw too much attention/hate. All the ones you recommend should be played in a more Competitive setting.

Yes, Reanimate instead of Animate Dead, will make the change.

Thanks!

loudbliss

I see your points on Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip, I didn't read it carefully and assumed it was at your end step (like most of the other flip enchantment from Ixalan). 100% not better than Ad Nauseam, more along side it.

This is much more of a mid-range reanimator deck. That's a playstyle I like a lot for more casual Ayli decks, but it's not built up to same level of competitiveness as the decklist we have featured right now.

I don't disagree that Raz/Aetherflux combos could have a place in Ayli, but I'm not going to move her placement based off the idea alone.

Also, I think you're misunderstanding how we rank commanders over on our list. There's no "different alternatives to make it Tier2 or Tier3," the rankings are based off of the commander as a whole. That means that we're only really considering two things: the best possible decklist that can be made around that commander; and how much that commander contributes to the effectiveness of that decklist. The reason there are black/white combo commanders ranked higher than Ayli right now, is that they act as combo pieces for their respective decklists, and so decrease the number of pieces that need to be tutored for to win the game. Ayli doesn't do that as much for the most effective strategies in her colors (Bomberman, Aetherflux, and Relic/Animate), so she is ranked lower.

From the discussion that's going on over there right now, I probably need to make this clearer.

Another thing to keep in mind is that what separates T2.5 and T3 is a little messy right now, since the recent printing of several colorless, universal combo cards (Walking Ballista, Paradox Engine, and Aetherflux Reservoir) have pretty much plateaued the competitiveness of the format across the board. We're not going to sort out what qualifies as a T2.5 deck (although I have a general idea) until most of the T3 decklist section has been filled out, so that's what I've been focusing on recently.

And, just an fyi, your mana curve here seems really high for an Ad Nauseam deck, and you have very little fast mana to go with it. In general, I consider an average CMC of 2 or higher as "pushing it" for Ad Naus, and yours is almost 3. Again, not saying you should tear apart your deck; I really do like this strategy for 75% Ayli, but it's a little too much to what Ad Naus is supposed to do in cEDH (untap with like 35 cards in hand).

Lastly, I haven't mentioned this on the Tier list yet, but in my next update I was planning on moving my Razaketh deck down from T1.5 to T2. So... yeah. Just thought I'd mention that since it seemed to have factored into your thought process in your comment.

A nice looking deck, I can't really think of any suggestions.

Have you thought of Karlov of the Ghost Council as a commander? It keeps the 2-cost part the same and lets you remove creatures that make storming off harder.