Pardon my English. Congratulations on the deck. I wonder if you have played with it and what your performance against competitive decks. Thank you very much.

Hi and thanks for appreciating!

It depends on what you mean by "competitive decks". If you refer specifically to the cEDH meta (decks like Food Chain Tazri, Jeleva Storm, Zur Doomsday, Thrasios & Tymna, Breakfast Hulk or Blood Pod) then the answer is no, my friends and I are not interested in this variation of the Commander format. If, however, you mean strong, optimised decks with powerful cards in them, then the answer is definitely yes. My personal metagame is all 75% decks: cards like Force of Will , Mana Crypt and Mana Drain are all over the place. I usually play against explosive/control decks such as The Locust God , grindy decks like Muldrotha, the Gravetide , aggressive ones like Edgar Markov and even fast combo decks like Food Chain Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and Teysa, Orzhov Scion . In addition to that, my friends have started including lots of "sideboard" cards in their maindecks to deal with decks such as mine. As a result, I also have to face multiple Rest in Peace s and Nihil Spellbomb s in every game.

So, how does my deck perform in this scenario? Quite well. Of course I'm not winning every single game, because as I have said the other decks at the table are all very powerful. One thing I have noticed in these months of playtesting is that no matter how fast my opponents can be, I am always faster. If I want to kill an opponent before he or she can combo-off (therefore, by turn 4 or 5), nothing can stop me from doing so. The way I have built the deck, it is very easy for me to have one of our lethal combos ( Phyrexian Dreadnought + Vector Asp , Ornithopter + Crackdown Construct or even Wall of Blood ) available very early in the game with some cheap counterspell like Force of Will , Misdirection or Mental Misstep to save me from removal. Very few decks have the tools to deal with such nonsense. This is, however, not your ideal gameplan in a 4-player game. You would waste too many resources while at the same time leave yourself vulnerable to disruption from the two opponents left. Oftentimes, then, you just want to play the slow game until you have more mana and resources available in the late game. As a result, I generally don't even play Lazav until turn 5 or 6 (unless I have a Cavern Harpy in my graveyard to save him from removal). I tend to leave mana open in the early game for some counterspells, and then start committing more stuff to the board once I'm sure I can protect myself. In the meantime, hopefully my opponents have started damaging each other. Do keep in mind that this is a deck that shines in 1v1, sometimes 1v2. You have very few chances if three opponents gang up against you. Having a 12/12 on the board on turn 2 will likely put a target on your head, so that's why you generally want to wait until one or even two opponents are already out of the game to expose yourself. This strategy has given me a lot of success so far, so that's the one I recommend to you.

Hey, I've tested your Lazav deck against my Lazav deck Kill and Run (Lazav) in a mirror match. What I liked was there are many good ways to set your commander online with acitvating his ability. There are different cards in both decks, like you are really going deep into the draw/discard theme while my deck has more cards to get a safe board state or that I'm using the Surveil-mechanic more often.

But they have many things in common like some fatties to pump up Lazav ( Phyrexian Dreadnought ). The control theme does work very smoothly in your deck, there are enough counter spells and destroy effects in it. With your average CMC you may be able to cut some lands. Strenghwise both decks are nearly at the same power level, in my opinion around 8 of 10. We know that Mana Crypt , Lion's Eye Diamond or any of those high end cards would rise the strengh of this deck, nevertheless for playing casual (and not competitive) this is an awesome deck. Congratulations.

My suggestions are well minded and are the following:

1. High Market : Another way to get creature cards from the battlefield into your graveyard
2. Pact of Negation : Also in commander a staple card, far better than Negate or Arcane Denial (both cards are also playable, for sure)
3. Mesmeric Orb gets you value in your graveyard
4. Hibernation Sliver is interesting to put it in instead of Cavern Harpy , because the sliver has no triggered bounce ability printed.

Those are just my thoughts, but anyway this is yet a nice deck. Well done

Hi thom-le and thanks for your kind words!

I've also had a look at your deck and compared it to mine, and they are indeed very similar. I particularly like your inclusion of Enhanced Surveillance , so much so that I'm considering adding it to my deck. The extra surveil on Lazav, combined with the ability to protect our graveyard at instant speed and for free, makes for a really handy tool. Your suggestion of cutting some lands is also something to be considered, although I like to have as much mana as possible with this deck to transform Lazav multiple times.

As far as your specific suggestions are concerned, they are all appropriate. However, with all the draw/discard I have included in the deck, I never find myself casting my creatures. They hit the graveyard by just being discarded, without ever hitting the battlefield. As a result, High Market isn't that necessary and Hibernation Sliver would be slightly worse than Cavern Harpy . If I could afford an extra colourless source, however, the Market would be an easy include due to its great utility (e.g., saving your commander from a Control Magic -type of effect). Mesmeric Orb is something I'm a little hesitant about, due to the random nature of self-milling. You could end up discarding something you need. Pact of Negation is a counterspell I really like, so I will be testing it for sure.

I have a couple of questions regarding some of your card choices, but I will be asking them on your own thread. Thanks again and let me know about any significant changes in your list, because I'm really interested in your ideas. Cheers!