Think Small (30 $)

Thanks.

Corrected the cc1/2 error in the descriptions.

I could probably go down in landcount to get running, however, I need lands to put on top to not get damaged. Moreover each land makes the next Soothsaying, Suffer the Past and Exsanguinate bigger. So I am unsure about this and only playing the deck will tell. It's one of the things I am monitoring.

The card you get from the seer is NOT a draw! Probably for it's own good, otherwise it would be too tempting to couple it with Underworld Dreams and from there it gets boring fast.

About the removal debate: I can understand (to some degree) that players don't want removal in their agressive 1-on-1 decks. But not running removal (besides creature removal) in any multiplayer format is nuts! Unless of course you play against noobish creature decks all day - and even then you run into equipments and enchantments that boost creatures. Those players are probably the same that complain about silly combos or gamebreaking permanents ...

Now to the part about putting cards on top opponent's library:
I briefly thought about Memory Lapse and then decided against it. The reason is twofold:
For one, if I start adding those cards, then I have to cut something. Knowing me the result would be yet another deck with lots of single cards and two-ofs, nobody would bother reading and the deck would get ignored again.
Secondly its about multiplayer dynamics. Adding those cards makes the deck more comboish => I would be a bigger threat => I get ganked on earlier and harder. But that might happen no matter what, so I still consider adding this stuff. Since I stopped researching past Memory Lapse, lets examine your suggestions:

- Ether Well: Maybe, but I don't think that it will be creatures that kill me.
- Nevermaker: That's pretty nifty! Didn't know that card - the evoke makes it flexible.
- Research the Deep won't work since this deck will hardly ever win a clash, Soothsaying or not, simply because of that flat mana curve
- Noxious Revival: Hm. Is there something similar that isn't one-shot?
-Spin into Myth: That's viable, however, 5 mana is risky. Too bad this is the only card so far with fateseal
- Totally Lost: I'll go with Nevermaker!

About non-basics, I could maybe run cycling lands which would also solve the question if I should go down with land count.

Thanks again.

Forget about Noxious Revival: MISINFORMATION! Always wanted to use that one.

Portent and Misinformtion together would be mean!
I plugged your deck, fyi, here is to hoping people come look.

Thanks!
About the explanation: I usually do lenghty explanations but figured that most readers will skip it if it is too long ... you know, anything longer than a Twitter message is considered useless these days^^

And as I said before: No suggestion will ever be "low profile"! For any suggestion or advice I get I will always assume it has it's merit and then check the viability. And even if I reject the suggested card, I always explain why, and the process of evaluating the card and expressing why I won't use it is healthy to understand the deck's inner workings! Besides, often times I may not include the suggested card but thinking about it leads to other thoughts and ideas that will make the deck eventually. In your case:

At first, Psychic Strike doesn't look like it would fit - it mills cards, Memory Lapse would be the counterspell to go for this deck. However, what if my opponent casts a low-casting-cost spell that I have to counter? Or lets say I know the opponent has a land on top of his library and this won't get any damage in my next upkeep: That's where milling would be useful.
Yet, I fon't have enough ways yet to look at the opponent's top card. In fact it's only Portent and if I see 2 lands and a one-drop, Portent let's me shuffle. So it would need more work to make Psychic Strike useful. I mentioned Elemental Augury. So, if I was really going to add red, Psychic Strike would be a good conisderation!

Into the Roil:
I thouoght about a Boomerang effect myself and had Recoil in my initial draft. Recoil has the slight chance to get rid of the bounced card permanently. However, the Seer basically acts as a Howling Mine, so I don't think their hands will ever be empty enough. That plus the cc3 made me cut it again. Into the Roil, however, is nice because of the low initial cost. And again, it made me thinking - Kicker is a very nice way to circumvent the Seer's drawback! And so does Buyback, for that matter! Adding red becomes more and more appealing (Shattering Pulse!).

Yeah, I hope it gets to the Hot Page. He deserves it.

Ponder maybe but Ornithopter does too little.

Regarding Hot Page, I guess I owe that to you, Jessie. However, it's not being on Hot Page that I want, it's comments with suggestions - which is basically the same :P

Very much agree with that one.

Indeed, that would make it a lot cheaper. Good catch on that.
But I am thinking he will be hard pressed to change it because the Scry 1 is better than the gain 1 life.
But, it would indeed shave 10 dollars off the deck.

Changes like that are up to whoever builds this deck. And as Jessie said, the Scry 1 is perfect for this deck! And for a dual land, the Scry lands are still very cheap. AND, as I stated in that strategy article, don't save your money on the wrong end! When you dismantle this deck after some months, you will find a new home for the Temples because they are good for many decks.

But then you realized that Duskmantle Seer causes loss of life and said "nah, it won't do anything" :)

EDIT:
But that's a cool card, though, why have I never seen it before? Looks like the key card to a nice casual deck where you do all kind of nonsense during your upkeep.

EDIT 2:
Personal Sanctuary helped me to remember Paradox Haze, so thx :)

There is a reason I don't play EDH - that's because playing successfully can basically be reduced to "don't do anything unless you are about to die". In essence, in a EDH game of good players, everybody is fiddling around with his spells for an eternity without really gaining anything because everybody is loaded with board sweepers and hosers of the prelevent strategies. Commanders get killed/exiled/shuffled away as soon as they hit play. Then, after hours, when everybody is in top-deck mode, somebody draws a bomb while nobody has anything left to neutralize it. Players die, hopefully all of them because otherwise the game might continue yet another hour with some players forced to twirl thumbs. In the end, usually the guy that did the least wins.
You don't need good combos, you don't need many expensive cards, you don't need to synergize everything, heck, you don't even need to tune your deck to fit your commander. In fact it's my thesis that a EDH deck would be better off using a random 5 colour legend as the commander and ignoring it. Instead fill your deck with the usual tutors, card drawers, mana rampers and mass destruction plus as many bombs as you can find. Let the others try to play their game, build token armies or whatever their commanders does and I'll just sit back and wait for the right opportunity to win in one go with one of the cards that truly dominate the format: Cards like Reins of Power, Insurrection, Price of Progress or Shriveling Rot.

The more players understand this, the less fun EDH becomes.

So, I have several reasons not to post on northies thread:
1) In order to properly explain what I just said I would have to write a gigantic article, more like a compendium.
2) What I would write would disagree with Northy on crucial parts. I don't want to pick a fight with him nor sound like a smartass, which I usually do, so no, thx.
3) Giving this ultimate advice would harm the format more than it would help. If no players use this strategy and play EDH as intended, it can be fun. If one player uses this strategy, he will win most games until people gang up on him regularily which is no fun for everybody involved. But as soon as more than one player uses it, games become dull and pointless, everyone is waiting for the others to make a move and nobody does so because for each potential winning move there are 3 solutions sitting in the other player's hands.
Players should have fun with this format for as long as possible. They'll discover why EDH sucks sooner or later anyway.

I might add another reason and again it will make me sound arrogant, but only few people other than you will read it, so ...

4) Nobody would actually understand my advice anyway - at the very least not the intended audience of that article!
Multiplayer is an art, highlander is an art and EDH is both. I can claim I have mastered both - I am playing casual multiplayer since 1994 and have written articles since the old days of Beyond Dominia. Highlander has always been my personal playstyle and I was the dedicated highlander player of my german premier league team. See - you can find a highlander primer I've written on the most important german forum of that time as early as 2003.
And EDH? I am still amazed how popular it is and how exited everybody is "you can play more expensive stuff! You can play cards never used before! The decks are so varied!" Well, I've always build my decks varied and highlanderish, why do you need tailormade rules to enforce that?
You know my decks here - one of the reasons I get so few replies is that they are too advanced for the average player. They don't really understand the concepts behind them. And this is understandable - it always depends on your environment. I almost exclusively play against veterans of the game. You simply need other cards and tactics to survive there. Just think about how many multiplayer decks here on MTGVault don't run any kind of artifact or enchantment removal - unthinkable in my environment! That's probably a bad example, though, because it sounds like a simple metagame call. But I am talking about things that aren't that obvious. Many things get more important the more experienced your adversaries are, for example graveyard-removal (exile) and in turn ways to prevent your own cards from getting exiled. In our environment a card like Claws of Gix is much better than in Average Joe's environment becacuse it let's me sacrifice my permanents in response to something that is about to exile (or steal!) it.

Gah, I am rambling again ... long story short: My advice it too advanced to be understood (by those that are in need of a how-to-EDH-article).

I am the smartest person on mtgvault...and I only understood about 40% of what Puschkin just said!!!
Something about Claws of Gix, or something like that :)
Joking aside...it does sound boring, EDH!

It is boring if the players involved are veterans and the decks streamlined (which they are these days - as soon as something is an official format, it isn't casual anymore) and it is if the chosen modus is multiplayer free-for-all (which it usually is). Half of my rant also applies to any other free-for-all. EDH just amplifies those mechanisms because you have 40 life and 100 unique cards, the slowdown is so great that any aggressive strategy is absolutely doomed => decks get even slowe and more controllish => a vicious circle that results into something we here in germany call "Beamten-Mikado" ("clerk jackstraws"): "He who moves first, loses".

i must test this theory.... niv mizzet the fire-mind with tons of goblins and counterspells!

oh, yeah, and card draw! tons and tons of card draw. enough that i could theoretically deck myself!

Why Niv-Mizzet? The "ultimate" EDH deck would not rely on it's commander at all. It would have a five color commander to have access to all colours when building the deck but it would probably never actually cast the commander. I would use Child of Alara because that one can be played in times of need and if it gets destroyed, it resets the game, but I would not add any cards that combo with it. At least none that are weak without the commander.

See, that's the basic problem with EDH: Take any commander, lets say Teferi. That makes your deck blue. No matter how well you design that deck and what kind of great combos you'll find to support Teferi, they will never be as good as cards like Reins of Power or Bribery are on their own. Which means you'll end up with these cards in evers single EDH deck that runs blue - if not, the deck is just weaker. And when cutting cards to make room for the staples, surprisingly for a 100 card highlander, you won't have anything else to cut except the cards that combo with your commander. Because mana ramp, removal and tutors are more important.
In this way, EDH actually beats itself: You are supposed to run diverse decks with fun interactions basing on unique legends. But you circumvent the highlander effect with tutors and library manipulation and you don't have enough space for the cards that should be the heart of the deck.

EDH is a format where ignorance is truly bliss: The less the players know about the format, the more fun it is.

i can agree with you. my current commander deck is thraximundar, with ways to temporarily take an opponent's creature, then sacrifice it. the majority of my creatures have some sort of sacrificial ability that helps me out, but many times simply keeping the creature alive is more beneficial, making the entire combo pointless.

do you by any chance run It That Betrays in that Thraximundar deck? or would that not be allowed since it is technically colorless?

Artifacts are allowed, so why should Eldrazis not be?

don't know. Just asking since I don't play EDH, so I am not overly familiar with the color limitations part of the rules.
so... yeah, It The Betrays would be a best with Thraximundar.

I am with you on that Kazzong. EDH does seem confusing. And sort of boring from what Puschkin says.

A lot of players enjoy EDH. It's boring if too many participants have "figured it out" and optimize to win. Basically, if there are no Spikes and enough Timmys (and if the Timmys play their decks like Timmys) then it can be a lot of fun.

I don't participate in Northys EDH article because I know my opinion is warped by the environment I play in and therefore skewed.

I don't know if I would say boring Jessie. Just... less variety because of format constraints.
If you don't know the format well then it is far harder to create decks for. but if you DO know the ins and outs... it is far easier because you already know what works and what doesn't. in that sense it is just like Standard, because you already know what people are going to throw at you from any given deck archetype.

I personally don't play EDH or commander because I don't find it interesting, simply for that reason. I like my casual kitchen table magic that isn't limited by any particular format other than ban lists I guess. It allows for variety, and unique concepts to be played to their fullest. even if they aren't very powerful in the traditional MTG sense. :)

I also love draft and sealed deck tourneys. super fun to me.
now coming up with a new format, that might be interesting. :)

edh has less then 30 cards banned and 100 different cards I think offers more variety then any 60 card deck even if you use tutors you don't always draw them and most edh players are not going to sink a ton of $ into every deck they create so they will not always have an "optimized" deck

That's the point, though: In my environment the players are veterans and DO have the cards to optimize the decks to death. Some even have enough spares to equip more than one EDH deck with all the staples typically at least four since they own the card 4 times for regular tournament play, but sometimes even more. Only 30 cards banned but otherwise Legacy means you have a pool of about 15000 different cards you can build from. A variety of 60 single cards isn't much then, especially if you include tutors (which everybody does), so you basically play against the bombs of this format all day. In an environment that has the cards. Which mine does. Your probably not. Therefore, don't listen to my ramblings regarding EDH.

Lol... I totally understand what you are saying. I also have a very small and SOMETIMES interested playgroup. so we really only play MTG occasionally anyways. they would be hard pressed to try a new format. even something like draft or sealed, much less EDH as it requires a bit more thinking for optimization (for a new player.)

The problem is: If players of at least average intelligence do "drunken social casual fun" for 20 years straight, there will be the point where their casual play ends up more organized and streamlined than many "serious" decks, especially when these players collected cards throughout. It becomes increasingly hard to keep the powerlevel of your decks in check when you have both the knowledge and card pool to do significantly better. Add to that the craziness of newer cards - many new cards are so powerful and borderline broken that you don't need to do much in order to screw over games. And everytime something nasty steamrolls you, you notch up your decks a bit, too.

The premade commander decks are considered crap in my environment, BTW. Note that my regular playgroup doesn't play EDH, when I am talking of EDH it's a different and bigger group of players, basically all the veterans of ye olde days of my city (Hamburg).

ive been playing about 13 years and I have a decent collection. my opponents are less skilled/ smaller collection so I try not to build to strong and with edh its so random that I don't have to dial back as much. I always considered premade as junk but the new commander series with planeswalkers as commanders is a lot better you should check out the cards they released in the new commander the green planeswalker is awesome

I have bought all 5 Commander 2014 decks. The green planeswalker sucks, he is just a Disenchant every 2 turns. The + ability is useless since it only produces manaelves which get killed by a million things. You are never going to use that ultimate - even if, it's just card draw and doesn't translate into anything useful immediatedly. If I activate an ultimate, I expect the board to explode or a powerful emblem, not just a few cards that *may* do something useful *later*.

if u play that planeswalker on turn 3 and start spitting out mana dorks that deck is fast and the disenchant effect in edh is very nice it has messed up my plan a lot playing against it idc about the 3rd ability the ramp/ removal effects are very good for edh and as far as the tokens go that deck has lots of ways to benefit from them being mana ramp, elves, or just as green permanents

NOTHING you do on the first 10 or so turns has any effect on the outcome of the game! In fact, playing your commander on turn 3 is the dumbest move you could do: Everybody still has it's fists full of removal plus early utility drops that can beat the planeswalker's head in! Even if it survives a turn or two, you produce a few tokens and then? I guarantee you that at least one player has a board sweeper ready by turn 5! And the rare case where nobody has a board sweeper ... well, that's actually the worst scenario for you because you are now the threat and everbody well be hellbent on stopping you, oftentimes keeping this attitude way beyond the point where you aren't a threat anymore.

Where I come from you won't see a commander in the first 20 or so turns. Why even try to cast it? It will be in your command zone with a +2cmc very quickly. And you can call yourself lucky if it gets back to your command zone. If you are unlucky it gets Spell Crumpled, stolen or something like that.

This is multiplayer where we don't use sideboards. Multiplayer also explains why I run Wall of Frost (more bigger tramplers) and so few counterspells.

Pain Seer + Springleaf Drum is a nice combo, however, I would need to run them in higher numbers in order to make it work. And what to cut!?
BTW, I am not really on a budget. In fact, the version I actually play looks a bit different, it runs Baleful Strix for example. The reason I made this budget is solely because otherwise it would get ignored here on Vault. I made this deck on the height of the budget-craze of MTGVault.
Having said that, I recently sold my only Dark Confident, so while I am technically not on a budget, I still can't add Maher :)

If you're not on a budget:
Add Consecrated Sphinx?
Add Sensei's Divining Top?
Uhh...splash white with Spirit of the Labryinth, using Aether Vial?
4 Isochron Scepter, 4 Unwinding Clock, 4 Silence?

As for the budget deck listed here, the only card I can think of is Notion Thief (and maybe Teferi's Puzzle Box). Forgive me.