Guten tag. I was able to play a few games with Memnarch on Friday, and they were pretty good games. But I had an observation to share. I recently shifted my Memnarch list back to a big mana focus with the artifact-centric theme and I cut Arcum Dagsson. It wasn't consistently drawn, didn't do anything when I had it in hand (I didn't have any dorks to sac to it) and I found that including him as a singleton isn't the best strategy. Since Arcum is so powerful, however, I feel like it might be worthwhile to revisit in the future.
Can Arcum be incorporated into a decklist that doesn't use it as a general? What are your thoughts regarding this matter? I know that for my particular configuration of Memnarch, I'm getting it tuned to where it needs to be now, settling into the mono-blue hierarchy as a big-mana/control deck whereas Azami and Arcum are control/combo and combo/stax, respectively.
Hey! I was wondering if you have pimped your deck out at all. If you have, could you post some pictures please?
Have not myself, sorry. Maybe someone else in the thread like mrjumbo can post some pictures or send you a PM? Personally I don't really invest much time or money into foiling or custom art or anything like that, I play too many formats (Legacy, Modern, EDH) in too many places (geographic places, as I travel around the US a lot, and also online places, MTGO and Cockatrice) to pimp out one specific decklist in one particular location, even if it is one of my favorites. Like just not too long ago I had to use a proxy stack of my Arcum list for some games with a friend in Illinois because I left my real stack hidden safely back at my place in New York before I traveled...that kind of thing.
Not that I don't appreciate the pimping process, I've seen some really beautiful customs and generally admire decks into which people put a lot of artistic effort (getting it all foiled out, or signed, or custom or whatever else), it's just not suitable for my particular lifestyle at this point.
Guten tag. I was able to play a few games with Memnarch on Friday, and they were pretty good games. But I had an observation to share. I recently shifted my Memnarch list back to a big mana focus with the artifact-centric theme and I cut Arcum Dagsson. It wasn't consistently drawn, didn't do anything when I had it in hand (I didn't have any dorks to sac to it) and I found that including him as a singleton isn't the best strategy. Since Arcum is so powerful, however, I feel like it might be worthwhile to revisit in the future.
Can Arcum be incorporated into a decklist that doesn't use it as a general? What are your thoughts regarding this matter? I know that for my particular configuration of Memnarch, I'm getting it tuned to where it needs to be now, settling into the mono-blue hierarchy as a big-mana/control deck whereas Azami and Arcum are control/combo and combo/stax, respectively.
I've seen Arcum used to great effect in Esper decks focused more on artifact creatures like Sydri, Galvanic Genius. She can turn almost anything in the deck into fodder to sac to Arcum. His utility definitely makes him a valuable inclusion there, especially if you are looking to win through combo. Also, any deck that makes extensive use of either of the Tezzeret planeswalkers, as well as any deck that uses March of the Machines can definitely make good use of Arcum even as a one of. Unfortunately, because of the restriction on what he can sac in order to activate his ability, Arcum is really best put into a deck either as part of a package built just for him, or having the entire deck built around him.
Can Arcum be incorporated into a decklist that doesn't use it as a general? What are your thoughts regarding this matter? I know that for my particular configuration of Memnarch, I'm getting it tuned to where it needs to be now, settling into the mono-blue hierarchy as a big-mana/control deck whereas Azami and Arcum are control/combo and combo/stax, respectively.
Firstly I'm glad to hear you're finding a place for Memnarch as a deck; ultimately I was unable to, which is why like I said I long ago retired my Memnarch list and built Azami and Arcum lists in its place, they just felt more streamlined to me. But it's clear you're more passionate about Memnarch, the card, than I was back then and I wholly respect that, so kudos to you for forging your own path.
Arcum, like a lot of other competitive commanders, has a fantastic ability to build around, and EDH naturally lends itself to building around a single card by giving you access to that single card all the time in your command zone and giving you 99 other slots for singletons. Also like a lot of other competitive commanders, when the ability ISN'T built around, it's mediocre at best. So, you can put him in the 99 and make him work, but you'd still have to build around him, meaning you'd need to commit a lot of other slots in your 99 exclusively to making him function consistently, and at that point you're probably better off putting him in the command zone and building around him the regular way.
That's not to say you can't put Arcum in the 99, I'm sure there are many people out there who find a use for him in some list or another and sephos gave some good examples, but as a product of the fact that he works better when he's built around, there's a natural incentive when he's in the 99 to build around him more and more to minimize those situations where you've got nothing on the board to activate him, because his ability is SO powerful and you want it to go off consistently...until finally you build around him so much that the deck is basically an Arcum deck.
Again, this is true of many competitive commanders, not just Arcum. Same story for Zur, Brago, Narset, Derevi, Prossh, and many others, even Azami to an extent though less so because wizards are so easy to come by (many U creatures who are totally good in their own right just happen to be wizards). Top tier commanders, mediocre 99's unless they're built around at which point they're basically the commander anyway.
Not that it truly matters much but Hedron Crawler came from Oath of the Gatewatch rather than Battle for Zendikar (regarding your update post at the top of the Primer).
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: -UBG Lantern Control-GW or RG or R Tron - G Stompy - C KCI Combo-
EDH: -UG Ezuri-UGZegana-BRMogis-WUBRGRamos-WBREdgar-URLocust God-WUBRBreya-BMacar-WUBrago-WEvra-
Not that it truly matters much but Hedron Crawler came from Oath of the Gatewatch rather than Battle for Zendikar (regarding your update post at the top of the Primer).
You're absolutely correct; pretty sure in my head at the time I was probably thinking "Battle for Zendikar block" rather than the set within that block. With rare exception the decklist is updated about once every block, or if we're unlucky once every 2-3 blocks, because the only thing Arcum really cares about are artifacts and super-strong mono-U control spells, and it's not often a new block comes out with any of those. So I always tend to think of updates coming in blocks rather than sets (for this deck, at least).
Speaking of, with Shadows (or at least, Shadows set, obviously not the block) fully spoiled at this point, I can't see anything worth including. The "Clue" mechanic is interesting, the clues themselves are artifact tokens with "2, sac this: Draw a card," so with our plethora of artifact-manipulators it might be possible for us to abuse them if we had some way to create them efficiently, but as of this first set all the ways to produce Clues are far too slow or ineffective for any sort of competitive-level breakage.
Hi, just found this thread linked from another site, I have played Arcum for a long time and our lists are mostly similar. (I post on the source with mrJumbo)
--- Removed ---
Svyelunite Temple
Gemstone Caverns
3 Island
Epochrasite
Lodestone
Master Transmuter
Revoker
Sage of Lat-Nam
Steel Hellkite
Artificer's Intuition
Defense Grid
Expedition Map
Guardian Idol
Mindslaver
Mox Opal
Oblivion Stone
Skullclamp
Smokestack
Sphere of Resistance
Staff of Nin
Thorn of Amethyst
Uba Mask
Vedalken Shackles
Winter Orb
----------
Some thoughts:
Svyelunite Temple is something I haven't tried, I imagine that it's okay but I wanted to avoid CIPT lands.
I agree with your reasoning for not playing Mox Diamond but then following that same logic it doesn't make sense to me that you play Gemstone Cavern AND Lotus Petal but not Mox Opal.
Sea Gate Wreckage has been pretty good for me, I think you should consider it.
I agree that if you're soft-locking someone with crucible then Strip is better than Waste (obviously), but in that case you still want to maximise your chances of drawing Strip/Waste.
Phyrexia's Core is probably the weakest colourless land but a couple of times it's been great for returning Spine (or more likely copies of spine) and for EOT sacrificing stax pieces so I can untap and go off. (One time Zedruu donated me a steel golem and I ate it, EDH is great).
I don't have any more reasons to recommend Expedition Map that haven't already been suggested, but I think the card is excellent.
In terms of protection/disruption I would rather play spheres (Lodestone/Sphere/Thorn/Orb/Grid) than counterspells. Many turns the Arcum deck only casts 0-1 spell, other decks often plan to cast many more, making the effect of the spheres asymmetric. It also breaks the symmetry of defense grid when you take all your counterspells out. Playing counters with spheres is a bit of a nonbo so you have to really pick one or the other but I have been happy with this configuration for quite a while. (Same logic applies for including Uba mask)
I agree with your initial assessment of Smokestack on an early page of this thread that it takes too long to come online if you aren't taxing your opponents mana - but my build has the spheres so it becomes much more appealing.
I consider Power Artifact, Clock of Omens, Unwinding Clock, Dross Scorpion, and Staff Of Domination to be 'combo clunk' and I don't play them for basically the same reasons that you dismissed Prototype Portal and Mirrorworks. Power Artifact is unsearchable and only goes with 2 cards to give infinite mana. You still need a third card to win the game with. Likewise, if you don't already have infinite mana, Staff sucks. If you have infinite mana by Rings/Monolith you can win the game with Top. I would play Staff if Metalworker was searchable.
It seems like Unwinding Clock and Dross Scorpion are mainly included to sustain Possessed Portal. Turbine and Crucible have always been enough for me in that regard. You don't have to keep Portal forever, just enough that you get ahead and then let it die. I can't see these 2 cards pulling their weight doing anything else either (Scorpion is a really fun card when you tinker for lattice but I think that's a bit win-more).
Clock of Omens is super fun and can be good in some situations but I think most of those are when you are already ahead. (I would be happy to be wrong here because I love this card).
I have no Torpor Orb, Null Brooch, or Ensnaring Bridge, but I have Oblivion Stone and Revoker as disruption instead. On the surface it seems that this is the kind of thing that would be a 'meta call' but I can't imagine ever cutting either of my 2, so I'm curious how strongly you feel about these 3 cards on your end.
Myr Sire vs Epochrasite isn't something I have a very strong opinion on, it might be correct to play both, or neither. Likewise I think Guardian Idol is good enough but it's not an exciting card. Karn is on my 'next thing to try' list.
I think Artificer's Intuition is very strong. I already thought it was good (Ring/Crypt are the best cards, you have plenty of utility with Needle, Map, Top, Key) but now Hangarback Walker makes it even better. I understand your concern about loss of card advantage, but Hangarback can make up for this and I also play Skullclamp. If you have Arcum online you would rather sac your Myrs to him instead but I find this card is an excellent 'plan B' if he dies a bunch of times or you have extra 1/1s.
I've never wanted the redundancy of a 2nd shoes effect.
I think Gilded Lotus is too clunky, anytime you are casting it I think you would pretty much always want it to be a card that actually does something and I can't imagine a situation where you would want to tinker it out (you mentioned the counterspell example which seems like a corner case). Is there a particular reason why you play this card and not Thran Dynamo? (I don't think you need either of them but it would help me to understand the reason for its inclusion).
Sage of Lat-Nam is a pretty minor effect but I have found it to be quite good. You have many artifacts which you don't care about at various points in the game so it often feels like a 2 mana phyrexian arena, and sometimes you get the additional utility of killing your own lockpiece or returning a Spine.
Steel Hellkite has been underwhelming for me. Master Transmuter and Shackles are recent additions so they haven't come up often enough for me to comment on them. I've been playing Mindslaver forever and it seems like a card that would be so good in this deck. Sometimes it does steal games that you just have no business winning but I don't know if it really comes up enough to be worth playing. I guess it's one of my pet cards lol.
Please excuse the wall of text. I think you have a good thread and we seem to have pretty similar ideas about how the deck plays out so I'm keen to hear your (or anyone else) comments.
Hi, just found this thread linked from another site, I have played Arcum for a long time and our lists are mostly similar. (I post on the source with mrJumbo) Hi, welcome, thanks for posting here, always appreciate the discussion! Can you link or PM the thread you're referring to over on the source? I try to keep in touch with Arcum discussion everywhere.
Svyelunite Temple is something I haven't tried, I imagine that it's okay but I wanted to avoid CIPT lands. Respect. Like you said, it's just okay, not gamebreaking; I think it's worth replacing an Island for, but I can easily see the argument for the other side. I really think this one boils down to personal preference.
I agree with your reasoning for not playing Mox Diamond but then following that same logic it doesn't make sense to me that you play Gemstone Cavern AND Lotus Petal but not Mox Opal. The logic behind not running Diamond is different from the logic of not running Opal. For Diamond, it's that I feel the card disadvantage is too fragile with our stax subtheme (but the effect is powerful enough that some people, including I think mrjumbo, run it anyway). For Opal, it's that we can't reliably hit metalcraft T1-2, the turns when we'd really need opal, unless the opening play is something already full of fast mana. I find Cavern a little more acceptable because it lets you give up anything, unlike Diamond which specifies a land, and unlike Diamond it's not completely useless if you don't/can't pay its special cost, it just produces colorless instead. Lotus Petal meanwhile has no disadvantage whatsoever, it's just a 1-shot rock like Mana Vault.
Sea Gate Wreckage has been pretty good for me, I think you should consider it. Will have to playtest it. 4 (3 + T) to draw a card with 0 in hand seems a little steep to me.
I agree that if you're soft-locking someone with crucible then Strip is better than Waste (obviously), but in that case you still want to maximise your chances of drawing Strip/Waste. Recently I've been thinking the same thing. I probably will cut an island for Wasteland at some point. I was probably used to playing against Azamis and Arcanises and other mono-colors too much, but over the last couple years the competitive scene has definitely diversified in color that I think it's a long-outdated sentiment on my part.
Phyrexia's Core is probably the weakest colourless land but a couple of times it's been great for returning Spine (or more likely copies of spine) and for EOT sacrificing stax pieces so I can untap and go off. (One time Zedruu donated me a steel golem and I ate it, EDH is great). Probably makes a little more sense for you since you run more orb effects mainboard than I do, but even then I'd have to seriously doubt whether such a corner-case effect is worth the loss of blue mana.
I don't have any more reasons to recommend Expedition Map that haven't already been suggested, but I think the card is excellent. It's definitely strong, but I'd like to see a few more superstrong lands worth fetching before I include a tutor that can only fetch lands...or another one, anyway, after Tolaria West which I already find myself rarely ever using as it is.
In terms of protection/disruption I would rather play spheres (Lodestone/Sphere/Thorn/Orb/Grid) than counterspells. Many turns the Arcum deck only casts 0-1 spell, other decks often plan to cast many more, making the effect of the spheres asymmetric. It also breaks the symmetry of defense grid when you take all your counterspells out. Playing counters with spheres is a bit of a nonbo so you have to really pick one or the other but I have been happy with this configuration for quite a while. (Same logic applies for including Uba mask) I can understand your sentiment here. Speaking purely from an efficiency/symmetry perspective, you're right that we can almost always play the orb game better than other decks, because we naturally cast fewer spells, and the orbs are all artifacts so they synergize with everything we've got. That said, they're also highly predictable, some decks can play around them really well, particularly if they don't come out super-early, and they can't be used defensively in the same way you can counter that removal aimed at Arcum or a key combo piece. Counterspells are always useful, every game, early or late--at worst, you run counterspells to counter your opponents' counterspells. Not that that makes the orbs bad, but countermagic is arguably the strongest mechanic in the entirety of MTG, and I don't really think it's worth giving up.
I agree with your initial assessment of Smokestack on an early page of this thread that it takes too long to come online if you aren't taxing your opponents mana - but my build has the spheres so it becomes much more appealing. That's fair. If you're running all the orbs mainboard I can better see a smokestack fitting in, because without heavy tax support saccing 1 permanent the next turn and 2 permanents the turn after just isn't that great...but even then smokestack needs to be something you hardcast T1-3. Once Arcum's out on T3+ there's so many better things you can tutor than smokestack, even simply Possessed Portal which is the same thing on steroids.
I consider Power Artifact, Clock of Omens, Unwinding Clock, Dross Scorpion, and Staff Of Domination to be 'combo clunk' and I don't play them for basically the same reasons that you dismissed Prototype Portal and Mirrorworks. Power Artifact is unsearchable and only goes with 2 cards to give infinite mana. You still need a third card to win the game with. Likewise, if you don't already have infinite mana, Staff sucks. If you have infinite mana by Rings/Monolith you can win the game with Top. I would play Staff if Metalworker was searchable. Now I have some beef. I strongly disagree with a number of these claims. PA is almost unsearchable (Muddle the Mixture is the only tutor for it), but no one can see it coming when you slap it on a monolith and there's your infinite mana, unlike just about every other combo in this deck which tend to be telegraphed. You're right that you need a 3rd card to win the game, namely Staff, but we've got every good artifact tutor in the game to get it, and even without going infinite you can still make crazy plays with infinite colorless that end up winning you the game anyway (or at least putting you in a dramatic lead). Staff, even by itself you can still make use of its "3: Untap Arcum" ability, and the fact that it works at instant speed (unlike Top, which only combos off at sorcery speed) makes the rings/monolith/x engine MUCH more resilient to removal as you can just keep comboing off in response to anything but Krosan Grip or one of the other few cards that freeze the stack, meanwhile literally any instant-speed artifact removal can thwart Rings/Monolith/Top. Lastly, we do have 4 tutors for Metalworker, so while I wouldn't say he shows up "consistently" he does show up enough that worker/staff isn't really as uncommon as you might think.
It seems like Unwinding Clock and Dross Scorpion are mainly included to sustain Possessed Portal. Turbine and Crucible have always been enough for me in that regard. You don't have to keep Portal forever, just enough that you get ahead and then let it die. I can't see these 2 cards pulling their weight doing anything else either (Scorpion is a really fun card when you tinker for lattice but I think that's a bit win-more). Dross Scorpion is a pretty general tempo machine; between saccing dorks to Arcum, to Kuldotha Forgemaster, to other tutors like Reshape/Xmute Artifact, there's a lot of critters dying, and in fact with dorks like Junk Diver and Myr Retriever we actually rely on it. So, Scorpion is himself another dork that adds raw tempo value to all the deaths already happening on our side of the board. Untap those Mana Vaults, monoliths, and other rocks for more mana, untap Myr Turbine for more fodder, untap Null Brooch for more countermagic, untap Kuldotha Forgemaster to win the game. The fact that he happens to also form a hardlock with Portal and Turbine is actually just a coincidence. Unwinding Clock follows the same logic, it's a general value engine (probably more for me than for you since you don't run counterspells) that happens to also be a lock piece.
Clock of Omens is super fun and can be good in some situations but I think most of those are when you are already ahead. (I would be happy to be wrong here because I love this card). I used to think it was win-more too, but a while ago I changed my mind. Without Mycosynth Lattice it's a tempo machine like Scorpion or Unwinding, giving a great boost to our economy. With Lattice, though, once Arcum is an artifact, it gives such a massive tempo boost that it wins the game all on its own, basically like a Time Stretch. You can literally have a T3-5 board like: a few lands, Arcum, boots on Arcum, Turbine, and 2-4 dorks/tokens...nothing very threatening, and a very common board state for us around that point; cast Clock of Omens, fetch Lattice with Arcum, and assemble the entire Rings/Monolith/Staff combo (or forge/disk) that same exact turn, completely out of nowhere, completely at instant speed (once again, they can't respond except with stack-freezers).
I have no Torpor Orb, Null Brooch, or Ensnaring Bridge, but I have Oblivion Stone and Revoker as disruption instead. On the surface it seems that this is the kind of thing that would be a 'meta call' but I can't imagine ever cutting either of my 2, so I'm curious how strongly you feel about these 3 cards on your end. All meta calls, but as "silver bullets" go, Torpor Orb and Bridge are by far the most widely applicable. Torpor Orb hoses: Sharuum, Animar, Brago, Roon, TAN shenanigans, DEN shenanigans, many Reanimator shenanigans (Kederekt Leviathan and similar), Palinchron shenanigans, plus a bunch of general goodstuff like Aura Shards and Eternal Witness. Ensnaring Bridge hoses: Narset, Derevi, Brago, Zur, Edric, Alesha, Kaalia, any aggro/voltron commander (Skittles etc.), any token swarm commander (Krenko etc.), plus general goodstuff like Trygon Predator and Steel Hellkite. For me having a reusable, untappable, instant-speed tutorable Negate-on-a-stick in the form of Null Brooch that also activates bridge is nice, but since you run neither bridge nor any countermagic I can imagine you wouldn't touch it. Phyrexian Revoker is a good card but I've seen it Bribery'd out against the deck using it one too many times. O-Stone is quality mass removal, but I just use disk for that when I need it, that's just a matter of preference.
Myr Sire vs Epochrasite isn't something I have a very strong opinion on, it might be correct to play both, or neither. Likewise I think Guardian Idol is good enough but it's not an exciting card. Karn is on my 'next thing to try' list. All a matter of preference. Lately I've been preferring Sire over Epochrasite, I've never preferred Guardian Idol, and some people really hate Karn for his steep 5cmc (even I regularly question whether Karn is actually worth it, every time a new card comes out I consider including I'm always like "Maybe it's time to cut Karn?") but I usually feel 5cmc isn't so bad when it's all colorless and he's got an ability that's worth it.
I think Artificer's Intuition is very strong. I already thought it was good (Ring/Crypt are the best cards, you have plenty of utility with Needle, Map, Top, Key) but now Hangarback Walker makes it even better. I understand your concern about loss of card advantage, but Hangarback can make up for this and I also play Skullclamp. If you have Arcum online you would rather sac your Myrs to him instead but I find this card is an excellent 'plan B' if he dies a bunch of times or you have extra 1/1s. My issue with it isn't as much the disadvantage (it's actually advantage-neutral, you lose a card and gain a card) it's that it's an enchantment. For obvious reasons I really dislike enchantments in this deck, the only two I run (Copy Artifact and Power Artifact) are both really good, and an enchantment tutor that can fetch Top, Key, Needle I'm not sure is worth it. But you do have a point, maybe with Hangarback Walker it deserves some more playtesting.
I've never wanted the redundancy of a 2nd shoes effect. Why? Both shoes are amazing. They're the two best "keep this guy safe" artifacts in the entire game, and safe Arcum = game won, the haste is gravy. Greaves equips for 0 which makes them super easy to slap on Arcum the turn he hits the board to take advantage of the haste, Boots are a little harder with their equip cost of 1 but they also allow Arcum untaps with Thousand-Year Elixir/Minamo/Staff as well as enable the kind of instant-speed Lattice/Omens victories I talked about earlier.
I think Gilded Lotus is too clunky, anytime you are casting it I think you would pretty much always want it to be a card that actually does something and I can't imagine a situation where you would want to tinker it out (you mentioned the counterspell example which seems like a corner case). Is there a particular reason why you play this card and not Thran Dynamo? (I don't think you need either of them but it would help me to understand the reason for its inclusion). It turns high colorless yield, which we're good at making, into high blue yield, which we're not (but we need). As much as our deck is colorless, we need those blue symbols for draw and tutors (Reshape, Xmute Artifact, etc.), and me especially for the countermagic I run, as well as to land Arcum himself. Thran Dynamo churns out only more colorless, we've already got a million other things in this deck that can generate boatloads of colorless. Gilded Lotus lets you keep a hand like Island, Mishra's Workshop, Hall of the Bandit Lord, Lotus, and a bunch of other artifacts, which we'd otherwise never be able to keep because we absolutely can't roll out with just 1 blue symbol without risking mana screw, simply because Lotus single-handedly takes care of all your colored needs for the entire game. Like with Karn, Kuldotha, Turbine, etc. I don't really think the 5 colorless casting cost is so high in a deck like this one that runs so many colorless accelerators. The fact that it can be tutored out with Arcum at instant speed for UUU on demand is kinda just a happy coincidence.
Sage of Lat-Nam is a pretty minor effect but I have found it to be quite good. You have many artifacts which you don't care about at various points in the game so it often feels like a 2 mana phyrexian arena, and sometimes you get the additional utility of killing your own lockpiece or returning a Spine. He's not an artifact dork and that makes me very sad. :[ I don't run non-artifact dorks unless they're outstanding, like Trinket Mage-level good, otherwise they're probably better off having an OK effect and the artifact type (like Myr Retriever) than a great effect but no artifact type. I'll have to playtest it, I guess.
Steel Hellkite has been underwhelming for me. Master Transmuter and Shackles are recent additions so they haven't come up often enough for me to comment on them. I've been playing Mindslaver forever and it seems like a card that would be so good in this deck. Sometimes it does steal games that you just have no business winning but I don't know if it really comes up enough to be worth playing. I guess it's one of my pet cards lol. Hellkite is too aggroish, I'd rather shut down all aggro with a Bridge set to 0 and reap the full asymmetrical value, since we really don't need to swing with anything to win. Transmuter was my cut for Metalworker since they both served the purpose of "get that expensive thing out of your hand onto the board," and I'm not sure we run enough basic islands for Shackles (plus it always struck me as more of a MUC card, built for Azami more than us). Mindslaver is really, really good, my only qualm is that it only works on 1 player. I think I mentioned it on the previous page of this thread, or maybe 2 pages ago, if I'm playing in a 1v1 situation I'd happily pull out a silver bullet for Mindslaver because it really does win the game all on its own, but in a multiplayer environment all too often you use it to shut down 1 player but there's just 2+ more players waiting to combo off next turn.
Please excuse the wall of text. I think you have a good thread and we seem to have pretty similar ideas about how the deck plays out so I'm keen to hear your (or anyone else) comments. I don't mind the wall of text--as you can see, I tend to write a lot too, and I'm always open to hear other people's thoughts. Ultimately it sounds like your Arcum deck is a little different than mine, you focus a little less on combo and a little more on incremental efficiency with stax; I'm not sure I agree with that, but then my meta is undoubtedly different than yours, so if your deck wins games for you and you have a good time doing it, that's all that matters. I know mrjumbo runs a slightly different deck from mine also, if I'm remembering correctly I think his is even more front-end loaded with Mox Diamond and Opal and Guardian Idol and Mind Stone and even more rocks, and that works for him and his meta so it's all good. We're different players with different preferences in different metas, so naturally we'll be playing different decks, we don't always have to agree on everything.
Regarding your comments:
I never tinker up Smokestack, it's just meant to be another powerful 4 drop. If your opponents are trying for a long game and holding up removal all the time it can be very difficult to get an Arcum activation off, in which case I would rather look to have other threats rather than try to sculpt a hand with counterspells and greaves (I think if you want to play that game other generals are better at doing it).
To me it seems like you are overlooking how easy it is to interrupt the Rings/Monolith combo itself (regardless of whether you win with Top or Staff). If you have an untapped Monolith and Rings then you need 2 mana to start the combo. If I have Naturalize I will just wait until you have paid for the Rings trigger and then kill your Monolith with 2 untaps on the stack. If you still want to make infinite mana in response then you need 5 more mana to untap Monolith and pay for Rings again - a total of 7 mana plus untapped monolith to start. I don't think having such an amount of resources available is common enough for this to be an argument in favour of having staff as an alternative to top.
I don't consider Steel Hellkite as an aggro card (although you can use it as an outlet for infinite mana with the firebreathing ability and win that way) nor is it just for 'shutting down aggro', it's a 1-sided repeatable engineered explosives. It can kill artifacts, enchantments, and creatures that don't need to attack to be good. (Although if you have Bridge in your deck it might be harder to attack with it, which is a fair comment). My only problem with it is that 6 mana is a lot and it's annoying when it gets Bribery-d.
I am also concerned we don't have enough islands for Shackles but the card is so good that I wanted to try it.
Artificer's Intuition is card disadvantage because even though it sets up 1-for-1s the card itself does nothing (in the same way that Careful Study is card disadvantage). You can use the tutors to recover advantage later but this can be a bit slow. The reason why you dislike enchantments is actually not obvious and I am wondering if you can elaborate further.
In your discussion about Clock when you say "You can literally have a T3-5 board like: a few lands, Arcum, boots on Arcum, Turbine, and 2-4 dorks/tokens...nothing very threatening" that's like the ideal, perfect board (Turn 3-5 you have all of that? holy *****) and is threatening as ****. In a majority of games you could just tinker for PPortal in this situation and that would be enough to win the game by itself. Now instead imagine that you had all of that stuff and no Arcum; you would much rather Clock be a Smokestack or a Shackles or a card that does something on its own without needing some kind of super-board to work with.
I realise that Null Brooch works pretty well with Unwinding Clock, which is quite funny but I don't imagine it comes up very often.
Have you ever considered playing Engineered Explosives? It's not terrible for 0 or 1 and with the new rules change you can swap some Islands for like City of Brass to make extra colours. Or Ratchet Bomb, Powder Keg. Generally the hardest games are the ones where your opponents have Ring/Crypt and you don't and I would like some card that can disrupt these starts fairly early while still being useful in a longer game.
While I don't have the time or the desire to address each of your points individually, I would like to simply address your post, as well as the card choices you have made, in a more general manner. It seems to me that many of the cards that you have chosen to include are there in order to accumulate value over several turns. While those cards are incredibly powerful for the reasons that you have stated, from following this post and list for a while, the entire point of TrueNub's list is speed. While a smokestack is a powerful stax effect, it works slowly, only hitting each player on their upkeep, so it won't create the full stop effect that Possessed Portal does. You may say that we could play both, but the power of Arcum is that we can grab whatever answers we want. While I don't play this exact list, I often land Arcum turn 2-3, and am able to tap him that turn for a tutor. This can lead to wins the same turn, or if I didn't keep many pieces in my opener, probably a turn later. The one thing you said that I specifically want to address is what you said about the Rings/Monolith combo. While it is true that it dies to instant speed artifact destruction, it is incredibly uncommon that my opponents have some, with mana open, on turn 2-4. This may not be the case in your playgroup, but I find that most of the time the only players with mana open so early are the people playing counters. Also, most of the time, people in my playgroup use repeatable artifact/enchantment destruction as opposed to the cheaper 1-use options (Krosan Grip excepted). Additionally, if my opponent has mana open, I will always be more cautious with what I put on the table.
While I don't have the time or the desire to address each of your points individually, I would like to simply address your post, as well as the card choices you have made, in a more general manner. It seems to me that many of the cards that you have chosen to include are there in order to accumulate value over several turns. While those cards are incredibly powerful for the reasons that you have stated, from following this post and list for a while, the entire point of TrueNub's list is speed. While a smokestack is a powerful stax effect, it works slowly, only hitting each player on their upkeep, so it won't create the full stop effect that Possessed Portal does. You may say that we could play both, but the power of Arcum is that we can grab whatever answers we want. While I don't play this exact list, I often land Arcum turn 2-3, and am able to tap him that turn for a tutor. This can lead to wins the same turn, or if I didn't keep many pieces in my opener, probably a turn later. The one thing you said that I specifically want to address is what you said about the Rings/Monolith combo. While it is true that it dies to instant speed artifact destruction, it is incredibly uncommon that my opponents have some, with mana open, on turn 2-4. This may not be the case in your playgroup, but I find that most of the time the only players with mana open so early are the people playing counters. Also, most of the time, people in my playgroup use repeatable artifact/enchantment destruction as opposed to the cheaper 1-use options (Krosan Grip excepted). Additionally, if my opponent has mana open, I will always be more cautious with what I put on the table.
As I said in the previous post, I never tutor for smokestack.
The point I was making about rings-monolith wasn't that the combo is bad, but that the suggestion of "play Staff so that when you win with Rings/Monolith you are immune to disruption" is most likely wrong.
If you are consistently able to play Arcum turn 2-3 with a haste enabler and have it resolve and live (ie your opponents have no disruption) then why aren't you just playing Hermit Druid? You only have to resolve a 2 mana creature, not a 4 mana one, you don't have to have any myr in play to get it to work - sure, you can't play Druid from your command zone but there are plenty of tutors for it. The reason why I like Arcum as a commander is that tinkering into a win is a very powerful linear strategy if your opponents let you do that, but Silver Myrs are still signets and you can play reasonable attrition game if you have to, unlike Hermit which has to dedicate so many slots to the combo that it when it gets disrupted it basically folds to any follow-up play.
The reason why hermit works as a balls-out strategy is because all you have to do is tap 1 creature. Nearly every card in the list is dedicated to either eliminating the opponent's disruption or getting druid into play. It's very difficult for arcum to play a similar game:
1. You have to play artifact dorks (and tinker targets) for your tinker to work so it's impossible to have the same density of interaction/combo redundancy
2. You're restricted to mono blue so you can't play reanimation or discard
One alternative, then, when faced with disruption is to not cast Arcum at the first opportunity and try to sculpt a hand/board where you can get it into play protected later. Again, if you think this is the strategy for winning commander games then you probably should choose a different commander, because decks packing higher levels of disruption are likely to have many more options for interacting with you (by virtue of not having a deck full of myrs and 6 drops) and also be able to exploit a draw-go game state by having more plays available at instant speed. Yes, if your opponent has mana open, you want to be cautious about what you put on the table; you don't want to cast Arcum for 4 mana and have it die when you've built your deck in such a way that it's the only threatening card you have. Smokestack is a card that you don't have to be cautious about putting on the table, you just cast it and it demands an answer. If they get rid of it then you still have Arcum, plus other cards that are scary (e.g. Steel Hellkite, Shackles).
You have to play a bunch of 2 drops that tap for mana (plus junk diver etc) so why not build the deck in a way that turns that into a pro rather than a con. You have so many permanents that things like smokestack and tangle wire become pretty abusable and with the amount of acceleration you can afford to think about playing powerful cards that cost 3,4+ mana as well as spheres.
I'm willing to accept that I might be wrong, that you can win more games with Arcum by either by building 'fast' or by buildng draw-go and trying to thread the needle with a protected activation, but to me it seems that if this is the case then it's correct to just play a completely different deck.
I think that in particular, perhaps Smokestack is the wrong card to be discussing, because it inherently works more slowly than some of the other lock pieces. I personally play Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, and Trinisphere, and frequently tutor for the first 2 in order to secure my board position after a fast start. Winter Orb is particularly good because it is fantastic even when I'm a bit behind. I understand that maybe your meta has much more disruption than mine, and so you want to diversify your threats. Most of the time, this is less of a problem for me, but I like to be able to recover when I do run into disruption. Personally, I don't play Hermit Druid for several reasons. First, the deck is incredibly boring, as well as being very fragile. If I encounter disruption as Arcum, I can probably rebuild. As druid, if someone has a RIP, a Leyline of the Void, a counter, a Grafdigger's Cage, or a Tormod's Crypt, I'm probably not going to win that game unless I started the game with more than one tutor in hand. Second, I enjoy the puzzle of getting Arcum to go off as early as possible. My tutor targets have lots of variance, and there are tons of combos in the deck, as opposed to maybe 3 in the Druid deck. Also, while this is my one extremely expensive deck, just the mana base for the Druid deck costs more than my version of this deck. Also, I hate green. Again, most of deckbuilding for casual Magic comes down to preference and meta, so I'm sure that your inclusions work well for you. My meta has very few fast combo decks, and so I try to make mine as quick and painless as possible so my playgroup will continue to play with me. Also, I have now played against Druid twice with a list very similar to this, and both times I was able to disrupt it either with a counter, or by capping off the combo pieces.
That said, I actually play 2 versions of this deck. My second list specifically play none of the cards in the first,and uses much more of a toolbox strategy. Most of the cards that you said you play in your list are pieces that I have included in that second list, the exceptions being the orbs, because that deck wants to play the long game. I agree that the cards work extremely well with Arcum, but probably don't have a place in a turbo-combo list.
I think that in particular, perhaps Smokestack is the wrong card to be discussing, because it inherently works more slowly than some of the other lock pieces. I personally play Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, and Trinisphere, and frequently tutor for the first 2 in order to secure my board position after a fast start. Winter Orb is particularly good because it is fantastic even when I'm a bit behind. I understand that maybe your meta has much more disruption than mine, and so you want to diversify your threats. Most of the time, this is less of a problem for me, but I like to be able to recover when I do run into disruption. Personally, I don't play Hermit Druid for several reasons. First, the deck is incredibly boring, as well as being very fragile. If I encounter disruption as Arcum, I can probably rebuild. As druid, if someone has a RIP, a Leyline of the Void, a counter, a Grafdigger's Cage, or a Tormod's Crypt, I'm probably not going to win that game unless I started the game with more than one tutor in hand. Second, I enjoy the puzzle of getting Arcum to go off as early as possible. My tutor targets have lots of variance, and there are tons of combos in the deck, as opposed to maybe 3 in the Druid deck. Also, while this is my one extremely expensive deck, just the mana base for the Druid deck costs more than my version of this deck. Also, I hate green. Again, most of deckbuilding for casual Magic comes down to preference and meta, so I'm sure that your inclusions work well for you. My meta has very few fast combo decks, and so I try to make mine as quick and painless as possible so my playgroup will continue to play with me. Also, I have now played against Druid twice with a list very similar to this, and both times I was able to disrupt it either with a counter, or by capping off the combo pieces.
That said, I actually play 2 versions of this deck. My second list specifically play none of the cards in the first,and uses much more of a toolbox strategy. Most of the cards that you said you play in your list are pieces that I have included in that second list, the exceptions being the orbs, because that deck wants to play the long game. I agree that the cards work extremely well with Arcum, but probably don't have a place in a turbo-combo list.
Hi Sephos, could you please post your competitive list of latest Arcum build?
Sorry I haven't been as active on this thread of late, been busy finishing the last few weeks of spring semester at my university. I'll get around to giving the thread an update and responding to some recent comments soon.
@ TheTrueNub - With the text of Winter Orb changed back to it's original form, will you change it to mainboard?
If I ever change Winter Orb to mainboard it won't be because of the new errata. It's stronger now, more akin to its big brother Static Orb, but its place as a specific kind of hoser hasn't changed, and with the ubiquity of nonland mana sources in Commander (dorks, mana rocks) I still think Static Orb is stronger here.
In summary I like the errata change, it's how Winter Orb was originally supposed to work and re-enables the infamous Winter Orb/Icy Manipulator shenanigan from Magic's history, but I don't think it's particularly revolutionary. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll amount to a bigger change than I think, but as of right now I'm a little skeptical.
@TrueNub Have you ever tried out Mirror Universe or Invoke Prejudice?
Can't say I've tried them, but I'm not particularly sure how you see them working in this deck. Life totals for all practical purposes don't matter in competitive EDH where infinite combos are the name of the game, so I can't see how switching your life total with someone would ever be helpful, particularly if you can only do it during your upkeep (and it costs a whopping 6 to do so). Invoke Prejudice is stronger, but as an enchantment synergizes with absolutely nothing in this deck, nor can it be tutored for--and in competitive EDH where so many of the strongest commanders are mono-U or U-based, a lot of our opponents won't even be affected by it.
Also, why do you consider Thran Dynamo to be suboptimal to Gilded Lotus? Doesn't dynamo (theoretically)come out a turn earlier, which makes Arcum be active one turn earlier as well? Also, the only color this deck runs is blue, so the colored mana from lotus shouldn't be TOO critical to the deck.
@ TheTrueNub - Thanks for the reply. On another note, if you were facing off with a Sharuum the Hegemon combo player with a mix of another aggro and stax player, what cards would you sub out from the main deck for Grafdigger's Cage, Mindslaver and Jester's Cap? Thanks in advance.
What are your thoughts on adding wraths such as all is dust and the blue edh STAPLE cyclonic rift?
If you like, and I think I mention this in the primer, you can run fewer hoser artifacts (for example Ensnaring Bridge) and a larger traditional U-control package: more counterspells, more card draw, generic control goodstuff like Cyclonic Rift, Hurkyl's Recall, Capsize, Mystical Tutor, other blue staples, and you might include All is Dust in that package as well.
And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that Arcum variant, but it's a tradeoff: you give up the maximum deck synergy of artifact-based solutions in exchange for more diversity and resilience to artifact hate. Consider, as an example, Oblivion Stone vs All is Dust--they both serve roughly the same purpose (board sweep), and you'd rarely if ever want to run both in this deck, particularly with Nev's Disk already in there as a combo piece. Oblivion Stone is an artifact and therefore clicks with literally everything: easily tutorable with Arcum or any of the other tutors; powers Clock of Omens and Metalworker; food for Forgemaster or Transmute Artifact or Reshape; untaps multiple times per turn with Voltaic Key, Unwinding Clock, or Dross Scorpion; and so on, and so on. But, if your opponent drops a Null Rod, Stony Silence or some other artifact hoser, Oblivion Stone becomes a brick, it won't help you get rid of it--that's where you'd be much better off with All is Dust or some other spell-based solution, which you won't be able to tutor out as consistently but will always be able to use when you do get a hold of it, even to get rid of those things artifacts just can't.
So which is better, Oblivion Stone or All is Dust? It really depends on your particular preferences and meta, and the same can be said for the whole "blue control answers vs. artifact answers" question in general. My particular list focuses on artifact answers rather than blue control answers because I feel that a) it's more Arcum's "signature" style, everyone is familiar with mono-U control cards but they might not be as familiar with artifact-based hosers, and it's easy to switch out the artifact hosers for their favorite blue control spells as they wish; and b) if I didn't know what meta I was going into, I'd use the artifact hosers rather than the mono-U control suite, because I think the artifact hosers make for a little bit stronger and faster deck overall unless you're going up against a really vicious amount of artifact hate.
Also, why do you consider Thran Dynamo to be suboptimal to Gilded Lotus? Doesn't dynamo (theoretically)come out a turn earlier, which makes Arcum be active one turn earlier as well? Also, the only color this deck runs is blue, so the colored mana from lotus shouldn't be TOO critical to the deck.
Arcum is CMC4, so neither Thran Dynamo nor Gilded Lotus are good for ramping into him. You shouldn't be using either one of them for that purpose. If you already have 4 mana to cast Dynamo or 5 to cast Lotus, you should be casting Arcum instead if you haven't done so already.
If you have 4 or 5 mana and you can't cast Arcum, it's usually because you don't have that U. And that's the real purpose of Lotus: it's to help you meet your colored needs when you're drowning in colorless. Between all our dorks, rocks, Metalworker, and lands, we can very easily generate obscene amounts of colorless mana--and by the same token we can also very easily get mana-screwed out of blue if we're not careful. And we can't afford that to happen, as there's still lots of crucially important spells that need those precious blue mana symbols, like tutors, draw, countermagic, and Arcum himself.
In short, you really shouldn't ever be hardcasting a card like Gilded Lotus or Thran Dynamo at all unless you're already drowning in colorless mana, and if you're drowning in colorless mana the exact thing you want is UUU, not Thran Dynamo's 3.
The ability to tap Arcum for UUU on-demand is also cute, but just icing.
@ TheTrueNub - Thanks for the reply. On another note, if you were facing off with a Sharuum the Hegemon combo player with a mix of another aggro and stax player, what cards would you sub out from the main deck for Grafdigger's Cage, Mindslaver and Jester's Cap? Thanks in advance.
That's a good question. Diverse tables like that one where you've got combo, grave, stax, aggro in the same round can be tricky to make subs for.
You didn't mention who the aggro and stax commanders are so I don't have a complete picture, but you're sure you want Jester's Cap and Mindslaver? They're good, but significantly deadlier in 1v1 where they can single-handedly win the game if used right (or at multiplayer tables where there's only 1 other deadly opponent and the rest are pushovers). Grafdigger's Cage is definitely a good swap-in though, good thinking there, it shuts down Sharuum's signature combo and most stax decks employ some form of grave shenanigans too.
If I *had* to make those switches I'd pull out Null Brooch, Karn, and maybe Memory Jar? But if I went against that table myself I'd probably leave out Cap, swap in Grafdigger's Cage for Karn, and maybe also swap out Jar for 'Slaver if both Sharuum and the Stax player are heavily B-based and enjoy fetching their beloved Necropotence. But just switching in Cage alone would give you two resources (other is Torpor Orb) to turn off sharuum's combo and ruin stax-guy's recurring stuff, and you'd still have Ensnaring Bridge to shut down the aggro player and Null Brooch to negate everything (stax and sharuum will both be making you discard so you'll have an empty hand most of the time anyway).
Glad you clarified. Torpor Orb, Ensnaring Bridge, and Grafdigger's Cage will get you much mileage at that table if you can keep them out. Torpor shuts down sharuum's combo + derevi's ETB ability (+ a bunch of ETB goodstuff that all those decks probably run); Bridge with a hand of 0 = no combat damage which shuts down Yisan's beats and derevi's combat damage ability; lastly Cage also shuts down sharuum's combo AND blocks Yisan's ability (remember Cage locks both graves and libraries).
So you've got 3 solid silver bullets against them, that's the good news. Figure out which player is dominating the game and tutor the appropriate bullet. The bad news is, all that WG means you'll likely be facing a lot of artifact removal (bad news for Sharuum also), so you'll need to maintain the pressure and keep dropping new bombs when your old ones eat a Nature's Claim.
So after much discussion and feedback from friends and others I'm beginning to capitulate a little bit on certain things and think much harder about others. Several different players in diverse metas and geographic regions have described cards like Dross Scorpion and even Crucible of Worlds as not pulling their weight. I've also for a really long time disliked Karn, Silver Golem, the "sac all your lands" combo with Mycosynth Lattice is cute but never really comes up (it's only detailed in the primer because one should still be aware of it as a theoretical possibility, even though it only comes up in play so very rarely if ever).
Another two suggestions I've heard from more than a few people is 1) taking advantage of our mana dorks more and using them as broader assets than just mana ramp, for example by mainboarding in broad-spectrum pieces like Winter Orb to play a tougher parity game or by including Skullclamp to eat them for cards; and 2) in the same vein as the Skullclamp thing, adding more card draw and blue goodstuff in general to add overall consistency and deck smoothing, things like Mystic Remora, Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, and Mystical Tutor, which would then maybe even allow for Force of Will.
I realize this represents a divergence from some arguments I've made in the history of this thread, even the relatively recent history. But I do appreciate and seriously consider the feedback people give me, recognizing that I have only one set of experiences and the community consensus is stronger than my own singular opinions, and I don't consider myself above changing my mind--after all, as I like to remind people, there was a day early on back when I didn't run Clock of Omens and argued it was win-more, and it wasn't until users here on MTGS convinced me otherwise on page 2-3 of this thread that I started using it more, and now years later I regularly venerate it as one of our strongest cards.
I've also been thinking really hard about Chalice of the Void, taking a page out of my braids deck brainstorming. Besides the obvious fact that it's an artifact and therefore plugs in to every combo in the deck, when it's set to 0-1-2 it blanks a LOT of the strongest cards in the format, and Arcum's ability avoids it so we can still tutor things like Grafdigger's Cage onto the field when it's set to 1. My concern is that, set to 2, arguably its strongest setting, it also blanks a lot of things in *our* deck (most importantly our artifact dorks). But I can't shake the feeling that a play like T1 Island -> Sol Ring -> Chalice of the Void at X=1 would mangle a lot of enemy hands.
The biggest challenge moving forward will be deciding what to cut (besides the things I mentioned up top, Dross Scorpion + Karn + maybe Crucible) to possibly make all these changes happen.
The mark of a great person is to be able to consider that he/she is wrong or outmoded. My respect and appreciation. Of the things that you're considering, I feel that adding more card advantage will be the best way to steer the deck. Skullclamp in particular would be useful since I believe you are still using the myr turbine. A built in card advantage that allows more arum fodder and draw power that would otherwise not be prevalent. Either way, arcum is a scary deck to play against and this list is the one I refer people to when they are asking about me piloting Teferi or memnarch as my mono blue pilot as opposed to arcum. It totally comes down to preference for me.
So after much discussion and feedback from friends and others I'm beginning to capitulate a little bit on certain things and think much harder about others. Several different players in diverse metas and geographic regions have described cards like Dross Scorpion and even Crucible of Worlds as not pulling their weight. I've also for a really long time disliked Karn, Silver Golem, the "sac all your lands" combo with Mycosynth Lattice is cute but never really comes up (it's only detailed in the primer because one should still be aware of it as a theoretical possibility, even though it only comes up in play so very rarely if ever).
Another two suggestions I've heard from more than a few people is 1) taking advantage of our mana dorks more and using them as broader assets than just mana ramp, for example by mainboarding in broad-spectrum pieces like Winter Orb to play a tougher parity game or by including Skullclamp to eat them for cards; and 2) in the same vein as the Skullclamp thing, adding more card draw and blue goodstuff in general to add overall consistency and deck smoothing, things like Mystic Remora, Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, and Mystical Tutor, which would then maybe even allow for Force of Will.
I'm actually very happy that you've brought these up for discussion. I built a similar list independently of the Primer here and have been piloting it as my only EDH deck for over 3 years now. My meta has always been pretty tuned for competitive play with decks like Azami, Lady of Scrolls, Animar, Soul of the Elements, Sharuum the Hegemon, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and a really well tuned Prime Speaker Zegana list. I have tried really hard to streamline the deck in a meta full of control and other aggressive combo decks.
I'll put some comments after the cards in these two lists shortly with my thoughts behind all of them but essentially I want a larger blue presence in the deck than what you have in your list. Originally it was to support Force of Will so I had more options to play my general on curve but the card actually ended up being super lackluster for me. I think that, with smart play, this deck should be able to win off of 1 successful Arcum Dagsson activation.
Notable Inclusions: Twiddle, Tidal Bore
Both of these cards have been all-stars in this deck. I originally started testing them to increase the blue card count in my deck but found that they have serious applications. Twiddle has extended some game-winning Clock of Omens chains and Tidal Bore has pulled numerous wins out of nowhere. There are other cards that have similar effects but I believe that these two are the best. I would recommend against playing more of these types of effects since they're bad in multiples, but I have never once been disappointed with drawing one
Master Transmuter
I think that this card is situationally good and I'll often switch it out when there aren't many control decks at the table. That said, against counter and stax-heavy decks, this card allows you to aggressively play around many effects that you normally wouldn't be able to interact with. It's a slow creature but those games tend to take a bit longer.
Brainstorm, Anticipate, Impulse
I really like being able to filter draws in this deck as opposed to raw card advantage. Temporarily cutting out Master Transmuter and permanently cutting Copper Gnomes, Scarecrone, and Elixir of Immortality a while back showed me that there are some zones our deck just doesn't interact with as well as it used to, our hand being one of them. Brainstorm lets you filter unwanted cards back easily with the numerous shuffle effects in our deck and the fact that they're instant speed allows you to interact with other players more easily.
Notable Exclusions: Force of Will
Force of Will was always a blowout when it was played with a turn 3/4 Arcum cast but otherwise it was lackluster since the deck doesn't have many redundant effects to pitch it besides counterspells and card draw. It went dead in hand often, not because there wasn't enough blue to support it, but because our other options were always better.
Copy Artifact
It always just felt like a value include. I never thought that this deck had really great targets for it and it was normally just another Manakin or something. Still on the fence with this one but I never felt like it pulled it's weight.
Dross Scorpion
I always loved drawing this one in my opening hand as it would speed up the Possessed Portal lock up by a turn, but I never really wanted/needed this one otherwise. If I'm getting it with a tutor, I would just much rather have the more resilient Unwinding Clock
Mishra's Workshop
So this is actually purposely left out, not just because it costs as much as a car. I think that you can have crazy early-game blowouts with it, but just as often I have been stuck with it when I need my mana for other things. I think that it deserves an include but I'm not exactly sure where yet. It needs more testing on my part.
Karn, Silver Golem
I think it's a fun card but he's just too slow, too cute, and not easily tutorable. I don't think his combo is why we would want to play him and his activated ability to create more Arcum targets is a little too expensive.
Strip Mine, Wasteland
There are some lands that need to be answered in EDH. Gaea's Cradle and Cabal Coffers are prime targets but they're slow and we can normally either play faster than those decks are shut them down with Torpor Orb or Grafdigger's Cage. In games that need-to-answer lands start to take over, they're normally answered by other decks in my experience. On top of that, we don't have a consistent way to tutor them and I believe that our land-choices are a bit tight already.
Thirst for Knowledge
While this is one of the best raw card advantage spells out there, I don't like just drawing a ton of cards in our deck. We often don't interact with our hand as well as we do with the cards in our deck and I would almost always rather this card be an Impulse. I don't think it's bad though, just a personal preference.
Spine of Ish Sah
This is great when it's really necessary but Arcum triggers are precious when only 1 or 2 will win you the game. Since cutting it, there have been a couple times that I wanted it in the deck but they're few and far between. If we need to use an Arcum trigger to toolbox, I want it to create an unplayable board-state for a few players instead of answering one permanent. That said, I don't see Null Rod or Stony Silence much in my metagame and I can see how it would sometimes be necessary.
Memory Jar
I can see how this card can cause blowouts if you run out your hand and use Arcum to refill and drop a bunch of permanents. I think that other combo decks are faster than this deck and normally would get more out of this game plan. I think that Arcum triggers are just too valuable to be used like this instead of trying to set up a tutor-chain or putting other people out of the game.
Gilded Lotus
I was on board with this card back when Hinder and Spell Crumple did what we wanted it to. Being able to represent either of those back-breaking counterspells with Arcum was huge but it's just unnecessary now.
Can Arcum be incorporated into a decklist that doesn't use it as a general? What are your thoughts regarding this matter? I know that for my particular configuration of Memnarch, I'm getting it tuned to where it needs to be now, settling into the mono-blue hierarchy as a big-mana/control deck whereas Azami and Arcum are control/combo and combo/stax, respectively.
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Ah, I see... thanks again!
I've seen Arcum used to great effect in Esper decks focused more on artifact creatures like Sydri, Galvanic Genius. She can turn almost anything in the deck into fodder to sac to Arcum. His utility definitely makes him a valuable inclusion there, especially if you are looking to win through combo. Also, any deck that makes extensive use of either of the Tezzeret planeswalkers, as well as any deck that uses March of the Machines can definitely make good use of Arcum even as a one of. Unfortunately, because of the restriction on what he can sac in order to activate his ability, Arcum is really best put into a deck either as part of a package built just for him, or having the entire deck built around him.
Arcum, like a lot of other competitive commanders, has a fantastic ability to build around, and EDH naturally lends itself to building around a single card by giving you access to that single card all the time in your command zone and giving you 99 other slots for singletons. Also like a lot of other competitive commanders, when the ability ISN'T built around, it's mediocre at best. So, you can put him in the 99 and make him work, but you'd still have to build around him, meaning you'd need to commit a lot of other slots in your 99 exclusively to making him function consistently, and at that point you're probably better off putting him in the command zone and building around him the regular way.
That's not to say you can't put Arcum in the 99, I'm sure there are many people out there who find a use for him in some list or another and sephos gave some good examples, but as a product of the fact that he works better when he's built around, there's a natural incentive when he's in the 99 to build around him more and more to minimize those situations where you've got nothing on the board to activate him, because his ability is SO powerful and you want it to go off consistently...until finally you build around him so much that the deck is basically an Arcum deck.
Again, this is true of many competitive commanders, not just Arcum. Same story for Zur, Brago, Narset, Derevi, Prossh, and many others, even Azami to an extent though less so because wizards are so easy to come by (many U creatures who are totally good in their own right just happen to be wizards). Top tier commanders, mediocre 99's unless they're built around at which point they're basically the commander anyway.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
EDH: -UG Ezuri-UGZegana-BRMogis-WUBRGRamos-WBREdgar-URLocust God-WUBRBreya-BMacar-WUBrago-WEvra-
Speaking of, with Shadows (or at least, Shadows set, obviously not the block) fully spoiled at this point, I can't see anything worth including. The "Clue" mechanic is interesting, the clues themselves are artifact tokens with "2, sac this: Draw a card," so with our plethora of artifact-manipulators it might be possible for us to abuse them if we had some way to create them efficiently, but as of this first set all the ways to produce Clues are far too slow or ineffective for any sort of competitive-level breakage.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
--- Removed ---
Svyelunite Temple
Gemstone Caverns
3 Island
Dross Scorpion
Karn
Myr Sire
Counterspell
FoF
Muddle
Negate
Pact
Swansong
Thirst
Power Artifact
Clock of Omens
Ensnaring Bridge
Gilded Lotus
Lotus Petal
Null Brooch
Staff of Domination
Swiftfoot Boots
Torpor Orb
Unwinding Clock
--- Added ---
Wasteland
Sea Gate Wreckage
Darksteel Citadel
Phyrexia's Core
Epochrasite
Lodestone
Master Transmuter
Revoker
Sage of Lat-Nam
Steel Hellkite
Artificer's Intuition
Defense Grid
Expedition Map
Guardian Idol
Mindslaver
Mox Opal
Oblivion Stone
Skullclamp
Smokestack
Sphere of Resistance
Staff of Nin
Thorn of Amethyst
Uba Mask
Vedalken Shackles
Winter Orb
----------
Some thoughts:
Svyelunite Temple is something I haven't tried, I imagine that it's okay but I wanted to avoid CIPT lands.
I agree with your reasoning for not playing Mox Diamond but then following that same logic it doesn't make sense to me that you play Gemstone Cavern AND Lotus Petal but not Mox Opal.
Sea Gate Wreckage has been pretty good for me, I think you should consider it.
I agree that if you're soft-locking someone with crucible then Strip is better than Waste (obviously), but in that case you still want to maximise your chances of drawing Strip/Waste.
Phyrexia's Core is probably the weakest colourless land but a couple of times it's been great for returning Spine (or more likely copies of spine) and for EOT sacrificing stax pieces so I can untap and go off. (One time Zedruu donated me a steel golem and I ate it, EDH is great).
I don't have any more reasons to recommend Expedition Map that haven't already been suggested, but I think the card is excellent.
In terms of protection/disruption I would rather play spheres (Lodestone/Sphere/Thorn/Orb/Grid) than counterspells. Many turns the Arcum deck only casts 0-1 spell, other decks often plan to cast many more, making the effect of the spheres asymmetric. It also breaks the symmetry of defense grid when you take all your counterspells out. Playing counters with spheres is a bit of a nonbo so you have to really pick one or the other but I have been happy with this configuration for quite a while. (Same logic applies for including Uba mask)
I agree with your initial assessment of Smokestack on an early page of this thread that it takes too long to come online if you aren't taxing your opponents mana - but my build has the spheres so it becomes much more appealing.
I consider Power Artifact, Clock of Omens, Unwinding Clock, Dross Scorpion, and Staff Of Domination to be 'combo clunk' and I don't play them for basically the same reasons that you dismissed Prototype Portal and Mirrorworks. Power Artifact is unsearchable and only goes with 2 cards to give infinite mana. You still need a third card to win the game with. Likewise, if you don't already have infinite mana, Staff sucks. If you have infinite mana by Rings/Monolith you can win the game with Top. I would play Staff if Metalworker was searchable.
It seems like Unwinding Clock and Dross Scorpion are mainly included to sustain Possessed Portal. Turbine and Crucible have always been enough for me in that regard. You don't have to keep Portal forever, just enough that you get ahead and then let it die. I can't see these 2 cards pulling their weight doing anything else either (Scorpion is a really fun card when you tinker for lattice but I think that's a bit win-more).
Clock of Omens is super fun and can be good in some situations but I think most of those are when you are already ahead. (I would be happy to be wrong here because I love this card).
I have no Torpor Orb, Null Brooch, or Ensnaring Bridge, but I have Oblivion Stone and Revoker as disruption instead. On the surface it seems that this is the kind of thing that would be a 'meta call' but I can't imagine ever cutting either of my 2, so I'm curious how strongly you feel about these 3 cards on your end.
Myr Sire vs Epochrasite isn't something I have a very strong opinion on, it might be correct to play both, or neither. Likewise I think Guardian Idol is good enough but it's not an exciting card. Karn is on my 'next thing to try' list.
I think Artificer's Intuition is very strong. I already thought it was good (Ring/Crypt are the best cards, you have plenty of utility with Needle, Map, Top, Key) but now Hangarback Walker makes it even better. I understand your concern about loss of card advantage, but Hangarback can make up for this and I also play Skullclamp. If you have Arcum online you would rather sac your Myrs to him instead but I find this card is an excellent 'plan B' if he dies a bunch of times or you have extra 1/1s.
I've never wanted the redundancy of a 2nd shoes effect.
I think Gilded Lotus is too clunky, anytime you are casting it I think you would pretty much always want it to be a card that actually does something and I can't imagine a situation where you would want to tinker it out (you mentioned the counterspell example which seems like a corner case). Is there a particular reason why you play this card and not Thran Dynamo? (I don't think you need either of them but it would help me to understand the reason for its inclusion).
Sage of Lat-Nam is a pretty minor effect but I have found it to be quite good. You have many artifacts which you don't care about at various points in the game so it often feels like a 2 mana phyrexian arena, and sometimes you get the additional utility of killing your own lockpiece or returning a Spine.
Steel Hellkite has been underwhelming for me. Master Transmuter and Shackles are recent additions so they haven't come up often enough for me to comment on them. I've been playing Mindslaver forever and it seems like a card that would be so good in this deck. Sometimes it does steal games that you just have no business winning but I don't know if it really comes up enough to be worth playing. I guess it's one of my pet cards lol.
Please excuse the wall of text. I think you have a good thread and we seem to have pretty similar ideas about how the deck plays out so I'm keen to hear your (or anyone else) comments.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
The commander board on that site is pretty dead (it's almost meant exclusively for legacy) so there's no point checking it often.
Regarding your comments:
I never tinker up Smokestack, it's just meant to be another powerful 4 drop. If your opponents are trying for a long game and holding up removal all the time it can be very difficult to get an Arcum activation off, in which case I would rather look to have other threats rather than try to sculpt a hand with counterspells and greaves (I think if you want to play that game other generals are better at doing it).
To me it seems like you are overlooking how easy it is to interrupt the Rings/Monolith combo itself (regardless of whether you win with Top or Staff). If you have an untapped Monolith and Rings then you need 2 mana to start the combo. If I have Naturalize I will just wait until you have paid for the Rings trigger and then kill your Monolith with 2 untaps on the stack. If you still want to make infinite mana in response then you need 5 more mana to untap Monolith and pay for Rings again - a total of 7 mana plus untapped monolith to start. I don't think having such an amount of resources available is common enough for this to be an argument in favour of having staff as an alternative to top.
I don't consider Steel Hellkite as an aggro card (although you can use it as an outlet for infinite mana with the firebreathing ability and win that way) nor is it just for 'shutting down aggro', it's a 1-sided repeatable engineered explosives. It can kill artifacts, enchantments, and creatures that don't need to attack to be good. (Although if you have Bridge in your deck it might be harder to attack with it, which is a fair comment). My only problem with it is that 6 mana is a lot and it's annoying when it gets Bribery-d.
I am also concerned we don't have enough islands for Shackles but the card is so good that I wanted to try it.
Artificer's Intuition is card disadvantage because even though it sets up 1-for-1s the card itself does nothing (in the same way that Careful Study is card disadvantage). You can use the tutors to recover advantage later but this can be a bit slow. The reason why you dislike enchantments is actually not obvious and I am wondering if you can elaborate further.
In your discussion about Clock when you say "You can literally have a T3-5 board like: a few lands, Arcum, boots on Arcum, Turbine, and 2-4 dorks/tokens...nothing very threatening" that's like the ideal, perfect board (Turn 3-5 you have all of that? holy *****) and is threatening as ****. In a majority of games you could just tinker for PPortal in this situation and that would be enough to win the game by itself. Now instead imagine that you had all of that stuff and no Arcum; you would much rather Clock be a Smokestack or a Shackles or a card that does something on its own without needing some kind of super-board to work with.
I realise that Null Brooch works pretty well with Unwinding Clock, which is quite funny but I don't imagine it comes up very often.
Have you ever considered playing Engineered Explosives? It's not terrible for 0 or 1 and with the new rules change you can swap some Islands for like City of Brass to make extra colours. Or Ratchet Bomb, Powder Keg. Generally the hardest games are the ones where your opponents have Ring/Crypt and you don't and I would like some card that can disrupt these starts fairly early while still being useful in a longer game.
As I said in the previous post, I never tutor for smokestack.
The point I was making about rings-monolith wasn't that the combo is bad, but that the suggestion of "play Staff so that when you win with Rings/Monolith you are immune to disruption" is most likely wrong.
If you are consistently able to play Arcum turn 2-3 with a haste enabler and have it resolve and live (ie your opponents have no disruption) then why aren't you just playing Hermit Druid? You only have to resolve a 2 mana creature, not a 4 mana one, you don't have to have any myr in play to get it to work - sure, you can't play Druid from your command zone but there are plenty of tutors for it. The reason why I like Arcum as a commander is that tinkering into a win is a very powerful linear strategy if your opponents let you do that, but Silver Myrs are still signets and you can play reasonable attrition game if you have to, unlike Hermit which has to dedicate so many slots to the combo that it when it gets disrupted it basically folds to any follow-up play.
The reason why hermit works as a balls-out strategy is because all you have to do is tap 1 creature. Nearly every card in the list is dedicated to either eliminating the opponent's disruption or getting druid into play. It's very difficult for arcum to play a similar game:
1. You have to play artifact dorks (and tinker targets) for your tinker to work so it's impossible to have the same density of interaction/combo redundancy
2. You're restricted to mono blue so you can't play reanimation or discard
One alternative, then, when faced with disruption is to not cast Arcum at the first opportunity and try to sculpt a hand/board where you can get it into play protected later. Again, if you think this is the strategy for winning commander games then you probably should choose a different commander, because decks packing higher levels of disruption are likely to have many more options for interacting with you (by virtue of not having a deck full of myrs and 6 drops) and also be able to exploit a draw-go game state by having more plays available at instant speed. Yes, if your opponent has mana open, you want to be cautious about what you put on the table; you don't want to cast Arcum for 4 mana and have it die when you've built your deck in such a way that it's the only threatening card you have. Smokestack is a card that you don't have to be cautious about putting on the table, you just cast it and it demands an answer. If they get rid of it then you still have Arcum, plus other cards that are scary (e.g. Steel Hellkite, Shackles).
You have to play a bunch of 2 drops that tap for mana (plus junk diver etc) so why not build the deck in a way that turns that into a pro rather than a con. You have so many permanents that things like smokestack and tangle wire become pretty abusable and with the amount of acceleration you can afford to think about playing powerful cards that cost 3,4+ mana as well as spheres.
I'm willing to accept that I might be wrong, that you can win more games with Arcum by either by building 'fast' or by buildng draw-go and trying to thread the needle with a protected activation, but to me it seems that if this is the case then it's correct to just play a completely different deck.
That said, I actually play 2 versions of this deck. My second list specifically play none of the cards in the first,and uses much more of a toolbox strategy. Most of the cards that you said you play in your list are pieces that I have included in that second list, the exceptions being the orbs, because that deck wants to play the long game. I agree that the cards work extremely well with Arcum, but probably don't have a place in a turbo-combo list.
Hi Sephos, could you please post your competitive list of latest Arcum build?
If I ever change Winter Orb to mainboard it won't be because of the new errata. It's stronger now, more akin to its big brother Static Orb, but its place as a specific kind of hoser hasn't changed, and with the ubiquity of nonland mana sources in Commander (dorks, mana rocks) I still think Static Orb is stronger here.
In summary I like the errata change, it's how Winter Orb was originally supposed to work and re-enables the infamous Winter Orb/Icy Manipulator shenanigan from Magic's history, but I don't think it's particularly revolutionary. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll amount to a bigger change than I think, but as of right now I'm a little skeptical.
Can't say I've tried them, but I'm not particularly sure how you see them working in this deck. Life totals for all practical purposes don't matter in competitive EDH where infinite combos are the name of the game, so I can't see how switching your life total with someone would ever be helpful, particularly if you can only do it during your upkeep (and it costs a whopping 6 to do so). Invoke Prejudice is stronger, but as an enchantment synergizes with absolutely nothing in this deck, nor can it be tutored for--and in competitive EDH where so many of the strongest commanders are mono-U or U-based, a lot of our opponents won't even be affected by it.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that Arcum variant, but it's a tradeoff: you give up the maximum deck synergy of artifact-based solutions in exchange for more diversity and resilience to artifact hate. Consider, as an example, Oblivion Stone vs All is Dust--they both serve roughly the same purpose (board sweep), and you'd rarely if ever want to run both in this deck, particularly with Nev's Disk already in there as a combo piece. Oblivion Stone is an artifact and therefore clicks with literally everything: easily tutorable with Arcum or any of the other tutors; powers Clock of Omens and Metalworker; food for Forgemaster or Transmute Artifact or Reshape; untaps multiple times per turn with Voltaic Key, Unwinding Clock, or Dross Scorpion; and so on, and so on. But, if your opponent drops a Null Rod, Stony Silence or some other artifact hoser, Oblivion Stone becomes a brick, it won't help you get rid of it--that's where you'd be much better off with All is Dust or some other spell-based solution, which you won't be able to tutor out as consistently but will always be able to use when you do get a hold of it, even to get rid of those things artifacts just can't.
So which is better, Oblivion Stone or All is Dust? It really depends on your particular preferences and meta, and the same can be said for the whole "blue control answers vs. artifact answers" question in general. My particular list focuses on artifact answers rather than blue control answers because I feel that a) it's more Arcum's "signature" style, everyone is familiar with mono-U control cards but they might not be as familiar with artifact-based hosers, and it's easy to switch out the artifact hosers for their favorite blue control spells as they wish; and b) if I didn't know what meta I was going into, I'd use the artifact hosers rather than the mono-U control suite, because I think the artifact hosers make for a little bit stronger and faster deck overall unless you're going up against a really vicious amount of artifact hate.
Arcum is CMC4, so neither Thran Dynamo nor Gilded Lotus are good for ramping into him. You shouldn't be using either one of them for that purpose. If you already have 4 mana to cast Dynamo or 5 to cast Lotus, you should be casting Arcum instead if you haven't done so already.
If you have 4 or 5 mana and you can't cast Arcum, it's usually because you don't have that U. And that's the real purpose of Lotus: it's to help you meet your colored needs when you're drowning in colorless. Between all our dorks, rocks, Metalworker, and lands, we can very easily generate obscene amounts of colorless mana--and by the same token we can also very easily get mana-screwed out of blue if we're not careful. And we can't afford that to happen, as there's still lots of crucially important spells that need those precious blue mana symbols, like tutors, draw, countermagic, and Arcum himself.
In short, you really shouldn't ever be hardcasting a card like Gilded Lotus or Thran Dynamo at all unless you're already drowning in colorless mana, and if you're drowning in colorless mana the exact thing you want is UUU, not Thran Dynamo's 3.
The ability to tap Arcum for UUU on-demand is also cute, but just icing.
That's a good question. Diverse tables like that one where you've got combo, grave, stax, aggro in the same round can be tricky to make subs for.
You didn't mention who the aggro and stax commanders are so I don't have a complete picture, but you're sure you want Jester's Cap and Mindslaver? They're good, but significantly deadlier in 1v1 where they can single-handedly win the game if used right (or at multiplayer tables where there's only 1 other deadly opponent and the rest are pushovers). Grafdigger's Cage is definitely a good swap-in though, good thinking there, it shuts down Sharuum's signature combo and most stax decks employ some form of grave shenanigans too.
If I *had* to make those switches I'd pull out Null Brooch, Karn, and maybe Memory Jar? But if I went against that table myself I'd probably leave out Cap, swap in Grafdigger's Cage for Karn, and maybe also swap out Jar for 'Slaver if both Sharuum and the Stax player are heavily B-based and enjoy fetching their beloved Necropotence. But just switching in Cage alone would give you two resources (other is Torpor Orb) to turn off sharuum's combo and ruin stax-guy's recurring stuff, and you'd still have Ensnaring Bridge to shut down the aggro player and Null Brooch to negate everything (stax and sharuum will both be making you discard so you'll have an empty hand most of the time anyway).
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Glad you clarified. Torpor Orb, Ensnaring Bridge, and Grafdigger's Cage will get you much mileage at that table if you can keep them out. Torpor shuts down sharuum's combo + derevi's ETB ability (+ a bunch of ETB goodstuff that all those decks probably run); Bridge with a hand of 0 = no combat damage which shuts down Yisan's beats and derevi's combat damage ability; lastly Cage also shuts down sharuum's combo AND blocks Yisan's ability (remember Cage locks both graves and libraries).
So you've got 3 solid silver bullets against them, that's the good news. Figure out which player is dominating the game and tutor the appropriate bullet. The bad news is, all that WG means you'll likely be facing a lot of artifact removal (bad news for Sharuum also), so you'll need to maintain the pressure and keep dropping new bombs when your old ones eat a Nature's Claim.
Good luck and let me know how your games go.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Another two suggestions I've heard from more than a few people is 1) taking advantage of our mana dorks more and using them as broader assets than just mana ramp, for example by mainboarding in broad-spectrum pieces like Winter Orb to play a tougher parity game or by including Skullclamp to eat them for cards; and 2) in the same vein as the Skullclamp thing, adding more card draw and blue goodstuff in general to add overall consistency and deck smoothing, things like Mystic Remora, Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, and Mystical Tutor, which would then maybe even allow for Force of Will.
I realize this represents a divergence from some arguments I've made in the history of this thread, even the relatively recent history. But I do appreciate and seriously consider the feedback people give me, recognizing that I have only one set of experiences and the community consensus is stronger than my own singular opinions, and I don't consider myself above changing my mind--after all, as I like to remind people, there was a day early on back when I didn't run Clock of Omens and argued it was win-more, and it wasn't until users here on MTGS convinced me otherwise on page 2-3 of this thread that I started using it more, and now years later I regularly venerate it as one of our strongest cards.
I've also been thinking really hard about Chalice of the Void, taking a page out of my braids deck brainstorming. Besides the obvious fact that it's an artifact and therefore plugs in to every combo in the deck, when it's set to 0-1-2 it blanks a LOT of the strongest cards in the format, and Arcum's ability avoids it so we can still tutor things like Grafdigger's Cage onto the field when it's set to 1. My concern is that, set to 2, arguably its strongest setting, it also blanks a lot of things in *our* deck (most importantly our artifact dorks). But I can't shake the feeling that a play like T1 Island -> Sol Ring -> Chalice of the Void at X=1 would mangle a lot of enemy hands.
The biggest challenge moving forward will be deciding what to cut (besides the things I mentioned up top, Dross Scorpion + Karn + maybe Crucible) to possibly make all these changes happen.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
I'm actually very happy that you've brought these up for discussion. I built a similar list independently of the Primer here and have been piloting it as my only EDH deck for over 3 years now. My meta has always been pretty tuned for competitive play with decks like Azami, Lady of Scrolls, Animar, Soul of the Elements, Sharuum the Hegemon, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and a really well tuned Prime Speaker Zegana list. I have tried really hard to streamline the deck in a meta full of control and other aggressive combo decks.
1 Arcum Dagsson
Lands
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Traitors
1 Crystal Vein
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Flooded Strand
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Svyelunite Temple
1 Tolaria West
15 Snow-Covered Island
Creatures
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Hedron Crawler
1 Manakin
1 Metalworker
1 Millikin
1 Palladium Myr
1 Silver Myr
1 Plague Myr
1 Junk Diver
1 Kuldotha Forgemaster
1 Master Transmuter
1 Myr Retriever
1 Myr Sire
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Spellskite
1 Trinket Mage
Counterspells
1 Arcane Denial
1 Counterspell
1 Deprive
1 Mana Drain
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Negate
1 Pact of Negation
1 Swan Song
1 Turn Aside
Card Advantage
1 Anticipate
1 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Impulse
Tutors
1 Fabricate
1 Reshape
1 Transmute Artifact
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
Miscellaneous Instants
1 Twiddle
1 Tidal Bore
1 Power Artifact
Mana Acceleration
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
Combo Artifacts
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Clock of Omens
1 Darksteel Forge
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Myr Turbine
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Possessed Portal
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Staff of Domination
1 Unwinding Clock
Toolbox Artifacts
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Null Brooch
1 Pithing Needle
1 Torpor Orb
1 Trinisphere
1 Tangle Wire
1 Sculpting Steel
Enabler Artifacts
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Voltaic Key
I'll put some comments after the cards in these two lists shortly with my thoughts behind all of them but essentially I want a larger blue presence in the deck than what you have in your list. Originally it was to support Force of Will so I had more options to play my general on curve but the card actually ended up being super lackluster for me. I think that, with smart play, this deck should be able to win off of 1 successful Arcum Dagsson activation.
Notable Inclusions:
Twiddle, Tidal Bore
Both of these cards have been all-stars in this deck. I originally started testing them to increase the blue card count in my deck but found that they have serious applications. Twiddle has extended some game-winning Clock of Omens chains and Tidal Bore has pulled numerous wins out of nowhere. There are other cards that have similar effects but I believe that these two are the best. I would recommend against playing more of these types of effects since they're bad in multiples, but I have never once been disappointed with drawing one
Master Transmuter
I think that this card is situationally good and I'll often switch it out when there aren't many control decks at the table. That said, against counter and stax-heavy decks, this card allows you to aggressively play around many effects that you normally wouldn't be able to interact with. It's a slow creature but those games tend to take a bit longer.
Brainstorm, Anticipate, Impulse
I really like being able to filter draws in this deck as opposed to raw card advantage. Temporarily cutting out Master Transmuter and permanently cutting Copper Gnomes, Scarecrone, and Elixir of Immortality a while back showed me that there are some zones our deck just doesn't interact with as well as it used to, our hand being one of them. Brainstorm lets you filter unwanted cards back easily with the numerous shuffle effects in our deck and the fact that they're instant speed allows you to interact with other players more easily.
Notable Exclusions:
Force of Will
Force of Will was always a blowout when it was played with a turn 3/4 Arcum cast but otherwise it was lackluster since the deck doesn't have many redundant effects to pitch it besides counterspells and card draw. It went dead in hand often, not because there wasn't enough blue to support it, but because our other options were always better.
Copy Artifact
It always just felt like a value include. I never thought that this deck had really great targets for it and it was normally just another Manakin or something. Still on the fence with this one but I never felt like it pulled it's weight.
Dross Scorpion
I always loved drawing this one in my opening hand as it would speed up the Possessed Portal lock up by a turn, but I never really wanted/needed this one otherwise. If I'm getting it with a tutor, I would just much rather have the more resilient Unwinding Clock
Mishra's Workshop
So this is actually purposely left out, not just because it costs as much as a car. I think that you can have crazy early-game blowouts with it, but just as often I have been stuck with it when I need my mana for other things. I think that it deserves an include but I'm not exactly sure where yet. It needs more testing on my part.
Karn, Silver Golem
I think it's a fun card but he's just too slow, too cute, and not easily tutorable. I don't think his combo is why we would want to play him and his activated ability to create more Arcum targets is a little too expensive.
Strip Mine, Wasteland
There are some lands that need to be answered in EDH. Gaea's Cradle and Cabal Coffers are prime targets but they're slow and we can normally either play faster than those decks are shut them down with Torpor Orb or Grafdigger's Cage. In games that need-to-answer lands start to take over, they're normally answered by other decks in my experience. On top of that, we don't have a consistent way to tutor them and I believe that our land-choices are a bit tight already.
Thirst for Knowledge
While this is one of the best raw card advantage spells out there, I don't like just drawing a ton of cards in our deck. We often don't interact with our hand as well as we do with the cards in our deck and I would almost always rather this card be an Impulse. I don't think it's bad though, just a personal preference.
Spine of Ish Sah
This is great when it's really necessary but Arcum triggers are precious when only 1 or 2 will win you the game. Since cutting it, there have been a couple times that I wanted it in the deck but they're few and far between. If we need to use an Arcum trigger to toolbox, I want it to create an unplayable board-state for a few players instead of answering one permanent. That said, I don't see Null Rod or Stony Silence much in my metagame and I can see how it would sometimes be necessary.
Memory Jar
I can see how this card can cause blowouts if you run out your hand and use Arcum to refill and drop a bunch of permanents. I think that other combo decks are faster than this deck and normally would get more out of this game plan. I think that Arcum triggers are just too valuable to be used like this instead of trying to set up a tutor-chain or putting other people out of the game.
Gilded Lotus
I was on board with this card back when Hinder and Spell Crumple did what we wanted it to. Being able to represent either of those back-breaking counterspells with Arcum was huge but it's just unnecessary now.