MTG Salvation

Hello all! There is a story full of twists and turns to the title, but here's the short version: I was a very active Elder Dragon Highlander player back in high school and college, I completely fell out of love with the format and dismantled all of my decks, now that I am starting to play Magic more often again I want to have a deck or two ready to go for the game's premiere casual format. Since I am mostly just doing this for pick-up games against a wide variety of decks where introducing myself is far more important than winning, I thought my best bet would be to run with one of my long-time favorite Commanders, Toshiro Umezawa.

The joke explanation of this guy is that you basically get to run Snapcaster Mage as your Commander, but I love how this guy encourages you to run tons of Limited commons and surprising answers. This deck encourages one of the more unique play patterns that I have ever come across. Removal chains off of Toshiro are a thing of beauty, and I'm not sure I knew what love was until I Transmuted Shred Memory into a Doom Blade that let me kill one player's creature and break another's graveyard. There just isn't really a deck that plays like Toshiro. It's like Storm and Control had the fairest baby.

The deck's game plan is to basically play the game of a Black control deck and building up a good collection of versatile instants in your graveyard. Your win conditions almost all play off of killing your opponents' creatures in some way, often by stealing them or turning them into treasure.

As you might have guessed, this deck is quite bad. I would not play it if winning is a primary or even secondary goal. However, I think it's a blast to play, you can definitely play real Commander, and it will almost certainly leave an impression. Besides, the idea that winning was more important than playing the Magic that makes you happy was why I got over the format in the first place. So if anyone has any thoughts on optimally pursuing this bad strategy, I would love to hear them!

I feel like you need much more cantrip instants than edicts in order to keep you hand full with this Commander.
Aphotic Wisps, Grave Birthing, Plunge into Darkness, Skeletal scrying (a must).
I would also consider instants with cycling.

Also, if there's one card this deck wants to play, it's Ad Nauseam.

Thrilling Encore is cute, but you have almost no creatures for this to be effective with. I would probably slot it out.
Murder, To the Slaughter, Victim of Night can probably go as well.

Also, consider more mass creature control, like Bile Blight, Echoing Decay, Contagion, or Consume the Meek.
Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual can enable some silly turns.
Murderous Cut can be good. Price of Fame can kill a creature and set you up with an instant to cast immediately. Slaughter pact is good if you like another free kill spell. Vraska's Contempt kills PWs and exiles, which is rare.
Darkness is always solid in this deck.
Hatred is a possible wincon, but not too reliable.
Makeshift Mannequin is good if you're looking to reanimate your own creatures, as does Shallow Grave.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hrm. I hadn't really included Evil or Stamina because I don't really run that many creatures, but they are cheap Toshiro protection. I might keep an eye out for them. Does Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho provide similar stamina, and possibly let my commander at least pretend that he's a win condition?

I have not felt like keeping the hand full was a huge problem with this deck? Having a full graveyard is at least comparably important, and for that reason I have never been particularly impressed with Skeletal Scrying here. Many of the Cycling instants have also underperformed, although Grave Birthing might be less clunky than I give it credit for and Plunge is probably about as good as Tainted Pact. Ad Nauseum feels like it casually kills this deck a lot of the time, but I suppose its worth a shot.

I'm not sure how my creature count is super relevant for Thrilling Encore? It is 100% there to close a removal chain by getting everything that I killed back. By a similar token, this deck isn't that interested in getting its own creatures back- frankly, I'd cut the ones I am running if I thought I could get away with it.

Has the meta shifted towards Bile Blight and Echoing Decay being good? I have run them before and cut them because I was just very unimpressed with them both as removal and as token answers. Contagion is a card that I have always been very fond of, though, I just never tried it because it seemed too low-impact for Commander. Is it actually good? I hope so, card's sweet.

I've never liked Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, or Darkness just because they don't really feel like they ever do anything in this deck. With that said, this may be Pauper cube evaluation getting in the way of a good choice. Are these cards actually good?

Murderous Cut has been straight-up bad for me. This deck is not very good at filling its graveyard with anything other than instants, and those instants tend to be better as cards rather than mana. I like Slaughter Pact, though. I think I cut it back when I was trying this as a Tiny Leader but I think free removal that I pay for later is a good fit for how the deck plays right now. I had also written Vraska's contempt off, probably because it doesn't actually kill creatures, but it's probably better than To the Slaughter and gains life, which I'm increasingly convinced is a weakness for this deck. Lots of life as cost.

Price of Fame is supposed to be in there- I just presented an incomplete list. Fixed!

My bad, I misread Thrilling Encore. I just remembered what an awesome card it is.
My meta is a creature meta, and I'd need a ton of defense if I were to run Toshiro there. Darkness is a Moment's Peace in your deck, and I've actually heard positive opinions about that card in Pauper.
My thoughts with the rituals are that they can help fuel a chain of instants or expensive ones if your mana is iffy. They could also benefit your deck if you run X cost cards like Torment of Hailfire / Exsanguinate, especially with Yawgmoth's Will.
Which reminds me. Unlike the original spell, Magus of the Will can be activated at instant speed. It can be a good backup if Toshiro is not currently available.
Talking about Price of Fame has reminded me of Doom Whisperer, which seems very useful in your deck. Kothophed, Soul Hoarder and Ob Nixilis, Unshackled can also be relevant - one as another fat draw engine that's also evasive, and one that grows while you kill creatures and punishes opponents for looking for answers. Geth could probably go for Kothoped.
Lastly, I think you should consider running some acceleration, or at least some more variations on lands. Isolated Watchtower, Terrain Generator, Maze of Ith.