Mana Drain
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Highlander Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Oldschool 93/94 Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Mana Drain

Instant

Counter target spell. At the beginning of your next main phase, add an amount of equal to that spell's converted mana cost/mana value.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

1 week ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

Rasaru on Octavia

2 months ago

TheCardPool Here is the version I quickly came up w/ based on your list. You'll see that I've made about 10 swaps based on my preferences.

Some of the cards I removed are Cyclonic Rift, Wash Away, Mana Drain, Teferi, Master of Time, Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, and so on.

Some of the cards I added are Brazen Borrower, Wavebreak Hippocamp, Traverse Eternity, Rise from the Tides, Glamdring, Runechanter's Pike, and so on.

My group def doesn't normally play tutors or cyc rift. I love bad cards like Rise from the Tides and I'm toying around with trying out Invasion of Segovia  Flip, Case of the Ransacked Lab, and Throne Of Eldraine.

I love the animate land sub theme!

Anything else I should know?

What I understand it could change based on the situation, but what do you normally target w/ Intuition?

Have you ever come close to decking yourself? I've never played a cantrip-y deck like this before.

TheCardPool on Canned Calamari (Octavia EDH)

2 months ago

Rasaru that’s awesome! You can make it a few ways but I prefer the animate lands as a sub theme. It ups the creature count and it allows for more instants and sorceries.

Just be mindful that this deck plays with a super low mana curve. This is why it’s only running 34 lands. You might have also guessed, this deck is a bit heavier on the stack. Like animating a land, casting spells, and combo-ing out attacks and blocks.

Also you can make this a super budget build and it will still perform well. You do not need to include Intuition or a Mana Drain unless you really want too.

Profet93 on Azami, Lady of Sudden Victory

3 months ago

The_Dragonmaster

Sadly, cEDH is not my scene. From what little I know, Concentrate is not good for cEDH given you're paying 4 mana to draw 3 cards when your commander already draws cards at instant speed rather than sorcery speed.

Ancient Tomb > Temple of false

Fierce Guardianship/Force of Will/Misdirection - Free counterspell

Mana Crypt/Jeweled Lotus - Ramp

What is the purpose of Perpetual Timepiece?

Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Mana Drain > Desertion

Mind Stone > Chromatic lantern. Lantern's benefit is for multi-color decks, not mono. Coalition Relic also fits the 3cmc slot and is colored mana if you really want something similar yet better. But mindstone comes down more quickly and can be draw when you don't need it so it usually sees more play

Your avg cmc is relatively high for cEDH. Might want to bring it closer to 3.20. I can give you ideas for more cuts should you wish.

Crow_Umbra on Neon Light Speed [Primer]

4 months ago

Thanks for checking out the deck Squidcod. Overall, the priciest cards in the deck are Terror of the Peaks, Goldspan Dragon, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Jeska's Will, and the various Shocks and Fetches. The real "meat" of the deck isn't as expensive

You could definitely swap Cyc Rift with Evacuation or Wash Out. Mana Drain could probably get swapped with Familiar's Ruse for some additional utility of taking a creature back to hand. Alternatively, you could also change some of those pricier creature slots into creatures with Ninjutsu, if you wanted a bit of that.

amarthaler on EDH Jorn, God of Winter

4 months ago

Update!

Out: Mana Drain... Saw it Coming... Binding the Old Gods... Glorious Sunrise... Lightning Greaves... Boreal Centaur

In: Rimewind Cryomancer... Freeze in Place... Bitter Chill... Pilfering Hawk... Glacial Revelation... Champion's Helm

hootsnag on Overgrown Garden

7 months ago

Honestly, I feel that magic has taken a weird direction. It seems entirely creature focused these days. When I play some of my decks against newer players, it's rage inducing for them. I play a lot of enchantments and artifacts that affect the entire board at once. These players say it's unfair or that they only lost because I have older and expensive cards. However, years ago magic explored more with enchantments and artifacts than they do now. Take for instance Tainted AEther. When I play with this card against newer players, they are forced to remove it or lose. Maybe I just enjoy control decks in general, but magic used to print a LOT of these powerful cards. It seems that the R&D team for wizards have mostly moved away from these powerful kinds of cards and focused much more heavily on creatures and creature abilities. Also, I love counterspells and tutor cards. This is something you don't see nearly as many of anymore unless they have some ridiculous cost associated with them. Long gone are the days of newer cards similar in cost to Counterspell and Mana Drain. I have consistently won more games against people by mass control than some cheesy combo deck. I guess that's why I still play cards like Jester's Cap. By exiling 2-3 cards from their main deck's combo, they concede because the rest of the cards in their decks are useless. In a way I find that playing against more modern decks and cards is a bit boring. Just my random thoughts on magic over the years and my experience with games against all kinds and types of decks.

ThassaUpYo@ssa on Anyway I Started Blasting

9 months ago

Bluelian! I've got some additional cards that I think we should consider and potentially work into your list to provide you with more wincons and card draw:

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus, Jin-Gitaxias  Flip, Electrostatic Field, Docent of Perfection  Flip, Counterspell, Mana Drain, Fierce Guardianship, Deflecting Swat, Blue Sun's Zenith, Electrodominance, Lightning Bolt, Increasing Vengeance, Rapid Hybridization, Force of Will, Valakut Awakening  Flip, Sublime Epiphany, Jeska's Will, Finale of Revelation, Crackle with Power, Banefire, Finale of Promise, Red Sun's Zenith, Seething Song, Mindsplice Apparatus, Primal Amulet  Flip, The Magic Mirror, Twinning Staff, Thousand-Year Storm, Double Vision, City on Fire, Ral, Storm Conduit, Riptide Laboratory, Temple of Epiphany, Cascade Bluffs, Stormcarved Coast, Scalding Tarn, Fiery Islet, Spirebluff Canal, Training Center, Reflecting Pool, and Plaza of Heroes

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