dknight27

You've got some color problems in here. Blue guys with no blue mana, and no black to make lingering souls any good

Surveil is a fantastic ability to be sure, better than scry by leaps and bounds. I hope they keep going with it.

Here is my thought process on ionize, and bear with me, its going to cause me to wax poetic.

As I see it, there are only 4 types of decks possible to build: aggro, combo, proactive control, reactive control. And all 4 of them seek to take advantage of the strange relationship between tempo (how fast you develop toward your goal), material (how many cards you have), interaction (the ability to change the board state or the future of the board state), and board state (what's in play and how it affects the win conditions).

The desire for tempo is a constant in all decks, and can't be ignored at any cost. However, the other 3 variables are in flux depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

Aggro just fields critters as fast as possible and tries to overwhelm board state at the cost of interaction, and has the possibility of material problems as they can be nuked into oblivion with 1 card.

Combo ignores material and largely doesn't care about board state in favor of a vastly accelerated tempo and enough interaction to get the job done.

Proactive control is the great compromise, which has pretty much equal interests in all 4 categories (the best recent example of this idea is nicol bolas the ravager).

But reactive control has the strange problem of maxing interaction with the inverse relationship between card advantage and board state. Simply put, every card you have in a control deck that is a win condition is hurting your ability to stop opponent's win condition, which is the entire point of the build. Thus, you have to very carefully balance the win conditions vs the control cards, and if you get the balance wrong you get steamrolled. Ionize is an example of a fantastic compromise that gets around this problem. If you can shock for free when you cast an interaction, you retain material and advance board state, all at the same time. Another fantastic example of this is electrolyze.

So, my contention is that in a reactive control deck, running cards like ionize lets you run fewer win conditions, which overall keeps you in control more often.

I've never been a fan of syncopate or its like. Too conditional for me. Ionize is the strongest in the format, and I wouldn't doubt it will trickle into modern. Negate is also extremely strong, as it hates on the dominant planeswalkers. besides those two, unwind isn't too bad, and sinister sabotage is solid (although harder to cast). But the best option I see for this deck in the side against control is risk factor. It does exactly what control doesn't want used against it, which is a + in tempo and material. If opponent uses a negate on it, they're down material when you ditch a land to recast it. If they let the 4 damage hit because they aren't close to the danger zone, you can still recast it by ditching a land. Its a damn near perfect card for control vs control.

No ionize?

I would pull 2 lands and the sabatage's for maxed ionize. They are just too good to ignore.

As for Carnage Tyrant, that's the question isn't it? I haven't seen a better anti-control critter in standard in a long time. Fortunately, and I believe firmly that this was on purpose, star of extinction is the answer. It can double as a side option against swarms if needed (honestly fiery cannonade is a fantastic nuke option), but this deck desperately needs 3 sided star of extinctions for game 2 and 3 against the tyrant.

It's also worth noting that your side is currently heavy on critter hate, as is the deck (even with the negate changes), so it would be a good idea to give the side some options against non-critter decks (mirror matches, grixis, jeskai, etc). The burn spells are fine, as they can go to the face, but essence scatter, lava coil, fiery cannonade are 9 basically dead draws against decks that use control or grind it out, so siding them out for non-critter hate will help bigtime.

In general this looks extremely solid.

I don't think you need 24 lands though, especially since none of them are tech lands (field of ruin).

I also see a couple balancing problems.

I hate running 4 crackling drakes, as you don't want one in the opening at all (hard to cast, conditional return). I would cut it down to 2 or 3. I have similar feelings about chemister's insight, as you don't want it in the opening, so maybe drop that down to 3.
Right now you have more than enough critter hate, but only a little non-critter hate. I would advise mainboarding 4 negates, as there are plenty of targets to take advantage of in standard with it.

I'm surprised to see no ionize in here, as its the flagship of control builds right now.

I hate running 4 thunderous wrath's in a burn deck, as if you have one in the opening hand its is a dead card the whole game.

Eternal witness and commune with the gods both work very well. Not a huge fan of noxious revivel in the mainboard, as it takes time and loses material

Some fetch lands would go a long way in here, as your curve is pretty small and you are basically set after you hit 3 lands

Not sure if 1 outlet for infinite mana that doesn't have haste built in is the best way to pull an otk. Shalai is good, as it will knock everything into the stratosphere, but its still semi-subject to conditions and removal (although it does protect the mana combo boys, which is lovely). Have you looked into any other outlets for the mana production?

Bloodghast is an excellent card, but doesn't help you hit an infinite combo, so you have to decide if you want to win in small chunks or just go directly for the infinite combo.

The search options you are running can be improved on. Jarad's orders is PERFECT for this build. Grisley salvage is better than vessel of nascency, even if it won't fetch blasting station. Zombie infestation is no good, there are much better discard options. Collective brutality is an excellent option for that, as you can pull an instant/sorcery away from opponent that would hit you, as well as remove a critter threat or drain away while ditching a grave component, all for 2 mana.

Unfortunately, if the land produces a color not in the commander's identity, you cant run it, or the mirrodin lands would dominate in here. Alas.

I see this deck going for between 150 and 200, which isn't that bad in commander (unfortunately). You could cut some of the more expensive cards (paradox engine, mycosynth golem, thought vessel, all is dust) if necessary to bring it under 100.

Ya, mycosynth lattice is just stupid in here.

As it stands, I'm not that big a fan of semblance anvil in here, as it eats material and is a terrible topdeck, and you have plenty of reduce cost cards and mana producers to speed things up.

You could also think about shaving off some of the agro bots, like traxos as memnarch is your win condition.

Lightning greaves goes a long way in this deck

It's starting to look better for competitive, but if you want it to be able to keep up in modern there are a few big changes that need to be made. The 1-drop counts needs to be filled up, specifically with 1-drop black discards like inquisition of kozilek, thoughtseize, duress, etc. They buy you time and disassemble opponent's ability to interrupt your combo. I would also run 4 fatal pushes.

Then there are some redundancies in the critter base and some better search options available.

I think 21 with a healthy supply of fetch lands (6 or 7) would do just fine. A third of the deck is in the 1-drop spot, so you can realistically run the deck on 1 land for a couple turns if you have to, but with 21 you almost certainly wont.

Another thing to consider is dark confidant, as you can bleed forever in a build like this and not care.

This is a pretty tight curve. Even with the 2 tactical lands, I don't think this needs 23 land spots.

Metallic mimic is a fantastic card for this build, especially with bloodsoaked champion (comes back as a 3/2 battering ram every turn).

Yahenni's Expertise is no good in here. If you get in a position where you have to nuke, you've already lost (this deck swarms and basically nothing else).

I'm also not a big fan of running 3 duresses, as 3 copies of an anti-nuke/removal aren't going to be effective, and you aren't going to see many opening hands with one (which is where you really want to see them). You could either give a higher saturation of 1 drop discards (throw in inquisition of kozilek and kick em up to at least 7 copies), or you could take em out entirely, roll the dice on your speed vs opponent's removal, and swap in some field interaction like fatal push (etc) to pull out the blockers that buy time. I would highly recommend 4 copies of fatal push, as you really want to pull opponent's early critters off the board as fast as possible so you can steal turns with damage.

Mutavault is perfect for this too, as are some fetch lands (polluted delta, etc) to thin the deck out so you don't topdeck useless lands once you hit your operative curve (which is very small).

What level of play are we looking to run this through? Competitive modern?

From my read, this build is a little heavy on the win conditions vs reactive control. 10 damage producing critters (albeit some with control mechanics), on top of 4 snaps, and a walker-token producer, all of which is backed up by 4 colonnades is a quarter of the deck that proactively seeks damage, which I've always found to be too high a ratio. It leads to some opening hands without control elements at all and some middle games where you have redundant board state with no way to protect it.

I've also never been a fan of the unsaturated mana leaks, as they are best in the opening so 2 copies tend to be far less effective than 4. I like 4 remands much better.

You also have a high saturation of critter hate, but very little against non-critters, so perhaps consider pulling a few removals for some negates or the like mainboarded.

Personally I've never liked the restoration angel/snap combo, as it requires a HUGE mana commitment over a 2 turn spread (first snap is 2 plus the spells cost, angel is a 4 drop plus the cost of the spell, so at min the whole thing runs 8 mana (if you choose 2 1-drops to flash back). I do like the angel and the clique, but im not sure if that justifies running the angels at all.

Just my thoughts, not trying to beat the deck up