Arcane Denial

Instant

Counter target spell. Its controller may draw up to two cards at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.

You draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.

Discussion (47)

DreadKhan on Tiamat semi-competitive

6 days ago

I tend to run a higher land count in my 5 colour decks (37-39 feels 'normal', your more competitive mana base would allow you to run less and still fix reliably, but I'd hesitate to go below 34 with a 7 MV Commander). As you're not at the full size for your deck, you have room to throw in some lands, and since opponents sometimes run effects that have 'find a Basic', you might want one of each Basic. Rampant Growth (and Expedition) has to find a Basic Land, so you should either add basics or switch it with Nature's Lore or Wood Elves.

I feel like a few more creatures would help, Birds of Paradise is a good ramp source, Ignoble Hierarch is a slightly worse one, and Tireless Provisioner offers a potentially better Lotus Cobra (you could use both IMHO). Very good if you run enough Fetch lands obviously. If you run both, you probably want all 10 Fetch lands, and might even run Krosan Verge, which is great with Triomes anyways. Really $$, but Urza's Incubator is a strong card in Dragons, even your Commander benefits. Really weird, but I guess Herald's Horn and Descendants' Path are pretty sweet. If you can get your creature count in general high enough, Lurking Predators can bring out multiple dragons per turn cycle, and when it doesn't find a creature you still get to scry. Dragon's Hoard, and Dragonspeaker Shaman are probably solid includes.

You probably want some card draw in here, but if you use Tiamat as your Commander over Ur-Dragon, you probably don't need Rush of Knowledge, but Stinging Study still draws a hand's worth of cards for 5 almost regardless of where your Commander is. Garruk's Uprising would probably fit. Due to having lots of big creatures, Return of the Wildspeaker is probably not bad, and Overwhelming Stampede might be good enough to close games for you.

You probably don't want to run stuff like Land Tax or Gift of Estates with actual Green ramp, if you have access to Green, you usually are better off running Green ramp over Gift of Estates type spells. YMMV!

Counterspell is a risky card to run in a 5 colour deck, it's hard to have UU mana up to cast it. Does it mostly deal with creatures, or protect vs wipes? Swan Song and Arcane Denial are both cards worth a look, the new An Offer You Can't Refuse might be interesting as well. I personally like 1-3 counters in my 5 colour decks, with competitive decks running more, overly Casual ones might run just 1 as a wildcard. Negate is much easier to cast I expect, and thus you're more likely to have the mana up.

If you are interested, Tyrite Sanctum can give Tiamat an Indestructible counter right away since she's already a God. Not sure if you care about keeping her out though!

Epicurus on Wide, Wider, Widest

6 days ago

Thanks again!

You're probably right on all of those points. I have a couple more questions I'd like opinions on, while I have your ear.

First, I'm leaning towards making this a Midrange deck, but the biggest problem is making sure to have enough token producers. All the token doublers in the game won't do me any good if I'm not creating tokens regularly. So if, for instance, I add Counterspell, Mana Leak, Arcane Denial, etc., I'm naturally removing token producers to fit them in. Same for removal. That's why the counters on this list are the ones I chose. Same problem for ramp. So the question is, how many token producers is too few? In other words, what's the minimum number of them I should have?

Next, what are your thoughts on Elder Gargaroth? I keep trying to make myself believe it's an awesome card. 5MV for a 6/6 with 3 keywords and a modal attack trigger??! I'm thinking that it would be a great option for Esix and others to copy. Am I wrong? Is it as great for this deck as I want to believe it is?

Epicurus on Always Loot the Bodies

2 weeks ago

dfbenj Thanks for the comments!

First off, you're spot on with Dauthi Voidwalker; Reanimation is the major theme of the deck, and exiling kills that plan. There's a similar issue with Mari, though that one could be interesting. Most of the fodder for reanimation is gained through mill, so it wouldn't necessarily be counterproductive the same way that the Voidwalker is. Worth playtesting.

I definitely want to make room for Prosperous Thief, and will be looking into something to cut for that. However, Grim Hireling is really just one mana too many for me to feel comfortable about considering it to be ramp. To reference an analogy, I had a brief love affair with Smothering Tithe, because yay white ramp. But after running it in basically every deck I made with white I noticed that by the time I started to benefit from it I really didn't need the mana. So a lot of the time it was a dead draw. I could forsee the same issue with the Hireling.

As for the staples you mentioned, in this particular deck Drown in the Loch is a better card to have than Counterspell for many reasons, and while the other counters I have in here cost more they also feed the theme. If there was room for another counter, the OG would be the top choice. For that matter, if milling was a major wincon (which it is not), I would include Arcane Denial.

Finally, I abhor Cyclonic Rift. I refuse to use it, ever. If I was building cEDH, it would be an automatic include. But, then again, so would be a lot of things. Rogue tribal is not competitive enough to do stuff like that.

Cheers!

DarthSeatb3lt on Barrin, Master Wizard

3 weeks ago

The synergy with Induced Amnesia is fantastic!

I like the idea of the deck - seems very unique and fun. A couple suggestions you could consider: it looks like you're dabbling in the wizard synergy but you could go a bit deeper for even more synergy with cards like Cyclone Summoner, Docent of Perfection  ^Flip, Minn, Wily Illusionist,Patron Wizard, Trophy Mage,Tribute Mage, Trinket Mage, Jace's Archivist and Azami, Lady of Scrolls

I think the above additions would help you keep the theme of your deck while offering more synergies all around. If you take this approach, you could also look to include Stonybrook Banneret as a budget medallion.

fetch your token fodder generators with: Trophy Mage,Tribute Mage, Trinket Mage create more fodder with: Docent of Perfection  ^Flip, Minn, Wily Illusionist

and bounce more with: Cyclone Summoner Stern Proctor & Equilibrium

The rest are just decent control/draw.

Additionally, in keeping with the bounce theme you may want to consider Into the Roil, Blink of an Eye, Disperse, and maybe even Capsize or Snap the former three will let you bounce your own targets for more ETBs/protection and in a pinch they can bounce those pesky enchantments blue has so much trouble dealing with.

For counterspells, the lower the mana cost, the better the counter. there are some great budget options if you find you've always got a handful of cards for free counters (Misdirection Disrupting Shoal) but one of the classics that isn't too pricey isArcane Denial but I'm quickly growing to loveAn Offer You Can't Refuse and Swan Song

For removal, the bounce theme is always great but for those pesky indestructible creatures I auto-include Resculpt in every blue deck I make.

Overall your deck looks like a ton of fun to play already, just adding in my thoughts.

Guerric on [Primer] Enchantress's Pillowfort: A Tuvasa Guide

3 weeks ago

kookoo They are nice! My sole copy of Protection is in my super-friends deck where it saves my walkers from friends who overestimate the threat of planes-walkers in EDH and attack them incessantly. They need the help much more than my enchantments, but its a good card! Intervention is also great and saves my elves time and again, but Privileged Position and Sterling Grove are enchantments, and Arcane Denial stops everything, so those work here. That being said, by all means use them if you like, they are great!

Guerric on Varina

1 month ago

As for suggestions, with Syr Konrad, the Grim you absolutely want to play Living Death. It's super powerful and so fun. You can wipe the board, bring all of your best stuff back, and do tons of damage. I'd also play Dusk / Dawn, which is a board wipe and recursion card stapled together. Rise of the Dark Realms is also a way to get everything back. It's tons of fun. You also need a lot more ramp, and they need to be all at 2cmc so you can play Varina early. You'll also want Crashing Drawbridge to give everything haste and get your engine going. You have the signets but need Talisman of Dominance, Talisman of Hierarchy, Talisman of Progress, and Coldsteel Heart. You want ten pieces of ramp that are 2cmc or less to hopefully get Varina out early and get you going. Necromancy, Dance of the Dead, and Diabolic Servitude are also great recursion pieces. I particularly love the latter because while it is 4cmc, it is the gift that keeps on giving. I'd also replace Dovin's Veto with Arcane Denial, which is easier to cast and more flexible, and add Oblation is for added flexibility with removal. I's also add most of the zombies from your maybe board as they are all great, and would skip over most of the non-zombies except Syr Konrad as they aren't good enough. If you are going to add any non-zombies I'd think about Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble which will make blocking and killing your zombies less desirable for your opponents. I'd also skip most of the non-Zombie, non-Tribal cards in your maybe board. Fact or Fiction is good in many other decks, but its redundant to the point of being pointless here. We want to avoid the good stuff cards! Same goes with Training Grounds, Reflections of Littjara, and Idol of Oblivion. Kindred Discovery is so good here, but make sure to replace a sub-optimal card draw piece in your current list with it. Feast of Sanity looks wicked fun, so I'd definitely play that! Return from Extinction is super meh. You want to return things to the battlefield and not your hand!

Guerric on Mizzix schmizzix

1 month ago

Hi Lord_of_Cardboard! I've been playing Mizzix for many years, and she is still actually both a budget-friendly and over-powered commander at the same time when played correctly. I have a few expensive cards in my deck (mostly free counterspells to ease the early game), but if you took maybe five pricey and unnecessary cards out it would be around the same budget as yours.

The key to Mizzix, as Josh Lee Kwai pointed out when it was spoiled, is playing mostly spells and playing lots of X-Spells. The rule of thumb for Mizzix is that Syncopate is better than Counterspell every time. Because X-spells can be cast for any amount, we can always add more and more counters on Mizzix. If I counter a spell with Syncopate where x=5 and I have five experience counters, I'll pay only a {U} but will get another counter because the cmc is higher. When I then turn around and cast Pull from Tomorrow for {U}{U} I'll draw six cards and add yet another experience counter. In this way you can always add more and more experience counters and draw your deck for ridiculously low mana costs, and get to your wincon. You have a few of these, but a lot more really makes the deck unstoppable.

The original precon was called Seize Control, and that is also one of the best directions for the deck, namely, playing lots of counterspells and shutting down all of your opponents' powerful plays. In addition to Syncopate we have Condescend, Clash of Wills, and Mindswipe, and while they aren't X-Spells Sublime Epiphany and Mystic Confluence can often increase counters while giving you flexibility. You have a lot of the other X-spell counterspells like Power Sink which are great and you should keep, and without the free spells it is also probably good to play good old Arcane Denial and the like for the very early game. You have most of the Blue Sun's Zenith clones, which are also really great and help with the counters.

Personally, I'd recommend cutting on creatures for more spells, which get the most out of Mizzix. I hate hard-casting anything for more than 3cmc, because I always need to have as much mana open as possible to police the board on my opponents' turns. I'd recommend cutting the splashy creatures like Niv Mizzet and even the token generators like Young Pyromancer as they just distract you from your focus on controlling the board. Reiterate (which you have) plus Turnabout is the best way to win and is easily tutorable. Once you have infinite mana you can just win with Earthquake, Rolling Earthquake, or Jaya's Immolating Inferno. In order to avoid dying to the former and having to worry about blockers (so you can cheat on creatures) you really want to get Glacial Chasm, as well as a couple of ways to tutor it (I play Expedition Map and Tolaria West).

This is just my advice, but I've definitely found the deck consistent and oppressive, and I avoid playing it too much to avoid demoralizing my opponents!

My deck is here if you're curious-

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Mizzix puts the "X" in Excellence!

Commander / EDH Guerric

SCORE: 1 | 2 COMMENTS | 112 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

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Nordlys on Mercenary Surprise (now with blue flavor)

1 month ago

Oh, dear Training Grounds will definitely be worth the splash, I like it!

Flavour speaking: I loved what you did replacing a Mark Zug card for another Mark Zug card! Also Arcane Denial keeping it "surprising" and mainly, the presence of the mighty Phyrexian Driver in the sideboard is superb, god bless!!