The $7K solution to having friends GAAIV Primer

Commander / EDH dash.secrets

SCORE: 53 | 45 COMMENTS | 35146 VIEWS | IN 24 FOLDERS


rdeller says... #1

Couple things.

1) Erayo is ban in EDH.

2) Your land count is absurdly low for a deck who's only mana rock is Sol Ring, especially for a deck that's trying to slow down the pace of the game and win the long game. You should really go up to a minimum of 37 lands.

3) Mana Rocks. Both Azorius Signet and Talisman of Progress are musts, and I'd recommend getting a bunch more. A deck that runs Winter Orb doesn't want to rely on lands for mana.

4) You have the Stasis and Kismet combo, but you don't have a reliable way to keep the stasis active. I would recommend adding either Eon Hub, Chronatog, or Venser, the Sojourner. Eon Hub makes it so you skip your upkeep and don't need to pay the cost on stasis anymore. Venser allows you to blink a blue source so it'll return untapped to pay for stasis next turn. Chronatog is the funniest. Once you have stasis & kismet or frozen AEther out you use Chronatog to skip your remaining turns. You never need to pay for stasis because you never take another turn. Your opponents can't do anything because everything enters tapped and never untaps. Eventually they'll draw their whole deck and lose over 90+ turns, as you skip all of yours. That's true suffering.

February 13, 2016 12:13 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #2

hey thanks for your input!!it sucks that Erayo, Soratami Ascendant / Erayo's Essence is ban i was hoping to run the Erayo, Soratami Ascendant / Erayo's Essence/Arcane Laboratory combo so that each player could only play one spell and it would be countered.

what suggestions do you have for mana rocks? what would you take out to fit more in?

also i took out Frozen AEther and Kismet because i have Blind Obedience, do you think this is a wise move?

What do you think about Karmic Justice and Sphere of Safety?

February 13, 2016 12:37 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #3

oh also what do you think about using Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer as my commander instead of the grand arbitor?

February 13, 2016 12:42 a.m.

rdeller says... #4

I think GAAIV is way better for this type of deck than Gwafa. The only other commander I'd consider in Blue/White for this type of deck is Brago, King Eternal, and he plays a little differently.

I would definitely put Frozen AEther + Kismet back in. Redundancy is important, and Blind Obedience unfortunately doesn't hit lands, which is great with Winter Orb. Having Orb of Dreams works with all of the combos I listed as well, but unless you're using the Chronatog combo, Orb hurts you equally.

Karmic Justice and Sphere of Safety are both great includes that you can't go wrong with.

Personally I'd cut:

Chalice of the Void: CMCs vary by a lot in EDH, and I can't think of a great number to put this on.

Eryao: Ban

Celestial Ancient: Not really needed, and it's really bad with Meekstone.

Mind Unbound: You're trying to slow the game down. While this looks good on paper, I guarentee it's going to end up decking you because your deck doesn't win fast.

Dissipation Field: Good on paper, bad when you realize a large majority of EDH players have tons of creatures with enter the battlefield abilities. Instead of deterring attacks this usually makes people want to attack you more.

Gwafa: I'd rather not pay 2 mana to make an opponent draw a card while there's a Winter Orb or Static Orb out. Sphere of Safety is better here.

Mindlock Orb: you run 10 cards that search your library. This makes 1/10th of your deck useless.

Ensnaring Bridge: This card's great, but you're going to struggle casting a lot of cards through a Winter Orb. You're likely going to want to have a few instants in hand as well. A lot of the time it's not going to actually do much, this is much better in decks that abuse discard effects.

Blue Sun's Zenith: X spells are pretty mediocre when you don't untap much.

Dream Cache: meh, not that great for a 3 drop.

Sigil of the Empty Throne: You don't really need this, it's overkill and doesn't really help you if you're losing.

In Place of those 11 I'd add 9 lands, Azorius Signet, and Talisman of Progress. Other cuts I'd leave to you based on what you go up against most. Depending on how much mana you typically have available I'd start by cutting the higher costed cards like Omniscience and Blatant Thievery. They're great when they resolve, but casting them is really hard under a lot of your effects.

Other mana rocks to consider are Mind Stone, Coldsteel Heart, Fellwar Stone, Gilded Lotus, Thought Vessel, Thran Dynamo, and Worn Powerstone

February 13, 2016 3:30 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #5

alright take a look now, i have taken out lots of your suggestions and added a bunch too

February 13, 2016 10:59 a.m.

PookandPie says... #6

If you're wanting to lock your opponent out of casting spells (you mentioned earlier that you wanted to Arcane Laboratory + Erayo lock your opponents), then try Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and Knowledge Pool.

Teferi only allows your opponents to cast spells on their main phases and only when the stack is empty. Knowledge Pool is a triggered ability that occurs every time a spell is cast, meaning the stack is not empty to resolve a new spell. The result is that your opponents cast spells, they get exiled, and instead of casting a different spell off of Pool, they can't (due to Teferi's, "Opponents can only cast spells as a sorcery" ability, since Knowledge Pool's ability is on the stack). So casting new spells just exiles them, but you can cast spells just fine with no problems. If you're wanting to do a simple, quick-and-dirty prison lock that is easy to cast and isn't too expensive, I can support including Teferi, who is good in general, and Knowledge Pool. All you have to do is flash Teferi in on an opponent's end step (so they can't even cast a kill spell on him, since they can't play sorceries then), then cast Knowledge Pool on your next turn's main phase- boom. Lock assembled.

February 21, 2016 11 p.m.

PookandPie says... #7

Sorry for the double post, I just thought that I'd drop off Teferi's oracle text from the Gatherer:

"9/25/2006: If an ability lets an opponent cast a spell as part of its effect (such as Isochron Scepter's ability does), that opponent can't cast that spell since the currently resolving ability is still on the stack."

That's why Knowledge Pool and he make a hard lock.

Source: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=244667

Just leaving this here in case you do include it, and your opponents don't think the combo works, for some reason.

February 21, 2016 11:02 p.m.

Quicksilver says... #8

February 24, 2016 1:20 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #9

im up in the air about that card. im trying to lock them out of doing anything and although having everything cost 1 more early is good it would also lock me out. In addition to that its only a 2/1 so something as simple as a Mogg Fanatic could take it out.

February 24, 2016 9:18 a.m.

Riverdare says... #10

Azor's Elocutors maybe? Good alternate win condition when you have the board locked down

March 1, 2016 8:23 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #11

that card seems like it will draw a lot of hate? i was thinking Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Nevinyrral's Disk that way i could board clear everyone elses stuff every turn

March 1, 2016 8:51 p.m.

unless I am not looking hard enough, you don't have any way to deal with decks running Paradox Engine

June 20, 2017 2:21 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #13

austere? revoke? any of the counters? i can just remove problem artifacts like this

June 21, 2017 8:24 p.m.

dash.secrets says... #14

oh also return to dust

June 21, 2017 8:29 p.m.

hchileman says... #15

Would Smothering Tithe + Stasis work in this deck?

February 10, 2019 12:50 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #16

So, this deck has actually run several incarnations of stasis. I finally realized that although it reads well, it is almost never that you can pull it off effectively. It seems like a great card but unless you run some kind of bounce or skip untap after a few turns it will negatively affect you. Also you have a maximum of one game to accomplish your lock before the people at the table will just counter it or destroy it. Overall I just ended up taking it out because by itself it can only serve to lock things for a few turns. If you are waiting several turns to dig out that exact card that will make stasis work then I think that's a wasted card in your hand and is preventing you from running more effective cards. That being said if you wanted to add more search to the deck and expirament with ways to make stasis useful feel free to do so. I've already run a huge battery of tests in various scenarios and my determination is that it's just one of those cards that looks like it could be good but doesnt end up actually being good.

Now as far as smoldering tithe...more ramp is always a good thing but this deck is meant to run on a small amount of mana already with only 32 lands. Without making substantial changes to the deck I dont think adding smoldering will work. Can you change stuff around and make it work with whatever sub theme you want to run? Yes absolutley. But in this incarnation of the deck I dont think it would work. Generally speaking when I'm slowing things down I have the opposite problem of having too much land. I've had several turn cycles where no one can do anything except lay a land and then I hard cast an avacyn. I generally never have any issues with lack of land. Now again more ramp is always good because the faster you can establish the lock the quicker you can deal with your opponents, so if you can find a way to squeeze smoldering in, by all means feel free

February 13, 2019 12:07 p.m.

hchileman says... #17

Wow... Wasn't expecting such a detailed reply lol. Thanks for the info! it definitely makes a lot of sense that you wouldn't want to run Statis in the deck. Everything you said about Smothering Tithe makes a lot of sense as well. After playing many different types of decks I can tell that prison is definitely my best and favorite playstyle. I love this deck and will try to make it in the future. It'll be a fun deck to bring out every so often to terrorize the playgroup! Thanks again for all the info and I can't wait to see what you make next!

February 13, 2019 4:09 p.m.

carlmoores says... #18

Cunning Wish cannot get cards back from exile because exile is a game zone. Wishes haven't been errataed to say "from exile" they do what they say, you literally get a card from outside the game. I can't believe no one pointed this out until now.

February 19, 2019 6:02 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #19

You are correct sir, back to the drawing board. I'll find something interesting to replace it with

February 21, 2019 6:09 p.m.

Limejuice says... #20

Unfortunately the commander rules committee has determined that Karn the great creator +2 ability, along with the wishes, do not function in edh as your deck is limited to the 100 cards. Bummer

August 16, 2019 6:43 p.m.

dash.secrets says... #21

um...correct..which is why i dont have any wishes in there and also you arnt using karns +2 ability, you are using his static ability with mycosynth lattice to make their land useless

August 19, 2019 8:54 a.m.

The commander rules committee does allow for a 10 card sideboard though. It's up to the LGS to determine if they allow for a wishboard to be used.

November 7, 2019 1:12 a.m.

dash.secrets says... #23

there arnt any wishes in the deck?

November 8, 2019 3:57 p.m.

magwaaf says... #24

yours is more control... mine is more annoying stax...i like both lol

March 20, 2020 8:04 p.m.

dash.secrets says... #25

I actually had annoying stax to begin with and basically you will just get hated off the table each game, especially if you are playing in a 4 man pod. With stax you basically have to go combo to establish control early, or everyone is just going to hyper focus you and it will be a short game

March 22, 2020 6:57 a.m.

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