Ok, so the title of the deck is a half truth. The deck is incredibly fun to pilot, but absolutely miserable for anyone playing against it. Now the primary reason why it's so miserable to play against may have something to do with the nearly 20 counterspells.
Let's talk about those counterspells. They are the backbone of the deck synergizing directly with Barral. With this deck you counter things, and you always loot. The loot here works great with filling the graveyard for gearhulks, snapcaster, delve, Eon, and crucible. So it's essentially a win-win.
Speaking of winning, the deck has two primary win cons. There is Teferi/Knowledge Pool to stop your opponents from playing cards (They can still attack and play there commander though!) and Enter the Infinite + Lab Maniac. Of course you can win through other methods such as mill and creature damage, but those are a lot less likely. As an upgrade to this deck you could add in painter's servant + millstone for the win, and those are both able to be grabbed by tribute mage.
In regard to the mages, this deck runs three of them. They are used to grab a slew of different artifacts which take the deck to the next level. The most important artifacts are the mana doublers. Doubling your mana is crucial to effectively controlling the board. More mana equals more counterspells and more drawn cards, which in turn puts you closer to finding your win conditions. All the artifacts in the deck with the exception of Gauntlet of Power can be tutored for. In my opinion sword of feast and famine is a phenomenal pick with trophy mage, as it allows you to develop/draw on your turn, then move to combat to refresh your lands to have counterspell mana open.
Besides these key cards there are a smattering of cards that help to fill out holes in the deck such as card draw, protection, and shits and giggles. Card draw is covered by ponder, preordain, treasure/dig, and stroke of genius to name a few. Coastal Breach, Reins of Power, Curse of the Swine, Cyclonic Rift amongst others for protection. There are some other cards that i'm still testing, such as Fade Away, which could be pretty sweet. Spelltwine is also in there just to make games different by relying on the good stuff that opponents have. This keeps games interesting for me. Ghostly flicker is really an all star, great for blinking the various creatures for more etb effects, or even gaining some extra mana by blinking lands with multiple mana doublers out. Temporal mastery can either be tucked, or can be a nice way to make everyone hate you by turn 2.
Overall, the deck is a ton of fun, but don't expect people to be smiling when you pull it out. Even though my playgroup knows that its coming and brutally target me, I still end up winning 50% of the time and around 90% of the time with new people. Half of it comes down to group politics. Demonstrate your nearly empty board with no dangerous creatures, and use your counterspells to curry favor from some players, and stop things coming at you. Over the course of a couple turn you can save up to win with 0 mana counterspell back up. Great deck with so much customization to still keep it true to Baral, but with little flairs.
