Thought I'd highlight some nice interactions with the card Nature's Will, in case people are wondering if its a good addition to a Thrasios build?
What this card can do is trigger for each different opponent that is dealt damage. You can use Thrasios ability and let your lands untap each time it resolves on the stack. First Strike is another ability that deals combat damage in a different phase, so again if you have a creature that has first strike and deals damage to a player you can trigger the untap lands ability one more time. Thrasios mana sink ability allows you to respond at instant speed to gain draw and land ramp advantages.
Nullstone Gargoyle, to make casting harder off Hive Mind, Eye of the Storm, Knowledge Pool, and forces opponents to cast two spells if they want a non-creature spell to resolve.
I don't know if its "underrated" but Horde of Notions Elemental deck is certainly a powerful tribal deck. However its 5 colors so the mana base is a billions dollars
* cards that kill Animar, Melek, and Selvala, Explorer Returned- need to all be in blue because of Animar
+Dictate of Erebos - double up to Grave Pact is very strong
+Pongify
+Rapid Hybridization
+Reality Shift
+Gilded Drake - control their commander is sometimes more powerful than removal as it makes them have to have an answer to your control
+Mind Harness - same as above and this hits all 3 combo commanders, so the upkeep cost should give you enough time to slow down their busted plans
With Phyrexian Altar you have an additional infinite combo, by sacrificing the Gravecrawler for one black and recasting it. If you have a card in play which has an ETB effect, especially the cards that do damage/life then you have the win. Its essentially a double up to Rooftop Storm infinite recursion. You already have Blood Artist, Diregraf Captain, but adding Diregraf Colossus and Vengeful Dead can help get you the kills.
I think in general that a good simic deck UG to your collection of decks would be nice. Simic builds are all combo based, with elements of control and speed. So they are very powerful in general.
You do have Roon of the Hidden Realm in bant, so you've already got an idea for some of the power of blue and green combined.
Your deck might be considered competitive within your own playgroup but is not something I would call truly Competitive. Keep in mind the decks that dominate the high end of this format are capable of extremely early wins (often with protection lined up). Ramping into some beaters is just too slow of a game plan on its own. There are almost no combos in GW that can out speed Storm which means we need to head the opposite route and utilize the brilliant hatebears GW has access to. I'm not saying you can't play Sisay other ways, but if you want to ever take a game off of Food Chain Proshh then Stax is going to be the only way you can realistically achieve that with any kind of consistency.
My playgroup is several thousand Magic Online players. There is a wide range of casual to competitive decks, but we have the best. I'll bring my Captian Sisay deck into any game that is marked as competitive for sure. Maybe you just don't have your head around the sequencing. I'm able to finish games by turn 5 no problem.
The primer deck has some good ideas.
We definitely want to get the mana curve of your deck way down. Unfortunately you've gone from a play group that probably allowed quite a bit of time to setup powerful spells, to now being potentially over on turn 4.
I feel like this deck is going in a couple of different directions, you are trying to go wide with lots of token creatures and you are also trying to go voltron with equipment. For the sake of speed and consistency really you should only pick one.
I think that the many tokens doesn't have a massive upside. As far as I can see the only real cards that makes this "broken" is Cathars' Crusade and Skullclamp? Balefire Liege and Captain of the Watch are OK for them, but not busted.
So you have to ask what the real value of having a bunch of 1/1's is? Attacking twice a turn only to have no evasion, your forces are easily picked off, so maybe they just don't attack and provide no value, other than blockers? I feel like Iroas, God of Victory is a better general for a small and wide type deck.
Don't get me wrong if this is the direction you want to go then we can try and make it work, but I feel like either pick equipment or tokens.
However based on what I think is the more mana efficient strategy, going to go with equipment:
Two quite of non intuitive cards to run are Armageddon and Cataclysm. You don't run that much artifact mana and your mana curve is on the expensive side. However these cards can be key to ending the game when you are in the position of being able to beat-down. Cataclysm is particular good, when you have voltron setup. You just need one creature and one sword equipment say, and you can really apply pressure. There will be times when you have these cards in your hand but are not wanting to pull the trigger. But with cards like Land Tax, Tithe and Weathered Wayfarer, you have opportunities to time these cards well to stop what your opponents are doing.
Still 3 cards to cut. Will have to think about it more.
I have to say if you want to keep your "Big Angel" theme, then Kaalia of the Vast as your commander might be a better option. Any card that allows you to cheat in cards is always going to be more effective to playing competitive games. You'd move away from equipment completely however. In my play group we have all the competitive decks. Narset, Animar, Azami, Nin, the Pain Artist, Edric, Spymaster of Trest, you name it we got it, all tweaked to be killers. But Kaalia of the Vast absolutely holds her own. What we could do is basically keep it mainly white/red for the sake of even not changing the mana base much (price is a big one when going into 3 colors), but also so we keep the deck fairly intact.
I'm willing to spend a fair amount of money on magic, just in small amounts, so I can afford to pay my bills, and such. I am a student, and I work 32-40 hours every week.
There are currently 3 combo decks in the group. Animar, Selvala, Explorer Returned, and Melek.
For all of you suggesting stax, I have Nath deck that is pretty oppressive, but it needs some optimization. It is kinda slow. Grimgrin can be kind of oppressive too.
Everybody has been suggesting archetypes, but I was waiting to see what your decks were. Clearly you have a some decks and play styles that you like, so I think we are better off making some improvements to you current decks to handle some combos, rather than forcing you into whole new decks.
First off there are definitely some ways that you can introduce more combos to your own decks. If you can't beat em, join em, right? Seriously though, you can win games by straight out comboing before they can.
It does seem with Animar, Selvala, Explorer Returned, and Melek that these commander creatures are a key part of your opponents combos. You do play quite a bit of removal in your decks, but are pretty weak to Animars protection from white and black. It might be that we can get some more spot removal for your meta group that circumnavigates Animar in particular.
You'll need to give us a bit of time, but we can really deconstruct your decks to work better with combos.
First off I think any deck containing white; Karlov and Aurelia, the Warleader can run a few "hate bears", and one card played per turn cards.
There are some more, but have to balance out how many you play of these versus still wanting your deck to remain in the themes you've got. But I think these 7 can be auto includes in Karlov and Aurelia.
I'll spend some time on figuring specifically what your decks can look like, to get faster synergies for you and make them more resilient to combo decks.
Can you tell me if your opponents play much disruption, like counterspells, or spot removal themselves?
Too be honest, some match ups are just going to be bad. Like they have top tier decks, so you'll always be behind the eight ball. Even with tweaking the decks a lot, just because of the play styles, you'll still be an underdog.
I've been running with a fast green mana version of Thrasios + Kydele and its been amazingly competitive. Only really falling massive victim if you don't have a counterspell and get hit by a mass creature removal. But it runs a lot of counters, so far so good.
I've update the OP with the deck list, check it out here.
Its interesting when the spoilers came out for Commander 2016, my competitive play group was very disappointed at the perceived power-level of the partner commanders.
However I've been playing a number of different partner commander combinations, and I have to say that I have been having great success, and even more importantly been having incredible fun with them. Its been interesting learning the new dynamics of having two commanders instead of one, as well as the actual commander abilities that I've chosen.
I thought I'd give a bit of insight to some things that have come out of playing with partners in general, to give you idea of extra advantages of playing a couple of commanders, outside of their own obvious card text and synergies when selected.
Your chances of getting a Sol Ring or Mana Cyrpt in your starter go from 13.71% to 13.84%. OK, this was a little joke, actually true, but on a serious note.. More flexibility with keeping starting hands with partners.
If you want to think of the commander format as having a starting hand of 8, then partner actually does give you a starting hand of 9. As it turns out this is quite an advantage.
To "curve out" is to play a card on each turn, in accordance with a planned mana curve. To play a spell with a converted mana cost of one on turn one, a spell with a converted mana cost of two on turn two, a spell with a converted mana cost of three on turn three, and so on, is curving out. It is considered the most optimal way for a deck to work, especially creature based decks, such as aggro decks or Limited decks and is effectively the opposite of mana screw and mana flood, e.g.: "I got mana screwed on two lands, and he just curved out for the win".
I've found it interesting with starting hands that you can afford to keep land light or land heavy hands more, as you kind of have a plan.
If you have a land heavy hand, because you can fill in two turns with casting commanders, there is more incentive to not worry about flooding out. You have real plan for curving out, and gives you time to draw into further action.
It will depend more on who your commander partners are with land light hands, but I've been playing Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver a lot. The thing is that as long as you have a 2 land starting hand, you have a plan. Cast out one commander on turn 2, and you should draw into a 3rd land in 3 turns. In this particular example it gives you an additional plan that you can draw extra cards to get you out of the "land screw" you might have been worried about with the starting hand.
What I'm saying is that you can afford to keep much sketchier hands than normal one commander generals usually allow.
It might be obvious, but it really isn't until you start playing with two commanders that you get a true sense that doubling up with two bodies becomes quite relevant to the game state.
Having commanders that can both click up separate commander damage, means that you can focus on several players. This is a specific example, but I was playing Reyhan, last of the Abzan and Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker and attacked a player with both Reyhan and Ishai. They could only block one and I had a sacrifice outlet, so did that to the blocked one, giving my other commander more than 21 damage.
The same with defense, being able to block a lethal attack, and still have one part of your commander team, means that you might still be able to operate part of your engine.
There are a few minor benefits like cards that trigger when a creature comes into play or number of a card type.
For example one "hidden" gem that's come out of the commander partners, is that Birthing Pod becomes more versatile. A specific card you might say, not many people might run it. But for those of you that know its power, having a couple of commander creatures that can you can use for their CMC is really amazing.
For example I know that I have a 3 mana and 5 mana creature tutor at my disposal when playing Thrasios + Kydele and I draw Birthing Pod. The difference means that I have a lot more diversity in my ability to always search for particular creature cards.
Sounds specific, but knowing that you have it on tap (pun not intended), has actual game winning interaction.
What I'm saying is that there are extra things to think about with having several different commanders when you have an extra creature that can be part of additional casting/abilities of cards. I don't know what they are all yet, but its things that people will experience during the game, probably not as part of the deck build.
Partner commanders are often chosen because they seem to synergies when both are on the board together. But often you can play games on the strength of one of the commanders alone. Or sometimes half the game with one commander and when that commander becomes too costly to recast, you can switch to the other commander and potentially even strategy.
Some games you'll worry about playing into mass creature removal. With two commanders, you can potentially use one as bait, or "testing the waters" as such.
This strategy allows you to keep something in "reserve", by not committing both commanders for fear of walking into a board wipe or maybe you have a board wipe yourself. So it gives you a bit of flexibility by just playing out one, then saving the other in the event of mass removal. This has a perception effect as well, because at least you've played out one commander. When you only have the traditional one commander and you can play it out but don't, it raises suspicion.
I've absolutely played games, where I've just used one commander because it was fitting for the board state and meta game, then half way through been able to switch strategies with introducing the other commander, and it really throws a curve ball to the opponents. They've spent their resources on what I've been doing with the first one, and suddenly by introducing another commander with its own mechanics, it can become overwhelming to how the opponents can react.
Double rainbow all the way! Lets not forget why we have partners in the first place. The community wanted the forum to have four color commanders. Color fixing into four colors is something that we wanted, and for good reason. Five color commanders are hard to cast. Even the four color commanders are hard to cast. They do not benefit from the fast colorless artifact mana of Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, etc.
Partners are not hard to cast. They provide early plays AND get you all the colors you want for your deck.
Also, Lab Man is just more time efficient. I can just say "draw my deck, Lab man + cantrip, GG", which is more merciful on a group than having to watch you bounce their whole board, make a bunch of tokens and attack over one or more turns. There's Cavern of Souls @ Wizard to make it uncounterable and countermagic and extra cantrips to respond to removal. It seems pretty resilient, and it just takes up one deck slot. Is there a reason I'm missing why the other win conditions are better?
I want to do a whole article on why I think Labratory Mananic is a wasted card slot for win conditions. It basically literally does nothing if you draw it during the setup phase of the game. I play Shaman of Forgotten Ways as my back up win condition. It cost the same as Lab Man, but actually provides you mana as well. Otherwise the game just plays out with inevitability, you don't even need to put in "win-cons". I mean the time difference is about 1 minute right, between showing the loop of bouncing everything, and then going through their turns. I mean you're passing with literally 7 counterspells in your hand, and you don't care about board presence, because you just bounce anything. Your opponents know the writing is on the wall.
The thing with Avenger of Zendikar as a "win-con", is that it goes nice with Gaea's Cradle, so for me its a win-con plus a huge enabler. Rampaging Baloths can honestly be cut in your version. Like for my landfall deck, creatures can be used to fuel other effects, but all they are in yours is solid bodies, with minor enhancements to Gaea's Cradle. The 6 mana might prove to be too much pre infinite.
I have mixed feelings about this. Is Mind Over Matter really good in your testing? If you have an infinite mana combo, you don't need it to untap things. If you don't have an infinite combo, it's unreliable without Retreat to Coralhelm. Otherwise if you hit a land, you don't get to chain another untap. I don't like the idea of investing cards without knowing whether the combo chain will continue. In what board states does it let you reliably go off without Retreat?
Just replace Lab Man with Mind Over Matter, and try it out for testing? Say if you have a hand of 4 cards, the deck would need to have 8 land cards all in a row, because you get to scry 1, each time. So the likelihood is very low, that you're just not going to be able to cycle through your whole deck. Plus what happens is that you obviously draw cards that allow for infinite in other-ways. Once you're in the 4+ mana threshold with Mind Over Matter, its a win in my experience. Admittedly I do play Retreat to Coralhelm, but its not necessary to be in play.
Finally I'd change Crush of Tentacles for Devastation Tide. You can do setups where you can draw it in opponents turn, perhaps end step, and cast for miracle cost. Brainstorm/Jace it back on top of library type thing. Or even just naturally draw it from Thrasios.
Sylvan Library is a Kydele enabler, you can even put the cards back, it allows you to "draw" 3. Trust me you're going to want Mind Over Matter - untap Kydele, keep draw/ramp going infinite.
What I've found is that it really is the Kydele >= 4 mana (draw 4) which is a key part. 5 if you want to get Staff of Domination to work.
Basically I really like your Compulsive Research, Thirst for Knowledge.
Frantic Search doesn't get you to the threshold on its own, but you can combine this with another cantrip or Thrasios, maybe to get you there.
Things to take out for a number of these:
Regrowth
Lightning Greaves - the only thing this can do is to offer Kydele haste, but you'll find that you are probably not casting her and have the mana to combo off, most games. As far as protection, your combo Dead-eye and Palinchron are blinking, and really nothing else is a must to protect. It was the first card I cut just from realizing its protection factor was pretty minimal.
Coiling Oracle
Laboratory Maniac - trust me, not needed, once you go infinite then you are drawing your deck (leave a couple of cards to give yourself a few turns) bounce everything back to hand, and countering anything that's going to stop you. Kydele + Umbral Mantle and Rampaging Baloths/Avenger of Zendikar is finishing the game in one turn.
Flusterstorm - change for Arcane Denial for sure.
I excluded the Bloom Tender, Krosan Restorer, Pili-Pala and Tidespout Tyrant combos as those combos are not only fragile but lack interaction with the rest of the deck, and the cards are pretty weak on their own in this deck. Instead, I tried to focus on combos with reusable pieces between different combos, taking up less space or using cards that are already otherwise good to run.
I think you're absoluetly right, having play tested quite a few games, the number of times I've been waiting for a piece, isn't really that good.
I've actually been running a creature mana ramp version with mana elves. The only "infinite" combos I run are:
Palinchron + Deadeye Navigator
Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Umbral Mantle
Grim Monolith / Basalt Monolith + Mana Reflection
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth
Mind Over Matter + (Gaea's Cradle / Kydele / or anything like Grim Monolith / Basalt Monolith that will get you further into ramp/draw)
What this card can do is trigger for each different opponent that is dealt damage. You can use Thrasios ability and let your lands untap each time it resolves on the stack. First Strike is another ability that deals combat damage in a different phase, so again if you have a creature that has first strike and deals damage to a player you can trigger the untap lands ability one more time. Thrasios mana sink ability allows you to respond at instant speed to gain draw and land ramp advantages.
Bitterblossom seems good with Dire Undercurrents.
Skullclamp with everything -- but might be a card you've left out on purpose
I've done a thread on Thrasios, Triton Hero synergies, and for this deck you might want to check out the section on Landfall. I think it will fit the little sub-theme you have with Fable of Wolf and Owl and Oona, Queen of the Fae with token creatures. Check it out here http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/761412-thrasios-triton-hero-to-infinity-and-beyond#landfall
It could be some sort of crazy "your deck is my deck" brew? Add Shared Fate, Knowledge Pool, Mind's Dilation, for more chaos stuff.
Nullstone Gargoyle, to make casting harder off Hive Mind, Eye of the Storm, Knowledge Pool, and forces opponents to cast two spells if they want a non-creature spell to resolve.
Cards to put in:
+Phyrexian Altar - combo
+Entomb - tutor for Gravecrawler 99% of the time
+Buried Alive - tutor for Gravecrawler 99% of the time and some other enablers
+Corpse Connoisseur - tutor for Gravecrawler 99% of the time
+Gisa and Geralf - powerful addition to Zombies
+Diregraf Colossus - combo and value
+Sidisi, Undead Vizier - zombie tutor, oh yeah
+Corpse Harvester - powerful for Zombie build
+Vengeful Dead - combo kill
+Graveborn Muse - card advantage
+Cryptbreaker - card advantage
+Forgotten Creation - enables you to filter through for combo pieces and Zombies in the graveyard can be an advantage
+Arcane Denial
+Forbid
+Intuition - costs $30 so only if you can afford it. One of the selection can be Gravecrawler, so you're guaranteed to get it.
* cards that kill Animar, Melek, and Selvala, Explorer Returned- need to all be in blue because of Animar
+Dictate of Erebos - double up to Grave Pact is very strong
+Pongify
+Rapid Hybridization
+Reality Shift
+Gilded Drake - control their commander is sometimes more powerful than removal as it makes them have to have an answer to your control
+Mind Harness - same as above and this hits all 3 combo commanders, so the upkeep cost should give you enough time to slow down their busted plans
With Phyrexian Altar you have an additional infinite combo, by sacrificing the Gravecrawler for one black and recasting it. If you have a card in play which has an ETB effect, especially the cards that do damage/life then you have the win. Its essentially a double up to Rooftop Storm infinite recursion. You already have Blood Artist, Diregraf Captain, but adding Diregraf Colossus and Vengeful Dead can help get you the kills.
Cards to take out:
-Dread Slaver
-Geth, Lord of the Vault - cool card, but too mana intensive against other combo decks
-Gravedigger
-Prized Amalgam
-Roofstalker Wight
-Sheoldred, Whispering One - cool card, but too mana intensive against other combo decks
-Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
-Sorin Markov
-Army of the Damned - too expensive
-Rite of Replication
-Sever the Bloodline
-Akroma's Memorial
-Redirect
-Creeping Tar Pit
-Dimir Guildgate
-Reliquary Tower
-Darksteel Ingot
-Ghoulcaller Gisa - the fact that its not a zombie means this doesn't quite make the cut
-Phyrexian Metamorph - this was a though cut, but all other cards are specifically synergized for Zombies and disruption
-Nim Deathmantle - probably going to be spending mana on other setups
We are going to go down to 35 lands. We've lowered the mana curve and I think we just need to be more aggressive.
You do have Roon of the Hidden Realm in bant, so you've already got an idea for some of the power of blue and green combined.
I've done a write up on Thrasios, Triton Hero here http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/761412-thrasios-triton-hero-to-infinity-and-beyond
I'd recommend you try the Elves Thrasios + Kydele type build. Very fun and combo based.
Other simic builds that I enjoy are Ezuri, Claw of Progress and Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. Recommend either of these as well.
Check out a primer for Aurelia here http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/511408-aurelia-the-warleader-boros-beatdown
The primer deck has some good ideas.
We definitely want to get the mana curve of your deck way down. Unfortunately you've gone from a play group that probably allowed quite a bit of time to setup powerful spells, to now being potentially over on turn 4.
I feel like this deck is going in a couple of different directions, you are trying to go wide with lots of token creatures and you are also trying to go voltron with equipment. For the sake of speed and consistency really you should only pick one.
I think that the many tokens doesn't have a massive upside. As far as I can see the only real cards that makes this "broken" is Cathars' Crusade and Skullclamp? Balefire Liege and Captain of the Watch are OK for them, but not busted.
So you have to ask what the real value of having a bunch of 1/1's is? Attacking twice a turn only to have no evasion, your forces are easily picked off, so maybe they just don't attack and provide no value, other than blockers? I feel like Iroas, God of Victory is a better general for a small and wide type deck.
Don't get me wrong if this is the direction you want to go then we can try and make it work, but I feel like either pick equipment or tokens.
However based on what I think is the more mana efficient strategy, going to go with equipment:
Cards to put in for synergy and to lower the mana curve:
+ Leonin Shikari
+ Mother of Runes
+ Weathered Wayfarer
+ Rule of Law
+ Ethersworn Canonist
+ Eidolon of Rhetoric
+ Spirit of the Labyrinth
+ Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
+ Thalia, Heretic Cathar
+ Armageddon
+ Cataclysm
+ Lapse of Certainty (surprise counterspell in white, can be used to delay a big game winning spell)
+ Boros Signet
+ Chrome Mox
* cards that kill Animar, Melek, and Selvala, Explorer Returned - haha getting our meta
+ Council's Judgment (this is not targeted so can get around Animar protection)
+ Char
+ Mizzium Mortars
+ Roast
+ Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Two quite of non intuitive cards to run are Armageddon and Cataclysm. You don't run that much artifact mana and your mana curve is on the expensive side. However these cards can be key to ending the game when you are in the position of being able to beat-down. Cataclysm is particular good, when you have voltron setup. You just need one creature and one sword equipment say, and you can really apply pressure. There will be times when you have these cards in your hand but are not wanting to pull the trigger. But with cards like Land Tax, Tithe and Weathered Wayfarer, you have opportunities to time these cards well to stop what your opponents are doing.
Sorry we are just going to have to remove the high cost cards and token strategies
- Angelic Skirmisher
- Avacyn, Angel of Hope (amazing card, but your ability to cast her is limited)
- Balefire Liege
- Captain of the Watch
- Cloudgoat Ranger
- Geist-Honored Monk
- Reforge the Soul
- Ajani Vengeant
- True Conviction
- Akroma's Memorial
- Swiftfoot Boots
- Mind's Eye (great card, but your mana is just too tied up to consistently be able to abuse this card)
- Urabrask the Hidden
- Elspeth, Knight-Errant - though I know, but not quite doing enough.
- Assemble the Legion - I know how much of a run away card this can be, I've played it myself, but it can be slow
- Cathars' Crusade - sorry the token theme is on the back burner.
Still 3 cards to cut. Will have to think about it more.
I have to say if you want to keep your "Big Angel" theme, then Kaalia of the Vast as your commander might be a better option. Any card that allows you to cheat in cards is always going to be more effective to playing competitive games. You'd move away from equipment completely however. In my play group we have all the competitive decks. Narset, Animar, Azami, Nin, the Pain Artist, Edric, Spymaster of Trest, you name it we got it, all tweaked to be killers. But Kaalia of the Vast absolutely holds her own. What we could do is basically keep it mainly white/red for the sake of even not changing the mana base much (price is a big one when going into 3 colors), but also so we keep the deck fairly intact.
First off there are definitely some ways that you can introduce more combos to your own decks. If you can't beat em, join em, right? Seriously though, you can win games by straight out comboing before they can.
It does seem with Animar, Selvala, Explorer Returned, and Melek that these commander creatures are a key part of your opponents combos. You do play quite a bit of removal in your decks, but are pretty weak to Animars protection from white and black. It might be that we can get some more spot removal for your meta group that circumnavigates Animar in particular.
You'll need to give us a bit of time, but we can really deconstruct your decks to work better with combos.
First off I think any deck containing white; Karlov and Aurelia, the Warleader can run a few "hate bears", and one card played per turn cards.
So these are Rule of Law, Ethersworn Canonist, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Hushwing Gryff.
There are some more, but have to balance out how many you play of these versus still wanting your deck to remain in the themes you've got. But I think these 7 can be auto includes in Karlov and Aurelia.
I'll spend some time on figuring specifically what your decks can look like, to get faster synergies for you and make them more resilient to combo decks.
Can you tell me if your opponents play much disruption, like counterspells, or spot removal themselves?
Too be honest, some match ups are just going to be bad. Like they have top tier decks, so you'll always be behind the eight ball. Even with tweaking the decks a lot, just because of the play styles, you'll still be an underdog.
I've update the OP with the deck list, check it out here.
However I've been playing a number of different partner commander combinations, and I have to say that I have been having great success, and even more importantly been having incredible fun with them. Its been interesting learning the new dynamics of having two commanders instead of one, as well as the actual commander abilities that I've chosen.
I thought I'd give a bit of insight to some things that have come out of playing with partners in general, to give you idea of extra advantages of playing a couple of commanders, outside of their own obvious card text and synergies when selected.
Your chances of getting a Sol Ring or Mana Cyrpt in your starter go from 13.71% to 13.84%. OK, this was a little joke, actually true, but on a serious note..
More flexibility with keeping starting hands with partners.
If you want to think of the commander format as having a starting hand of 8, then partner actually does give you a starting hand of 9. As it turns out this is quite an advantage.
I've found it interesting with starting hands that you can afford to keep land light or land heavy hands more, as you kind of have a plan.
If you have a land heavy hand, because you can fill in two turns with casting commanders, there is more incentive to not worry about flooding out. You have real plan for curving out, and gives you time to draw into further action.
It will depend more on who your commander partners are with land light hands, but I've been playing Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver a lot. The thing is that as long as you have a 2 land starting hand, you have a plan. Cast out one commander on turn 2, and you should draw into a 3rd land in 3 turns. In this particular example it gives you an additional plan that you can draw extra cards to get you out of the "land screw" you might have been worried about with the starting hand.
What I'm saying is that you can afford to keep much sketchier hands than normal one commander generals usually allow.
It might be obvious, but it really isn't until you start playing with two commanders that you get a true sense that doubling up with two bodies becomes quite relevant to the game state.
Having commanders that can both click up separate commander damage, means that you can focus on several players. This is a specific example, but I was playing Reyhan, last of the Abzan and Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker and attacked a player with both Reyhan and Ishai. They could only block one and I had a sacrifice outlet, so did that to the blocked one, giving my other commander more than 21 damage.
The same with defense, being able to block a lethal attack, and still have one part of your commander team, means that you might still be able to operate part of your engine.
There are a few minor benefits like cards that trigger when a creature comes into play or number of a card type.
For example one "hidden" gem that's come out of the commander partners, is that Birthing Pod becomes more versatile. A specific card you might say, not many people might run it. But for those of you that know its power, having a couple of commander creatures that can you can use for their CMC is really amazing.
For example I know that I have a 3 mana and 5 mana creature tutor at my disposal when playing Thrasios + Kydele and I draw Birthing Pod. The difference means that I have a lot more diversity in my ability to always search for particular creature cards.
Sounds specific, but knowing that you have it on tap (pun not intended), has actual game winning interaction.
You might have your own 2 card creature combo, where you can specifically use your commanders as a guaranteed means of getting both of them.
For example Tymna the Weaver = Restoration Angel and Tana, the Bloodsower = Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (Restoration Angel + Kiki-Jiki = infinite haste Angels)
What I'm saying is that there are extra things to think about with having several different commanders when you have an extra creature that can be part of additional casting/abilities of cards. I don't know what they are all yet, but its things that people will experience during the game, probably not as part of the deck build.
Partner commanders are often chosen because they seem to synergies when both are on the board together. But often you can play games on the strength of one of the commanders alone. Or sometimes half the game with one commander and when that commander becomes too costly to recast, you can switch to the other commander and potentially even strategy.
Some games you'll worry about playing into mass creature removal. With two commanders, you can potentially use one as bait, or "testing the waters" as such.
This strategy allows you to keep something in "reserve", by not committing both commanders for fear of walking into a board wipe or maybe you have a board wipe yourself. So it gives you a bit of flexibility by just playing out one, then saving the other in the event of mass removal. This has a perception effect as well, because at least you've played out one commander. When you only have the traditional one commander and you can play it out but don't, it raises suspicion.
I've absolutely played games, where I've just used one commander because it was fitting for the board state and meta game, then half way through been able to switch strategies with introducing the other commander, and it really throws a curve ball to the opponents. They've spent their resources on what I've been doing with the first one, and suddenly by introducing another commander with its own mechanics, it can become overwhelming to how the opponents can react.
Double rainbow all the way! Lets not forget why we have partners in the first place. The community wanted the forum to have four color commanders. Color fixing into four colors is something that we wanted, and for good reason. Five color commanders are hard to cast. Even the four color commanders are hard to cast. They do not benefit from the fast colorless artifact mana of Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, etc.
Partners are not hard to cast. They provide early plays AND get you all the colors you want for your deck.
The thing with Avenger of Zendikar as a "win-con", is that it goes nice with Gaea's Cradle, so for me its a win-con plus a huge enabler. Rampaging Baloths can honestly be cut in your version. Like for my landfall deck, creatures can be used to fuel other effects, but all they are in yours is solid bodies, with minor enhancements to Gaea's Cradle. The 6 mana might prove to be too much pre infinite.
Just replace Lab Man with Mind Over Matter, and try it out for testing? Say if you have a hand of 4 cards, the deck would need to have 8 land cards all in a row, because you get to scry 1, each time. So the likelihood is very low, that you're just not going to be able to cycle through your whole deck. Plus what happens is that you obviously draw cards that allow for infinite in other-ways. Once you're in the 4+ mana threshold with Mind Over Matter, its a win in my experience. Admittedly I do play Retreat to Coralhelm, but its not necessary to be in play.
Finally I'd change Crush of Tentacles for Devastation Tide. You can do setups where you can draw it in opponents turn, perhaps end step, and cast for miracle cost. Brainstorm/Jace it back on top of library type thing. Or even just naturally draw it from Thrasios.
What I've found is that it really is the Kydele >= 4 mana (draw 4) which is a key part. 5 if you want to get Staff of Domination to work.
Basically I really like your Compulsive Research, Thirst for Knowledge.
Here is a list of possible other at least draw 3 cards that get you to the 4 threshold are Harmonize, Careful Consideration, Urban Evolution, Meditate, Attunement, Concentrate, Distant Memories, Dream Cache, Ideas Unbound, Intellectual Offering, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Jace's Ingenuity, Mystic Confluence, Mystic Meditation, Oath of Jace, Plea for Power, Pore Over the Pages, Rhystic Scrying, Scour the Laboratory, Sift, Tezzeret's Ambition, Treasure Cruise, Ugin's Insight, Visions of Beyond, Vivisection.
I think the pick of the bunch is Ideas Unbound, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mystic Confluence, Oath of Jace, Dream Cache, Pore Over the Pages, Harmonize, Concentrate.
Frantic Search doesn't get you to the threshold on its own, but you can combine this with another cantrip or Thrasios, maybe to get you there.
Things to take out for a number of these:
Regrowth
Lightning Greaves - the only thing this can do is to offer Kydele haste, but you'll find that you are probably not casting her and have the mana to combo off, most games. As far as protection, your combo Dead-eye and Palinchron are blinking, and really nothing else is a must to protect. It was the first card I cut just from realizing its protection factor was pretty minimal.
Coiling Oracle
Laboratory Maniac - trust me, not needed, once you go infinite then you are drawing your deck (leave a couple of cards to give yourself a few turns) bounce everything back to hand, and countering anything that's going to stop you. Kydele + Umbral Mantle and Rampaging Baloths/Avenger of Zendikar is finishing the game in one turn.
Flusterstorm - change for Arcane Denial for sure.
I think you're absoluetly right, having play tested quite a few games, the number of times I've been waiting for a piece, isn't really that good.
I've actually been running a creature mana ramp version with mana elves. The only "infinite" combos I run are:
Palinchron + Deadeye Navigator
Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Umbral Mantle
Grim Monolith / Basalt Monolith + Mana Reflection
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth
Mind Over Matter + (Gaea's Cradle / Kydele / or anything like Grim Monolith / Basalt Monolith that will get you further into ramp/draw)