A word of caution here: This guy is going to be hated. He’s not actually that powerful in EDH, because countering isn’t that fruitful, but both of his abilities are still good.

Just understand that even though this might not work out very well, blue is often a feel-bad color for others and others will see you as the big target in the game just because they dislike being countered, even though many other spells are much more effective answers in this particular format.

With that in mind, how can we abuse this guy? My first instinct would be just to put him into a Talrand deck and be done with it, but since we’re here…. So, we need plenty of permission spells and effects. The latter would be nice, because repeatable effects would let you loot more, but there aren’t that many good ones (for a very good reason).

Here’s some repeatable effects:

There are more, but I wouldn’t even play all of these.

Then, of course, we have actual counters:

Again, we aren’t going to play all of those, but at this point, I’m just looking at options.

Since we are putting cards into the graveyard, we might as well try to use those to our advantage, mostly through Flashback and Delve.

Okay, not many options there.

In order to abuse the first ability, we’ll need a bunch of instants and sorceries that can be affected by the cost reduction, such as…

Finally, we need to win somehow, so some bodies for the deck, that happen to care about instants and sorceries, or can counter spells.

This is a hard one. This deck is going to be fun to play for a certain kind of player, but its not going to be very good. Still, there’s a lot of play there. So, I decided to go with this list:

[deck]
[commander]
Baral, Chief of Compliance
[/commander]
[instants]
AEtherize
Anticipate
Capsize
Counterspell
Cryptic Command
Cyclonic Rift
Dig Through Time
Disdainful Stroke
Dismiss
Dissipate
Dissolve
Dream Fracture
Engulf the Shore
Essence Scatter
Evacuation
Exclude
Fact or Fiction
Ghostly Flicker
Hinder
Impulse
Into the Roil
Mystic Confluence
Negate
Overwhelming Intellect
Ovinize
Polymorphist’s Jest
Quicken
Rapid Hybridization
Reality Shift
Reins of Power
Remove Soul
Repulse
Scatter to the Winds
Squelch
Telling Time
Visions of Beyond
[/instants]
[creatures]
Augur of Bolas
Curious Homunculus
Docent of Perfection
Draining Whelk
Ertai, Wizard Adept
Glen Elendra Archmage
Guile
Kheru Spellsnatcher
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Lunar Mystic
Snapcaster Mage
Stratus Dancer
Surrakar Spellblade
Talrand, Sky Summoner
Thing in the Ice Flip
Torrential Gearhulk
[/creatures]
[sorceries]
Curse of the Swine
Day’s Undoing
Displacement Wave
Merchant Scroll
Mystic Speculation
Temporal Trespass
Treasure Cruise
Wash Out
Welcome to the Fold
Windfall
[/sorceries]
[lands]
37 Island]
[/lands]
[/deck]