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.)

Combos

• Delay + Elite Arcanist

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

Discussion (48)

Necramus on Baral, Chief of No

2 months 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

2 months 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

4 months 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

6 months ago

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

DreadKhan on First Commander Deck

8 months ago

The deck looks pretty good, I suspect you've got a pretty good grasp of the basics of this format already, so you're off to a good start!

How competitive are you hoping this deck will be? cEDH is pretty hard to play if you aren't familiar with both how competitive play in general works or with how competitive multiplayer works. I ask because you run a few cards that are very competitive but tend to play pretty poorly in Casual settings. The standouts I noticed were Spell Pierce and Brainstorm. Brainstorm and cards like it are too small in Commander, digging 3 deep in a 60 card 4 of deck is wildly different from the same effect in a 99 card singleton deck. It's good with your fetch lands, but you really want Sensei's Divining Top I suspect and can cut Brainstorm. Spell Pierce is just too small, it's only useful when mana is extremely tight, and it's really narrow to boot. An Offer You Can't Refuse is probably a much better effect, but I'd even run Dispel over it, maybe Delay if you were hoping for a less cEDH card. In addition to Brainstorm, you might also cut the similar sorcery speed spells that fiddle with your deck's top cards, these are really small in Commander and you can find better 1 mana effects I think. The joy of having something up on turn 1 is IMHO more than offset by how bad it feels to draw them later, when they just tie up mana and can be annoying with your Commander if you need to cast your Brainstorm to find a more impactful spell to cast, you've already used up your trigger for the turn. Brainstorm at least is an instant and you can play it on an opponent's turn, but sorcery ones seem solidly worse.

In Simic I try not to run very much (any even) artifact ramp, you have access to very strong ramp spells like Three Visits, as well as stuff like Harrow and Kodama's Reach. There are also bigger ones like Skyshroud Claim. Land ramp is safer than artifact ramp, and in Green it's more cost effective to ramp with non-artifacts other than actual mana positive ramp rocks, which are generally run at very high levels of play like cEDH. At your higher land count, creatures that put lands into play will probably feel pretty good when drawn early, Sakura-Tribe Scout and Skyshroud Ranger are 1 mana and can ramp you repeatedly if you have lots of lands in hand, so they're also good with Cultivate or Kodama's Reach. There is also Azusa, Lost but Seeking to put extra lands down, but she comes down late enough that I think Scout is the better card in practice.

I feel like you could cut Courser of Kruphix for a better payoff for landfall, something like Scute Swarm or Rampaging Baloths seem like much more useful cards to have out.

LeonSpires on How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

9 months ago

Your commander has a good effect but he costs 7 mana. I would suggest running more 2 CMC mana rocks to make it so you can more consistently cast him. Start with Fellwar Stone, Rakdos Signet, Izzet Signet, Talisman of Creativity, Talisman of Dominance, and Talisman of Indulgence.

Also Essence Backlash and Essence Scatter are very narrow counterspells. Some less narrow sounterspells for you to consider would be Negate, Drown in the Loch, and Delay.

Symph0nyS0ldier on Esper Control

1 year ago

I can normally get UU turn 2 but it's not 100% and delay is just in a spot where it's the next best 2cmc counter I think. A suggestion for something else that isn't dependant on my opponent's yard like Drown in the Loch or Anticognition is something I'd for sure look into.

UR Murktide was about 1/3 of the decks last week. It's legit insane. I don't run Rest in Peace purely because of my snap package and instead rely on my other cards to handle it in conjunction with my snaps being able to support it by flashing back a Kaya's Guile if I need to.

Your point here on Murktide Regent vs Shark Typhoon makes sense. I'll for sure keep that in mind as it hasn't been long since I added both of them to the list but I for sure see why I'd run Sharknado instead. I'll see how it plays both ways since I do already have murktides but only one Sharknado so I'd have to borrow other copies to test.

Burn isn't a part of my meta that was just an example of why it's there as there are situations where thaT concept is applicable. It's really a card that I probably should get rid of and I agree but I'm not quite sure what to replace it with.

I'm working on making a top list and I have looked at both UW and WUB control lists while making and editing this list. I know it'll take some tuning and a couple revisions more than I've done to get it solidly where I want it though. How would you feel about some changes that look like this?
-2 Murktide Regent
-3 Delay
-2 Sunset Revelry
+1 Counterspell
+4 Rune Snag
+1 Shark Typhoon
+1 Dovin's Veto/Archmage's Charm

wallisface on Esper Control

1 year ago

Symph0nyS0ldier, replying to your reply:

• Delay works fine if you both have drawn a Teferi, Time Raveler to cast, and can have it stay in play long enough for the delayed spell to come off suspend. Imo, it's very gimmicky as there are just too many conditions towards it being useful, with lots of scenarios where it's not. And realistically, the cost between running Delay and Counterspell is negligible (if your landbase is having trouble presenting UU on turn 2, then that's a landbase issue. 3-colour control decks should have zero problems presenting UU early).

• It's really surprising if Murktide is common enough at your store for Prismatic Ending to not be the top-tier removal. It makes me think that, if that's the case, you should be running more dedicated graveyard hate (Rest in Peace/Leyline of the Void etc) so that you can actually shut those decks down properly. There's no real reason for a Murktide safely resolving post-game-1.

• I'm not denying Murktide Regents power. But Murktide works very well in tempo decks, which you are not. Shark Typhoon lets you safely hold up counter-magic every turn (or, at least represent having counter-magic, to mess with your opponent). It's also immune from graveyard hate, replaces itself on-cycle (so that even if your opponent kills it, you're ahead card-wise). Murktide represents trying for a quick-but-fragile win, which isn't what control decks want. You want something that is both reliable and inevitable, which Sharknado provides.

• Your entire paragraph about Sunset Revelry concerns me. If burn decks are a big part of your meta, then there are better options than this card. But in any case, running it mainboard still seems like a big punt to me - there's too many situations where this card is nigh-on useless, and will cost you the game by allowing your opponent to cast a critical spell. Generally speaking, control decks don't care about life total or creatures, and most-certainly should always have more cards in hand than their opponent.

From looking at your deck, its evident you have the funds to create a top-tier decklist, though I'm not sure you've invested the time in working-out what the archtype is about, and what cards are valuable. I think a good exercise would be to have a look through all the other top-tier Azorius/Dimer/Esper control lists and see what cards are run there, and why. Your deck isn't far-off being something great, but a few odd choices are going to really set-back your odds of performing well with this build.