Most decklists that are posted are bad. They almost never have enough ramp or card draw, and are almost always jam packed with expensive cards that are going to clog up in their hand and be super clunky.
Building a good deck almost requires you to avoid netdecking.
I would counter by saying the next time you are watching a game of EDH, it could even be a VOD, to analyze a deal and see if the person getting something intangible like a "free turn of not being attacked" is actually getting anything at all. Because in my experience, as people get better when those intangible deals do get agreed to, its often because it's just the best play for both players involved. And what is happening is less politics, and more just talking out and executing the best line of play in the open, and making sure the people that your playing with also see that it's the best mutually beneficial line for both players to take.
Even though sometimes these things get phrased as a deal, I think if you were to take a snapshot in time of the board before the deal was about to be made, and replace everyone at the table with a bunch of pro players, I think most deals that get made by good EDH players, would be how the game would play out even without politics by very strong technical players that can analyze the board and see that if they attack person X, they will essentially be getting a free turn of not being attacked by player Y because it's not in Player Y's interest to attack them back anyways.
I think there has been a pretty big shift away from clones and reanimates as general good stuff cards. For a while the meta would revolve heavily around 1 or 2 real creatures in play, and fighting over them with reanimates and clones, especially when clones could double as removal and threats. I think thats also probably why you see a lot less consecrated sphynx. Grave Titan is another one that I think used to be much more common to fight over and define a game. Primeval Titan and sundering titan were also big parts of that meta and they obviously got banned for it.
I think the other thing that has streamlined a lot more is the ramp and removal that people use. I think it has become much more streamlined like the person above noted Krosan Grip losing popularity for Nature's Claim.
A lot of expensive blue card draw spells like Recurring Insight used to be popular as well, that seems to have been streamlined more into things like Rhystic Study and Treasure Cruise
I think this is a hard one to comment on without seeing what’s happening directly. The other thing that could be a possibility is that maybe the deals your proposing don’t actually make sense.
I think the better people get at assessing threats themselves the less politics happens. Politics thrive in low level games because threat assessment seems much more ambiguous. Once people get better at assessing threats for themselves the number of opportunities to sway someone’s actions drops dramatically. They still exist but they are fewer and far between, and overdealing gets annoying, especially when one player is constantly tricking the least experienced player into bad threat assessment situations.
Time walk effects are the most broken thing you can do with panopticon mirror, but that’s just a 2 card combo. I don’t think it’s that bad. There are more efficient 2 card combos. At least you can just say game over once they successfully imprint a time walk.
Panoptic Mirror seems much worse when you play it “fair” and imprint something like wrath of god, demonic tutor, Armageddon, or even explosive vegigitation.
You quickly set up combos that lead to mass destroying permanents every turn or multiple tutor effects per turn. Anything that does that would be far more annoying than a combo that ends the game.
I don't know why they didn't just have it take up a slot in the 100 like the partner cards, if their arguments were really just the ones that they presented about it having no costs to including in your deck.
That being said, It's also a pretty broken combo deck with Twinflame, and you can use Kess or a 4 or 5cc general to get around the restrictions to give you not only the blue tutors, but also all the black tutors, and would probably make an incredibly consistent turn 4 kill with multiple counters back up deck.
I play a Godo deck with a TON of artifact ramp and low color requirements. I was thinking about including the Tron lands (Urza's TowerUrza's MineUrza's Power plant). and a handful of enablers for an extra boost of ramp since my color requirements were low.
The only thing I really came up with though was Expedition map, and maybe putting gamble back in. I already run crucible.
Any other ways to find tron in mono-red?
Worst case scenario, expedition map can go find Mishra's Workshop as is, so it's probably a low-cost inclusion.
I trimmed down the equipment a bit more down to 14, including actually cutting the Helm of the Host and Grafted Exoskeleton, since they just weren't that much fun to play with. If your going for a cutthroat build they are probably the way to go. Here is the updated list:
A lot of other commander decklists can get away running a lot of 5-7drop monsters that can just take over the game in the right scenario, I've tried a ton of them, and very few of them work at all in my experience.
I've tried many of the dragons in the past and they just seem to sit dead in my hand. I just almost always wanted to recast Godo if I had a bunch of mana.
I'm not really worried about moat. I have 7 pieces of removal that can take it out, and a Junk Diver that can fly and pick up swords of various colors, and I don't think I almost never actually seen moat effects. The one moat effect that I do come across has been that blue leviathan that is moat except for island walk and flyers, which doesn't even need painter to be taken out. Although I have run Anarchy in the past to deal with Stony Silence in the past to the point that we kinda have a gentleman's agreement to not play that card, since I admit that I essentially can't beat it even if I warp my deck to insane lengths.
There are a lot of Return to Dust and Aura Shards in my meta. I don't think 4-5 would cut it. I will probably cut back on a couple of the equipment at least, but I don't see it dropping below 9 for sure.
I ended up going base green, so I would always have access to my mana fixers, and mana slivers. It also makes it much easier to have the check lands come into play untapped if there is a strong chance I'm going to have a forest in play. UB as the next most represented colors since the card draw engine is UB. Red and white are mostly for removal and a couple of powerful slivers
I have to say it's tempting to drop the 5 UW and WB lands out of the deck for something like the 4 green filter lands and the UB filter land.
All of the ramp I feel like it could something else, I don't really have strong feels on any of it aside from sol ring + the 2 slivers. I've thought about switching over to green signets and talisman.
Cascading Cataracts is probably the weakest 5c land in the deck, but it does filter sol ring and some of the other color restricted cards to mana you can use. I had been using Gilded Lotus as a stand in until I get a Mirari's Wake
It has definitely accomplished the goal of providing a smooth mana base, without the annoyance of needing to shuffle, or when I hand it to someone else, the annoyance of watching them shuffle a million times. I think it's a noble goal for anyone with a 4+ color deck with 10-11 fetch lands to try to convert to something like this. If your not running Harmonic Sliver or Aura Shards in your deck, converting the ramp spells to artifacts would be a pretty easy switch to make it shuffle free. The only tutors i'm running are Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact to reduce shuffling there too.
Haven't gotten in too many games with this version yet, but I cut back on the equipment package a bit, still is probably too high to be optimal, but wanted to keep playing around with some things to test. Probably the biggest thing though is switching over to the Painter Package of removal. My biggest worry about painter is that it becomes a global board wipe with either Ugin or All is dust, which seems frowned upon in most groups.
They aren't square cut, they just have a non standard back and a gold border.
I have used a couple of them when I own the real cards, but in other decks (mostly the Grim Monoliths)
I'm not super familiar with all the different cards, but Grim monolith is the main one that I have seen people use, and I think some fetch lands. I would just make sure your not bringing a gun to a knife fight by using some super powerful essentially proxy cards.
I want to search as little as possible, so I didn't want to run fetches. Non basic hate is pretty much non existant
I have OG duals but I use them more in legacy, and I don't like that they are the only white boarded cards in my EDH decks.
Darksteel was more to ground out harmonic sliver so i'm not blowing up my own stuff.
I made exceptions to my minimize searching rule for cards that only searched up basics since I can always just say what i'm looking for and people can keep playing while I find the basic.
I was trying to build a 5c sliver deck, and I wanted to run as few search your library effects as possible effects that slow the game down as possible. Initially I was thinking Shocks/Hybrids, but then it was pointed out that it can be somewhat difficult to activate hybrids sometimes, especially on the splash colors.
The other thing I was thinking was that since I have so many 5 color lands in the deck, maybe I could even just get away with Pain lands??
If those Oddessy Filter lands were a complete cycle I would probably just go with those.
Checks/Shocks might not be bad.
I have a set of OG duals, Shocks, and Fetchlands if I need to go that far to get a smoothe manabase, but my main objective would be to find a manabase that is smoothe and preferably doesn't require a ton of searching your library.
Most decklists that are posted are bad. They almost never have enough ramp or card draw, and are almost always jam packed with expensive cards that are going to clog up in their hand and be super clunky.
Building a good deck almost requires you to avoid netdecking.
Even though sometimes these things get phrased as a deal, I think if you were to take a snapshot in time of the board before the deal was about to be made, and replace everyone at the table with a bunch of pro players, I think most deals that get made by good EDH players, would be how the game would play out even without politics by very strong technical players that can analyze the board and see that if they attack person X, they will essentially be getting a free turn of not being attacked by player Y because it's not in Player Y's interest to attack them back anyways.
I think the other thing that has streamlined a lot more is the ramp and removal that people use. I think it has become much more streamlined like the person above noted Krosan Grip losing popularity for Nature's Claim.
A lot of expensive blue card draw spells like Recurring Insight used to be popular as well, that seems to have been streamlined more into things like Rhystic Study and Treasure Cruise
I think the better people get at assessing threats themselves the less politics happens. Politics thrive in low level games because threat assessment seems much more ambiguous. Once people get better at assessing threats for themselves the number of opportunities to sway someone’s actions drops dramatically. They still exist but they are fewer and far between, and overdealing gets annoying, especially when one player is constantly tricking the least experienced player into bad threat assessment situations.
Panoptic Mirror seems much worse when you play it “fair” and imprint something like wrath of god, demonic tutor, Armageddon, or even explosive vegigitation.
You quickly set up combos that lead to mass destroying permanents every turn or multiple tutor effects per turn. Anything that does that would be far more annoying than a combo that ends the game.
That being said, It's also a pretty broken combo deck with Twinflame, and you can use Kess or a 4 or 5cc general to get around the restrictions to give you not only the blue tutors, but also all the black tutors, and would probably make an incredibly consistent turn 4 kill with multiple counters back up deck.
The only thing I really came up with though was Expedition map, and maybe putting gamble back in. I already run crucible.
Any other ways to find tron in mono-red?
Worst case scenario, expedition map can go find Mishra's Workshop as is, so it's probably a low-cost inclusion.
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Sword of Truth and Justice
1 Sword of the Animist
1 Blade of Selves
1 Hammer of Nazahn
1 Argentum Armor
1 Lightning Greaves
Alt Wins
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Hellkite Tyrant
1 Aggravated Assault
Recovery
1 Goblin Welder
1 Goblin Engineer
1 Scrap Trawler
1 Junk Diver
1 Myr Retriever
1 Scrap Mastery
1 Magnetic Theft
1 Brass Squire
1 Crucible of Worlds
Card Draw/Filter
1 Merchant of the Vale
1 Faithless Looting
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Wild Guess
1 Tormenting Voice
1 Cathartic Reunion
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Daretti, Scrap Savant
1 Memory Jar
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Painter’s Servant
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Active Volcano
1 Chaos Warp
1 All is Dust
1 Karn Liberated
1 Ugin, the spirit dragon
Mana Ramp
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Manifold Key
1 Grim Monolith
1 Dockside Extortionist
1 Treasure Nabber
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Worn Powerstone
1 MetalWorker
1 Palladium Myr
1 Nyx Lotus
1 Empowered Autogenerator
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Gauntlet of Might
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Caged Sun
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
1 High Market
1 Flamekin Village
1 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Wooded foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained mire
1 Prismatic Vista
21 Mountain
Here are also some of the cards that I pretty much always keep in the back of my mind of what could go back into the deck.
1 Helm of the Host
1 Grafted Exoskeleton
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Skullclamp
1 Nim Deathmantle
Painter’s Package
1 Jaya
1 Fry
1 Combust
1 Anarchy
Card Draw/Search
1 Mind’s Eye
1 Anvil of Bogarden
1 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Gamble
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Squee, Goblin Naob
1 Relic of Progenitus
Other Stuff
1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Nevynrals Disk
1 Darksteel Forge
1 Platinum Empyreon
1 Vandalblast
1 Shattering Spree
1 Abrade
1 Manac Vandal
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
Non-Painter Removal
1 Scour from existence
1 Maze of Ith
Mana Denial
1 Boom//Bust
1 Ruination
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Epicenter
1 Impending Disaster
1 Orcish Settlers
1 Dwarven Miner
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Blood Moon
1 Magus of the Moon
Fast Mana
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Amber
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Diamond
1 Vessel of Volatility
1 Generator Servant
1 Seething Song
1 Treasonous Ogre
1 Extraplanar Lens
1 Honor-Worn Shake
1 Solemn Simulacron
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Soulbright Flamekin
1 Sisay’s Ring
1 Ur Golem’s Eye
1 Hedron Archive
A lot of other commander decklists can get away running a lot of 5-7drop monsters that can just take over the game in the right scenario, I've tried a ton of them, and very few of them work at all in my experience.
I'm not really worried about moat. I have 7 pieces of removal that can take it out, and a Junk Diver that can fly and pick up swords of various colors, and I don't think I almost never actually seen moat effects. The one moat effect that I do come across has been that blue leviathan that is moat except for island walk and flyers, which doesn't even need painter to be taken out. Although I have run Anarchy in the past to deal with Stony Silence in the past to the point that we kinda have a gentleman's agreement to not play that card, since I admit that I essentially can't beat it even if I warp my deck to insane lengths.
There are a lot of Return to Dust and Aura Shards in my meta. I don't think 4-5 would cut it. I will probably cut back on a couple of the equipment at least, but I don't see it dropping below 9 for sure.
1 Sol Ring
1 Manaweft Sliver
1 Gemhide Sliver
1 Rampant Growth
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Mirari's Wake
Green Dual Lands (12)
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Temple Garden
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Brushland
1 Stomping Ground
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Karplusan Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Watery Grave
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Underground River
1 Godless Shrine
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Glacial Fortress
5c/Utility Lands (11)
1 Command Tower
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Sliver Hive
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 City of Brass
1 Mana Confluence
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Cascading Cataracts
1 Mutavault
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Forest
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Swamp
I ended up going base green, so I would always have access to my mana fixers, and mana slivers. It also makes it much easier to have the check lands come into play untapped if there is a strong chance I'm going to have a forest in play. UB as the next most represented colors since the card draw engine is UB. Red and white are mostly for removal and a couple of powerful slivers
I have to say it's tempting to drop the 5 UW and WB lands out of the deck for something like the 4 green filter lands and the UB filter land.
All of the ramp I feel like it could something else, I don't really have strong feels on any of it aside from sol ring + the 2 slivers. I've thought about switching over to green signets and talisman.
Cascading Cataracts is probably the weakest 5c land in the deck, but it does filter sol ring and some of the other color restricted cards to mana you can use. I had been using Gilded Lotus as a stand in until I get a Mirari's Wake
It has definitely accomplished the goal of providing a smooth mana base, without the annoyance of needing to shuffle, or when I hand it to someone else, the annoyance of watching them shuffle a million times. I think it's a noble goal for anyone with a 4+ color deck with 10-11 fetch lands to try to convert to something like this. If your not running Harmonic Sliver or Aura Shards in your deck, converting the ramp spells to artifacts would be a pretty easy switch to make it shuffle free. The only tutors i'm running are Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact to reduce shuffling there too.
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Steel and Sinew
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Sword of Truth and Justice
1 Sword of the Anamist
1 Skullclamp
1 Helm of the Host
1 Grafted Exoskeleton
1 Blade of Selves
1 Hammer of Nazahn
1 Argentum Armor
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
Recovery
1 Goblin Welder
1 Goblin Engineer
1 Scrap Trawler
1 Junk Diver
1 Myr Retriever
1 Scrap Mastery
1 Magnetic Theft
1 Brass Squire
1 Aggravated Assault
1 Merchant of the Vale
1 Faithless Looting
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Wild Guess
1 Tormenting Voice
1 Cathartic Reunion
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Daretti, Scrap Savant
1 Memory Jar
Removal
1 Painter’s Servant
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Active Volcano
1 Chaos Warp
1 All is Dust
1 Karn Liberated
1 Ugin, the spirit dragon
Mana Ramp
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Manifold Key
1 Grim Monolith
1 Dockside Extortionist
1 Treasure Nabber
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Worn Powerstone
1 Empowered Autogenerator
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Sisay's Ring
1 Ur-Golem's Eye
1 Hedron Archive
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Gauntlet of Might
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Caged Sun
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
1 High Market
1 Flamekin Village
1 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Wooded foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained mire
1 Prismatic Vista
21 Mountain
I have used a couple of them when I own the real cards, but in other decks (mostly the Grim Monoliths)
I'm not super familiar with all the different cards, but Grim monolith is the main one that I have seen people use, and I think some fetch lands. I would just make sure your not bringing a gun to a knife fight by using some super powerful essentially proxy cards.
I have OG duals but I use them more in legacy, and I don't like that they are the only white boarded cards in my EDH decks.
Darksteel was more to ground out harmonic sliver so i'm not blowing up my own stuff.
I made exceptions to my minimize searching rule for cards that only searched up basics since I can always just say what i'm looking for and people can keep playing while I find the basic.
This is what I was thinking so far
1 Rampant Growth
1 Manaweft Sliver
1 Gemhide Sliver
1 Cultivate
1 Koldamas Reach
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Solemn Simulacrom
1 Mirari’s Wake
10 Shock
1 City of Brass
1 Mana Confluence
1 Command Tower
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Cascading Cataracts
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Unclaimed Teritory
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Sliver Hive
1 Mutavault
1 Island
1 Snow Covered Island
1 Forest
1 Snow Covered Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Swamp
The other thing I was thinking was that since I have so many 5 color lands in the deck, maybe I could even just get away with Pain lands??
If those Oddessy Filter lands were a complete cycle I would probably just go with those.
Checks/Shocks might not be bad.
I have a set of OG duals, Shocks, and Fetchlands if I need to go that far to get a smoothe manabase, but my main objective would be to find a manabase that is smoothe and preferably doesn't require a ton of searching your library.