MTG Salvation

I upgraded my Azorius list, prior Lavinia of the Tenth with lots of blink spells, to this, this morning. It was originally Dragonlord Ojutai with Taigam, Ojutai Master in the 99, but a friend saw the list and recommended I swap them. The idea of near infinite turns, uncounterable, and all the other value in the deck - it's gonna be awesome. Another friend says "Taigam Turns" is a concept better players are still working out, but it could be up and coming. I'm glad I came upon it organically and originally, but I'm also interested to see what pros come up with. What do you think?

Mystical tutor would fir very nicely in here to tutor up extra turn effects. I think some sort of way to grant Taigam evasion to trigger rebound would be sweet. Honestly I would play more draw spells and evasion spells or tempo cards, since rebounding extra turns and card draw freaking divine.

Another friend thought I might have gone too heavy on the "dig" effects, so I'm going to look into swapping some dig for some card draw. Another friend had warned that I need to make sure I protect Taigam, as well. Fortunately, he need only attack, and not deal combat damage, so my plan was to use one of my removal spells to invalidate one player's blocker(s), and then get the ball rolling. I hope I have enough dig and enough extra turn spells to go pseudo-infinite fairly quickly. My meta is diverse, but the better table is anything but forgiving. My win condition is probably walker emblems and/or token agro, but probably emblems. I think if I put one player off his defense, I'll be good for a game, I hope.

Quote from BaronCappuccino »

Another friend thought I might have gone too heavy on the "dig" effects, so I'm going to look into swapping some dig for some card draw. Another friend had warned that I need to make sure I protect Taigam, as well. Fortunately, he need only attack, and not deal combat damage, so my plan was to use one of my removal spells to invalidate one player's blocker(s), and then get the ball rolling. I hope I have enough dig and enough extra turn spells to go pseudo-infinite fairly quickly. My meta is diverse, but the better table is anything but forgiving. My win condition is probably walker emblems and/or token agro, but probably emblems. I think if I put one player off his defense, I'll be good for a game, I hope.

If you wanna make sure Taigam either connects or survives combat, do it with lands:

• Maze of Ith
  
• Rogue's Passage

Lands can't be countered and there are only about a dozen cards in MtG that can counter activated abilities. Giving Taigam unblockable and shroud with Whispersilk Cloak might be useful as well. Protection from creatures might be great also; there are many auras in your color identity that do just that. Giving him protection from creatures also protects him from creature abilities.

Are you not running Sol Ring? I imagine that is purposeful.

Quote from XeroxedFool »

Are you not running Sol Ring? I imagine that is purposeful.

Yeah - as a Commander player, I'm torn. I love Commander, and am disenfranchised from other formats, because of the illusion of creativity that Commander provides. I don't kid myself into thinking I can homebrew modern or legacy (if I could even afford the latter). I kid myself into thinking I can homebrew Commander, and to an extent (until my meta becomes 100 card vintage) it's true. I'm torn between wanting to be a Spike and wanting to be a Timmy. I deliberately excluded the best rocks on the premise that I would thematically only include ramp that produced Azorius colors. Silly, I know. I also didn't include Cyclonic Rift, despite not living under a rock since RTR block. This was originally a Dragonlord Ojutai deck, with Taigam in the 99 for theme. Big value Azorius was the theme and the extra turns weren't designed to be oppressive. It wasn't till a friend said I'd be really oppressive if I swapped the two Ojutais, and I saw the light - I was inadvertently onto something really cool. Even my counter spells are all big value instead of efficient, as I got them from EDHRec's Baral, Chief of Compliance page - a commander who, unlike Talrand, wants his instants and sorceries to be beefy to take advantage of his reductions. That's how all this came about.

I see what you mean with "value" counterspells, and I think it's pretty neat. I noticed a good chunk of the instants and sorceries are modal spells, which I think is really useful and flexible - particularly since you can choose new modes when you recast them from rebound.

I'm curious, are you tied to Fortune's Favor somehow? It just seems bad to me to let an opponent see the cards and then choose how to split the piles without being able to see your options. I feel like Glimmer of Genius or Foresee (if you're okay with sorcery speed) could be better here at the 4CMC.

I ended up cutting Uncovered Clues for Pieces of the Puzzle. Clues gets you 2 out of 4, whereas Pieces gets you 2 out of 5 for the same CMC. Pieces puts the remaining cards in the yard instead of the bottom of library (like Clues does), but I figure 1 (or more) of those 5 could be lands anyway and it feels good to pick the 2 best cards out of my top 5 no matter where the rest go. Just a thought.

Some really interesting stuff here though!

I scrapped Fortune's Favor and Fact or Fiction as they didn't fit the theme of my dig spells. I wanted "look" and not "reveal" in the card text. Fact only got listed because I remembered it wrong and entered it without looking it up, and Fortune got listed because I wasn't careful in my search parameters on Gatherer to make sure I was the one looking. In their stead, I upped my land count to 39. 37 is risky in a post partial-paris world. Coincidentally, this should satisfy the advice that I ran too many "dig" spells. Giving your opponents choice is usually a bad idea. I only keep the two vote cards because I like interaction, and in this case, there's no bad outcome - even the worse of the two that doesn't guarantee me an extra turn, is likely a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall with all the cost reduction in the deck.

Swapped in Primal Amulet and Spell Swindle in place of Savor the Moment and Machinate.