Not a bad idea. I'll find a suitable replacement for it.

Well, you're probably going to want an infinite combo or two in here to win you the game, because as is, this deck is extremely slow. Archaeomancer + Deadeye Navigator with something like Time Warp is an easy one, Palinchron + Deadeye Navigator to sink into an x-spell such as Blue Sun's Zenith or Stroke of Genius (both of which should probably be in here anyways). These would considerably quicken up your deck.

Some other passing thoughts:

There are a number of really good counters (Force of Will, Misdirection, Mana Drain, Swan Song, Arcane Denial) which are not in here. FoW and Drain I presume are for budget reasons, but I would definitely include the others, they're fantastic.

Index, Energy Tap, Unsummon, Vapor Snag, and others are very weak in EDH in general, and especially here. If you want cheap draw spells, Ponder and Preordain are great, Azami, Lady of Scrolls looks solid here with all the wizards, the X-spells I mentioned above could certainly find a place, Rhystic Study and Mind's Eye are especially nice too. You have plenty of options.

I would advise reading earlier comments please. As stated there, Rhystic Study and any other cards where "unless opponents pays blank" are unwanted. From personal playing experiences both in tournaments and my group, opponents easily pay those after turn 7 or so thus making them useless and there's no guarantee I draw them early. Also from the earlier comments, I keep my decks cheap excluding the $100 enchantment as I already own it. Therefore, Time Warp and Palinchron are not an option.

Something else from comments in many of my decks, I don't deal in Infinite Combos. To me, it makes the game less fun and less reliant on the skill of the deck. To me that's saying "hey my deck has no meaning except this 1 insta-win". While this deck has Rewind + Tamiyo, the Moon Sage (emblem) infinite combo, I did not realize it was one until someone pointed it out. But the two cards are a vital part of the deck and therefore stay in so I must list the infinite combo in the description.

However, Ponder will replace Index, good find. Blue Sun's Zenith will replace Energy Tap, Mind's Eye will replace Unsummon, and Stroke of Genius will replace Vapor Snag.

I mean, fun is good and all, but then you should probably take off the competitive hub, because as is, the deck wouldn't handle itself well against other Tier 1-2 commanders.

And I would encourage you to think of Rhystic Study this way: : Draw 2-3 cards for each opponent. In a 4-player pod, that's three mana for 6-9 cards. That's absolutely fantastic and vital for you to keep up. You could make the same argument for Propaganda, and I notice that you have that.

Actually I ran this when a friend of mine put it together pre-March changes, the deck handled itself very very well in 3 local venues, against a variety of competitive decks. I only lost to an aggro goblin sacrifice burn tribal. It was wicked fast. So for a deck that had worse cards than it does now, it handled great against competitive decks even though you say it wouldn't. The deck has stayed mostly the same because of live testing in a tournament environment.

But if you put me in a corner with that reasoning, then I would either have to take out Propaganda or add Rhystic Study. I may as well add it. But what card would replace it? A suitable replacement is the only way.

Well goblin sacrifice isn't exactly competitive XD I'm talking about fully-tuned Animar or Damia decks.

I would take out Early Frost. It has a very weak ability that's absolutely terrible late game and only hits one opponent (or multiple opponents weakly).

Any deck type is competitive when built right. No type of deck is only competitive or only non competitive. It's about the cards and the strategy. Ignorance and blindness is saying a deck type isn't competitive just because it's not among the 10 or so decks the world players use.

Although I can agree with Early Frost. While I have been lucky enough to get it early most of the time, a late draw would be useless. Ok replaced.

That's not entirely true. Draw-go control is virtually nonexistent on the competitive EDH scene, the only exception being Azami because she has a two card combo with Mind Over Matter and a ridiculous ability. Instead, combo-control is much better strategy because it's a control deck with an I-win button. Another thing is that budget is perfectly understandable, but a deck that has unrestrained card choices such as Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, or Force of Will will be faster and better than an otherwise identical deck without them. Hence my suggestion to add in a few infinite combos, because without them, you'll have an extremely hard time closing out games.

I've proved time and time again that expensive cards used by rich pros are not the sole way to win, and that whatever you see in the pros is not the only way to build a deck. Yes they build extremely great decks, but it's not the only route. They buy the most expensive cards partly because they simply can.

I set out to prove that you don't need every $50+ card nor infinite combos, and most of my decks have succeeded on those points in the competitive scene around my location. The ones that still need a ton of work are my Lifelink/token Darien deck, my Goblin tribal deck, and my eldrazi decks. And my Land Destruction could be a little cheaper too.

I never said that expensive cards were the only way to win, they just make it a hell of a lot easier. That's why they're expensive: there's a lot of demand for them because they make decks better. I kind of doubt that pros use expensive cards "because they can" :)

The problem I see here is that you only have 2-3 ways to realistically win the game, and even those can easily fizzle. One is your commander, and the others (Stormtide Leviathan, Guile, etc...) are painfully slow in a multi-player format. Now against some commanders, these can probably grind out a win. But against a table where each player is threatening to win T3-4, you have no way of coming out on top unless you can also realistically win by those turns.

I said "partly" because they can lol. If you have serious money to blow, wouldn't you make a $2,000 deck? This deck isn't aggro. It's not meant for a quick T4 win. It holds your opponent back so they can't threaten a T4 win, while you keep the tempo of your opponent's turns in check to build yourself for a mid game win.

That is the whole point to this type of cancel, keeping the card playing of your opponent at a minimum. They can't threaten an early win if 3 of their 4 cards are cancelled.

Except that there's a ton of ways that doesn't help your situation. They almost certainly have their own countermagic. Their wincons could be counterspell-proof (such as Storm). And if you manage to stop one guy from winning, you're going to deplete your resources doing so, meaning that the guy on your right has a wide open field in front of him.

But even assuming that you manage to counter every combo, every creature beatdown, and every piece on the board. Then what? Because you have very little ways to win, and you can be sure that your opponents will try again in a couple turns.

Oh, and pros are sponsored, so companies pay for them. They also get sponsored because they won games or came up with inventive brews. Everyone starts at the beginning.

It's impossible to counter everything, you counter what's important. Arguing over this is pointless. I don't expect every player or even most to share my views.

I wonder if yeaGO has seen your profile background by the way. Makes things very hard to read. Wasn't that kind of thing frowned upon on this site by fear of breaking things? As others have done? Show the admins a little respect.

First of all, I completely respect the admins, and they can vouch for that themselves. Technically speaking, I even am an admin, though my privs are very limited and I don't really use them anyways. Code is fine on the site so long as you know how to use it. I've also had that profile background for a good nine months, if not more, during which time every admin on the site commented on it without mentioning any such problem. If it actually becomes a nuisance to a lot of people, I'll take it down, but that has not been the case so far.

Second of all, damn was that low. Like not even a bit subtle. I did take the time to read through those previous comments by the way, and I'm not at all impressed how you stubbornly avoided almost any kind of advice. People don't comment on the deck because it gets them upvotes on theirs or points for their rank, they do it to help the deckbuilder and make the deck better. If you don't want to improve your deck, what exactly was the point of posting it? To collect internet points? There were some experienced deckbuilders giving very good advice back there, and you completely blew them off. If you can't handle criticism, don't ask for help in the first place.

Third of all, I'm actually happy that you linked yeago so that he can get a good chuckle out of this. There's so much bad salt sometimes on this site that it's good to have some comic relief :)

you can use the disable scripts option to remove user customizations in most places

move on fellas :P this doesn't seem like a deck discussion anymore.

I love what this conversation says about blue players. "Well, you're probably going to want an infinite combo or two in here to win you the game." .....

I have a mono blue deck of my own. It's called Mr. Jerking Fatman, featuring -Kami of the Crescent Moon

I try to clone Laboratory Maniac and get one to each player, using Rite of Replication, Clone, Cackling Counterpart, along with Donate, Cultural Exchange, and Tempt with Reflections.

Can you see the difference in the games these decks create?

It's fine if you want a competitive deck, but from what I can see this deck has only started becoming competitive as it gets edited. Make sure the deck does what you want, and what you think will be fun. Unless you want your deck to win and that's it, make sure to follow that mantra when building your deck. That's the whole point to EDH.

I Counterspell this conversation and suggest you update this comment stream away so we can get back to discussing and improving the deck.

This is a forum type discussion. Ill make the appropriate page if you'd like.

FAMOUSWATERMELON

vs

Madaraximundar

I have just finally noticed an offensive infinite combo (kinda) that completely eluded me, fellas.

Rewind + Tamiyo, the Moon Sage to make for infinite cancelling, BUT have Talrand, Sky Summoner on the field at that point for infinite tokens. Sort of.

Have you ever consideted Mana Web just for the troll of it?

Not a bad call. It would definitely help slow of the flow of cancel cards used by slowing down how much they can play. Ok it'll go in.

This is actually the funniest comment section ever

Thanks! :D

Inexorable Tide could be useful to get Tamiyo's emblem out faster and win off Darksteel Reactor faster.

Inexorable Tide would only affect tamiyo though and is pricey manawise. Contagion Engine could slowly wipe an opponets creatures from the board and gets two proliferatuons off but is also pricey. I dont know if either would help him out enough.