Deck has been scrapped. It felt just too similar to my mono-black deck
Oona - Dimir Lobotomizer Mill & Kill
"We are the unknown hand of influence, the unspoken thought that controls. We are the unseen terror that you fear in the night." - Dralnu, Lich Lord
"When do I get one of those flashy thingys?" - Oona
Vorthos - House Dimir wants utter control of Ravnica. Such absolute control requires complete invisibility so as not to arouse opposition. Therefore, the guild works very hard to ensure that Ravnicans don't believe the guild exists. As such the Dimir are never straightforward in their strategy. They use tricks of the mind and erase memories to ensure they will never be found out.
My newest deck, still has a few proxies, still needs a lot more playtesting. I'm sure I'll be making some changes in card choices as I go, so feel free to make any recommendations.
All my decks try to adhere to these guidelines:
Be mostly true to a flavor and a theme
Be good against one or multiple opponents
Be very interactive
Be fun to pilot or to play against
Have multiple paths to victory
Play out differently every game to keep it fun over a long time
Integrate the Commanders abilities into the strategy at least a little, but...
Be able to win without ever playing the commander.
How the deck plays:
This is a very "controllish" build that uses a lot of mill, disruption, and some creature/spelljacking to win a war of attrition and either mill opponents out or beat them down (often with their own creatures and spells). There are several instant win mill combos and big, game-winning sorceries that are included in the list of major threats. The deck is fun to play with or against as it's very interactive, aand can attack/win from many different angles, and since you use a lot of your opponents own spells against them, each game plays out very differently. The deck also has a surprisingly high level of incidental lifegain to keep you with a nice chunk of buffer.
** Note - Mill is a difficult proposition in the edh environment, especially with so many Eldrazi creatures being played, for that reason, this deck runs multiple other ways to win, some that synergize specifically with lots of cards having been milled to the graveyard (like Geth, Lord of the Vault and Suffer the Past) and spells to pre-emptively "gut" any Eldrazi out of an opponents deck like Sadistic Sacrament and Bitter Ordeal. But even without opposing Eldrazi to gut, these spells are potential gamewinners if the timing is good.
The Power Play:
The deck wants to generate lots of mana and use it to power huge spells that outright kill your opponents or activated abilities that mill opponents or pump beaters. Add Rings of Brighthearth to those abilities for double the fun and destruction.
And besides just naturally generating a lot of mana, there are a couple ways to generate infinite mana in the deck. Palinchron + Caged Sun, or Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth. Once you generate infimana you can: Oona, Queen of the Fae - Mill the table Geth, Lord of the Vault - Possibly Mill the table or at least do a heck of a lot and get some good creatures from it. Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief - Sweep all creatures and kill one opponent Steel Hellkite - Kill 1 player with no blockers and destroy a nonland permanent. Profane Command - Kill one player plus extra value Exsanguinate - Kill the table Capsize - Bounce all permanents but yours (also known as "winning")
The Oona/Ashnod Combo (Thanks Prince Tristan):
With Oona, Queen of the Fae and Ashnod's Altar in play.
Let's say I have 9 mana available. Leaving or open, pay 8 to exile 7 from the library and put 7 tokens in play. Sac all 7 tokens to Ashnod putting in my pool. Use my colored plus the 14 to exile and get 14 more.
Or even leave 2 colored open netting 12 colorless when it's all done to finish off with an Exsanguinate.
The Cheap and Easy Mill:
As long as your opponent doesn't have Eldrazi, an alternate and easy instamill combo is simply to use Hinder, or Spin into Myth on an opponent and then cast Tunnel Vision. And given any of these cards can be replayed from the graveyard (Mnemonic Wall, Dralnu, Yawgswill) makes it much more reliable to use.
Focus the Mill:
Remember it's always best to focus your milling on a single opponent until he's dead instead of spreading it out among all opponents. Also keep in mind that some cards like Painful Quandary can make you an instant target for the whole table, so play them with caution.
Why didn't I include: Cabal Coffers - It's a dead land far too often in a two-color deck. My swamp count isn't high enough to justify it. Bojuka Bog - I want cards in my opponents graveyard for Geth, Suffer the Past, Memory Plunder. Extraplanar Lens - Caged Sun is just so much better as it doesn't get used by your opponents or get you 2 for 1'd having an island imprinted on it. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - I feel like it's not needed for manafixing in here, and it often gets killed by another players Urborg. High Tide - I know it combos with Palinchron, but it needs a lot of islands in play.
Infinite geth mill doesn't work. X has to equal the converted mama cost of the thing you are recurring. Otherwise, I like the deck.
Edit: nvm, it works unless you whiff on milling a creature or artifact. Kinda unreliable.
Private Mod Note
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I play Magic and fighting games competitively.
Standard: UW UW Pike
Mtgo Pauper: U Tempo
Mtgo Block: RW Aggro
I'm 14, shout-outs to all other young magic players out there!
Quotes:
Fiend Hunter is not a good answer to a Titan.... red will Shock it.
With infinite mana, it even works if you somehow manage to "whiff". It's an activated ability that can be repeated over and over. The only problem with him in here is meeting the black mana requirement every time you use it, but late game, you should still be able to make enough black mana to mill out an opponent or two.
Maybe given that, maybe it would be worth it to go ahead and run Cabal Coffers/Deserted Temple? I don't think I've got a high enough swamp count.
Wow, I never thought of that and I use Ashnod's. In fact I have a spare. It's going in, thanks.
So.....
Let's say I have 9 mana available. Leaving U or B open, pay 8 to exile 7 from the library and put 7 tokens in play. Sac all 7 tokens to Ashnod putting 14 in my pool. Use my colored plus the 14 to exile and get 14 more.
Or even leave 2 colored open netting 12 colorless when it's all done to finish off with an Exsanguinate.
Oona used to be better with Ashnod's Altar and Painter's Servant, but c'est la vie. One of my favorite cards that should go in Oona if you are actually going to use her UBX ability is Dire Undercurrents. Typically, when I had it out and a decent mana flow I would draw 3-4 cards per turn, get 3-4 faerie tokens per turn, and force 3-4 cards to be discarded. Good turns were better and even if Oona dies that engine usually just sits and waits for Oona to come back. Black Market is another card that I don't think I could do Oona without - it either dies right away or nets you somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 mana before the table dies or gets sick of it.
I think you need to seriously bump up the amount of card draw and tutor outlets you have. Oona always kills when she uses her milling with infinite mana. She exiles instead of placing in the GY so its never a problem if someone has an eldrazi because they cant get any of it back.
Oona should be all about hitting infinite mana then just outright winning. I think you have too much other stuff going on. I would have a ton of counterspells, draw, tutors, and some removal. The only chance you might even need to worry about a plan B is if someone can stop your infinite mana or if they can hinder your commander. If you are packing counter magic especially in the form of Force of Will and or Pact of Negation you should be able to power thorugh. Stack in some basic 2 mana counters as well and get ready to just outright win games.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
When A Man Lies
He Murders Some Part Of His World
These Are The Pale Deaths
Which Men Miscall Their Lives
All This I Cannot Bear
To Witness Any Longer
Cannot The Kingdom Of Salvation
Take Me Home
All my decks must adhere to these guidelines:
Be mostly true to a flavor and a theme
Be good against one or multiple opponents
Be very interactive
Be fun to pilot or to play against
Have multiple paths to victory
Play out differently every game to keep it fun over a long time
Integrate the Commanders abilities into the strategy at least a little, but...
Be able to win without ever playing the commander.
So I'm a bit curious about these constraints in the context of this deck. You say your game plan is to generate a whole ton of mana and then sink it into something. But that doesn't seem very interactive. It doesn't have multiple paths to victory either. It has multiple DESTINATIONS-- you can kill someone with Oona, Geth, or Exsanguinate. But in practice no one cares what card you use to win the game once you have infinite mana. How will it play differently? I guess you'll have different ways to generate infinite mana, but it's still just a "combo out" deck.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. It's just that since your overall deck idea doesn't seem to fit your constraints, please don't be offended when I suggest a whole bunch of things that also don't fit these constraints.
As a rule of thumb, in EDH you need to play cards that are almost always good. When considering a card, ask yourself if you can imagine drawing the card and saying, "Thank god I drew X! That is exactly the card I needed right now!" That's the real measure of whether a card should go in a deck, top 50 list be damned.
Your main sources of infinite mana seem to be Caged Sun + Palinchron or Basalt Monolith / Grim Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth / Power Artifact. Keep in mind that Caged Sun is primarily targeted at monochrome decks. To go infinite with Caged Sun and Palinchrone, you need at least 5 lands that produce blue mana (and Underground River doesn't count). But your mana base includes all kinds of utility non-basics like Tectonic Edge that produce colorless and don't really help Caged Sun.
To really make this work, I think you need to treat the deck as mostly mono-color and just play the very best cards of the secondary color. You could go either blue or black, but I think blue is the better choice, since blue has far more cards you want to play with double or even triple U in the mana cost. Also, it lets you play both High Tide and Bubbling Muck (since at least Bubbling Muck will work with Urborg).
Also, you need more mana acceleration in this deck. There's a lot of top-heavy stuff in here, but I don't even see Thran Dynamo, much less Worn Powerstone or Gilded Lotus.
I do think you have the hints of a strong deck in here but, as you imply in the original post, it might need a lot of work. Rather than give a list of changes (which would include swapping on the order of 30 cards), here's a different take on the deck:
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
Thanks for the interest/critique, I will consider all that you've suggested, though I doubt I'll get my hands on a Mana Drain (as much as I'd love to).
So I'm a bit curious about these constraints in the context of this deck. You say your game plan is to generate a whole ton of mana and then sink it into something. But that doesn't seem very interactive. It doesn't have multiple paths to victory either. It has multiple DESTINATIONS-- you can kill someone with Oona, Geth, or Exsanguinate. But in practice no one cares what card you use to win the game once you have infinite mana. How will it play differently? I guess you'll have different ways to generate infinite mana, but it's still just a "combo out" deck.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. It's just that since your overall deck idea doesn't seem to fit your constraints, please don't be offended when I suggest a whole bunch of things that also don't fit these constraints.
I'm not offended at all. Though I will disagree with it to a degree. True enough, the decks strongest strategy is to generate big mana and kill with it (not much variety and not very interactive), but it's not the only path to victory. In the games I've been able to play with it so far the "theivery" stuff has has been nearly as potent as the big mana stuff. Several of the opponents creatures in play from Geth, Rite of Replication fatty tokens, and I even won one game from just straight beatdown off of a fat Draining Whelk protected by Glen Elendra. Much more interactive, and using opponents cards always plays out differently.
I'm still glad you compared it against my deck guidelines though, it may not meet them sufficiently enough, and maybe I should re-evalute it.
As a rule of thumb, in EDH you need to play cards that are almost always good. When considering a card, ask yourself if you can imagine drawing the card and saying, "Thank god I drew X! That is exactly the card I needed right now!" That's the real measure of whether a card should go in a deck, top 50 list be damned.
I agree completely with "top 50 be damned". It shouldn't ever play a role in actually deciding to include a card, that's determined completely by how well the card functions with the rest of the deck.
And I also agree with "almost always good" most of the time.
Suffer the Past - In most decks I don't like the card much, but in here, though I will consider cutting it, it's going to take more convincing. In a long game, especially with mill, there are really full graveyards. And with me producing a lot of mana it's potentially a solid finisher. I will specifically have an eye on whether I'm happy to draw it.
Soul Manipulation - So far I have been pretty happy about having the card in my hand. Other than early game, theres almost always a place for a counterspell (even if it's only creature), and almost always a creature in my graveyard that I'd love to see back in play.
In all I think it all may be a question of balancing efficiency/effectiveness against interactive/variety. No doubt the deck would win more games if it focused more heavily on getting off the big mana combos, but it would also lose variety and interactivity at the same time. So the deck may be doomed to be torn apart for having too much trouble walking that line. We'll see.
I believe the best way to build commander decks is start with the commander and build around it. The whole purpose of the other 99 cards is to counterpoint the commander, and vice versa. Here are two examples of this, though the lists are slightly out of date:
Here's how this design works for Patron of the Orochi. Patron untaps forests. That means you want cards that make forests good and put more forests into play. The deck is loaded with mana flare effects like Vernal Bloom and Gauntlet of Power. The deck is designed to play mana production which Patron has a multiplicative effect on, not additive, and plays cards that capitalize on having any large amount of mana.
The build for Ashling works like this. Given enough mana, Ashling can kill almost all creatures. She also grows very large very fast, meaning she is a suitable win condition. Therefore playing a deck with Ashling means you don't need to worry very much about creature control or including threats. So by extension, the deck should focus more on non-creature control and mana production. The focus on artifact mana production in turn makes mass land destruction strong. So by the very nature, Ashling is best used in a land destruction deck.
Now what does this mean for Oona? You have to think about what Oona brings to the table and build the other 99 cards accordingly. Here's what I see as the benefits of Oona:
Guarantees a win if you have infinite mana
Colors give access to solid search and card draw
Has the option of playing as a mono-color deck
Source of token creature generation
Being a win condition is the best part of Oona. It frees up the 10-ish slots that most decks have to contribute towards high end threats.
Of course it's worth noting that the 1/1 fliers aren't that much of a benefit. Given that most people play 50% land + artifacts in their decks, even against a mono-color deck you're at best likely to get 3 fliers when you spend 6U on Oona's exile ability. Putting three 1/1s into play for 7 mana is not exactly a game-breaking play in EDH, unless you have something useful to do with those creatures.
And seriously, what's the best that black and blue can do with a token creature engine? Skullclamp is good. Braids, Cabal Minion is good. But in general the creatures aren't that helpful.
What about the other benefits? Search and card draw are good, but only as good as the cards they provide. Oona's first benefit (win on infinite mana) suggests you should use blue and black to arrange an infinite mana combo. The ability to play Oona as monochrome (or near that) suggests you should do that, to get more mileage out of Caged Sun and friends, which in turn supports infinite mana combos.
If Oona is your kill card, that says you shouldn't cast her until you're ready to win. The longer she's in play, the more likely she is to get tucked, killed, or stolen. Besides, it's usually too risky to use her as a 5/5 blocker, and she won't win you the game by swinging. Why bother doing 15 points in general damage when you're still going to mill them to death?
You have to let decks be what they want to be. I don't think deck designers are like sculptors, bringing their imagination to life. Rather designers are like gardeners. They merely direct the latent forces of the raw materials (plants or cards) in the direction they want to grow. It might be that you aren't happy with the end construction. I know I wouldn't be happy playing an infinite mana combo Oona deck. But that's what the Oona deck very much wants to be. Trying to make it something else will only leave you unhappy with something that just doesn't feel right.
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
You seem to missed listing one of your wincons:
Infinite mana + Blue Sun's Zenith.
Stroke of Genius is slightly better.
I was looking at ways to kill the table with Prosperity without taking yourself out in the process and am coming up pretty empty :/
You already got Bloodchief Ascension in there. Why not throw in a Mindcrank? It seems to fit the combo mill-out theme you have going here..
I like that this build. It definitely has range and looks like it will play a little different each time.
As far as what tedv is saying, I would just have a sub package for this build that was tailored more for 1 vs 1 and competitive. No reason to go completely linear in a social MP game. In this package would be all the tempo and tutors meant only to assemble the combo and then protect it..
There's a big difference between 1v1 and competitive.
As for "No reason to go completely linear", I feel like that issue has already been settled when the general was selected. Oona demands a linear deck. You can make the deck less about Oona, but then you're just making a blue/black millstone deck. The fact that Oona also mills is more coincidence than actively helpful, since you're not trying to use her for milling. (If you were, you'd just immediately win the game.) Why build an EDH deck that doesn't use the general?
The problem with defining [EDH] by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
So I'm intrigued by this deck. One of my friends has a Oona deck, but it really lacks focus, and I think yours is a step in the right direction.
So I'm a bit curious about these constraints in the context of this deck. You say your game plan is to generate a whole ton of mana and then sink it into something. But that doesn't seem very interactive. It doesn't have multiple paths to victory either. It has multiple DESTINATIONS-- you can kill someone with Oona, Geth, or Exsanguinate. But in practice no one cares what card you use to win the game once you have infinite mana. How will it play differently? I guess you'll have different ways to generate infinite mana, but it's still just a "combo out" deck.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. It's just that since your overall deck idea doesn't seem to fit your constraints, please don't be offended when I suggest a whole bunch of things that also don't fit these constraints.
As a rule of thumb, in EDH you need to play cards that are almost always good. When considering a card, ask yourself if you can imagine drawing the card and saying, "Thank god I drew X! That is exactly the card I needed right now!" That's the real measure of whether a card should go in a deck, top 50 list be damned.
Your main sources of infinite mana seem to be Caged Sun + Palinchron or Basalt Monolith / Grim Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth / Power Artifact. Keep in mind that Caged Sun is primarily targeted at monochrome decks. To go infinite with Caged Sun and Palinchrone, you need at least 5 lands that produce blue mana (and Underground River doesn't count). But your mana base includes all kinds of utility non-basics like Tectonic Edge that produce colorless and don't really help Caged Sun.
To really make this work, I think you need to treat the deck as mostly mono-color and just play the very best cards of the secondary color. You could go either blue or black, but I think blue is the better choice, since blue has far more cards you want to play with double or even triple U in the mana cost. Also, it lets you play both High Tide and Bubbling Muck (since at least Bubbling Muck will work with Urborg).
Also, you need more mana acceleration in this deck. There's a lot of top-heavy stuff in here, but I don't even see Thran Dynamo, much less Worn Powerstone or Gilded Lotus.
I do think you have the hints of a strong deck in here but, as you imply in the original post, it might need a lot of work. Rather than give a list of changes (which would include swapping on the order of 30 cards), here's a different take on the deck:
Deck has been scrapped. It felt just too similar to my mono-black deck
Oona - Dimir Lobotomizer Mill & Kill
"We are the unknown hand of influence, the unspoken thought that controls. We are the unseen terror that you fear in the night." - Dralnu, Lich Lord
"When do I get one of those flashy thingys?" - Oona
Vorthos - House Dimir wants utter control of Ravnica. Such absolute control requires complete invisibility so as not to arouse opposition. Therefore, the guild works very hard to ensure that Ravnicans don't believe the guild exists. As such the Dimir are never straightforward in their strategy. They use tricks of the mind and erase memories to ensure they will never be found out.
My newest deck, still has a few proxies, still needs a lot more playtesting. I'm sure I'll be making some changes in card choices as I go, so feel free to make any recommendations.
All my decks try to adhere to these guidelines:
Be mostly true to a flavor and a theme
Be good against one or multiple opponents
Be very interactive
Be fun to pilot or to play against
Have multiple paths to victory
Play out differently every game to keep it fun over a long time
Integrate the Commanders abilities into the strategy at least a little, but...
Be able to win without ever playing the commander.
How the deck plays:
This is a very "controllish" build that uses a lot of mill, disruption, and some creature/spelljacking to win a war of attrition and either mill opponents out or beat them down (often with their own creatures and spells). There are several instant win mill combos and big, game-winning sorceries that are included in the list of major threats. The deck is fun to play with or against as it's very interactive, aand can attack/win from many different angles, and since you use a lot of your opponents own spells against them, each game plays out very differently. The deck also has a surprisingly high level of incidental lifegain to keep you with a nice chunk of buffer.
** Note - Mill is a difficult proposition in the edh environment, especially with so many Eldrazi creatures being played, for that reason, this deck runs multiple other ways to win, some that synergize specifically with lots of cards having been milled to the graveyard (like Geth, Lord of the Vault and Suffer the Past) and spells to pre-emptively "gut" any Eldrazi out of an opponents deck like Sadistic Sacrament and Bitter Ordeal. But even without opposing Eldrazi to gut, these spells are potential gamewinners if the timing is good.
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
Lands (41):
1 Tectonic Edge
13 Island
12 Swamp
1 Academy Ruins
1 Vesuva
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Secluded Glen
1 Strip Mine
1 Watery Grave
1 High Market
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Bad River
1 Polluted Delta
1 Underground River
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Tolaria West
Infimana Pieces:
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Palinchron
1 Caged Sun
Other Mana Help:
1 Coalition Relic
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Sol Ring
1 Dimir Signet
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Solemn Simulacrum (plus draw)
1 Expedition Map
1 Liliana Vess
1 Sorin Markov
Easymill Combo:
1 Hinder
1 Spin into Myth
1 Tunnel Vision
Big Finishers:
1 Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief (plus removal)
1 Steel Hellkite (plus removal)
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault (plus thievery and mill)
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Exsanguinate (plus lifegain)
1 Capsize
1 Profane Command (plus removal and recursion)
1 Suffer the Past (plus lifegain)
1 Rite of Replication
Thievery Package:
1 Gilded Drake
1 Chancellor of the Spires (plus maybe extra mill)
1 Bribery
1 Desertion (plus countermagic)
1 Telemin Performance (plus mill)
1 Memory Plunder
Card Draw:
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Mulldrifter
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 River Kelpie
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Recurring Insight
1 Syphon Mind
1 Dralnu, Lich Lord
1 Mnemonic Wall
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Soul Manipulation (plus countermagic)
Removal:
1 Rend Flesh
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Eyeblight's Ending
1 Life's Finale (plus mill)
1 Yawgmoth's Will
Tutors:
1 Demonic Tutor
Other Countermagic:
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Draining Whelk
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Rewind
Gutting and Other Mill Cards:
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Bitter Ordeal
1 Traumatize
Other Spells:
1 Painful Quandary (Punishment)
1 Bloodchief Ascension (Punishment & Lifegain)
1 Twincast
.
Combos, Synergies, Strategies, Tricks, etc:
The Power Play:
The deck wants to generate lots of mana and use it to power huge spells that outright kill your opponents or activated abilities that mill opponents or pump beaters. Add Rings of Brighthearth to those abilities for double the fun and destruction.
And besides just naturally generating a lot of mana, there are a couple ways to generate infinite mana in the deck. Palinchron + Caged Sun, or Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth. Once you generate infimana you can:
Oona, Queen of the Fae - Mill the table
Geth, Lord of the Vault - Possibly Mill the table or at least do a heck of a lot and get some good creatures from it.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief - Sweep all creatures and kill one opponent
Steel Hellkite - Kill 1 player with no blockers and destroy a nonland permanent.
Profane Command - Kill one player plus extra value
Exsanguinate - Kill the table
Capsize - Bounce all permanents but yours (also known as "winning")
The Oona/Ashnod Combo (Thanks Prince Tristan):
With Oona, Queen of the Fae and Ashnod's Altar in play.
Let's say I have 9 mana available. Leaving
Or even leave 2 colored open netting 12 colorless when it's all done to finish off with an Exsanguinate.
The Feed Mill:
Putting lots of cards in other players graveyards add to the effectiveness of Geth, Lord of the Vault, Memory Plunder, Bloodchief Ascension, Beacon of Unrest, and Suffer the Past becomes a solid finisher. And with so many creatures coming into play from the graveyard and spells being played from the graveyard, River Kelpie is amazing.
The Cheap and Easy Mill:
As long as your opponent doesn't have Eldrazi, an alternate and easy instamill combo is simply to use Hinder, or Spin into Myth on an opponent and then cast Tunnel Vision. And given any of these cards can be replayed from the graveyard (Mnemonic Wall, Dralnu, Yawgswill) makes it much more reliable to use.
Focus the Mill:
Remember it's always best to focus your milling on a single opponent until he's dead instead of spreading it out among all opponents. Also keep in mind that some cards like Painful Quandary can make you an instant target for the whole table, so play them with caution.
Other cards to consider:
Wrexial, the Risen Deep - Fits the flavor well and uses full opponent graveyards.
Necrotic Ooze - Becomes a second Drana, Geth, Hellkite, or Dralnu (with no drawback).
Nemesis of Reason
Pupeteer Clique
Why didn't I include:
Cabal Coffers - It's a dead land far too often in a two-color deck. My swamp count isn't high enough to justify it.
Bojuka Bog - I want cards in my opponents graveyard for Geth, Suffer the Past, Memory Plunder.
Extraplanar Lens - Caged Sun is just so much better as it doesn't get used by your opponents or get you 2 for 1'd having an island imprinted on it.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - I feel like it's not needed for manafixing in here, and it often gets killed by another players Urborg.
High Tide - I know it combos with Palinchron, but it needs a lot of islands in play.
Banner by Nakamura, Thanks!
EDH Math
EDH Decks:
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
Edit: nvm, it works unless you whiff on milling a creature or artifact. Kinda unreliable.
Standard:
UW UW Pike
Mtgo Pauper:
U Tempo
Mtgo Block:
RW Aggro
I'm 14, shout-outs to all other young magic players out there!
Quotes:
Standard:
UW UW Pike
Mtgo Pauper:
U Tempo
Mtgo Block:
RW Aggro
I'm 14, shout-outs to all other young magic players out there!
Quotes:
Maybe given that, maybe it would be worth it to go ahead and run Cabal Coffers/Deserted Temple? I don't think I've got a high enough swamp count.
Gotcha on Hellkite, thanks for pointing that out.
Updated info on both cards
Banner by Nakamura, Thanks!
EDH Math
EDH Decks:
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
Thank You Rivenor/Miraculous Recovery Studios!
GGGSKamahl's Band of Monstosities SGGG
RRRSFreaki-Kiki, The Goblin DoucheSRRR
BBGGNath, Raper of Hands and Spewer of Tokens!GGBB
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EDH Math
EDH Decks:
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
Wow, I never thought of that and I use Ashnod's. In fact I have a spare. It's going in, thanks.
So.....
Let's say I have 9 mana available. Leaving U or B open, pay 8 to exile 7 from the library and put 7 tokens in play. Sac all 7 tokens to Ashnod putting 14 in my pool. Use my colored plus the 14 to exile and get 14 more.
Or even leave 2 colored open netting 12 colorless when it's all done to finish off with an Exsanguinate.
Sounds pretty good.
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EDH Math
EDH Decks:
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Oona should be all about hitting infinite mana then just outright winning. I think you have too much other stuff going on. I would have a ton of counterspells, draw, tutors, and some removal. The only chance you might even need to worry about a plan B is if someone can stop your infinite mana or if they can hinder your commander. If you are packing counter magic especially in the form of Force of Will and or Pact of Negation you should be able to power thorugh. Stack in some basic 2 mana counters as well and get ready to just outright win games.
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So I'm a bit curious about these constraints in the context of this deck. You say your game plan is to generate a whole ton of mana and then sink it into something. But that doesn't seem very interactive. It doesn't have multiple paths to victory either. It has multiple DESTINATIONS-- you can kill someone with Oona, Geth, or Exsanguinate. But in practice no one cares what card you use to win the game once you have infinite mana. How will it play differently? I guess you'll have different ways to generate infinite mana, but it's still just a "combo out" deck.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. It's just that since your overall deck idea doesn't seem to fit your constraints, please don't be offended when I suggest a whole bunch of things that also don't fit these constraints.
As a rule of thumb, in EDH you need to play cards that are almost always good. When considering a card, ask yourself if you can imagine drawing the card and saying, "Thank god I drew X! That is exactly the card I needed right now!" That's the real measure of whether a card should go in a deck, top 50 list be damned.
It's easy to see how that would be true for say, Basalt Monolith or Capsize. It's much harder to make that argument for Suffer the Past or Soul Manipulation.
Your main sources of infinite mana seem to be Caged Sun + Palinchron or Basalt Monolith / Grim Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth / Power Artifact. Keep in mind that Caged Sun is primarily targeted at monochrome decks. To go infinite with Caged Sun and Palinchrone, you need at least 5 lands that produce blue mana (and Underground River doesn't count). But your mana base includes all kinds of utility non-basics like Tectonic Edge that produce colorless and don't really help Caged Sun.
To really make this work, I think you need to treat the deck as mostly mono-color and just play the very best cards of the secondary color. You could go either blue or black, but I think blue is the better choice, since blue has far more cards you want to play with double or even triple U in the mana cost. Also, it lets you play both High Tide and Bubbling Muck (since at least Bubbling Muck will work with Urborg).
Also, you need more mana acceleration in this deck. There's a lot of top-heavy stuff in here, but I don't even see Thran Dynamo, much less Worn Powerstone or Gilded Lotus.
I do think you have the hints of a strong deck in here but, as you imply in the original post, it might need a lot of work. Rather than give a list of changes (which would include swapping on the order of 30 cards), here's a different take on the deck:
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
Lands: 37
17 Island
3 Swamp
7 Fetch Lands
1 Vesuva
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Deserted Temple
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Underground Sea
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Tolaria West
1 Barren Moor
1 Lonely Sandbar
Mana Generation: 17
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Dimir Signet
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Worn Powerstone
1 Mind Stone
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Palinchron
1 Caged Sun
1 Power Artifact
1 High Tide
1 Bubbling Muck
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Trinket Mage
1 Expedition Map
1 Memory Plunder
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Dralnu, Lich Lord
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Twincast
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
Card Draw: 12
1 Time Spiral
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Future Sight
1 Magus of the Future
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Mulldrifter
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Recurring Insight
1 Syphon Mind
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Braingeyser
Tempo: 4
1 Chancellor of the Spires
1 Time Stretch
1 Time Warp
1 Tangle Wire
1 Invoke Prejudice
1 The Abyss
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
1 Capsize
1 Cryptic Command
1 Gilded Drake
1 Damnation
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Treachery
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Arcane Denial
1 Mana Drain
1 Sower of Temptation
Threats: 3
1 Exsanguinate
1 Rite of Replication
1 Bribery
I'm not offended at all. Though I will disagree with it to a degree. True enough, the decks strongest strategy is to generate big mana and kill with it (not much variety and not very interactive), but it's not the only path to victory. In the games I've been able to play with it so far the "theivery" stuff has has been nearly as potent as the big mana stuff. Several of the opponents creatures in play from Geth, Rite of Replication fatty tokens, and I even won one game from just straight beatdown off of a fat Draining Whelk protected by Glen Elendra. Much more interactive, and using opponents cards always plays out differently.
I'm still glad you compared it against my deck guidelines though, it may not meet them sufficiently enough, and maybe I should re-evalute it.
I agree completely with "top 50 be damned". It shouldn't ever play a role in actually deciding to include a card, that's determined completely by how well the card functions with the rest of the deck.
And I also agree with "almost always good" most of the time.
Suffer the Past - In most decks I don't like the card much, but in here, though I will consider cutting it, it's going to take more convincing. In a long game, especially with mill, there are really full graveyards. And with me producing a lot of mana it's potentially a solid finisher. I will specifically have an eye on whether I'm happy to draw it.
Soul Manipulation - So far I have been pretty happy about having the card in my hand. Other than early game, theres almost always a place for a counterspell (even if it's only creature), and almost always a creature in my graveyard that I'd love to see back in play.
In all I think it all may be a question of balancing efficiency/effectiveness against interactive/variety. No doubt the deck would win more games if it focused more heavily on getting off the big mana combos, but it would also lose variety and interactivity at the same time. So the deck may be doomed to be torn apart for having too much trouble walking that line. We'll see.
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EDH Math
EDH Decks:
BB Drana: Down with the Sickness
BWR Kaalia Punisher: Heaven's on Fire
Patron of the Orochi: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=285693
Ashling the Pilgrim: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=318226
Here's how this design works for Patron of the Orochi. Patron untaps forests. That means you want cards that make forests good and put more forests into play. The deck is loaded with mana flare effects like Vernal Bloom and Gauntlet of Power. The deck is designed to play mana production which Patron has a multiplicative effect on, not additive, and plays cards that capitalize on having any large amount of mana.
The build for Ashling works like this. Given enough mana, Ashling can kill almost all creatures. She also grows very large very fast, meaning she is a suitable win condition. Therefore playing a deck with Ashling means you don't need to worry very much about creature control or including threats. So by extension, the deck should focus more on non-creature control and mana production. The focus on artifact mana production in turn makes mass land destruction strong. So by the very nature, Ashling is best used in a land destruction deck.
Now what does this mean for Oona? You have to think about what Oona brings to the table and build the other 99 cards accordingly. Here's what I see as the benefits of Oona:
Being a win condition is the best part of Oona. It frees up the 10-ish slots that most decks have to contribute towards high end threats.
Of course it's worth noting that the 1/1 fliers aren't that much of a benefit. Given that most people play 50% land + artifacts in their decks, even against a mono-color deck you're at best likely to get 3 fliers when you spend 6U on Oona's exile ability. Putting three 1/1s into play for 7 mana is not exactly a game-breaking play in EDH, unless you have something useful to do with those creatures.
And seriously, what's the best that black and blue can do with a token creature engine? Skullclamp is good. Braids, Cabal Minion is good. But in general the creatures aren't that helpful.
What about the other benefits? Search and card draw are good, but only as good as the cards they provide. Oona's first benefit (win on infinite mana) suggests you should use blue and black to arrange an infinite mana combo. The ability to play Oona as monochrome (or near that) suggests you should do that, to get more mileage out of Caged Sun and friends, which in turn supports infinite mana combos.
If Oona is your kill card, that says you shouldn't cast her until you're ready to win. The longer she's in play, the more likely she is to get tucked, killed, or stolen. Besides, it's usually too risky to use her as a 5/5 blocker, and she won't win you the game by swinging. Why bother doing 15 points in general damage when you're still going to mill them to death?
You have to let decks be what they want to be. I don't think deck designers are like sculptors, bringing their imagination to life. Rather designers are like gardeners. They merely direct the latent forces of the raw materials (plants or cards) in the direction they want to grow. It might be that you aren't happy with the end construction. I know I wouldn't be happy playing an infinite mana combo Oona deck. But that's what the Oona deck very much wants to be. Trying to make it something else will only leave you unhappy with something that just doesn't feel right.
I solve all my colored Mana fixing issues in my Oona build with my secret tech: Initiates of the Ebon Hand .
After I go colorless infinite Beseech the Queen for OotEH + one black mana = Infinite Oona mill.
Plus, it's always cool to play exploding Initiates FTW.
Infinite mana + Blue Sun's Zenith.
Stroke of Genius is slightly better.
I was looking at ways to kill the table with Prosperity without taking yourself out in the process and am coming up pretty empty :/
You already got Bloodchief Ascension in there. Why not throw in a Mindcrank? It seems to fit the combo mill-out theme you have going here..
I like that this build. It definitely has range and looks like it will play a little different each time.
As far as what tedv is saying, I would just have a sub package for this build that was tailored more for 1 vs 1 and competitive. No reason to go completely linear in a social MP game. In this package would be all the tempo and tutors meant only to assemble the combo and then protect it..
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As for "No reason to go completely linear", I feel like that issue has already been settled when the general was selected. Oona demands a linear deck. You can make the deck less about Oona, but then you're just making a blue/black millstone deck. The fact that Oona also mills is more coincidence than actively helpful, since you're not trying to use her for milling. (If you were, you'd just immediately win the game.) Why build an EDH deck that doesn't use the general?