MTG Salvation

With one of my playgroups deciding to plan a weekend full of Commander, I decided to try and piece together a new deck to bring to the table. This group is fairly casual orientated and as means to keep things relatively fair one of the house rules is that a deck shouldn't cost more than $150, using the most recent 'regular' printing of a card as a guide for pricing. One day will be spend running our own decks and the other day decks will be lend out to each other, and where as we have two players relatively new to Magic/Commander decks shouldn't be too overly complex.

I wanted to do something along the lines of Josh Lee Kwai's famed Tim deck and through that I came across a Tibor and Lumia list that also takes inspiration from it. Going two color will help keep the cost down from a mana base perspective, but I did end up replacing a few cards of the Tibor list to bring it down to something that fits the playgroup's budget limit.

The deck's strategy stays true to the traditional ping, untap and ping again strategy that comes with it being a Tim deck, along with trying to generate some card advantage as well. Other then that there are a few flying enablers to use the abilities of the deck's Commander.

So that's roughly the list I'm sleeving up right now, but am still looking to get some advise on potentially tweaking things a bit more. Though, of course, I'd prefer if the suggestions are made keeping budget limitations in mind, so try not to suggest cards that cost more than like 3-4 dollar a piece.

I am still considering replacing Swiftwater Cliffs with a basic, since it does come into play tapped, but with limited amounts of fixing I've not done so yet. Ionize probably could be replaced by a more efficient counter spell, but wanted to avoid having to keep open double blue for the classic Counterspell. Also, I just wanted to see if I could fit it in so to run some newer cards and it fits the theme since it pings when it counters something.

Some cards I'm still on the fence about whether or not to include them are Quietus Spike and Ral Zarek. Both haven't made the cut so far mostly due to the keeping in mind of my playgroup. Quietus Spike would make the pinging a lot more efficient but would draw a lot of hate for that, in past decks I ran it in the card rarely got to stick but this group probably won't assess it's threat not until the first hit and subsequent ones. While I'm for people learning to be more wary of it, with the new players in mind I feel it's better not to include it, at least not for the planned event.

With Planeswalkers its often the question for me whether or not to run them or not, since they often are vulnerable pieces and thus getting some use out of them tends to be limited. I always consider the fact if they are worth running if I can only use an ability on them once and more often then not I feel better at running an instant or sorcery with the same effect for the same CMC. At the same time, I know this playgroup is not keen on taking extra turn shenanigans. Taking a single extra turn per game is something they have no issues with but taking multiple is usually less appreciated. That said, I don't expect Planeswalkers to stick around long enough to ultimate and never would include one just for their ultimate. In this deck I don't even care that much about using Ral's ultimate but it being there will still probably be something they'll groan about.

Added a little bit more fixing with getting a copy of Steam Vents for the deck, though I don't plan on running any fetches it's going to be helpful when having Niv in your hand. Same goes for Cephalid Coliseum, while the pinging is supposed to happen to the opponent, having a little extra card draw handy is always nice.

To me Zuran Spellcaster is just a better fit to the deck than Fervent Paincaster, as the deck is heavier on blue already and Spellcaster isn't restricted by Exert.