Dear Mister McDole,

You are wrong.

You suggested in your recent article that a spike would choose to play Arcanis the Omnipotent as their spike general of choice. I feel that Arcanis is only the fourth strongest general a mono blue player can field; depending on what format you are building for (1v1 or 4-player chaos) you should build a deck around Vendilion Clique, Azami, Lady of Scrolls, or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir before you seriously consider Arcanis as your spike general.

The reasons for these ‘alternative' choices are manifold, but as I said before, it really depends on if you are playing duels or multiplayer. If you are building for a duel event (such as the events they hold 40 minutes from my home store monthly) then there is no question that the best mono-blue general is Vendilion Clique: evasion, focused disruption, and high-powered general damage is critical to winning in 1-on-1 edh. Especially in a post-Rofellos world, one need not worry as much about the critical mass of mana acceleration we were experiencing in the months between his unbanning and the banning of both him and Tolarian Academy. Vendilion Clique decks speed out a turn two or three clique and use cheap countermagic and bounce to swing seven times for the win.

The strategy differs greatly if you have to face multiple opponents; the Clique is really only effective at disrupting a single opponent, and cannot really effectively kill anyone as your clique is not fast enough to overcome three opponent's worth of removal, blockers, and their own ‘winning the game'. In these situations you are much better off selecting a general a bit more expensive, but situationally much more powerful.

Teferi is a seemingly no-brainer, he keeps your opponents off their instants, and allows you to flash out surprises at every turn (literally). That is why, for my rebuttal, I'm going to provide you an alternative decklist for your spiky edh: Azami, Lady of Scrolls. I believe I've boiled down my issues with your Arcanis deck to three points:

1. You aren't drawing enough cards. You have the ability to start drawing three cards a turn on turn seven (naturally, six, five or four with particularly strong mana acceleration). You have to spend your early turns countering particularly brutal spells from your opponents in order to survive to your combo-rific turns; having played a few mono blue edh decks, I know how easy it is to run out of cards. And having to cast spells to draw cards is sub-optimal 90% of the time.
2. You aren't turning your cards into anything but more cards. Cards in hand are a neutral resource, they don't really afford you anything until you can cast them; your deck seems structured around the concept of building up cards over a few turns to slowly take over complete control of the game by taking infinite turns.
3. You are overly reliant on counterspells. Having read Sheldon Menery's excellent series about his hometown's EDH league, I know that the blue deck is the first to be targeted for expulsion from the table. You have 15 counterspells in 100 cards. You have card drawing that doesn't turn on until turn three. And most importantly, you have six creatures including your general. You have two creatures at four, one at five, one at six, one at eight, and one at a staggering fifteen mana. How soon do you plan on having an effective defense? One Mystical Tutor and one Personal Tutor are not going to be enough to get your defences set up early. And you do not have enough countermagic to hold off three dedicated opponents.

It strikes me that you are setting yourself up to play a 3-on-1 game of archenemy, without any of the advantages that that format presents. However; before I defend my choices, I feel it is only fair to show you the list I would like to present as an alternative.

"Azami, Lady of Spiky EDH"

• General (1)
• 1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Arcanis the Omnipotent
• 1 Echo Tracer
• 1 Enclave Cryptologist
• 1 Glen Eledra Archmage
• 1 Jushi Apprentice
• 1 Lighthouse Chronologist
• 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
• 1 Memnarch
• 1 Patron Wizard
• 1 Prodigal Sorcerer
• 1 Sage of Fables
• 1 Sea Gate Oracle
• 1 Sower of Temptation
• 1 Surgespanner
• 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 1 Temporal Adept
• 1 Trinket Mage
• 1 Uyo, Silent Prophet
• 1 Vedalken Aethermage
• 1 Vedalken Plotter
• 1 Vendilion Clique
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1 Voidmage Prodigy
• 1 Willbender
• 1 Zuran Spellcaster

• Instants (16)
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Commandeer
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Forbid
• 1 Force of Will
• 1 Hinder
• 1 Mana Drain
• 1 Memory Lapse
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Opportunity
• 1 Reality Spasm
• 1 Rewind
• 1 Spell Burst
• 1 Stroke of Genius
• 1 Thirst of Knowledge
• 1 Trickbind

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Ancestral Vision
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Merchant Scroll
• 1 Time Stretch

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Future Sight
• 1 Legacy's Allure
• 1 Mind Over Matter

• Artifacts (14)
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Diviner's Wand
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Memory Jar
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 1 Quicksilver Fountain
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Vedalken Shackles

• Lands (36)
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Riptide Laboratory
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Urza's Factory
• 1 Wasteland
• 25 Islands

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You can see from the list above that I have chosen a very different route for my mono blue EDH deck: fewer counterspells, many, many more creatures, and a defined theme around which the deck is built.

Wizards; potentially the most derided of the main onslaught tribes: not merfolk, so instantly hated when Onslaught was released, and perhaps because of that they've never been given much respect. That said; Wizards as a tribe have some of the most blatantly powerful creatures ever printed. Scoff if you must, but as blue creatures, they have an edge up on the competition: it doesn't hurt that as a general rule they have some insanely powerful and synergistic abilities.

I believe that the selection of Wizards as a pervading theme helps to minimize all three of the areas of difficulty that I defined above. Azami, Lady of Scrolls provides the deck with an alternative route to drawing multiple cards; tapping a wizards to draw a card gives the deck the capacity to draw three, five, or more cards each turn, doesn't require a turn to become available (unlike Arcanis), and it gives the deck a very good solution to problems two and three.

On the face of it, cards are cards and there aren't a lot of ways to change that fact; except one. Perhaps the most questionable card in the deck would be the pretty little beating stick: Diviner's Wand. This is a card that functions much like a Thornbite Staff in a shaman build: the ability to convert one resource into another, in this example those resources would be cards for dead opponents. In a very true sense, with cards like reality spasm and a few extra mana, you can conceivably kill all three of your opponents in one turn thanks to the wand, and perhaps a little help from your opponents earlier in the game.

The other primary issue that I had with your deck was a lack of non-counterspell defense. You ran six creatures (one of which at fifteen mana) and packed the deck jam full of ways to start taking infinite turns after a while. I have found that it is most often best to be a griefer a bit more subtly than your path: I still run plenty of counterspells, but I don't focus my efforts on building to a big finish, hoping and praying to get to the midgame while knowing that I'm the one guy everyone else will be targeting with the full extent of their power.

I can take a few extra turns when I need to but more importantly I can keep my opponents from having the opportunity to keep me from winning the game. Quicksilver Fountain and Oboro make for a soft lock that your opponents can only solve one mana at a time (acting like a faux winter orb) without limiting your ability to act and react whatsoever. Wizards has a pseudo Sparkmage-Collar with our favourite Tim and our less than favourite Jim along with the Basilisk Collar, effectively locking down the offenses of anything short of Ulamog and Uril.

This deck can play a fairly streamlined equipment-based aggressive gameplan, it can play an instant-based control game, and it can provide a game-breaking single-turn combo very much akin to dragonstorm with gigadrowse from standard a few years ago. This deck has so many pathways to attack your opponents, and it does so without being a jackhammer banging on the sidewalk at 7 in the morning.

Being a spike is about playing to win without becoming distracted by the cool things, the pretty things; but sometimes the best way to win is by denying your opponent the ability to stop you. Your deck's entire focus is on getting to "infinite turns", winning over the course of an hour of taking your own turn over and over again. My deck can do similar; winning all at once, not giving my opponents the ability to respond, not giving them an hour to formulate a gameplan to stop me at the most inopportune time. But my deck can do so much more than just winning in a magnificent and explosive manner; being able to effectively control the tempo of the game (without relying on fifteen cards out of a hundred) can prove just as powerful and "spiky" as taking every turn after the tenth.

I certainly respect your hypothesis, that there is a spiky way of building an EDH deck, I just reject your conclusion: that Arcanis the Omnipotent is the correct general and creatureless control is the right strategy to win games as a spiky EDH player. I have been reading your articles for months, and I most often find myself agreeing with what you write; but this time was different, this time I could not resist speaking out. There is room for spikes in the game of EDH (even though Bennie Smith would disagree with me); but there isn't any point in doing it if you won't do it right.

Sincerely, and with great respect,

Matthew Henderson,

@esternaefil on twitter