Deck Frameworks and Oloro - A Case Study

[Azrael]

[cards]Oloro, Ageless Ascetic

Orzhov Signet
Azorius Signet
Dimir Signet
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Tezzeret, the Seeker
Thada Adel, Acquisitor
Worn Powerstone
Fabricate
Charcoal Diamond
Everflowing Chalice
Marble Diamond
Sky Diamond

Swords to Plowshares
Go for the Throat
Gilded Drake
Treachery
Austere Command
Hallowed Burial
Decree of Pain
Supreme Verdict
Darksteel Mutation

Overwhelming Intellect
Desertion
Spelljack
Spell Crumple
Hinder
Counterspell
Mana Drain
Forbid
Rewind
Exclude
Dissolve
Negate

Orim’s Chant
Silence
Knowledge Exploitation
Time Stretch

Bribery
Storm Herd
Entreat the Angels
Army of the Damned
Felidar Sovereign

Vampiric Tutor
Cruel Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Personal Tutor

Well of Lost Dreams
Recurring Insight
Stroke of Genius
Concentrate
nAmbition’s Cost
Phyrexian Arena
Jace’s Ingenuity
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Fact or Fiction
62 Action

Lands:
Tundra
Underground Sea
Scrubland
Windswept Heath
Scalding Tarn
Marsh Flats
Polluted Delta
Arid Mesa
Verdant Catacombs
Misty Rainforest
Bloodstained Mire
Flooded Strand
Homeward Path
Boseiju, who Shelters All
Urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
Dimir Aqueduct
Orzhov Basilica
Azorius Chancery
Drowned Catacombs
Glacial Fortress
Isolated Chapel
Fetid Heath
Mystic Gate
Sunken Ruins
Command Tower
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Swamp[/cards]

Stats:
38 Land
62 Action

17 Slots of Acceleration
9 Slots Creature Control
12 Counterspells
4 Extra Turn Effects
5 Win Conditions
5 Tutors
9 Card Draw

I've been noticing that a number of my Commander decks have adopted some similar structural choices that have proven to be more effective than a lot of my previous work, and I thought I'd take the time to stare at and break down one of my lists and try to figure out what it is that
I've done differently, and why it's been working better.

Oloro is probably the deck of mine that has the fewest general-specific innovations - it's the most generic, and W/U/B is a pretty good representation of the most played parts of the color pie.

The first thing that surprised me was how far the number of win conditions I'm running has really dropped, in this list more than most. Instead of 13-18 "good" threats, there's now just a core of five that can pretty much win on the spot if they're set up well. Five is probably the lowest I've gone, but with five tutors in the deck, I hadn't noticed any lack of supply on that score. If you've got ten ways to go for an insta-win, that's probably all that you really need. And that opens up an awful lot of design space for other choices - potentially about twenty percent of the action slots in the decklist freed up for other duties, assuming about 16-18 win cons and 60-some action cards.

A few things I've been aiming for more
intentionally was the triad of a good ramp engine, good card advantage, and a good suite of countermagic. Much easier said. Figuring out what those things actually look like has been a pretty long and tortured journey. Changing one of those elements really affects the other two in some unexpected ways.

As much as I can, I like to ramp more than a single mana at a time. Signets and Talismans aren't exactly my favorite rocks. Compared to a lot of the options that green has, they're really pretty disappointing. It takes up a lot of card slot space, and that potentially puts you at risk of drawing a lot of unimpressive chaff over the course of the game. I was initially more inclined to run about 12-18 slots of acceleration in non-green lists, almost all of which would put me ahead by at least two mana.

Alongside that, I was inclined more or less exclusively towards "bursty" card draw for most of my lists. Braingeyser, Jin-Gitaxias, Recurring Insight, Necropotence, Necrologia - cards that
provide huge bursts of card advantage all at once, and make their presence felt. Accordingly, most of that happened to be sorcery speed.

Eventually, with a lot of trial and error, I figured what a lot of experienced control deck-builders have always known was good in tournament magic - that with both acceleration and card draw, there are some nice advantages to building on a streamlined curve, and making use of the EOT step. Building for EDH differs in a lot of ways from tournament magic, but that seems to be one of the constants.

The eventual framework included about 9-12 acceleration spells that I could play on turns 1 or 2 - enough to create a pretty fair chance of getting a turn's jump ahead of the table, hopefully giving you an opening to safely cast a spell early on, and also has the nice side effect of improving mana consistency. Once, I only did it in green, which is better suited to that. Now, I do it pretty much across the board.

To supplement that acceleration, you definitely want a way
to replenish your hand within the first several turns. Otherwise, you're going to start missing land drops, and it may not be very safe to offset that by tapping down for acceleration that costs three mana or more in the mid-game phase. The exact number of early card draw spells, I'm still figuring out. Oloro has about 7 or 8 - which I think might be slightly light. Some of my other decks have more, and seem to enjoy it. And then there's the green decks that cheat on their acceleration so much that tapping down for a five or six mana card draw spell on turns 3-4 is pretty easy - there's certainly some very nice advantages to being green in EDH. But for Oloro, I'm not sure what other cheap card draw options are out there that I can safely play without dropping my countershield, and that generates at least +2 cards in advantage. There's definitely a lot of good options on the more expensive side of things, but most of those I've reserved for green-based decks with better and more consistent mana ramp.
So that remains an area I'm watching.

So, counterspells, the third part of the equation. Not all my blue decks have a countermagic suite, and not all the best decks need it, so it's certainly not as essential as getting the acceleration/early card draw balance right. A good counterspell suite can be just awful to fight past, however, even (especially?) in a multiplayer format where there are multiple players and *something* ugly is bound to eventually get through (hopefully something ugly of yours).

The first thing I got wrong was failing to pay attention to how much not having either cheap or instant speed card draw available was hamstringing the decks I was building that included heavy (12 or more slots) commitments to countermagic. I thought it was far more tolerable a downside than it was, but the amount of turns I spent holding up countermagic, waiting to draw fresh lands off the top of my deck, was just a complete and awful waste. Stalling out your opponent is great - stalling out yourself,
not so much.

The other choice I made with countermagic that took me a good long while to arrive at was ditching every last one of the "free" counterspells from 99% of my lists - stuff like Force of Will, Pact of Negation, Foil, Misdirection, Commandeer. I'm still not completely convinced that I've got that angle totally figured out - it's possible that running enough cheap card advantage also significantly alters that equation. The decks where I do/would run them still, are the decks that have ludicrous access to both card draw and mana (Edric). But my current theory is that it's far better to avoid the card advantage, versatility, and/or tempo tradeoffs inherent in most of those cards, and count on your manabase to develop to the point that you can simply hold an extra three mana open without breaking a sweat, and then you don't need to count on having an expendable blue card to pitch, or to mortgage five mana on your next turn.

The second part of that theory was that in decks where
you're going to be holding lots of mana open for a good part of the game, some of the slightly more expensive countermagic options like Desertion, Overwhelming Intellect, and Spelljack can really be worth it, and advantageous over running cheaper options in their place. The tempo advantages from tapping two extra or three mana compared to a Dissipate and actually taking the creature you just countered, or drawing six cards, or taking someone else's extra turn for them, are pretty compelling. With a sprinkling of cheaper removal options in the mix, enough so that with cheap countermagic you have perhaps 14-18 good early removal options all told, it works out to be a pretty good balance.

Hunh. I think I must miss playing competitive magic/writing articles. The theory-crafting aspect of deck-building is definitely one of the things I enjoy most about this game. That's maybe obvious from the fact that I wrote a novel for no apparent reason.