Well, Realms is instant speed 3 mana that nets you two lands, most noticeable a sac-outlet like Phyrexian tower or nab mana fixers like command tower/dual lands.
Corpse dance is instant speed recursion that abuse CIP effects like counter spells, edicts, utility destruction and makes surprise blockers in combat.
79 Leyline of the Void: Disynergy with mimeoplasm
80 Leyline of Anticipation: win-more
56 Rhystic Study: Never been a fan of this. "friends, don't let friends draw more cards"
52 Fabricate: meh tutor
55 Demonic Collusion: overcosted tutor
86 Nim Deathmantle: not abusable enough here. I'd run this if the deck is CIP effect heavy with the likes of terastodon, acidic slime
40 Azusa, Lost but Seeking: in 36 land deck will wiff. And crucible/loam stripmine effects are inconsistent without some real land tutors like Realms uncharted.
38 Exploration: 36 land wiff
Some general comments:
There's not enough carddraw to fight the table. I'd run draw/filter spells like Fact or fiction, thirst for knowledge.
Also, way too few lands (effectively 34 excluding bazzar, cradle. And virtually lower given the number of fetches) with little ramp. Decks that can run this few either pack a ton of cheap carddraw or have super low curves.
I have Buried Alive, but Intuition is a bit of an issue given that its a bit pricey itself and to make thingworse I'm currently jobless. Are there any cheap alternatives? Because while my store does allow proxies, a proxy of that would probably be a bit much (they were iffy about my friend's proxy of Doubling Season which is around the same price range).
I will eventually buy one eventually, unfortunately I'll need to wait until I get a job to do that. After that it will be games and Magic everywhere!
Intuition isn't a must have like buried alive but it does open up lots of plays at EOT which streamlines your mana for the next turn. And given that there's really nothing else outside this, buried alive, corpse connoisseur with similar function, I'd opt to use the slot for maybe spot removal like putrefy or some tech like Brain spoil or Clutch of the Undercity .
Well bob is good in other formats for a)Being a 2/1 that can hit for damage, 2)2cmc, 3)net you cards for life. Downside? $40
Now in EDH, the 2/1 is irrelevant. The life loss may matter in the wrong builds (I don't want him in say reanimator). And also the fact that it doesn't gain you any cards till the next turn makes it a bit slow. I see this guy played out in maybe child of alara land decks or hyper aggro builds.
Entomb is pretty tech for 1 mana indeed but its somewhat narrow in other formats and edh builds to the point where $35 is way too high. Like dual lands, wasteland, and survival, it may be too pricey (money wise) for its function.
Was cut from old versions for being too cost inefficient. 5 mana for fetching 1 creature to grave doesn't beat buried alive/intuition. And the fact that it finds only 1 creature makes your graveyard more of a liability over future turns.
Many but not all infinite combos rely on pieces that don't do much on their own. Thats why I opt for the insidious ones with pieces that double or triple as other functions throughout the game and so would increase the interactivity of the board state.
To answer the original question, EDH is more of a sandbox format so there's no reason to run anything in particular. Infinite combos may be an efficient means to an end but if the means are uninteresting (group/meta opinion), then why play it in this casual format?
Another thing I was wondering, what about dropping in a few spells that bounce creatures(or whatever) back to the deck, like Spell Crumple? Its great at dropping more agressive generals back to their decks.
This sort of goes back to passive/active deck design. Pure counterspells are control strategies that this deck avoids. In the original design, I'd rather actively disruption my opponent's board/hand than sit on a what if scenario. Furthermore, hinder effects are disynergistic as you want the countered fatty (non-general) to hit their graveyard so you steal it with Mimeoplasm.
Another variant idea extends back to my Wrexial/sakashima Deck where you'd run many of the clone/copy effects that win off the back of your opponent's decks. That means stuff like Splitting Image, Mimic Vat, Sakashima, Clone, Phantasmal image, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Phyrexian Metamorph, body double. Also include the spell steally guys like Wrexial, Chancellor of the spires.
I've been following this build a bit, and while I do enjoy it (my Mimeoplasm deck is largely following this set-up), my local store uses Victory Points and in this setting you lose 4 points if you use an infinite combo. Would you have any suggestions for altering the deck this setting?
More the more casual oriented, refocus the deck into a reanimator build (but not dredge). Cut the palinchron and vorinclex. Run more mass card filter effects like Windfall, Jace's Archivist that hit opponents instead of the discard effects. Noticeable targets to reanimate are Jin Gitaxis, Sheoldred, Terastodon. From m12, rune-scarred demon and Sphinx of Uthuun are good. Other targets include Avenger of Zendikar, and Genesis/Primeval titan/gaea's cradle if you're after big mana. Throw in the missing reanimation spells like Animate dead, Dread return.
The death of a format is when it gets solved. There's two ways of looking and addressing this.
-From a competitive standpoint, a single deck/strategy dominates the meta. However, this usually doesn't happen as Wotc updates the banlist when some degeneracy ensues. EDH however circumvents the issue as its stated in a "casual" light where competition is a lesser reason reasons to play the game. (hence, local banlists/rules emerge)
-From a rules perspective, the set of all local strategies is constrained/shrunk. e.g. limited cardpool, too few rules, too many rules, rules that step over each other. I see this more like imposing an interesting set of boundary conditions which would make for multiple local solutions (or decks). What plagued 5 color may have been the 5 colors themselves (restricts deck design, reduces color flavor), the 300 card minimum (too great a loss of consistency, reduces flavor), and 4 card minimum (steps over previous rule by attempting to increasing consistency). Highlander was more interesting as the "there can be only be one" mantra instilled a greater importance to card function over
card quantity. Hence, emphasis is placed over uniqueness rather than consistency but this may have been too restrictive. EDH remedied this by levitating one specific Legendary creature card to General status, hence adding a semblance of consistency (in an orthogonal direction) to an otherwise inconsistent highlander format.
Current problems with the format?
-Banlist: official banlist (a bit inconsistent) vs. local lists is debatable. They can keep this going so long as the format is not officiated.
-Sanctioning: "casual" interpretation of the format keeps the rules vague enough to let local groups tweak the format to their liking. Any sort of officiating would set some set of rules in stone which not everyone would agree too.
Corpse dance is instant speed recursion that abuse CIP effects like counter spells, edicts, utility destruction and makes surprise blockers in combat.
80 Leyline of Anticipation: win-more
56 Rhystic Study: Never been a fan of this. "friends, don't let friends draw more cards"
52 Fabricate: meh tutor
55 Demonic Collusion: overcosted tutor
86 Nim Deathmantle: not abusable enough here. I'd run this if the deck is CIP effect heavy with the likes of terastodon, acidic slime
40 Azusa, Lost but Seeking: in 36 land deck will wiff. And crucible/loam stripmine effects are inconsistent without some real land tutors like Realms uncharted.
38 Exploration: 36 land wiff
Some general comments:
There's not enough carddraw to fight the table. I'd run draw/filter spells like Fact or fiction, thirst for knowledge.
Also, way too few lands (effectively 34 excluding bazzar, cradle. And virtually lower given the number of fetches) with little ramp. Decks that can run this few either pack a ton of cheap carddraw or have super low curves.
Intuition isn't a must have like buried alive but it does open up lots of plays at EOT which streamlines your mana for the next turn. And given that there's really nothing else outside this, buried alive, corpse connoisseur with similar function, I'd opt to use the slot for maybe spot removal like putrefy or some tech like Brain spoil or Clutch of the Undercity .
Now in EDH, the 2/1 is irrelevant. The life loss may matter in the wrong builds (I don't want him in say reanimator). And also the fact that it doesn't gain you any cards till the next turn makes it a bit slow. I see this guy played out in maybe child of alara land decks or hyper aggro builds.
To answer the original question, EDH is more of a sandbox format so there's no reason to run anything in particular. Infinite combos may be an efficient means to an end but if the means are uninteresting (group/meta opinion), then why play it in this casual format?
This sort of goes back to passive/active deck design. Pure counterspells are control strategies that this deck avoids. In the original design, I'd rather actively disruption my opponent's board/hand than sit on a what if scenario. Furthermore, hinder effects are disynergistic as you want the countered fatty (non-general) to hit their graveyard so you steal it with Mimeoplasm.
Another variant idea extends back to my Wrexial/sakashima Deck where you'd run many of the clone/copy effects that win off the back of your opponent's decks. That means stuff like Splitting Image, Mimic Vat, Sakashima, Clone, Phantasmal image, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Phyrexian Metamorph, body double. Also include the spell steally guys like Wrexial, Chancellor of the spires.
More the more casual oriented, refocus the deck into a reanimator build (but not dredge). Cut the palinchron and vorinclex. Run more mass card filter effects like Windfall, Jace's Archivist that hit opponents instead of the discard effects. Noticeable targets to reanimate are Jin Gitaxis, Sheoldred, Terastodon. From m12, rune-scarred demon and Sphinx of Uthuun are good. Other targets include Avenger of Zendikar, and Genesis/Primeval titan/gaea's cradle if you're after big mana. Throw in the missing reanimation spells like Animate dead, Dread return.
-From a competitive standpoint, a single deck/strategy dominates the meta. However, this usually doesn't happen as Wotc updates the banlist when some degeneracy ensues. EDH however circumvents the issue as its stated in a "casual" light where competition is a lesser reason reasons to play the game. (hence, local banlists/rules emerge)
-From a rules perspective, the set of all local strategies is constrained/shrunk. e.g. limited cardpool, too few rules, too many rules, rules that step over each other. I see this more like imposing an interesting set of boundary conditions which would make for multiple local solutions (or decks). What plagued 5 color may have been the 5 colors themselves (restricts deck design, reduces color flavor), the 300 card minimum (too great a loss of consistency, reduces flavor), and 4 card minimum (steps over previous rule by attempting to increasing consistency). Highlander was more interesting as the "there can be only be one" mantra instilled a greater importance to card function over
card quantity. Hence, emphasis is placed over uniqueness rather than consistency but this may have been too restrictive. EDH remedied this by levitating one specific Legendary creature card to General status, hence adding a semblance of consistency (in an orthogonal direction) to an otherwise inconsistent highlander format.
Current problems with the format?
-Banlist: official banlist (a bit inconsistent) vs. local lists is debatable. They can keep this going so long as the format is not officiated.
-Sanctioning: "casual" interpretation of the format keeps the rules vague enough to let local groups tweak the format to their liking. Any sort of officiating would set some set of rules in stone which not everyone would agree too.