It's been a while since I played a game of magic! Every now and then I check up on new sets and the game's hooks get me a little each time. I stopped collecting a while back and I don't really want to start again, but I do like the idea of having an EDH deck or two and maybe a cube.
So, I have always had a soft spot for cards like Knacksaw Clique that let me steal my opponent's cards and play them myself. For whatever reason, doing that (instead of palying, like, Control Magic) really tickles the Timmy in me. I think I'd like to build a deck around that sort of effect, to the point where I almost don't even have my own strategy. Of course, I'd include a few of the format's staples and swiss-army-knives that can make their own path to victory, but I really like the idea of focusing on trying to use other people's strategies and combo pieces to pave a new path to victory every game.
Does anyone have any decks that follow this sort of plan? What are the better effects like Knacksaw Clique? Are there enough of them that don't care about colors of mana, or do I need to play something like Celestial Dawn? (lol, I accidentally wrote Glorious Dawn first.)
Sen Triplets. You may also want to wait and look to see if any of the WUBG commanders from the upcoming precons are suited for the deck as well in order to run Progenitor Mimic, Altered Ego and Villainous Wealth in addition to all of the U and B goodies. Hedonist's Trove can really piss off a graveyard deck while also giving you their cards to play. Clones are awesome for copying other people's gameplans (there are to many to list them all). Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Daxos of Meletis can steal cards from the top of your opponents library, while Praetor's Grasp can get it from anywhere in their library.
Celestial Dawn and Mycosynth Lattice both allow you to use your mana as any color, and the rule restricting you from producing mana of a color outside of your color identity is gone, so just run a bunch of 5 color mana rocks and land.
I actually had a Commander deck revolving around this theme a year or so ago.
Most cards that involve casting your opponents' spells happen to be in Grixis colors. Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge is a Grixis Commander which can cast your opponents' spells, and Mishra, Artificer Prodigy is also a Grixis Commander which sometimes focuses around casting your opponents' spells, although for less obvious reasons. I'd recommend checking out a Mishra guide if you'd like to know more about him.
Lots of folks tend to like this angle, but they often use Clone or Control Magic type effects for their decks rather than outright casting the cards since there are very few that do so. Below is a list of cards which I compiled during my misadventures that you may or may not be interested in:
Colorwise Grixis (URB) should be your combination of coice, to have maximum possibilities stealing/copying/playing your opponents stuff. Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge would be an excellent choice for your needs!
The Oona, Queen of the Fae deck in my signature is built around that kinda stuff, primarily instants/sorceries. I'll post you some of my key pieces below.
My riku deck sort of does that. It has its own win cons as well (such as pathbreaker ibex being Cloned 7 times.) But you can basically clone their creatures and swing for the win. With copy artifact, copy enchantment, phyrexian metamorph and clever impersonator you also take some key elements in combos. Riku also just makes everything fun. I live twincastibg a explosive vegetation.
I've done Temur with Stolen Goods and Reclaim/Noxious Revival combo before, although it requires your opponent to have something tasty in his/her graveyard.
I forgot about this year's Commander having four-color commanders in it. That's super exciting! I'm definitely going to wait to see what all I can pick from there before deciding what to do.
Based on my preferences, I think I'm leaning most towards "not-red" out of all of the color combinations. I know Red has a lot of snatching effects, but a lot of them are temporary. Then again, I do really like Wild Ricochet...
We'll see, though. There's a cool commander in most of the shard/wedge color combinations that either directly plays into stealing spells or is just solid and could help out in a unique way. Currently, I think I'm going to try to lean away from cards that search my opponent's deck. To the point where I might play Telemin Performance over Bribery. I definitely want to at least lean away from searching another player's deck every turn if possible if only for the sake of etiquette.
Fingers crossed there's a super cool and suitable four-color commander coming up!
I highly, HIGHLY recommend Gonti, Lord of Luxury. I built a deck with him inspired by ISBPathfinder's Gonti deck and have had an absolute blast. One of my favourite plays in recent memory was casting a stolen Hangarback Walker for 7, EOT saccing it to get 7 thopters, Animate Deading an enemy Steel Overseer with a stolen Minion Reflector to copy the Overseer so it had haste so I could pump the thopters with the help of a stolen Tempered Steel to deliver 32 damage to their owner's face.
All you need to do is run cards that can flicker him or recur him out of the yard through reanimation or repeatable Raise Dead-type effects (combined with sac outlets) and you get to churn through your opponents decks, finding synergies between cards in the same deck or even between multiple decks. Unlike most of the other generals mentioned, Gonti is both non-reliant on staying in play to cast the spells he steals and isn't reliant on what types of cards your opponent has on top of their library to function (i.e. creatures or instants and sorceries); as long as they aren't 4 lands, you're getting something. The fact that he offers you selection without actually tutoring through your opponent's deck (which you mentioned you wanted to avoid) is also really handy, as well as being a deathtouch blocker most people won't want to run their big ground dudes into. If you want to use the off-colour activated abilities of the cards you steal, you can run cards like Chromatic Lantern or Exotic Orchard as pretty free ways of getting extra colours (as they recently changed the rules for generating off-colour mana).
Just fill your deck with card draw/ramp to develop your mana base into the late game to recast Gonti a bunch, bring answers to your opponent's threats (Mono-B can run All is Dust/Oblivion Stone as answers to permanent types it normally can't deal with) and engines to retrigger Gonti and you're good to steal and win with your opponent's threats. :>
I run a deck that plays enemy cards with Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker at the helm. He doesn't steal the cards out of their hand or library, but out of their graveyard once he's milled them. It's a bit of a roundabout approach, but it works very well (Rise of the Dark Realms is a better 'steal' spell than most you'll find, for example, and you can pack the deck full of cards like Lazav and Wrexial). One big advantage is that you always see your enemy's graveyard, so you can target your stealing better than when you do it from their hand or library.
Silumgar the Drifting Death is awesome for this style deck. Both his body and his abilities are super relevant(big butt, flying and death touch), and being able to get a creature or planeswalker is nuts. U/B is definitely the best color pair for this type of deck because of access to all the spelljacks, mind controls, and mind slavers and clones. Black also lets you play cards from opponents graveyards.
I LOVE Thada Adel, Acquisitor. I get not wanting to search through your opponents deck all the time (and that's in fact why I eventually took apart my deck with her at the helm... people don't really like it when you're constantly handling their cards)... but stealing sol rings is great, and stealing someone else's combo is even better.
My Thada Adel, Sneak-Thief "Acquisitor" deck doesn't have its own wincon. The deck can only be as good as the decks my opponents bring to the table. I love it, because every game is different.
Hey guys! Those spoilers are looking pretty spicy! Not necessarily for what I'm trying to do here, but we've definitely got a lot of choices for building 4-color decks soon. I'm a little disappointed we didn't get 10 2-color partners and 10 3-color partners. (And maybe 5 1-color partners?) I guess that's design space that's still out there, though.
So, I think we're all pretty much in agreement that blue and black are key here. Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the perfect card for what I'm looking for and there are ways to abuse him even if it's just sacrificing him and bringing him back to cast him again. I honestly couldn't tell you why I'm so focused on casting my opponent's spells, but Spelljack is another card I really want to include.
From there, we have other less reliable ways to cast other people's cards but it starts getting objectively better to take the cards in more reliable ways like Beacon of Unrest or Progenitor Mimic or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker...
So, the most compelling reason to pick white based on cards I've seen is Adarkar Valkyrie. White also gives me access to more blink effects (which a lot of modern ones actually put them back into play under my control!) like Restoration Angel. +Sen Triplets, which is reliable and fairly on-theme.
The most compelling reason to include green is Progenitor Mimic. Green also has lots of unique value that it adds to Commander decks. More so than other colors (in my opinion, of course), it gives me weird fringe "combo" pieces like Noxious Revival. +Villainous Wealth is pretty obnoxious.
Red is probably the most sensible color to add. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Dack Fayden are universally useful cards that also play into my theme. (And they "permanently" take control of their targets.) Wild Ricochet is super fun, and Prince of Thralls is probably not actually good but is cool.
I'm pretty torn. What do you guys think? Do you think any of the new commanders we've seen suit this deck idea particularly well? Should I just play a 5-color commander?
I definitely don't think you need to go as far as 5c. IMHO you will find most of what you want in Dimir colours. Maybe esper with Sen Triplets. That will give you Adarkar Valkyrie as well as the UB stuff previously mentioned.
Ultimately, I think your decision needs to be made based on what specifically you want to do:
I think the point I'm making though is that there are a lot of ways you can hijack someone's deck, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I think you should pick which area speaks to you most and roll in that direction. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way for you to have your cake and eat it too. My gut feeling is you're heading most towards Sen Triplets.
Oh and from what's spoiled so far, I don't think any of the 4c commanders have any specific abilities that suit you. At least not specifically, you could always use one at the helm just for its colour combinations.
Also, as an aside, I second Thada Adel, Acquisitor as an unspoken hero. You can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that any deck you play against has mana rocks. If not something way cooler. Plus with blue being a prominent colour in a lot meta's around, her islandwalk ability will almost guarantee you can get her through to take something most turns.
Also, as an aside, I second Thada Adel, Acquisitor as an unspoken hero. You can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that any deck you play against has mana rocks.
Also, a lot of the good theft cards are expensive (Aethersnatch, Spelljack, Blatant Thievery...), so stealing mana rocks is super useful.
I actually played Intet, the Dreamer as my first "EDH" deck thinking back on it. I never really lived the dream as I couldn't build a good deck and it's surprisingly hard to reliably connect with a dragon.
Later on I built a Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck that was way better in principle (way easier to connect with), but I really didn't like having to manage the mini-game of looking through my opponents' decks and remembering what cards I was on the lookout for. It's pretty innocuous to just pay 3 mana each time and hit a mana rock every time, but the Spike in me will rack me with guilt if I'm not looking at every single artifact in every single deck at the table and thinking about what I need and when I need it. This kinda goes back to me not wanting to search my opponents' decks. It feels like bad table etiquette, and it's a lot more "mental clutter" to play those sorts of cards well.
Cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury or even Sen Triplets have a more tame scope of the decisions and management they impose on me, similar to Discoveries in Hearthstone. "Here are a few cards that aren't in your deck that you can pick from." It's a lot easier (and more random, which I think is fun) to make decisions when you only have 1 to 7 cards to choose from versus a whole ~77 card singleton deck.
Cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury or even Sen Triplets have a more tame scope of the decisions and management they impose on me, similar to Discoveries in Hearthstone. "Here are a few cards that aren't in your deck that you can pick from." It's a lot easier (and more random, which I think is fun) to make decisions when you only have 1 to 7 cards to choose from versus a whole ~77 card singleton deck.
Well, you basically narrowed down your list to either one of these two Commanders. None of the new Commanders this set have direct "steal and cast" ability, so either you stick with one of those two and lose the colors you aren't playing, or you'll have to compromise on the Commander being able to do what you want if you literally want every effect across all colors. The suggestions here have pretty much listed all the possibilities, so it's a matter of which sacrifice you want to make.
I'm glad you posted this thread, and I'm glad arrogantAxolotl compiled that list. I have been gravitating toward these types of effects recently as my wincons of choice. It's a great way to scale the power level of what you are doing to that of the rest of the playgroup. Although, in my experience, people still find room to complain even if they are getting a taste of their own medicine.
Well, you basically narrowed down your list to either one of these two Commanders. None of the new Commanders this set have direct "steal and cast" ability, so either you stick with one of those two and lose the colors you aren't playing, or you'll have to compromise on the Commander being able to do what you want if you literally want every effect across all colors. The suggestions here have pretty much listed all the possibilities, so it's a matter of which sacrifice you want to make.
This. I think you have your choices. These decks can be so much fun because they scale so well. I think the challenge with Sen Triplets will be controlling someone else's turn without them thinking you're a jerk. If you can manage it, I'll tip my hat to you.
Later on I built a Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck that was way better in principle (way easier to connect with), but I really didn't like having to manage the mini-game of looking through my opponents' decks and remembering what cards I was on the lookout for. It's pretty innocuous to just pay 3 mana each time and hit a mana rock every time, but the Spike in me will rack me with guilt if I'm not looking at every single artifact in every single deck at the table and thinking about what I need and when I need it. This kinda goes back to me not wanting to search my opponents' decks. It feels like bad table etiquette, and it's a lot more "mental clutter" to play those sorts of cards well.
Thada is much better if you've got a few people you play with on a regular basis, so you can get a good idea of what's in their decks over the course of multiple games.
Personally, if I'm swinging with Thada on T2-4, I'm absolutely only looking for Sol Ring, Mana Vault, and Mana Crypt. Maybe Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, a Mox, or Lotus Petal. Depending on the table I might then go for Signets or Thran Dynamos/Gilded Lotuses/Caged Sun level mana ramp artifacts. After I hit a few of those bigger ramp artifacts, I'm pretty much solely focused on exiling combo pieces forever, or value for me. Of course, if the deck has critical combo pieces (especially if they're good value even without the full combo, like Ashnod's Altar), they'll frequently get priority over a mana rock.
If you become familiar with common combo piece artifacts, you don't even need to necessarily check the rest of the deck while searching your artifact. "Ashnod's Altar is never a fair card, I don't really care if you can't go infinite with it. GONE FOREVER!"
It's been a while since I played a game of magic! Every now and then I check up on new sets and the game's hooks get me a little each time. I stopped collecting a while back and I don't really want to start again, but I do like the idea of having an EDH deck or two and maybe a cube.
So, I have always had a soft spot for cards like Knacksaw Clique that let me steal my opponent's cards and play them myself. For whatever reason, doing that (instead of palying, like, Control Magic) really tickles the Timmy in me. I think I'd like to build a deck around that sort of effect, to the point where I almost don't even have my own strategy. Of course, I'd include a few of the format's staples and swiss-army-knives that can make their own path to victory, but I really like the idea of focusing on trying to use other people's strategies and combo pieces to pave a new path to victory every game.
Does anyone have any decks that follow this sort of plan? What are the better effects like Knacksaw Clique? Are there enough of them that don't care about colors of mana, or do I need to play something like Celestial Dawn? (lol, I accidentally wrote Glorious Dawn first.)
Any cool commanders that suit this theme?
I have one myself, built around a specific theme. He's good fun, and scales to the decks you're playing against.
Or there's Wrexial, The Risen Deep, Sen Triplets, Emrakul, The promised end, The Mimeoplasm.
EDIT:
Thinking on it more, there's the new Gonti, Lord of Luxury too. I'd still back Lazav though.
Celestial Dawn and Mycosynth Lattice both allow you to use your mana as any color, and the rule restricting you from producing mana of a color outside of your color identity is gone, so just run a bunch of 5 color mana rocks and land.
GRUAnimar, Soul of CreaturesGRU
GWGW Tokens: Rhys,Tolsimir, or Trostani GW
BMarrow-GnawerB
BGSkullbriar, All's fun in the GraveBG
RWBAlesha, Who Smiles at DeathRWB
Most cards that involve casting your opponents' spells happen to be in Grixis colors. Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge is a Grixis Commander which can cast your opponents' spells, and Mishra, Artificer Prodigy is also a Grixis Commander which sometimes focuses around casting your opponents' spells, although for less obvious reasons. I'd recommend checking out a Mishra guide if you'd like to know more about him.
Lots of folks tend to like this angle, but they often use Clone or Control Magic type effects for their decks rather than outright casting the cards since there are very few that do so. Below is a list of cards which I compiled during my misadventures that you may or may not be interested in:
Beacon of Unrest
Bribery
Commandeer
Diluvian Primordial
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Grinning Totem
Guile
Havengul Lich
Hedonist's Trove
Jace's Mindseeker
Knowledge Pool
Lord of the Void
Mindclaw Shaman
Muse Vessel
Nightveil Specter
Ornate Kanzashi
Praetor's Grasp
Prince of Thralls
Psychic Intrusion
Rise of the Dark Realms
Sepulchral Primordial
Shared Fate
Spelltwine
Stolen Goods
Telemin Performance
Thada Adel, Acquisitor
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
The Oona, Queen of the Fae deck in my signature is built around that kinda stuff, primarily instants/sorceries. I'll post you some of my key pieces below.
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
I forgot about this year's Commander having four-color commanders in it. That's super exciting! I'm definitely going to wait to see what all I can pick from there before deciding what to do.
Based on my preferences, I think I'm leaning most towards "not-red" out of all of the color combinations. I know Red has a lot of snatching effects, but a lot of them are temporary. Then again, I do really like Wild Ricochet...
We'll see, though. There's a cool commander in most of the shard/wedge color combinations that either directly plays into stealing spells or is just solid and could help out in a unique way. Currently, I think I'm going to try to lean away from cards that search my opponent's deck. To the point where I might play Telemin Performance over Bribery. I definitely want to at least lean away from searching another player's deck every turn if possible if only for the sake of etiquette.
Fingers crossed there's a super cool and suitable four-color commander coming up!
All you need to do is run cards that can flicker him or recur him out of the yard through reanimation or repeatable Raise Dead-type effects (combined with sac outlets) and you get to churn through your opponents decks, finding synergies between cards in the same deck or even between multiple decks. Unlike most of the other generals mentioned, Gonti is both non-reliant on staying in play to cast the spells he steals and isn't reliant on what types of cards your opponent has on top of their library to function (i.e. creatures or instants and sorceries); as long as they aren't 4 lands, you're getting something. The fact that he offers you selection without actually tutoring through your opponent's deck (which you mentioned you wanted to avoid) is also really handy, as well as being a deathtouch blocker most people won't want to run their big ground dudes into. If you want to use the off-colour activated abilities of the cards you steal, you can run cards like Chromatic Lantern or Exotic Orchard as pretty free ways of getting extra colours (as they recently changed the rules for generating off-colour mana).
Just fill your deck with card draw/ramp to develop your mana base into the late game to recast Gonti a bunch, bring answers to your opponent's threats (Mono-B can run All is Dust/Oblivion Stone as answers to permanent types it normally can't deal with) and engines to retrigger Gonti and you're good to steal and win with your opponent's threats. :>
Besides the already mentioned Gonti, Lord of Luxury, you might also want to consider.
Ornate Kanzashi
Mind's Dilation
Villainous Wealth
Although not linked directly to the theme, Oblivion Sower is a great way to recoup lands that you couldn't play from exiling.
Sneak-Thief"Acquisitor" deck doesn't have its own wincon. The deck can only be as good as the decks my opponents bring to the table. I love it, because every game is different.Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
So, I think we're all pretty much in agreement that blue and black are key here. Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the perfect card for what I'm looking for and there are ways to abuse him even if it's just sacrificing him and bringing him back to cast him again. I honestly couldn't tell you why I'm so focused on casting my opponent's spells, but Spelljack is another card I really want to include.
From there, we have other less reliable ways to cast other people's cards but it starts getting objectively better to take the cards in more reliable ways like Beacon of Unrest or Progenitor Mimic or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker...
So, the most compelling reason to pick white based on cards I've seen is Adarkar Valkyrie. White also gives me access to more blink effects (which a lot of modern ones actually put them back into play under my control!) like Restoration Angel. +Sen Triplets, which is reliable and fairly on-theme.
The most compelling reason to include green is Progenitor Mimic. Green also has lots of unique value that it adds to Commander decks. More so than other colors (in my opinion, of course), it gives me weird fringe "combo" pieces like Noxious Revival. +Villainous Wealth is pretty obnoxious.
Red is probably the most sensible color to add. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Dack Fayden are universally useful cards that also play into my theme. (And they "permanently" take control of their targets.) Wild Ricochet is super fun, and Prince of Thralls is probably not actually good but is cool.
I'm pretty torn. What do you guys think? Do you think any of the new commanders we've seen suit this deck idea particularly well? Should I just play a 5-color commander?
Ultimately, I think your decision needs to be made based on what specifically you want to do:
Are you into pseudo Mindslaver? Sen Triplets.
Are you into clones or copies? Lazav, Dimir Mastermind or The Mimeoplasm to allow for Progenitor Mimic and Altered Ego
Are you into threaten? Yasova Dragonclaw
You could go ridiculous combo tokens with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Splinter Twin, Zealous Conscripts et al.
You could go spelljacking with...well, Spelljack, Counterlash, Spelltwine Aethersnipe, Praetor's Grasp and so on. Probably your best general there would be Dralnu, Lich Lord, or an Izzet general like Melek, Izzet Paragon, or my preference of izzet generals would be Mizzix of the Izmagnus.
I think the point I'm making though is that there are a lot of ways you can hijack someone's deck, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I think you should pick which area speaks to you most and roll in that direction. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way for you to have your cake and eat it too. My gut feeling is you're heading most towards Sen Triplets.
Oh and from what's spoiled so far, I don't think any of the 4c commanders have any specific abilities that suit you. At least not specifically, you could always use one at the helm just for its colour combinations.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Later on I built a Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck that was way better in principle (way easier to connect with), but I really didn't like having to manage the mini-game of looking through my opponents' decks and remembering what cards I was on the lookout for. It's pretty innocuous to just pay 3 mana each time and hit a mana rock every time, but the Spike in me will rack me with guilt if I'm not looking at every single artifact in every single deck at the table and thinking about what I need and when I need it. This kinda goes back to me not wanting to search my opponents' decks. It feels like bad table etiquette, and it's a lot more "mental clutter" to play those sorts of cards well.
Cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury or even Sen Triplets have a more tame scope of the decisions and management they impose on me, similar to Discoveries in Hearthstone. "Here are a few cards that aren't in your deck that you can pick from." It's a lot easier (and more random, which I think is fun) to make decisions when you only have 1 to 7 cards to choose from versus a whole ~77 card singleton deck.
Well, you basically narrowed down your list to either one of these two Commanders. None of the new Commanders this set have direct "steal and cast" ability, so either you stick with one of those two and lose the colors you aren't playing, or you'll have to compromise on the Commander being able to do what you want if you literally want every effect across all colors. The suggestions here have pretty much listed all the possibilities, so it's a matter of which sacrifice you want to make.
Currently, my Ghost Council of Orzhova deck plays Praetor's Grasp and Hedonist's Trove, and my Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant deck plays Grinning Totem and Knowledge Pool. And yeah, it is much more satisfying than Control Magic.
I must have missed Gonti, Lord of Luxury when he was spoiled -- thank you! I think I'd rather build around him instead of the new C16 commanders.
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
lichess.org | chess.com
This. I think you have your choices. These decks can be so much fun because they scale so well. I think the challenge with Sen Triplets will be controlling someone else's turn without them thinking you're a jerk. If you can manage it, I'll tip my hat to you.
Personally, if I'm swinging with Thada on T2-4, I'm absolutely only looking for Sol Ring, Mana Vault, and Mana Crypt. Maybe Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, a Mox, or Lotus Petal. Depending on the table I might then go for Signets or Thran Dynamos/Gilded Lotuses/Caged Sun level mana ramp artifacts. After I hit a few of those bigger ramp artifacts, I'm pretty much solely focused on exiling combo pieces forever, or value for me. Of course, if the deck has critical combo pieces (especially if they're good value even without the full combo, like Ashnod's Altar), they'll frequently get priority over a mana rock.
If you become familiar with common combo piece artifacts, you don't even need to necessarily check the rest of the deck while searching your artifact. "Ashnod's Altar is never a fair card, I don't really care if you can't go infinite with it. GONE FOREVER!"
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)