I can say that Skeletal Scrying has been very good for me in my own Toshiro deck. The biggest problem I run into with my list is that I run out of gas so fast, so I love seeing this card off of the top when I've got nothing going on. My list is less focused on reanimation shenanigans than yours, so I am usually okay with eating up huge chunks of my graveyard.
Also, I'd reconsider cutting Entomb. Casting it in response to something dying (with Toshi out) and dumping an instant speed draw spell (almost always Skeletal Scrying) into the yard to re-cast is super awesome, and in the early game you can always just get Stinkweed Imp to fend off early attacks and start filling up your graveyard.
I would consider adding more cards that act as sacrificial fodder for Jalira that she can't hit with her polymorph ability, like Mishra's Factory, Mutavault, or Trading Post. You said you weren't looking to add mana rocks, but I highly recommend that you add Guardian Idol at least. By itself it lets you cast jalira on turn 3 and activate her on turn 4, which is great. Ideally, your actual creatures should all either be legendary (so they don't get in Jalira's way when you're trying to flip a huge fatty) or just huge lategame fatties, so I would also look to cut cards like Oculus and Stormbound Geist that are just really awful to flip off of Jalira's ability. Replace them with sweet bombs like Stormtide Leviathan and Darksteel Colossus.
I dunno, Panoptic Mirror needing to survive a full turn cycle before it generates any advantage whatsoever is a huge knock on its power level. Putting time warp or something on it just seems less powerful or oppressive than a lot of already legal two card combos. I expect that the spikes inclined to doing degenerate things in EDH won't bother with this card. Or maybe they'll put Restore Balance on it. That's probably fine though, because Restore Balance by itself is bad.
1. I think poor threat assessment would lead to people attacking the one in control of Telepathy because bad players tend to overrate minor effects. And even people with poor threat assessment know that you shouldn't let cards like Craterhoof Behemoth or an entwined Tooth and Nail resolve if you can help it. Knowledge of my opponents' hands isn't a factor in the decision to counter backbreaking spells. What I'm getting out of your defense here is that "Telepathy is good because it's good against people who make bad decisions."
2. Not all resources are created equal. Cards are just much more valuable than information. Knowing the contents of your opponents' hands is objectively better than not knowing the contents of your opponents' hands, but putting yourself in that position isn't worth a whole card. When you play telepathy, you're playing it over every other card you could've played instead. And the fact that Telepathy is blue makes it worse in my opinion because blue has some of the best cards in the history of the game competing for deck slots. You shouldn't have to compensate for the inherent card disadvantage of playing a bad card by surrounding it with powerful cards. You could just surround powerful cards with other powerful cards and have an overall better deck.
The effect isn't worth the card. The information isn't useless, but it looks like a miserable topdeck when you're in situations where you need gas. It doesn't stop your opponent from crushing your face, and most players can identify what cards must be countered without 100% knowing the contents of their opponents' hands. Cards are your most valuable resource, especially in multiplayer. When you spend a card that gains you no cards nor takes cards from your opponents, all of your opponents are now effectively up a card on you, which is bad. Additionally, people might just kill you because they're annoyed by your do-nothing card or because you're an easy target because you played cards that didn't actually do anything. Ultimately, Telepathy is a bad card.
That said, play it if you have fun with it. Bad cards are fun sometimes.
My list isn't done yet, but I don't think I'll have enough creatures to use Gate to Phyrexia effectively. I put Liquimetal Coating in the deck mostly to make King Macar into an artifact so that I could untap him with Unwinding Clock, but I could also conceivably turn something into an artifact, and then animate it with Karn or something and then exile it with King Macar.
I'm working on a similar list. I like the idea that King Macar, the Gold-Cursed ends up surrounded by artifacts because he turned all of his friends into gold. I tried to compensate for mono-black's inability to handle artifacts by including old cards that animate artifacts, like Karn, Silver Golem, Toymaker, and Xenic Poltergeist. It's probably too cute, but I also have Liquimetal Coating in my list.
As far as I know, Feldon-copies of Starke or Humble Defector don't get sacrificed at EoT because the player who's supposed to sacrifice them doesn't control them anymore. On the other hand, it should be easy enough to hold priority, activate, then sacrifice (to something like Trading Post) before resolution.
Nope, they still get sacrificed regardless of who controls them. It's the same as Kiki-Jiki.
Yep, Starke of Rath has been an alstar and this works similarly. Probably want to have a few sac outlets available for hardcasting it early game, but once it is in your yard it will be another great draw engine to go along with skullclamp.
In that case, couldn't you Clamp it, then while that's on the stack you could tap it to draw 4 cards? Or would the Clamp no longer attach since you don't control the creature anymore.
Clamp's controller draws the cards, so it works in the sweetest way possible. --EDIT: I actually read that wrong, and I'm not sure about my answer here.
Yes, but Blue is allowed to DESTROY things, not Exile them. That has always been in White(Enemy Exile) and Black (Self Exile), but never blue until recently.
They are both simply means to the same ends. The blue part is the part that leaves something behind once you've polymorphed the threat, not the game mechanic used for the polymorphing itself.
Reality Shift: Is our Pongify of the set, and while it exiles, the risks of Manifest are probably far worse for a player than fighting a 3/3 Ape could be.
Dunno, I'd be willing to pay 1U to kill someone's commander/Exile something like Sheoldred and then turn Omniscience into a 2/2.
Also, wasn't Maro just complaining about how he loves a rigid color pie? Why is Blue getting Exile effects now between this and Curse of the Swine, yet he threw a tantrum at Song of Dryads?
It's because blue is allowed to turn creatures into other stuff. Green isn't allowed to kill creatures without using its own
creatures, which is what song of the dryads enables.
I'd probably cut the Call to the Grave, because it's a fairly marginal effect in commander and it'll probably force you to sacrifice Gisa more often than not since you have very few non-zombies to sacrifice to it. I'd also cut the Obelisk of Urd and the Door of Destinies. You have plenty of anthems in the form of your various zombie lords that are much more efficient and come online faster. I'm also not a huge fan of Coat of Arms either because of how confusing it can get, but I see the power in making a very large army of very large zombies with Gisa. I think swapping Umbral Mantle for Rings of Brighthearth is a good choice just because the mantle is pretty bad unless you're doing an infinite combo, and the rings work to double-up all of your activated abilities without the baggage of the sorcery-speed equip. I also think it's fairly reasonable to include Thornbite Staff as long as you don't run Phyrexian Altar, since your ability to generate zombies will be limited to how much mana you have, and the base-case scenario is that you're sacrificing 2/2s to make 1 extra zombie per 1 black mana, which is a worse rate than casting Army of the Damned.
I'd at least try to make room for Endless Ranks of the Dead because free zombies are always good, Grafted Wargear because getting 3 more zombies out of any creature for free is incredible, Wall of Blood because it can easily jumpstart your zombie production, and Genju of the Fens because repeatedly turning your lategame swamps into a gazillion zombies sounds awesome.
Also, I'd reconsider cutting Entomb. Casting it in response to something dying (with Toshi out) and dumping an instant speed draw spell (almost always Skeletal Scrying) into the yard to re-cast is super awesome, and in the early game you can always just get Stinkweed Imp to fend off early attacks and start filling up your graveyard.
2. Not all resources are created equal. Cards are just much more valuable than information. Knowing the contents of your opponents' hands is objectively better than not knowing the contents of your opponents' hands, but putting yourself in that position isn't worth a whole card. When you play telepathy, you're playing it over every other card you could've played instead. And the fact that Telepathy is blue makes it worse in my opinion because blue has some of the best cards in the history of the game competing for deck slots. You shouldn't have to compensate for the inherent card disadvantage of playing a bad card by surrounding it with powerful cards. You could just surround powerful cards with other powerful cards and have an overall better deck.
That said, play it if you have fun with it. Bad cards are fun sometimes.
Nope, they still get sacrificed regardless of who controls them. It's the same as Kiki-Jiki.
Clamp's controller draws the cards, so it works in the sweetest way possible. --EDIT: I actually read that wrong, and I'm not sure about my answer here.
They are both simply means to the same ends. The blue part is the part that leaves something behind once you've polymorphed the threat, not the game mechanic used for the polymorphing itself.
It's because blue is allowed to turn creatures into other stuff. Green isn't allowed to kill creatures without using its own
creatures, which is what song of the dryads enables.
I'd at least try to make room for Endless Ranks of the Dead because free zombies are always good, Grafted Wargear because getting 3 more zombies out of any creature for free is incredible, Wall of Blood because it can easily jumpstart your zombie production, and Genju of the Fens because repeatedly turning your lategame swamps into a gazillion zombies sounds awesome.