Cgrybel wrote:

    Hey, this is my first contribution to pojo so please bear with me. For a while now I have always found that my favorite combos in magic are the ones that require a good deal of work to pull off but are extremely powerful when pulled off. Over time i have assembled these cards and was hoping for your advice. Oh and I'd like to stick just to one color i have problems when i try to blend more than one. Okay here we go:

 

land:20

20 islands

 

Creatures:

4x silent arbiter

4x spire golem

4x vedalken engineer

3x sakashima the impostor

2x soramaro, first to dream

1x darksteel colossus

2x kami of the crescent moon

1x platinum angel

 

Other spells:

4x pariah's shield

4x bubble matrix

4x counterspell

4x tinker

2x pulse of the grid

1x proteus staff

 

    Well there it is I have looked at it hundreds of times and can't figue out why it doesn't flow as good as it used to I previously had "that which was taken in the deck instead of bubble matrix.PLEASE your help would be great. Thanks.

 

NOTE: 4 tinkers is only because i play casual i know that they are limited to one but nobody follows the banned/ restricted list were i play. 

The deck looks fairly solid, and also looks very fun to play with.  You mention that "your favorite combos are ones that are difficult to pull off", but then you don't say which combos you're using.  It's not hard to figure out, though; it appears that your most powerful combo is Tinker/Darksteel Colossus, followed by Platinum Angel/Bubble Matrix, or Bubble Matrix/Pariah's Shield, or Kami of the Crecsent Moon/Soramaro, First to Dream.  All good ideas. 

I think the first order of business is to exploit the most powerful card in this deck- Tinker.  If your playgroup really lets you play four of these, then make the best of it.  You've already got Darksteel Colossus, Proteus Staff, and Platinum Angel as massively punishing artifacts to search for, so what you need is some cheap artifacts to sacrifice.  The obvious answer is 4 copies of Seat of the Synod.  That will work against Spire Golem, but it's worth it- trust me.

Next, I advise against Silent Arbiter in this deck.  Four mana for a 1/5 is a bit underwhelming, and even though it works well with the Colossus, you don't need four of them.  I'd say replace two of them and two Islands with those Seat of the Synod I mentioned.

After that, I agree with you in that I can't see why the deck isn't performing as it should.  On paper it looks like a well-oiled machine (no pun intended).  But maybe there's a clue in that you said the deck doesn't perform "as good as it used to".  This tells me something has changed.  You tell me that Bubble Matrix is what changed, from That Which Was Taken.  The two cards aren't identical-- perhaps the problem is that the people you play with have a lot of "destroy" effects which Bubble Matrix can't stop.  Also possible is that the people in your playgroup are starting to alter their decks to be better able to beat yours.  You said they allow four copies of Tinker, but perhaps deep down they're having second thoughts.  As Mairsil the Pretender said in The Gathering Dark, "the nature of Magic is change."  He was talking about what makes spellcraft work in the Multiverse, but the same holds true for the card game itself.  Perhaps you ought to shelve this deck for a time and give your friends a new challenge.  After all, it can get boring playing against the same strategy over and over, and when this occurs you inevitably learn to beat the strategy.  Perhaps that's your only problem-- your opponents have seen your deck so often, they know all its weaknesses.  That can happen over time.

I can't say for sure that's what's wrong, but I can't find any other problems with this deck.  And without watching you play several games with it to evaluate your play strengths and the metagame you're up against, that's really the best advice I can give.  Good luck to you.

~BMoor