Hey there, I'm not great with budget lists but I have a few cards to consider:

Mystic Speculation - always love drawing this card, so much value.

Recoup - I'm not sure if you are running enough sorcery spells for this maybe Past in Flames, Shreds of Sanity or Mystic Retrieval instead?

Increasing Vengeance - best spell doubler on a budget imo.

That's about all I can think of atm, hopefully it helps.

Thanks for taking a look!

Mystic Retrieval might be better than Pull from the Deep, thanks for the suggestion!

I kinda like the Mystic Speculation, do you have any ideas for a cut?

I'm not sure what spell I'd be copying that'd be worth running Increasing Vengeance for. The double red might be hard some percent of the time as well. My deck is mostly mono-blue. It can be hard drawing cards with Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius sometimes.

Mmm how is Oona's Grace working for you? I think Mystic Speculation might be a strict upgrade, putting unwanted lands and such on the bottom of the deck.

I really like Oona's Grace! It helps fuel delve, turns lands into spells late game, is repeatable and most importantly is an instant to help trigger jori en on other peoples turns. Another minor thing is it makes bigger tokens with Metallurgic Summonings

Hmm well you probably know better than me honestly, are you able to pay the buyback on Capsize reliably?

Or Whispers of the Muse maybe?

Capsize is great and I am normally playing the buyback on it.

Whispers of the muse is mostly instant speed draw card, and helps trigger jori en.

I could try to swap if for Mystic Speculation, but then I'd have to look at the budget as well. Granted I'm running Sol Ring and that's on the top of list for most $expensive$ cards in the deck and is easily replaceable with another mana rock. So I have some wiggle I the budget.

After talking it out with you I might keep the speculation on the sidelines for now though

Hello again! I'm on mobile currently so my help might be minimal for now.

I do not like Forbid. It's way too much of a disadvantage.

I think you can cut back on a lot of instants by adding this mini combo. Run Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall/Scrivener and Ghostly Flicker/Displace in order to get cast triggers repeatedly. You then can even run a mini ETB package with creatures such as AEther Adept, Mulldrifter, Ingot Chewer, and Faultgrinder.

Also you can use Vedalken AEthermage to grab Talrand, Sky Summoner.

Maybe that could be a direction to take.

Thanks for stopping by Podkomorka and the upvote!

What do you like over Forbid?

I like the archaeomancer ghostly flicker combo, I could even add Peregrine Drake for infinite mana as well. I'm going to keep your suggestions in mind when i eventually swap up the deck, though for right now i like the izzet token strategy.

Vedalken AEthermage could also grab Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius and Archaeomancer. I like it! Now to find room for it

Unless you've enjoyed Forbid while playing the deck, I would run something like Faerie Trickery.

Another suggestion would be to cut room for at least 10 mana rocks. It's a good standard for edh decks. Although your commander is cheap it's nice to have way more mana to cast spells on everyones turn. I'd reference my list you visited earlier for some quick rocks.

Isn't Forbid just a Faerie Trickery with a potential upside? like you don't have to buyback every time you cast it but if you do it just once you get to counter two spells. Granted I haven't played a game with it yet, just thought it'd be good. I'll update the list with the results of my play testing.

Right now I run 4 rocks, what 6 cards am I taking out to get up to 10? I think a strength of the deck is that i don't need to go super big, and hitting lands drops every turn is kinda my land ramp. normally I play like 20 turns with this deck and I rarely miss any land drops throughout the game.

I have used Forbid in my Azami deck and I never enjoyed casting it with buyback. unless i have my deck in my hands it just hurts too much. I would try it for yourself first though.

lol that's a good point. I think I'm having rose colored memories cause i use to run Forbid with Consecrated Sphinx. Then it's not too bad

Hey hoardofnotions,

I haven't played with Melek yet either unfortunately, so I can't share my experiences with that card. It came to mind as a card you could test given the themes of your deck. However, I also think niv would be a better choice if you had to chose between them.

Concerning cuts, there isn't an obvious card that has to go in my mind. I did notice that your 4-drop count is relatively high, so when searching for cuts I would start there to smoothen out your curve a little.

Maybe I would cut disdainful stroke to make room for muddle the mixture, as muddle can be what you want it to be in more situations.

Beebles

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I think I'm going to keep disdainful stroke in for now. My reasoning is that it targets more types of spells and ones that I'm likely going to want to counter ex. Some big creature or game winning spell. The transmute on muddle isn't getting me combo pieces any more though if i decide to run the Nivix Guildmage + Reality Spasm combo again I'll throw muddle in. Does this make sense or am I being resistant to change for bad reasons?

Speaking of lowering the curve do you think I should swap Jace's Sanctum for Goblin Electromancer?

No I think your reasoning makes perfect sense. The fact that it doesn't find you your combo makes it less useful. I still like it that it turns into spot removal or a board wipe when I need it, but that does come at a steep price at sorcery speed. So this one comes down to preference I think.

I would say electromancer vs jace's sanctum depends on your meta somewhat. If you face many aggressive decks, like infect or voltron, I would vote for the electromancer as that guy can block. If your meta is mostly control and grindy, and the board wipes are numerous, then I would lean more towards the enchantment as they tend to stick to the board for longer.

If it's mixed then I would go for the goblin: you can more easily draw of off it with your commander and you can benefit from the discount earlier in the game. I'm also unsure how necessary the scry ability of jace's sanctum is with the amount of draw your commander provides.

Beebles Thank you so much for debating card choices with me!

I like your argument for electromancer, I think I'll make the change. I run against mostly grindy midrange budget decks that can' t really afford$ board wipes. Though this is starting to be a deck i break out against the general field.

I also have Radha, Butcher of Keld as another budget deck I'm fine tuning right now if you want a different style of deck to dig your teeth into.

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your thoughts, do you have any other decks you want extra eyes on?

You're welcome! Glad I can be of help. I'll have a look at your Rahda deck later when I have some more time.

Actually the deck that I keep going back to and that I want to revisit again soon is Niv-Mizzet, which you already looked at. I sometimes think it has too much going on at once for it's own good, leading to consistency issues. It might just need more ramp and carddraw, but I'm not sure yet. Maybe you can look at it from a distance and see which theme you would reduce or cut entirely to increase the focus of that deck. But don't feel obliged ;).