Pact of Negation

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Kjartan on The Book of Exalted Deeds

1 week ago

4x Pact of Negation seems really excessive seeing it can't feasibly protect you casting a combo piece, unless you're comboing out of Lotus Bloom. It's not online unless you're set up to do a one turn cast + activate book with Mutavault left over as well.

Maybe if you played Angel's Grace, it would work better? It would give you an option to use Pact of Negation before you've achieved a winning board-state, an it's also a decent card to put under Isochron Scepter meaning it works on two axis in your deck.

But ultimately, I'd just move pact to the side-board, I think.

LordDonato on The Queen's Egg

2 weeks ago

Mortlocke and Flodes,

To jump in on this, I recently picked up the Flusterstorm you mentioned and have been trying to fit it into this list somewhere. Strix Serenade was also on my radar, as it rounds out Swan Song nicely. This is the primary deck I play, and the cards on the chopping block for me are Cyclonic Rift and Pact of Negation. Rift is underwhelming unless overloaded and the Pact upkeep cost (unless protecting your win on your turn) is basically a time walk. 5 or 6 open mana is coming close on win-con range, so it seems less than ideal to leave that open or spend it on upkeep. Choosing one I would probably replace Cyclonic Rift with Flusterstorm, but I may give the Serenade a chance as well.

nuperokaso on Win Turn 0 vs Yu-Gi-Oh

1 month ago

If you actually playtest the deck, many times your hand is not that great.

1. 8 of your tutors put the card only on the top of your library rather than into your hand. I suggest you play Demonic Tutor rather than Imperial Seal.
2. You have problems with color fixing. You end up being unable to play your cards because you don't have right combination of mana. If your plan is solely to play only one turn, then Lotus Petal is better than Mox Jet or Mox Sapphire.
3. With Dark Ritual and 8 Lotuses, It's reasonable to get to 5-6 black mana. Some 2 Ad Nauseam and/or Yawgmoth's Bargain would improve your consistency.
4. Ceremonious Rejection looks bad. If your only plan is to play for one turn, play Pact of Negation. You'll save 1 mana and have more possible targets. It's better if you start the game. If your opponent starts the game, Ceremonious Rejection only works if you have Leyline of Anticipation. And if you have that, you should able to win even with Pact of Negation trigger.
5. Play 4 Gitaxian Probe and 4 Street Wraith. Your deck doesn't care for life, and you need to get your relevant cards.
6. If you are allowed to play 4 Black Lotus and 4 Blacker Lotus, then I assume anything is playable. If so, you forgot to include the most powerful card in the entire history - Contract from Below

DreadKhan on Sisay- CEDH Build

2 months ago

I'm not sure if you should be running that many guild Signets, why not just run more Green ramp that is better at fixing your mana? Artifacts do better in cEDH than more casual games, but you'll be feeding Dockside. I'd even run Talismans over Signets if you feel desperate for 2 mana rocks, Talisman of Indulgence is a more useful card in most situations than Rakdos Signet. Also Fellwar Stone exists fwiw.

Similarly, I'm not sure if you should run ETB tapped Fetches in a cEDH deck, but I will admit the fixing is nice. Stuff like Rocky Tar Pit belong in more casual games, at least in my experience.

I can see you have tons of combos in here, but I can't help but mention Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, she synergizes incredibly well with Sisay, Emiel and a Haste source (like Samut), usually netting you infinite mana and as many cards as you want (by flickering your Sisay, who should be the strongest creature). I only mention it because I think you've got everything Selvala needs to work, and she's a Legendary mana dork that can make any colours of mana.

If you're hoping to play cEDH I would recommend you run at least a couple Counters, some relatively affordable ones (that still hit relevant stuff reliably) are Swan Song, An Offer You Can't Refuse, and maybe Pact of Negation or even Flusterstorm. If these are too pricey you can also try Arcane Denial or Dispel. I would definitely run Dispel over Lightning Greaves in a deck like this, people don't run Sorcery speed answers very often in cEDH, so they'll just wait until you're going to equip the Greaves and then Swords you.

Do you have a plan for Opposition Agent? I feel like if people resolve one you're going to be having a very bad time, unless I'm missing a bunch of removal, and people love Oppo in cEDH. You might consider some of the more versatile removal options, stuff like Generous Gift, Stroke of Midnight, and Beast Within can hit pretty near anything you need gone.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

2 months ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

jarncards on All Will Burn

6 months ago

I'd use Faithless Looting, especially if you're using lava-dart. and for burn spells Lava Dart, Thunderclap, or Fireblast are probably better burn spells than your one mana spells. Being able to cast the burn on the turn you have All Will Be One + any combo piece is what you need most. I would main-deck include Pact of Negation even without blue mana and have a sideboard including 4x Pyroblast/4x Red Elemental Blast

other possible rituals include Simian Spirit Guide and Lotus Petal

EokLennon on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

10 months ago

I'm currently on a budget so what do you think on cards like Pact of Negation and Foil to replace Force of Will and Force of Negation, also Baleful Mastery to replace Snuff Out?

Gidgetimer on Colossal Chronology

1 year ago

Skipping the turn created with Last Chance will skip the turn on which you will lose the game on the end step because Last Chance specifies that it is "that turn's end step" on which you lose the game. So assuming that the next turn is the one from Last Chance tapping Magosi, the Waterveil to put an Eon Counter on it will keep you from losing the game. ("Fizzle" has a specific game meaning is why I didn't answer with a simple "yes" to that part.)

Pact of Negation says "your next upkeep", so skipping turns won't do anything to make you not have to pay mana. The trigger simply waits until the beginning of the next upkeep you have and then is put on the stack.

For this same reason that you should wait until the end step triggers go on the stack for your tokens before activating Sundial of the Infinite. If you end your turn before the beginning of the end step the exile trigger will go on the stack on your opponent's end step and you won't be able to end the turn.

Obeka, Brute Chronologist may not work how you want. It allows the player whose turn it is to end the turn. You can not use it to end your opponent's turn without their consent.