with Commander Legends on the horizon, would you consider switching Lotus Petal for Jeweled Lotus ?

Oh I am just straight up cutting a land for the lotus

are you? while already being down to 32 lands? gutsy.

If it cost 1 mana I’d consider other cuts, but at 0 mana there’s no reason not to, since it’s basically a land for the purposes of the most important spell in your deck.

yeah it is. but it is a one-time land, even if it gets you triple mana.

on the other hand, a first-turn Arbiter is soul-crushing for any opponent and probably makes up the discomfort of sacking the lotus.

Yup, and lotus petal is already helping us churn out early Arbiter so no reason to cut it!

So, currently I feel there is quite some speed-boost coming to Commander as a format. valoopy, do you consider this a meta change grave enough to make this deck no longer compatible any more? With the main strategy being to slow everything down, the increased options of your enemies to create more mana might be a killing blow to this deck's strategy.

Also, I had a look at the Smothering Arbiter list mentioned by you above. There is a lot of similarity in both cards and overall game plan, basically Smothering Arbiter does not have the Winter Orb // Crucible of Worlds line of this deck and focuses more on interaction and additional card draw. Nevertheless I prefer your list, as it has an additional (if somehow loathsome) wincon.

as an additional note: with the amount of fetch lands in your list, you might consider Rings of Brighthearth to double up the fetches.

My list is tuned for a sub-cEDH, so it’s not gonna have the intense meta choices a cEDH list will. Rings is wayyyyy too slow just for a few extra abilities.

I do not intend to make this a cEDH list, either. I just care for this deck and am looking for ways to tune it into the current meta. I am still waiting for a few key cards, so I can't make the final call, yet. But from my current point of view, it all depends on getting your tax effects on the board before the majority of players are able to ramp. Commander gained so much pace during the last year, it will be really hard to make this deck work against massive ramp. (And this is no criticism, as I said, I love this deck)

Hilariously this deck rarely struggles against ramp, because if you play out an early Arbiter, they can never ramp on the curve they want to.