MTG Salvation

Time to let the cat out of the bag....





-The deck has elegant synergy with the general, but is not utterly dependent on her. Cards like Vampiric Tutor are not only great cards in their own right, but they are neat with Damia's upkeep ability. Other spells such as Insidious Dreams , Forbid and Dream Halls have been included to be abused with the general (the latter is a risky play in multiplayer), and aren't lackluster in their own right. Misdirection, Force of Will and Commandeer serve a similar purpose, by having a drawback that may be beneficial once Damia has resolved.

-Yes, the deck has a combo for the Johnny's out there. In fact, there are at least three combos (in the sense that they essentially win the game outright....unless someone has a Stranglehold in play :-/).

A. Tooth and Nail for Palinchron and Vorinclex = infi mana. Then somehow get Oona, Queen of the Fae out and mill everyone out. There are alot of ways to reenact this combo. Provided you have Mana Reflection in play, you can instead Tooth and Nail for Palinchron and Oona. If one or the other of the three pieces is in your graveyard, get Body Double to act on its behalf.

B. Time Warp + Genesis + Eternal Witness + sac outlet
Obv obv....it's a blue green deck we're talking about

C. Time Warp + Sheoldred, Whispering One + Eternal Witness + sac outlet

As aforementioned, there are heaps and heaps of permutations for the above combos, but the third is by far my favourite. Noone sees it coming, seriously.

-The deck has a very efficient toolbox. There are many tutor spells, blue and black arguably being the best tutor colours. However, many cards serve more than one purpose in the deck. Forbid can turn into a niche Entomb by discarding your bomb through buyback (value!). Intuition can search for answers, or for those with miserable lives, fetch the Life from the Loam + Strip Mine + irrelevant card soft-lock combo.
However, LftL can be used with Tolaria West to continually for answers to any situation. Phyrexian Tower to complete your Eternal Witness + Sheoldred + Time Warp combo? For those unfamiliar, LftL gets dredged back to your hand every turn (or whenever you draw and LftL is in your graveyard) and replayed, returning Tolaria West and up to two other lands (or Lonely Sandbar for card-draw). Tolaria West is transmuted for that silver bullet you need. Engineered Explosives to deal with the infinite Pestermite tokens next turn or other annoying crap below 3 CMC? Homeward Path to take back your Jin-Gitaxias? Tormod's Crypt to f*** up that Hermit Druid deck? Slaughter Pact to deal with that Vorinclex? Dryad Arbor to activate Survival of the Fittest? You get the point.

Anyways, suggestions and queries are more than welcome.

Tap 9: Tooth and Nail finding Palinchron + Eternal Witness.
Untap 7
Eternal Witness Grabs Tooth and nail
Tap 9: Tooth and Nail find Phantasmal Image + Oona.
Image Targets Palinchron
Untap 7
return Image and generate infinite mana. Kill with Oona

I feel like you want a lower curve and more ramp spells to abuse daminia, and I think you can skip out on some of the higher CC draw spells like fact or fiction.

I think you want more cheap 1:1 answers that you can use to answer opposing threats with and giant bombs that require answers.

The preators just seem too slow for me.

Phantasmal Image is a cheaper more versitile infinite mana combo with Palinchron than Vorinclex. Jin draws you 7 cards - but your general already fills similar roles. Sheolord is just kinda slow. I feel like I would just want to be ripping through my deck ramping and looking for tooth and nail or another infinite combo.

Some ways to protect Daminia might be nice like Sylvan Safekeeper, [card] Asceticism
[/card], or Plaxmanta. Even just some cheap counterspells like dispel or pact of negation

Cards that let you discard or play extra lands like exploration could be nice.

More Wrath effects might be helpful to stay alive longer All is Dust, life's finale, Oblivion Stone.

Bosiju, who shelters all can be nice for slaming through tooth and nail. (and Palinchron can untap it so both TNNs are uncounterable.).

In your first example the palinchron untaps 7 and ewitness returns your TnN...but you can't cast it again for 9 to get the image and oona since you've only untapped 7. I haven't tried out image, but it seems worth a shot, at least as a second metamorph.

Also, I like my bombs....simply because they're bombs and they apply heaps of pressure. Vorinclex isn't in the deck just for tooth and nail combo, he is there as a reanimator target and for uber mana accel. Sheoldred also enables the infi-time warp combo whilst at the same time affecting board state. And yes, Jin just neuters an active Damia, but he's such a good reanimator target that i can't justify cutting him for now. Drawing past your maximum hand size allows you to discard other bombs, or stuff like genesis that you want there.
Slaughter pact has usually been tutored and played sorcery speed just as a last resort answer. Pact of negation should be included - i'll find a slot for it.
Fact or fiction is one of those spells that seem to be counterintuitive to the deck (it's a draw spell for christ's sake), but it is such a great draw spell with a relevant discard effect. Some people seem to think spells like cultivate or kodama's reach suck with Damia, but the extra land you draw would probably have been relevant to resolving Damia - you most likely would've needed it to not miss a land drop each turn. So what I'm trying to say is, sometimes you just need that early fact or fiction or cultivate to smooth out your early game and let you cast Damia. But anyways i'll take your suggestion and replace it with an explosive vegetation. What good ramp spell have i missed?

I'm not really a big fan of o-stone...if I can't tutor an artifact with trinket mage then i'd be hard pressed to include it. This list doesn't run tezzeret the seeker.
I'm happy with having singleton answers that can be tutored. I don't feel that I need more than 1 wrath, since i can usually tutor for one quite easily.

BTW, I only ever win less than 10% of my games through tooth and nail...the other 90% is usually through infi time walk or flooding the opponent with massive card and board advantage through an active Damia, and after clearing my opponent's hand and board.

Thanks for your suggestions!!

It only works with a mana doubler out. Here's a better explanation

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=330557

I've been playing Damia a while and I believe extra draw in necessary if you're playing with anyone who knows how to play decent magic. Because if they do, they run spot removal and will keep you from untappibg with damia if they can.

Hunting Wilds is another ramp spell.

My list is in my sig if you want to check it out. I used to run a lot of bombs but I've tuned the deck more and lowered the curve.

Yes i rarely ever get to untap with Damia if all i've been doing is ramping up to her until that point. Doing that is just asking for some to steal/kill Damia. Resolving Damia for the first time but with an empty hand is just asking for trouble.

My deck is different from the other lists here. I run "fatter" spells, not so much cheap and efficient spells. I do rely on cheap cards like gilded drake, misD, FoW and commandeer at times to steer me out of trouble, and when i resolve any of my game ending bombs. Dream Halls + Praetor's Counsel usually ends the game right on the spot seeing as by that stage my graveyard would have been stocked by LftL or hermit druid. MY curve is quite high, but i do focus alot on resolving big spells.

It makes the combo cost 11, but its a 1 card combo that kills everyone.

If you are going for the "fatter" spells why not just go with Mimeoplasm? You get the nice ramp/tutor/draw of BUG, and your general is a likely a 12/12 for 5 with various abilities.

To me it seems like the entire reason for playing Daminia is to have crazy card draw either from playing as many spells as possible every turn, or discarding cards you can't play.

i guess the upside with damia is that you present threats at different angles, whether through an active damia pumping card advantage or the inevitability of recurrable fatties. mimeoplasm's most obvious weakness is its reliance on the graveyard. my list makes good use of the graveyard (card selection and card advantage from graveyard), but it doesnt fumble after a relic activation.
also, i still manage to use 3-4 cards a turn after untapping with damia, despite how high my curve seems to be. my go-to card is dream halls, and after that i pitch cards until get a praetor's counsel. that usually seals the game on the spot.

but yeah...i admit i hadnt thought of the more complicated way of winning outright with 11 mana. once u tooth and nail for 9 to get vorinclex and palinchron u get infi mana, and with that mana u should have a way to tutor and cast the oona that same turn (transmuting tolaria west for a summoner's pact to fetch and cast oona sounds quite fun to pull off :D).

You get oona with TnN after you cast eternal witness then clone it after youve produced 10 million mana with the clone copying palinchron when you bounce it to your hand.

Yes.....another poster (that0neguy) had already mentioned that alternate method. But the issue I have with casting it for 11 is exactly that....I'm casting it for 11.
If I have 11 mana, I should have already won the game through a different means. This deck usually combos off on turn 6 (slow for a dedicated combo deck, but reasonable seeing as I never intended for it to exclusively play out as a combo deck). Ramping to 11 to tooth and nail is irrelevant, when I could have already won through a time warp lock or the praetor's counsel/dream halls game state. Most times I can find a faster combo out before I cast that 9 mana TnN (which sometimes doesn't even seal the game immediately).
I understand there are various means to win instantly with TnN, but unless I can do that with 9 mana, I don't really care if I can with 11.
If someone can find me a card that is similar to Chancellor of the Spires, the only difference being that it allows you to cast an instant/sorcery from your yard not your opponent's, then that would be terrific :D. It would turn a 9 mana TnN into a one-card combo, which is ideally preferred over an 11 mana one.
I'll explain my wishful thinking:
With 9 mana TnN for Palinchron + [that card similar to chancellor of the spires]
Resolve Palinchron trigger first to untap 7 lands, float 7, then resolve the next trigger, targetting TnN to cast and entwine for and extra 2 mana. 5 mana in pool.
The 2nd TnN will fetch and dump Phantasmal Image and Oona. The image will copy Palinchron, and you net 1 mana everytime you bounce and replay the image copying Palinchron....you get the point.

Have you had a any trouble running cultivate,kodama's reach, 9 fetchlands and only 5 basics?

only against monored or LD decks. the fetches always go for duals/shocks and i only ever hit around 2-5 fetches in a whole game. they will get the majority of the dual lands.
in games with a life from the loam, i occasionally exhaust my dual lands and move onto basics, but by that stage i should have filtered through my ramp spells or used them anyway, in which case my being out of basic lands is no concern, (unless i am reckless enough to hermit druid myself to death :P). when you consider the probability of hitting 1 of 2 ramp spells in a 100 card deck when there are twice the number of lands themselves than the spells to exclusively search for them, then you generally don't run into any trouble with your basic lands.
however against blood moon effects, the limited amount of basics this deck runs is a serious problem i will admit.
i also run very few basics because of hermit druid. milling on average 20 cards (you usually hit genesis, life from the loam + tolaria west/strip mine/fetch/lonely sandbar, or a nice reanimator target) allows you to exploit your graveyard more than if you were to run 12 or more basics.

5 basics seems like the optimal number for this deck (unless u run dedicated combo, in which case optimal is 0 basics).

hope this answers your question!

I always figured Nostalgic Dreams should be a Damia staple.

that card seems like it should be a GB staple, let alone a Damia staple.
i will be trying the card out. thanks!

Insidous dreams can be pretty good for getting your combos. It's pretty similar. Some people don't play it for fear of it being countered.

Yes, it was already in the list from the start. That card is so tech with the general.

I've been trying to figure out my next EDH deck that I want to make. I knew I wanted to play blue. I knew I wanted to play Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, Vedalken Orrery, Yawgmoth's Will, and Snapcaster Mage for some instant good times while reusing spells from the graveyard. I thought about playing mono blue, U/B, Grixis colors, and U/R. But I think I just found my next general. Your deck is quite impressive. I won't copy all of your ideas, but I definitely want to use it as a starting point. It looks fun as heck!