Cool. I figured that it might be what we need to steal a few more games. As far as what to cut, I was thinking of Burnout. As much as I love it and like seeing it played, its scope is very narrow plus it's also a two CMC Red spell so swapping them should be fairly painless. I do think that the mana base does need a few more mountains though.... Maybe 3 mountain, 7 swamps?

Have you considered Seething Song?

Seething song, and by extension altering the land base to move heavier into mountains both came resulted in the same problem:

We end up with a lot of red mana in a deck that really only needs 1 red mana to win and RR total to support.

Extra mountains diluted our ability to acquire the massive amounts of B we needed to go off, a d weakened our muck lines.

Seething song has an similar issue in that it provides with with a healthy amount of R, but we have nothing to spend it on, while increasing our CMC.

I see, and agree, it doesn't make sense to blow out on mana we can't use

I don't have a Blackcleave Cliffs at the moment so was looking for a substitute... Settling in on Gemstone Mine. The way I see it, it ALWAYS comes into play untapped, It gets us any colour, and the limit of 3 uses doesn't REALLY matter when we expect to be comboing off at that point. Thoughts?

As mentioned before, I am testing out Final Fortune instead of Burnout, but have yet to draw it, so therefore have nothing to report.

Friday Night I played 3 matches with this deck and won every round, including a turn-3 win against a very tuned Ydris-Storm deck. Overall I'm loving it and am having excellent results

I'm glad to hear you're having success with the deck!

I'm also testing Final Fortune, but have yet to draw it myself, so let me know if you manage to get it going.

Dragonskull Summit is probably the most straight across exchange for Blackcleave, but Gemstone will certainly work in a pinch if the stax meta is low in your pods!

Have you thought of adding Gemstone Caverns?

Gemstone had a couple problems for us:

1. Our natural draw isn't where we need it to be to be able to sacrifice a card to the effect.

2. Outside the opening hand, it's lack of colour production slows off our win

3. We can't benefit off it from Muck or Lake

So, while it's decent for us in the opening hand, the downsides far outweighed the benefits at this time.

It is a card that we're always look at readding, but currently, unless we get some new Black mana tech from the upcoming sets, it's likely going to stay on the sidelines for now

Ok.

How is Fire Covenant working out for you?

Haven't draw into it enough to make a decision on it. So, still in testing.

Here are my questions concerning some card choices I would like to understand if I want to pick this deck up. I'm looking to really shape this list towards my meta and some cuts are gonna be inevitable, just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

Lion's Eye Diamond-- It seems to me like it's not pulling the weight such an overpowered card should be. Aside from being a great enabler when comboed with Yawgmoth's Will, the only realistic way to use Lion's Eye Diamond is towards Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, a purpose that leaves you defenseless to interaction, with no cards in hand to fuel back up. Necropotence is always required to go with Lion's Eye Diamond to gain substantial advantage from the card and even then, I feel like it keeps going back to Yawgmoth's Will here. Am I crazy to disregard such a powerful card for more well-rounded options? Let me know your thoughts.

Victimize-- A tricky card to use. If we have an expendable creature, which we have few of, it provides value IF we also have two good creatures in the bin. Seems to me like Reanimate would cover more ground? Am I crazy or is the possibility of having 2 combo creatures in the yard plus a fodder on the field very slim, even after Doomsday (Since both the Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo and the Metallic Mimic combo are stopped by one removal spell, you would get stuck being 1 creature short most of the time)?

That's basically what I was wondering , I'll be testing some weird cards in this shell and report back what I see based on my meta (which can be quite varied). I really like this deck salute everyone who worked on it!

Lions' Eye Diamond is a powerhouse, in the same way any rocks are a powerhouse with Grenzo DD.

We don't cast DD with it, but we crack it in response to a successful DD cast. If DD is resolved, we're already all in. What LED does, however, is for 0 to ensure we can count it against our required land to plug DD. With something like Chrome Mox, or Mox Diamond, etc, we need BBB + both of those rocks to hit our threshold.

With LED, we can ensure we hit that threshold for using Grenzo's ability for 0. With LED, we need: BBB+LED. With almost any other rock/mana source (outside of the double taps like Crypt/Sol), we need BBB+Rock/Rock, or BBB+B(for ritual, etc). This means that we end up needing to cast more things.

Sure, the loss of the hand is regrettable, and we'd always prefer to keep that hand, but LED is another 0 drop to keep us firing on what we do best - win the race to go off. Without it, we just end up needing more cards/ramp/ritual that slow us down or affect our opening hand more. LED is probably one of the best rocks inside of a DD deck simply due to that - it ensures you only need to cast 1 rock to go off, not 2.

Victimize acts a a final backup for the KIZC pile, and while ending in a position that you need to wait a full turn to cast it probably means life is over for you, it does give you that sliver after a failed DD. Reanimate is certainly something you could consider in it's place. If you do, please let me know how it handles, especially after double removal.

Cards that are currently likely to be cut, as per my testing log if you're looking for cuts to add in a reanimate package:

Mox Opal - just not enough rocks to trigger threshold to get use out of it. SSG or Blood Pet are likely additions to add the necessary coloured mana pooling.

Viscera Seer - Too many redundant sac outlets. Likely adding Diabolic Intent.

Played this yesterday and managed to draw Final Fortune. It worked as expected and allowed me to set up and go off a turn faster. Needless to say, I was happy to draw it when I did, and I'm happy with how it performed.

Clay_Puppington, Has Ricochet Trap been considered as an alternative to Burnout? It has the advantage of better versatility against more colours, and gets a nice discount when responding to Blue disruption.

Ender666666 Hi! An early version of the deck did indeed have Richochet Trap in the position of Burnout.

We found over the many early versions, that the extra mana for Burnout was well worth the cost of the card draw, while the colourless and red were almost always available at least as 1R.

Richochet trap saw itself moving further and further to the sideline as the deck got fast, relying more on large ad-nauseum pulls in many games.

With the higher cmc, and the lack of draw, Burnout ended up taking its place.

I see, that makes sense. I hadn't seen Ricochet Trap until someone suggested it yesterday.

BTW, Fire Covenant is definitely a champ. I used it twice yesterday and both times it really made a splash.

To my readers;

3 big changes can be found in the Card Change Log. Blood Pet, Springleaf Drum, and Simian Spirit Guide have made their way to main board.

I'm adding this comment so there can be a quick record on Simian Spirit Guide, which has currently is added to the mainboard with recent changes. However, while this change is currently more valuable then the card it was replacing, it does find itself likely to be cut in the incredibly near future for all of the problems it has (listed in the comments above).

If you don't happen to currently own one, I'd recommend holding off on rushing out to buy one for the next few weeks. Over the next little while I have ample time, and a few tournaments on the docket, so it will be given a strict test sooner rather than later.

Hey, I love this deck, first off, and Ive been running a budgetish version for a while at my LGS for commander night, and Ive started running against Zur Stax. I feel like I can win through most artifact hate or if I get a fast draw, but Arcane Laboratory has just been killing me. Any advice on other cards I can add to beat enchantment hate?

GrizzIebear- Arcane Lab can be a nuisance, but thankfully we don't end up playing that many spells in a turn. However, much like it's other stax contemporaries can certainly cause us issues.

Black and Red don't come with great enchantment removal, and the artifact availability inside of our curve doesn't give us much to be desired.

Likely, outside of a potential T1 Ratchet Bomb (which I wouldn't add in a full list, but might help you out), it's probably just going to come down to you holding up an early answer (using tutor 1 to grab REB or Chaos Warp, etc and then finding DD).

Thankfully, you should be loaded with more tutors than most players, and you have a greater chance of mulliganing into a counter or answer then they are on Arcane Lab.

Sadly, not having great usable enchantment removal is the price of BR.

If something crosses my mind, I'll hit you back with some better suggestions.

Thanks for the response. I kinda figured there wasnt much more that would work, but I thought Id ask in case I was missing some hidden gem. Chaos Warp vs Zur the Enchanter has just felt so bad. I guess killing him helps a bit, but it feels like its mostly a matter of just winning faster.

This is an awesome deck Clay.

Thanks buddy! Appreciate it!

We're in big testing log right now, so hopefully after I get some more games in, we'll be making it even better, really soon!