I recommend putting in Clone Legion. In a Talrand deck, it just makes an army of 2/2 drakes, in addition to giving you one off of Talrand's ability. +1

Hashtag-Netdeck: Thanks for the suggestion and the +1, but I don't like Clone Legion for two reasons:

• One, I don't run any creatures other than Talrand and the tokens he makes, so paying 9 mana for a bunch of 2/2 fliers (and even then, only if I already have a bunch of 2/2 fliers, so it's even more restrictive) seems... bad. That means I have to depend on my opponent's board being good for Clone Legion to hit value, and I don't like having to depend on my opponent being ahead of me.
• Two, it costs 9 mana, and I have a thing with this deck that nothing has a CMC higher than 5. Lets me chain spells easier.

I know you have that really strict "nothing over CMC 5" rule, but have you ever thought about including Time Spiral? It's essentially free and kicks the crap out of Learn from the Past in the cantrip department. Plus it goes great with High Tide.

I know it's like a $20 card, but considering this was originally a power9 effect $20 is a pretty good deal.

My commander deck runs Time Reversal,

I started working on my Talrand EDH about 2 months ago, and it's coming close to being 100% finished. Already now, its extremely... stupidly strong.

I must say, I'm amazed that you do not play any Timewalks. I have Time Warp, Temporal Mastery and Temporal Trespass included for now, which is already extremely insane and a wincon, since you will just blow out one player after another on the table. Also, why no Force of Will? Ok, its stupidly expensive as a 1-off EDH card, but for that I use the WCD Version to not pick one out of my Legacy Decks. A cheap alternative for that would be Thwart, which I also play. I also like Daze, because its for 0. It doesn't even have to counter the spell I target; its just another Drake for 0.

I would also recommend Merchant Scroll, Long-Term Plans and Personal Tutor + playing Mystical Tutor in the Maindeck - its just stupidly strong, and much Tutors make the Deck consistent as Hell! (For me at least).

I know you don't play other Creatures then Talrand, but i can recommend at least Testing Tidespout Tyrant + Proteus Staff and Fabricate as Tutor (also for your other artifacts). Tidespout is just nasty once it hits the table and is a extremely powerful wincon combined with the Time Walks + Talrands Drakes attacking with him. And it's powerful enough to cut Brain Freeze from the Wishboard and make room for another thing. Also, Proteus Staff can traget your enemy's creatures (or even Generals), which makes it very strong!

I also can just beg you to try out Time Spiral. God, that thing is HUGE! Even if its against your CMC5 Rule - try it, its insane!

Another card I love (and everyone else hates to death) is Sunder. Since it's instant speed, you could also play it in the Wish-board! Its just insanely strong and wins you alot games (especially if you resolved a overloaded Cyclonic Rift before, haha).

Last thing i can say, is that i do not like cards Like Runechanter's Pike - it's just win-more, which is not necessary in this Deck.

Oh, I forgot to add in my comment:Why no Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise? They are insane as Hell!

Alright, shivx. Thanks for all the suggestions. In order:

• Extra turns don't do anything but double the length of my turns and give me an Explore, unless I'm already vastly ahead, at which point it would be redundant. At least that's my experience. Different playgroups might necessitate the extra turns to actually bring the beats around.
• Force of Will is entirely because of the price point. I'd run it if I had one.
• Thwart is one I'm actively considering (as is Foil, which I'm surprised you didn't mention). Daze is a bit too niche for me; it won't win counter wars where I play anytime soon, and no one's gonna be dumb enough to tap out against a blue player.
• Personal Tutor and Long-Term Plans require me to either wait too long to get the cards I searched for, or spend more mana on cantrips. Merchant Scroll can't find me power cards like Bribery. All of them have the inherent problem of dragging out my turns and causing stale gameplay, because there's no reason not to just find the same cards every game (which is almost always gonna be Rift).
• Mystical Tutor I allow in the wishboard as a nice little niche choice in a sticky spot, not as a consistency thing. I don't need more consistency. Deck runs fine without the tutors.
• If I ran creatures, Archaeomancer, Snapcaster Mage, and Tidespout Tyrant would be the first places I'd go. At the moment, not running them. Personal choice.
• Proteus Staff is something I used to run way back in the day, because in a deck with actually no creatures, it's stacked however you want. That caused scoops immediately and was a type of game I didn't want to play.
• 5 CMC or less rule is a personal choice that just makes me all happy inside. It's just kind of beautiful to me. Time Spiral is a beautiful, beautiful card that I'd run in a heartbeat... at one less mana. I recognize it's powerful, but I think you can catch the drift from my responses so far that sometimes I eschew power for aesthetic or playgroup reasons.
• Sunder is not the type of game I wanna play. That is all.
• Pike is sick. It's not win-more. It's backup. If, instead of amassing an army, I can barely keep 1-2 tokens on the field, or Talrand died enough times that all I can do is steal a creature from someone else, Pike can bring the extra points for the win.
• Dig and Cruise are aesthetic reasons. Yeah, they cost 2 and 1 mana. Their CMCs are both still 8. If I ever get over my own obsession with keeping the CMC below 5, Cruise at the very least is getting the invite.

Thanks for all the suggestions, friend.

As for Time Reversal, Son-of-Mace, if only it didn't exile itself... shuffling my graveyard in is something that I kind of want to keep doing.

P.S., shivx, if you ever post your Talrand deck (welcome to T/O, by the way), link it here, I'd love to take a look.

Talrand Control(Help Wanted) is my build of this, took out alot of more expensive cards that i dont have.

Talrand, Sky Summoner EDH is my List, i'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

I'm surprised to not see Whelming Wave as it has no effect on you (unless Talrand is out) and forces them to recast everyone. It's a solid blue sweeper and with Quicken it can ruin their attack. Otherwise +1 for such creative brewing!

Also Divination, Swan Song, Turn to Frog, Opportunity and Stroke of Genius could be helpful. And you really do need Dig Through Time since your graveyard will fill so quickly. Annul is also good.

Actually I guess Whelming Wave isn't awesome if you have a bunch of drakes out, but then again if they have Dragonlords or such killing your drakes to buy time could be important. Also helps as you can counter their deadliest creatures when they try to recast.

You, my friend, are a Magic baller. I can't even imagine a deck of mine getting 26,000 views! Holy crap!

Jimmy_Chinchila, in order:

• You already caught yourself on Whelming Wave, so yeah.
• Divination isn't a strong enough effect here I don't think.
• Swan Song is nice, but I've got a nice enough suite of counterspells I think.
• Turn to Frog I used to run, but it required some contrived situations to actually function as proper removal.
• Opportunity costs six mana, and I went over in one of the above comments about my thing about CMC 6 or more (that is, that I don't run those cards).
• Stroke of Genius kind of has the Blue Sun's problem (too much mana for a cantrip, too unreliable as a wincon) and also doesn't self-recur itself.
• Dig Through Time I went over with shivx above.
• Annul's too narrow.

erabel wow not the expected response.

1. A bunch of drakes get shat on by a single Bile Blight or the crappiest of Kaalia of the Vast decks (which would get screwed by Whelming Wave FYI), so yeah.. Oh and Drown in Sorrow and Doomwake Giant are cards.

2. yeah drawing cards to keep your hand full in a instant heavy deck is pointless, so no Divination.

3. 1 CMC counterspells are terrible, you're right.

4. but Pongify made the list

5. that's reasonable as it is highly unlikely an EDH game would run long enough to acquire 6 sources of mana, I mean that's like 6 turns if you hit your drops and don't use ramp or cost-reducers. Nothing's good in blue above 5 mana, especially not cards like Omniscience or Arcanis the Omnipotent.

6. Drawing large quantities of cards does not provide card advantage, which isn't even a real advantage anyways. Sphinx's Revelation is an awful card.

7. yeah no one plays that card, being able to look at 1/11th of your deck by the time you cast it is a worthless effect. Good call.

8. I went over 1 CMC counterspells in a typically permanent-heavy-format above.

Oh, 150 +1s out of 26000 views means roughly 0.58% of the people who viewed this deck liked it or thought it was well made.

Jimmy_Chinchila: and Epoch's Damia, Sage of Stone deck has 136K views and only 516 +1's, roughly 0.38%. Bad logic is bad.

Uthden Troll

Yes, you are trolling at this point.

card advantage is in every way a major advantage, and it is provided exclusively by drawing large quantities of cards and making efficient plays, sphinxes revalation is AMAZING

Son-of-Mace: The chinchila was very obviously being sarcastic.

As for you, Jimmy_Chinchila, I'm sorry if my response came off as terse or dismissive or something. I was actively in the middle of something, and it was also late at night, but I still wanted to give you a response while it was still a fresh comment, so I typed up a little something for each card. Not too much detail, but enough to get my point across, y'know?

Also, what all did you expect my response to be, that "I've got my reasons for not running any of those cards, here they are, I won't take these suggestions for now" wasn't a possibility for you? The sheer amount of views is more a function of the deck's age than anything (it's been on the site for over a year now, and I'm pretty sure it's getting close to two), so I've been playing it for a very long while. I know what I like and what I don't and what works for me and my playgroup.

Honestly, if your default response to "Person didn't immediately implement all (or any) of my suggestions" is "Be sarcastic at them on the Internet", I don't think you should be suggesting things on people's decklists.

I apologize.

Lets go with some Door of Destinies. Name drakes... (shudder...)

SwaggyMcSwagglepants: Door of Destinies only gets counters when you cast drake spells, not when they enter the battlefield. So unless the deck runs drake creature cards, you'll never get counters on the door.

Has anybody mentioned Obelisk of Urd? what're your opinions of it?