My oona deck went through a similar phase. I eventually did away with the Tunnel Vision and Pili-Pala combos. Also took out most of the counterspells with cmc 3 or greater.

When you play combo, you often need to win fast so you want to be able to play and protect your combo with as little mana as possible. I'd look into getting the ave cmc low enough to make use of Ad Nauseam. A lot of the successful Oona decks which make use of the monoliths use it.

It has been tested in tournaments ? I love the mechanics of this deck

@ Megalomania: Well you are right, i have to play really safe especially versus another blue or black colored deck and protect my stuff fast ! i have personally played Ad Nauseam a plentiful of time even when i had a lot less big mana costs in the deck and i didn't like it all too much, it can get you a lot of value yes, but at the cost of rng, i'd rather use less rng and have another certain tutor.

i have had a lot of turn 4 / 5 / 6 wins with this even in multiplayer so i am quiete okay with the speed it performs at but if you could suggest me counterspells that cost less i'd love to know which ones are proper not just for Ad Nauseam...just in general a good counterspell is always welcome

but i don't think i am looking to change a lot (just looking for the maybeboard cards now except for contamination) not to be rude but it performs like crazy and i have a lot of wins with it as well...

@ Spoosky i have played this in several shop tournaments (like the outposts ones and local shops that do official tournies) i have had a first place , a second place and also have performed way less, but i tend to playtest on a daily basis against as much decks as i can ; 1v1 , 2v2 4free for all etc...

(lovely to just mill multiple people at once in one turn and win, but when i win like this i just tell them i won and let them continue their game as losers , because if it's multi most people are quiete buthurt when it goes infinite or you do somthing they don't like and crybaby about it, which i don't give a damn about )

i've come across easier and harder setups, but there is one i have not won against yet, an esper deck making use of Sen Triplets as it is sort of a hard counter to me and also the player who plays it also has a better tournament mindset and history !

1v1 people tend to have an easier time for those who can ; to focus your combo down, and destroy or counter most parts, that is why i play more than a few other ways to win as well which has been needed and have succeeded the more you play it though the more people will realise what to stop and what they can do against it but it's not completely built to be a one trick pony, because you can't stop everything every game... and you also play a shit ton of counterspells

Ad Nauseam is a guaranteed win if your deck is built right. You will need to stack up on those 0 cmc mana rocks like Mox Opal, Mox Diamond and Chrome Mox. Mana Crypt was reprinted in Eternal Masters so you might want to check that out as well.

You also have too many redundancies for BSZ. I doubt you need them with Oona as your commander.

As for counterspells, I tend to limit mine to around 10-12. There is no use trying to play control in a 4-man pod in a deck that can win fast. I more often than not reserve my counterspells for my combo turn. Some people don't like it but for a combo deck, Arcane Denial, Delay and even Daze can prove to be worth their drawbacks. Misdirection, Force of Will and Flusterstorm are must-haves.

You should also look into Yawgmoth's Will to give your deck some form of resiliency.

Toxic Deluge, Damnation and Black Sun's Zenith are better options than your current sweepers.

The Pili-pala combo is just too slow because of summoning sickness. The Tunnel Vision combo requires too much effort just to get rid of one guy. You might be better off using Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void since it is repeatable.

Lastly, you need to improve on your land base. You have way too many lands that comes into play tapped. (Which makes those turn 4 wins surprising) 33 lands is, IMO, too low even with mana rocks.

@ Megalomania at the moment i can't afford any of those mana rocks sadly enough and i haven't found people that trade them... they've been on my other list for a long time but won't affect too much expect for easier mana...

but i'll refuse to use Ad Nauseam as it hasn't been worth it for me and is too RNG bound again ... JUST A BIG NO ... thanks...

there are no redundancies in this deck ;)

there is always use for control in any game type, as you just stop what is detrimental to your combo ... although that Flusterstorm is quiete good as well as is the force of will ... but i've seen them 0 times up for trade so far so again i won't proxy them if i know i won't get them...

also damnation is on the maybeboard as i still am looking for it ... black sun is in it if you would have checked it at all ...but life's finale is a great sweep and deny to a lot of decks... and decree of pain is lovely for both it's effects...

i simply do not care if it's presumed slow by you, i've won many many times with it and it wasn't slow at all ;)

I haven't had any land problems so improve ? where are you getting this information from anyway ?

@Kiyomeii Thanks for you response, I will be attentive to new modifications, you dont like other mana combos for example Deadeye Navigator + Palinchron, Duskmantle Guildmage + Mindcrank or Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake

Like I said, my Oona deck went through the same "calibrations" a few years back. I was running the same combos, sweepers, creatures, land counts, etc. and have come across a lot of Oona combo decks as well.

Just pointing out what I was able to improve on as the decks I played against improved as well. Hope you don't take the suggestions negatively as they were meant to be constructive.

Good luck with the deck-building!

@ Megalomania no no not negatively at all i just like to discuss and come to conclusions by trying to counter an argument instead of taking everything as true or correct from the start ... , but as far as i know most of the things you suggest i'd love to add, just i can't afford some of them yet or haven't found them , they were all in my mind though . and i will keep looking . i'll add them on the maybeboard (which is my wishlist)

i do understand the competitive scene is getting faster and faster,but for now i am pretty happy about what i can do with it in it's current state (no deck is final and unbeatable obviously) and is interchangeable every time new cards come out and new plays are made by the pros and the meta shifts ...

just at the moment i have not had any trouble or problems regarding the mana the way i play ...

@ Spoosky they are lovely combo's yes and they reserve you mana to make use of the guilmage's second ability and when you have mindcrack it hurts i know about that one but i think Megalomania makes better use of those in his oona . i'll add them on my maybeboard (whishlist) see what i can do with them if i aqquire them .

You cannot get Grim Monolith by transmuting Perplex because Grim Monolith costs not 3 which is the Converted mana cost of Perplex

@ turtletsav i know that but thanks for the info ..

What about Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Jace Beleren? Very nice +1 for you. Could you review and upvote my Brago Azorius ETB?

@aekrusty i love ashiok but i play her in my other oona , as she needs boddies to protect her

i am not a fan of this jace, i don't want to give my opponont card draw not a fan of giving .. and the -1 ,yes one card for maybe one turn and he is cheaper than my other jace that's a fact , but i can't scare people with another body to focus on if i -1 him which my jace does , they won't want me to draw twenty cards , because it will be game ... and i make them discard top card

and sure as hell i'll check brago, love blink effects ;)

Great list! I haven't uploaded mine just yet, but I've been tinkering and testing for a couple weeks.

Did you consider Ashnod's Altar? I put a copy in mine as an alternate "combo" with Oona, Queen of the Fae and Dire Undercurrents in case I can't get any of the other pieces, but I haven't had to use it yet. It's not infinite, but it should allow you to go pretty far and disrupt someone else's strategy.

thing is i don't play that many creatures and don't get oona out unless i am forced to, so it's not my main theme , have lingered a few times over it in trade of others ,

but i am definitely going to add that to my tribal oona as it can be quiete fun ,dire undercurrents should be on that list already.

@n0bunga yea love that combo also works with Hinder and Spell Crumple

I play a lighter version similar to this that skips infinite combos. I find that Keening Stone closes games and matches. However, it won't explosively take a table. It could be a +1 kill on a targeted infinite colorless mill spell (if it sticks).

keening stone is indeed a light version and way too slow but it's fun... doesn't work with multiple people though as it states; cards already in that players grave

When I mentioned +1 on a targeted infinite mill kill I meant:

Let's say you had something like Blue Sun's Zenith instead of Mind Grind because MG got countered or otherwise stopped (assuming your table collectively held at least one way to counter a spell but allowed your infinite combo pieces to stand - a purely hypothetical scenario since there are other players that could interfere and you may have to fall back on redundancies in some way).

If you only took out one player with your infinite zenith and there was any player you milled (not with oona obviously but most or all of your other mill cards or draw- overflows go to the graveyard) or even a graveyard interaction or stormy instants player - or even if this was late in a tough match where players cast spells and had things removed - of even more midgame with a Voltaic Key - you could get one extra person out.

It is situational and more for interactive, close, and long games. If people are winning the whole table by turn 6 without much removal or interference then it would be a dead card. Otherwise it would soak up a removal spell that otherwise would have hit a combo piece because it's an exponential clock.

I understand that it isn't for you and doesn't fit your deck / meta and that's fine. I'm glad you agree that it's a fun card (that's why I play it) and just wanted to clarify what I was talking about.

if that is the scenario i would just draw my deck and win that way, play all my cards ... ? :)

but i could imagine it being a multiplayer where a lot of grave action is going on , just rek one of em with that card ...

has happened in our local store not so long agoa traumatize into keening ... and that was a 1v1 even ...

I have a Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker // Lazav, Dimir Mastermind deck, that focus on milling and playing with everyone else's decks, and I have Oona in there... This deck made me think I went for the wrong generals.

Your build seems awesome! +1 Given!

they are both great and fun generals too @GS10 ;) , they can be pretty beast mode in a multiplayer , maybe the mind drinker is more nasty in a 1v1 because of Mind Funeral and the likes of Mind Grind ; noting that players range from 33-40 lands ...

As for the lazav i am not too informed what it plays around, as our local store has a player that plays it but his capabilities of deck building are very limited due to plain retardedness

i might be able to suggest you a site i often use as inspiration , you might already know of ;

https://edhrec.com/commanders/lazav-dimir-mastermind

Perhaps you can build towards a more nasty version of both or change to oona, ;)

I've thrown the list together as a way to try to lure a friend to play EDH, since she plays mostly 60 cards formats and hates playing decks that win by regular damage. I tried to keep it budget and usually only use it to change the pace a bit. Mill in commander is hard to pull off. At least as the main plan of the deck (My Brago deck will often win by decking everyone, but no one sees it coming and that's only one way it can go). You might mill one or two players, but by the time you mill the first the rest of the table will see you as the threat, so they turn against you quickly. Same goes for infect as well.

Oona, Queen of the Fae goes around that generating huge ammounts of mana and getting everyone at once while you still defend yourself with tokens, so it's much more appealing in that sense. Mirko and Lazav are mostly fun to goof around and were kind of a throwback for me to build (since I used to play a Szadek, Lord of Secrets in one of my old decks and simply loved it!). They let you play your opponents' stuff and sometimes make some crazy things happen, but it's not a deck I think I want to improve much on. This being said, it's great against Narset, Enlightened Master and Oloro, Ageless Ascetic (with this one no one turns on you, you become kind of a table-hero if you take him out lol). On 1vs1 though, it's really unfair. I run A LOT of removal, countermagic, and board wipes, so, raining with all of that on one single opponent, it's pretty much impossible for him to win unless I'm mana screwed, I tend to play more multiplayer though.

I already use EDHRec and a bunch of other tools and decklists, either from here, MTGSalvation or even data from MetaMox. I try to go through all information I can when I build my decks so I try to be as low-budget as possible, but still packing some powerful interactions for some casual play, which is how I play most times (the only almost competitive deck I run is a Narset deck and I don't enjoy it as much since it doesn't allow much interaction and that for me is what makes EDH fun).

well that's quite personal :) , our local store focuses a lot on competitive play around commander. we often have tournaments like

two headed Giant,

1v1 (non french),

4-player multiplayer free for all ,

and maybe soon a 4 free for all achievements commander like the one from starcitygames (youtube)... hence the take on all my decks being as Insane as i can get them , for the moment ... As it draws a lot of people in ;) while some still play quite the casual deck here and there on a daily basis ... I consider my self among the top tier players of the shop by far among some others while there is still a lot of room for improvement ;) i prefer the go hard or go home playstyle ;)

I love Szadek , he used to be in here way back , such a fun card even got me killed once, because he became so big somebody made me lose life equal to his power haha ... Anyhow i wish you luck with improving your decks and staying budget i find that quite a hard thing to do :) ... narset isn't that scary at all to me tbh

Milling is pretty much the best way to kill Narset. There's been times I decked myself with an early Beacon of Tomorrows getting countered. She goes through the whole deck pretty quickly.

I dislike very competitive commander games. I like games to last longer and fun stuff to happen. My LGS is also starting with various EDH tournaments by achievements just as SCG's Commander Versus but there is a huge ammount of negative points for stuff like comboing off prior to turn 5, infinite extra turns, and a whole lot of other really common win conditions that pretty much everyone relies on just to encourage new players to join, since most times everyone new to it will loose painfully for something like Zur the Enchanter + Doomsday or something along those lines. To play that competitively I'd rather play modern. In commander I like to have fun, and part of the fun for me comes from building new decks and different strategies, so I kinda need to keep it in budget, otherwise I'd go bankrupt building decks at the rate I do lol. That SCG series is actually my "benchmark" for commander, that's acceptable level of play for me. Nothing dirt cheap and pretty intricate strategies, but no one comboing off right away on the first turns of the game. That's what drives me away from competitive play, at least in my meta. There aren't any fair decks competing around here lol