Ohthenoises

You are a god among men, I'll look at this carefully in a bit.

I also spoke about my thoughts on the Tier List deck.

Would there be any value in Trinket Mage? With GAAIV in play it's a 2 mana : go find Voltaic Key or Sensei's Divining Top. I know it doesn't work with Humility but.....

Not a fan. It's a bit narrow and the deck has 6 tutors than can grab both.

Well it's not the only thing he can grab, I just figured that a higher tutor density could be better. Meh, not like I can see anything to cut anyhow.

As someone who used to run GAAIV as my primary deck, I appreciate the fact that you genuinely mixed up the old formula of the deck into a more interesting, and quite frankly, better version from the looks of it. Helm+RIP was a decent combo but I felt that it was too weak to hold the deck on its own which is why in my list I started to move closer to the Scepter/Reversal/Engine combo as you have. Unfortunately, I played in a very casual environment which meant that I was targeted by the entire table before the game even started which convinced me to move on from GAAIV to my current deck which can actually survive the entire table targeting me whereas the Arbiter would struggle in that scenario.

As a side note, how has Blue Sun's Zenith been for you? In testing, the 3xU cost made it almost uncastable for me due to the constraints of a Back to Basics land base. I would actually consider the new one from AKH over it just because it only costs 2xU, even if it makes you discard a card and doesn't shuffle itself back into library.

Cards on the table, I have a meta that's constantly shifting power levels and decks. We go from competitive T1 decks to dumb shit all the time because we have so many rotating faces around a core group. Every time I write about Arbiter, I preface my posts with that info. I get maybe 1 full day of cEDH in 3 months. In the meantime, it's difficult for me to get in games I consider worthwhile with this list. For example, I used to run a version of this deck tuned for my meta. That list ran 34 lands and used 4 fewer basics than this deck. In my group, back to basics didn't do a whole lot so I didn't run it.

With that in mind, I'm going to tell you that BSZ isn't even necessary for this list. In all honesty, you could probably get away with Pull from Tomorrow. You can live off of stroke alone, but as this deck doesn't run helm, if stroke gets exiled, you'd be in a pinch without BSZ. Also, no Future sight means less draw, so that's a consideration.

The real reason I run BSZ is becasue arbiter often wins off the back of an end step X-draw spell. That's not the kind of card you want to tutor for, so having redundancy is great.

But no, I've never has BSZ in my hand and not been able to cast it when it was relevant. If I start feeling like the saturation's a problem, I'll use Pull from Tomorrow instead.

I need to do a lot more testing with this list, create a write-up, ask people for some advice, and then I'll submit it to the tier list thread for consideration.

Fair enough. I just remember from my days of running the Arbiter having a real struggle with colored mana due to the constraints of Back to Basics (which was incredibly good in my meta with a lot of people running 3+ color decks) and I would get stuck trying to hold up both Mana Drain and Swan Song for example and being unable to do so.

As an additional note, you could take some ideas from the Thrasios storm decks given that a lot of them run the Scepter/Reversal/Engine combo. Perhaps Aetherflux Reservoir could be of use to you for incremental life gain and just to end the game when you get your combo. Worst case scenario, if you get over 50, you can always threaten to spite someone who tries to stop you or tries to go for their own combo by killing them off, even if it kills you. This has kept me in games that I should have lost and actually won me a few games because my opponent would not go for a combo while I had the ability to kill them on board in response.

Thoughts on running Thought Scour or Reality Shift as potential targets for Scepter? Both result in all opponents being milled out (well, they have to have a creature to shift for that win but meh)

I've got a ton of thoughts on this deck but I've yet to test stuff. Updates in a month?

Oh, you'll be happy to know that this won me $35 last Sunday.

One thing I found myself wishing is because I started two games with RIP and I kept wishing I had a Helm to just tutor for and kill someone

I get that, but i also have tons of games where I open helm and mulligan away. Life has kept me busy with stuff, but in two months I hope to have this deck tested and improved and a primer written.

Legit haven't had the chance to play in over a month. Send help.

1 like = one prayer :'(

I do like that once you get engine and scepter in play this combo is virtually uninterruptible barring split second.

Well, the deck is mostly solid. The base has been good for a very long time. It's just that it's a little ways off from being truly competitive at T1. Mainly that GAAIV doesn't do much for you and your combos are a tad clunky comparatively speaking.

how would you build this on a $300 budget like you said?

I honestly dig this list more than Deadman's with his Future Sight tech or the one that made it onto the tier list that uses a Helm of Obedience/Rest in Peace combo, which I find incredibly weak in the cEDH realm. A well earned +1 to you sir or madam. I'm going to dust off my Augustin list and use this as a base to work from because I think this would work really well in my meta! Thank you for sharing!

I don't like having enchantments as combo pieces. The individual value that rings gives you is lower, but it's an all artifact based combo and still has relatively high utility with things like sensei's and fetch lands sometimes granting you extra utility.

If you're going to push into cEDH with this deck, there's some obvious stuff to add, like Back to basics, Flusterstorm, lower land count, maybe some yard hate, etc.

I personally hate helm combo.

I really don't like the helm combo either. I do like how you left out enchantment pieces to assemble your combo so can focus on artifact tutors to grab all of your combo pieces (besides Dramatic Reversal if you're going for a Scepter combo but that's what Spellseeker, Merchant Scroll, and Mystical Tutor are for of course). Also, my current meta is semi-competitive, so it isn't pure cEDH by any means. Your list would do really well in it, and I think I will do some minor changes to it and use something similar in my playgroup.

I frequently see GAAIV lists with walkers like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Narset Transcendent. Might I ask why you opted against running any of these? Do you also dislike Ethersworn Canonist because it conflicts with an IsoRev combo? Thanks in advance! I appreciate your take on the list and I'd just like to know your thoughts on a couple of your choices.

I have mixed feelings with walkers. They're great at casual, become worse at tuned high-level, and become ok again in cEDH. I bought a Narset for a league several years back and ulted her twice that night, for example. They're ok. My only issue is that you can struggle immensely to protect them and doing so usually takes resources (and the point of the walkers is to accrue value anyway). Overall, I don't feel like they're worth it. Still, 2 mana Narset is sooooo spicy...

If I were to take this semi-competitive, I'd include more greedy cards. Things like Ugin and Consecrated Sphinx become much better at that level. A ton of cEDH lists struggle vs tuned mid-tier decks because extremely high level decks prioritize speed so much that they actually have relatively low average card quality. It's really hard to deal with opponents that answer one of your plays every once in a while and then proceed to back it up with something like a Sun Titan, for example. So yeah. Go greedier.

Ethersworn is a great meta-dependent hate card. This list is capable of running tons of flex hate. It's all meta-dependent. Currently I don't have one, but I have used her in the past. She's fine. It's hard to create a blanket list with GAAIV. Again, this is just what I run atm because of the unique meta I'm in. THe lsit would be slightly tightened if I were to take it to cEDH. Think of it as an off-season athlete or something.