Hello, and welcome back to my deck garage. I want to first apologize to those who have sent me decks to fix in the past few weeks. I've had a busy life recently and that hasn't left much time for secondary things like Magic. Yes, Magic is a secondary thing. Be careful to not let Magic (or any hobby for that matter) get in the way of truly important things in your life.

With that reminder, things have slowed down a bit for me now, so I have a chance to get to some of these decks that have been piling up in my inbox. Today, we look at what appears to be quite a fun little combo deck from Jason:
 

Land x24

Dark Depths x1

Vesuva x3

Cloudpost x4

Academy Ruins x1

Teremorphic Expanse x4

Island x4

Forest x7

Creature x10

Magus of the Candelabra x3

Sakura Tribe Elder x4

Sakura Tribe Scout x1

Triskelion x2

Other Spells x26

Staff of Domination x3

Oblivion Stone x3

Reap and Sow x4

Sylvan Scrying x3

Aether Spellbomb x4

Syrum Visions x4

Chord of Calling x1

Reshape(? the Mirrodin sorcery that has a similar effect to Tinker) x1

Wierd Harvest x1

Lightning Greaves x2

the goal behind the deck is to get out the Magus, a couple

Cloudpost/Vesuvas and a Staff of Domination, use that to get infinite

mana, dump that into my Staff to draw my Library, or as much as I

need, and win with Triskelion/Academy Ruins/Magus/Staff for infinite

damage divided as I choose among any number of targets or just gain

obscenely huge amounts of life and pass the turn with a de-iced Dark

Depths token in play. The Scout is there so that I can play all the

lands in my deck (Academy Ruins) after I draw my library, and the

greaves are there to a) give the Scout and Magus haste so they can go

to work imediatly and b) protect them from things like Terror and

Last gasp. The deck can get some fairly good and fast hands, but

feels aquard and slow, or at least to slow for agro matches. Any

advice would be appreciated. Thanks. Jason

First off, I like the creative combo! I always thought that the Staff of Domination had potential, but this is by far the best use I have seen of it. It is actually quite a complex combo. As I was reading the e-mail, I had to work this all out to make sure I really understood what was happening, and to make sure it all really worked the way you wanted.

After playing around with it for a while, it seems that we need 3 Cloudposts/Vesuvas with the Magus and the Staff in play to make the combo work. In your e-mail, you said get  "a couple Cloudpost/Vesuvas", but as you see in the following scenario, 2 won't quite do it:

Tap 2 Cloudposts to get 4 mana.

Use 2 mana (leaving 2 mana in your pool) to use the Magus and untap your 2 Cloudposts.

Tap 2 Cloudposts to get 4 mana (totaling 6 mana in your pool)

Use 3 mana (3 mana left) to use the Staff to untap your Magus

Use 1 mana (2 mana left) to untap the Staff

Use 2 mana (mana pool empty) to use the Magus to untap 2 Cloudposts

Tap 2 Cloudposts to get 4 mana (totaling 4 mana in your pool)

Use 3 mana (1 mana left) to use the Staff to untap the Magus

Use 1 mana (mana pool empty) to use the Magus to untap 1 Cloudpost

Tap 1 Cloudpost to get 2 mana (2 mana left)
 

...and now you don't have enough mana left to untap your Staff. Having an additional basic land or two doesn't help either, because you don't gain the advantage of paying one mana to allow the Magus to untap a land producing more than one mana. Watch how much differently the cycle works if you have 3 Cloudposts:

Tap 3 Cloudposts to get 9 mana.

Use 3 mana (leaving 6 mana in your pool) to use the Magus and untap your 3 Cloudposts.

Tap 3 Cloudposts to get 9 mana (totaling 15 mana in your pool)

Use 3 mana (12 mana left) to use the Staff to untap your Magus

Use 1 mana (11 mana left) to untap the Staff

Use 3 mana (8 mana left) to use the Magus to untap 3 Cloudposts

Tap 3 Cloudposts to get 9 mana (totaling 17 mana in your pool)

Now THAT will give you your unlimited mana potential. The problem now is that your combo is 5 pieces instead of 4. This adds a level of difficulty in getting it going. To make it easier, I would, in this instance, suggest switching the Cloudpost/Vesuva combo out for Urzatron. There has been a lot of debate over which is better - Urzatron or Cloudpost/Vesuva, and in many cases, Cloudpost wins because you have a higher mana potential. But in this case, I believe Urzatron is better for 4 reasons:

1) If you don't draw a Cloudpost, your Vesuvas are worthless, because you don't want to play them copying anything else. Urzatron, however, at least nets you 1 mana for each piece as you look for the others.

2) With 12 lands in your library, it's more likely you will draw them than with only the 8 Cloudposts/Vesuvas.

3) The 7 mana from Urzatron sets off the combo just as well as the 9 mana from 3 Cloudposts, so the extra mana that usually makes Cloudposts more valuable is irrelevant.

+4 Urza's Tower

+4 Urza's Power Plant

+4 Urza's Mine

-4 Cloudposts

-3 Vesuva

Now, to find Urzatron, you currently have 3 copies of Sylvan Scrying. I think we need to increase that to 4.

+1 Sylvan Scrying

For the other combo pieces, to increase the likelihood of drawing them we need to round out to 4 Staffs and 4 Magi:

+1 Staff of Domination

+1 Magus of the Candelabra

Wow, all these additions have put us at 68 cards including 29 lands! That won't do! Let's see what we have that could be dropped. To start off with, Dark Depths, while it is fun, isn't really necessary. As I look at the colored mana requirements, I'm thinking the double blue mana for Reshape might be a little difficult, and the only other use we have for blue mana is Aether Spellbomb, Serum Visions, and Academy Ruins. Among those the only really important card is the Ruins, so let's drop 2 Islands, the blue sources, and the Expanses, since we won't need the color fixing. In their place, let's add 1 more Forest. 2 Islands, 4 Tribe Elders, and 4 Sylvan Scrying should be enough to make sure you get at least one blue source.

-1 Dark Depths

-2 Islands

-4 Serum Visions

-1 Reshape

-4 Aether Spellbomb

-4 Teramorphic Expanse

+1 Forest

To replace the card draw effect lost when we dropped blue, we can add in a set of Fa'adiyah Seer. The Seer can help you find Urzatron, and if you happen to discard the Staff, you can bring it back with Academy Ruins. In a pinch, you've also got another chump blocker. Since we just increased the chance of having our key artifacts hit the graveyard, let's add in one more Academy Ruins. Just be careful not to play them both if you draw them both!

+4 Fa'adiyah Seer

+1 Academy Ruins

Instead of the slow Reap and Sow, I would suggest playing Edge of Autumn. This allows you to search for a Forest, or, if you don't need one, it lets you cycle so you can have one more chance to draw a card you do need.

-4 Reap and Sow

+4 Edge of Autumn

Against aggro decks, since you mentioned that being a weakness, there are two ways to go. One is to deal with their threats as soon as they put them out, and the other is to beat them in a race. In other words, we need to get the combo out before they have time to do 20 damage. I can think of no better way to do both in green than Ohran Viper. I know it's on the pricey side, but it can intimidate their big aggro creature or help draw you a card a turn, depending on the situation in each game. I really think this could be the missing piece that makes this deck much smoother. Oblivion Stone can go, because it's just too slow to do you much good.

-3 Oblivion Stone

+4 Ohran Viper

I would recommend dropping Weird Harvest in favor of a second Chord of Calling. The main creature you want to get is the Magus, and there's no point in letting your opponent search for their creatures too. With one remaining card slot, I would put in a copy of Hurricane. This gives you a secondary win condition in case people start doing nasty things with Extirpate or Cranial Extraction. It can also deal with an opponent who relies  a little too heavily on those flying creatures!

+1 Chord of Calling

-1 Weird Harvest

+1 Hurricane

So, with all of these changes, your decklist might look like this:

Land x24

Academy Ruins x1

Island x2

Forest x9

Urza's Tower x4

Urza's Mine x4

Urza's Power Plant x4

Creature x19

Magus of the Candelabra x4

Sakura Tribe Elder x4

Sakura Tribe Scout x1

Triskelion x2

Fa'adiyah Seer x4

Ohran Viper x4

Other Spells x17

Staff of Domination x4

Edge of Autumn x4

Sylvan Scrying x4

Chord of Calling x2

Lightning Greaves x2

Hurricane x1

One other idea I had that you might consider is Moment's Peace. If your deck still has trouble 'going off' quickly enough, this might give you a couple more turns if you're fighting off a particularly aggressive deck.

I hope this gives you some ideas for your deck. Give it a try and see if it doesn't make things run a little more smoothly. Thanks again for your patronage of my deck garage!