BrianBell

Run at least 2, preferably 3 prosecution in the main. they not only boost your army but kill bob, snappy, lavamancer, souls tokens, and much more. it will single handedly win you not just the mirror but the affinity and faery matchups. any card that steamrolls 3 matchups while being solid in the rest is VERY maindeckable. i'd also suggest dropping 3 of your discard for 3 tidehollow skuller, and for sideboard run burrenton forgetender to stop pyroclasm.

i'm pretty sure you take 6 if you flip a procession off of bob, so i agree that bob should be dropped. if your looking for a draw engine for this deck, it should probably be phyrexian arena. also you are missing zealous prosecution, that card is absolutely nasty, you should probably be running 3 or 4 main board.

cool deck, i think vexing devil might be cool, if they pay the life the sac will still trigger artist and beetle. also goes with the theme of bad choices.

honestly i'd build the deck quite differently, so suggestions i have for the main would require some substantial re-engeneering of the core. but for the side, i think a spirit of the labyrinth to grab with zur would be sweet. zealous prosecution would also be incredible in this deck, but the 4 favorable winds may be enough crowd pump as is. if you dont mind, i may try building my version of this deck at some point.

good, solid points. i appreciate the full explanations. question, what are the surveilling sprites for in sideboard?

really cool deck! i agree with sora119 though, if your running zur, you better be running some form of protection he can fetch for himself. i personally would run 3 and not 4 zur, because though they are a cornerstone of the deck, once you land one and give it protection it's going to stick on the field, making the other zur's dead in your hand due to legendary status.
as for the rest of the deck, you definitely need some sort of draw engine. arena is fetchable off of zur, but you are already running bitter blossoms, and so the life loss may well become a liability. so the man i suggest for the job is jace beleren. lets think about him in comparison to arena. in a fast-paced deck like this, arena will probably draw you 3 to 4 cards before the game is over. if all you do is -1 jace until he dies, he will give you 3 cards. this is less than four, but notice that unlike arena, he gives you the first card IMMEDIATELY, which in my experience is well worth the possibility of one less draw in a deck like this . yes, by being a planeswalker, jace is vulnerable. but this deck's strength is it's ability to pour on pressure, and if the opponent burns a card or combat phase to take out jace (who's -1 has already replaced himself), they will be loosing even more tempo, and quite honestly i dont see them coming back from that.
my only other observation on the deck is the land count, i feel that a deck curving out at 4 needs 23 lands at most, probably more like 22.
so all in all, i would -1 midnight haunting, -1 land, -1 zur, +3 baby jace, and then i'm not really sure where to put the protection.
feel free to take as little or as much of my advice as you like. great deck, and happy building!

if you dont have pyrohemia it's dead, i'd really suggest dropping down to two or at most three, and just run another enlightened tutor and maybe something else in their place.

thanks kmk!
and yeah, i somehow totally missed genju of the fields in my first readthrough of the deck. definately drop them you're gonna need to deal damage more than gain life. in their place i'd probably run lightning bolts or burrenton forge-tenders, though genju of the spires could work aswell.

I had a deck that was allot like this a few years ago, but mono red. it was a ton of fun. from my experience with that deck, i can tell you kmk888 is right, pulse of the forge is dead in here. also, dangerous wager is really good in decks that empty their hands fast, but these decks do not since your spending mana on pyrohemia. so i'd probably drop it aswell. though braid of fire is absurd with pyrohemia, with out it braid of fire is comletely dead. so i'd drop those down to 2. that leaves you with 6 open slots. 3 of those slots should be for idyllic tutor, as it grabs you pyrohemia if you haven't drawn it yet and braid of fire once you have. the last three open slots are up for whatever you find works best. in my list i found deep-slumber titan and war elemental to be allstars, so i highly recomend them. come to think about it, a 2 tajic 2 slumber-giant split might work better than the 4 tajic -- having playsets of legendary creatures can be awkward. at one point i ran akki lavarunner -- end of their turn wipe board with pyrohemia, my turn drop lavarunner and flip. he was allot of fun, though hilariously risky at times.
Nice deck overall, happy building!

any time. also, black sun's zenith seems ridiculously good -- tutor it up, board wipe, shuffles back in, rinse and repeat.

sweet deck, i have a slightly similar casual deck and this makes me wonder if i should hone it for modern. do you have trouble with pyroclasm and the like? also, what do you think about the possibility of eldrazi monument? and is there a reason you aren't running nettle sentinel, or do you just not have room for it?

This is a really cool deck, i like it a lot. i'm surprised to see the exclusion of nether void, is there something i'm missing that nonbos with it or something? Temporal extortion would also be sweet in this deck. though i see the combo of cloister and bridge, i still feel cloister is pretty lackluster. i would much rather run glacial chasm in that slot, since chasm + crucible results in the same lock wile being more resilient to removal (& landfall triggers for bloodghast), and chasm just seems more solid on its own than cloister. if you decide to do that, i might also consider scroll rack -- it doesn't technically draw so you can use it with maralen down, and once maleren is down you can use it to cycle away your less useful cards. though six mana is really pushing it, i might also consider eternity vessel. not taking damage from your general, any of your pestilence effects, and being able to draw as much as you like with necropotence seems ridiculous, and with crucible + strip mine it only gets better.

...i dont understand what you are saying. grammar please?

you seem to be suggesting i build a STAX or Sneak & Show deck. for competitive play, i would run a STAX list over this deck any day. however, this deck is not for competition but for the kitchen table, and so fun and flavor take priority over win percentage. the flavor i am working at is simply "All-Colorless Eldrazi Ramp," which may give you more of an idea on where i am heading with this deck. i definitely agree the deck needs some work. as for the number of mana rocks, i am caught in a dilemma -- if i dont run enough of them, my eldrazi dont come down early enough; but the more mana rocks i run, the less slots there are for the eldrazi themselves. right now i am airing on the side of more mana rocks, since being stuck at 6-7 mana with eldrazi in hand is less fun then being at 10-12 mana and on the draw, atleast for me. the ideal solution to this problem would be card draw, but to stay in flavor the deck must be colorless, and am blanking on good colorless card draw. thoughts on that?

wow i'd totally forgot about that. but come to think about it, with the creature count at 9, i'm not sure if it's worth it. yeah i'd get to push through an eldrazi for a lot less mana, but since there's only 9 eldrazi i almost never have more than one in hand. this means that i'll be in situations where i have up to 15ish mana, but i'll be only using 4 of it to sneak in an eldrazi, which seems like a waste. it also means i wont get the "cast" triggers off of kozilek/ulamog/artisan. you could make the argument that amulet protects from counters, but caverns fills that role just as well. so i feel that in a more creature heavy list amulet would be an allstar, but in here it seems rather lackluster.

yeah the pithing needles are solid, i totally didn't know those were standard. deathrites are also great, i didn't recomend them because i assumed you would be running them if you had them. the deck looks pretty sweet now, tell me how it holds up in testing.

first off, unless you are running a mill or graveyard combo deck, dedicated mill cards are a waste of mana -- cut mind grind. from there, you should probably cut a land and add 3 springleaf drum, the shinanigans with seer and siren will be worth it. i'd also cut 4 psychic strike for a third dimir charm and 3 syncopates or dissolves -- strike just feeds their deathrites, charm is REALLY good and the counters are also very solid. i'm tempted to recomend judge's familiar but i dont really know what to drop, maybe tormented hero, but hero might be good, not really sure. if you find hero to be lackluster in testing, give the bird a shot. i'd actually drop erebos -- i'd hate to hit him with seer, and his ability seems really risky what with 3 seer and 4 thoughtsweize already in main board -- for another another charm and another thassa or aqueous form. the unblockable stuff from thassa/form is great for inspired and the scry is nice. thassa lives through removal and is potentially a 5/5 late game, but form costs 2 less and triggers heroic -- they're both good, you can go with whichever. from their you can drop a specter for a third siren -- the inspired abuse may push it's value over that of specter.
I dont really understand what's happening in your sideboard. last thoughts and shadow slice are, to be perfectly honest, horrible. their cmc is way to high for seers, and their effects are not worth their cost. as stated above, mill cards are dead outside of a dedicated mill deck -- so phylax is bad. yes he turns on inspired, but the mill minuscule and irrelevant. i garentee that every serious standard game in which you find yourself using his ability as a win con you will lose. if you are so far behind that you are resorting to tap-mill, you're not gonna win. it's that simple. even if his ability was half decent, his cost of 5 is really scary for seer. i'm also confused about whip -- the lifegain is nice, but i it's ability is way too mana intensive for this deck. Elixir of immortality is solid lifegain and, to a certain extent, deathrite hate. i also dont really know enough about standard to know what would replace them, so leave 'em in i guess. The two things i full on agree with are the 2 bident (these are even worth 4 life off of seer) and 3 ashiok.
so after all that we now have a sb consisting of 2 elixer, 3 ashiok and 2 bident, leaving us with 8 open slots. from what i see, you will have some trouble with more agro decks due to the lack of removal. the obvious choice would be hero's demise, but if you want to keep it budget, some number of doom blade/pharika's cure/ultimate price would work. i'd also run the fourth seer for matchups where card advantage is key. that leaves you with 3 slots to do whatever you want with -- you could run your erebos's if you are worried about opponent's lifegain, more removal if your really concerned for agro, the final drum if you want the deck to go faster, or even the judge's familiar for the control mirror.
once again, really cool deck, and happy building!

woops, missed the synergy with winter orb. i knew there was something i wasn't seeing. and here's a question that's also probably the product of an oversight: is there a reason you're running forbidden orchard over a verdant catacombs or some other fetch? though there are ways to negate the creatures with pox-rounding-math and stuff, it seems like paying the one life and searching for a scrubland would be much better than giving them blockers/attackers/staxfood. i'm probably missing something -- please enlighten me.

i dont think pain seer will be as good as they say. dont get me wrong -- i really, really want seer to live up to the hype, but as far as abilities go, he probably wont reach bob's ankles. however, bob's ankle-level is still pretty darn powerful. so i say there's no hurt in testing 'em out, but when you do make sure the curve is really low, and i suggest dropping 2 land and some other stuff for 4 springleaf drum and as some method of giving haste -- messanger's speed and hellrazer goblin are the only half-decent haste givers in standard that i know of -- so that you can fully abuse his ability.

i dont know a whole lot about standard, but this looks really cool. there do seem to be some areas that could use work though.
The main issue i see is that your deck does not have a low enough curve to run 18 land, especially since only 15 of them produce colored mana. It looks like you are trying for a more aggro build, and so i think by lowering the curve and raising the land count a bit you'll have much more consistantancy and overall better performance.
i suggest cutting cutthroat maneuver. the lifelink and potential double heroic trigger is nice, but at 4 mana it is way to pricy, especially for agro. i suggest running either dragon mantle (heroic trigger + cantrip and manasink), madcap skills (good pump and evation) or deviant glee (good low cmc pump and decent evation) in it's place.
the next few cards i would cut are abhorrent overlord and two gods of your choice. overlord because you're never realistically going to reach 7 mana even with nykthos, and the two gods because though the gods are very good they are 4 cmc, and an agro deck doesn't need more than 4 cards at 4 cmc. in the 3 slots opened by these drops i would run lands. also i would drop a nykthos for another blood crypt, an agro deck would rather have colored mana right off the bat then later game mana excel.
after those changes the deck should run pretty smooth, just platest around and find which of your 2 and 1 drops are least effective and drop them to round out playsets of the better ones.
happy building!