have you considered Scent of Brine?

May I suggest a couple cards you may want to look into...? They would be Sphinx of the Final Word, Last Word, Jace's Sanctum for Arcane Melee so that you would get the benefit of it and not your opponents, since most of your counterspells have just one colorless in them.

FAMOUSWATERMELON,I took Mystic Confluence out of the deck a ways back. Stifle and Desertion are too circumstantial and Remand is only a temporary fix. They can still play the card again. The others are too expensive.

-Orvos-,I don't like card that say counter unless controller pays blank because it's useless if I don't draw it early. That's a big if.

ThatBluePlayer,I like what I see. Jace's Sanctum will replace Arcane Melee. Last Word and Sphinx of the Final Word will also be an addition after I look over the deck for replacements.

At least try out Stifle and Confluence. In my experience, Stifle wins you games. Kuldotha Forgemaster getting out Blightsteel? Hi. Roon of the Hidden Realm giving you blinking problems? Hi. Smokestack killing your stuff? Hi. It's a fantastic card, I definitely advise that you try it out.

Mystic Confluence is also a card that's good at basically any point in the game. I don't really see why it isn't more or less an auto-include.

Also, you could replace Index with either Ponder or Preordain, they're both excellent cards. You could also take out Gitaxian Probe for Telepathy.

Void Shatter and Faerie Trickery are extra Dissipates, and with Regrowth running rampant in this format, you're going to want stuff exiled. Foil, Thwart, and Misdirection are the poor man's Force of Wills. Also, Ertai, Wizard Adept and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir are the masters of No.

You could do hive mind + pact of negation just for win cons and fun, but at least pact of negation

So, I have been playing mono blue "Nope" in EDH for quite a while. You can listen to my advice if you want and check out my deck called Jace's Pleasure.

Firstly, you have to know that more counterspells does NOT equal more countering. I know it seems like a lie but it's not. You want to control the game, but you do not need to counter everything they play. It is actually very unwise to counter everything because then you can't counter the real threats.

Second, get a Caged Sun and replace Spellbook with Venser's Journal. You are in for the long haul. You need to have much more mana than the other guy and the life always helps.

Third, take out the creatures that are 'meh' and put in good ones. Yes, I know you are trying to stay under $300 but just trust me. Kira, Great Glass-Spinner is the first to take out. You don't specialize in creatures and she is just too pricey for her role in your deck. Also take out Ludevic's Test Subject  ^Flip, Apprentice Wizard, Battlefield Thaumaturge, and Palladium Myr. You can use this early mana countering spells instead of these guys. The small creature-based ramp is not worth the mana.

Fourth, please please PLEASE put in Mystic Confluence. I know it seems useless but it has won me several games. Don't forget you get to choose three abilities when you cast and they can be any combination of the three. Three mana leaks, draw three cards, bounce three things etc.

Fifth, if you want to go infinite on a budget, add Deadeye Navigator and Great Whale. Going infinite is infuriating (for the other guy) and will give you near limitless counters.

Sixth, Forbid is literally the BEST counterspell for your deck. I would choose it over Force of Will every time. Use it with Otherworld Atlas, Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, or even Well of Ideas for more counter than you will ever need. Not to mention it's insane synergy with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage.

Seventh, get yourself a win condition. You have big creatures, but nothing that actually wins you a game by itself. Try Darksteel Reactor, Lorthos, the Tidemaker, or even Rite of Replication + Stormtide Leviathan

Lastly, grab Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip if it is in your budget. He can't grab you counterspells, but he can let you recast Cyclonic Rift, Cryptic Command, Sleep, and my favorites from my deck: Time Warp, Knowledge Exploitation, and Devastation Tide.

darkcleric13,Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip is much too expensive. I cannot stress that this deck is to remain at a reasonable price or players will shy away from wanting to use it. Not a lot of players have a ton of money to throw at magic. I personally don't build a deck if it isn't under 400.

However, I like some of your other suggestions and will make changes accordingly over the next half hour.

I also just noticed that Invoke Prejudice is over $100... If you have one, that's great, keep it in. But if you don't, even though it's arguably the best spell in the deck, I would swap it out for Chisei, Heart of Oceans + Decree of Silence combo.

Invoke Prejudice is the only exception I will make as it is irreplaceable.

I know drakes are useful, but I would encourage Arcanis the Omnipotent as your commander. He's incredibly hard to remove and guarantees you'll always have cards in your hand.

Due to my lack of creatures, I need a defensive front. Talrand's free token spawn off of my cancelling is a great fit for that. I already have quite a few ways to keep my hand full.

Deadeye Navigator + Archaeomancer + Time Warp or Walk the Aeons = HA HA

Grim Monolith or Basalt Monolith + Power Artifact + Stroke of Genius = Can you hold all those cards bro?

Mindslaver + Academy Ruins = You get turns?

Memnarch + Mycosynth Lattice = All mine

A couple of my favorite win cons for blue

Nice win cons!

dont forget about ertai, wizard adeptdor a good creature based ounter

Ertai was taken out. It was a waste a resources to pay 4 for a counter spell when I can just bring the cheaper ones back over and over.

Add more mana rocks, then add Stasis and Winter Orb. Add Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora for strong draw power.

Stasis and Winter Orb go against my deck, I would need to take out at least 10 cards for extra mana rocks and untap cards to even make them worth it. That's not happening. Rhystic Study is useless after turn 8 or so, when you can easily pay 1 mana for something like that without losing speed. Mystic Remora is the same way, equally useless late game and I have to pay to keep it out. I have plenty of strong draw for less maintenance and more certainty.

No offense intended, but I don't think you've thought this through entirely. Rhystic Study is crippling early-game: they either give you ridiculous card draw (which most players do, actually) or you slow them down a huge amount from T1-7. At T8, it's already served its purpose - if you don't have a strong grasp on the game on T8 as a control deck, you've lost.

Mystic Remora is as good, but slightly different: if you spend T1-3 paying only for RM, you've still generated incredible card advantage in any competitive pod (since creature-based decks are rare, and everyone plays mana rocks). Those two cards are what make blue commander decks tick, full stop.

The other two cards (the lockdown ones) may not be what you're going for in the deck (because they ARE unfun, but you're a counter deck, so you don't care about fun anyway) but do be aware of how much easier they make the game for a control player. Your counters are much cheaper than their threats, so you profit immensely more than them. Plus, you have several so-so cards here that SHOULD come out for mana rocks to give you a faster start, and allow you to keep up on resources (to have enough mana to answer everyone's threats).

Citation: My entire meta is competitive control decks. I've seen the power of some of these cards repeatedly.

At the bare minimum, consider Back to Basics. It's fantastic, since you're playing mostly basic lands.

"Rhystic Study is crippling early-game": That's IF I draw it early game. I could shuffle and the card is number 37. If you look at all of my decks and the comments in some of them, I don't deal in "if" in Magic. Every single card I use is good for every single phase of the game, from turn 1 to turn 80. That card will be utterly useless if I were to draw it, say, turn 10 when my opponent has probably 12 mana to blow.

So I actually don't think you thought it through. No offense intended.

As for Mystic Remora, "if you spend T1-3 paying only for RM": Do you really think I intend to spend my first 3 turns solely focused on the upkeep of a card? The first 1-5 turns of a game are a lot of times the most crucial. I'm not wasting early counter mana to upkeep a card that may work out. Sorry.

As for the other 2, "may not be what you're going for in the deck": Yes they do not go in it. The basics of deckbuilding, you don't add a card just because it's "fun". It needs to work. While my deck is Control, there are dozens of ways to play it. Causing the untap step to vanish without having mana untapping cards of my own is just screaming "hey I have no mana to cancel. please play your spells now."

As for your citation, if your entire meta was control, then I would see even one blue or partially blue control deck in your list of decks. But I do not.

While I value feedback, I suggest to look into my deck's purpose before reinforcing cards that have no purpose. The comments as well. Above comments will show I am intentionally keeping away cards like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora.

Mostly basic lands yes but I still have 6, so no. That's cutting 6 mana from my arsenal as soon as I play the card. It's a gamble, as the card relies on my opponent having more than that many nonbasic lands.

Back to Basics would be great if I ran no nonbasics. As it would then pose no risk to me.

I would like to mention that 1) I don't like control personally, so I'm the exception in my playgroup and 2) I DO have several hard control decks ("No Holds Barred" and "Ojutai EDEDH"), but they're marked as private on this site. I'm not sure if they're visible when you look at the decks on my profile.

Your mind seems set, and although I strongly disagree with your logic here (and your interpretation of the statistics of a mana curve), I'm not interested in an argument. I sincerely wish you well with your deckbuilding! :)

I cannot stress how important it is to be protecting your win condition in EDH. You don't want to be wasting your counterspells on their removal, so I would highly recommend Lightning Greaves to protect your Guile or commander or any of your sphinxes.