I have one simple question. Why do you run Naturalizes in the board? Why don't you just play Ray of Revelations. They are tremendously better than Naturalizes. The first advatange is obviously that you can play them twice and the second advantage is that you can simply discard them to Bazaar and still use them.

Before actually evaluating Bob in combo we have to look at what decks really are combo. For example Gifts is a Deck which is a combo deck to some extend and is a control deck to most likely the same extend. TPS is a control-combo-deck seeking to win in turns 3-4. Gifts is more likely to win a little later around turn 4-6 I suppose. You all might have had first turn kills with TPS. Well, so did I but this deck simply isn't built to win on turn 1. Otherweise cards like Force of Will would definitely not be included. Gifts play Drains to power out Gifts Ungiven and the following "comboing-out"-turn.

The question is basically: does Bob help you get a 3-4 turn-kill with TPS or does he help you get a turn 4-6 kill with Gifts? What cards do you plan to play on turn one playing Gifts? Mana Drain would be an option but nobody will play a Confidant when you're holding Drain and have double blue turn 1. Therefore the start of USea/Swamp + Mox + Confidant doesn't seem all that bad apart from the fact that playing Swamp on your first turn makes a second turn Drain nearly impossible unless you get a Sapphire in some way... Not only do you have to suffer from not having Drain-mana open on turn 2 but you are also in danger of your USea getting wasted. Assuming you played fetchland and cracked it for Usea that really sucks and in the case of not playing Confi you would most likely not have cracked it vor a dual at this point of time. When playing TPS you have several disadvantages playing Dark Confidants. First of all you most likely will play something like Swamp, Mox, Confidant. This way you "waste" two potential spells which would normally help you resolve a deadly Tendrils. Assuming you think that Confidant is a awesome card you might probably even play Dark Ritual on turn one to get Bob into play as early as possible. This loss of spells for the storm-count will finally be balanced by turn 3. We all realize that this really isn't that good as any card which would have made you simply draw two cards (like Night's Whisper) would have made the same thing. You want to win on turn 3-4 therefore basically a spell which makes you draw 1 card already serves the same purpose as bob does. (By the way by cracking a fetchland for Swamp isn't bad at all in this deck and if you already had a USea in hand you would have played it anyway.) This fact is known to every single TPS-player. Nevertheless Bob is being played in TPS (at least in my homecountry which is Germany).

Conclusion 1: When playing Gifts and playing Confidants you might not have drain-mana open on turn two (which is a lot more essential for this deck than having Bob out on turn 1). That really sucks. Nevertheless Confidant rides to you tremendous card advantage but my question is if this advantage in a deck like Gifts is actually needed. I personally think that the basic game plan of playing Gifts and just winning and therefore playing cards that help you find and resolve Gifts are a lot better than playing Dark Confidant. In TPS he doesn't help you actually at all. When you play a deck that is built to win on turns 1-4 Bob isn't helpful at all.

Nevertheless Bob is played anyways. For quite a long time one argument of this card was that you have a beatstick this way but when everybody plays Bob you no longer have a beatstick. Therefore the only aspect of Bob still counts. Let's say you cannot combo out as early as you want Bob will definitely support you with tremendous card advantage so that you will be able to recover from a failed try of comboing out and so on ... I actually do not want to believe that the plan should be to play Dark Confidant instead of cards that help you comboing out simply to be able to combo out later on ...

Comments?

@ JACO

You're absolutely right with saying that there are situations when tinkering for Memory Jar is less efficient or efficient to the same degree as it is to tinker for Slaver/Titan/whatever. I think this entire argument should not only be based on arguing if should tinker for Jar or for something else. Effectively Fact or Ficiton has been cutted so that you can play Memory Jar (or you might argue that Mystical Tutor vanished to make room for Jar and consequently Ben Kowal replaced FoF with Tormod's Crypt).

If we now take this fact for granted we have to consider wheather Jar is better than FoF. You'll supposedly cast both of them off Mana Drain mana. The advantage of FoF refering to this issue is that you can cast it at instant speed. FoF nets you 5 cards basically and you get to choose the specific pile which helps you in a situation. By using Jar you will most likely have to waste a main phase and that means you waste an entire turn casting it (assuming hardcast). Nevertheless Jar gives you 7 cards to do extremely stupid and broken things most likely involving Yawgmoth's Will. Consequently you might be able to set up the game-winning conditions such as playing Welder and getting Mindslaver either in your graveyard or into play directly. Consequently we can conclude that a resolved Memory Jar is a lot more powerful than a resolved Fact or Fiction.

This leads to the discussion introduced in the beginning of our entire discussion. Which card is easier to cast?!
FoF: 4 Mana, instant, (blue card)
Jar: 5 Mana (only colorless), sorcery-speed

Concerning Jar: As Memory Jar is an artifact and Slaver is a deck built for the purpose of doing stupid things with artifacts we can take advantage of this. Thirst for Knowledge is a discard outlet for Memory Jar and Goblin Welder can get this discarded Jar into play so that we do not have to spend 5 freakin' mana to pay for it. Furthermore we can simply tinker for Jar which only costs 3 Mana at sorcery speed which isn't that bad. If it is the right play in a specific situation is not to be discussed at this point. You might also put Jar into your GY by playing Intuition/Gifts but let's be honest: you'll more likely set up the win instead of trying to get Jar into play.

Conclusion: I personally like the idea of playing Memory Jar. You can get it into play quite easily. Furthermore imo Jar is way more powerful than FoF. I'll test this card definitely again. If FoF really has to be removed from the list has to be tested. Maybe there are other possibilities.

I have tested the deck by Ben Kowal a couple of times and have come to various of oppinions about it:

1. I really don't think that Night's Whisper ist that hot. First of all I personally prefer playing cards during my opponent's eot. You might argue that playing a sorcery speed draw spell is better than playing no draw spell at all but I definitely prefer being able to bluff some sort of response ... Furthermore Whisper nets you 1 card which really isn't that hot. I personally prefer palying cards like Fire/Ice, Merchant Scroll and Intuition over this choice but as this really isn't the topic of this thread I'll move on.

2. Memory Jar is really freaking awesome but I have had this opinion now for quite a while. If you're able to tinker it out within the first couple of turns, you can establish such a great board position that you really shouldn't fear anything anymore. The advantage over tinkering up Slaver in the first turns is that let's say you have a start like island, crypt, tinker. Tinkering up Slaver is not that hot in this situation as you won't be able to activate it until like turn 4 but this should be common sense. If you play Colossus, tinker for Jar is way more powerful as you gain control of the game this way. Tinkering for Colossus doesn't help you actually. It's just a creature that basically doesn nothing except for winning the game within 3 turns which isn't good enough in various cases. Tinkering for Memory Jar is more powerful in this situations as you get ahead in the game by establishing a proper mana base and if you even get a Goblin Welder into the game you're all set for the victory.

hi, thanks for the fast answer.

certainly the ground seals are pretty incredible against slaver as well though i actually believe that playing 2 darkblasts is completely sufficient to deal with this specific problem. thanks for the advice of boarding in all cards and disregarding the cunning wishes.

hurkyl's recall sounds neat but what card should be removed from the sideboard to add hurkyl's recall?

First of all I have to say that I think the deck really is amazing and I will try it out in German metagame this weekend. It has so much potential when playing against Gifts and TPS - momentarily dominating decks in Germany - which makes it a great metagame-deck atm. The deck author reported that the Stax matchup is really bad he was right. I believe that this is a horrible matchup which isn't really improved by playing 3 Oxidize, 2 Naturalize and 2 Darkblast + probably a Rushing River (i prefer this card over Echoing Truth as it can bounce both Oath-Creatures) after sideboarding. Probably you only board in 3 Oxidize and 1 Naturalize to keep up the sb tool box. Playing 3 Energy Flux seems to me to be a pretty solid attempt to improve this matchup. SB might then actually look sth like this:

3 Energy Flux
2 Gilded Drake
2 Oxidize
2 Naturalize
1 Rushing River
1 Berserk
1 Mana Drain
1 Skeletal Scyring
1 Darkblast
1 Duress


This sideboard now lacks the 3 Ground Seals which I personally don't play as there really isn't any of Dragon.dec in Germany at all for some reason (probably because everyone owning power either plays Stax, Gifts or TPS and everyone semi- and unpowered plays Fish in every color-combination or simply Oath).

The problem I see when going back to U/B which was announced as the best color combination in the beginning of this thread is that you have a whole lot of difficulties coping with several situations. UBG Dragon takes advantage of Xantid Swarm but Xantid Swarm can be replaced by Duress (Duress can even prevent your opponent from doing his thing additionally protecting your gameplan). Nevertheless Xantid Swarm is a really strong card even though I experienced that U/B can fight through a massive wall of disruption and hate by playing Duress, Stfile, Engineered Explosives and so on. Nevertheless U/B has difficulties handling Oath and Stax. In my opinion playing UBG doesn't improve these matchups. This color combination makes only life from the loam, oxidize, naturalize and  pernicious deed available. These card only help litte or let's say this more focused: these cards do a whole lot less than the cards made available. Therefore we end up playing 5c Stax if our feared matchups are Stax and Oath. If these decks aren't played a whole lot or only unpowered Oath I agree that one might go back to U/B.

@ dicemanx

Well ... I think playing Buried ASlive will additionally lead to concentrating a lot more on the color black as you might then consider playing dark rituals to support the speedkill. then u might furthermore consider playing 4 Duress + Unmasks and so on ...

The only thing that makes BUG Dragon superior in reference to 5c Dragon is that you get to play 2-3 basic lands. I do not think that this will ever help you win the critical matchups like Oath and Stax. Furthermore your opponent will most likely concentrate on wasting your Bazaars to assure you cannot create massive cardadvantage. Furthermore you can still sideboard in the Sacred Grounds to be able to cope with this factor. You don't really have to worry about fish decks running Wastelands because the will most certainly not play any recursion for Wastelands. Against Stax the Sacred Groudns in addition to Rack and Ruins are a real force I wouldn't want to miss out.

Hi everybody,

I have lately placed third with TPS. It was a UBR list (1 Gifts, Recoup, Darksteel Colossus). In that tourney I didn't play any Dark Confidants as I didn't own any at that point of time and wasn't able to borrow a complete playset. Now several lists have come up on the internet from several people (i.e. the list from Marco Kiewit placing first in Eindhoven but as there was only little participation we shouldn't really regard that list as a statement of how powerful Dark Confidants are in a TPS-list). I've been working for a while now on a build with 4 Dark Confidants. The additional draw is just so amazing that I am not willing to go down with this number. First of all I'd like to present my build to you:

// Ulrich Büttner: "Strictly Confidantial"

// Lands
    4  Polluted Delta
    4  Underground Sea
    1  Tolarian Academy
    2  Island
    2 [UG] Swamp
    1  Bloodstained Mire

// Creatures
    4  Dark Confidant

// Spells
    1  Tinker
    1  Timetwister
    1  Rebuild
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Demonic Tutor
    4  Dark Ritual
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Ruby
    4  Duress
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Memory Jar
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Lotus Petal
    1  Mystical Tutor
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Mind's Desire
    4  Force of Will
    2  Tendrils of Agony
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1  Yawgmoth's Bargain
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Necropotence
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Hurkyl's Recall
    1  Cabal Ritual

First I'll sum up all the advantages Dark Confidants bring you:

1. One additional card each turn which makes aou a lot less dependant from Necroptence, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune (which I personally extremely dislike) and Memory Jar. You don't really have to tutor for these cards but can just lay down a Dark Confidant and start drawing extra cards. It has happened to me several times that playing a Memory Jar or Timetwister just wasn't enough to get the storm count up high enough and I think that these extra cards help me to get there.

2. With the Dark Confidant you have a beatstick with power 2 which is actually pretty solid in the current meta as there aren't a whole lot of decks dominating playing a whole lot of creatures. Confidant actually only sucks when playing against Oath which is a very tough matchup. You will have to sideboard them out I believe as the actual SB-tech - Engineered Plague - isn't really supported well when starting to drop creatures ... But let's get back to the aspect of Dark Confidant being a beatstick. If you play Confidant on Turn 1 which is pretty common in T1 when holding him in hand this is a card your opponent has to cope with as he might just fall back too much be ever recover from the cardadvantage Dark Confidant creates for you. Then you have a creatures that can beat your opponent down for  several turns. So when you are in turn 3 or 4 Dark Confidant has beaten your opponent either 2 or 3 times and your opponent is down to 14 or 12 (I simply assume that the opponent will have lost 2 life due to fetchlands and/or Force of Will/Vampiric Tutor/Imperial Seal or whatsoever). That makes it much easier for you to actually combo out as you don't need 8 Spells + Tendrils but only 5 or 6 Spells + Tendrils.

Now we have to look at the disadvanteges of playing Dark Confidants. It's pretty much written on the card itself that your mana curve should be very low which isn't really the case in this deck including cards like Mind's Desire, Force of Will, Memory Jar, Yawgmoth's Bargain, 2 Tendrils. You might probably cut the Memory Jar and the Tinker to probably include like 2 Sensei's Divining Tops which should really neglect the lifeloss. Nevertheless I don't think that the lifeloss is that terrible (of course I've already lost a couple of games due to Dark Confidant but I have won even more games because of the cardadvantage built up by using this card). Furthermore you can simply play Tendrils for with a storm count at 3 or 4 just to survive a little longer keeping in mind that Dark Confidant is still able to beat your opponent.

I hope I have explained my reasons for playing Dark Confidants well and we can discuss it's inclusion in TPS and the impact of the inclusion on the maindeck and sideboard for a while.

Hi,

Buried Alive isn't good for several reasons. Let's first start with one of the advantages of playing Buried Alive. Buried Alive can place 3 creatures in your graveyard. Intuition on the other hand can only place 2 creatures in your graveyard and one creature to your hand. That means that u have to be able to place a winning condition in the graveyard.

Let's assume you play Buried Alive on Squee, Worlgorger Dragon and Ambassador Laquatus/Shivan Hellkite/Kumano, Master Yamabush/Caller of the Claw/Sliver Queen/Eternal Witness (just to have covered all possibilites). Then u can simply play Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Necromancy and just win. If you instead run Intuition you have to take something like Worldgorger Dragon, Worldgorger Dragon, Amabassador Laquatus/Shivan Hellkite/Kumano, Master Yamabushi/Caller of the Claw/Sliver Queen/Eternal Witness. That gives you most certainly the two Worldgorger Dragons in your graveyard and the third card in your hand. If this is early in the game and you have no other creature in your graveyard u cannot really go for the win as u miss an alternative target for the animate-spell to leave the loop. The only option here would be the Caller of the Claw but that doesn't end the loop either.

Consequently you might argue that Buried Alive is a whole lot better than Inution as it can win right away. Therefore we have to look at the other advantages of Inution to be able to consider which card is actually better. First of all Intuition is a blue card and can thereore be pitched to Force of Will. Second of All Intuition can get sooooo many different cards and is therefore a tutor-effect. You can just get triple Bazaar/Force/Duress/Xantid Swarm/animate-spell or u can just place 2 Deep Analysis (always depending on your build) in the graveyard. This is a huge advantage in reference to Buried Alive which can only lead to one decision: to play Intuition over Buried Alive.

Hi,

I've played Oath in the last tourney I went to. I chose a muddle oath deck. now i've been testing the decklists with tops. first of all i like the more aggressive approach inculding 4 duress, 4 leak and so on (it seems to be better than playing the drains). furthermore i like imperial seal and crop rotation but don't you actually think that a deck not being able to handle certain scenarios is a pretty bad deck? the deck is all about aggression and trying to resolve certain threads as soon as possible as devastating as possible but sometimes this just doesn't work. don't you therefore think that some sort of bounce would really improve this deck? some card like rushing river? you're totally handcuffed by a card like chalice 2 in game 1 and i don't really think that that should be the way to go.

Hi everyone. I've been messing around with several stax builds over last couple of months. I have played 5c Stax with a lot of success (e.g.: I won the tournament in Iserlohn / Germany). After playing this deck for a while I actually missed the explosive starts decks using Metalworker can have. This is why I put a Mono R Stax list together and I'd been very happy to hear your opinions on this deck list.



// Lands
    1  Strip Mine
    1  Tolarian Academy
    4  Wasteland
    4  Mishra's Workshop
    4  Mountain
    2  Barbarian Ring
    1  Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
    4  Metalworker
    4  Goblin Welder
    1  Sundering Titan
    2  Triskelion
    1  Karn, Silver Golem
    2  Gorilla Shaman (2)

// Spells
    1  Memory Jar
    4  Smokestack
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Ruby
    3  Crucible of Worlds
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Trinisphere
    1  Wheel of Fortune
    4  Chalice of the Void
    3  Tangle Wire
    3  Sphere of Resistance

// Sideboard
SB: 1  Sphere of Resistance
SB: 2  Rack and Ruin
SB: 3  Duplicant
SB: 3  Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2  Lava Dart
SB: 2  Viashino Heretic
SB: 2  Jester's Cap

Hope to hear some criticism from you guys.

Furthermore playing for the Tendrils-Kill in the TPS-Style as well will distract your opponent from playing Chalice 2 so that you can set up the Combo with the Cloud of Fairies.

Well... I think that the idea is great.

First of all we should face all the hate cards that might be plyed against this deck:

1. Chalice of the Void: a chalice set at zero isn't that bad. Basically you just have no creatures which you can use the Clamp on but that doesn't prevent you from playing your Kobolds, drawing cards with Glimpse of Nature and getting your Storm Count up to infinite by using the Fairie-Recursion. A Chalice at 1 isn't that bad either and a Chalice at 2 isn't the end as well. This is a great advantage of this deck. It really doesn't die to one Chalice because it can simply suucceed by using another winning condition. The most likely set of chalices you are going to be faced with as soon as your opponent knows your deck would be Chalice for 1 and Chalice for 2. Then you have some serious issues as your list does not suggest how handel this. Therefore playing Rebuild would be a solution to this problem.

2. Trinisphere: Well the Trinisphere isn't that bad either. You simply have to get to your 3 mana to Bounce the Sphere eot. Nevertheless you have to get to 3 Mana at first which might to porve a litte difficult without a Workshop which can easily spit some 0-mana artfeacts providing you with the necessary mana on the table.

3. Arcane Laboratory: You can handel this one just as all the other threads by using some sort of a Bounce Spell just as well.

4. Counters: I think that there are several cards your opponent should counter. The Curios, the skullclamps and last but not least the Glimpse of Nature are cards which should be countered by your opponent. Since these are like 11 cards you can assume that your are going to get the combo through. Therefore I don't think that counters are that bad of a problem. They get a problem as soon as the counter your bounce-spells.

Hi, a couple of my thoughts regarding this deck:

1. I think that a Crop Rotation would be a good tutor for the Bazaar as the deck isn't really likely to create cardadvantage without it.

2. I'm not really convinced by the Drains in this deck and this is why i' support the idea of playing more Mana Leaks and a couple of Circular Logics. You might argue that the Logics aren't a good help in the beginning but the Drains aren't either. The normal play you want to see is Bazaar of Baghdad activate and drop a random mox or something like that. With such a play you can drain for the first time pretty much in round 3 and that's not really good.

@ Pave

Well, 3cc simply beats Gifts with superior carddraw, swords to plowshares ans last but not least tormod's crypt. I believe that 3 swords postsideboarding should ensure you to remove the colossus. After playtesting gifts i learned that the tendrils-kill is quite difficult as it takes the right cards at the right time and a full graveyard to achieve this goal.

Hi everyone,

After reading the last couple of pages in addition to the smmenen's nice article i have become pretty fond of this deck. consequently i started testing around with this and i think the maindeck is really tight and i'm not going to change anything about it.

As one can see on the last pages the sideboard has to be discussed. First of all we have to think about which cards may be sideboarded out before we can think about which cards can be sideboarded in. I guess the 4th Merchant Scroll, the 4th Gifts, Mystical Tutor and Fact or Fiction can be sideboarded out along with the 4th Brainstorm if the cards sideboarded in are that important. Cards that can fill these "open" slots should either destroy or at least slow down your opponent's game plan or support yours better. So what can we play in the freakin' sideboard?

First of all I'd suggest playing 2 Red Elemental Blasts or 2 Pyroblasts or 1 REB and 1 Pyroblast or whichever configuration you might prefer.

Furthermore 2 Pyroclasms seem to be a very solid call as they clear the table from all sort of "fish-creatures" and small and quite nasty goblins. Advantage: you can survive a lot longer and you can destroy meddling mage this way which is really a big help unless the card named by the mage is darksteel colossus.

2 Rack and Ruins should be very good two although i might even consider playing 3 of them. I haven't yet tested the matchup against Stax but Trinisphere, Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance and Crucible of Worlds can become areal issue, i suppose. As you mostly don't want these cards to be played against you or at least they shouldn't stay in play very long 3 Rack and Ruins might be really good. Then the only card you really have to counter is good old Goblin Welder as a Stax-player with an active Welder doesn't really care a whole lot about Rack and Ruin. Even though the Rack and Ruins can be tutored by means of Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor or Demonic Tutor i think that the Rack and Ruins should be played this often so that you don't have to depend on huge amounts of mana just to get the Rack and Ruind to your hand. Furthermore you then have the tutors to still be able to succesfully use your own game plan.

Another really good card is Boseiju, Who Shelters All as it simply wins several games for you. At first glance you might think that i simply slows you down but if you can resolve the Yawgmoth's Will with the Boseiju you really can ignore the "comes into play tapped"-fact.

Furthermore I'd suggest playing a single Blue Elemetal Blast as it kills a Goblin Welder when you didn't have either the Force of Will or the mana for the Drain open to counter this little goblin. As it can be tutored up one Blue Elemental Blast should be enough.

Additionally you simply should play the Tendrils of Agony. It's really awesome in this deck and furthermore it's quite obligatory as maybe your Colossus could get extracted, removed with a Swords to Plowshares or something similar. I'll simply not talk about a Jester's Cap as the deck simply dies to a Jester's Cap unless you're able to destroy it before your opponent has the mana to activate it or you can counter it. If both of these two alternatives are not the case you're simply dead as taking out the Colossus and the Burning Wish is enough to kill this deck.

I personally think that these cards should be the basis of our sideboard and it pretty much looks like this right now:

2 REB
2 Pyroclasm
2-3 Rack and Ruin
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 BEB

Further cards you might think about are Mind Twist - which can win the game for you in the control matchup -, Pithing Needle - haven't really figured out in which matchup it simply wins the match for you and therefore i hope you can tell me -, Gorilla Shamans - which help against storm-combo -, Seasinger - which simply rock against Oath and Colossus-based decks.

Would be very happy if you shared your thoughts with me.

Greetings from Germany,

Cr0v4x

Well, ok 

I just copied the decklist from above and made the changes to it so that everyone has a better look at the list.

4 Goblin Welder
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Mindslaver
1 Triskelion
1 Platinum Angel

4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Thirst For Knowledge
3 Intuition

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt

1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
1 Darksteel Citadel
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
3 Island

SB:
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Seasinger
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin

I hope this was the right list i Copied there. 

I don't really think that the Pentavus help the Deck that much. Certainly you can get an infinite Time Walk this way but i still prefer going off over CoW and citadel which is just more likely to achieve than having 2 welders in play. Nevertheless it's definitely an option but i'd prefer using simply another mighty artefact than trying to improve the slavery aspect which is IMHO pretty good already. This artefact might be a Sundering Titan just to bring a really fattie into the game.

@ Revvik

I'm running a dran-slavery deck, too, and I'm not really convinced of deep analysis either. You already mentioned the disadvantages (casting cost, ...). The really "mighty" thing about deep analaysis is to play inuition on DA, DA, and a card you probably want to have in your graveyard. Therefore your opponent might give you the card you want to have in your graveyard to your hand after considering how much mana you control at that very moment. If hardcasting the artifact would work, you will most certainly get one analysis to your hand and that's just a wasted card because you're never really going to play it from your hand. Even the loss of 3 life seems to me as quite a lot. Furthermore i think that being able to play a full set of TfK's, a full set of Brainstorms and an Acestral Recall is enough Drawal, I believe.