oops my bad disregard my prior comment i misread it.

Just out of curiosity which Dark Ritual and Counterspell art do you run?

I run the FTV foil Dark Ritual (although I also have a foreign copy stored away in my deckbuilding collection) and an altered-art Mercadian Masques Counterspell .

Most of the cards in this deck are either foil or altered.

Trying to create the Blue-Green equivalent of this deck is very hard. Without the inclusion of black you lose all of your reliable tutors as well as Necropotence and Damnation . We'll have to play sometime soon when I iron out the kinks in my Prime Speaker Zegana build.

Deglamer keeps getting brought up, but I'm going to add more validity to its merit! what about as a tuck for the times you go up against esper generals! or in the event your opponent plays some nasty combo centered piece that you didn't have a Counterspell for? This card gives you another out-of-the-box disruption that most people wont anticipate.

@larsenp: I suppose I could add it to the sideboard and side it in if I go up against a deck I know will use artifact combos. However, I still question whether it is good enough to see general mainboard play.

Prismatic Omen might be good for manafixing

Prismatic Omen is unnecessary because it doesn't actually ramp, and because I have all possible duals, shocks, and fetches. The color fixing is fine, so I'd rather have ramp.

Have you tested to see how many competitive decks your list can fend off at the same time, in excess of the usual 3-4 man pod?

@YerpyMoose: No. Such a test would be pointless. Any deck will fail when it gets focused by too many opponents, and there are too many variables and too few applications to bother with all the work such testing would require.

I play this deck almost to the T, just 3-5 different cards weekly, almost daily, and I can say this: it works well 1v1 but it really shines in 2v2 format. When we play any other formats like star, ffa, 3v3 it has a hard time going off because there are simply just too many interactions.

Oh yeah, that was @ YerpyMoose

Why not Storm Crow ? Great combo enabler.

Storm Crow and Chimney Imp are great cards, and perhaps you need another way to kill creatures? Razor Boomerang will kill any Hermit Druid that you need it to.

Wild Growth ?

Wood Elemental can help for a late game beatdown and has good synergy with Damia.

What countermagic were strong considerations for the deck but didnt make the cut?

I don't see much graveyard hate in the deck, barring Deathrite Shaman , leading on from that i was wondering if Trinket Mage was ever in the deck to fetch up your mana rocks, Sensei's Divining Top , and what might've been graveyard hate artifacts like Nihil Spellbomb , Relic of Progenitus or Tormod's Crypt .

Has the deck ever had to cope with losing it's win conditions? i.e. a turn 1 Dark Ritual +Sadistic Sacrament

Gaze of Granite is a card i've found invaluable in edh, dealing with opponent's mana-rocks and early plays if you wind up playing it before your own, did it not make the cut similarly to how Pernicious Deed got cut from the deck?

@gheridarigaaz: I tested a lot of the 1U counterspells, but cut several of them (like Delay ) for more effective counters (like Swan Song , when it came out) and other cards. I avoided most of the 3+ CMC counterspells because they are too expensive for a fast-paced control deck, and they sit awkwardly on the mana curve.

Graveyard hate is pretty specific, and it isn't generally relevant except in certain cases. Even in those few cases, it's generally better to have a counterspell than graveyard hate.

Trinket Mage never made the cut. I'd sooner run Fabricate , and I cut Fabricate because it wasn't performing optimally.

I've never seen Sadistic Sacrament in game, and it's exceedingly rare that someone plays something that interferes with my win conditions while they're still in my library or hand. Regardless, I have backup combos. They aren't as efficient or straightforward as my infinite mana combos (especially if they exile Deadeye Navigator , but they can do the job in a pinch. Overall, though, the deck is a bit more fragile than I'd like. I'll be the first to admit that. Multiplayer games tend not to see a whole lot of single-opponent disruption beyond counterspells and removal, though, because it's just not mana or time efficient to target one player to lose the game.

Gaze of Granite can certainly have its place in many decks, but it isn't up to scratch for competitive circles. It's just too expensive to cast, and it's a sorcery. Pernicious Deed would likely make a reappearance before Gaze of Granite sees play here. I need to include only the most efficient cards when I can.

I'm building something similar around Damia with a little bit less focus on Infinite (my group rather frowns on it, unless the game is getting extremely drawn out). I was wondering if you had ever experimented with Parallax Tide for mana-denial, counter-LD, and potential hilarity to the tune of "oh, Pact of Negation ? You lose." (It'd require your Leyline of Anticipation , but the look on your opponent's face would be priceless.)

@Atmaweapon: I have not used Parallax Tide , but I've seen some decklists experiment with the card (and similar cards). I don't personally find it too impressive, at least on paper. Then again, I don't have any in-game experience playing with or against it, so my opinion on the matter is of limited value.

How does one interfere with your win-con combos? I'm looking to make either a chaos or policing edh deck. My vorosh BUG deck is exceedingly good at making people quit, discouraging people from playing against me. Hence asking about counters and library disruption, theres a similarly combo-centric bug deck in our meta that i'd look to stymie or stifle to earn favour with the other players

And i am aware this ought to be in one of the forums, but i'm just looking for a straightforward answer

gheridarigaaz the most fragile point of the combine is when Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator enter the battlefield. The easiest way to disrupt it is to kill one of them in response to the soulbond trigger. It can't be blinked to make infinite mana since it hasn't been bonded yet. Also you don't get to untap the lands just yet since that trigger is also on the stack.

I think a comment purging is in order soon.

@gheridarigaaz: Disruption against this kind of deck is largely situational. For disruption to have effect, I need to not be able to counter it. A careful combo-control player presents few opportunities for disruption.

That said, the best means of interfering with combos are counterspells and removal. If you counter a critical combo piece, then it takes time and resources to get that piece back or change combos. For example, if I combo with Phantasmal Image and Palinchron , you can counter Phantasmal Image on the cast or recast (that's one of the reasons I like Deadeye Navigator - it evades counterspells).

Spot removal also works, provided I don't have counterspells or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir to protect my combo (although the same is true of counterspells in general).

Other options include discard, tucking, and exile (e.g. Vendilion Clique ).

@larsenp: I agree, but I'll wait until BNG is spoiled. That way I can update the deck (if anything usable even comes out) and purge the comments at the same time.

Prophet of Kruphix