Firstly and foremostly, Braids is NOT banned, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. If you click on over to the official rules page on mtgocommander.net, and you navigate to "Deck Construction and scroll down to the banlist section, you'll see up at the top of the list a preliminary statement. Read it well: These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game.
This single statement, though brief, is tremendously important. It represents a core tenet of EDH philosophy: EDH is a social format, and the ultimate bottom line on the rules and banlist are in the hands of each individual playgroup, not Sheldon and the rules committee (though they attempt to provide guidelines). Thus, in the same manner that many playgroups reach a concensus and choose to ban infinite combos, MLD, and/or countermagic, even though those cards are not present on the mtgocommander.net banlist, your playgroup may reach a concensus and choose to UNban Braids, Cabal Minion, even though she is on the banlist.
Of course, this may very well be easier said than done. It demands you and your playgroup are highly familiar with each other: you have to know your playgroup well enough to anticipate that Braids will be a welcome addition to the game (more on this under "Why Braids?" below), and your playgroup has to know you well enough to genuinely and meaningfully consider your ideas and to generate an honest debate.
Some of you might not even know where to start in terms of getting an opinion about Braids, so below (spoilered for your convenience, since by now some of you might just want to move on to Braids) I've provided some facts for you to keep in mind and some resources to start you off.
Braids was added to the mtgcommander.net banlist on June 20th, 2009, many years ago. The official announcement can be found here, but here's also a transcript below:
Quote from Sheldon »
If you're not absolutely prepared for it and capable of doing something about it on the first few turns, a Braids lock is nearly inevitable. We also don't want games to devolve into being about a single card every time that card hits the table (see Kokusho). Braids as a General defines "unfun."
Keep in mind that in both the game (i.e. the cards available) and the metagame (i.e. the strategies people use) have changed drastically since 2009. For comparison, Kokusho, the Evening Star was banned back then for a similar reason to Braids as stated in the above quote, but since that time, due to the evolution of the format, Kokusho was unbanned first in the 99 and subsequently as a commander. This example highlights an important consideration: in today's EDH, with all the powerful new commanders and other cards that have been printed (that is to say, power creep), some of the committee's older rulings may no longer be applicable, and this is what you and your playgroup have to decide for yourselves. Perhaps Braids, like Kokusho, isn't the unbeatable monstrosity she used to be, particularly in a competitive environment where people are already running Derevi, Prossh, and other extremely powerful commanders. Is it right, then, for her to remain banned?
Obviously, I certainly don't think so, and my playgroup doesn't either. But all that said, this thread you're reading now is NOT a place to discuss it. There's already a thread here on the MTGS Commander boards for such discussion, and that's the official banlist discussion thread posted by viperesque. Additionally, a quick google search will reveal countless other threads reaching all the way back to the original announcement date on various forums (mtgs, mtgcommander.net, reddit, and others) in which people expound their personal opinions on the justification (or lack thereof) of Braids' banning, and I encourage you to catch up on the debate thus far.
In addition to killing peasants, punishing subordinates, and raising an army of nightmares,
Braids somehow found time for her favorite hobby: petty extortion.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\--Blackmail
Braids' story takes place on the plane of Dominaria, on the continent of Otaria. The exact chronology of her story in the overall lore is unknown, but it takes place sometime long, long after the events of the Tolarian Academy and the Phyrexian Invasion. In the cards, Braids' chronology is represented in Odyssey, Onslaught, and related sets.
Over half of Otaria was ruled de facto by a secret, B-aligned organization known as the Cabal. Headed by the Patriarch, the Cabal was a cross between religious cult and racketeering gang, known most prominently for the brutal pit fights it hosted to raise money from gamblers and spectators alike. The Patriarch's innumerous underlings, the members of the Cabal, were known as minions, and creature cards associated with the Cabal bear the creature subtype "minion"--such as Cabal Surgeon, Cabal Torturer, Cabal Trainee, and, of course, Braids, Cabal Minion.
But Braids, whose origins are still unknown, was a special type of minion: she was a dementia summoner, a mage who specialized in pulling grotesque nightmares from dementia space into reality to fight for her, either shadowy memories of previous figures she killed or, more commonly, formless, terrifying abominations. Dementia summoning typically took years to fully master (just ask Chainer), and in their struggle to maintain their connection to dementia forces, summoners eventually lost their grip on reality and sank into babbling madness. Braids, however, was already quite insane by nature; as a result, she possessed an innate connection to dementia forces. Thus she had a natural talent for dementia summoning, and moreover she remained lucid--insane, but lucid--throughout her career. These attributes, in combination with her zealous loyalty to the Cabal and the bubbly enthusiasm with which she approached her "work," allowed her to rapidly ascend the Cabal hierarchy, becoming one of its elite generals and ultimately (after slaying the Patriarch) even its leader.
From there, Otarian events escalated rapidly. For the rest of the story, check out her MTGS wiki lore page.
Braids' ability, "At the beginning of each player's upkeep, each player sacrifices...", is representative of Braids' cruelty and oppressiveness as a Cabal elite. Everyone at the table, including yourself, will feel first-hand her murderous, extortionate nature while she's on the field.
It's only frightened five people to death. Not my best work.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\--Braids, Face of Fear
Do you like stax? That sadistic strategy of symmetric resource denial and tax effects that leaves your opponents utterly unable to fight? Put simply, Braids is stax. No other legendary creature lives and breathes the archetype as much as she does. She's effectively a black creature version of Smokestack--the titular card of stax--except that she's fixed at one counter (hardly a drawback). Indeed, other black-based stax commanders like Nath of the Gilt-Leaf and Sek'kuar, Deathkeeper often rush into Braids as an opening play. With Braids in your command zone, you don't have to tutor for her; she comes out early and hard, and she'll go right back to your command zone when she's dead. If stax is your archetype, Braids is your girl.
But she's banned for a reason. It practically goes without saying that Braids is an extremely competitive commander. For those of you wondering whether it's worth the effort to get Braids legalized in your playgroup, your friends most likely won't even consider allowing Braids unless they're already allowing other degenerately powerful decks like Arcum, Sharuum, Hermit Druid, Azami, and so on, as these are the commanders that rival her power most closely.
In my personal case, I noticed that my competitive playgroup was growing rather stagnant--people were bringing the same blue-based combo commanders over and over again to our tournaments, because these were the commanders that were proven to win consistently. I pointed this out to my friends, and we collectively agreed that legalizing Braids would add some new diversity (black-based stax) to freshen things up without being so overpowered as to polarize the entire metagame. But that's just my meta, so YMMV.
At any rate, if you're considering whether or not you'll like Braids, here's a short and sweet list to help you out...
You may enjoy Braids if:
you like playing a top-tier commander (read: you like winning).
you like the stax archetype--combining resource denial and tax effects to lock opponents out of the game.
you like extremely consistent and speedy decks, but don't like infinite combos or the color U.
your playgroup is competitive, but needs a fresh new twist.
you like locking your opponents completely out of the game.
You may not enjoy Braids if:
you like alpha striking for massive damage to win.
you like assembling an infinite combo for the win.
you or your playgroup don't like "mean" decks that sometimes leave opponents literally unable to play.
you like longer games. Braids puts the pain on fast and tries to force a scoop by T3-6 at latest, even against 3+ opponents.
you like making alliances and playing politics at the table. This deck will make you NO allies whatsoever.
Once upon a time, Braids was legal, and I was happy. Then Braids was added to the mtgocommander.net banlist, and I was sad. Like so many others, I played Braids prior to the ban and ended up shelving her when the ban announcement came out. But Braids was never truly dead to me; I was convinced, at the time, that the power creep in the cards and the meta would eventually catch up to the ol' girl (or at least that's what I like to tell myself in 20-20 hindsight).
At one point several years ago, after one of my playgroup's competitive community tournaments, I noted to my playgroup the overall lack of diversity; blue-based combo everywhere, lots of prison, some MBC/reanimator, the occasional voltron or all-in build like Uril or Hermit Druid, rarely fast aggro like Azusa (this was before the days of Prossh, Derevi, or any other terrifying commanders that would later see print in the Commander sets). As I mentioned above, I proposed to them that allowing Braids would add some competitive pox-esque stax to the mix (besides Zur stax, which ends up feeling more like a voltron/combo deck anyway) and potentially diversify the meta without unbalancing it. My playgroup agreed.
So I tuned up the list below for my competitive meta. New toys like Torpor Orb and Cavern of Souls fit right in. The end result is a deck that truly lives up to Braids' reputation as a genuinely terrifying commander, fully equipped to stand toe-to-toe with other competitive commanders of the present era.
The following list is a budget version of the list above for those of you who can't afford to drop thousands on playing cards (or whose playgroups won't let you proxy). Almost all of the "money cards" like Mishra's Workshop and Imperial Seal have been removed, lowering the deck's price to around $200-$300 rather than $3000. You can remove even more money cards if you wish, such as Crucible of Worlds or Bitterblossom, but doing so will weaken the deck considerably.
The unfortunate truth is that stax as an archetype--regardless of commander--is financially costly to build well because the majority of our best cards are also our most expensive. Many of our strongest fodder generators like Crucible and Bitterblossom cost dozens of dollars, while many of our core stax pieces like The Abyss and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and our most efficient mana sources like Mana Crypt cost hundreds. You can play stax on a budget, but you'll gain a lot of bang for your buck if you choose to spend more (or lose a lot of bang if you choose to keep it cheap).
This decklist plays basically the same as the one above; the Helm + Leyline combo is in this time because the removal of money cards made room for it, and you've still got Contamination lock and of course Braids.
Step 1: Play mana rocks and other accelerants, working toward 2BB as soon as possible to cast Braids (ideally by T2-T3, potentially even T1 if not playing first) while disrupting opponents with removal, discard, tax, and denial; Step 2: Cast and resolve Braids, then tighten the lock with even more tax, stax, discard, and denial; Step 3: Force opponents into a concession by locking them out of the game.
Have you considered switching darksteel ingot for a two drop? As I see it, it doesn't ramp braids due to her being a 4-drop and it's not like you need the colored mana that badly.
Might I suggest felwar stone and kin instead for consistent t3 braids?
Love the deck. Null Rod shuts off like most of your artifacts. I guess that is okay due to its power level. In the same vein, is Mishra's Workshop really worth it? It can only cast 19 cards. I'm sure it adds some amazing early plays, but I don't see the point of a land that is so narrow. You can sac it to braids, but thats like a $400 dark ritual for artifacts only...
Have you considered switching darksteel ingot for a two drop? As I see it, it doesn't ramp braids due to her being a 4-drop and it's not like you need the colored mana that badly.
Might I suggest felwar stone and kin instead for consistent t3 braids?
Yanno I totally forgot about Felwar Stone, or perhaps I'll use Mind Stone, not sure. My biggest peeve with most of its ilk are that they CIPT, like Coldsteel Heart, and in my meta that just won't do.
Love the deck. Null Rod shuts off like most of your artifacts. I guess that is okay due to its power level. In the same vein, is Mishra's Workshop really worth it? It can only cast 19 cards. I'm sure it adds some amazing early plays, but I don't see the point of a land that is so narrow. You can sac it to braids, but thats like a $400 dark ritual for artifacts only...
I have no concerns about Null Rod, particularly in my meta. Everyone's packing all the broken mana rocks, from Sol Ring to Mana Crypt to Grim Monolith, not to mention the ubiquitous artifact combos like Arcum's Rings/Top/Staff, Sharuum's Foundry/Sword, and Azami's MoM/Temple Bell. It single-handedly turns off both mana ramp and wincons. I've even made T1 plays as silly as Swamp, Sol Ring, Null Rod, and it still ended up being backbreaking for the rest of my table.
Speaking of backbreaking, I'm a little on the fence about Workshop here also, but it's in right now because I was going for the dead brutal Vintage stax feel. Imagine it: T1 Trinisphere, T2 Smokestack, so on so forth. With all the stax pieces that are also artifacts, I get the feeling that just about every opening hand with Shop is a god hand. But we'll see how it plays out in the longer run.
I'm glad you like the deck. It's refreshing to dust off Braids and play a genuine Smokestack commander, not that wannabe Anowon, the Ruin Sage.
Hey man, don't know if you're still playing this deck, as it's been a few months since a post here, but I just wanted to say I'm super jelly of your access to stuff like Imperial Seal , Chains of Mephistopheles, Grim Tutor, The Abyss, Nether VOid, and Mishra's Workshop. It's unfortunate that so many of the good black cards - and good stax cards for that matter - are so expensive and danged difficult to acquire. That said, since budget doesn't seem to be a concern, did you consider running The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? If so, what were your thoughts on it? Definitely seems good here to me.
Still playing this once in a while when my playgroup is feeling OK with it. Updated the years-old decklist, though my current list is actually mostly the same. Changes were Darksteel Ingot out, Fellwar Stone in (as a poster above mentioned, 2CMC rocks are way better as they ramp into a T3 braids); and swamp out, Tangle Wire in, 'cuz that card is nuts.
Whereas in 2013 I was more on the fence about Mishra's Workshop nowadays I'm pretty much in love with it. It single-handedly turns good hands into god hands, enabling crushing Vintage-like plays like T1 shop, Sol Ring, Jet Medallion; T2 Swamp, Trinisphere, Tangle Wire; T3 Braids. Or even just T1 shop, Trinisphere; T2 Swamp, Smokestack. It IS a repeatable dark ritual for artifacts only, but many of our strongest stax cards (Trini, Smokestack, Null Rod, Tangle Wire, Lodestone Golem, Sphere of Resistance) are artifacts, and they hurt the most when they're played in the first two turns.
I'm super jelly of your access to stuff like Imperial Seal , Chains of Mephistopheles, Grim Tutor, The Abyss, Nether VOid, and Mishra's Workshop. It's unfortunate that so many of the good black cards - and good stax cards for that matter - are so expensive and danged difficult to acquire. That said, since budget doesn't seem to be a concern, did you consider running The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? If so, what were your thoughts on it? Definitely seems good here to me.
Firstly, my playgroup allows proxies only for super expensive singletons (more than ~$60-100, we change the threshold once in a while), so we all run (legal) P9, P3K etc. in our competitive decks without paying thousands of dollars, you might consider discussing the possibility of the same thing with your own playgroup. Secondly, you can still make a powerful, competitive Braids deck, or any black deck for that matter, without those money cards--it just won't be quite as powerful. Lastly, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is a super strong card, great tech with Expedition Map which is already in my deck and the fact that it slips under a Trinisphere lock, but I'm not sure what to cut it for (hopefully not a swamp?). I'd love to include it if I could.
I'd also like to make room for Thorn of Amethyst if I could. I debate really often about cutting the Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void combo, because I never find myself needing to use it and the cards are basically useless outside of the combo, but then my deck doesn't have an alternate wincon and that makes me nervous.
Still hoping and praying that Braids sees an unban one day! I'll be ready when she does.
Ended up doing this today as a followup note. I think I've only actually used Leyline + Helm a few times since I built this deck; usually if the situation has deteriorated to the point where I can't get a lock, then I'm not able to tutor up and play the leyline+helm combo AND activate it enough to wipe the whole table before somebody disrupts it. And to top it off both Helm and Leyline are basically dead draws without each other (Belm especially, Leyline a little less so that it's grave hate, but still not very useful most of the time), if they were individually useful cards I'd be much more comfortable with them.
My brain tells me that having a "plan B" in case a prison can't be established is mandatory, but my gut tells me Helm+Leyline isn't a good enough plan B to merit inclusion. I suppose we'll see.
So the first change I made was Lightning Greaves out; Grave Pact in. I'm not even sure what I was thinking when I threw in Greaves in the first place really, if I wanted a gameplan where I actually planned to protect braids I would've included other protective equipment as well. The fact of the matter is that Braids is best played unprotected on T2-3 (or even T1 on a god hand), not shrouded on T3-4.
Meanwhile Grave Pact is one I'd been thinking about for a long time; I like how unlike other stax effects it doesn't consume your own resources in parallel but rather adds extra milage to the resources you're already consuming, meaning you don't have to worry about "feeding" it (cf. The Abyss).
Then after some playtesting I realized Pact isn't quite as good as I thought it was because it only procs on our creature sac, and we're not always saccing creatures (oftentimes its lands and artifacts). I'm going to keep testing Pact but in the meantime it seems like Shadows of the Past is a much more universally-applicable addition since it procs off of ALL creature deaths, not just yours, and being able to scry 3-4 times before your next turn with a one-time investment of 1B even before Braids comes online seems pretty strong, even if I never use the 2nd ability. So currently it's Pact out, Shadows in.
Really trying to trim the fat on this list these days, making sure every single card pulls its weight. Waste Not is neato but we probably don't run enough discard. Regarding other cards from the new set, Liliana, Heretical Healer is nice but might not be so easy to flip since she doesn't work with tokens and a lot of the things we sac are tokens; Kothophed, Soul Hoarder has an amazing ability but at 6cmc is just too expensive. Languish is sort of a budget Damnation.
Tabernacle, as expected, is amazing. The best part is that it can't be countered.
I played maybe 10 solitaire games with this deck, and I have a couple of questions:
1. In general, I had to mulligan pretty aggressively to get a hand that could play a turn 3 Braids, and in some games I couldn't make it happen at all. At my count, there are 9 ways to do this: Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Dark Ritual, Fellwar Stone, Jet Medallion, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, and Sol Ring. In your experience, how consistently can you get one of these 9 cards into your opening hand? Am I just having a different experience with randomization, or are there more important cards currently occupying slots that could otherwise be dedicated to ramp?
2. What are your tutor targets? Perhaps a better question would be, what is the next thing you want to play after landing Braids? Not having opponents, I generally searched for Bitterblossom, so that I could proceed to play a normal game of Magic.
Why no Chrome mox / dark confidant?
Cruel tutor is pretty bad.
Did you test lions eye diamond? In not sure it's worth it here but then again I'm not sure it's not.
Of the 3 I would think chrome mox would be auto include status.
Why no Chrome mox / dark confidant?
Cruel tutor is pretty bad.
Did you test lions eye diamond? In not sure it's worth it here but then again I'm not sure it's not.
Of the 3 I would think chrome mox would be auto include status.
When I tried Chrome Mox the first time I wasn't getting enough hands with both it and a black card I'd feel good about exiling instead of playing. It'd be nice if you could exile an artifact to tap it for 1 but it specifies nonland, nonartifact, and lands + artifacts = nearly 2/3 of this whole deck. I've also been testing Mox Diamond, which has been doing a little better on average, but thus far I'm not certain whether it's worth a spot (and if it is, what to cut it for). You're right that Cruel Tutor is pretty meh as tutors go, I'd put it at best on par with Diabolic Tutor, maybe even a little worse, but I'm kind of a tutors-addict so I'm reluctant to cut it.
Haven't tried LED and in general I'm not a fan of it outside of dredge and storm decks (but maybe I just play too much legacy). In theory it could allow a T1 braids all by itself with Swamp + LED = braids, but then you'd just screw yourself unless you got some wicked topdecks. Still, mind as well give it a fair chance, I'll try it out.
I played maybe 10 solitaire games with this deck, and I have a couple of questions:
1. In general, I had to mulligan pretty aggressively to get a hand that could play a turn 3 Braids, and in some games I couldn't make it happen at all. At my count, there are 9 ways to do this: Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Dark Ritual, Fellwar Stone, Jet Medallion, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, and Sol Ring. In your experience, how consistently can you get one of these 9 cards into your opening hand? Am I just having a different experience with randomization, or are there more important cards currently occupying slots that could otherwise be dedicated to ramp?
2. What are your tutor targets? Perhaps a better question would be, what is the next thing you want to play after landing Braids? Not having opponents, I generally searched for Bitterblossom, so that I could proceed to play a normal game of Magic.
For item 1, you forgot several: Wayfarer's Bauble, Peat Bog, and super-speedy tutors like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Imperial Seal. You also need to keep in mind that playing braids T2-T3 isn't always the strategy if our starting hand sets us up for something different, like if we start with 'shop and Smokestack we don't have to worry about braids. Or if we start with Tangle Wire or Null Rod or Trinisphere or The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or some other denial/tax effect, it becomes much safer to wait until T4 to play braids because those cards will slow down their permanent generation in the meantime (which is what we want--the whole stax game is a permanent race, if they can fill their board with permanents before we get braids out it'll be much easier for them to play around her; as such, the goal isn't exactly to get braids down ASAP, playing braids T4 after a T1 Trinisphere is basically as good as playing her T3 with no sphere).
Not that that means this deck starts well 100% of the time, after all 10 hands is not a particularly big sample and every deck has its minority of unlucky moments, but it shows you some of the opening plays we consider keepable. Just as when you were solitaire-testing my Arcum deck, the trick that comes with practice is that you stop thinking formulaically ("I need Braids T3, there are X many cards in the deck that can accomplish this, I must mull until I get one") and start thinking abstractly ("I need a hand that will get a stax effect on the field before my opponents develop too much board advantage, let's see if I can find one").
I have to say that I like it that you're giving Shadows of the Past a try. I had the pleasure of opening two in the prerelease of origins and ran both, it smoothed out my draws a lot in limited and I'm hoping to see how it performs in a Liliana, Heretical Healer commander deck I'm building.
I have to say that I like it that you're giving Shadows of the Past a try. I had the pleasure of opening two in the prerelease of origins and ran both, it smoothed out my draws a lot in limited and I'm hoping to see how it performs in a Liliana, Heretical Healer commander deck I'm building.
What's really selling it for me is the 1B cost. If it was 2B I'd probably say it wasn't worth it, if it was only B I'd say it was a staple pseudo-CA card on the level of Sensei's Divining Top for black decks only. Still, 2cmc is nothing to scoff at for such an effect.
I don't know if it'll pull its weight in this deck, but it's definitely worth the consideration for its price.
It's not just the scry that I think is useful (though it will be definitely the most relavent ability most of the time), I think it's drain could easily become an alternate win condition for black decks. There is just so much ramp available to black that the 4B cost per activation becomes somewhat irrelevant. Things like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Cabal Coffers, Crypt of Agadeem, Crypt Ghast and a ton of others might make it useful as a plan B, or just it could just help things along by draining your pillowforted opponents the rest of the way or gaining yourself enough life to stay in the game. For creature light decks like yours though, this probably won't be as relavent.
For creature light decks like yours though, this probably won't be as relavent.
If it only required three creatures in the grave then I could see the second ability being used considerably more in this deck, if only to add some life in a pinch if we're hurting ourselves too hard with Ancient Tomb, Necropotence, and so forth. Or if it required 4-5 creatures across all graveyards, not just yours, that would work too. Three creatures in the grave is actually kind of reasonable as often enough we'll Buried Alive for Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, and Nether Traitor. But it's not always so easy to make 4.
In other news, I added a budget decklist in the spoilered section below the main decklist. Building stax on a budget is possible, particularly with Braids (she's still strong even without all the money investment), but since several core stax pieces like Crucible of Worlds, The Abyss and Bitterblossom are money cards, you do lose quite a lot of power if you choose to cut some or all of those in the interests of saving cash.
No Gemstone Caverns, Crystal Vein, Ebon Stronghold, Phyrexian Tower, Mox Diamond or Chrome Mox seems weird to me. Isn't plan A to cast Braids on turn 1-2 every game? Isn't anything turn 3 and beyond just way too slow for competitive play? Doesn't she just get countered/killed/bounced/combo'd out? How are you beating competitive stax decks like Derevi and competitive combo decks like Arcum with turn 3+ Braids? I dunno, Gemstone Caverns is like Sol Ring or Ancient Tomb IMO. Why wouldn't you play it in competitive multiplayer?
I don't understand cards like Diabolic Tutor, Magus of the Abyss, Call to the Grave, Breeding Pit and Nuisance Engine. They seem extremely slow, mana intensive and/or pointless. Again, I don't see how you can put those in your list when you're facing against actual God-tier commanders/archetypes. You are not going to beat Damia ramp + combo + take extra turns or Riku Splinter Twin combo with something like Breeding Pit in your deck.
Cruel Tutor is basically unplayable IMO. 3 mana for a Vampiric Tutor doesn't cut it in competitive EDH.
No Innocent Blood, Toxic Deluge or Massacre? Why run all of those expensive spot removal spells over things like these? There's no world in which Rend Flesh is better than Toxic Deluge when you have 40 life to work with. I realize that mass removal hits Braids but if you need outs to things like Hermit Druid then you want Snuff Out, not "Murder."
Why would you ever play Null Rod? It absolutely neuters your own gameplan. It can't possibly be correct to play it in basically any mono-Black deck.
Where's Winter Orb? Static Orb? You're playing Stax yet you're omitting 2 of the most powerful mana-denial spells for seemingly no reason at all.
You said that you face a lot of Blue, where's Defense Grid? It's like the single best card against them. It's way better than Duress et al. because it strips each opponent of each and every one of their counters (virtually).
Why no Ensnaring Bridge? Are creatures not a concern at all? E.Bridge + Necrogen Mists (or any variation thereof) isn't an easy thing for any archetype to beat. I have to imagine that some people are playing Elfball (prossh), Animar, etc. and since this deck usually sits at 1-3 cards E.Bridge is typically amazing.
No Liliana of the Veil? No Liliana, Heretical Healer? They're Necrogen Mists that have extremely relevant additional uses. Heretical Healer I can somewhat understand not playing, especially in a creature-light deck, but Liliana of the Veil should always be played. That being said I still don't see how Heretical Healer could possibly be bad because Braids can always sac herself to her own ability. She's like Sidisi, Undead Vizier in the sense that you'll always have a way to flip her because your commander is both a creature and a self-sac outlet.
Why no MD Torpor Orb? Is it legitimately weak against the decks that you're facing? I understand why you don't run Grafdigger's Cage but what decks is Torpor Orb actually bad against?
I'm surprised that Mindslicer isn't in the MD but Unnerve is. Saccing him to Braids with a Planeswalker/draw engine in play is usually enough to seal the deal.
I'm baffled to see Waste Not omitted. Even if this isn't a dedicated discard deck like Nekusar or Nath Waste Not is just the most busted thing that you can possibly be doing if you're playing Black IMO. Whereas Mike + Trike/Necrotic Ooze + Trike + Phyrexian Devourer is slow and weak to GY hate Waste Not + global discard hits as early as turn 2 and once it gets rolling it's just an automatic GG. Black has Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, etc. to find it and with partial Paris mulligan rules (or even the free multiplayer mulligan) it's not that hard to find it. Once it hits play (often turn 1) all of your global discard becomes instant GG auto-win spells. Smallpox, Pox, Dark Deal, Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit, Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, Heretical Healer, Death Cloud, Mindslicer, Memory Jar... it's trivially easy to win the game once you resolve any of these with a WN in play. Where you play cards like Duress, Hymn to Tourach, Unmask, Thoughtseize, etc. that interact with 1 card from 1 opponent I personally think that you should be trying to jam things like Defense Grid, Waste Not, Pox, Death Cloud etc. that shut everyone down while slamming as much fast mana into play as you possibly can.
37 land seems like a lot. I personally suggest running 34, 35 tops and using those extra slots on more ramp. Your deck should be able to "win the game" off of 2 lands so you really need to max out on cheap ramp to ensure that you can stick your Commander on turn 2 at the latest. You might need 35 if you're just doing the free MP mull as opposed to partial Paris but 37 still seems like too many to me. You really need some actual ramp to start casting your 4 drops on turns 1-2.
I like your deck a lot, it's like ~75/100 what I play, I just don't understand why you don't commit to the turn 1-2 Braids every game strategy. If people are playing legitimately busted Blue-based combo/stax decks such as Derevi, Edric, Jace, Brago, Arcum, Zur, Riku, The Mimeoplasm, etc. I don't see how a card like Call to the Grave could possibly make the cut. The deck that you posted just seems a bit too slow and clunky to actually pressure those archetypes. You need a turn 1-2 Braids to keep pace with them and from there you really want to slam things like Winter Orb and Defense Grid to deny any of their would-be options to beat it. Those decks can produce turn 3 wins so if yours can't then you're just always going to be playing from behind.
You made a long (but constructive) post so I'll give you an equally long (and hopefully just as meaningful) answer. Firstly, a few bits of background: one, my playgroup uses multiplayer mulligan rules (full paris, with first one free). As such our average clock ends up being about a turn slower than partial paris because we can't sculpt god hands as often--which is exactly how we wanted it. Two, I don't receive as many opportunities to test this deck with other players as I do with my other decks, since even though we've "house unbanned" braids I personally elect not to play her unless everyone who shows up is comfortable with it since I'd rather not get into a fuss with somebody who arrived expecting us to play with the mtgcommander rules to the letter; as such, my deck is still evolving in ways perhaps yours already has. In the future I might arrive at the same conclusions you did, but my progress is limited by my accommodating nature (and certain people's inflexibility). And thirdly, some of your suggestions I agree with wholly--so much to the point that I've actually already included them in my decklist a while ago, even though the list in the OP doesn't show it. This has happened to me occasionally in the past; I'll edit a decklist from a doc on my computer and accidentally copy+paste an older version to the thread when I update it. That's entirely my clumsiness.
No Gemstone Caverns, Crystal Vein, Ebon Stronghold, Phyrexian Tower, Mox Diamond or Chrome Mox seems weird to me. Isn't plan A to cast Braids on turn 1-2 every game? Isn't anything turn 3 and beyond just way too slow for competitive play? Doesn't she just get countered/killed/bounced/combo'd out? How are you beating competitive stax decks like Derevi and competitive combo decks like Arcum with turn 3+ Braids? I dunno, Gemstone Caverns is like Sol Ring or Ancient Tomb IMO. Why wouldn't you play it in competitive multiplayer?
Crystal Vein is in my paper decklist already, just not in OP list. Chrome Mox in my initial playtesting couldn't make the drop frequently enough without a black permanent I was willing to exile alongside it, but I'm still testing it. Mox Diamond has been doing better than Chrome Mox; if I was going to make a cut for any additional ramp I'd probably consider Mox Diamond before chrome, and the rest of the 2-drop non-card-disadvantage rocks like Mind Stone before those.
I don't understand cards like Diabolic Tutor, Magus of the Abyss, Call to the Grave, Breeding Pit and Nuisance Engine. They seem extremely slow, mana intensive and/or pointless. Again, I don't see how you can put those in your list when you're facing against actual God-tier commanders/archetypes. You are not going to beat Damia ramp + combo + take extra turns or Riku Splinter Twin combo with something like Breeding Pit in your deck.
Call to the Grave has, as you've correctly noted, played out extremely lackluster, at 5cmc and only affecting creatures. It would be the first thing I'd consider cutting. While I've normally avoided Waste Not under the premise that I wasn't discarding enough to make it worth it to make use out of it (see my above post from early June), recent games in the last several weeks I've been playing braids since that post have reminded me otherwise; I think I'd simply forgotten, after playing Arcum and Azami for too long, how much I actually end up prioritizing discard spells on a game-to-game basis when I'm playing a B deck, and how underwhelming stuff like Duress can be outside of a 1v1.
I too dislike Nuisance Engine primarily because it's both pricey and turned off by Null Rod (I know you don't like it, but I do, more on that below). Breeding Pit doesn't entirely pull its weight either I don't think, but I have to find some other fodder-makers in black to replace them.
No Innocent Blood, Toxic Deluge or Massacre? Why run all of those expensive spot removal spells over things like these? There's no world in which Rend Flesh is better than Toxic Deluge when you have 40 life to work with. I realize that mass removal hits Braids but if you need outs to things like Hermit Druid then you want Snuff Out, not "Murder."
I'll concede on that one, Rend Flesh is pretty outdated, and there's some other good removal pieces conspicuously absent. I think I've been kind of lazy or absent-minded with the removal suite thus far, hence why I just sort of threw Damnation and some anti-green sweepers in the 'board.
Why would you ever play Null Rod? It absolutely neuters your own gameplan. It can't possibly be correct to play it in basically any mono-Black deck.
This one I'll defend. It shuts off every fast mana rock and every artifact combo in a format dominated by fast mana rocks and infinite combos. I'd hazard no other card in this deck disables as many things in a single stroke. Yes, it turns off our own rocks too, but that's OK because we pitch them to braids (which we usually end up doing anyway after we've ramped into her), and our strongest artifacts (Tangle Wire, all the tax/denial orbs, Smokestack, etc.) don't have activated abilities in the first place.
I normally interpret Null Rod as one side of a coin whose other side is Contamination. Both of them shut off a large portion (but not all) of players' manabases at a cost that we can work around. Null Rod is perhaps even stronger as it also turns off equipments and artifact combos.
I'll finish responding to your other stuff a little later, it's all valid criticism and I concur on several points, I just don't have the time to comment on each item at this particular moment.
p.s.: Expedition Map isn't ramp, it's a tutor for tech lands (most typically Tabernacle, Strip Mine, Cavern of Souls), that one's easy and short for me to explain.
I strongly recommend that you at least test a version of the deck with about 2 fewer lands, no Expedition Map, no Wayfarer's Bauble, no Null Rod, all of the broken ramp (Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus), a whack of 2 CMC ramp and a fair amount of the 0 CMC stuff (Gemstone Mine, Ebon Stronghold, Mox Diamond, etc.). I think that you'd amazed at how powerful the deck can be when you're dumping a hand of fast mana into play and following it up with a turn 2 Braids. I don't think that the best version of this deck needs to bother with assembling combos nor does it require a "Bloodghast" before you can start wrecking people with Braids. Just play her as fast as you possibly can and use your broken mana and tutors to seal the deal. In order for this deck to hold its own against things like Arcum or any of the other broken Blue generals (there's too many to list) it needs to be as fast and disruptive as possible and that makes things like Expedition Map for Strip Mine + CoW way too slow. You'll kill one land from one opponent and promptly get combo'd out.
Like, just think about your Arcum deck. How unhappy would you be to see someone spend their opening turns casting Crucible, tutoring up a Strip Mine/Tabernacle with E.Map, etc.? Your grin would span from ear-to-ear amiright? Braids doesn't combo kill. Braids doesn't immediately remove everyone's fast mana. You need to slam her into play FAST and then support her with as much relevant disruption as you possibly can.
So after convincing my playgroup to let me get a lot of playtime in with Braids lately so I can keep testing her I ended up making a bunch of changes to the list, it's quite different now from what it's been for the last several months.
Firstly despite my inital reluctance I maxed out on 2cmc rocks, even the ones that come into play tapped. I also included Mox Diamond and Gemstone Caverns for some 0-drops, as I anticipated from earlier playtesting however Chrome Mox isn't nearly as effective because over 3/5ths of the list as it currently stands is artifacts and lands, and Chrome Mox demands a nonartifact, nonland card to work. This maximizes the probability of landing a T3 braids at latest, while making a T2 braids much more likely. T1 braids is neat when you're not playing first, but when you are it's kinda useless since almost nobody plays permanents on T0 anyway. I think T2 is a nice target to shoot for.
Updated the removal and discard package, which as discussed above was kinda lazily whipped together as a placeholder while I spent my time figuring out how to use the commander most effectively. While I'm still a fan of single-target discard in EDH I'm trying something new for now and getting rid of all single-target discard effects in favor of multi-target only. I was skeptical about Prid3's suggestion of Mindslicer, put it in, took it out, then put it back in again for now, and I'm still testing it. The BB is harder than it looks to pull off, and having to wait until your next upkeep to sac it to braids is huge telegraphing (unlike Unnerve, which while a considerably weaker discard effect, it does come out as a surprise and is noticeably easier to cast with only one B in the cost.
Trimmed out the most expensive fodder producers, like Breeding Pit and Nuisance Engine. They're nice old school flavor, and I used to run them with braids back before she was banned in the first place, but the fact of the matter is that there's simply better stuff by now that doesn't require continued mana investment (or less investment at least). The only fodder producers left are the most efficient ones. For a while I played legacy pox and I took a page from that book by throwing in Nether Spirit, which has been playing out well as a one-card solution to feeding braids forever with no continued mana cost (basically as good as Bitterblossom once he's in the yard). Also trimmed out the fattest stax pieces, stuff like Call to the Grave and Lodestone Golem, which I basically never got around to playing anyway, as well as the slower tutors and most restrictive ones (including Emap, had more than one person telling me it was useless and I finally bit) to bring the average CMC of the deck to about 2. This in turn raises the question whether Dark Confidant would be worth it. I'll have to test that.
With all that space I was able to cram the mainboard with more efficient stax pieces like: Static Orb and Winter Orb, as well as badly-needed silver bullets borrowed from my Arcum deck including Defense Grid, Ensnaring Bridge (true aggro doesn't feature as heavily in my meta but a bridge with an empty hand is good universally), and Torpor Orb in from the sideboard.
The only thing I lack now is a grave hate silver bullet. I'm still thinking about it. It would need to be something that didn't affect my GY because I use it too much myself I think. Leyline of the Void is nice but the casting cost is clunky. I'm thinking an artifact solution like Relic of Progenitus, or perhaps another item from legacy with Withered Wretch. Will have to mull that one over. Bojuka Bog is the GY piece I've been managing with thus far.
Lastly I'm still thoroughly in love with Null Rod. Again, once braids is out we often end up pitching our mana rocks anyway, and in the competitive scene where everyone and their mother is running every mana rock and utility artifact under the sun (Top, GY hate artifacts, equipments like skullclamp or greaves, etc.) and artifact combos abound, shutting down all those wincons, utility artifacts, and 50%+ of everyone's manabase simply can't be trumped. I have literally never been disappointed to have it in my hand, and I might even go so far as to say it's the strongest denial card in the deck.
In summary, lots of changes, faster braids, stronger spells, lower curve. I'm pleased with the progress.
The more chances I get to play Braids the more I realize she really hinges on making a big play T1-2, or T3 at absolute latest (early Braids, early Trinisphere, early Tangle Wire, something of that nature). Unlike combo decks like my Arcum deck it seems very difficult for Braids to "turn the game around" or "explode out of nowhere" when she's behind; as soon as another player has a developed board state (which requires a few turns at most in a rock-heavy format like EDH) Braids' "sac 1 thing per turn" is pretty easy to keep up with. So either she makes a masterstroke play in the first few turns and wins, or she doesn't and the opponents prepare themselves and she loses. She reminds me very much of other "all-in" decks like Skittles or even Hermit Druid that way, though she uses her few critical turns to go for a stax win instead of an infect-aggro or combo win.
I cut Diabolic Edict for Thought Vessel. Edict was underperforming as a single-target removal spell that sometimes didn't even hit the single target I wanted. Definitely more of a duel card. The new Thought Vessel, while nothing amazing, is a 2 rock that gives 1 that doesn't come into play tapped and has a fluff ability stapled to it, and is therefore already better in my book than a lot of earlier rocks like Prismatic Lens and Guardian Idol. I'd place it roughly equal to Mind Stone, a little lower perhaps. In either case, 2cmc rocks that ramp for 1 are our ideal tools for pulling off the early-game plays we need to win (besides of course the broken rocks like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt), so having more when they fit is never a bad thing.
Other than that, not much has been released or changed in recent months that suits us. Reanimator got a big new toy in the form of Void Winnower, which played early shuts down this deck (along with so many others) and only further emphasizes the need for a solid anti-grave sideboard. The partial paris change doesn't really affect this deck as my playgroups have always used multiplayer mulls anyway and I built the list with that in mind.
Perhaps the best news since my last post is that Braids was unbanned in French, which has boosted her exposure as a commander in a way she hasn't seen for many years, and which may herald a subsequent unbanning of Braids in regular edh if the RC ever reaches the same conclusion the French folks did (with power creep, braids isn't really as astronomically broken relative to other top commanders as she used to be back when she and Kokusho were originally banned), though that's anyone's guess as the RC is sort of unpredictable on that.
We'll just have to keep an ear to the ground in the meantime, so to speak. As always, suggestions and thoughts on the decklist are welcome.
This deck is beautiful, it's great that you're still putting work into the list. My group won't allow Braids, so I run Sidisi, Undead Vizier with a similar build. I lack the expensive black enchantments(I won't proxy a card unless they're in the mail), and make up for the lack of Braids with Possessed Portal to force concession, despite the high cmc. How do you feel about Desolation and Gate to Phyrexia? Have you found Magus of the Abyss to be effective? So far I've really liked Pawn of Ulamog for extra mana/tokens, what do you think?
Have you thought about using Withering Boon as single-target removal? It's really helped against turn 3 Zur/Narset and can even stop things like Acidic Slime/Reclamation Sage. I'm not sure how sensitive your list would be to artifact hate because Braids, but in any case W. Boon seems like it could be at least as efficient as Innocent Blood. I agree that Leyline of the Void is a bit clunky, albeit powerful. Nihil Spellbomb might be a good option for gravehate and cantrips like the Relic. Shred Memory could be a possibility as well, with the transmute hitting a relevant cmc.
This deck is beautiful, it's great that you're still putting work into the list.
Whenever I get a chance. Sorry for the late reply.
My group won't allow Braids, so I run Sidisi, Undead Vizier with a similar build. I lack the expensive black enchantments(I won't proxy a card unless they're in the mail), and make up for the lack of Braids with Possessed Portal to force concession, despite the high cmc. How do you feel about Desolation and Gate to Phyrexia? Have you found Magus of the Abyss to be effective? So far I've really liked Pawn of Ulamog for extra mana/tokens, what do you think?
Playing competitive stax without proxies or cockatrice is a real pain in the wallet, no doubt about it. The Abyss, Tabernacle, Nether Void, Liliana, Crucible, and others are all highly important stax mainstays (Nether Void in particular can be game-ending if it resolves) but they cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars, and in addition to the usual "competitive goodstuff staples" like Imperial Seal and Mana Crypt that add hundreds/thousands more you'll be spending a small fortune on cardboard if you tried to build this list legitimately.
Interesting that you chose Possessed Portal as the haymaker. I love the card, it single-handedly wins games in my Arcum list since he can spit it out as early as T3-T4, but I admit I've never, ever seen it used outside of Arcum in a competitive deck. The 8 casting cost is intimidating enough to discourage most people from even considering it
Magus of the Abyss has been somewhat disappointing. Before, Call to the Grave was on the cutting block for its high CMC and I did eventually end up cutting it. Magus is one of the cards on there next. All too often he's simply played out as an overpriced Fleshbag Marauder, where I cast him, everyone else sacs a thing, and then I sac him to himself on my next turn. Unlike his enchantment counterpart you can't "set him and forget him," i.e. the enchantment keeps working even without fuel, he doesn't. He still has the enchantment's main drawback, though, which is that he doesn't get around shroud/hexproof which are pretty ubiquitous these days. I'm this close (holding up my fingers nearly together) to cutting him, just need a little more playtesting and something good enough to cut him for.
Gate to Phyrexia is tempting, I know, because it's artifact removal in mono-black and we're arguably a deck that could make it work; I haven't playtested it yet, but on paper it strikes me as having the same problems I ran into with Grave Pact (which I did test extensively), namely we aren't always using creatures for fuel--often enough it's recurring lands with Dakmoor Salvage dredge or Crucible of Worlds, other times its spent mana rocks like that tapped-out Grim Monolith or Mana Vault (also the same reason once again why Magus of the Abyss all too often eats his own trigger next turn).
Desolation is strong and I think it deserves more playtesting on my part, but I don't think it's as strong as Contamination. Anyone knowledgeable enough about the rules can exploit the fact that its trigger happens at the beginning of the end step to cast instants/activate abilities in the end step after the trigger resolves and avoid the penalty. It also doesn't help vs high-output lands like Gaea's Cradle and Mishra's Workshop or mana-doublers. But it still has potential too.
Have you thought about using Withering Boon as single-target removal? It's really helped against turn 3 Zur/Narset and can even stop things like Acidic Slime/Reclamation Sage. I'm not sure how sensitive your list would be to artifact hate because Braids, but in any case W. Boon seems like it could be at least as efficient as Innocent Blood. I agree that Leyline of the Void is a bit clunky, albeit powerful. Nihil Spellbomb might be a good option for gravehate and cantrips like the Relic. Shred Memory could be a possibility as well, with the transmute hitting a relevant cmc.
Not as sensitive to artifact hate as other stax lists. Once we power out braids I'll happily throw some mana rocks away to feed her, which is why I run Null Rod. Still in love with that card, by the way, at worst it plays out as Contamination for mana rocks, at best it shuts down entire decks if their wincons rely on artifacts and activating them.
Withering Boon and other spells like it (situational off-color counterspells, cf Illumination, Deathgrip/Life Force, etc.) have never been much my style--I'd rather have a more consistent, less situational solution. You could also, to use your example, deal with a T3 Zur/Narset with Ensnaring Bridge set to 0, or deal with an Acidic Slime/Reclamation Sage with a Torpor Orb, and you don't have to worry nearly as much about timing (they work as long as they're on the field). They do have a "surprise factor" in that no one expects to get hit with a counterspell from the B player, and that can be pretty humorous the first time, but that doesn't fool anyone twice (or, at least, it shouldn't XD).
Thanks for the suggestions though, you definitely reminded me that I need to do more playtesting of Desolation, and I'd forgotten about Shred Memory too, instant speed grave-hate with a relevant tutor looks better and better the more I consider it.
No worries, thank you just the same. I've since cut Possessed Portal from my list because yeah, it's just way too clunky for anything that isn't Arcum or Daretti. Options are limited without Braids, though.
Chalice of the Void is a really solid idea, it could definitely do some serious work in competitive metas. What do you think about Cursed Totem? It wouldn't affect anything in your list and shuts off some pretty relevant abilities. Arcum and Yisan for instance.
I agree with what your observations about Gate to Phyrexia and Grave Pact in that it's not always creatures fueling the engine. At that same rate, Dark Confidant seems more reliable than Shadows of the Past. Shadows is a really neat card though, how is it doing for you?
Desolation has been awkward so far because I'm usually the only one casting spells through the lock. It might be more effective with Braids leading the deck and I may just be playing it wrong. The fact that it doesn't affect the high output lands is very real however. I'm curious to hear what your experience with it will be.
I've drawn similar conclusions regarding Withering Boon, just kind of a pet card for me because my first EDH deck was Phage lol. You're right though, there are far more efficient solutions to the problem W. Boon tries to amend.
Thanks again, TrueNub. If you ever have the time, would you mind checking out my list? The initial idea was heavily inspired by your Braids.
The rationale for many of these is somewhat interconnected. Bob is for sure better and more consistent CA than the "virtual CA" of Shadows of the Past, but I wanted a little smaller curve to make him work without hurting me too much in the long run (if the game even gets to the long run). So I took out the CMC6 Beseech the Queen and replaced it with CMC2 Shred Memory, doubly serving as grave hate (which I needed more of) and tutor, since 9/10 times the thing we're searching for with Beseech is transmutable by Shred anyway (Bitterblossom or Reassembling Skeleton to feed braids; Null Rod, Torpor Orb, Chains of Mephistopheles, Winter Orb, etc. as deck hosers; and so forth...at absolute worst can always grab Demonic Tutor if you really badly need something not cmc2, but I can't imagine that ever being relevant). I also took out the CMC4 Magus of the Abyss, who as I mentioned above was usually getting sacced to himself next turn anyway like a glorified Fleshbag Marauder (he's not a bad creature on his own, but when Braids is in the command zone he loses a lot of appeal) and replaced it with Liliana, Heretical Healer, who has all highly relevant abilities if she can be flipped. I'm still not entirely certain just how consistently she can be flipped, so I'll be testing that out, but as Prid3 said a long time ago in an above post at worst we can always sac Braids to herself for the flip, though granted that means pitching Braids to the GY instead of the CZ.
The other changes are more minor. Drownyard Temple is a slightly worse than Dakmoor Salvage #2 in that it's a one-card land-based solution to feeding Braids if necessary, though it only taps for colorless. Also I never really ended up needing Thought Vessel's "no max hand size" ability, it's only relevant with Necropotence, so I swapped it for Prismatic Lens which has a slightly more useful secondary ability.
It's a good list. There's many different Sidisi variants out there, most I've seen are more reanimator/combo than stax to take advantage of recurring sidisi for additional tutors. Also, I've been saying for a long time what you guys discussed in that thread, which was that the banning of Braids in the 99 was a real blow to Pox-type stax in EDH (actually I've been saying that from the day the "banned as commander" list was abolished), and I think it's only matter of time considering recent power creep that she becomes unbanned. Kokusho was seen as overly oppressive back then also and he's since been unbanned. At this point people are afraid of her just by name, she's been on the banlist for so long a lot of people can't (or don't want to) imagine what a Braids deck even looks like. And that's part of the reason I maintain this thread, I think more exposure to Braids is a good thing, so people can see that she's not nearly the unrivaled terror she used to be next to Derevi, Empyreal Tactician and other power-creeps.
Braids in the command zone really does make a big difference in card selection. Magus of the Abyss for me is meh because I have a superior alternative in the CZ, since you guys don't it's a much more viable pick for you. For me reanimation effects like your Reanimate or Xiahou only dilute Braids, for you every reanimation is another Demonic Tutor with Sidisi in the grave. Your curve, too, is overall a little bigger, so you probably generate more mana-per-game than I do and you can afford to play things like Bubbling Muck and Death Cloud, and you'll likely have more lands out than I do at any given time so you can make better use of Beseech the Queen.
That said I still have some questions. How's Mana Web work for you? Don't people just tap all their lands in response to the trigger? It won't stop people from playing "draw-go" against you. My go-to solution for control players has always been Defense Grid, it does the same job of forcing everyone to play on their own turn while also screwing over "free" spells because of the tax mechanic (for example, your mana web won't do anything if someone counters you with Force of Will, but my defense grid will say "nope, pay 3 or go home"). And land-light rock-heavy decks ignore the web almost completely.
How about Infernal Darkness? How long can you sustain it? Once again you seem to be running a bigger-mana, bigger-curve build than mine, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works better for you than I'd imagine it working for me.
I like your Ophiomancer by the way, I didn't even know that card existed. Learn something new every day! I might consider testing it against Sengir Autocrat, he's kinda like Breeding Pit you know (which I eventually cut a while back), old school 2009 pre-ban braids flavor, but maybe he's been eclipsed by now.
Anyway, I'm glad to know my braids list is still inspiring people, even though as of yet she remains banned. As far as I'm concerned, any discussion about Braids or Braids-derivatives like your Sidisi, whether here on mtgs or on the competitive edh subreddit or elsewhere, is a discussion worth having--because people will never seriously start reconsidering Braids' position on the banlist in 2016 if they don't know what a Braids deck would actually look like in 2016 compared to other top commanders.
This. I totally get why she is seen as "unfun" in a casual environment, but with power creep rising, I honestly don´t see the point. I am pretty sure Braids could be the Commander mono black needs, but even with her at the head, I fail to believe that she would be seen as T1 by anyone.
I think she has the potential to be one of the top commanders. In my games playtesting braids she's been able to stand toe-to-toe with Azami, Brago, Arcum, Zur, and other front contenders and consistently put up a good fight, winning sometimes and losing sometimes, with some better matchups than others (and that's how it should be, if she were imbalanced she'd be winning all the time). Like most stax decks she does better against opponents who keep a smaller, more control-oriented board (like Zur) and worse against opponents who keep a bigger, heavy-loaded board or who play stax also (like Edric or Derevi). I don't think she's overpowered, I think she's well-balanced with other top guys.
I stopped focussing on a hard lock, so my list is way lighter on actual stax pieces than yours. That beeing said, I feel like people tend to leave up Defense Grid just as long as it is usefull to them, clearing it whenever they need / want to get rid of it. Defense Grid doesn´t only help you (in fact someone else might be happy to have it hanging around, not having to fear interruption as they want to combo). Mana Web doesn´t work "great" against every list, but same can be said for Torpor Orb / Defense Grid / Null Rod. BUT, Mana Web is like a wet dream together with Winter Orb / Static Orb / Tangle Wire, my most important tools for slowing down the game.
OK, I can understand it a little better in that context, once again I think it's just a difference from having Sidisi in the CZ rather than braids. In my games no one is happy to have Defense Grid hanging around except me because it means nobody gets to Force of Will T2 Braids. I still think Grid is overall a little stronger because of the ubiquity of non-land mana sources (mana dorks and rocks) in EDH that completely circumvent Web, but if you're regularly tutoring out Winter Orb and overall playing a little slower and less staxxy game where more lands end up on the board overall then I suppose you'd have a better experience with Web than I would.
I don´t care about sustaining it [ Infernal Darkness ] for forever. Usually, this card feels like a 1-3 turn mono black time walk (or as close to as we can get), same goes for Contamination. Everyone I speak to is telling me Contamination > Infernal Darkness, while I can´t agree. 9 % of the time, even a fed Contamination doesn´t lock the board (in my list). Better decks are able to deal with it and something as simple as a Sword to Plowshares in your upkeep might break the chains. That beeing said, with all the fodder in your list (and again, Braids at the head), I would also tend to to say Contamination > Infernal Darkness. Dunno if you also "need" Infernal Darkness, but to me, this card is boss for buying 1-3 crucial turns, no setup required.
Again I think this comes down to Sidisi vs Braids. For you, buying time is important while you use Sidisi and other tutors to grab your stax pieces. For me, I don't want to buy time, if I can pay 2BB I want to be spending it on Braids, Cabal Minion, not Infernal Darkness. You're right that Contamination usually doesn't lock the board on its own, as I mentioned above there are enough non-land mana sources in edh (mana dorks, mana rocks) that turning off lands isn't always game-ending. But I do have to agree with the people who tell you it's better than Infernal Darkness, first of all Infernal Darkness only changes type of mana but not amount while Contamination changes both (i.e. Gaea's Cradle with 5 creatures will produce BBBBB with Infernal Darkness; but with Contamination it will only produce B), and second of all Contamination can be sustained indefinitely with the right setup (again, a little easier in Braids than Sidisi) whereas Infernal Darkness only lasts at max 3-4 turns no matter who's using it.
I'm going to do a bunch of solitaire trials with Liliana, Heretical Healer to see how consistently I can get her flipped in a vacuum, but I'm feeling optimistic. Necrogen Mists-style effects are always welcome, and her -8 is game-ending if it goes off.
I like Shred Memory, but at some point I'd still like to work in Leyline of the Void or some other more persistent grave-hate. I also can't shake the feeling that Chalice of the Void would be great tech if I could find a spot for it too: I imagine like legacy/vintage it can serve as a mini-Trinisphere if played on T1 for X=1 or even X=0 (lets you build tempo with a play like Swamp -> Sol Ring -> Chalice while forcing others to land -> pass) and X=2 blocks so many EDH competitive game-changers it's not even funny. That said, it does brick several cards in our own deck; self-reanimators like Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton can get around an X=2 chalice but other great cards like Null Rod and Bitterblossom can't. The key question is whether or not it consistently blanks more critical things for other people than it does for us, that's what I'll be thinking about moving forward in deciding if it's worth a mainboard spot.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\--Braids, Ghastly Demise
B) Background
==or, "But Braids is BANNED!"==
Firstly and foremostly, Braids is NOT banned, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. If you click on over to the official rules page on mtgocommander.net, and you navigate to "Deck Construction and scroll down to the banlist section, you'll see up at the top of the list a preliminary statement. Read it well: These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game.
This single statement, though brief, is tremendously important. It represents a core tenet of EDH philosophy: EDH is a social format, and the ultimate bottom line on the rules and banlist are in the hands of each individual playgroup, not Sheldon and the rules committee (though they attempt to provide guidelines). Thus, in the same manner that many playgroups reach a concensus and choose to ban infinite combos, MLD, and/or countermagic, even though those cards are not present on the mtgocommander.net banlist, your playgroup may reach a concensus and choose to UNban Braids, Cabal Minion, even though she is on the banlist.
Of course, this may very well be easier said than done. It demands you and your playgroup are highly familiar with each other: you have to know your playgroup well enough to anticipate that Braids will be a welcome addition to the game (more on this under "Why Braids?" below), and your playgroup has to know you well enough to genuinely and meaningfully consider your ideas and to generate an honest debate.
Some of you might not even know where to start in terms of getting an opinion about Braids, so below (spoilered for your convenience, since by now some of you might just want to move on to Braids) I've provided some facts for you to keep in mind and some resources to start you off.
Braids was added to the mtgcommander.net banlist on June 20th, 2009, many years ago. The official announcement can be found here, but here's also a transcript below:
Keep in mind that in both the game (i.e. the cards available) and the metagame (i.e. the strategies people use) have changed drastically since 2009. For comparison, Kokusho, the Evening Star was banned back then for a similar reason to Braids as stated in the above quote, but since that time, due to the evolution of the format, Kokusho was unbanned first in the 99 and subsequently as a commander. This example highlights an important consideration: in today's EDH, with all the powerful new commanders and other cards that have been printed (that is to say, power creep), some of the committee's older rulings may no longer be applicable, and this is what you and your playgroup have to decide for yourselves. Perhaps Braids, like Kokusho, isn't the unbeatable monstrosity she used to be, particularly in a competitive environment where people are already running Derevi, Prossh, and other extremely powerful commanders. Is it right, then, for her to remain banned?
Obviously, I certainly don't think so, and my playgroup doesn't either. But all that said, this thread you're reading now is NOT a place to discuss it. There's already a thread here on the MTGS Commander boards for such discussion, and that's the official banlist discussion thread posted by viperesque. Additionally, a quick google search will reveal countless other threads reaching all the way back to the original announcement date on various forums (mtgs, mtgcommander.net, reddit, and others) in which people expound their personal opinions on the justification (or lack thereof) of Braids' banning, and I encourage you to catch up on the debate thus far.
Braids' story takes place on the plane of Dominaria, on the continent of Otaria. The exact chronology of her story in the overall lore is unknown, but it takes place sometime long, long after the events of the Tolarian Academy and the Phyrexian Invasion. In the cards, Braids' chronology is represented in Odyssey, Onslaught, and related sets.
Over half of Otaria was ruled de facto by a secret, B-aligned organization known as the Cabal. Headed by the Patriarch, the Cabal was a cross between religious cult and racketeering gang, known most prominently for the brutal pit fights it hosted to raise money from gamblers and spectators alike. The Patriarch's innumerous underlings, the members of the Cabal, were known as minions, and creature cards associated with the Cabal bear the creature subtype "minion"--such as Cabal Surgeon, Cabal Torturer, Cabal Trainee, and, of course, Braids, Cabal Minion.
But Braids, whose origins are still unknown, was a special type of minion: she was a dementia summoner, a mage who specialized in pulling grotesque nightmares from dementia space into reality to fight for her, either shadowy memories of previous figures she killed or, more commonly, formless, terrifying abominations. Dementia summoning typically took years to fully master (just ask Chainer), and in their struggle to maintain their connection to dementia forces, summoners eventually lost their grip on reality and sank into babbling madness. Braids, however, was already quite insane by nature; as a result, she possessed an innate connection to dementia forces. Thus she had a natural talent for dementia summoning, and moreover she remained lucid--insane, but lucid--throughout her career. These attributes, in combination with her zealous loyalty to the Cabal and the bubbly enthusiasm with which she approached her "work," allowed her to rapidly ascend the Cabal hierarchy, becoming one of its elite generals and ultimately (after slaying the Patriarch) even its leader.
From there, Otarian events escalated rapidly. For the rest of the story, check out her MTGS wiki lore page.
Braids' ability, "At the beginning of each player's upkeep, each player sacrifices...", is representative of Braids' cruelty and oppressiveness as a Cabal elite. Everyone at the table, including yourself, will feel first-hand her murderous, extortionate nature while she's on the field.
Do you like stax? That sadistic strategy of symmetric resource denial and tax effects that leaves your opponents utterly unable to fight? Put simply, Braids is stax. No other legendary creature lives and breathes the archetype as much as she does. She's effectively a black creature version of Smokestack--the titular card of stax--except that she's fixed at one counter (hardly a drawback). Indeed, other black-based stax commanders like Nath of the Gilt-Leaf and Sek'kuar, Deathkeeper often rush into Braids as an opening play. With Braids in your command zone, you don't have to tutor for her; she comes out early and hard, and she'll go right back to your command zone when she's dead. If stax is your archetype, Braids is your girl.
But she's banned for a reason. It practically goes without saying that Braids is an extremely competitive commander. For those of you wondering whether it's worth the effort to get Braids legalized in your playgroup, your friends most likely won't even consider allowing Braids unless they're already allowing other degenerately powerful decks like Arcum, Sharuum, Hermit Druid, Azami, and so on, as these are the commanders that rival her power most closely.
In my personal case, I noticed that my competitive playgroup was growing rather stagnant--people were bringing the same blue-based combo commanders over and over again to our tournaments, because these were the commanders that were proven to win consistently. I pointed this out to my friends, and we collectively agreed that legalizing Braids would add some new diversity (black-based stax) to freshen things up without being so overpowered as to polarize the entire metagame. But that's just my meta, so YMMV.
At any rate, if you're considering whether or not you'll like Braids, here's a short and sweet list to help you out...
You may enjoy Braids if:
You may not enjoy Braids if:
Once upon a time, Braids was legal, and I was happy. Then Braids was added to the mtgocommander.net banlist, and I was sad. Like so many others, I played Braids prior to the ban and ended up shelving her when the ban announcement came out. But Braids was never truly dead to me; I was convinced, at the time, that the power creep in the cards and the meta would eventually catch up to the ol' girl (or at least that's what I like to tell myself in 20-20 hindsight).
At one point several years ago, after one of my playgroup's competitive community tournaments, I noted to my playgroup the overall lack of diversity; blue-based combo everywhere, lots of prison, some MBC/reanimator, the occasional voltron or all-in build like Uril or Hermit Druid, rarely fast aggro like Azusa (this was before the days of Prossh, Derevi, or any other terrifying commanders that would later see print in the Commander sets). As I mentioned above, I proposed to them that allowing Braids would add some competitive pox-esque stax to the mix (besides Zur stax, which ends up feeling more like a voltron/combo deck anyway) and potentially diversify the meta without unbalancing it. My playgroup agreed.
So I tuned up the list below for my competitive meta. New toys like Torpor Orb and Cavern of Souls fit right in. The end result is a deck that truly lives up to Braids' reputation as a genuinely terrifying commander, fully equipped to stand toe-to-toe with other competitive commanders of the present era.
Here is my list as it currently stands:
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1x Cabal Pit
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Traitors
1x Command Beacon
1x Crystal Vein
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Darksteel Citadel
1x Drownyard Temple
1x Ebon Stronghold
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Marsh Flats
1x Mishra's Workshop
1x Peat Bog
1x Polluted Delta
7x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Strip Mine
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Vault of Whispers
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Wasteland
Artifact (32)
1x Chalice of the Void
1x Charcoal Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Cursed Totem
1x Defense Grid
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Grim Monolith
1x Jet Medallion
1x Jeweled Amulet
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Null Rod
1x Pithing Needle
1x Prismatic Lens
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Skullclamp
1x Smokestack
1x Sol Ring
1x Sphere of Resistance
1x Static Orb
1x Tangle Wire
1x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Torpor Orb
1x Trinisphere
1x Winter Orb
1x Bloodghast
1x Dark Confidant
1x Liliana, Heretical Healer
1x Mindslicer
1x Nether Spirit
1x Ophiomancer
1x Reassembling Skeleton
Instant (7)
1x Dark Ritual
1x Dismember
1x Entomb
1x Go for the Throat
1x Shred Memory
1x Snuff Out
1x Vampiric Tutor
Planeswalker (1)
1x Liliana of the Veil
Sorcery (10)
1x Buried Alive
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Innocent Blood
1x Night's Whisper
1x Sign in Blood
1x Smallpox
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Enchantment (10)
1x Bitterblossom
1x Bottomless Pit
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Contamination
1x Necrogen Mists
1x Necropotence
1x Nether Void
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x The Abyss
1x Waste Not
1x Withered Wretch
1x Damnation
1x Perish
1x Nature's Ruin
1x Delirium Skeins
1x Leyline of the Void
The unfortunate truth is that stax as an archetype--regardless of commander--is financially costly to build well because the majority of our best cards are also our most expensive. Many of our strongest fodder generators like Crucible and Bitterblossom cost dozens of dollars, while many of our core stax pieces like The Abyss and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and our most efficient mana sources like Mana Crypt cost hundreds. You can play stax on a budget, but you'll gain a lot of bang for your buck if you choose to spend more (or lose a lot of bang if you choose to keep it cheap).
This decklist plays basically the same as the one above; the Helm + Leyline combo is in this time because the removal of money cards made room for it, and you've still got Contamination lock and of course Braids.
1x Charcoal Diamond
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Expedition Map
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Helm of Obedience
1x Jet Medallion
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Nuisance Engine
1x Null Rod
1x Pithing Needle
1x Skullclamp
1x Smokestack
1x Sol Ring
1x Sphere of Resistance
1x Tangle Wire
1x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Torpor Orb
1x Trinisphere
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
Instant (8)
1x Dark Ritual
1x Devour in Shadow
1x Diabolic Edict
1x Dismember
1x Doom Blade
1x Entomb
1x Go for the Throat
1x Rend Flesh
1x Ambition's Cost
1x Ancient Craving
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Buried Alive
1x Delirium Skeins
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Diabolic Tutor
1x Hymn to Tourach
1x Mind Twist
1x Mutilate
1x Night's Whisper
1x Sign in Blood
1x Smallpox
1x Unnerve
Land (36)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Cabal Pit
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Ebon Stronghold
1x Mouth of Ronom
1x Peat Bog
27x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Springjack Pasture
1x Strip Mine
1x Bitterblossom
1x Bottomless Pit
1x Breeding Pit
1x Call to the Grave
1x Contamination
1x Leyline of the Void
1x Necrogen Mists
1x Necropotence
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Shadows of the Past
Creature (9)
1x Anowon, the Ruin Sage
1x Bloodghast
1x Endless Cockroaches
1x Lodestone Golem
1x Magus of the Abyss
1x Nether Spirit
1x Nether Traitor
1x Ophiomancer
1x Reassembling Skeleton
Step 1: Play mana rocks and other accelerants, working toward 2BB as soon as possible to cast Braids (ideally by T2-T3, potentially even T1 if not playing first) while disrupting opponents with removal, discard, tax, and denial;
Step 2: Cast and resolve Braids, then tighten the lock with even more tax, stax, discard, and denial;
Step 3: Force opponents into a concession by locking them out of the game.
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
Have you considered switching darksteel ingot for a two drop? As I see it, it doesn't ramp braids due to her being a 4-drop and it's not like you need the colored mana that badly.
Might I suggest felwar stone and kin instead for consistent t3 braids?
[Primer] Kozilek, Butcher with Juice.
GWUBAtraxa, Praetor's Voice PrimerGWUB
GWURoon Bant Blink WhateverGWU
BRGLord Windgrace LandsBRG
Yanno I totally forgot about Felwar Stone, or perhaps I'll use Mind Stone, not sure. My biggest peeve with most of its ilk are that they CIPT, like Coldsteel Heart, and in my meta that just won't do.
I have no concerns about Null Rod, particularly in my meta. Everyone's packing all the broken mana rocks, from Sol Ring to Mana Crypt to Grim Monolith, not to mention the ubiquitous artifact combos like Arcum's Rings/Top/Staff, Sharuum's Foundry/Sword, and Azami's MoM/Temple Bell. It single-handedly turns off both mana ramp and wincons. I've even made T1 plays as silly as Swamp, Sol Ring, Null Rod, and it still ended up being backbreaking for the rest of my table.
Speaking of backbreaking, I'm a little on the fence about Workshop here also, but it's in right now because I was going for the dead brutal Vintage stax feel. Imagine it: T1 Trinisphere, T2 Smokestack, so on so forth. With all the stax pieces that are also artifacts, I get the feeling that just about every opening hand with Shop is a god hand. But we'll see how it plays out in the longer run.
I'm glad you like the deck. It's refreshing to dust off Braids and play a genuine Smokestack commander, not that wannabe Anowon, the Ruin Sage.
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
R.I.P. Sundering Titan (6/20/12) and Braids, Cabal Minion (9/12/14)
Whereas in 2013 I was more on the fence about Mishra's Workshop nowadays I'm pretty much in love with it. It single-handedly turns good hands into god hands, enabling crushing Vintage-like plays like T1 shop, Sol Ring, Jet Medallion; T2 Swamp, Trinisphere, Tangle Wire; T3 Braids. Or even just T1 shop, Trinisphere; T2 Swamp, Smokestack. It IS a repeatable dark ritual for artifacts only, but many of our strongest stax cards (Trini, Smokestack, Null Rod, Tangle Wire, Lodestone Golem, Sphere of Resistance) are artifacts, and they hurt the most when they're played in the first two turns.
Firstly, my playgroup allows proxies only for super expensive singletons (more than ~$60-100, we change the threshold once in a while), so we all run (legal) P9, P3K etc. in our competitive decks without paying thousands of dollars, you might consider discussing the possibility of the same thing with your own playgroup. Secondly, you can still make a powerful, competitive Braids deck, or any black deck for that matter, without those money cards--it just won't be quite as powerful. Lastly, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is a super strong card, great tech with Expedition Map which is already in my deck and the fact that it slips under a Trinisphere lock, but I'm not sure what to cut it for (hopefully not a swamp?). I'd love to include it if I could.
I'd also like to make room for Thorn of Amethyst if I could. I debate really often about cutting the Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void combo, because I never find myself needing to use it and the cards are basically useless outside of the combo, but then my deck doesn't have an alternate wincon and that makes me nervous.
Still hoping and praying that Braids sees an unban one day! I'll be ready when she does.
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
My brain tells me that having a "plan B" in case a prison can't be established is mandatory, but my gut tells me Helm+Leyline isn't a good enough plan B to merit inclusion. I suppose we'll see.
Replaced them for Thorn of Amethyst and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
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
Meanwhile Grave Pact is one I'd been thinking about for a long time; I like how unlike other stax effects it doesn't consume your own resources in parallel but rather adds extra milage to the resources you're already consuming, meaning you don't have to worry about "feeding" it (cf. The Abyss).
Then after some playtesting I realized Pact isn't quite as good as I thought it was because it only procs on our creature sac, and we're not always saccing creatures (oftentimes its lands and artifacts). I'm going to keep testing Pact but in the meantime it seems like Shadows of the Past is a much more universally-applicable addition since it procs off of ALL creature deaths, not just yours, and being able to scry 3-4 times before your next turn with a one-time investment of 1B even before Braids comes online seems pretty strong, even if I never use the 2nd ability. So currently it's Pact out, Shadows in.
Really trying to trim the fat on this list these days, making sure every single card pulls its weight. Waste Not is neato but we probably don't run enough discard. Regarding other cards from the new set, Liliana, Heretical Healer is nice but might not be so easy to flip since she doesn't work with tokens and a lot of the things we sac are tokens; Kothophed, Soul Hoarder has an amazing ability but at 6cmc is just too expensive. Languish is sort of a budget Damnation.
Tabernacle, as expected, is amazing. The best part is that it can't be countered.
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
1. In general, I had to mulligan pretty aggressively to get a hand that could play a turn 3 Braids, and in some games I couldn't make it happen at all. At my count, there are 9 ways to do this: Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Dark Ritual, Fellwar Stone, Jet Medallion, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, and Sol Ring. In your experience, how consistently can you get one of these 9 cards into your opening hand? Am I just having a different experience with randomization, or are there more important cards currently occupying slots that could otherwise be dedicated to ramp?
2. What are your tutor targets? Perhaps a better question would be, what is the next thing you want to play after landing Braids? Not having opponents, I generally searched for Bitterblossom, so that I could proceed to play a normal game of Magic.
Cruel tutor is pretty bad.
Did you test lions eye diamond? In not sure it's worth it here but then again I'm not sure it's not.
Of the 3 I would think chrome mox would be auto include status.
Damia http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=410191
DDFT Legacyhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=505247
Domain Zoo http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10212429#post10212429
When I tried Chrome Mox the first time I wasn't getting enough hands with both it and a black card I'd feel good about exiling instead of playing. It'd be nice if you could exile an artifact to tap it for 1 but it specifies nonland, nonartifact, and lands + artifacts = nearly 2/3 of this whole deck. I've also been testing Mox Diamond, which has been doing a little better on average, but thus far I'm not certain whether it's worth a spot (and if it is, what to cut it for). You're right that Cruel Tutor is pretty meh as tutors go, I'd put it at best on par with Diabolic Tutor, maybe even a little worse, but I'm kind of a tutors-addict so I'm reluctant to cut it.
Haven't tried LED and in general I'm not a fan of it outside of dredge and storm decks (but maybe I just play too much legacy). In theory it could allow a T1 braids all by itself with Swamp + LED = braids, but then you'd just screw yourself unless you got some wicked topdecks. Still, mind as well give it a fair chance, I'll try it out.
For item 1, you forgot several: Wayfarer's Bauble, Peat Bog, and super-speedy tutors like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Imperial Seal. You also need to keep in mind that playing braids T2-T3 isn't always the strategy if our starting hand sets us up for something different, like if we start with 'shop and Smokestack we don't have to worry about braids. Or if we start with Tangle Wire or Null Rod or Trinisphere or The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or some other denial/tax effect, it becomes much safer to wait until T4 to play braids because those cards will slow down their permanent generation in the meantime (which is what we want--the whole stax game is a permanent race, if they can fill their board with permanents before we get braids out it'll be much easier for them to play around her; as such, the goal isn't exactly to get braids down ASAP, playing braids T4 after a T1 Trinisphere is basically as good as playing her T3 with no sphere).
I just got 10 games in a row with solid openers: first one started with Mana Vault = T3 braids; 2nd Wayfarer's Bauble = T3 braids; 3rd mulled down to Mishra's Workshop into T2 Smokestack; 4th mulled to 5 and got Fellwar Stone = T3 braids; 5th started with Peat Bog and Mana Vault after mull to 6 = T3 braids; 6th started with Demonic Tutor on a full hand of 7 = T3 braids (grab Sol Ring or Mana Crypt); 7th mulled to 6 and got Jet Medallion = T3 braids; 8th was a vintage-esque god hand: Workshop, Trinisphere, Smokestack, swamp, Dakmor Salvage, Nuisance Engine (T1 trini, T2 stack, T3 engine); 9th kept a hand of 7 with Swamp, Strip Mine, Reassembling Skeleton, Sol Ring, Jet Medallion, Endless Cockroaches, and Lodestone Golem, which is a T3 braids if I draw into one more black mana source or a way to tutor it, T2 topdeck was Expedition Map so that worked out; and 10th was a full hand of 7 with Fellwar Stone = T3 braids. I was using multiplayer mulligans, not partial paris.
Not that that means this deck starts well 100% of the time, after all 10 hands is not a particularly big sample and every deck has its minority of unlucky moments, but it shows you some of the opening plays we consider keepable. Just as when you were solitaire-testing my Arcum deck, the trick that comes with practice is that you stop thinking formulaically ("I need Braids T3, there are X many cards in the deck that can accomplish this, I must mull until I get one") and start thinking abstractly ("I need a hand that will get a stax effect on the field before my opponents develop too much board advantage, let's see if I can find one").
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
I don't know if it'll pull its weight in this deck, but it's definitely worth the consideration for its price.
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
In other news, I added a budget decklist in the spoilered section below the main decklist. Building stax on a budget is possible, particularly with Braids (she's still strong even without all the money investment), but since several core stax pieces like Crucible of Worlds, The Abyss and Bitterblossom are money cards, you do lose quite a lot of power if you choose to cut some or all of those in the interests of saving cash.
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
I don't understand cards like Diabolic Tutor, Magus of the Abyss, Call to the Grave, Breeding Pit and Nuisance Engine. They seem extremely slow, mana intensive and/or pointless. Again, I don't see how you can put those in your list when you're facing against actual God-tier commanders/archetypes. You are not going to beat Damia ramp + combo + take extra turns or Riku Splinter Twin combo with something like Breeding Pit in your deck.
Cruel Tutor is basically unplayable IMO. 3 mana for a Vampiric Tutor doesn't cut it in competitive EDH.
No Innocent Blood, Toxic Deluge or Massacre? Why run all of those expensive spot removal spells over things like these? There's no world in which Rend Flesh is better than Toxic Deluge when you have 40 life to work with. I realize that mass removal hits Braids but if you need outs to things like Hermit Druid then you want Snuff Out, not "Murder."
Why would you ever play Null Rod? It absolutely neuters your own gameplan. It can't possibly be correct to play it in basically any mono-Black deck.
Where's Winter Orb? Static Orb? You're playing Stax yet you're omitting 2 of the most powerful mana-denial spells for seemingly no reason at all.
You said that you face a lot of Blue, where's Defense Grid? It's like the single best card against them. It's way better than Duress et al. because it strips each opponent of each and every one of their counters (virtually).
Why no Ensnaring Bridge? Are creatures not a concern at all? E.Bridge + Necrogen Mists (or any variation thereof) isn't an easy thing for any archetype to beat. I have to imagine that some people are playing Elfball (prossh), Animar, etc. and since this deck usually sits at 1-3 cards E.Bridge is typically amazing.
Where's Everflowing Chalice, Grim Monolith, Charcoal Diamond, Fractured Powerstone, Mind Stone, Prismatic Lens, Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, etc? Why are you running trash-tier ramp such as Wayfarer's Bauble and Expedition Map? Why aren't you just all-in on turn 2 Braids at the latest? The difference between a turn 1-2 Braids and a turn 3-4 Braids is too massive for words. Expedition Map fetching Tabernacle is fine and all but a "Grim Tutor" that only realistically finds 1 card in your deck seems terrible to me.
No Liliana of the Veil? No Liliana, Heretical Healer? They're Necrogen Mists that have extremely relevant additional uses. Heretical Healer I can somewhat understand not playing, especially in a creature-light deck, but Liliana of the Veil should always be played. That being said I still don't see how Heretical Healer could possibly be bad because Braids can always sac herself to her own ability. She's like Sidisi, Undead Vizier in the sense that you'll always have a way to flip her because your commander is both a creature and a self-sac outlet.
Why no MD Torpor Orb? Is it legitimately weak against the decks that you're facing? I understand why you don't run Grafdigger's Cage but what decks is Torpor Orb actually bad against?
I'm surprised that Mindslicer isn't in the MD but Unnerve is. Saccing him to Braids with a Planeswalker/draw engine in play is usually enough to seal the deal.
I'm baffled to see Waste Not omitted. Even if this isn't a dedicated discard deck like Nekusar or Nath Waste Not is just the most busted thing that you can possibly be doing if you're playing Black IMO. Whereas Mike + Trike/Necrotic Ooze + Trike + Phyrexian Devourer is slow and weak to GY hate Waste Not + global discard hits as early as turn 2 and once it gets rolling it's just an automatic GG. Black has Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, etc. to find it and with partial Paris mulligan rules (or even the free multiplayer mulligan) it's not that hard to find it. Once it hits play (often turn 1) all of your global discard becomes instant GG auto-win spells. Smallpox, Pox, Dark Deal, Necrogen Mists, Bottomless Pit, Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, Heretical Healer, Death Cloud, Mindslicer, Memory Jar... it's trivially easy to win the game once you resolve any of these with a WN in play. Where you play cards like Duress, Hymn to Tourach, Unmask, Thoughtseize, etc. that interact with 1 card from 1 opponent I personally think that you should be trying to jam things like Defense Grid, Waste Not, Pox, Death Cloud etc. that shut everyone down while slamming as much fast mana into play as you possibly can.
37 land seems like a lot. I personally suggest running 34, 35 tops and using those extra slots on more ramp. Your deck should be able to "win the game" off of 2 lands so you really need to max out on cheap ramp to ensure that you can stick your Commander on turn 2 at the latest. You might need 35 if you're just doing the free MP mull as opposed to partial Paris but 37 still seems like too many to me. You really need some actual ramp to start casting your 4 drops on turns 1-2.
I like your deck a lot, it's like ~75/100 what I play, I just don't understand why you don't commit to the turn 1-2 Braids every game strategy. If people are playing legitimately busted Blue-based combo/stax decks such as Derevi, Edric, Jace, Brago, Arcum, Zur, Riku, The Mimeoplasm, etc. I don't see how a card like Call to the Grave could possibly make the cut. The deck that you posted just seems a bit too slow and clunky to actually pressure those archetypes. You need a turn 1-2 Braids to keep pace with them and from there you really want to slam things like Winter Orb and Defense Grid to deny any of their would-be options to beat it. Those decks can produce turn 3 wins so if yours can't then you're just always going to be playing from behind.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
All that said...
Crystal Vein is in my paper decklist already, just not in OP list. Chrome Mox in my initial playtesting couldn't make the drop frequently enough without a black permanent I was willing to exile alongside it, but I'm still testing it. Mox Diamond has been doing better than Chrome Mox; if I was going to make a cut for any additional ramp I'd probably consider Mox Diamond before chrome, and the rest of the 2-drop non-card-disadvantage rocks like Mind Stone before those.
Call to the Grave has, as you've correctly noted, played out extremely lackluster, at 5cmc and only affecting creatures. It would be the first thing I'd consider cutting. While I've normally avoided Waste Not under the premise that I wasn't discarding enough to make it worth it to make use out of it (see my above post from early June), recent games in the last several weeks I've been playing braids since that post have reminded me otherwise; I think I'd simply forgotten, after playing Arcum and Azami for too long, how much I actually end up prioritizing discard spells on a game-to-game basis when I'm playing a B deck, and how underwhelming stuff like Duress can be outside of a 1v1.
I too dislike Nuisance Engine primarily because it's both pricey and turned off by Null Rod (I know you don't like it, but I do, more on that below). Breeding Pit doesn't entirely pull its weight either I don't think, but I have to find some other fodder-makers in black to replace them.
I'll concede on that one, Rend Flesh is pretty outdated, and there's some other good removal pieces conspicuously absent. I think I've been kind of lazy or absent-minded with the removal suite thus far, hence why I just sort of threw Damnation and some anti-green sweepers in the 'board.
This one I'll defend. It shuts off every fast mana rock and every artifact combo in a format dominated by fast mana rocks and infinite combos. I'd hazard no other card in this deck disables as many things in a single stroke. Yes, it turns off our own rocks too, but that's OK because we pitch them to braids (which we usually end up doing anyway after we've ramped into her), and our strongest artifacts (Tangle Wire, all the tax/denial orbs, Smokestack, etc.) don't have activated abilities in the first place.
I normally interpret Null Rod as one side of a coin whose other side is Contamination. Both of them shut off a large portion (but not all) of players' manabases at a cost that we can work around. Null Rod is perhaps even stronger as it also turns off equipments and artifact combos.
I'll finish responding to your other stuff a little later, it's all valid criticism and I concur on several points, I just don't have the time to comment on each item at this particular moment.
p.s.: Expedition Map isn't ramp, it's a tutor for tech lands (most typically Tabernacle, Strip Mine, Cavern of Souls), that one's easy and short for me to explain.
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
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Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Like, just think about your Arcum deck. How unhappy would you be to see someone spend their opening turns casting Crucible, tutoring up a Strip Mine/Tabernacle with E.Map, etc.? Your grin would span from ear-to-ear amiright? Braids doesn't combo kill. Braids doesn't immediately remove everyone's fast mana. You need to slam her into play FAST and then support her with as much relevant disruption as you possibly can.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Firstly despite my inital reluctance I maxed out on 2cmc rocks, even the ones that come into play tapped. I also included Mox Diamond and Gemstone Caverns for some 0-drops, as I anticipated from earlier playtesting however Chrome Mox isn't nearly as effective because over 3/5ths of the list as it currently stands is artifacts and lands, and Chrome Mox demands a nonartifact, nonland card to work. This maximizes the probability of landing a T3 braids at latest, while making a T2 braids much more likely. T1 braids is neat when you're not playing first, but when you are it's kinda useless since almost nobody plays permanents on T0 anyway. I think T2 is a nice target to shoot for.
Updated the removal and discard package, which as discussed above was kinda lazily whipped together as a placeholder while I spent my time figuring out how to use the commander most effectively. While I'm still a fan of single-target discard in EDH I'm trying something new for now and getting rid of all single-target discard effects in favor of multi-target only. I was skeptical about Prid3's suggestion of Mindslicer, put it in, took it out, then put it back in again for now, and I'm still testing it. The BB is harder than it looks to pull off, and having to wait until your next upkeep to sac it to braids is huge telegraphing (unlike Unnerve, which while a considerably weaker discard effect, it does come out as a surprise and is noticeably easier to cast with only one B in the cost.
Trimmed out the most expensive fodder producers, like Breeding Pit and Nuisance Engine. They're nice old school flavor, and I used to run them with braids back before she was banned in the first place, but the fact of the matter is that there's simply better stuff by now that doesn't require continued mana investment (or less investment at least). The only fodder producers left are the most efficient ones. For a while I played legacy pox and I took a page from that book by throwing in Nether Spirit, which has been playing out well as a one-card solution to feeding braids forever with no continued mana cost (basically as good as Bitterblossom once he's in the yard). Also trimmed out the fattest stax pieces, stuff like Call to the Grave and Lodestone Golem, which I basically never got around to playing anyway, as well as the slower tutors and most restrictive ones (including Emap, had more than one person telling me it was useless and I finally bit) to bring the average CMC of the deck to about 2. This in turn raises the question whether Dark Confidant would be worth it. I'll have to test that.
With all that space I was able to cram the mainboard with more efficient stax pieces like: Static Orb and Winter Orb, as well as badly-needed silver bullets borrowed from my Arcum deck including Defense Grid, Ensnaring Bridge (true aggro doesn't feature as heavily in my meta but a bridge with an empty hand is good universally), and Torpor Orb in from the sideboard.
The only thing I lack now is a grave hate silver bullet. I'm still thinking about it. It would need to be something that didn't affect my GY because I use it too much myself I think. Leyline of the Void is nice but the casting cost is clunky. I'm thinking an artifact solution like Relic of Progenitus, or perhaps another item from legacy with Withered Wretch. Will have to mull that one over. Bojuka Bog is the GY piece I've been managing with thus far.
Lastly I'm still thoroughly in love with Null Rod. Again, once braids is out we often end up pitching our mana rocks anyway, and in the competitive scene where everyone and their mother is running every mana rock and utility artifact under the sun (Top, GY hate artifacts, equipments like skullclamp or greaves, etc.) and artifact combos abound, shutting down all those wincons, utility artifacts, and 50%+ of everyone's manabase simply can't be trumped. I have literally never been disappointed to have it in my hand, and I might even go so far as to say it's the strongest denial card in the deck.
In summary, lots of changes, faster braids, stronger spells, lower curve. I'm pleased with the progress.
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
I cut Diabolic Edict for Thought Vessel. Edict was underperforming as a single-target removal spell that sometimes didn't even hit the single target I wanted. Definitely more of a duel card. The new Thought Vessel, while nothing amazing, is a 2 rock that gives 1 that doesn't come into play tapped and has a fluff ability stapled to it, and is therefore already better in my book than a lot of earlier rocks like Prismatic Lens and Guardian Idol. I'd place it roughly equal to Mind Stone, a little lower perhaps. In either case, 2cmc rocks that ramp for 1 are our ideal tools for pulling off the early-game plays we need to win (besides of course the broken rocks like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt), so having more when they fit is never a bad thing.
Other than that, not much has been released or changed in recent months that suits us. Reanimator got a big new toy in the form of Void Winnower, which played early shuts down this deck (along with so many others) and only further emphasizes the need for a solid anti-grave sideboard. The partial paris change doesn't really affect this deck as my playgroups have always used multiplayer mulls anyway and I built the list with that in mind.
Perhaps the best news since my last post is that Braids was unbanned in French, which has boosted her exposure as a commander in a way she hasn't seen for many years, and which may herald a subsequent unbanning of Braids in regular edh if the RC ever reaches the same conclusion the French folks did (with power creep, braids isn't really as astronomically broken relative to other top commanders as she used to be back when she and Kokusho were originally banned), though that's anyone's guess as the RC is sort of unpredictable on that.
We'll just have to keep an ear to the ground in the meantime, so to speak. As always, suggestions and thoughts on the decklist are welcome.
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
Have you thought about using Withering Boon as single-target removal? It's really helped against turn 3 Zur/Narset and can even stop things like Acidic Slime/Reclamation Sage. I'm not sure how sensitive your list would be to artifact hate because Braids, but in any case W. Boon seems like it could be at least as efficient as Innocent Blood. I agree that Leyline of the Void is a bit clunky, albeit powerful. Nihil Spellbomb might be a good option for gravehate and cantrips like the Relic. Shred Memory could be a possibility as well, with the transmute hitting a relevant cmc.
Playing competitive stax without proxies or cockatrice is a real pain in the wallet, no doubt about it. The Abyss, Tabernacle, Nether Void, Liliana, Crucible, and others are all highly important stax mainstays (Nether Void in particular can be game-ending if it resolves) but they cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars, and in addition to the usual "competitive goodstuff staples" like Imperial Seal and Mana Crypt that add hundreds/thousands more you'll be spending a small fortune on cardboard if you tried to build this list legitimately.
Interesting that you chose Possessed Portal as the haymaker. I love the card, it single-handedly wins games in my Arcum list since he can spit it out as early as T3-T4, but I admit I've never, ever seen it used outside of Arcum in a competitive deck. The 8 casting cost is intimidating enough to discourage most people from even considering it
Magus of the Abyss has been somewhat disappointing. Before, Call to the Grave was on the cutting block for its high CMC and I did eventually end up cutting it. Magus is one of the cards on there next. All too often he's simply played out as an overpriced Fleshbag Marauder, where I cast him, everyone else sacs a thing, and then I sac him to himself on my next turn. Unlike his enchantment counterpart you can't "set him and forget him," i.e. the enchantment keeps working even without fuel, he doesn't. He still has the enchantment's main drawback, though, which is that he doesn't get around shroud/hexproof which are pretty ubiquitous these days. I'm this close (holding up my fingers nearly together) to cutting him, just need a little more playtesting and something good enough to cut him for.
Potentials include Leyline of the Void or Shred Memory as you suggested, both of which are solid, as well as maybe another cmc-2-tap-for-1 rock like Everflowing Chalice or Prismatic Lens, or perhaps Liliana of the Veil or maybe Withered Wretch in from the SB. Also been looking at Chalice of the Void, just like legacy/vintage you can set it to 0-1-2 and hose a lot of things, and as competitive EDH more approaches legacy/vintage tempo it only gets better.
Gate to Phyrexia is tempting, I know, because it's artifact removal in mono-black and we're arguably a deck that could make it work; I haven't playtested it yet, but on paper it strikes me as having the same problems I ran into with Grave Pact (which I did test extensively), namely we aren't always using creatures for fuel--often enough it's recurring lands with Dakmoor Salvage dredge or Crucible of Worlds, other times its spent mana rocks like that tapped-out Grim Monolith or Mana Vault (also the same reason once again why Magus of the Abyss all too often eats his own trigger next turn).
Desolation is strong and I think it deserves more playtesting on my part, but I don't think it's as strong as Contamination. Anyone knowledgeable enough about the rules can exploit the fact that its trigger happens at the beginning of the end step to cast instants/activate abilities in the end step after the trigger resolves and avoid the penalty. It also doesn't help vs high-output lands like Gaea's Cradle and Mishra's Workshop or mana-doublers. But it still has potential too.
Not as sensitive to artifact hate as other stax lists. Once we power out braids I'll happily throw some mana rocks away to feed her, which is why I run Null Rod. Still in love with that card, by the way, at worst it plays out as Contamination for mana rocks, at best it shuts down entire decks if their wincons rely on artifacts and activating them.
Withering Boon and other spells like it (situational off-color counterspells, cf Illumination, Deathgrip/Life Force, etc.) have never been much my style--I'd rather have a more consistent, less situational solution. You could also, to use your example, deal with a T3 Zur/Narset with Ensnaring Bridge set to 0, or deal with an Acidic Slime/Reclamation Sage with a Torpor Orb, and you don't have to worry nearly as much about timing (they work as long as they're on the field). They do have a "surprise factor" in that no one expects to get hit with a counterspell from the B player, and that can be pretty humorous the first time, but that doesn't fool anyone twice (or, at least, it shouldn't XD).
Thanks for the suggestions though, you definitely reminded me that I need to do more playtesting of Desolation, and I'd forgotten about Shred Memory too, instant speed grave-hate with a relevant tutor looks better and better the more I consider 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
Chalice of the Void is a really solid idea, it could definitely do some serious work in competitive metas. What do you think about Cursed Totem? It wouldn't affect anything in your list and shuts off some pretty relevant abilities. Arcum and Yisan for instance.
I agree with what your observations about Gate to Phyrexia and Grave Pact in that it's not always creatures fueling the engine. At that same rate, Dark Confidant seems more reliable than Shadows of the Past. Shadows is a really neat card though, how is it doing for you?
Desolation has been awkward so far because I'm usually the only one casting spells through the lock. It might be more effective with Braids leading the deck and I may just be playing it wrong. The fact that it doesn't affect the high output lands is very real however. I'm curious to hear what your experience with it will be.
I've drawn similar conclusions regarding Withering Boon, just kind of a pet card for me because my first EDH deck was Phage lol. You're right though, there are far more efficient solutions to the problem W. Boon tries to amend.
Thanks again, TrueNub. If you ever have the time, would you mind checking out my list? The initial idea was heavily inspired by your Braids.
THE CELL
The rationale for many of these is somewhat interconnected. Bob is for sure better and more consistent CA than the "virtual CA" of Shadows of the Past, but I wanted a little smaller curve to make him work without hurting me too much in the long run (if the game even gets to the long run). So I took out the CMC6 Beseech the Queen and replaced it with CMC2 Shred Memory, doubly serving as grave hate (which I needed more of) and tutor, since 9/10 times the thing we're searching for with Beseech is transmutable by Shred anyway (Bitterblossom or Reassembling Skeleton to feed braids; Null Rod, Torpor Orb, Chains of Mephistopheles, Winter Orb, etc. as deck hosers; and so forth...at absolute worst can always grab Demonic Tutor if you really badly need something not cmc2, but I can't imagine that ever being relevant). I also took out the CMC4 Magus of the Abyss, who as I mentioned above was usually getting sacced to himself next turn anyway like a glorified Fleshbag Marauder (he's not a bad creature on his own, but when Braids is in the command zone he loses a lot of appeal) and replaced it with Liliana, Heretical Healer, who has all highly relevant abilities if she can be flipped. I'm still not entirely certain just how consistently she can be flipped, so I'll be testing that out, but as Prid3 said a long time ago in an above post at worst we can always sac Braids to herself for the flip, though granted that means pitching Braids to the GY instead of the CZ.
The other changes are more minor. Drownyard Temple is a slightly worse than Dakmoor Salvage #2 in that it's a one-card land-based solution to feeding Braids if necessary, though it only taps for colorless. Also I never really ended up needing Thought Vessel's "no max hand size" ability, it's only relevant with Necropotence, so I swapped it for Prismatic Lens which has a slightly more useful secondary ability.
It's a good list. There's many different Sidisi variants out there, most I've seen are more reanimator/combo than stax to take advantage of recurring sidisi for additional tutors. Also, I've been saying for a long time what you guys discussed in that thread, which was that the banning of Braids in the 99 was a real blow to Pox-type stax in EDH (actually I've been saying that from the day the "banned as commander" list was abolished), and I think it's only matter of time considering recent power creep that she becomes unbanned. Kokusho was seen as overly oppressive back then also and he's since been unbanned. At this point people are afraid of her just by name, she's been on the banlist for so long a lot of people can't (or don't want to) imagine what a Braids deck even looks like. And that's part of the reason I maintain this thread, I think more exposure to Braids is a good thing, so people can see that she's not nearly the unrivaled terror she used to be next to Derevi, Empyreal Tactician and other power-creeps.
Braids in the command zone really does make a big difference in card selection. Magus of the Abyss for me is meh because I have a superior alternative in the CZ, since you guys don't it's a much more viable pick for you. For me reanimation effects like your Reanimate or Xiahou only dilute Braids, for you every reanimation is another Demonic Tutor with Sidisi in the grave. Your curve, too, is overall a little bigger, so you probably generate more mana-per-game than I do and you can afford to play things like Bubbling Muck and Death Cloud, and you'll likely have more lands out than I do at any given time so you can make better use of Beseech the Queen.
That said I still have some questions. How's Mana Web work for you? Don't people just tap all their lands in response to the trigger? It won't stop people from playing "draw-go" against you. My go-to solution for control players has always been Defense Grid, it does the same job of forcing everyone to play on their own turn while also screwing over "free" spells because of the tax mechanic (for example, your mana web won't do anything if someone counters you with Force of Will, but my defense grid will say "nope, pay 3 or go home"). And land-light rock-heavy decks ignore the web almost completely.
How about Infernal Darkness? How long can you sustain it? Once again you seem to be running a bigger-mana, bigger-curve build than mine, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works better for you than I'd imagine it working for me.
I like your Ophiomancer by the way, I didn't even know that card existed. Learn something new every day! I might consider testing it against Sengir Autocrat, he's kinda like Breeding Pit you know (which I eventually cut a while back), old school 2009 pre-ban braids flavor, but maybe he's been eclipsed by now.
Anyway, I'm glad to know my braids list is still inspiring people, even though as of yet she remains banned. As far as I'm concerned, any discussion about Braids or Braids-derivatives like your Sidisi, whether here on mtgs or on the competitive edh subreddit or elsewhere, is a discussion worth having--because people will never seriously start reconsidering Braids' position on the banlist in 2016 if they don't know what a Braids deck would actually look like in 2016 compared to other top commanders.
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
OK, I can understand it a little better in that context, once again I think it's just a difference from having Sidisi in the CZ rather than braids. In my games no one is happy to have Defense Grid hanging around except me because it means nobody gets to Force of Will T2 Braids. I still think Grid is overall a little stronger because of the ubiquity of non-land mana sources (mana dorks and rocks) in EDH that completely circumvent Web, but if you're regularly tutoring out Winter Orb and overall playing a little slower and less staxxy game where more lands end up on the board overall then I suppose you'd have a better experience with Web than I would.
Again I think this comes down to Sidisi vs Braids. For you, buying time is important while you use Sidisi and other tutors to grab your stax pieces. For me, I don't want to buy time, if I can pay 2BB I want to be spending it on Braids, Cabal Minion, not Infernal Darkness. You're right that Contamination usually doesn't lock the board on its own, as I mentioned above there are enough non-land mana sources in edh (mana dorks, mana rocks) that turning off lands isn't always game-ending. But I do have to agree with the people who tell you it's better than Infernal Darkness, first of all Infernal Darkness only changes type of mana but not amount while Contamination changes both (i.e. Gaea's Cradle with 5 creatures will produce BBBBB with Infernal Darkness; but with Contamination it will only produce B), and second of all Contamination can be sustained indefinitely with the right setup (again, a little easier in Braids than Sidisi) whereas Infernal Darkness only lasts at max 3-4 turns no matter who's using it.
I'm going to do a bunch of solitaire trials with Liliana, Heretical Healer to see how consistently I can get her flipped in a vacuum, but I'm feeling optimistic. Necrogen Mists-style effects are always welcome, and her -8 is game-ending if it goes off.
I like Shred Memory, but at some point I'd still like to work in Leyline of the Void or some other more persistent grave-hate. I also can't shake the feeling that Chalice of the Void would be great tech if I could find a spot for it too: I imagine like legacy/vintage it can serve as a mini-Trinisphere if played on T1 for X=1 or even X=0 (lets you build tempo with a play like Swamp -> Sol Ring -> Chalice while forcing others to land -> pass) and X=2 blocks so many EDH competitive game-changers it's not even funny. That said, it does brick several cards in our own deck; self-reanimators like Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton can get around an X=2 chalice but other great cards like Null Rod and Bitterblossom can't. The key question is whether or not it consistently blanks more critical things for other people than it does for us, that's what I'll be thinking about moving forward in deciding if it's worth a mainboard spot.
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