shaderaven Thank you for your kind words. I am happy to have built something that was a source of inspiration for you. I'll check it out.

Made some major changes, and added Counterspells. Please let me know what you think. Femme_Fatale, let's see if you approve now... Maybe I'll finally get a +1 from you, lol.

I rarely ever give upvotes. Only to unique rogue decks that I haven't thought of building or did a much more fantastic job than I ever have. This mainly focuses on modern.

Ok, so what do you think of the new list?

Not even to the Overpriced Store? That breaks my heart femme XD

The ideas here make me want to rate this a 4/5 immediately where as most other Oloro, Ageless Ascetic deck's i've seen are 2 or 3 stars.

Necropotence + Venser's Journal is just good like a 3.5 or 4 out of 5 star on the 5 star synergy scale and I have never seen it done in 4+ years of playing commander. The only thing that makes it better is being able to make sure that you don't lose the Journal before you gain life, which i've noticed you've thought of with all of your counters.

Now I want a deck with both Necropotence and Sylvan Library along with the Journal. I think my Ghave deck is about to get a lot more draw power.

The funny thing is after glancing at only like half the list and the commander my first instinct was to ask "What's your card draw look like?" because I hadn't seen it yet and a lot of Oloro decks have just the Well of Lost Dreams.

kengiczar Thanks for the compliment. Necropotence + Venser's Journal is a favourite combo of mine.

As far as card draw goes, Necropotence, Well of Lost Dreams and Rhystic Study are all workhorses. Erebos, God of the Dead, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, and Planar Portal all offer reusable draw effects. Finally Narset, Enlightened Master, Tezzeret the Seeker , and Jace, the Mind Sculptor all offer pseudo-draw effects. I suppose it's all about incremental card advantage while also restricting your opponents' lines of play, which effectively give added advantage.

Do you know of any way to play standard similarly in KTK/Theros blocks?

This makes me want to try Erebos, God of the Dead + Nyx-Fleece Ram + kill spells/counters lol.

I like this deck because you never have to dedicate to beating them up with a creature, though I'm sure you could with Erebos and Sun Titan.

kengiczar: No, the standard card pool is far from big enough and has no support for this archetype. You will have to build a deck that is supported by the cards available. What you are looking for is probably esper control though. That is a thing in standard.

Where's Counterspell? Flusterstorm? Force of Will? Swan Song? Could also try ... I fell asleep while making this comment. I can't remember what else I was going to say.

Femme_Fatale Mana Drain replaced Counterspell as a strict upgrade.

Mindbreak Trap and Time Stop both effectively do what Flusterstorm does. Additionally, Storm isn't very prevalent in my meta.

Force of Will is nice, but I don't see it used in EDH very much, and I don't know how likely I would be to want to exile another blue spell in my hand. I will test this build out and see if it makes sense to add it.

Swan Song is fun, but it is limited in what it can target, and I need my counterspells to be as versatile as possible.

Have you ever played this against a mill deck? I was looking through your list and you dont have much protection from it besides counter spells And hand lockdown (zurs weirding combo)

yoshiman95 That's a great question. The short answer is no, I haven't played it against a mill deck. I have played 1v1 against a Nekusar forcefeed group slug deck, and was able to win. It was a tough battle, but I did come out on top.

My hope is that if I did come across a mill deck, I'd be able to pick apart the main combo pieces to neuter it. I'd be up for the challenge.

yoshiman95: Mill simply isn't a strategy that is strong enough to warrant counter-tech. If mill became a problem, you'd add an Eldrazi Titan and call it a day.

Overall Stax decks neuter most strategies regardless of what kind of deck it is due to the taxation and punish effects.

Combo is so infinitely superior to mill there's literally no reason to run it if you want to go for the strongest deck possible. Most people run mill because they enjoy the archetype or want a silly gimmick deck. It's just not worth building to counter it.

A lot of edh mill decks I've gone up against use a lot of creatures so you don't have to worry much there. Other than that there are a few combos that take out your whole deck at once like tunnel vision but hopefully you're holding onto a counterspell at that point

@sleaze it was just a thought because i just opened into an ulamog and noticed he didn't have any answers to mill. P.s. I love eldrazi

Yeah, the most viable EDH mill is Phenax, God of Deception and he uses big blockers, mainly. So you're probably good.

I actually have a fun and fairly competitive Phenax deck. It's thematic for Phenax as the God of Deception, with Morphs, Ninjas, and other psych out tactics. You can find it here if interested: Lord of the Lies

I've also seen a few altar of the brood combos

I hope you realize that all of your explanations for why you shouldn't use those counterspells are moot. You must run all the effective 1 and 2 mana counterspells. Do not run anything that costs more than 2, otherwise you will not be able to win the counterspell wars. I suggest around 7-11 counterspells.

it may seem a bit of a stretch for you not to have thought about this but a stax deck without Smokestack feels kinda weird.You could probably run Bitterblossom since the lifegain makes it a minimal loss and gives you a constant stream of blockers/attackers and fodder for your stack.Elspeth, Sun's Champion is also good in conjuction with smokestack as well as a stand alone card.Bitterblossom + Contamination might be worth considering but highly unlikely

You don't need to run Smokestack in a stax build datsik2124. I rarely ever use it as it requires a certain kind of deck to abuse its functions.

But it is a valid observation and suggestion... It's called Stax for a reason after all...

datsik2124 I've actually tried all of those cards in one build of this deck or another but as I mentioned in my last update, I'm actually pulling back on the Stax effects in favour of more Prison elements and counterspells, as an exercise to see if it is more effective for me.

Thanks for the suggestions though, I love the discussion that comes from all these different perspectives.

Femme_Fatale I'm going to test this current build, then possibly add more counters.. It will depend on how it feels when played.

Whats Myth Realized do for you? dont get me wrong. i know it can be an amazing card i just dont see what its adding to your deck.

Also as far as versatile counter spells go you could try Disdainful Stroke I dont know how 3> your meta's overall CMC is. but ive found it to be an amazing catch all late game.

Since it's a new addition, everything I'll say about Myth Realized is theory. The idea is that it's a potential beater that isn't affected by my boardwipes, or things like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. It is also disnchant bait as it is a card that can seem very threatening and demand an answer. More testing will prove if it deserves a place here or not.

Regarding Disdainful Stroke, I don't doubt that it's good, but I would prefer to play a harder counter like Hinder or Forbid or even Trickbind. Thanks for the suggestion though, I might not have otherwise thought of it.