how about the new general leovold emissary of trest ? compare to Damia ?

Epochalpytic, what are your thoughts on Long-Term Plans for the deck, seems like a good tutor for damia seeing as you will most likely draw the card during your upkeep while damia is out anyways.

Grim Tutor is much better than Long-Term Plans, but didn't make the cut either.

being instant and only requiring one colored symbol makes a big difference with Long-Term Plans and Grim Tutor

Psst, you should upgrade to Leovold, Emissary of Trest, he's significantly better than Damia as a commander thanks to his much lower cost and generally more oppressive abilities. He doesn't even require much building around-- just a handful of additional wheel effects and Puzzlebox for relative optimization.

BiggestJohn: Long-Term Plans is significantly worse without Damia on the field though.

@Matheyru: Generally, you want to accelerate enough in the early game that you can afford to counter or remove the key stax cards before they hit you too hard. If you can't preempt or quickly respond to stax engines, you don't really have a great chance of winning the game due to the advantage loss.

For your lock and DD question, your best chance is really to either play heavy control early and prevent the strategy from launching or to combo out before it becomes an issue. Competitive pods with fast, powerful decks inevitably turn into a few turns of Mexican standoff followed by a game-ending series of events.

@Raging_Squiggle: I generally dislike playing "wincons" that don't actually win the game when used. Venser, Shaper Savant gets away with it because it's a good utility card as well, but Gonti, Lord of Luxury isn't really something I'd want to play for the effect. That's also why Villainous Wealth isn't in the deck.

@maddoxmtg: The primer has a section dedicated to intentional omissions; you can find a better answer there. But to briefly address your point, Forbid is not good in competitive. It's expensive to start, and you don't want to rely on an even more expensive card to already be out to make it average.

@klone13 & ninomiya & NarejED: I haven't fully evaluated Leovold, Emissary of Trest yet. I have a feeling you could pretty effectively swap between Leovold and Damia depending on the meta.

@Silverf1sh: In a non-optimized version of the deck, it's worth considering. I don't include it because the mana base is already optimized, but if you couldn't afford to build the 3-3-9 foundation for the land base, then Gemstone Mine isn't a bad way to compensate. It lasts long enough for you to get some other mechanism in place to replace it after the third turn. As long as you need it to color fix and you're spending the mana productively, I wouldn't worry too much about the downside.

@BiggestJohn: I'll add it to the maybeboard. I certainly see the utility.

@Cirridian: I wouldn't list 5 CMC as a pro of any card. That's a lot of mana to tie up in a single spell, which is one of the reasons this deck's curve has gotten progressively lower as time goes on.

I also tend not to like "lose life equal to its mana cost" effects in this deck because so many of the key cards have higher mana costs (e.g., Tooth and Nail, Palinchron, Deadeye Navigator). While they're certainly fewer in number than the low-CMC cards, I remain apprehensive about Ad Nauseam and similar effects. I'm open to testing them, but I also haven't played in a while.

@huntersmith878: Long-Term Plans is a very common card in casual and semi-competitive Damia decks, but I don't include it here because I dislike depending on Damia to gain access to something. If I don't have Damia out, I'm limited in how many cards I draw per turn, so I can't always guarantee that I'll get to the tutored card before I need to shuffle due to a fetch or something else. The other part of it is the mana cost. I'm moving toward cheaper tutors in order to maximize resource availability for other cards.

So, I've slowly began expanding my deck to make it more consistent, and so far it usually is, but I think I'm at the point where I should be swapping/upgrading cards.

Now my question to you Epochalyptik is should I start with lands or another card set?

Here's my deck.

@Ishio: In your case, it depends. The land base probably makes the single biggest difference out of any of the deck's "food groups," but it's also the most expensive to optimize. I would at least consider Drowned Catacomb and Hinterland Harbor as well as some multi-lands like Reflecting Pool.

Your deck does run a number of expensive, "suboptimal" creatures, but part of that may be due to preference. I choose not to run cards like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, for example.

@ Epochalyptik: I forgot I didn't have those lands in there! For less than $10 average, they should be in there. Are there any lands I am currently running that I shouldn't be? And, is my land base decent enough with those two duals and a multi-land enough to look into other cards?

You're right finances are a huge thing to an extent, so ABU lands are kind of out.

I've been on the fence about Mikaeus/Glen Elendra and wanting to swap them out for something but unsure really what to. I guess the biggest things would be to get Green Sun's in there and Yaw or Azusa.

Ishio: if Mikaeus is just in there for Glen Elendra, why don't you just run Sage of Fables? it's a bucket load cheaper and provides some utility with other wizards.

enpc: I never knew this existed. Thank you. I will replace Mikeaus for that.

What about adding Delay as another 2 mana hard(ish) counter?

What do you usually find with Green Sun's Zenith, the only wincon I could figure out was Eternal Witness, and that doesn't do much on its own. Maybe you generally just find a mana dork or other ramp creature?

On that same note, I find that I am generally hurting on mana. I am probably just playing the deck wrong, but I find that I accelerate extremely fast the first 2-3 turns, but have no ramp for the mid game which leaves me hurting on resources to both execute and protect the combo. Keep in mind that I am not playing much of the fast mana such as Mana Crypt or the moxen, and thus this might be part of my problem.

I am aware that I have mentioned this before, but I find that unless I get a non-creature draw engine such as Sylvan Library or Necropotence, that I often run out of cards because Damia rarely survives a turn cycle. This is most likely a piloting problem (eg I need to tutor more for draw engines), but I feel that if I wait a turn or two so that I can play Damia and protect her for a turn cycle, I often get outpaced by the other players at the table.

Also, did anything change about mulling with the new rules?

Hey, awesome deck! + 1 from me

I have 2 questions:

What do you think about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip? Even though Snapcaster Mage is faster and more versatile, Jace can provide some card advantage and cast important spells a second time (without flashback, so you can overload Cyclonic Rift from the graveyard).

What is your opinion on Leovold, Emissary of Trest? He would work in a different way than damia with less ramp, more lockdown and more specific combos but I think he could maybe as strong as damia.

Thanks! :)

@Matheyru: Delay was in the deck a while ago. I cut it in favor of more permanent counterspells, but I maintain that it's still a decent flex pick. You just have to be aware of its limitations, as with any other imperfect counter.

Green Sun's Zenith is used more for getting ramp creatures like Lotus Cobra or Birds of Paradise. It was slightly better when Dryad Arbor was still in the deck.

If you're not playing any of the fast mana sources, then I would ask what you're playing instead. Your balance of ramp to utility spells might be what's messing you up.

It might also be what's leading to issues getting Damia out in a timely manner. The deck is designed to ramp very aggressively for turns 1-2, begin playing utility engines on turns 3-4, and combo out in turns 5-7. If it's taking you too long to ramp to a point where you can safely cast Damia, then you might not have efficient enough ramp, and you might be focusing on the wrong things in the early-mid game.

I haven't played the deck since the new mulligan rules, so I'm not really sure. I don't assume the change should materially affect the deck, but it's possible that some changes might be more optimal.

@Typ13: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip is slow for what it gives me, and the + ability isn't really relevant to the overall strategy.

I haven't fully evaluated Leovold, Emissary of Trest.

@Matheyru: If you're trying to keep cost down while still getting strong early ramp. May I suggest this package (Arbor Elf, Kiora's Follower, Voyaging Satyr, +Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth). The Kiora's Follower also has great synergy with many other cards. This is how I like to run Epochalyptik's style deck on a semi-budget with a semi-competitive kitchen table group - Sage of Sultai - Kitchen Competitive v7. To note, I went with more "put land onto that battlefield" to keep my costs down and because I like the backup infinite combo/mean stax created with Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger + Palinchron

Cheers.

Thinks this deck is an interesting one.

Sees price tag.

Dies

Thinks this deck is an interesting one.

Sees price tag.

Dies

Thoughts on Manifold Insights? Digs 10 cards, and since this is a multiplayer oriented deck, the more opponents you have, the more cards you get.

Wouldn't you want Vedalken Orrery since about 1/3 of your spells are sorcery speed? I know that Leyline of Anticipation and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir are hard to cast but this is colourless.

I cant't speak for Epoch. From personal experience with my own damia deckLeyline of Anticipationhas a chance of not costing anything at all. Also not super critical most of the time. I have considered cutting it for sometime but it some how manages to show up during an important game turn zero and the advantage is just so good when it happens.Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is more used for locking out your opponents from stopping your combos. the creature flash is helpful but more of sweet icing than cake.