1 - The mana base needed some work. There aren't enough sources of Blue, there are too many sources of Green
The deck is base green. The cards that you look to cast every game are either green or colorless except for the snake. Force is free, Daze is active in one of 9 ways (and daze isn't as awesome against other decks that pack wastes anyway) and the other blue spells are almost all for draw. Green ensures that you keep access to loam and tarmogoyf. The rest of your prison elements are colorless.
That said, the reason the list I used at the Open is straight Gu is because I couldn't get black to work correctly (admittedly I was also trying to squeeze tog into that list as well). With Vassago's recent success I am going to try and add black back into the build for the tutors it provides.
2 - Bazaar of Baghdad underperformed whenever the deck didn't have a Life from the Loam.
I'm not sure how bazaar can under perform its function. It is intended as a free, uncounterable card selection engine. Loam is what augments it into a card advantage engine, and the beauty is that bazaar brings you closer to loam every turn. It isn't always advantageous to use bazaar every turn, especially if you don't have lock pieces out or loam already online, but the card will always do its job and do it well.
-1 Misdirection, -1 Hurkyll's Recall
These two need to be cut from my list. No doubt in my mind.
I disagree with your thought on time walk though. You compare it to smmennen's gro list which has tutors to try and find it. This deck draws twice as many cards as gro does. I would argue that the overall chances of seeing walk in this deck are higher than in grow, and the effect of taking an extra turn for a prison deck is more important that taking an extra turn is for a tempo deck (and both are incredibly strong).
Null Rod - This is a possibility for sure. 3x Null Rod with 4x Chalice and 4/1 Wasteland/Strip still leaves the deck with plenty of mana denial. Yet, Null Rod is such an important piece of the deck that cutting to 3 is probably the wrong choice.
I'm fairly sure that 3 rods will work fine. I will be testing that as a way to make room for the black tutors. The only problem is that you decrease the potential for a turn 1-2 null rod to a probable turn 3. This may prove to be too bad for the deck, but I will try it.
I still think this deck is maybe one card away from being something I'd feel comfortable running in a larger (40+) person event. I'm not sure if its an existing card we haven't hit on yet, a card that needs to be printed, or a card that might be un-restricted. 4x Gush could really make this deck a contender.
I'll be tuning this until the 6th when I plan on going to the event in Philly, so we'll see if it can do well in a large tournament setting there. As far as gush is concerned, I don't think it is right for this incarnation of the deck, or at least optimal. Gush, much like brainstorm would push for the deck to act more like a gro deck instead of the prison deck that it currently is. I think it would make for a good deck, but it wouldn't have the room for the lock pieces this deck sports.
The only thing I'm not sold on is Daze in this deck as I don't see that you're running something like Noble Hierarch to help curve you up to the Coatl quickly while still having the freedom to Daze and not cost yourself valuable and needed mana.
The deck wasn't designed to be a fast killer. The snake should rarely, if ever, come down before turn 4. The plan is to play the deck like stax that runs counter magic instead of sphere effects and use the snake and goyf as your juggernaut after you have the game locked up. I found that the tempo loss for playing daze was often less than the tempo loss from having whatever spell that was dazed countered.
Another thing for daze was that it feeds into the idea that you want to spend as little mana on anything but furthering your lock or casting your beaters as possible. I think that this is also why something like circular logic and disrupt can't be used nearly as efficiently.
