ShadowMizzix_cEDH

Reversal is a little awkward and ultimately comes down to pilot preference but considering it has a decent capacity to miss in application it wasn't included. There's a lot of stock in lean or effective stopgaps over things with a potential upside than can fail.

Spell Snare is an interesting choice but was excluded due to the fact that it ends up being far more narrow in application than Mental Misstep, which is interesting since they do similar things. But in practice 1 >>> 2 and free is just too strong. Snare does hit Flash, true, but there isn't a lack of 1 CMC countermagic that is more diverse, hence it's not played.

Angel's Grace is awesome. It can definitely make the cut in the list if you like it or feel its a powerful axis you want to play on.

The maybeboard is a list of suggestions for making a full 100 which are all good choices but up to the pilot.

Cards I have been testing as possible options for this deck:

Cephalid Coliseum - This one works well against the mirror-match, killing in response to the oracle trigger, but also just has decent value targetting yourself. This isn't the worst even if it is just a bad island too, and this deck can fill it's yard fast too. Great in grindier matches.

Tale's End - Stifle effect, that can hit commanders, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, Oko, Thief of Crowns, and other walkers, then it can hit Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, Tymna the Weaver, and Edric, Spymaster of Trest in the Najeela deck. Linvala, Keeper of Silence is seeing play as a one-sided counter to this deck in some midrange builds, and it too can be countered. So while it isn't a great counterspell, stifle effects are in high demand, and this does some outside work.

Abeyance - This Orim's Chant effect is often way more powerful than it seems. It is no silence when you are trying to go off, 2 CMC and it doesn't stop any artifacts, enchantments, or walkers, but the card can shut down an on-stack flash, by making Nomads en-Kor unable to activate, and also stopping the consult line but shutting down further consultation casts. Few cards can shut down both halves of this line, while also cantripping, and being able to be used to protect yourself from interaction in a pinch or grab a top-of-deck-tutored card. I have found mild success for this card, but haven't seen it in enough games to be completely sure.

Why doesn't Sylvan Tutor make the cut or even the maybe board?

SK00MA Sorcery Speed reveal to your opponents and top of library is far too slow and worse than Instant speed with Worldly Tutor

Why is the deck at 94 cards right now?

N00best

It's a core and you can add the last few cards depending on your meta.

SynergyBuild

Good suggestions.

Cephalid Coliseum is an interesting one and likely playable. Though I have some hesitation with the Threshold, it is a card in EDH which is relatively okay to run.

I like Tale's End. Trickbind in this meta may be stronger though. I think it's a solid choice after though for added tech, but I may lean Stifle over it. 2 CMC can't be countered + 1 CMC over the Legendary clause. But that clause is for sure still okay.

I'm generally not too impressed with Abeyance. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn't help. I think in the current meta having cards with failure modes is less acceptable than it used to be. Similar reasoning to Narset's Reversal. With the card quality where it is, there isn't much motivation to play cards with capacity to miss.

DTrain5742

Sorry so late.

Delay's pretty fine. It's a 2 CMC counterspell which we aren't quite as taxed into running since we can afford to be ultra-efficient with slim countermagic and interaction (Summer + Silence is stupid) and abuse stuff like Force of Negation (yuck).

However, if you want to run Delay, it's alright, it's a fine card. Our thinking was since the deck doesn't require reaching into that realm too deeply, we picked the best 2: Mana Drain and Dovin's Veto, or at least ones with a really high powerlevel.

Crazy to think Oracle Hulk now has such good quality cards in it (thanks 2019 WotC) that Delay is just "okay."

Kinda curious why the overwhelming decision is to ban flash and not ban oracle.

mathguy124

Mostly because the play patterns of Flash are a detriment to the game. Flash/Hulk will just take on the next most broken way to win but does so in ways which warp the game in ways other combos don't.

Oracle is an interesting card but without Flash/Hulk becomes another Consult card - which is more reasonably handled in EDH. Very good though.

If your meta is so heavy with Oracle Hulk, would Angel's Grace be the better choice over Stifleesque effects? you already run Ad Nauseam and all you have to do is shut down the Oracle trigger, which Angel's Grace does. Plus one mana split second is nice.

EDIT: My bad - I see it's already in the maybeboard.

Quick other question to the group (and I know the question has been asked before however I am asking in a different light) on the topic of Blood Pet vs Nomads en-Kor + Cephalid Illusionist:

I know that the preferred option is Cephalid Illusionist + Nomads en-Kor over Blood Pet. I'm guessing the primary reason is for the inclusion of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, since the two creatures work well with him outside of the hulk combo. I also understand that the benefit they provide is that once Flash resolves, you don't have to cast any more spells (meaning that you can rock Boseiju, Who Shelters All if you really want to, which this list does).

On the topic of Blood Pet though, the comments say it is a dip in card quality outside of combo. Is this purely due to Cephalid Illusionist's ability to prevent damage? Outside of this ability, I would have thought that Blood Pet actiing as a "for future use" mini Dark Ritual was actually the better of the abilities.

On top of this, generally the deployment lines for hulk are either Nomads en-Kor, Cephalid Illusionist and Thassa's Oracle (+ any 1 drop creature); or Blood Pet, Spellseeker (getting Consultation) and Thassa's Oracle. This would imply that the two creature pairs for the combo are either pet/seeker or illusionist/nomads, since you only need one of the two to make the combo work. Of the two of those pairings, the otuside of combo value pairing to me would heavily lean towards seeker/pet as you have a mana source and a tutor on a stick. On top of that, against cards like Linvala, Keeper of Silence or Cursed Totem, you just need to add to make the combo work. And while I know the pet/seeker line gets shut down by Rule of Law type effects, I would think that a stax deck would either run both (Blood Pod) or would rahter shut down creature abilities (GAAIV) rather than limit their spell count.

So is the main tipping point here ultimately just the ability to pair with Boseiju?

On a semi related note, how does this change with addition of red to the deck, since Wild Cantor can take the place of Blood Pet (and is a much stronger card). I recently put together a (completely untested) list for Najeela, the Blade-Blossom which sports the cantor/seeker hulk line: Najeela Fish Hulk and is running sans Jace. In this case, is the cantor/seeker better than the iilusionist/nomads line here or am I still better off swapping?

enpc

When I say a dip in card quality, it's in light of the fact that Blood Pet isn't a required card in the Hulk pile. The Spellseeker + Thassa's Oracle pile doesn't actually require BP, and while it does make the pile a little more convenient, it's often little cost to find the after the fact.

So therefore, since it's an extraneous card, it begins to compete with the rest of the cards in the deck. When compared to the cards required in the combo, BP does actually come out ahead as it does give a for later use (except, of course, compared to Spellseeker, that card is just great). So the question is more, is that worth it over another card in the deck? And most of the time it's not, and having another strong bomb in that slot ends up going farther to improving the deck. Thus, overall deck quality can be improved at a cost of a small synergy loss for the secondary pile since we compress the combo and play more "real" cards.

For Wild Cantor instead of smol frog, I could see her in Hulk piles using haste Hermit Druid piles. But I don't know much more about Hulk piles than that. They're also more moving parts than the Breakfast combo one.

Thanks for the effort of building the deck, and of proposing the ban. I've got a question to ask, though. Can the card Memory's Journey be used as an anti-fish tech? The card has been seen some fringe usage, especially in budget decks. Most winning conditions in this deck guarantee three cards in the graveyard, and a devotion as high as five or six is almost unrealistic for a fast deck like this. Furthermore, the flashback may also cause some dilemma for a player backed up with counter magic.

Admittedly this card is useless against the "go-to" breakfast combo, which makes the Blood Pet/Wild Cantor Route a bit less attractive, and has no use when Veil of Summer is up. Adds to the frustration trying to fight a deck this all-mighty.

Well, that's pretty much all I can come up with the topic. In vain as it might seem, any comment is appreciated.

spuiopq Meme Journey seems better as a defensive option in the deck (with the breakfast pile) to shuffle Chain of Vapor back in and attempt to win again the following turn if the first one failed. With all of the Hulk piles there will be at least 3 devotion on board (Thassa's Oracle + Spellseeker/Cephalid Illusionist), and likely higher if the game lasts longer (Rhystic Study, Thrasios, etc.). Thus Meme Journey as a tech card really doesn't do much unless you have other removal on top of it. Since that's the case it's basically just better to run better interaction and have higher card quality than a card that isn't even guaranteed to stop the combo.

Right. Seems I wasn't thinking straight at the time. Thanks for the reply.

Great deck, congrats!! What do you think about Eladamri’s call to find pieces of the combo or some protection finding grand abolisher

Mark_Lopes

The card is pretty goood but the overall card quality of the 4C deck means that we don't have to dig that deep into tutors since the tutors we have are all significantly stronger cards.

It's not that it's bad, it's more that the deck has a high bar for cards already so I don't think there's any pressure to play it.

Understood! Thanks for the reply!!

Sylvan Tutor and Tale's End are worth to mention.

smilodex

Sylvan Tutor is really slow - it often doesn't make the cut in most cEDH decks. I don't think it can make the cut here either. It's a worse version of Worldly Tutor and the deck isn't hurting for card quality.

Tale's End is quite nice though. Perfectly fine meta choice.

Thoughts about Extract? Or Praetor's Grasp? In a 4 player pot, I think it's not worth the card slot. But if you're sitting on a table where you know who your threat is (or in 1vs1). Praetor's Grasp vs a flash player is just sooo good, because you can tutor for your opponents flash and play it by yourself. Aaand you can deny access to different cards.

smilodex

Like you said, in a 4-player pod they are fairly weak choices.

1v1 is quite a different environment, and playing Oracle Hulk would probably have some changes to make it better in that scenario. Namely, we can go much higher on 1-for-1 interaction that doesn't function well in pods.

That being said - I don't think PGrasp would make the cut in 1v1, nor Extract. I think they are too low impact when other cards could do similar but more general jobs. The climate of 1v1 is also not really that of speedy combo and decks are much more grindy and pack much more powerful/impactful interaction on average because there is only 1 opponent.

I respectfully ask an appraisal of this list, for both merits and weaknesses link to deck. I have considerations for specific cards in the moderated list as well.

Does this new card have what it takes?

Link, in case the image breaks