Puschkin

Sol Ring has been printed in every single Commander deck (that's 15 so far), it has dropped in value dramatically.

Wrath of God was just a placeholder name for the type of effect. Planar Collapse certainly won't work. If Wrath is not allowed due to budget reasons, try False Prophet or Evacuation.

If you like my suggestions, why didn't you upvote the comment? Just asking because I made the observation that detailed comments are less likely to get upvotes than "Cool deck, bro" type of one-liners.

Artifacts are allowed, so why should Eldrazis not be?

Yeah but remember? The Hot Page is irrelevant ;)

Well, sometimes even Puschkin locks them up in the closet ;)

Beware the morning wood!

Neither deck description nor tags say it should stay modern, so I thought it would be viable. Okay then ;)

You can find them here, too ;) I mean, take any creature type or block mechanic, run a deck search and you'll find countless decks that differ in just a few cards.

You have to consider:
A well designed deck has less room for improvement. This also means less replies! But if a deck has flaws, people will comment on that and make suggestions. And if a deck is actually on the weaker side of things, then even novice players may be able to make sound suggestions. In either way, a suboptimal deck has more potential to generate messages. Each message counts toward "hotness". More importantly, once you replied, you get notifications if others reply. This causes a positive feedback loop that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the deck.

Yeah, make a brake. I need that from time to time, too, albeit for slightly different reasons. But I know you'll come back :)
And you can always call me out for help on your decks. I am a bit rusted regarding the tournament scene but my knowledge of cards is vast. As long as you want some twists and fresh ideas on any deck, I am your man.

Why Niv-Mizzet? The "ultimate" EDH deck would not rely on it's commander at all. It would have a five color commander to have access to all colours when building the deck but it would probably never actually cast the commander. I would use Child of Alara because that one can be played in times of need and if it gets destroyed, it resets the game, but I would not add any cards that combo with it. At least none that are weak without the commander.

See, that's the basic problem with EDH: Take any commander, lets say Teferi. That makes your deck blue. No matter how well you design that deck and what kind of great combos you'll find to support Teferi, they will never be as good as cards like Reins of Power or Bribery are on their own. Which means you'll end up with these cards in evers single EDH deck that runs blue - if not, the deck is just weaker. And when cutting cards to make room for the staples, surprisingly for a 100 card highlander, you won't have anything else to cut except the cards that combo with your commander. Because mana ramp, removal and tutors are more important.
In this way, EDH actually beats itself: You are supposed to run diverse decks with fun interactions basing on unique legends. But you circumvent the highlander effect with tutors and library manipulation and you don't have enough space for the cards that should be the heart of the deck.

EDH is a format where ignorance is truly bliss: The less the players know about the format, the more fun it is.

Urm, yes, but that adds another card (with a restrictive mana requirement no less) you have to have in play just to make one working. I am all for making odd cards work but there is a point where it gets a bit silly.
We could do it anyway and just pretend the line about paying life wasn't there :P

I understand you, too. You just have to adjust your useage of Vault a bit:

a) Stop focussing on the HOT page. I know it is not easy, but ignoring it is actually beneficial for everyone involved!
b) Instead have a look at Unloved and Active decks.
c) better yet, use the deck search and tags! Of course many users don't label their decks properly but you'll find the ones that do.
d) Once you have found what you like, interact with the authors of that deck *and stay in touch with them*! Use the Follow function or whatever it is called here and help each other out whenever someone brews up something new.

That way you will find more content that's your taste more reliably.

But once aroused ...

Actually Black Vise makes this deck Vintage legal only since Black Vise is banned in Legacy. And almost no card in this is legal in Modern ...

But it's old school for sure. This is actually what decks looked like back then when we built the decks ourselves (nowadays R&D pre-builds them for us).

About the deck:
* Hoodwink has to go.
The only benefit it has is that it only requires one colored mana but since you deck is almost mono-blue ... instead I would pack actual removal of sorts. Or, if you insist on that much bounce, what about Wash Out? It may be 4 mana but it gets rid of multiple threats and it doesn't target! As it is now you die to a single creature as long as it has hexproof.

* The deck is slow ... there isn't that much we could do about it, but at least a bit:
- I am a fan of cycling lands but not in this! You cannot afford that many lands that come into play tapped.
- As it is, the deck is already Vintage. Might as well add a Sol Ring.

* Planar Collapse
You don't have any creatures yourself and can't afford to wait until the opponent has four! Heck, you are bouncing his stuff and limiting the spells he can play, he will most likely never have 4 creatures in play! I think you have to bite the bullet and go up to 4 mana, adding Wrath of God instead. Better a more expensive card that does it's job than a cheaper one that will fail every single time you need it!
One of the Wraths could be Balance as long as you stay Vintage.

* Ivory Tower would be a wonderful way of keeping you alive.

* You sideboard is cards you consider adding, right? Cards that didn't make the cut? Because it won't work as a real sideboard (besides being 19 cards). A sideboard should cover the weaknesses of the deck and problems you might run into:
- You lack permanent removal spells. Oblivion Ring, Dismantling Blow, something like this.
- Creatures with come into play effects would be very annoying for you, Torpor Orb solves this. Humility would even be better but costs more mana.
- Burn decks circumvent about all your defenses. Add Douse to deal with them. Especially with those Arcane Labs, a Douse would mean game.

Have you considered Seton, Krosan Protector?

Replace 4 Forest with Treetop Village! Imagine that, the poeple living there would be like head louses for your ents ... and Primal Bellow should be Might of Oaks, flavour wise.

Other than that, pretty boring deck, though^^

Typically, going for tournament worthy decks drains all the fun out of the game. Unless you get your fun by stomping opponents of course. But Magic is by heart a game of other components, mainly creativity, but also exploration, imagination and interaction. It has a very strong emphasis on social play, the cards are able to tell stories, the game is made by and for roleplayers.
You should be HAPPY that there is still a place where these elements are nurtured! Countless sites focus on tournaments. Tournaments means that efficiency and results is all that counts - it's a cutthroat environments and cutthroat environments will create cutthroat mentality players! The art of casual is lost to waaaay too many players out there!

Yes, sometimes casual equals not enough skills. However, only competitive players that are already spoiled would think all casuals are without skill. In fact, if you equal casual = no skill and see casual just as a low step on becoming a magic master, then you still haven't really understood what casual play actually means!

Yes, if you always play against weak decks, you won't become a master. But if you always play against tournament decks, you won't either. See, nobody gets better by reading decklist and playing someone else's decks will also only get you that far. Take the winning deck of the last championship and give it to a newbie - he won't know how to play it nor would he be able to understand why this deck works better than others.
You actually need to play and build your own decks and move on. Casual play can help you a lot regarding this, as Necrumlsize pointed out. You need to know basic concepts before you can grasp the advanced concepts other decks use.

Regarding the Hot Page:
There are dozens of reasons why specific decks turn up there, seemingly regardless of the quality of the deck. One of them are discussions like this - meanwhile, this discussion about casual generated 25 replies, that's more than half if the replies this deck got ;)

* Prey Upon
Only really works if you have an Eldrazi in play. And chances are, if you have one that the opponent doesn't kill immediatedly ... well, then you most likely don't need that Prey Upon anymore. I would replace this with true creature removal (Beast Within) or at least upgrade it to Setessan Tactics (good in this deck because you have so much mana) or Ulvenwald Tracker.

* Boundless Realms
When you've got enough mana to cast this, then you don't need that many more lands. This could be a Gaea's Bounty for example.

* Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
You don't have that much colorless permanents and if you do (Eldrazis) then you are probably going to win anyway. Instead of getting a few life when you have your big hitters in play I'd rather have something that helps you getting/keeping them in play! Yavimaya Hollow would be the first basic land I would add. Of course that isn't exactly budget ... same is true for Gaea's Cradle, Thawing Glaciers and Cavern of Souls ... damn :) Hm.

The problem with that card is that anybody can destroy it by paying life. It is pointless to build a deck around a card that has it's own removal built in. I could build a deck around the concept of Volrath's Dungeon but it would not contain the Dungeon itself.

It is boring if the players involved are veterans and the decks streamlined (which they are these days - as soon as something is an official format, it isn't casual anymore) and it is if the chosen modus is multiplayer free-for-all (which it usually is). Half of my rant also applies to any other free-for-all. EDH just amplifies those mechanisms because you have 40 life and 100 unique cards, the slowdown is so great that any aggressive strategy is absolutely doomed => decks get even slowe and more controllish => a vicious circle that results into something we here in germany call "Beamten-Mikado" ("clerk jackstraws"): "He who moves first, loses".

I might add another reason and again it will make me sound arrogant, but only few people other than you will read it, so ...

4) Nobody would actually understand my advice anyway - at the very least not the intended audience of that article!
Multiplayer is an art, highlander is an art and EDH is both. I can claim I have mastered both - I am playing casual multiplayer since 1994 and have written articles since the old days of Beyond Dominia. Highlander has always been my personal playstyle and I was the dedicated highlander player of my german premier league team. See - you can find a highlander primer I've written on the most important german forum of that time as early as 2003.
And EDH? I am still amazed how popular it is and how exited everybody is "you can play more expensive stuff! You can play cards never used before! The decks are so varied!" Well, I've always build my decks varied and highlanderish, why do you need tailormade rules to enforce that?
You know my decks here - one of the reasons I get so few replies is that they are too advanced for the average player. They don't really understand the concepts behind them. And this is understandable - it always depends on your environment. I almost exclusively play against veterans of the game. You simply need other cards and tactics to survive there. Just think about how many multiplayer decks here on MTGVault don't run any kind of artifact or enchantment removal - unthinkable in my environment! That's probably a bad example, though, because it sounds like a simple metagame call. But I am talking about things that aren't that obvious. Many things get more important the more experienced your adversaries are, for example graveyard-removal (exile) and in turn ways to prevent your own cards from getting exiled. In our environment a card like Claws of Gix is much better than in Average Joe's environment becacuse it let's me sacrifice my permanents in response to something that is about to exile (or steal!) it.

Gah, I am rambling again ... long story short: My advice it too advanced to be understood (by those that are in need of a how-to-EDH-article).