Welders should not be to big of a problem for this deck when its comboing.  Just Cast Flame first and welder can't do a thing, same with artifact destruction.  Another nice thing to think about is the fact that flame has much more bluff potential.  If you know your opponent has a FOW or mana drain, you can cast the flame first, which will be much more likely to draw a counter, since they won't want their welders/utilities creatures killed off and time vault is much cheaper than a belcher + activation.  Severance, while increasing your card quality, most likely won't draw a counter as much of the time.

Well, while playing MTGO I tried to pitch an inspiration to it, when my opponent played mindslaver and it wouldn't let me.  That really threw me, are you positive it works?

A quick question about disrupting shoal.

Am I able to remove a card with cc of 4 when the spell I'm targeting has a cc of 5, so the spell won't be countered but I will get rid of cards in my hand.  It came up when my opponent played mindslaver and I had no blue mana open, can I pitch a ancestral recall to shoal, so it's not in my hand when my opponent has control of my turn.

First off Oshawa does not lose to welder decks or combo decks very easily.  You want to play Null rod, rootmaze main. Ground seal can find a spot in the side.  It can come in to stop welder decks and dragon.    Root Maze is awesome against combo.  Null rod does a good job of taking care of both of them.

I see no hidden creatures in your deck, while gibbons isn't that great of a card, hiddon guerrillas is.  What deck doesn't run artifacts, played first its either a huge beater or something to keep your opponent from playing their moxen.

That looks like a really solid list.

However you really want 4 songs.  Also I would run at least 3 Reaping the graves.

Memory Jar seems clunky and too expensive, I would cut it for an ancestral recall.

So here is what I would do.

-2 cycling critters
-1 land grant
-1 memory jar
-2 drain life

+2 songs
+1 reaping the graves
+1 Ancestral recall
+1 mana crypt/sol ring  (so you have both)
+1 tendrils of agony

If you play the deck you will realize how much easier it is to ramp up to 10 spells than it is to get 21 black mana.  Before you play drain life please play the deck and realize how much better tendrils is.
On a final not, due to the lack of cycling lands I would recomend 2 infernal contracts.  

so.

-1 land grant
-1 duress

+2 Infernal contract

I played a deck like this a while ago.

Anyway the best things that you left out are...

Dark Ritual: Insane in any combo deck.  Gets fluctuator and mana for a songs on first turn.

Mana crypt: first turn fluctuator and pays for a cycling when digging for a fluctuator.

Sol ring: same as crypt

Lotus petal: provides early mana or mana when your trying to go off.

You also need some card drawing, or you cyclers will eventually dry up.

The best I have found are...

Infernal contract: 4 cards for 3 mana and some life, awesome deal in this combo deck.

Vampy/Demy  tutor: finds fluctuator or kill

Reaping the graves:  Gets all your cycled critters back

Yawgs will:  A given in almost all combo decks,  lets you recast rituals and songs.

Finally I have found Tendrils of Agony to be a much better kill condition, it allows you to go off with less mana and its not as easily disrupted.

I have tried to fit 4 duress into the MD but with little luck.  You need at least 18 cycling dudes and 8 cycling lands along with 4-8 other lands.

Before sui died I saw a deck that ran MD masticore.  It really helped against creatures and helped the deck alot against aggro.  I would consider adding 3-4 instead of angels.

Root maze doesn't slow you down as much in the late game, but in the early game.  Having to wait til turn 3 to play a madness outlet slows you way down and gives your opponent time to draw counters off cheap card drawing.  Madness is very tempo oriented and root maze just disrupts that tempo too much.  It turns madness from aggro control into control with a ton of creatures.

As for null rod, you don't have all that much card drawing to begin with so dropping the count to 2 is a bad idea.  You will never see one when you want to.  Even with three it can be hard to find them.  But with so many decks playing all the artifact mana they can, null rod has turned into a great maindeck tempo card, cutting them off from lots of their mana.

I feel the need to reply on this thread as I have been playing madness forever.

I have played in 3 power tournaments with it and top 8ed in all.  making it to the finals in 2 and winning 1.

I have played a very standard madness build.  While I hate to post another list, I feel that it will help the discussion.  This list has 5 proxys as most tournaments allow them anyways.

creatures 16
4 Wild mongrel
4 Aquameoba
4 Basking rootwalla
4 arrogant wurm
2 wonder

CA 9
3 deep analysis
1 gush
1 time walk
1 ancestral recall
3 brainstorm

other 3
3 null rod

mana 22
4 tropical island
4 flooded strand
1 mox emerald
1 mox sapphire
1 black lotus
3 island
3 forest
4 wasteland
1 strip mine

sideboard
3 energy flux
3 Beb
3 Naturalize
3 gilded drake
3 arcane lab

Answers to a couple arguements:
I have tried LED for a long time and while sometimes it can be awesome, most of the time it is dead.
Gush should be in the deck.  It allows you to tap for 2, gush and replay a land for the third mana.  This comes into play often when you keep a mana light hand.
Tropical islands are great.  If your opponent wishes to use wastes on them then he is hurting his mana base even more.  As you have the upper hand in the early game.  So you can keep him even lower with your own wastes.
Rootmaze slows you down way to much.  I would not run it unless every deck you play against is combo.

The strengths and weaknesses:
This is a deck that requires a good knowledge of your opponents deck and how it runs.  If you have a good knowledge of how the decks in your meta run this is a great choice.  The main reason is against different decks, draws, and starts of a deck you can choose different ways to run madness.  Many times you will either go all out aggro or all out control.  Other strategys include keeping a waste heavy hand with a lone beater or two and try to mana screw them the entire game.
The sideboard can also be switched up very easily based on the meta.  It is also an unexpected deck and you will see very little in the way of sideboards.


matchups:
Oath:
While this looks like a headache, most of the times it isn't.  You can usually keep oath of the table long enough to race.  I had to play 2 oath decks in a recent tournament and at first I was very scared of them.  But thanks to my knowledge of the deck I was able to easily handle both of them.

Workshop aggro:
These are fun matchups as long as you can keep the welder of the board.  Many times you will lose the first game and win the next two handily thanks to energy flux.  At first I was very scared of this matchup but have grown to like it very much thanks to energy flux.

Slavery:
This is a matchup that I have tested a lot as of late.  While sometimes it can just own you, many times you can go all out aggro and win before they can stabilize.  That said this matchup becomes a lot better when you know how slavery works.  I would suggest proxying it up and learning to play slavery.  This will go along ways in helping you beat the deck.

FCG:
Another match that can be a headache.  However if you sit down and just play a ton of games against it you will learn how to beat it.  I played against it forever and can now usually handle it with ease.


I would say the number one thing to do if you want to be good with madness is proxy up all the decks you suspect are in your metagame.  Then learn to play them all.  After you do this sit down and play a lot of games against them pre and post sideboard.  I know this is usually standard precedure for most decks, but it is so much more so with madness.  Believe tons of playtesting will pay off more with this deck than any other deck.

I believe the control madness to be the much better of the two decks, aggro and control, mainly because it is more reliable and does have counters to help against trouble spells.  Plus it has the ability to be just as fast.

We worked on a deck similar to this.  The difference was that it was a rector tendrils deck that played only black and white.  Anyway the principle is still close to the same, except yours is more resilant to hate.
My thoughts on matchups.  Pure aggro and Pure control should be your decks best matchups.  The worst matchup by far is aggro control.  It can do enough damage early on so you can't use bargain effectively and it has some disruption, counters, to make you have some disruption before you go for the win.  I don't have much of an idea against workshop.  I would assume that as long as they don't drop a ton of lock components, like trinisphere and tangle wire, you should be fine against them.

Hi
We've been working on a r/g beats  /  zoo deck for a while now.  A couple of things I might change with your deck.  Rancor is kinda situational, I would probably cut 2 of them for a couple more good creatures, maybe troll ascetic or river boa.
The one other thing I found out is that root maze in the main deck, when dropped turn one, is a house.  It stops most of the broken stuff other decks do.  The problem with zoo is that it can't go broke like most of the other decks in the format.  Rootmaze really helps this problem because its like saying, If I can't go broke then neither can you.

Sylvan scryings would be good.  But not too many.  Maybe just 2 and then 1 Crop rotation.  If you do this I would try adding the 3rd crucible as it can almost end the game if you draw either of these spells.  If you do decide to do these, the best cards to cut would probably be the eternal witness's.  In essence you would be swapping some LD spells for more LD lands.

About the Fetches.  The problem with these is that they are terrible under a root maze.  If you are going to run root maze, which you should, then you should not run fetch lands.

I think the naturalizes need to be main as to stop opposing crucible of worlds.  Rootmaze does a great job of stopping early and late brokeness.  I don't think this deck really needs trinisphere, once you get them locked down its usually game.  Trinisphere just seems like a win more card, I would cut it for 4 more LD spells.

The main problem with this deck is against decks that drop moxen, unless you have an early null rod, you have no real way to deal with their threats.  I think engineered explosives might be interesting, as it would take out opponents moxen and it can be cast first turn, and it isn't affected by rootmaze.

Interesting
While power tournaments are fun.  It would be interesting so see more tournaments with lesser cards.  If they are giving away, say a mana drain, they only need about 15 people at 10 bucks to cover the costs, and then anything else could go for top8 prizes.  Also if organizers started giving away lesser prizes, they would be able to hold more high end tournaments.  Because we all know getting a moat or mana drain, is a lot easier then coming up with power.
This could also make it so that your regular weekly tournament could hold one a week.  Think about playing for a moat of something similar on a weekly basis.  At first 10 bucks a week might be slightly expensive, but this would bring in new and more people and the price could be lowered over time.
Still going to power tournaments is a lot of fun and I don't think they should be abandoned at all.

My team and I were discussing possible old archtypes that may comeback because of the current control/workshop heavy enviroment.

The first was landstill, we saw this at our last friday tournament as 3 landstill decks made top8.
It seems to be an awesome choice against oath as you play only manlands for beaters.  Against workshop if you can drain into nevy disk, it can be game against workshop.  The problem with this deck wat the fact that it dies to most aggro decks, as people found out when they played me with madness, there was very little they could do. In fact I didn't lose a game to landstill.  However there is a very small amount of aggro right now so that doesn't seem to be much of a problem

Another deck that we thought might come back is masknaught.
The disruption in the deck should allow you to be able to drop an early mask against control, this will give control nightmares and should help you win handily.  After all dropping a 12/12 trampler or 2 should be able to take on a tiny, little akroma, or spirit of the night.
Against workshop things may be a little more tricky.  You would want to get out a first turn mask, before they can drop a trinisphere.  You would also need to make sure that you don't discard or lose any artifacts as welders can be a nightmare.  On the other hand, welder shouldn't stay on the table long against any black deck.  Finally this deck will also benefit very much from a little spell called nights whisper.  Giving this deck a better draw engine will greatly improve its competitiveness.
i might even play this for the power tourney so watch out  

The finally deck we discussed is very controversial
and that deck is...
suiblack.

Yes, suiblack can and did own control, dropping an early negator or nantuko shade can spell game over.  However there are a couple main problems with this deck, first it only has proactive hate, therefore if a control deck can topdeck an oath of druids, before its too late, monoblack will lose.  Also this deck has trouble with workshop decks.  Its main strategy is to go faster than its opponent, and if they can drop a workshop and lots of other acceleration this isn't going to happen.  However in the next couple weeks if workshop decks begin to dwindle and are replaced by landstill and oath decks then I believe that suiblack could jump into the meta for a couple weeks and do well before it gets hated out

Any thoughts on these decks or possibly other decks that might come back.

I would have to agree with you.  Having 3 - 4 maindeck slots devoted to whatever the metagame is, is a great idea.  I have always done this with u/g madness, switching null rod to naturalize, to oxidize, to other things.  It has really helped the deck.  We also saw this at SCG virginia, the 2nd place workshop deck had maindeck seal of cleansing.  This was pretty unexpected and probably helped him to win a couple matches that he might have had a problem with otherwise.

I played a deck very similar to this in the finals of the last power tourny i went to.  First off gibbons/guerrillas are awesome, even if they do just sit there all game because they make your opponents play around them.  No opponent is gonna drop a turn one mox if you have a guerrillas in play, same for gibbons.  How many people would play a brainstorm so that you can have a 4/4.  I also think that the deck should run 4 arrogant wurms, they are just too good to pass up.

One other note, when we were working on this a while back, we talked of adding a few fetches and duals so that it could either run anger or wonder.
without wonder madness is almost an autoloss, which my opponent found out when he played me.  Also I believe he also tried a lone copy of brawn, while it was  okay, he said in the end he would rather have had a couple berserks.

I believe that the best way to beat mono U is not to go aggro on them but rather to let them stop your first oath and then try to force through a game breaker against them, chains of mephistopheles if your running black, if your running red, ReB should be enough beat them.  As for the u/g deck, well you lose a lot, however it does have a bit more game against aggro because its mana base is stabiler.

I think one of the strongest cards against control might be chains of mephistopheles.  Sure it shuts down your brainstorms, but as long as you run impulse over ak/intuition.  It could help the control matchup at ton.  

Also I have seen some decks running sylvan library.  I believe that this deck should run mirri's guile over the library.  First you can drop it turn one and second it doesnt count as a card draw, so it doesnt trigger chains.  It sometimes hurts that you can't pay for another card but I have found it to be superior most of the time.

Actually MaskNaught has been back on the rise in recent tournaments.  With all the aggro-control decks out there winning with 1 big creature has become a lot more viable.  Your disruption and the fact that your more of a control deck then they are should let you force through most spells that you want.
Also against combo decks being able to beat them down in 3-4 turns with a bit of countrol back up makes that match a lot better for you.

I think that forbidden orchard should not be your only way to give them a creature.  I have added 3 funeral pyre into my maindeck.  Not only does this give you a creature but with the multitude of welders and other graveyard recursion, it can be very useful in some matchups

second I like white better than black because it also gives you StP which is also helpful and balance.
Balance will be awesome in this deck.  If it has a DSC in play it can just give an opponent a 1/1 to save its creature and then nuke their hand/lands
it also will bail you out of hopeless situations, I think we can all atest to that.

I play madness and I have played against a couple oath decks.  If they can force an oath through early enough it can win the game.  But if the madness player can keep it off the table for a few turns the can just fly over what you oath up and win.

I think that the controllish oathstill and aggro oath could both become very viable decks in the current metagame

This will probably bring back an Oathstill style deck.
Your opponent gets a 1/1, you get an 11/11 indestructible trampler.
Sounds like a good deal to me.

Not really a big deal, just curious:

Bob swings with Ophidian and Mishra's Factory, Steve has an ornothopter and a phyrexian walker in play. Steve decides to block - he blocks the factory with the walker and the phid with the ornothopter. "In response" to Steve declaring these blockers Bob bolts the ornothopter and claims that the phid gets through for a card. Steve argues that you can't bolt something in response to assigning a blocker and that even if you could it would still be considered "blocked". Who is right? Steve or Bob?

In the sideboard add Raven Guild Master.  It can be awesome in combo/control matchups.  It is also a wizard.

If your changing to suicide red(bloody sui) I would seriously consider shattering pulse in the maindeck, it will help you out in so many matches.  It also can destroy mask.  If you don't have room in the maindeck I would be sure to include 2, Which I feel to be the correct number, in the sideboard.

I have found that usually eight creatures plus four mishras factories work fine maindeck.  My current combination is,
4 withered wretch
4 nantuko shade
One other thing that I want to try and am currently playtesting is slith bloodletter.  It has a decent ability and plus regeneration.  So you won't usually lose him to a pernicious deed.

I don't know about Masticores in the sideboard.  I know if you can get one out and active it can destroy aggro, however against many of the decks, especially r/g beatz, it seems that it is just to slow.  I have found the best solution for these decks to be diabolic edict.  After a pernicious deed it can get rid of any regenerators that they have, also it can function as spot removal in the early game to slow them down.  The other thing with diabolic edict is that it can help in other matches too, especially dragon.  Finally the last sideboard card that I have found to be great is planar void.  It really helps with the matchup against GAT and Hulk.  It is also a virtually win against dragon, and can help against goblin welders in workshop decks.

One idea that has helped me against stax is to play seeds of innocence, however the life gain could potentially hurt you a lot.  Another idea for both workshop decks and aggro style decks would be to maybe play bayou's maindeck and run some pernicious deeds either main or side.

Swords to Plowshares could come in handy, but with a majority of the decks being beatdown, swords to plowshares is going to be as handy as you think it will be.  Sure it might hit the stray spiritmonger, but the majority of the time you will want fire/ice, either to tap down one large threat or pick off two smaller ones.  Other than that I don't think that white has anything very useful.  Finally fire/ice will never be a dead card like swords to plowshare, it can always just be used as a simple cycle to draw into another card.