I can agree with your assessment of Archmage Ascension . Sangromancer is there as a life gain source. You gain from things dying, from discarding, and from mill so it works well with the discard and tempo aspects. Also a 3/3 flying body. She isn't combo based here, but the deck has a lot of utility for her. Liliana of the Veil is just too expensive. With the suicide black aspect of the deck, a little life gain here and there is very helpful. Sword of War and Peace gives a benefit to me for having a lot of cards and punishes my opponents for the same. Seems to fit perfectly with the commander and the general theme of the deck. Ral Zarek doesn't really have a place besides his tap trick and maybe hitting his ultimate for a few extra turns of damage. I've tried everything you've suggested. I originally cut Psychosis Crawler cause I was playing so many card it wasn't always an impact card. And I avoided Molten Psyche for fear of relying on Metalcraft. I'm trying to not make the deck super comboy by having some utility for specific defense, not just making myself as OP as possible ad comboing as hard as I can, hence Dreadbore , Turn / Burn , Boardwipes, and Planeswalkers. On that note, I will cut Ral Zarek and Archmage Ascension per your suggestion.
March 13, 2014 2:43 p.m.
jermtube Actually pretty well. I was skeptical about it but his mill can be pretty damaging, often dumping the topdeck win someone had lined up. And he has the added bonus of steal a creature of reasonable size if he even survives for one turn. I don;t know that I would ever use his ultimate, but as a whole he has been useful.
July 19, 2014 6:13 p.m.
DarkHero that's interesting to hear. i currently have three copies of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver because I wanted to make a deck around that planes walker. Now that I gave up on that project, and decided to build commander decks instead, I wanted to find a reason to use those cards. I'll have to give Ashiok a shot; thanks for the feedback!
July 19, 2014 6:40 p.m.
jermtube I personally enjoy trying to find value in underutilized cards, and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is one of them. His low CMC is a blessing and a curse. You can drop him early game in EDH and start dictating tempo for the whole board, but still that kind of makes you a target. The best thing he has going for him is his first ability is a +2 instead of just a +1. So he hits 5 loyalty after one turn and can steal a 5 cmc creature from the graveyard if you managed to mill one the previous turn.
Jamesborg99 says... #6
I can DEFINITELY recommend the Helm of the Ghastlord , Jace Beleren , Jace's Archivist , and Seizan, Perverter of Truth that you have in your maybeboard
As far as what to take out, which is always the hard part, here's what I can suggest.
Archmage Ascension generally takes way too long to get set up. It takes SIX quest counters to activate.
Sangromancer feels strange here without dedicated combo support(stuff that triggers on lifegain or repeatable discard effects like Liliana of the Veil and Liliana Vess ). You can't always rely on max hand size forcing them to discard.
Sword of War and Peace feels equally weird, since it triggers on combat damage and not any kind of damage. On that note, Whip of Erebos is pretty sweet to combo with Nekusizzle and Fate Unraveler.
Ral Zarek feels vulnerable and not particularly powerful in Commander.
Two things I don't see that I can recommend are Psychosis Crawler and Molten Psyche . Crawler is an ALLSTAR for Nekusizzle decks. Recommend replacing Black Vise with him. Psyche is great because it feeds off your Group Hug strat and you can easily activate Metalcraft on it. Not entirely sure what you'd cut for it. Maybe Turn / Burn ?
March 13, 2014 1:37 p.m.