Delay

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Delay

Instant

Counter target spell. If the spell is countered this way, remove it from the game with three time counters on it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard. If it doesn't have suspend, it gains suspend. (At the beginning of its owner's upkeep, remove a counter from that card. When the last is removed, the player casts it without paying its mana cost. If it's a creature, it has haste.)

Murrow on Anew Polymorph Deck

7 months ago

jdogz32 I gotcha. Yeah the tweaks never stop in an under explored archetype haha. I like Remand the card draw/replacement is a big plus. However I’ve personally been leaning more towards Delay lately instead of Remand because it buys you 3 turns versus maybe the one turn you get from Remand. But we all have different needs so obviously act accordingly lol. However Delay does let them cast it for free essentially after the suspend is up sooo that’s a consideration lmao.

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

Azoth2099 on Green/Black toxic/proliferate need recommendations

9 months ago

Balvron Thanks, man! Happy to help, really.

So the core of the / presence in the deck should be devoted to Dorks, Ramp and Tutors so that you can quickly get the deck engine up and running. Getting your commander on the field and geared up as quickly as possible is everything in this new context. Some cheaper options for Tutors are Diabolic Tutor, Profane Tutor, Mastermind's Acquisition and Increasing Ambition. I'd really recommend just biting the bullet and slotting in the more efficient ones like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Intent & Wishclaw Talisman though. Cheaper card draw options like Phyrexian Arena & Dark Tutelage are also pretty solid. Necropotence, Black Market Connections & Dark Confidant are up there, but worth it.

The only thing you need for is for card draw and interaction, with a few key Proliferate pieces that you'll be able to Tutor for when the time is right. Spells like Brainstorm, Ponder, Tolarian Winds, Impulse, Preordain & Serum Visions provide decent gas for cheap. Classics like Counterspell, Delay, Negate, & Dispel protect your game plan. Flux Channeler & Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus are probably the only Proliferate pieces you'll need, but I'd Throw a Serum Snare in there too. Mystical Tutor, Rhystic Study & Mystic Remora are always nice to have as well.

The few things you'll need for here is to Tutor up gear for your Commander with cards like Enlightened Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Steelshaper's Gift & Open the Armory, and occasionally control the board with Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile. I'd also recommend some Stax pieces like Silence, Grand Abolisher, Smothering Tithe, Esper Sentinel, Archivist of Oghma & Drannith Magistrate for good measure, & some more Commander protection with Mother of Runes & Giver of Runes.

Some good pieces of gear to retrieve slap on could be Swiftfoot Boots, Mask of Memory, Conqueror's Flail, Bone Sabres & Mask of the Schemer, for example.

eliakimras on Menacing Aura

10 months ago

Hello! May I step in to give you some recommendations? Since you're on a budget, all cards suggested are 2 dollars or less.

Part 1: Ramp

In: You probably want aura ramp and cost reducers over standard land ramp: Wild Growth, Transcendent Envoy, Hero of Iroas, Jukai Naturalist and Stenn, Paranoid Partisan (choosing Enchantment). These will allow you to storm through your deck casting Auras ad nauseam.

Out: Elvish Mystic, Farhaven Elf, Arcane Signet, Nature's Lore and Cultivate are all great ramp cards, but you can do better (and more thematically) with the cards I mentioned above.

Part 2: Card draw

Just as important as ramp is card draw: Galea won't always be available to you.

In: Sage's Reverie, Enchantress's Presence, Satyr Enchanter, Mesa Enchantress.

Out: Coiling Oracle, Curious Obsession (unreliable), Curse of Verbosity (unreliable), Eel Umbra.

Part 3: Removal

Swords to Plowshares is GREAT, no doubt. But, in this kind of deck, you can spice it up with the great Auras that has for removal.

The objective is, then, to use the cheapest Auras that can hit more than one permanent type, with emphasis on "loses its abilities" in the text box.

In: Mortal Obstinacy, Ossification (synergy with your basic land fetchers).

Out: Reclamation Sage, Swords to Plowshares.

Part 4: Boardwipes

In: I believe you should run more boardwipes that leave your board mostly untouched. Austere Command is one such example. You almost always will clean all artifacts and the half of creatures that are more dangerous to you. Curse of the Swine is another selective wipe.

Out: Time Wipe (not one-sided), Plains.

Part 5: Protection and Evasion

In Voltron, tempo is crucial.

Now to the Auras:

Following the same logic as with removal, I'm using auras over instants to protect the Voltron.

Part 6: Tutors

Without Hammer of Nazahn, Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith is just a more expensive Open the Armory.

In: Open the Armory, Heliod's Pilgrim, Moon-Blessed Cleric, Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice and Invasion of Theros  Flip (bonus that all those tutors also change your library's top card).

Out: Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith, Celestial Archon, Heliod's Emissary, Hypnotic Siren, Curse of Unbinding (7 mana is a lot for an Aura).

Part 7: Win Conditions

In: Since you're going all-in with auras, All That Glitters and Ethereal Armor do wonders.

Out: Bruna, Light of Alabaster is slow and telegraphed in this build. People won't let her stick to the field. Nissa, Steward of Elements is tough to protect in a Voltron build, while she only offers scry, which your lands can already do.

Part 8: Lands

In:

Out:

  • Thriving Grove, Thriving Heath and Thriving Isle are neat fixing, but the Temples are superior since they play into Galea's strategy.
  • Path of Ancestry is great if you're in a 5-color deck or in a tribal-heavy creature deck. This build is neither.
  • Lumbering Falls is good for suiting Equipments on, but Auras will just go to the graveyard when this land stops being a creature.
  • Azorius Chancery, because you don't run the other two bouncelands.
  • Razorverge Thicket. You'll soon realize that the later turns are more important than the early ones in EDH. This land is a beast in Modern, but it is far from worth it in Commander unless you're playing a turn-3 win deck.
  • Forest and Forest to give room for the two remaining Panoramas. (With all the land searching above, you're probably more likely now to have a target for Utopia Sprawl than before.)
  • Seaside Citadel. I know, I know: tri-lands are great and all, but, in this build, I'm trying to bake the top-of-library manipulation into the manabase so you have more free spell slots for your Auras, similar to what I did with Yennett, Cryptic Oddity (to a great success): each land in it has to either enter untapped somehow or change the top card of the library.

If you read this far, congratulations! Here is the list of the deck with all the suggested alterations, in case you want to test it: Galea, Menacing Aura. Good luck and have fun!

Necramus on Baral, Chief of No

1 year ago

Sea Gate Restoration  Flip - this can double as either a land or a phat ass draw spell, depending on how you want to use it, and options are always good!

Finale of Revelation - again, can be a phat spell or a more modest one, depending on what you need. You have several ways to discount spells, though, and so you can kinda cheat your way towards the high end of this spell.

Sapphire Medallion - don't need to explain this one.

Solve the Equation - excellent tutor for this deck and a budget option to Mystical Tutor, though, I'd suggest both.

Consuming Tide and Cyclonic Rift are both mono blue pseudo wipes that you'll probably want to help keep the battle field in your favor.

Rhystic Study - don't need to explain this one.

Mystic Sanctuary and Otawara, Soaring City are both free for you to play and are better than basics when you have so many.

As for additional counterspells I'd suggest Mana Leak, Tale's End, Force of Will, and Delay.

Since you're on the discount game, I'd also suggest Bribery and Mass Manipulation too!

And one last piece of removal: Imprisoned in the Moon

Hope this helps! I like that your curve is almost down to 3. Your deck building skills are getting keener!

Mortlocke on The Queen's Egg

1 year ago

Profet93,

Thank you for the nice words, this is my signature deck of signature decks and have put the most most time (and money...so much money) into building it into what it is today. This deck is forever a work in progress, for as tuned as it is there is always room for improvement - so I always appreciate any and all criticism and suggestions. Speaking of which - Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are indeed powerful lands - but only within context. The pros don't outweigh the cons with those suggestions in my opinion - I don't run any Beacon of Creation or Cabal Coffers effects so I don't have any way to really "cash in" on these lands past having them fix my manabase. But like you said fixing the manabase of my opponents is the last thing I'd ever want to do, so i'll have to take a pass on those suggestions.

Delay is absolutely wonderful counter magic. Most often i'd end up delaying a turn 2 or 3 Najeela, the Blade-Blossom - which would then be dealt with when it hits the battlefield. Another great play I managed to pull off with Delay was "countering" a Swords to Plowshares that was aimed at my Commander. On my next turn I simply tutored for and cast a Crystalline Sliver. No one managed to cast a board wipe so when the time counters were all removed the Swords to Plowshares simply failed to find. Honestly, I've never been disappointed by Delay and is definitely one of my all time favorites - it always gives me just enough time to dig for an answer.

Toxic Deluge is just an old hold over from my previous meta. Alot of creatures were lower to the ground as most of my friends played combo decks that relied on some key creatures or played with creatures that had reliable methods of gaining protection or indestructible. I used to run Damnation, but I also have a full art foil Damn that i'm considering trying out as well. The verdict is still out on what I should run in that card slot to be honest, but i'm more than interested in your thoughts on what would be the most efficient option available for mass removal.

Once I managed to use Deflecting Swat to target a Expropriate. Obviously this was a late game play, but I knew that the Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign player had something up their sleeve and properly baited out the big spell by tapping out. It also helped that I had a Fierce Guardianship in hand as well in case someone wanted to thwart my plans. Everyone scooped after the swat resolved.

Thanks for commenting on the deck, i'll think more on your suggestions. Happy New Year to you, by the way. Do you have any acquisitions or decks your want to build in 2023?

Votecat on The Queen's Egg

1 year ago

Depending on the meta I might cut Carpet of Flowers , Mystic Remora / Rhystic Study , Delay , or Swan Song for Root Sliver . I agree that with the addition of Root Sliver and the use of Cavern of Souls, Rhythm of the Wild does become redundant and even with riot isn’t a particularly attractive choice.

I would definitely agree that Intruder Alarm is a very risky play and only provides consistent value in specific metas.

I personally use Dregscape Sliver solely as a low mana recursion win con and usually wouldn’t see any long term value returns from Yawgmoth's Will.

I agree with your assessment of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. I will usually only use them if the color isn’t being played in the pod.

Although I do like having an additional mana loop win con, I probably wouldn’t run Ashnod's Altar if I didn’t also run Morophon, the Boundless. Thank you for the thorough reply.

Grind on Grand Fortress of Protection

1 year ago

Absolutely, happy to offfer thoughts. Also in general i prefer any of Arcane Denial, Swan Song, Disallow, Delay, or Void Shatter over cancel.

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