A momo-blue deck which started life somewhere between competitive unfriendliness and casual creature-based face smashing and has become more card draw and counter spell focused.
There are three, maybe four, win conditions:
The first is small, evasive creature tokens, created by Talrand, Sky Summoner, Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, Meloku the Clouded Mirror and Access Denied.
Next, we have Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Laboratory Maniac which win the game for us when we try to draw cards but there are none left in our library. The way we get there is with an absolutely silly number of card draw enablers. From card draw X spells, such as Blue Sun's Zenith, Braingeyser, Commander's Insight and Even the Score which allow chunk-drawing, to creatures such as Curiosity Crafter, Body of Knowledge and Soramaro, First to Dream the deck will get small pretty quickly. Alhammarret's Archive, Teferi's Ageless Insight and Consecrated Sphinx speed things up even further so that Lab Man and Jace can work their unfair Magic. Oh and Rhystic Study is in there , so we need to practice how to say "Do you pay for Rhystic?" in as neutral and non-condescending a tone as possible.
Finally as far as card draw victory conditions go, I have added Psychosis Crawler so that realistically, I only need to draw about 20 cards to win. Assuming that the other players in the pod will be damaging each other as well.
On a similar note, Thought Lash and Thassa's Oracle have been added. I keep vacillating on this and they have been in and out of the deck a few times but think that it is a worthwhile addition, given the power level of my LGS.
The LGS is also the reason that the Isochron Scepter & Dramatic Reversal were added. Infinite tokens and/or infinite colourless mana will help with the beat down or the drawbased win cons. I would say I feel dirty, but I'm the one who chose to put this together in paper, so I guess I'm just a terrible person.
Self-realisation aside, keeping all of these cards we draw is easy with all of the cards giving us an unlimited hand size. Library of Leng, Wizard Class, Body of Knowledge and Curiosity Crafter. Redundancy is always a good thing in Commander.
Of course, being a Talrand deck, instants and sorceries are vital to the deck's strategy. As mentioned above, there are the card draw spells, but there are also the counterspells. Oh the counterspells. We have Counterspell, obviously, An Offer You Can't Refuse because the thought of countering a spell, giving an opponent treasures to cast spells with and then countering that spell as well is just brutal. Being a blue deck that creates blue tokens, Abjure has to be included. Deprive and Disappearing Act to counter a spell and return Mystic Santuary to hand, Spell Burst coming back time and time again will be infuriating for opponents and keep the drake tokens flowing. There are other counterspells but the most important ones, will be the free ones. Force of Negation, Force of Will, Pact of Negation and Fierce Guardianship are all in the list. Baral, Chief of Compliance then helps us draw more cards, albeit with a discard clause as well, when countering, at the same time reducing the costs of the instants and sorceries we cast. Synergies!
Mystical Tutor helps us find the right spells at the right time and then one of the best cards in the deck, Mystic Sanctuary will help us get them back again. Meloku and Deprive, mentioned above and Cryptic Command mentioned here for the first time, will allow us to return Mystic Sanctuary to our hand, to play again and get our spells back from the graveyard to the library. There are not many board wipes in the deck. In fact, just two; Jin-Gitaxias
and everyone's least favourite mass removal spell in blue... Cyclonic Rift. Getting Cyc Rift back multiple times per game isn't so vital, with Jin being a repeatable effect. If we can keep him protected, he will win us the game almost single-handedly.
Ramp is a necessary evil, and the ability to cast a silly number of spells by turn 6 is pretty much an imperative. So we have spells to help us join the party:
Sword of the Animist, Sky Diamond and Sapphire Medallion are the headliners here, with the exception of Jeweled Lotus, because who doesn't want the opportunity to cast their 4-drop commander on turn 1? Mana rocks aren't generally very exciting, so I won't list them all here. However, High Tide doubling the mana output of Islands, attached to Isochron Scepter sounds like a lot of fun. So does attaching Pact of Negation. I guess that decision is aituation-dependant. If the infinite combos aren't available.
Indeed these are most of the highlights. I've left some good stuff out so that it makes it at least vaguely worthwhile reading the list and making some connections of your own. Indeed, feel free to comment if you see any synergies, combos and general fun play opportunities that I have not already mentioned.
