A while back, my friend put together an arcanis the omnipotent edh deck that quickly morphed into an artifact-based/extra-turn abomination of a memnarch edh deck that ran all sorts of overpowered blue crap from time stretch to omniscience. As a greatly vorthosian casual/edh player with a scathing hatred for blue, needless to say this pissed me off greatly. but what pissed me off even more is, well, he didn't do it in style. if you are gonna be THAT guy who plays a mono-blue hurr-durr i win deck, you gotta have class. and without further ado, i will introduce my Jin-Gitaxias EDH deck which i built for the specific reason of showing him exactly how a gentleman plays blue edh. No extra turn bullshit, no enter the infinite, no one-shot robot, no memnarch shenanigans. This, my fellow metalheads, is a blue deck. Class is in session.
First off, early game, you want to control the board-state without becoming the prime target. permission is very shaky in the edh format, largely because it is not as consistent as a normal 4-of 60 card deck. luckily, we have an answer for that in isochron scepter and elite arcanist. imprint a counterspell on one of these babies and boom, no one speaks unless the master says so. the second part of your early game should be focused on building your mana base with extraplanar lense, thawing glaciars (thankfully can be transmuted with tolaria west) and trinket maging a sol ring from your library. your general costs 10 mana; you need to reach this threshold before your opponents realize what you are up to.
a quick aside on unwinding clock... combined with cards like grim monolith, gilded lotus, and temple bell it can either make you a big target or a beloved ally, use these interactions wisely, as it is a greatly underestimated card.
with a plethora of draw spells, you should be able to mold your hand pretty easily for a tricky mid game. this should be spent either searching up key combo pieces (which i will go into later) and control pieces. bribery, blatant theivery, duplicant, and consecrated sphinx dominate mid-game and can make you one or two enemies at the table. but once you get the ball rolling and have assembled your pieces, they wont be able to... hehe... stop you...
which leads me to the crux of the deck, the cards that will make your enemies rue the day they challenged Jin-Gitaxias to an unwinnable power-struggle. After i played this deck against my blue spell-slinging friend, he learned a thing or two about how a real blue mage plays magic. I almost hate myself for it. almost.
Dream Halls and Mind Over Matter. The card omniscience wishes it could be and "Twiddle-on-a-stick". these are the cards that will give your opponents nightmares.
First of all, dream halls gives all your spells the "force of will" ability. thats right, for half the cost of omniscience, you get to cast your spells for free. but, it costs cards. Not to worry, trinket mage up a library of leng or elixir of immortality and you wont run out of cards anytime soon. But morgoth, you say, doesnt it give your opponents the same ability? well, not with your newly cast jin-gitaxias it doesnt. they have one turn at most to play all of their cards, and thankfully, you have counter backup. not that they will live long enough to have their fun. because you have the most powerful card in the game up your sleeve. not jace, not time walk, not black lotus. Twiddle on a stick.
Mind over matter is a strange card at first glance. you can twiddle. great. we all know that. but look at all the little toys you can twiddle with in this deck: isochron scepter, icy manipulator, arcanis the omnipotent, grim monolith, tolarian academy... and did i say it was free? no? well... its not exactly free. a measly card pays for the cost. but library saves those cards, you draw more with jin-gitaxias, and oooo look, you can haz combo with arcanis!!! why, mind over matter can give you infinite mana with card draw and some lands!!! mind over matter does it all. which leads to the win of course. draw until you get lab maniac, temple bell, or psychosis crawler, then kill them with damage, mill them, or just plain win. simple. as. that.
Class is dismissed.