MTG Salvation

NOTE: I've dismantled this deck. I had a very hard time making it better without going more combo oriented. The deck was fine, but I felt like it durdled too much and had a hard time closing out games without either comboing or destroying everybody's lands with Sydri, Galvanic Genius + Mycosynth Lattice.

So, I recently decided that I wanted to tinker around with a Sydri, Galvanic Genius list.
As it stands, though, I can't really decide what I want to do with it/how I want to build it. All I know is that I'm not looking to build a combo deck, which is what I see most people doing with her.
Honestly, the things I'm most looking forward to doing are:
Sydri + Caltrops/Staff of Nin/Triskelion to kill many creatures
Sydri + Liquimetal Coating/Mycosynth Lattice to blow up lands for U each

There are probably other neat Sydri interactions I'd have fun doing. I also like the idea of being able to play a relatively low creature count and still have a high number of beaters/blockers off of my non-creature artifacts.

I've got a list thrown together, but it's definitely 100% unfocused right now. So, hit me with some suggestions, both for individual cards, and for overall deck direction.
I want powerful and fun to play, without being cut-throat, and not combo oriented.

EDIT: So, after having played the deck a bunch, I got a better idea of how I wanted it to run, what I wanted it to do, etc, and I've made changes to the list accordingly. It definitely still needs tweaking and tuning, but I'm happier with it right now than I was at first. In particular, it was previously very soft to things like Austere Command and Vandalblast, but I've made several changes to help to fix that.

EDIT 2: More playing, more changes, etc. Updated the list here to reflect what I've currently got together. Deck is fun to play, still needs work though.

Mind Over Matter to be able to untap things as much as possible and at instant speed.

I would probably reinclude Clock of Omens before Mind Over Matter, largely because it's cheaper, easier to cast, and I already feel like I have a hard time keeping cards in my hands. Last thing I need is to be discarding them.

I'm contemplating taking it in a sort of Stax/Pillowfort sort of direction.
With cards like Crawlspace, Portcullis, etc, I feel like there are relatively decent cards to support thing.
I think the biggest thing I'd be missing for that sort of strategy is steady card draw, like what the enchantresses offer in that sort of deck.
Now they just need to print me more Vedalken Archmage type cards. Yeah.

On a side note, I've been super, super happy with Thopter Spy Network. That card is sweet.

Made a bunch of changes to the list. Updating the first post with the new deck list, and some updated information.

you should add caltrops it is ver strong with sydri

Quote from elderscrollsnick »

you should add caltrops it is ver strong with sydri

Thanks, but it's already there. It's been there from the beginning. In fact, that card was the entire reason I decided to tinker with a Sydri deck in the first place.

Why no Muzzio, Visionary Architect, Hanna, Ship's Navigator or Master Transmuter?

Mostly because they're all really slow. Arcum Dagsson and Kuldotha Forgemaster are both slow, too, but they tutor stuff out of the deck into play.
Master Transmuter is slow and requires that I have something in hand that's worth playing her to cheat in.
Muzzio, Visionary Architect frequently misses. If it was for number of artifacts rather than higher cost I'd probably include it, despite being slow.
Hanna, Ship's Navigator I've actually considered adding, despite being slow. She still might find a spot sooner or later, if I feel I need more recursion.

Karn, Silver Golem seems like a nice redundancy for Sydri's first ability, especially because you don't need U open to use it.

Quote from Jay13x »

Karn, Silver Golem seems like a nice redundancy for Sydri's first ability, especially because you don't need U open to use it.

Yeah, I've considered him. She's got a pretty cheap cost and commanders can't be tucked anymore, so I feel like I don't really need that extra redundancy. That being said, it could be nice for reasons of things like Nevermore, Pithing Needle, etc, but I'm still not 100% sold on it. My biggest issue with him, I think, is that he just doesn't really do much else.

I play Sydri as well, and I like to include a good trinket-tinker package with Artificer's Intuition, Salvaging Station, and a plethora of 1 drop artifacts that can answer most situations.

Brittle Effigy for emergency spot removal, Codex Shredder to get recur big spells late game, Nihil Spellbomb as my anti-graveyard (read, **** you Jarad), Aether Spellbomb for screwing over reanimator, Pithing Needle (read, **** you Jarad) or just Expedition Map, Sol Ring, Manavault etc. There's a lot of artifacts at 1 cmc or less that can save your butt in a pinch, especially if you can recur them over and over.

Salvaging Station recurs all that.

Salvaging Station + Seat of Synod + Sydri = infinite landfall & infinite ETG (let's you kill with disciple of the vault). Tap for blue, use blue to animate the land, it instantly dies, tap salvaging station to grab it. Comes back, tap it again, animate&die, salvaging station untaps, tap again to grab the land, etc.

Throw in adventuring gear for infinite power/toughness, then animate a mana-rock, equip the gear and strike to win.


One thing to note that, unless you get Mycosynth Lattice, you really won't have enough mana to animate all your artifacts and have them beatdown. There just won't be enough blue mana. And Mycosynth Lattice is rather OP with Sydri, as you can blow up their lands by animating them into 0/0 creatures.

Yeah, Sydri + Mycosynth Lattice is one of my favourite things about this deck. It's not so hard to get a ton of blue, though, with the help of Chromatic Latern, too. But yeah, definitely blue heavy.

Going with a heavy package of cheap artifacts for Artificer's Intuition and Salvaging Station is a neat idea. I like how the Intuition is like a Survival of the Fittest for artifacts, except they have to be CMC <= 1. It's something I may consider. I don't know how much I want to build around those two cards, though, with no guarantee of ever actually having them. I'd feel a lot better about filling the deck with 1 and 0 CMC artifacts if there were more cards like Vedalken Archmage.

Chief Engineer and Grand Architect both work much better in a build with lots of creatures. I've been steadily trying to cut back my number of creatures. Especially non-artifact ones.

Contagion Engine is a fine card, but I don't feel like I do enough things with counters to really take proper advantage of it.

Sphinx Summoner and Venser, the Sojourner are both cards I'd waffled on since I first put this list together. They've been in and out and in again. The deck is still a work in progress and they may end up making it in at the end.

I think there are better options than Renowned Weaponsmith. For his first ability, I'd even rather have Palladium Myr. And for his second ability, I don't want to play either of those two artifacts he tutors up. If they were better cards he'd be much better.

Updated the list with some changes. Deck is slowly getting there. I haven't spent as much time fine tuning it as I'd like, but it'll get there.

Is Mind's Eye really that good?

It is a sweet card but I can't shake the feeling that it is simply not that strong and this deck looks like it's trying to be pretty competitive

EDIT: and while I'm at it. What about Transmute Artifact? I know it's a very expensive card (you do have Mana Crypt in there though!) but it seems rather absurd and I seldom see it in Sydri threads

Quote from Canadian Guy of Wrath »

Is Mind's Eye really that good?

It is a sweet card but I can't shake the feeling that it is simply not that strong and this deck looks like it's trying to be pretty competitive

EDIT: and while I'm at it. What about Transmute Artifact? I know it's a very expensive card (you do have Mana Crypt in there though!) but it seems rather absurd and I seldom see it in Sydri threads

Mind's Eye has been fantastic for me. I'm never sad to see it, and frequently even tutor it up. It's a nice and steady source of solid card draw, and one of the best artifact draw effects.

I used to run Transmute Artifact. I found I was never as happy with it as I hoped I would be, with rare exceptions here and there. I particularly disliked that it was a dead draw with no artifacts already on the table.

That's kind of a cute idea. Might think about that.

I think I really want to try out Sandstone Oracle. Probably in the spot of Soul of New Phyrexia. I'll make a decision about it after I've had a chance to try it out a bit.
I mostly really want some artifact that draws cards on ETB, and this fills that role.

Use Sydri with Mindslaver animated with Illusionists Bracers equipped to it for multiplayer shenanigans. Then you can use Hanna Ships Navigator to return Mindslaver and rinse/repeat.

I've tried for a long time to make a good Sydri deck, but can never quite make it competitive enough. This may be for one of two reasons:

1. Sydri lends herself to combo, and unless you're going all-in on that...
2. It durdles with nifty artifacts that do interesting things but can't win the game

At this point my Sydri deck is mostly an artifactgoodstuff.dec. It's pretty underwhelming, and Sydri's only real function is to win-more when I have a Mycosynth Lattice and lots of mana.

I actually haven't been keeping this thread up to date with changes I've made to the actual deck. I should probably do that at some point.

The deck DOES durdle a lot. I feel like it can be worked out, though. I just need to get the chance to spend a little more time on it.

It could be improved, but as a general Sydri leans so much towards combo that I don't think a competitive list could go any other way.

And if you're going combo, I feel like Sharuum or Arcum Dagsson offer an easier and more resilient game plan. Sydri's only truly unique and broken innate ability is her mass land destruction, and even then Dagsson can do it faster with Lattice/Forge/Disk. Sydri can do it that way too, but loses flavour points for using Disk.

I could be wrong. I want to be.

I love Hanna in my Sydri deck. She often goes unnoticed and noone really wants to use removal on her. I always at least get one or more uses out of her. I should post my list one of these days, but its more of a 75% deck than a full out Sydri combo deck.