Villainous Wealth is a bad win condition. Not only are you relying on your opponent's deck to win but you can't actually kill a player with it or you lose access to their stuff. Not to mention once you have access to your entire deck from Tooth and Nail it just seems win more. Why not just run Exsanguinate or Blue Sun's Zenith or something else that's more applicable outside of combo.

You also don't have enough lands in your deck. 34 is too low especially since a decent chunk of your ramp is putting muliple lands into play per turn. Especially with Cabal Coffers as one of your lands.

Time Spiral seems bad as you fuel your opponent's hands. Especiall if you're playing against other control decks you either A) give them more cards or B) get your spell countered as you're disrupting their full hand.

What's in your wishboard? Also, if the only reason you're running the Riftsweeper is so yo ucan recur the Living Wish then I would cut it. It seems janky and slow and not worth running. Or at least run the sweeper in the wishboard and fetch it first.

i can generally kill the table with villainous wealth by recurring it but i see what you mean. i dont notice the low land count. sometimes i have a land issue but its so few and far between that it doesnt seem to happen unless i play several games in a row without shuffling well enough. time spiral is more when im hitting a slow spot in my draws or important cards need to be shuffled in. riftsweeper is a meta choice for me my group has alot of grave hate so sometimes i need it if the game starts running long. i have dropped the wish for the time being i never used it or didnt matter.

For card advantage, I have been really impressed with Jace's Ingenuity. It sits right on the perfect CMC for where I'm finding I need cards and the instant speed of it is really powerful.

Also, Powerleech seems really underwhelming.

i need to update first off i did a fair amount of testing over the weekend the deck has changed a bit.

ok this is the up to date list

I noticed your list doesn't have Counterspell, which is basically THE control staple :P

I would recommend swapping Ertai's Meddling for it.

Do you find that you actually play Time Stretch very much?

I dont use counterspell because of the 2 blue cost and its wierd i know. I actually like ertai's meddling it lets your stop uncounterable spells ie things cast with Boseiju, Who Shelters All or counter flux because it doesnt counter the spell. with the testing that i have done its a great politic card that has wrecked some of my oppenents. Sometimes one or 2 turns is all you need to get the win. I went with time stretch because time warp never really seem to get me any where when i cast it. this lets me set something up and activate it.

But you run Cryptic Command which is triple blue...

I would look into Mindbreak Trap. It's a much more permanent solution to uncounterables and wrecks storm decks. I once shut down 22 copies of Mind's Desire with one blue mana, a Mystical Tutor, a Sensei's Divining Top and that beast. The look on my opponent's face too.

ya and i am considering cutting it for that reason but i fond of the counter and draw part of it and a bit of a pet card at the moment. Mindbreak trap is awesome but storm really isn't a problem in my meta its starting to show up a little but table punishes them quick most of the time. ertai's meddling can turn the table against someone really fast. example uncounterable cyclonic rift is cast i delay it for one turn all of a sudden the whole table wants that person dead because they with get a free overloaded cyclonic rift on their upkeep which will probably win them the game. So the table starts to view them as a bigger threat then they actually are and it buys me a turn to combo myself or find a better solution.

I recently got a hold of a Cunning Wish and want to develop a side board for it and mindbreak trap would be a really nice addition.

If you're looking at running Cunning Wish, I'd recommend taking a look at my Damia deck (shameless advertising whee!):

Damia Morgendorffer Playtest

Commander / EDH enpc

SCORE: 27 | 0 COMMENTS | 10470 VIEWS

I run Cunning Wish and have tweaked my wishboard to give me all the options :P

The deck might also give you a few ideas. It's not as tuned as Epoch's, however it's also built for a different and more creature heavy meta.

Anyway, it might give you some ideas.

I like the look of your side board gave me some ideas on what to put in my own, thanks. Im definitly wanting to make cunning wish a tool box for myself while i can deal alot of things there are still problems that arise and i want to be able to have some options.

if i was to add 2-3 lands what should take out for it?

I'd say Time Stretch and Pernicious Deed.

time stretch is a tough one it let me win after i had my PalinchronDeadeye NavigatorVillainous Wealth where taken by Bitter Ordeal today. What do you think of Maelstrom Pulse?

I used to run it up until recently however I cut it because as strong as it is (and it is amazing) the sorcery speed is frustrating at times. I'm all for letting my opponents have big creatures, just as long as they're not aimed at me and Maelstrom Pulse didn't give me that leverage.

thats how i feel most of the time. i guess it one of those tough cuts that you have to make.

It is. It's a really powerful card too. I had to make the same tough choice about cutting Yisan, the Wanderer Bard a little while ago. That was a tough call.

I still think with the performacne increase cutting Time Stretch should be fine. I used to run Time Warp and would combo off with it, however as the deck got faster and faster I was finding more and more it was just a dead card in my hand and that I was relying on it less and less.

You might want to look through the changelog and omissions sections in my deck, Dominus - Dreamcrusher Edition. You're running a few cards that I've determined to be suboptimal for the competitive environment.

For example, Plasm Capture is very expensive and completely saturated. It's not a practical counterspell compared to Mana Drain, and it's not really a suitable replacement for Mana Drain, either.

Coiling Oracle doesn't really make sense in the deck. It doesn't do anything for you. And yes, while you can bounce it with Deadeye Navigator and infinite mana, you can do the same with Rune-Scarred Demon, which is actually relevant to the combos that drive the deck.

I cut Mystic Snake from my list a long time ago. It's cute in theory, but it's just too impractical in most cases.

Acidic Slime doesn't really seem necessary. If your goal is to combo out for the win, then you don't need to be playing very expensive answers to general threats.

Is there a reason you don't run Mana Crypt, Mana Drain, Underground Sea, and the rest of the fetches? I'd assume cost is really what's prohibiting you because they're staples in .

I agree with enpc about Villainous Wealth. It's not a practical win condition when you could just kill everybody with Blue Sun's Zenith, which is relevant outside of your combo. As a general rule, you should try to avoid combo-only cards like Villainous Wealth and Exsanguinate. A well-tuned combo deck will integrate as many of its combo pieces into its normal strategy as possible to ensure the minimum of dead or irrelevant cards in the early and mid game.

ya budget is an issue at the moment. wow never even thought about Coiling Oracle that way. i wish i could run mana drain. and i agree with Plasm Capture, i run into that problem from time to time but there are time were it generates so much advantage. Mana Drain will replace it.

what counterspells would you suggest besides Counterspell because it just need to find one. and what would you swap in for Acidic Slime?

Villainous Wealth is starting to be a problem for me. using Blue Sun's Zenith as a win con requires you to re tutor it to cast it again or am i missing something?

With Blue Sun's Zenith as a win condition, you want to get yoursef into a position where you have Palinchron, Deadeye Navigator and Rune-Scarred Demon (or something like Eternal Witness with Demonic Tutor in the graveyard) on the battlefield. You cast USZ, bounce the RSD and re-tutor it. With cards like Stroke of Genius or Villainous Wealth as a win condition (if you really want ot run VW or don't have access to USZ), you can let them hit the graveyard and then recur them with an Eternal Witness or Archaeomancer.

The benefit of the USZ + RSD combo though is that other than Tooth and Nail, no card ever hits the graveyard meaning that the combo can't be stopped via graveyard hate cards such as Deathrite Shaman or Scavenging Ooze. This is why so many BUG decks use it as a win condition - not only do most of the piece offer functionality outside of combo (even Palinchron can be used as a recurable flying blocker) but inside of combo they are much harder to stop than graveyard based combos. Of course graveyard based combos still supply an excellent backup win condition.

So after a alot of testing in my play group i removed both Acidic Slime and Coiling Oracle for a Living Wish and Cunning Wish. So far it has been good both and let me recover or stop a lot of copies of Bitter Ordeal happening through getting either Mindbreak Trap and Riftsweeper respectively. I have also started questioning Jace, the Mind Sculptor. He is good but generally gets wrecked quickly after i play him. any thoughts on something to replace him with? I want to keep it around the same CMC.

I personally like Jace's Ingenuity. As far as card advantage goes, it has been really solid. I know I've recommended it before but as I said, its been good.

i believe you i have used it before but it always felt underwhelming. I have been looking at Mindslaver and Praetor's Grasp as possible choices. but i feel like there is a card that would be perfect i just cant think of it.

There's also Mystic Remora and Phyrexian Arena. Arena is good in that yo ucan stack the triggers with Damia's ability.

I don't like Mindslaver in a build like this. You're not running Academy Ruins to begin with, so your only recursion option is really Eternal Witness + Deadeye Navigator and at this point you should just be winning instead.

I know of one Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck that runs Mindslaver but can actually lock with it using Tasigur's ability. It's stupid but at least there is recursion there.

I think Sadistic Sacrament is better than Praetor's Grasp. While you don't get to play the card, you are shutting down 3 times as many of your opponent's cards so it seems better.

What are your thoughts on replacing jace with Abundance and Time Spiral for Mana Severance. jace has been very lack luster in my meta latly, im not happy to draw him most of the time. It would also bring the mana curve down a tiny bit. It gives me an alternative way to "fetch up" my win con. Abundance also lets me get lands if I'm falling behind. It also works well with damia and other draw effects and with blue sun you can control your draws. Its gives you a little insurance that you wont deck yourself for the most part. it still can be removed easily enough but what cant besides emblems.