Simic Growth Chamber actually hurts you in EDH. It slows down your land by 1 turn and makes you crazy vulnerable to land destruction. Use Tropical Island instead. Mindbreak Trap is not very good. Most people don't even understand how it works but you need to have 3 spells on the stack to get it off and then your target has to be on the stack as well. Cloudstone Curio is pretty shitty. Try running Conjurer's Closet if you want bounce effects.

Also, Slippery Bogle might be the worst card I have ever seen in an EDH deck. This format is about big fat creatures with come into play effects, that's what wins the game. In blue / green, you can use enchantments and instants to make your dudes have shroud and unblockable, that is way better than a bad 1 drop creature.

If you want removal, Beast Within and Pongify (Rapid Hybridization is the remake, so you can run that too :P) are my favorites for these colors. Do you really run enough stuff having to do with counters to validate Give / Take ? Nefashu, Cloudstone Curio lets you get more use out of Momir Vig, so that's why it's not "shitty" in this case.

Lol....@Nefashu "Use Tropical Island instead." Or as other people could say....drop this 40 cent card...add 106 dollars.

Nefashu - Whoa there. Sorry if my deck offended you. Slippery Bogle is in there not because I think a 1-drop hexproof guy is OP (I think that's why you think I have it?) but because Vig turns it into a better Worldly Tutor that can put those big fat creatures with come into play effects into my hand, and comes with a body that can be bounced and re-used. Cloudstone Curio is overall more versatile than Conjurer's Closet and also has synergy with Vig and Wild Pair . I am 99% sure that is not how Mindbreak Trap works. The amount that Simic Growth Chamber slows you down early game isn't that huge a deal in a format that's about, as you said, "big fat creatures" and late-game is offset by landfall effects or Oracle of Mul Daya . Obviously I would like to have a Tropical Island in the deck, but until food and university comes free, I think it's a pipe dream. Then again, if you feel so strongly about it, you could always send me one!

Ralloc - Those are some nice cards, I'll pick 'em up next time I'm at the store! You're right about Give / Take there's a couple cute interactions but probably not enough to warrant an inclusion. Thank you! :)

You're welcome!

Some other suggestions I just thought of after looking back through - Omnath only works with green mana, so he doesn't seem that good in a deck like this. I'm not big on Alexi making you discard for her effect, but that's up to you. I'd add Coiling Oracle and Wistful Selkie since they do really well with Momir Vig and bouncing. Crystal Shard is also a really good card for bouncing your own stuff

Mindbreak Trap is just a Dissipate , that rarely is for free, but more often is just a more expensive card to cast. The Growth Chamber is an awful land. The second an opponent land destroys you, which is incredibly prevalent, you are set back two turns on land. If you can't afford the Alpha land, even a Simic Guildgate is better. As far as Cloudstone Curio , if you're trying that hard to tutor cards, that you'd prefer recasting instead of getting it for free, you're not running the right cards to begin with. If you need to search up something that badly, your deck isn't putting good cards into your hand.

Mindbreak Trap works like this, your opponent plays 3 spells in a single turn. Your casting cost becomes free and you play a counterspell. That's it. Not a whole lot of value there. Discombobulate or any of the good multi-effect counterspells will be way better.

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/20154969/?pg=last

As far as Simic Growth Chamber is concerned, it only helps you get come into play effects from land which aren't too prevalent or important.

Again, like others have said, if you are using the shitty Slippery Bogle for a simple search spell to grab a new creature, why not run Green Sun's Zenith ? Waaay better. And Tidespout Tyrant should give you enough good bounce to not only control your opponent but also give you more search engines. Anyone who needs to search that much though just doesn't have a good enough deck to compete. Searching once or twice for a good creature or answer is great, but if you need 5 searches to get something going, why bother? Just build a better deck, which means not playing simic. A perfectly built simic deck still can't beat a $50 reanimator style or mono red rush EDH.

@Nefashu/Taurnil - Whoa now, no need to get hateful. It's Maxie's first EDH deck, and he's having fun with it. Constructive criticism is great and all, but you need to remember that not everyone is playing this format the same way or for the same reasons as you are. His playgroup may have a completely different metagame from yours, for instance. Hell, my playgroup doesn't run a bit of land-destruction, so it's not something I have to worry about. The point is, he's trying to learn, but he also wants to have fun with the game while doing that. So cool it down some, please

Ralloc - Thanks again, man! Crystal Shard may work perfectly as a replacement for Curio, actually, since Curio is only really a good performer in this deck if I have lots of flash cards to work with. Those creatures look worth considering, especially because I have been thinking about swapping out Omnath.

Taurnil - I did NOT realize so many people were down on the karoo lands! The golden rule of my playgroup is don't use cards you wouldn't want used against you, which means land destruction is a pretty rare thing to find. All told, many games, what I draw gives me enough to do that I forget about Vig and don't tutor anything. Cloudstone Curio has uses other than giving me extra tutors, although I think I'll swap it for Crystal Shard .

Nefashu - you're 100% right. you have helped me see the error of my ways. i thank you. my deck thanks you.

Ralloc - you're just a champ all-around, haha! :P

May I suggest Cultivate , Explosive Vegetation or Kodama's Reach ? They are generally good mana ramp, which edh loves.

Also possibly Asceticism .

Instead of Simic Signet , I would run Darksteel Ingot , and instead of Trickbind , run Voidslime . The Darksteel Ingot will survive any Planar Cleansing effects, and Voidslime is more versatile than Trickbind.

Mindbreak Trap is far superior to Dissipate, in that it does not actually counter the spell(s), but exiles them off the stack, which allows it to stop spells which "can't be countered". I run Mindbreak Traps in any edh deck that has blue.

CrazedXenomorph - Thanks, ramp is always helpful and those look like some solid cards for it. :) I have an Asceticism already and it's a champ!

Kaitoghost - Finally someone defends Mindbreak Trap :) I've had this deck for about three months and have been looking for a Voidslime since, but no luck yet. Trickbind is definitely appealing in its own right, though.

A lot of advice given here made me cringe for some reason.

Simic Growth Chamber is not a bad card in edh, depending on your meta. Often in big edh games, there will be a lot of scarier lands that people will want to target. Even if they blow it up, the green in your deck should more than compensate for the lost mana. Unless someone's playing a dedicated LD deck, I don't think you need to worry about people blowing up your bounce land.

Cloudstone Curio is really good if you have a lot of etb creatures, so that you can keep bouncing them for their etb effects and vig triggers. Crystal Shard does the same thing, but with more of a mana investment. I think personally I would run the shard, but running both is not a bad idea.

Mindbreak Trap is really more of a meta call, but it never hurts to run it anyway. In large edh games, it's not uncommon to see "can't be countered" type cards, and the trap can really surprise them. Think of the trap less as a free counterspell, and more of a stronger, more expensive one.

If you want ramp, try running creatures that search for lands when they etb (Wood Elves , Ondu Giant , Farhaven Elf ). That way you can ramp but not diminish your creature count.

+1 to pretty much everything Krayhaft just said. Especially about the Simic Growth Chamber ; that and all if its brethren are well-respected multi lands. It can be occasionally vulnerable, but most of the time the decks that do LD (which aren't "extremely prevalent," in my experience) are going to get you in a bad spot with it whether you had Growth Chamber or not.

Mindbreak Trap 's value as an EDH counter has definitely risen since RtR's "cannot be countered" cycle of spells. Plus, it's got sweet artwork.

Krayhaft and MagnorCriol - Haha! Yeah, I'm not sure what's gotten into people today, I've never heard anything against the karoo lands before. Thanks for the approval :)

I play very competitive EDH on a daily basis, so I guess when I see bad cards, I need to learn to just let them go. Let me just say this, even without having good lands like Tropical Island and the sort, even without having all the normal dual lands and filter lands, if you dropped a Simic Growth Chamber in even a casual game with a brand new 'just for fun' deck during a pick-up game in between rounds at a tournament, even the judges would laugh at you. That card has negative value, especially early game. The first 4 or 5 turns of MOST EDH games are spent fixing up your colors and playing the cheap mana boost artifacts and the inexpensive equipment cards that everyone runs. Simic Growth Chamber means you miss a Simic Signet or other 2 drop on turn 2 and means your turn 3 isn't accelerated!!! Missing a turn 2 cast for something like Farseek or Rampant Growth is fine (and good) since it accelerates your land. If the Simic Growth Chamber added 3 instead of 2, it would be fine. If you use Thespian's Stage to copy it, that adds some value, but using the stage to copy Lotus Vale or another 3-value land is so much better.

At any sort of competitive level, you have so much land destruction (Frenzied Tilling , Strip Mine , Ghost Quarter , Tectonic Edge , Molten Rain , Demolish , Acidic Slime , just to name a FEW of the many popular choices at the higher levels) running around that any sort of 2-value and 3-value lands are very vulnerable so they either need to be amazing or NEEDED to get all of your colors. I know a pro EDH guy I play all the time who runs Azorius Chancery and Rakdos Carnarium because he is in 5 color and hasn't dropped the cash for the alpha dual lands. In 4 and 5 color EDH, those lands help you fix. You get all your colors in G/U from a simple Simic Guildgate .

Nefashu - I understand where you're coming from, I just don't particularly care.

I looked at the first three two-colored decks up on the EDH hub and they were all using karoo lands too. Please, stop singling me out for this.

@ Nefashu : Agreed, karoo type lands like the bounce lands are bad competitively, because they basically set you up to be 2-for-1'd. Except that edh was intended to be a casual format, and while many people do play it competitively, its safe to say that the majority of edh players are casual, so a 'good' card can vary between competitive/casual.

If this were Epoch's damia deck, I wouldn't recommend a land like Simic Growth Chamber to him. But this deck wasn't built with the intention of being competitve, so as such I recommended to him cards that would work fine in a casual game. Simic Growth Chamber does set you up to be LD'd, but it's a fine choice given that maxie intends to play casually. The fact that in your very first post you suggested he take out the growth chamber for a Tropical Island shows your ignorance in this point.

@Nefashu , First of all, please learn to recognize a casual player when you see one. He obviously is not intending to play this at a competitive level and therefore does not need competitive level cards, rather he only needs to run what's best for him.

Second, your whole rant about getting 2-1'ed with LD for karoo's is false. It is a one for one card trade. The only thing you lose is a land drop, which isn't that much when you think how much resources are required to destroy a land. Strip Mine , Wasteland , and Tectonic Edge (the only competitively played targeted LD) are all better lands than a karoo. I would hesitate to use them in this scenario as there are almost always better lands to kill.

Third, please don't claim his deck isn't "competitive" when it seems you hardly know what that word means yourself. You claim that "A perfectly built simic deck still can't beat a ... mono red rush EDH.". Blue and green are the first and third most powerful multiplayer EDH colors, while red is the weakest beyond a shadow of a doubt. Also, you said "This format is about big fat creatures with come into play effects, that's what wins the game". This is also not true. What wins EDH games are cards like Necropotence , Hermit Druid , and Survival of the Fittest , low cmc cards with game-breaking power, not Tidespout Tyrant /Avenger of Zendikar /fatty of choice with ETB. Lastly, you have said "Discombobulate or any of the good multi-effect counterspells will be way better.". Again, any competitive EDH player could tell you otherwise. There are really only four "multi-effect" counterspells that are consistently worth playing. They are Cryptic Command , Dismiss , Mana Drain and Exclude . Other than that, simple counters like Counterspell and Mana Leak is always what you want to do. If maxiepad's meta is full tendrils decks, Mindbreak Trap may indeed be one of those good counters (even otherwise it is an above average counter).

maxiepad, I'm sorry for filling up your deck with this wall :P. I just felt that Nefashu was being extremely rude and decided to intervene.

I used to run the bounce lands in a 5 color deck. I came to hate them, as they were just too slow. However, in a 2 color deck, such as this one, they are perfectly fine.

I refuse to play "Competitive" EDH. To me, and many, many other EDH players, the format is about having fun, and creating shenanigans, not about trying to stomp my opponent's face into the ground.

Damn, this is going to give me a great story to tell at FNM tomorrow. Nefashu , you should know I've decided to include karoos in all my EDH decks from now on in your honor.

Blakkhand - I appreciate it! :D

Gotta say I love this deck, especially your critter list. And saying simic is always weak just isn't true, Momir Vig, Simic Visionary is a powerful general and card engine. So don't listen to big headed people. +1 from me. :)

I have dropped plenty of karoo lands in pick-up games with casual EDH decks, and the judges who were playing with me didn't laugh then, nor did anyone else laugh when those judges put down theirs. I don't know what tables he plays at but they're strange places.