Salient

If you're going to use an infinite mana combo, win with Helix Pinnacle! :-)

Mesmeric Orb is amazing with Life from the Loam.

It's too bad Mishra's Factory is long-gone from standard. You might consider running four Inkmoth Nexus, as +1/+1 counters don't disappear from manlands when they revert back to noncreatures. Especially if you're going to play Tempered Steel -- the thought of 3/3 flying infect creatures will scare the daylights out of your opponents.

Mana Drain's legal in EDH? Wow.

This deck needs more Ornithopter, Flying Men, and cowbell. :)

Crap, Edna's right of course. I was thinking Stonehewer Giant could attach the Equipment (since it doesn't target), but forgot about rule 502.7d, which says that cards with characteristic X can't be attached to a creature with protection from X.

Thanks for the catch on that.

Sweet, that answers my objection to the low incidence of instants.

It would take ten turns to die from a Pacified Vatmother. If your opponent can't reliably destroy an unprotected creature within a few turns or so, there's lots of easier ways to kill them. I'd think beating them down with the Vatmother would almost always work better.

If you really want to run Bazaar Trader, consider also using Abyssal Persecutor.

Wow, Knowledge Pool is sick.

If I understand correctly, you can fill your deck with cheap instant-speed disruption. Once Pool's in play, you cast enough cheap junk to empty the pool of anything good they exiled off the top. From then on, once the opponent casts something, you can cast junk at instant speed and steal their spell, allowing you to play (their) artifacts and creatures and such on their turn, for cheap. They can't effectively respond to counter the spells you steal unless they have an instant *and* there's a counter in the pool. So pool wins the game for you.

Amazing. I hope this finds its way into Legacy, though 6cc is practically verboten.

All that having been said, why aren't you running more instants? Do the current Standard decks generally only drop one spell per turn? I feel like, intuitively, you ought to need a full and thorough set of instant-speed disruption. Otherwise they can cast their win-spell (Titan or whatever) and follow it up with any cheap junk spell. I guess Pool isn't your main focus here, especially since you're going aggro-control rather than pure control. I'd love to see a pure control Knowledge Pool deck.

or perhaps Foresee, Mystic Speculation, Skeletal Scrying, Viscera Seer.... ?

Oh, also -- Ponder, Opt, Brainstorm, Preordain, Serum Visions, Sensei's Divining Top if you can find a few cheap, uhh, Breakthrough, Careful Study, Mystic Remora, uhhhh..... Portent, Read the Runes, Shared Discovery (and then run lots of zero-casting-cost creatures like Ornithopter).

Some of those have got to be cheap.

How do you plan to get the Ad Nauseam into your hand? I mean, tournament ANT decks died off once Mystical Tutor was banned, and for that exact reason. I don't understand what you plan to do if you don't draw Ad Nauseam in the first five turns... which, with only two in the deck, seems like it'll happen often enough.

For a cheap "hang on while I go find my combo card" card, go find Lim-Dul's Vault and buy four. Nobody likes them in tournament so they're only maybe $4 each, but they will help you draw Ad Nauseam about as well as anything can.

Ethan's correct here. Even a Progenitus equipped with Darksteel Plate will die to Black Sun's Zenith, provided X > 9.

Note -- unless I'm mistaken, Black Sun's Zenith is the only card in the game that can boast of this. Cards like Humility can cripple Progenitus, but not kill kim all on their lonesome; cards like Damnation or Perish will usually kill Progenitus, but not if he's equipped with Darksteel Plate. But the BS Zenith evades all forms of creature defense that exist in the game. Provided that it resolves successfully and the X paid is sufficiently large, Black Sun's Zenith will kill every creature, regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of what's on the battlefield.

Awesome.

Hey, neat first deck. You might throw in some fetch lands like Scalding Tarn, not only to thin your deck out so you don't draw unnecessary land, but also to trigger multiple Plated Geopede abilities. A 5/5 first striker is a beast of a third-turn attacker. I'd put four of them in.

Your mana curve's a bit high. You might consider prioritizing high-cost spells and running fewer of them in the deck. Usually a card costing 5+ mana is a questionable add unless it's guaranteed to win you the game. Some of the high-cost cards you are using (like Hoarding Dragon) don't advance your game state very far. You'd be better off with an extra Lightning Bolt or Flame Slash more often than not.

Leylines are the exception: they're better when you run four of them, so you're more likely to draw one off the bat and get a free play. But I'm not sure I'd run four Leyline of Punishment, unless you're building a "punishment" theme deck (and I suspect you're not much of a theme-oriented player, as you didn't like my rage joke deck). Either way, all the best to you!

He goes by his last name. :P

I do! I've been working on constructed Legacy decks for near-on a decade now. :)

Infect is so good. Inkmoth Nexus are underpriced right now.

Somewhat, perhaps, but not significantly. It's possible to find good constructive advice, fine-tune tournament-quality decks, and work on technical aspects of the game, right alongside these jokers. I certainly do! :)

Fun tip -- Followed Footsteps and Forced Fruition are both fantastic hilarious fun in EDH. If they haven't seen it before, they're practically guaranteed to laugh the first time Forced Fruition hits the table.

Why don't you play a set of Mox and Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall and such?