Arcane Denial post Thirst's restriction

[meadbert]

Original Thread:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37846.0

2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
2 Cephalid Colliseum
3 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Urza's Bauble
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Skeletal Scrying
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
4 Force Of Will
3 Misdirection
1 Fact Or Fiction
1 Thirst For Knowledge
4 Arcane Denial
4 Mana Drain
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain Of Vapor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Repeal
sideboard
4 Pithing Needle
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Rebuild
2 Hurkyl's Recall

So in my opinion Arcane Denial.dec is borderline the best deck in the format.  That is how good I think this deck is.  I have no first hand tournament experience to back this up, but I have been testing it like crazy both two fisted and with anyone else I can find.  I am not quite ready to start this thread yet.  Ideallly I would complete a full round of testing first (which generally takes me 3 months), but we have worlds coming up. so I figured I would give a brain dump of what I have found so far.  I will surely append to this when my current round of testing is complete.

The previous list had -1 Fetch, -1 Scrying, -1 Fact, -1 MisD, -1 Repeal, +3 Thirst, +1 Volc, +1 Warrens.
Two changes I was considering making were dropping Coliseums entirely for a fetch and a dual and then swapping out a Needle in the board for a basic Island.

Then Thirst was restricted and Crop Rotation was unrestricted.  All of  a sudden Coliseums were crucial for getting Darksteel Colossus out of hand.  Also, the token Island I was pondering putting in the board was vulnerable to Crop Rotation for Strip Mine, while the 4th Pithing Needle was yet another answer for Strip Mine so I quickly dropped that idea and decided not to make those changes.

I was forced to drop 3 Thirsts.  There were several directions to go in.

1:  Dark Confidant
  I tried this first and actually Dark Confidant is doing better in testing, but I am worried about Bobicide.  To add Bobs I dropped 3 Thirst, Volc and Warrens from the original list and then added 4 Bobs and a fetch.  The result was a deck with total CMC of around 84.  That is not terrible for Bob, but it is on the high side.  Flipping DSC, Force and MisD can all hurt.  Also the 2 Skeletal Scrying do not always play well, although you can simply Scry for 0 and Denial it to draw 3 cards for 0 life.  I have only lost once in 25 games to Bobicide.  On average I would expect losing about 5% of games to Bobicide which is actually a lot.  Although I have been testing with 4 Bobs, you rarely want 2 out so I could see dropping to 3 Bobs.  This has actually tested slightly better than what I am proposing so far, so maybe the Bobicide threat is over stated.

2:  Night's Whisper
  I have not tested this at all yet, but the way I see it Night's Whisper can only be justified in really short games.  In a long game Dark Confidant will draw more and Scrying can be played for a X > 1 thus it becomes better.  Night's Whisper's sweet spot is drawing you 2 cards on turn 1 or 2 to win a turn later.  Control Slaver used Night's Whisper effectively but Bob was not an option because of multiple high CC robots and in Slaver, Night's Whisper was played as a turn 1 play to bridge you to your Thirsts and Drains.  Skeletal Scrying is not that card.  Arcane Denial already has the Denials, thus it is in less of a need of a Bridge and would rather have the Bomb of Skeletal Scrying for X=4 or 5.

3:  Keep a  similar deck
  This is what I have above.  I upped by MisD count and Skeletal Scrying count, added Fact as Scrying#4 and then I added Repeal because I feared Chalice@0 on the play with fewer ways to pitch Baubles.  Note that there are still 4 Denials, 1 Thirst, 1 Brainstorm and 2 Coliseums so it is not that bad being hit with a Chalice, but I thought the extra Repeal might be worth it.  Note that you can Denial Repeal on a Mox EOT to draw 3 cards at instant speed.  Also you can always cycle Repeal so long as you have a Mox or Bauble so the card is rarely dead.

4:  Vault/Key
  So Martin Bonneville split 1/2 in a tournament with Arcane Denial.dec and he used Vault/Key.  I briefly tested his version and did not like it initially, but my brother also tested it and swore up and down that it was better.  When we got together and tested in person I found that we played with different strategies.  I played Denials as soon as possible.  I either used them to draw with Baubles or to counter bombs.  My brother was far more controlling.  He pointed out that Denial's draw back is no draw back at all if you win that turn.  He was able to hold back Denial in the mid to late game and basically use them as Drains 5-8 to protect his Key/Vault win.  As an example if I had Vault, Key, Denial and Bauble in hand with 3 mana available then I would Denial Bauble and then possibly play Key to then go for the win the following turn.  My brother's instinct was to crack Bauble, play Key and then pass the turn with Denial insurance.  Then next turn he would play Vault with Denial backup.  If played properly Vault/Key may have been the best option before Thirst's restriction.  Unfortunately Thirst's restriction hurts Key and Vault since they are more likely to sit dead by themselves.  My brother now concedes that he usually wins with Tinker->DSC and Vault and Key are more likely to just sit dead in hand.  I have not tested Vault/Key enough since Thirst was restricted to offer up much more, but I will admit that I underestimated them in my original list.

5:  Thoughtcast (possibly with Vault/Key)
  Thoughtcast was proposed as an addition to the deck before.  The trouble is that Thoughtcast's synergy with Baubles is not THAT good because you generally want to activate your Baubles to draw cards and thus you rarely have many in play at once until you are playing Yawg Will.  On your Yawg turn Thoughtcasts are busted since they read draw 2 cards for just  .  To make Thoughtcast work you want to start adding Divining Top and Vault and Key.  When all is said and done you end up with a very powerful deck, that is unfortunately crushed by Null Rod.  In the right meta this could make sense, but there are enough Rods out there now to make this unappealing for now.

6:  Dimir Cutpurse. 
   Untested.  Could this be a good replace for Thirst?  It comes down the same turn.  It pitches to Force/MisD.  It acts as an extra win condition.  Also, using Denial to delay an opponent's win with Cutpurse out is strong since they will lose 1 of the cards they draw off Denial when Cutpurse swings in.  In the right meta, this could be amazing.  I am pretty sure this is not the right meta.  Cutpurse sucks against Dredge and can cause trouble against Stax with Welder out.  Cutpurse is weak against Fish which there is a ton of right now.  The one matchup where Cutpurse could be really strong is against a Controlling Tez list full of Duress effects.  There Cutpurse can delay a Tez win outdraw and dodge Duress.  Unfortunately it is still a juicy Drain target and must be played at sorcery speed thus cutting off your own Drain (and possibly Denial.)

7:  Storm
  Worse than untested.  Yawg Will is far more broken in this list than in Tez lists.  That is the first thing that surprises everyone that plays it.  With all those free Baubles building up a ton of stor is easy.  Perhaps Warrens/Tendrils/Brain Freeze should be added and the deck could be played as more of a combo deck.  I have toyed around few a few lists but never came up with something that I liked.  In the past I have been surprised by how well others (in particular Machinus) can take a control deck and add 1 Tendrils to suddenly play it like a combo deck so it is entirely possible that a token Tendrils and perhaps Mana Vault, Lotus Petal and Hurkyl's could turn this into a deck that can play combo.  I would be interested in any ideas along these lines.


I would like to address two common complaints of this deck:
1:  Null Rod just wrecks it - This was totally untrue before.  Between Thirst and Arcane Denial I rarely had trouble with Null Rod decks.  Now with Thirst restricted things are a bit worse.
2:  Sphere of Resistance is a beating - This remains totally untrue post board.  Post board you have Chain, Rebuild, 2xHurkyl's and 4xExplosives thus you have no problem with Resitor whatsoever.  I routinely crush both Stax and Shop Aggro.  I consider those fairly easy matchups.  The moment I pick this deck up, my teammates start putting their Shop decks down.  My testing against 4xCrop Rotation is not yet extensive enough to comment with confidence, but this deck never had a high basic count with only 6 Fetch/Basics so Strip is not THAT scary.  Also having Denials to counter turn 1 Cropper is huge.

As others have noted, this deck is strong in the Drain mirror.  I actually do not consider it THAT strong, but it is strong.
The Long match up is strong since you have turn 1 Denials to counter turn 1 Bombs.  Post board you might bring in a token Tormod's Crypt and even some Explosives to answer Xantid.
The Dredge match up is insanely favorable post board with 12x(Needle/Crypt/Explosives)
Oath is favorable with 4xExplosives.

So are there any bad matchups?
Absolutely.  Your worst nightmare is basically a Fish deck with 4xNull Rod and 4xStifle.  Stifle is strong because it counters Bauble + Denial for 1 mana.  Rod is annoying in general.  Also, Scrying becomes tough to use for high values of X with mana cut off and the life loss matters more with a Goyf beating your down.  You still have Explosives for mass removal against Bob/Goyf/Gaddock but only if Rod is not out.  This matchup is not THAT bad, but it is unfavorable.

The second problematic matchup is a Belcher list that boards in 4 Jester's Caps and 4 Xantid Swarms.  Needles and Explosives can help, but in general this is a really tough machup!

Is anyone else out there willing to share experiences with Arcane Denial?  I know that Martin toped 8ed twice with it, but has anyone else been playing it in tournaments and having trouble?  Are there any other ideas on replacements for Thirst?  I am particularly interested in anything that would run Tendrils because I tend to be a bit weak with optimizing control decks for Storm since my instinct is always to Tinker for DSC.

[Doomsday]

Hi, thanks for posting this.  I read it over and I'm not sure I understand it correctly.  Your draw engine is basically casting these baubles (or Scry for 0) and counter them with Arcane Denial, so you spend either 1U or 1UB and wait a turn for +1 net cards?  I'm sure I missed something here but maybe you could clarify.  Thanks

[meadbert]

The idea is to pay  {U}1 to Denial a Bauble.  This nets you +1 cards.  Although this does not sound great it actually is.  If there were a blue sorcery that cost  {U}1 and drew 2 cards I am confident that it would be restricted and considered an automatic 1of in every blue deck.

Also how bad is it to "wait a turn?"
First of all you are not waiting a full turn.  You still get the 3 cards before your opponent's next main phase.  This is actually fairly convenient at times.  How often have you wanted to cast Recall, but worried about being stuck having to discard eot because you have 8-9 cards in hand.  With Denials you can draw up to 10 cards during your opponent's upkeep thus it is like playing a game with a virtual Library of Leng in play.  This is not broken and it might not even be as good as getting the cards right away, but it is not terrible either and in some cases it is advantageous.

Also compare Denialing a Bauble to Thirst for Knowledge or Merchant Scroll.

The Thirst comparison shows that rather than get +0 or +1 card advatage for  {U}2 you instead get +1 card advantage for  {U}1.  That part is better for sure, but you sacrifice Thirst being instant speed.  Still, subtracting 1 from the casting cost is better than being instant speed.  For instance if Merchant Scroll cost  {U}2, but were an instant would it have been more or less played?  I think less although I admit that it is close.  The other comparison with Thirst is in loading the yard.  Ideally Thirst dumps not just Thirst itself, but a Mox in your graveyard to make Yawg that much more powerful later on.  Denial does better by dumping a Bauble and Denial in the yard.  Baubles can be played back for free post Yawg which frequently allows Yawg to draw 5 cards on turn 2 and if you wait till turn 3 or 4 drawing 10 or more cards is not uncommon.  Also, if you really want to use Denial eot as an instant you can always Denial Chain of Vapor/Repeal/Skeletal Scrying to gain +1 card advantage just as Thirst would have.

A risk of Denialing Baubles is that your opponent can counter the Bauble to effectively counter both spells.  This sort of makes Denialing a Bauble similiar to Mysticalling for Recall in that 1 counter loses 2 cards for you.  The good news is that in practice this is worse for your opponent than it sounds.  The most common counters in type 1 are Force of Will, Mana Drain, Misdirection, Red Blast and Pyroblast.
Force on Bauble is decent, but it is still just a 2 for 2 trade so it hardly loses you the game.
Drain on Bauble is a solid 2 for 1 trade for you opponent, but he gets no Drain mana out of it so while this is a good play for him, Drain could have done worse to you.
Misdirection, Red Blast and Pyroblast can only stop Denial itself thus your Bauble will still resolve and you will still get a card.  These are all much more dangerous to you if you were to Mystical/Vamp for Recall.

The other comparison is with Merchant Scroll.  Scroll's primary uses were finding Recall and Force early or finding bounce to answer a threat or Mystical->(Yawg/Tinker) late.
Denial does not find Bounce or Mystical, but it is flexible as either Force or Recall.  Denialing a Bauble/Mox draws your 3 cards similar to Scroll Recall.  The difference is that Scroll Recall is actualy +2 card advantage for 3 mana while Denialing a Bauble is +1 card advantage for 2 mana.  As great as Scroll for Recall on turn 1 is, it suffers from the same problem that Intuition for AKs does.  It does not get you anything till a turn later.  Denialing a Bauble gets you 3 more cards and thus more chances to draw Force/MisD before your opponent's next main phase.  Scroll for Force is worse than using Denial as a counter.  The reason is that Scroll for Force cannot be undone.  If you Scroll for Force on turn 1 against Combo, but later get Drain on line and decide you would rather have Recall than Force then you are stuck with the Force you Scrolled for.  If you leave Denial mana up and do not need to use Denial, then later you can in fact decide to use Denial as a draw engine by Denialing a Mox or Bauble.  In this manner Denial is actually more flexible than Scroll.
I do not consider Denial better than Scroll at all, but it is basically the best alternative that we have access to at this point.

[Doomsday]

Hey, thanks for the very detailed explanation.  I appreciate it.

Just another quick question because this is completely new to me:  What makes this better than running 4x Night's Whisper, 4x additional counters (because you said you like the being able to counter them with the denials if it's worth the card disadvantage) and then 4x good cards in place of the denials and 8 baubles?  Is it just all of the added storm after Yawgmoth's Will?

[Rome]

ive used this Arcane Denial trick in a form of fish when it comes right down to it there is plenty of other ways to drawl. your opponet is less willing to counter arcane when its shot at them due to the fact they do like the fact of drawling cards and its a great pitch card to FoW but comming back down to the reality its more of a dead card when holding it since CA is so imporant and ditching 2 cards for 3 cards is almost a waste and its wraping up your mana on turn as opposed to most draw agents that are EoT effects and/or creature attack/upkeep effects. Dont get me wrong I love arcaine it just dosnt have a place at this point in time.

[Parcher]

Pehaps with 20+ free or zero cost spells, and many one-costed, Errayo might be better than Cutpurse?

[meadbert]

Just another quick question because this is completely new to me:  What makes this better than running 4x Night's Whisper, 4x additional counters (because you said you like the being able to counter them with the denials if it's worth the card disadvantage) and then 4x good cards in place of the denials and 8 baubles?  Is it just all of the added storm after Yawgmoth's Will?

This is a very good question.  Why not just run 4xNight's Whisper and 4xNegate or something like that.  The answer is that what you suggest is not much worse, but I believe it is slightly worse.  Part of the answer is what you already said.  I would not say "Storm" specifically since I do not run a storm card, but basically I would much rather play Yawg with 2 Baubles and 1 Denials in the yard than with Night's Whisper and Negate in the yard.  Similarly Skeletal Scrying and Cephalid Coliseum become much better when you are regularly hitting threshold by turn 3.
The other part is the flexibility.  Sometimes you might have 2 Negates, but you want draw or you may have 2 Night's Whispers but you want a counter.  Denial offers choices.
Baubles are generally not bad cards because they allow you to run a lighter mana base and they cantrip so you are more likely to draw into your broken cards.  If you believe that Baubles are the worst cards in the deck then you must also believe that Denialing a Bauble is better than Night's Whisper since you are losing your worst card and drawing 3 which should be better than just drawing 2.  In the mid to late game, Moxes are fairly weak, so Denialing a Mox is fairly strong.

its more of a dead card when holding it since CA is so imporant and ditching 2 cards for 3 cards is almost a waste

I do not understand your comment.  If Card Advantage is so important then I would expect trading 2 cards for 3 is a very good thing.

Pehaps with 20+ free or zero cost spells, and many one-costed, Errayo might be better than Cutpurse?

Excellent idea!  This is why I post on these forums.  I am going to have to test Erayo.  It seems flipping him should be easy in this deck!  Erayo might be better than Storm cards.

[Wagner]

Did you consider Chalice of the Void at all? By removing a couple of 1 CC spells, you could fit them right in or at least in the side. Obvisouly they should only be set at 1, but that is a very good play right now. They also have synergy with your Arcane Denial if you ever draw one of your few 1 CC remaining.

Just a suggestion as I haven't played the deck. Also, I will direct M. Bonneville to this tread, hoping he will test the deck some more.

[xerxes]

Mishra's Bauble + Predict


I win

[Rome]

that came out wrong when i was saying it. 2 cards for 3 is a 1 gain yes seems ok but you get the same gain out of nights whispers (said earlyer) and its a dead card based on you really dont want to counter someone elses spell with it and give them the CA. your basicly looking at it as a combo card that your putting your own mana down for i just think it seems like a worse idea than just running another drawl agent.

[pierce]

let me get this straight. according to what you said, it is the best deck in the format. But it has problems with fish, which is very popular, and sphere of resistance effects, yet stax is very popular right now (5/8 of the t8 of Mr Nice Guy games was workshops).

So this is the best deck. But it can't beat two of the most popular decks.

In addition, I see you quote testing results vs "Long" and a Charbelcher variant?

Ummm. No one plays charblecher. Even Nat Moes stopped, and thats saying something. Also, it's not 2006, so "long" isn't a significant part of the metagame. Fish and Stax are, and those are your other bad matchups.

But you think this is the best deck in the format. WIthout playing it in a tournament.

Nice claims. I see no fault in their reasoning structure.

[ErkBek]

Hey Bert. Have tried Spell Snares main or SB? I know you like MisD's, but Snares cover problematic matches better. They're also pretty solid in outside of Fish and Stax.

EDIT: Can we just call this deck TurboBert?

[meadbert]

let me get this straight. according to what you said, it is the best deck in the format. But it has problems with fish, which is very popular, and sphere of resistance effects, yet stax is very popular right now (5/8 of the t8 of Mr Nice Guy games was workshops).

So this is the best deck. But it can't beat two of the most popular decks.

In addition, I see you quote testing results vs "Long" and a Charbelcher variant?

Ummm. No one plays charblecher. Even Nat Moes stopped, and thats saying something. Also, it's not 2006, so "long" isn't a significant part of the metagame. Fish and Stax are, and those are your other bad matchups.

But you think this is the best deck in the format. WIthout playing it in a tournament.

Nice claims. I see no fault in their reasoning structure.

Perhaps I was not clear about Stax.  I was explicitly saying that the Shop matchup is very strong.  Both Shop Aggro and Stax are so strong that my playtest partners now throw away their Shop decks and grab something else when I pick up this deck.  Fish with both Rods and Stifles is the weakest matchup so if you expect a Stifle/Rod infested meta then this is not the best choice.

Hey Bert. Have tried Spell Snares main or SB? I know you like MisD's, but Snares cover problematic matches better. They're also pretty solid in outside of Fish and Stax.

Replacing Misdirections with Spell Snares in the Dark Confidant version might be a huge improvement!  I will definitely test that.  I have tested both Spell Snare and Annul post board and they are good.

Regarding Chalice:  I had not considered boarding it in or adding it to the main to set it at 1.  Considering the super low amount of 1cc spells in this deck that is actually a solid idea.  For what cards and what matchups is that most useful?  Is it mostly for shutting of Duress?

[BruiZar]

chalice at one trumps storm, which is played in our metagame actually.

It also affects Seal, Vampiric, Brainstorm, Ponder, Red Elemental Blast, Mystic Remora, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Chain of Vapor, Mystical Tutor, Voltaic Key, Sensei's Divining Top, Ancestral Recall, Cabal Therapy, Relic of Progenitus, Duress, Thoughtseize, Dark Ritual.

[wiley]

suggestion:
-4 Mishra's Bauble
-4 Urza's Bauble
+4chalice
+2ee
+2crypt

I've played against this deck multiple times, I know that it draws as well, and often better than mystic remora control decks.  The problem I have always seen is that the baubles by themselves are never impressive, never scary and never relevant to the opponent.

[meadbert]

That is actually a really interesting idea.
Chalice@1 stops the annoying Stifles.
Explosives is good against Fish if set at 2.
Combo, Stax and Dredge become better pre board.

[miss_bun]

I'm not sure about this deck, as I haven't played it at all, but wiley's suggestion of explosives and chalice seem like much better choices than the baubles.  I mean heck, ornithopter isn't even terrible, since it can be a blocker in a pinch.

Also, have you considered any of the pacts?  Slaughter and Negation seem kinda sexy, since they also fill the role of free spell to counter, and can also actually be useful?

[meadbert]

I have considered, but not tested Pact of Negation.  The idea would be to do something like run Dark Confidant, Arcane Denial, Stifle, Trickbind, Pact, and Dreadnought.  Oath + Platz could be substituted for Dark Confidant.  Anyway, the risk of Denialing a Pact is huge since if your Denial is countered you lose the game on upkeep unless you have 5 mana, Stifle or Trickbind.  Also you need to actually pact something to begin with so if you were Pacting your own spell, then even if you do have the Stifle for your Pact it was still like a 4 for 1 trade for your opponent since you used original spell + Pact + Denial + Stifle and they used 1 counter.  After realizing all this I gave up with out ever testing a list.


Ornithopter is terrible, but Explosives is not.  Explosives is really, really good right now.  It used to be that Explosives was sort of weak against Drain/Control decks, but now that Dark Confidant and Mystic Remora are two of the better draw engines, Explosives is basically good against the field.  It answers Warrens and Xantid swarm against Grim Long.  It wipes out Moxen against TPS.  It answers Welder against Stax.  It removes Oath.  It can crush Fish if they do not have a Rod out.  Explosives is very good.

Still, I sense that folks are underestimating Baubles.  They cycle for free, load the yard like crazy and are uber broken off Yawg Will.  They are what give you a brokenness edge against other decks.  Also, the information gleamed is far from useless in a deck with 15 counters.  You can even peek at your own top card if you have Vamp/Mystical in hand or if you have a fetch land out to see if you want that.  In that case it is more like a peek/opt/slight of hand for free.

[Qube]

you can still keep the 4 mishra's baubles in and put in 4 expolsives, so you have a bit a mix of the two.
Another thing:
do you usually have a lot of mana? If yes, cunning wish for a toolbox, 1 Bomb and Brainfreeze could ba an option.

[ErkBek]

Still, I sense that folks are underestimating Baubles.  They cycle for free, load the yard like crazy and are uber broken off Yawg Will.  They are what give you a brokenness edge against other decks.  Also, the information gleamed is far from useless in a deck with 15 counters.  You can even peek at your own top card if you have Vamp/Mystical in hand or if you have a fetch land out to see if you want that.  In that case it is more like a peek/opt/slight of hand for free.

I agree. People are underestimating Baubles. Baubles let you play like a Yawg Will combo deck, which you don't see much of these days (without Brainstorms, Yawg Will in Drain has lost some oomph). I had a lot of games where I'd cast Will for 3 baubles, a random good card, and recast the tutor that found Will. At that point I would be really far ahead. Since this was often happening on turn 3 alot, I started calling the deck TurboBert. 

[Grand Inquisitor]

People are underestimating Baubles

I at least like the Mishra's one.  I tried a slightly different tweak that went something like this:

-1 Skeletal Scrying
-1 Arcane Denial
-4 Urza's Bauble

+3 Predict
+3 Sensei's Divining Top

The predicts had synergy with bauble and top and were still effective at nerfing opposing topdeck tutors.  Sometimes investing two mana for it felt underpowered, but it was good enough where I felt someone with more experience/creativity could make it work.  What's the expression, 'it pitches to fow'?

[meadbert]

Pehaps with 20+ free or zero cost spells, and many one-costed, Errayo might be better than Cutpurse?

So this idea sounded really good at first.  Then I tested it.  It is WAY better than I expected.  Erayo is a bomb in the early, middle and late game.
So many games start:
Land, Mox, Erayo (Forced), MisD on Force, Bauble (flipping Erayo)

If you draw Erayo in the mid game you are usually drawing several cards a turn so it easy to flip him them.  He seems better than Wish->Brain Freeze, Tendrils or Warrens right now.

The only question is how many to run?  I was running just 1 in place of Repeal, but perhaps a second in place of either Fact or the 3rd Skeletal Scrying is in order.

[Parcher]

Glad it's working well; it was sort of an off-the-cuff thought. Two would seem the right number. You don't want multiples, but also don't need to open with it. Although, of course, opening with one to flip is game. With the draw available, you should be able to get one as you need.

I don't see how he is an actual win condition though, however he may hurt your opponent. I just wouldn't cut those for him. I'd say Fact is the more losable since Erayo effectively gives you the free turns to draw cards. And he hurts Aggro so badly once flipped due to their weaker available draw, that Scrying can be even more effective.

[LordHomerCat]

Pehaps with 20+ free or zero cost spells, and many one-costed, Errayo might be better than Cutpurse?

So this idea sounded really good at first.  Then I tested it.  It is WAY better than I expected.  Erayo is a bomb in the early, middle and late game.
So many games start:
Land, Mox, Erayo (Forced), MisD on Force, Bauble (flipping Erayo)

If you draw Erayo in the mid game you are usually drawing several cards a turn so it easy to flip him them.  He seems better than Wish->Brain Freeze, Tendrils or Warrens right now.

The only question is how many to run?  I was running just 1 in place of Repeal, but perhaps a second in place of either Fact or the 3rd Skeletal Scrying is in order.

That example doesn't work.

Spell 1: Mox
Spell 2: Erayo
Spell 3: Force
Spell 4: MisD.  Is Erayo in play?  No?  Then SOL
Spell 5: Bauble.  Not so effective.

[meadbert]

Pehaps with 20+ free or zero cost spells, and many one-costed, Errayo might be better than Cutpurse?

So this idea sounded really good at first.  Then I tested it.  It is WAY better than I expected.  Erayo is a bomb in the early, middle and late game.
So many games start:
Land, Mox, Erayo (Forced), MisD on Force, Bauble (flipping Erayo)

If you draw Erayo in the mid game you are usually drawing several cards a turn so it easy to flip him them.  He seems better than Wish->Brain Freeze, Tendrils or Warrens right now.

The only question is how many to run?  I was running just 1 in place of Repeal, but perhaps a second in place of either Fact or the 3rd Skeletal Scrying is in order.

That example doesn't work.

Spell 1: Mox
Spell 2: Erayo
Spell 3: Force
Spell 4: MisD.  Is Erayo in play?  No?  Then SOL
Spell 5: Bauble.  Not so effective.

That makes it worse.  Somtimes Erayo resolves and you have 2 Baubles, but that is less common. 

[covetousrat]

Meadbert a really innovative idea. After some testing I think the mainboard is really weak against Tezz and stax. Ive added bobs, Time vault+key in it and it works perfectly due to the main engine of bobs +arcane baubles. However post board, Iv always taking out the arcanes and baubles to swith to a Tezz Drain deck. Heres the decklist Im running currently.

4 Polluted Delta
2 Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy

1 Inkwell Leviathan
4 Bobs

3 Arcane Denial
3 urzas baubles
3 Mishras baubles

1 Time Walk
1 Repeal
1 HUrkyls Recall
4 Fow
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 A. Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Mana Drain
1 Tinker
1 Sensei divining top

1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault

1 Yawgmoths will
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor


5 Moxen
1 B lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana vault
1 Sol ring


SB
1 Rack and RUin
1 Ingot chewer
2 Energy Flux
1 Rebuild
1 Pyroblast
1 REB
4 Leyline of TV
1 Tormods Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Pyroclasm
1 Darkblast