@magicdai: Unfortunately, I so rarely get to play Magic that I don't have any "regular" opponents.

I used to play a semi-mirror against a friend who helped me codevelop this deck in its intermediate phase, but a lot has changed since then. The last deck I consistently played against was Jarad.

Very nice job... I tried playtesting this against my new Kaho, Minamo Historian deck (which was built specifically to stop broken stuff like this), but couldn't quite pull through. In otherwords, Jace, the Mind Sculptor said no.

And you should probably find a slot for Trickbind in here... Stifle is probably good enough, but there are a bunch of situations where you want to stop a Palinchron or opposing general for an entire turn rather than just once... and you don't want them to respond either.

+1

I'm guessing that Torpor Orb is your achilles' heel with this deck, how do you get rid of it (assuming that you couldn't counter it)

@Skimm3r: Hopefully, I'll be able to get some more playtesting experience in soon. I haven't actually used this deck in several months (I have few opportunities to play), but I have several cards to test. I'll add Trickbind to the lineup.

@magicdai: One of the weaknesses of this deck is that it relies heavily on countermagic to protect itself. In the event that something resolves, it relies on ETB effects to deal with it. There are very few direct removal spells in the deck, so the best option may be to tutor for something like Nature's Claim . It's definitely not an optimal answer, but there have to be tradeoffs.

Thankfully, I haven't seen Torpor Orb come up in competitive games. Most of the time, opponents are worried about getting to their own combos, and Torpor Orb would probably interfere with their own game plans.

How often do you play against actual aggro decks in EDH? I understand it's a much more difficult proposition to kill 3-4 other players instead of one that you normally have to kill, and doing twice as much damage is not in favor of an aggro player either. Have you seen commanders that were suited well to an aggressive strategy, and what were they?

I don't mean to answer this for you Epochalyptik, but thispersonisagenius: There is a really competitive EDH deck at my game store that is Aggro. Its a super fast Boros Aggro deck and the commander is Gisela, Blade of Goldnight . There is another one that is almost the exact same deck except the commander is Aurelia, the Warleader .

@thispersonisagenius: Aggro is, in my experience, almost nonexistent in the competitive multiplayer environment. Although some people and some decks can make it work, it's very difficult and very vulnerable when you're dealing with multiple people trying to combo as soon as possible. Combos generally start going off before you can get very far with an aggro strategy.

On occasion, you'll find an infinite token strategy that uses combat to win, but that's still a combo, and there are less vulnerable ways to win using infinite tokens. Some people try the voltron approach, but that's made difficult by the fact that you have to kill three players, and you have to choose between the player who's likeliest to combo next turn and the player who's actually defenseless. Nontoken, nonvoltron approaches tend to falter because they simply aren't fast enough to win. Unless someone resolves a Primal Surge on turn two or three, the stompy method isn't about to work.

@TheGamer: Interesting. Maybe it's a local meta thing? How do those decks fare in combo-heavy pods?

Epochalyptik: In pods with people like me they just die because I can just combo off super quick. But the tournaments we have at our store have "casual" players. What I mean by that is bringing a combo deck to the table or just a competitive deck in general isn't frowned upon but not a lot of people do it. I'd say there are 3 (including me) combo players at our store, the rest just play the game for fun.

So to answer your question, when there is a combo deck in the pod it doesn't do too well. But most of the time, there isn't a combo player in the pod.

Deck has been updated a bit. Dropped Time Stretch and Utopia Sprawl ; added Spell Pierce and Carpet of Flowers .

I'd like to fit Diabolic Intent in here somewhere. That probably means dropping a counterspell.

I havent found diabolic intent to be a high achiever. Its dependent on multiple conditions being fulfilled which makes it tricky.

I could see dropping Mental Misstep for Diabolic Intent . I actually really like that tutor because it replaces a not so good creature for a much better card for the situation that you are in. also, Mental Misstep is the most restricted counterspell that you have in here (i think).

Its dependent on both you having the tutor and a creature. Doesnt always happen. Having a dead card is bad times.

The intent is to sacrifice one of the utility creatures for the tutor, but I do need to protect Diabolic Intent itself; it's the kind of card opponents would love to counter in order to 2-for-1 me.

Is Spell Pierce all that useful with every deck (usually) having access to lots of mana? In 60 card decks drawing it too late is terrible, and obviously with larger decks you're even less likely to have it when it matters.

Like ChiefBell said, Diabolic Intent requires you to have a creature, and it's quite conceivable that you won't have one in play.

A couple of suggestions. I feel like a combo that requires fewer individual cards to win might be strong. Voltaic Key untaps mana rocks, and of course you can combo it with Time Vault . Did you feel that those cards were too weak individually to be in the deck?

I also feel that certain planeswalkers may be helpful to your attrition strategy. Vraska the Unseen kills anything you want her to. Liliana Vess is Vampiric Tutor on a stick. Nissa, Worldwaker and Garruk Wildspeaker , while more combat-oriented, can provide needed ramp in case you feel you don't have enough. If you want to go for the Key-Vault combo, Tezzeret the Seeker is great, and he still finds mana otherwise. Those are the ones I found to be at all relevant, but there are plenty of others obviously.

It might also run into the problem that Survival of the Fittest had. "Finally, I dropped Survival of the Fittest for Lotus Cobra . I don't run enough creatures for Survival of the Fittest to really do what I need it to do," (epoch). I never thought about the 2-1 business with that card, hmm. Also, could the argument be made for Riftsweeper ? you have five cards in the deck that exile your own cards (counterspell fodder, flashback, yawgmoth). it can also bring back exiled Palinchron /Deadeye Navigator combo pieces along with what you have exiled.

All of those are kind of high mana though. Although Tezzeret can come in and immediately get something onto the field which is very useful.

Sorry that was referring to the planeswalkers.

thispersonisagenius - Epoch has said that he doesnt like combo pieces that are useless on their own so I doubt that the artifacts will make it in. And as much as I love Tezzeret he doesnt have much to tutor up at the moment.

If it had blue in it, you could make use of it with Force of Will /Misdirection fodder, but that is not the case.

@thispersonisagenius: Spell Pierce is good because it's effective in counter wars. It's not optimal, but it's good.

I generally do have a few creatures on the battlefield because I use several of my creatures for utility. I can justify sacrificing a Birds of Paradise or Azusa, Lost but Seeking to find a combo piece.

Also, Time Vault is definitely banned in EDH, so there's that.

There is no attrition strategy in this deck. The focus is shutting people down and comboing out as soon as possible. The only planeswalker that's remotely useful in this deck is Jace, the Mind Sculptor , which makes the cut because it's a toolboxing engine and pairs very well with fetches.

@miracleHat: Riftsweeper would only be useful in a few fringe cases, and it's generally not important enough to be able to recover exiled cards. I just play around the disadvantage.

What do you think of Mirri's Guile ? It's a good 1-drop and works well with the fetches.

I would suggest adding Hurkyl's Recall and Tezzeret the Seeker . Hurkyl's Recall has enormous blowout potential and Tezzeret the Seeker can generate large amounts of mana quickly and tutor for other mana rocks.

I would cut Remand and Utopia Sprawl . Both these cards seem to week except in certain situations. Utopia Sprawl fails to be useful as a topdeck late game and Remand against combos but cannot adequately defend a combo against a dedicated attack.

@lordoftheshadows: Utopia Sprawl has already been dropped; I cut it for Carpet of Flowers , but I guess the change was never saved.

Hurkyl's Recall is kind of underwhelming. Optimistically, it's a Time Walk . However, mana rocks are easy to play off of one another, so it really doesn't gain me too much. It's especially underwhelming in multiplayer, where I can only inconvenience a single opponent at the expense of two mana and a card.

Tezzeret the Seeker might have a shot if it cost 2UU, but at 3UU, it's too steep to fit properly into this deck.

Remand is strong because it helps delay critical plays in a resource-intensive format, and it cantrips. It's not always a hard counter, but it works in many situations.

@rathalos3000: I considered Mirri's Guile a while ago, but I opted not to include it because it doesn't actually draw me any cards. The effect is certainly good, but I have to ask whether it's good enough.

Another suggestion: I would rather play Toxic Deluge than Damnation , it costs 1 less and destroys even indestructible creatures and creatures with regenerate. And I remember reading, that lifeloss is not very important.