Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

$18.66

Augustin makes your white spells and your blue spells each cost {1} less, so a card that is both costs {2} less, and every spell an opponent casts costs {1} more. That gap is the whole deck. You play cheap counterspells and lock pieces early, then let the tax eat into everyone else's turns. Builds lean on stax like Static Orb, Back to Basics, Cursed Totem and Drannith Magistrate, plus rule-setters like Archon of Emeria. The win condition is kept small so most slots can go toward slowing the table down.

In the recorded games, Persistent Petitioners showed up again and again. Augustin makes them cost a single blue mana, Herald's Horn naming Advisor helps too, and four of them tap to mill a player for twelve. Other lists won with Painter's Servant and Grindstone, Helm of Obedience, or Thassa's Oracle. Mystic Remora, Esper Sentinel and Smothering Tithe punished opponents for playing through the tax, while Supreme Verdict and Propaganda kept creature decks off. The weak spots were real. A tax slows a combo deck but doesn't stop it, and some games were lost to a combo that resolved through the counters. Budget versions with fewer lock pieces played more like slow ramp-control.