Hey Epochalyptic,

what du you think about Fierce Empath?

Tried a pretty similar Build today(very inspiring Primer, btw, Thanks! :D).Sadly, 2 times i found no valuable target for Green Sun's Zenith while i got inf. mana going or possible.Eternal Witness was out of Range (1 Time in Gy, another time exiled).A Green Sun's Zenith into Fierce Empath can either find you a combo part ( Deadeye Navigator or Palinchron ) or you just go for Rune-Scarred Demon and find your missing piece.

GreetsUul

Further on the Fierce Empath synergises pretty well with Deadeye Navigator to find even more Combo cards, same with Ghostly Flicker (eg. 10 mana(7 lands)+Fierce Empath+Ghostly Flicker needed: play Fierce Empath (7 mana left),find Palinchron, play it (untap 7 lands=7 mana open), Ghostly Flicker them both (tap all,4 mana in pool, untap 7 lands,still 4 in pool), find Deadeye Navigator , play it(5 lands open), bounce Palinchron for infinite mana, bounce Fierce Empath, find Rune-Scarred Demon, End game.

You can use the Fierce Empath pretty nicely in Phase II, while you Dig for Wincon's. 3 mana is payable and he still can Chump Block.

He also could easily be a target for the Intuition . By enabling the Green Sun's Zenith to find nongreen Creatures, he also adds a lot of Power to Mystical Tutor.

With a Phantasmal Image and Fierce Empath on Hand and 10 mana available you can tutor for Palinchron , Combo it with Image for inf mana and finally Copy the Fierce Empath and find Rune-Scarred Demon for the Victory.I think the Fierce Empath really fits in the Synergy, just a little bit behind Rune-Scarred Demon.

I like your thinking, its cool tech that i have been trying to figure out for a while and decide if i wanted to run it. 3 months ago it probably would have went right in. It provides another win route. So thank you for showing me this.

while Fierce Empath is a good idea its a little to slow for what a deck like this wants to do. its an expensive sorcery speed tutor. Wouldn't it be more efficient to run a tutor for anything card vs tutor a very specific type of thing. What tutors are you using right now? Why Mystical Tutor for Green Sun's Zenith over Tooth and Nail? it does let GSZ find non green creatures but not as good as tooth and nail. It enables other ways of winning but thats not really needed where protecting your winning play is far more important.

Fierce Empath's power is also dependent on your meta. for example i run Riftsweeper because people have started to remove things from the game on me and this lets me get them back. it saved me earlier today and let me retrieve my deadeye.

Just my two cents on the card.

In a deck like this where you're waiting on Tooth and Nail to go off, does Sphinx of the Final Word seem in any way tempting as a back up Teferi, or is it still too underwhelming in comparison?

Silverf1sh: the problem with sphinx is that opponents can still cast spells so things like Venser, Shaper Savant get through because they don't specifically counter. On top of that, people can also play removal effects in response to Deadeye Navigator's soulbond and Palinchron's untap ability. There is a very small window where your cards are vulnerable and sphinx doesn't help in those circumstances.

Now that the partial paris is gone, does that change much of anything with play?

Hey Epoch, what're your thoughts on Mirrorpool? I know it comes into play tapped but the abiltiy to copy Tooth and Nail or a counterspell/tutor seems good.

with only 16 creatures (+ tutors), how often is cradle better or worse than a basic forest?

have you tested City of Brass or Mana Confluence? the incidental life loss probably wouldn't matter, but i can see them being a problem if you need to repeatedly tap them to go infinite. how often do you combo out with exactly the number of lands needed, or could you start the chain with these and then stop tapping them once you are just paying u1 to flicker to infinity?

Mas courser instead of le oracle of mul? Life is good.

How is this deck after the mulligan changes? Would you recommend this deck for a competitive format? I have most of the cards in other decks and would only have to pick up a few of the blue cards to finish it, since I typically don't play blue.

How is this deck after the mulligan changes? Still competitive or?

Have you considered running Alchemist's Refuge and Winding Canyons? This would allow you to better flash in your commander and other combo pieces without being too reliant on Leyline of Anticipation. Not to mention you can still play defensively.

In the deck weaknesses, you missed Azami, Lady of Scrolls as a deck that can out-speed you

@GevatterUul: Fierce Empath certainly has choices in the deck, but I don't know if it's versatile enough to warrant a spot given the other tutors available (e.g., Grim Tutor).

You do make a good point about its usefulness in certain combos, but those situations require you to have other cards in hand and not just Fierce Empath. I suppose that's not enough to disqualify it. I do agree with knight611, though, in saying that the option of using Fierce Empath doesn't necessarily mean that it's optimal to do so; the deck's central engines are better, so Fierce Empath is more of a backup-only sort of card.

I'll add it to the maybeboard, but I don't do much testing anymore.

@Silverf1sh: Sphinx of the Final Word has applications, but I think it's too expensive and narrow for this deck. It doesn't do anything for combos requiring creature casts (rather than being strictly enabled through Tooth and Nail, and it's sorcery speed.

@Magnivore & Perplex: I'm not sure. The deck, like most decks, suffers a bit in the early game from the change. But I haven't played in a long, long time, so I'm not sure exactly what changes may be necessary given the new mulligan rule.

@enpc: In my opinion, Mirrorpool is more of a gimmick or win-more card. Its abilities are too expensive to be practical.

@shuflw: Having not played the deck for a long time, I'm not sure how best to answer the statistical portion of your question. I think Gaea's Cradle is preferable to Dryad Arbor, but both of those cards serve different purposes than a typical basic. I guess the best way to assess it is that a basic is still better in the early game whereas Gaea's Cradle can potentially enable earlier combos and offers more late-game power.

On Mana Confluence and City of Brass, the latter was in a very early version of the deck. I cut it because it presented problems in certain combos (specifically, you need seven lands in order to make the Phantasmal Image combo work). I suppose it's a matter of whether you want another gold land at the (somewhat minor) risk of having to wait slightly longer to combo in some cases. I feel comfortable enough with the power of the land base to justify not running it, but I guess it's a personal choice.

@Ninjadude51: Courser of Kruphix doesn't actually ramp, so it isn't as useful as Oracle of Mul Daya. I suppose it does add some security if you're missing land drops, but I haven't tended to have that issue. I don't think saving is worth losing the ramp power.

@Oseros77: Alchemist's Refuge was in an earlier iteration of this deck, but I cut it because the ability is, in practice, too expensive to use to any great advantage. If I had more space in the land base, it might find its way back in for those cases where I want to dump a mana dork or small spell on an opponent's turn, but it isn't good enough often enough to edge out any of the other lands.

Winding Canyons was never in the deck, but the philosophy is the same.

@Podkomorka: The decks I listed in that section are examples. I don't claim or intend to create an exhaustive list of those decks that are faster or better; the principle is what's actually important.

That's fair.

One more question for you, regarding Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I know that for a long time your were running this card, and I know that you cut it. I guess the question is what was your though process behind getting rid of it? after all you run 9 fetches plus like 14 other ways of shuffling your library making his brainstorm very powerful, at least in a vacuum. Did you find it to be too prohibitive cost wise? Or was he too underwhelming when he hit the battlefield? Or were you finding that people were just killing him?

I'm currently running him and he's not bad, but I notice that he pulls a lot of aggro just because he's Jace (much more than is warranted for the card at least). And the problem with relying on him as a constant source of card advantage is that if I get one brainstrom off and then he dies I've effectively just wasted a turn playing him.

So yeah, I'd be interested to pick your brains about keeping or not keeping him.

JTMS is certainly a good card, but I often found myself in positions where I didn't want to cast it. is an expensive cost to manage in Stage II, and it's not really justifiable often enough in Stage III. This means it's a dead card in the critical first stages of the game, and I tend to prioritize those stages rather than late-game utility.

I agree that City of Brass and Mana Confluence aren't optimal in this list because they hinder your combo, but what about Tarnished Citadel? Paying three life seems like a lot, but if you only need it to tap for colored mana once or twice per game it's maybe as painful as City of Brass, but works just fine with the combo.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy seems like a solid option for this deck, as it filters yours draws and allows you to flashback tutors or a counterspell on your combo-turn. Have you given any thought to that card?

Amazing Deck...

For more Exploration style cards, have you considered Fastbond?

The paying life would probably be minimal in edh..? It also synergises with Damia. You get rid of the land cards with Fastbond, and then Damia refills your hand with useful cards..?

if Fastbond wasnt banned in EDH...

@Emzed: Tarnished Citadel has applications, but I think I'd sooner run the regular pain lands or even a tango land.

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip is interesting, but I think it's ultimately underwhelming. The loot effect doesn't seem highly relevant, and the only relevant loyalty ability is the -3.

@xavrr: If it weren't banned, it would already be in the deck.

Epochalyptik

Sorry, that was stupid of me...

Final thing, (I checked this wasn't banned!), have you thought about Telepathy?

You might be underestimating Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip. Looting once or twice might not always be fantastic, especially when everything else works perfectly, but whenever you draw for example both Exploration and Burgeoning, or the card Crucible of Worlds or a situational card like Toxic Deluge or simply too few/many lands, it can be really good. The new mulligan rule really makes those scenarios a lot more relevant. Also, looting enables you to access a card that you put on top of your deck with Vampiric Tutor etc right away.
The -3 loyalty ability is great and the one big reason Jace is played in basically every format he is legal in. (Many other planeswalkers also have one defining ability that you use most often and some others that are situationally powerful or necessary evils to get more loyalty.) After flipping him, two of his next three activations can be used to flashback spells (starting at 5 loyalty you use -3,+1,-3, or +1,-3,-3). In your deck, he could ramp, help to assemble your combo by casting a tutor multiple times, give you resilience against countermagic/discard, make the card Intuition a lot more powerful, or protect your combo by using -3 on something like Pact of Negation or Swan Song before you expose your combo (you can cast the spell you target with Jace's ability any time during your turn, just like Snapcaster Mage).
Finally, he will occasionally simply be a lightning rod for a Swords to Plowshares that would otherwise have been directed at your Palinchron later in the game. I will admit, that is not a great feature, but a small upside.
Let's compare him with Snapcaster Mage: Jace is slower, he can't flashback a spell right away, but needs 1-2 turns of setup. Also, he doesn't synergyze with Mystical Teachings, Riptide Laboratory, Phantasmal Image, Ghostly Flicker and Deadeye Navigator, for whatever that's worth. However, he is better in your starting hand as he can be cast for just 2 mana, the loot ability is solid, and he is better at flashing back expensive spells like Tooth and Nail because you don't need to pay for him in the same turn the way you do with Snapcaster. Generally, Jace prefers to work in combination with discard instead of countermagic, as he does his thing during your turn. That's not the way your deck prefers to operate though. Jace is able to do something Snapcaster can't: Given time, he can flashback mutliple spells, generating actual card advantage.
Jace isn't explosive, he won't be very helpful if you draw the nuts and your opponents don't interact. However, he is cheap, flexible and reliable, the kind of card you want if you hit some troubled waters. I'm not 100% convinced myself that he deserves to be in this deck, but i think he should be seriously considered. If Snapcaster Mage makes the cut, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip can't be completely wrong.

Oh, i think nobody mentioned Dark Petition so far. I haven't really played with the card myself (oustide of limited), but seeing that your list is pretty high on tutors, this might be another option. It will be worse than Demonic Tutor most of the time, but occasionally it can find Necropotence and fix your mana for it at the same time. Seeing that it's played in Vintage storm to great success, it might be good enough for you.

Wait, this deck is now number 1? What happened to the Mikaeus deck?