sonnet666 Deckspert

How are you going to pay for Freed from the Real with only black mana?

There are lots of infinite combos in EDH. If you want one with Sengir Autocrat, Nim Deathmantle plus Ashnod's Altar works well.

But this isn't a thread on infinite combos, it's a rules Q&A. So if you understand how the rules work here you should select an answer and ask any new questions in a new Q&A.

Even if Culling the Weak was an enchantment, this wouldn't work.

Sacing the creature and returning Recurring Nightmare to your hand are both activation costs of Recurring Nightmare's ability.

Activating an ability works the same as casting a spell, you choose the spell's targets before actually paying the spell's cost. You can't target the creature you decide to sacrifice to Recurring Nightmare because it's not in the graveyard yet when you're choosing targets.

You guys have made some nice improvements, but you're at 101 cards.

Maybe cut Throne of the God-Pharaoh? There's isn't much here focused on incremental damage, so it's not like you're likely to win with it.

Oh, and you can cut a few lands. 35 is a bit high when you have all the 0 mana rocks, even in mono-red. Simian Spirit Guide could go in too, maybe.

Thoughts:

• You definitely don't have enough artifacts for Daretti, and the filtering isn't really that great in a deck that's not very graveyard focused.

• Browbeat is bad. Never give your opponent choices. If you're in a position where you want to draw three cards, then 5 mana isn't going to help you very much. Your opponents will be able to figure out which option is worse for you and act accordingly.

• Staff of Domination and Umbral Mantle don't go well with Neheb, and Metalworker is the only creature they combo with. I'd take them out. Mono-red has so little tutor power that two card combos almost never go off, and these two are mostly dead cards by themselves.

• Basalt Monolith is a pretty meh mana rock when you're not trying to combo with it. I'd replace with Coalition Relic

• I feel this deck is kind of remiss without Heartless Hidetsugu. He's going to make more mana than anything else really.

• With all the attacking and tap effects going on here you could probably do with more haste. Fervor and Hammer of Purphoros are simple and effective.

• There's easier ways to keep creatures from blocking than War Cadence. Bedlam comes to mind, or Goblin War Drums.

• You could use more X spells to dump all of your mana into. Commune with Lava would be my first pick, and Tempt with Vengeance could be a win if you have an extra combat lined up. Fanning the Flames could also be neat, as you kill a player and then put it back in your hand to kill another. A bit more of a crazy idea would be Indomitable Creativity. You have a high instant and sorcery count and a relatively small pool of artifacts and creatures, so it's not unreasonable to expect to hit one of your combos if you exile a bunch of your own stuff. Whatever you pick, I would NOT go with Molten Disaster. Split second is neat, but you can only win with it if you're at the highest life total (You won't be, aggro decks get ganged up on for that reason.), and the odds that you're going to want it as a board sweep when you're the aggressor are slim.

That's sounds good to me. Send me an offer.

I love where this conversation has gone.

Enable chat with me so we can work out the shipping details.

I wasn't saying any of that either. Simply the Bontu did not have the resources to kill a pre-mending planewalker on Amonkhet. She really didn't, and probably would have known that.

As for Bolas's telepathy, he's usually more of a brute force kind of guy. Where Jace tries to slip in without being noticed, Bolas just finds an opening and uses to sheer weight of his mind to break his opponent's thoughts apart. Jace and Bolas have squared off before this when Tezzeret wanted to meet with Bolas without getting his mind read, and Jace really didn't stand a chance.

Bontu probably would have been able to protect against his telepathy now, but she wouldn't have been able to pre-mending.

Has anyone noticed that in all of his art Bolas never seems to be flapping his wings?

They just kinda stretch out behind him all the time. Like he could fly but keeps himself aloft with just magic to show he's better than all those pleb dragons or something.

Wouldn't Blue Sun's Zenith be less steps since you can just put it back into your hand with Jhonny?

Eh, I guess it doesn't really matter...

Well, the "combo" I thought of was an extra turn spell + Tamiyo, the Moon Sage's ult, but you'd have to chain 4 or 5 turns with her put to get that.

Anyway, even if you don't build into turns, I think you'd be remiss not to include Time Warp & friends. A 5 mana Time Stretch is certainly nothing to scoff at.

DarkLaw, You see, the problem with that theory is that the only reason Umezawa was able to trick Bolas into the meditation plane is because Bolas himself made it. Only pre-mending PW's had the power to make planes, and it's very difficult to trick a 10,000 year old dragon without the proper set up.

As far as we know, no other PW had visited Amonkhet before Bolas, so there wouldn't be anything available to make Bontu think she had a chance of beating Bolas.

Had she known Bolas's power would be severely diminished by the time he came back, maybe she would have revolted, but there's no way she could have known.

Also, Bolas is an accomplished telepath. If he'd demonstrated that on his last visit, Bontu might have thought he'd instantly know on his return of any rebellious schemes she'd cooked up, and thwart them.

Lastly, there's the possibility that Bolas actually DID alter Bontu's mind along with the others, but just enough that she'd think trying to serve him would be her best option. She might have been unknowingly maintaining the spell of her own altered memory along with her siblings.

irisfibers, Giving your opponent choices is typically just an invitation for them to figure out how to screw you.

Smart opponents will refuse to pay for anything that doesn't matter if it goes to the yard or not, and make sure to pay for any creature that you would rather have back in your hand.

In a 4 player game your opponents will have 120 life to start, and there's no way you're going to have 40 creatures die quick enough to matter. By comparison, Purphoros has a hard time just getting 20 creatures to ETB timely enough to be relevant.

Would anyone be opposed if I just wrote DECK NEEDED in the description for every commander we don't have a list for?

It would look ugly but probably encourage more submissions.

It hasn't come through yet.

Sometimes stuff takes extra long in the mail. I wouldn't worry just yet.