So I know Jace has been the defecto mono U storm commander for a while but Baral begs the question, is Jace's flashback or Baral's cost reduction more important.

Getting islands to tap for 3 is no joke.

Oh I'm aware, but you don't need to get them to tap for 3 if averything costs less

That's kinda where I'm going with the question. Unless you're talking about an X spell or non instant/sorcery Baral + HT = Jace + 2HT

I was really focused on other things at the time, and never really found out. Would anyone be kind of enough to explain to me Narset, Enlightened Master's fall from grace? What caused her to drop?

Mulligan rule changes her consistency to the point where it's tough.

Yeah, I'm creaming my pants over Baral right now.

so basically remaking high tide? ok wizards. this is fine. loot city here I come.

I still don't see a Nin, the Pain Artist list in the description

Baral also seems decent in JAAIV

I would like some feedback from you guys on my list before I finish writing my primer. Baral will definitely be making the cut, but other suggestions would be appreciated. Note: I have already considered Whir of Invention and I believe it is underpowered in comparison to Transmute Artifact for my build. I would like this list to eventually be considered to be featured on this list so I want to make it the best it can possibly be. You can find my list here Prepare Your Salami for the Azami

As far as Jace vs Baral goes, I think that one of the best ways to evaluate them is to look at Jace's critical turn - Turn 4, the turn that it most consistently goes off (yes it can go off earlier with the right hand, but turn 4 is the turn it most frequently goes off on because 4 Islands that tap for 3 mana each put you way ahead in terms of mana) - and compare how they would both do with the critical line of play. We're going to go with the typical lines in both cases - play High Tide, get a bunch of mana floating, and then play a bomb like Time Spiral or Enter the Infinite.

With Jace, you play High Tide, loot with Jace and flip him, flashback High Tide, Turnabout, and then you have 12 mana from your lands. This lets you have 9 mana available after a Timetwister and Windfall, 7 mana available after Memory Jar, 6 mana available after Recurring Insight and Mind's Desire, 18 mana available after Time Spiral, and, most importantly, it's enough to cast Enter the Infinite. Enter the Infinite is THE card to cast in the deck, since when you resolve it, your chances of losing are almost zero. It's akin to Ad Nauseam or Doomsday in black storm decks. It's just that good. So Jace looks pretty good in this scenario.

Before I go into mana availability after playing bombs with Baral, I'd like to briefly discuss expected mana reduction for this deck. Let's assume Baral is playing a list identical to a Jace list (specifically, let's say it's this Jace list). Due to the differing nature of the commanders, it's a bad to assume that they are identical, but we don't really have an optimized Baral list so there's nothing to go off of. That list in question runs 69 cards that will not be discounted by Baral - 32 lands, 16 artifacts, 3 creatures, Mystic Remora, Force of Will, and 16 1-mana spells. Instead of looking at it as a 1 mana discount on your entire deck, it's more mathematically useful to look at it as a 0.303 mana discount per card - so a hand from a draw7 will typically cost about 2 mana less. This is assuming that there is no replacement though - in other words, no permanents on field, your draw7 shuffles itself back in, and you just got the mana to play it from nowhere. This is unrealistic, so to calculate the expected mana "gain" from a draw7 effect, we need to do some math. The next section is going to be caluclations from draw7 effects and the expected discounts on a hand assuming 4 lands in play and High Tide and Turnabout have already been played. If you have math anxiety or just don't care, skip to the next section where I give the final results anyway. I should also note that these are only for draw 7 effects, so I won't be doing calculations on Enter the Infinite or Mind's Desire - Mind's Desire lets you play spells for free, and Enter the Infinite just wins, so they're not really relevant. Calculations will be rounded to the nearest integer.

Now, back to Baral. Taking the same line as before, you play High Tide, float 6 mana, and Turnabout, and then you have 3 mana floating and 8 mana from your lands and a cost reduction on your spells. All of this combined using the values for cost reduction we calculated gives you 6 mana available after Mind's Desire, 8 mana available after Memory Jar, 9 mana available after Recurring Insight, 11 mana available after Timetwister or Windfall, 16 mana available after Time Spiral, and you can play Enter the Infinite. Timetwister and Windfall effectively pay for themselves! Wow!

Comparing them side by side, Jace only beats Baral cleanly when taking a Time Spiral line, which is not surprising considering the absurd amount of mana he generates. They're also even on Mind's Desire and Enter the Infinite lines - they both have 6 mana after Mind's Desire and they both win the game once Enter the Infinite resolves. Baral beats him on every other spell though.

This is just one line though and it's a slower line at that. Let's get greedy and take a faster line now, one with only 3 Islands and the commander in play. This line will not be the same as we will not be using Turnabout to untap our lands. Instead we will be using Frantic Search since it costs less, which means we can have more mana available. For the purposes of Baral calculations, we will be assuming that after Baral draws with Frantic Search, he will discard 2 cards that do not get a discount from him. This is really only relevant in the case of Recurring Insight, but it is worth noting.

With Jace, after the double High Tide and the Frantic Search, you have 1 mana floating and 9 mana available from your lands. This gives you 7 mana available after a Timetwister and Windfall, 5 mana available after Memory Jar, 4 mana available after Recurring Insight and Mind's Desire, and 13 mana available after Time Spiral, but, unfortunately, you cannot cast Enter the Infinite without another untap effect. I'll move onto Baral in a second, but first, more math!

With Baral, after High Tide and Frantic Search, you have 2 mana floating, 6 mana available from your lands and a discount. This gives you 8 mana available after a Timetwister and Windfall, 3 mana available after Memory Jar, 4 mana available after Recurring Insight, 1 mana available after Mind's Desire, and 9 mana available after Time Spiral, and you still cannot cast Enter the Infinite without another untap effect.

Once again, Baral looks more favorable. Jace is still better with Time Spiral, of course, and he's also better with Mind's Desire, but on every other front Baral beats him clean. What we can conclude from this analysis is that Baral does seem to be better than Jace in the combo turn. The combo turn isn't everything though, so now let's examine their utility outside of just who can win the game better.

A lot of people think that Baral is just Goblin Electromancer with a marginally useful second ability, but when comparing him to Jace there are a couple of subtle advantages Baral has over him. What's most notable about Baral is that he doesn't have to exile High Tide in order to do combo, meaning that he has a chance to recur it with Timetwister or Time Spiral later on when comboing off, which is very significant. Jace also has the disadvantage of relying on an activated ability, meaning that he is probably the only storm combo commander (other than infinite outlets like Tasigur and Thrasios) that gets hosed by Cursed Totem. Baral does not have this disadvantage and you won't need to worry about bouncing something to utilize his effect (unless it's Humility).

Despite these advantages Baral has over Jace, when it comes to the midgame Jace is better in pretty much every other way. Being able to loot on command is better than only being able to loot after a counter war, even after you factor in summoning sickness. It makes top-of-library tutors much better, with most Jace lists even going as far as running Personal Tutor. In the original primer for Jace (which is now unavailable online, RIP Landdestruction.com), the author mentioned that one card Jace has amazing synergy with is Intuition. With Intuition, you can basically grab whatever you want since Jace can just flip and then flashback it the following turn. This utility is much better in the midgame than just having a discount on spells and lets you sculpt your hand to combo off much more easily.

In the end, both of them have their merits, and we won't know for sure which is better until Baral is tested as extensively as Jace has been.

tl;dr - Baral is better in the combo turn because of math, Jace is better outside of the combo turn because of looting, my calculations are dubious at best because probability theory without replacement is really hard, and none of this matters because all the black storm combo commanders are better than these losers will ever be anyway.

As an Azami player I feel like the last few sets keep bringing in the good stuff. Barack looks insane!

Gates88 nice analysis!

Gates88

Nice analysis! However, you don't really address Candelabra, which is one of the central engines of the deck; it's very easy to find and just as easy to recur activations. I'm inclined to think that the case analysis here is not exhaustive.

Mana generation/reduction is likewise only part of the story. Much of JVP's strength comes from (nearly) guaranteed early card selection and versatility in how you can utilize his ability.

Gates88

Nice analysis! However, you don't really address Candelabra, which is one of the central engines of the deck; it's very easy to find and just as easy to recur activations. I'm inclined to think that the case analysis here is not exhaustive.

Mana generation/reduction is likewise only part of the story. Much of JVP's strength comes from (nearly) guaranteed early card selection and versatility in how you can utilize his ability.

A few tier 2 and 1 decks got a lot better with the arrival of walking ballista. Food Chain Sidisi, Brood Tyrant finally has a cheap and easy outlet (which allowed me to cut Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Triskelion, Tidespout Tyrant and Victimize from my list). Now I can simply Dread Return into Eternal Witness grab walking ballista cast it for a big X cost with Food Chain mana gg.

This card also seems like a nice finisher for Animar, Soul of Elements and is good with any commander who has an infinite outlet.

Food chain Sidisi? That sounds much more interesting than food chain tazri. Can I get a list?

It is our sidisi brood tyrant list actually. Hangarback walker is a temporary placeholder for ballista.

Cool, I'll check it out

ShaperSavant, it's not a comprehensive analysis (and I never claimed it was), which is part of the reason why I didn't mention Candelabra. In those two specific cases, Frantic Search/Turnabout respectively are as good or better than Candelabra in terms of mana production. It's also not an analysis for the full combo turn, just an analysis of the start of it leading into a huge spell like Time Spiral, Timetwister, etc. which in my experience is usually how the combo turn goes.

I talked about pros and cons of Jace and Baral outside the combo turn near the end of my post and basically said that Jace was better in the setup phase for the reasons you said - superior card selection.

On a different note, since Landdestruction.com is no longer available, the link to the Sharuum deck no longer works. Several members of r/CEDH are attempting to archive the articles on pastebin and here is the Sharuum article: Playing Eggs in EDH.

Also there is no actual link to the Teferi list in the description. I assume you meant to link to this one?

Hey guys, I know I am showing up late to this party, but is there any type of deck that smashes together Atraxa Stax with HD? I had a late night sleep deprived idea and I wanted to know if there is any merit behind it. Obviously the stax pieces couldn't be things that inhibited the HD combo, but it would give the deck more resiliency as compared to a lone HD or lone Stax deck, maybe. I am relatively new to cEDH, so I'd love any and all feedback on why this would, or likely wouldn't work. Thank you very much!

Very interesting analysis, I didn't expect something so in depth in response to my musings.

I feel like Baral has potential for taking Jace's place but it would definitely take a massive overhaul and someone willing to be patient, adding more effects that can benefit from his ability and so on. Being able to tutor for the High Tide that was reshuffled with Timetwister as you mentioned could be very key and cards like Merchant Scroll (especially for ) would do a massive amount of work.

Saffi just got a new best combo piece with Renegade Rallier, the deck will definitely stay tier 2 now.

While Renegade Rallier is a nice new combo piece for Saffi and while it is faster than most other combos, she still does have Loyal Retainers (if you're inclined to run it) however still doesn't solve the bigger issue of completing the combo. One of Saffi's biggest weaknesses is that you're basically relying on 4 sac outlets (plus Enlightened Tutor) and that's the hardest part of the combo to assemble.

That being said, Renegade Rallier is an awesome card and will find its home in most Saffi decks (and possibly make a viable modern deck too).