I did remove 2 of the 0 drops for Myr Moonvessel and Hope of Ghirapur on Thursday. I find it more necessary to run *more* artifact creatures now that we'll be wanting two of them faster than we ever did before, so I'm up to 20 creatures. I've been able to consistently get two creatures on the board and Arcum tapped on turn 4.
I used Disk-Forge-Lattice to win most of my games on Wednesday, though come Thursday I had already removed the three cards in favor of using Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker as my win conditions since they're just easier and to-the-point, not to mention less of dead draws if I get them from turns 1-3. Ballista has the same weakness as Disk against activation-stoppers (Pithing Needle for example), basically, except you can cast it and put millions of damage on the stack with opponents having no real way of stopping it (just activate it multiple times in a row without passing priority). In the event of hexproof or shroud you can simply generate millions of tokens using Hangarback Walker and win the following turn, just like I'd do with Myr Turbine, Clock of Omens, Basalt Monolith, and Rings of Brighthearth in the event of someone having indestructible permanents or an indestructible Commander with Plate and other nonsense.
Basically, now with Engine, t3 and t4 Arcum with protection is easier than ever because you only need him for one turn- no more do you have to protect him over the course of 2-3 turns, depending on if Rings of Brighthearth got removed.
I still run two 0 drops in the event of having to cast Arcum on the fourth turn with haste, etc.. I may replace another of them with something simple, though, since the one to get either Monolith or Mana Vault is what's most important.
I've left in Rings of Brighthearth-Monolith-Staff combo. Actually, to save time, here's my current list:
I'm not settled on the numbers of anything, really, yet. You can leave in Disk-Forge-Lattice if you want the old win conditions. I no longer think that Possessed Portal is necessary- if you get that single tap of Arcum, then you can make the attempt to win rather than attempt to stall, ergo I don't see Portal being necessary any longer at all (and anything that'd remove Engine removes Portal). The downside to Portal is: You grab it, you're done for the turn. You grab Engine and then you can untap Arcum and try again for another win con after they remove it (as the active player, you get priority to cast another spell- it doesn't have to be an instant, and you get the untap from it being cast, not resolving). You can then directly go into Rings-Monolith-Staff if you really need a backup win, and both primary wins in my build do their thing with infinite mana. Oh, and I guess I'm running Isochron Scepter, still, as well. I haven't found anything worth taking out for it, yet.
I probably am running too many counters and not enough draw. Maybe swapping Delay for Scroll Rack- to put Flute/Engine back into the library, would be valuable.
My weakest card is probably Isochron Scepter. I just haven't found what additional cards I want to run in my current meta (the decks equally as fast as mine don't care about attacking or are Yisan, so I dropped Ensnaring Bridge). I'm still one turn behind Doomsday castings unless I get a good hand rather than an average one (average being mana dork + lands). I haven't really tried optimizing my list, yet; I've just trimmed a *lot* of the fat. I'd be tempted to re-add some of my old cards, though, I just can't think of too many cases where some of them are valuable any longer, like in the case of Possessed Portal.
Memnite > Ornithopter is perfectly reasonable, though I don't run 'clamp, myself. Could be a good idea, though- I could try that out over Winter Orb, which is increasingly less relevant and the hardest decks for this to win against (Doomsday builds) don't care about it at all.
Also, more games to report that I updated on elsewhere last night:
We had a game that went very long yesterday: The whole table had to fight through a resolved Stasis lock and we just kind of sat there while he dug for stuff to kill us (Derevi tutored into Stasis to stop myself and FC Tazri from comboing off). My Engine was removed, so I had to go for Rings-Monolith-Staff I basically just sat back until the Stasis player countered another player's spell. I used Arcum to get Basalt Monolith on that player's end step, Dramatic reversal'd on my turn tapping down my last U source, got my Rings, then generated a few million using the floating mana. Then I tutored into Staff and drew my whole library, finishing the table with Ballista. Several players had counters in hand to stop me with no way to cast them thanks to Derevi's Stasis.
Krosan Grip on Paradox Engine was no fun (three players moved them from board to main due to me testing Arcum lol), but I did get to untap as I was the active player at the time (priority is fun), so I got to leave most of my permanents untapped while waiting to draw into a tutor or Staff. I did have to cast a counter to stop Tazri from going off with Ad Nauseam a couple turns before, though, which is largely why I was biding my time.
I won a big chunk of the games even through disruption thanks to casting Arcum on the second/third turn with protection while everyone else was trying to resolve big spells (even though I've moved, I cannot escape people trying to cast Land Equilibrium on the second turn off of 1-2 land. A couple players tried for early Doomsdays only for them to get countered, etc.). Though, since these were decks like FC Tazri, Yisan, Leovold, etc., all I really have to fight through are 1-2 removal spells in each deck, total (several of them were cursing having Abrupt Decay in hand, for example, since removing my artifact creature is not enough since I've upped the count- it's like removing one of Yisan's Llanowar Elves, now). Watching Brago spend his Mystical Tutor to grab Swords to Plowshares just to stop me from untapping with my Commander was very entertaining- and usually made me thankful I didn't have to protect Arcum multiple turns anymore.
This deck still needs some work to tangle with Doomsday builds- even the pass piles are hard to get around since they can be turn 1-2, and this deck isn't quite that fast (so my only answer is counter magic, hence why I've upped the numbers). Any non-Doomsday deck, though, I feel fairly confident when sitting across, now. Especially Yisan, now that I've had a few more games against it. Karador is pretty fun, as well, since a lot of the early wins with that deck involve binning Boonweaver which is something this deck can easily tutor to stop. Arcum plays significantly well through Stax now, though, so that's been pretty valuable against Brago, Derevi, Teferi, etc..
So far I haven't run into an issue using Ballista and Hangarback as my win conditions. I'm expecting this to change, though, because I'm winning a fair amount due to people not quite knowing how to deal with this Arcum build- that's obviously going to change and my record of wins will normalize a bit once people get used to dealing with Arcum again, but I have been greatly enjoying this. Most games end around turn 4-6; maybe an occasional one on turn 3 or later than 6 if the Stax decks are involved. There's enough disruption that most players delay their wins until the fourth or fifth turn, myself included (even if I can gun straight for the 3rd turn win, I slow my roll a bit because I may get screwed).
@TrueNub, why are you keeping Lattice if you're already dropping Disk and Forge?
Also, I think Memnite>Ornithopter in this deck for being skullclamp-able.
Mycosynth Lattice, even without Disk and Forge to accompany it, is still an extremely strong combo piece. Clock of Omens is easy to cast from the hand, and if you ever stick it, you can often just tutor out Lattice and win (or vice versa in the one-in-a-million games where you actually hardcast lattice). Similar to Paradox Engine+Citanul Flute, it's not directly game-ending in itself, but it immediately gives you such huge tempo and 3-4 Arcum taps so you can typically build whatever game-ending combo you want that same turn.
I agree that the case for keeping it in is weaker without Forge and Disk alongside it, but for the time being I still think it can pull its weight. I always considered it the most individually useful of the three pieces--Forge outside of the combo was deadweight, and Disk outside of the combo was useful only when we were already losing and needed a reset.
You're absolutely right that Memnite would be the superior 0-drop for Skullclamp synergy, I'd forgotten about that. Also, Pook, I also strongly recommend the clamp if your deck is hurting for draw power; the weakest component of Arcum has always been the lineup of mediocre artifact dorks and tokens we need to spit out, and a 1cmc artifact that adds "1, sac this: Draw 2" to all of them is a big deal.
I used Disk-Forge-Lattice to win most of my games on Wednesday, though come Thursday I had already removed the three cards in favor of using Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker as my win conditions since they're just easier and to-the-point, not to mention less of dead draws if I get them from turns 1-3. Ballista has the same weakness as Disk against activation-stoppers (Pithing Needle for example), basically, except you can cast it and put millions of damage on the stack with opponents having no real way of stopping it (just activate it multiple times in a row without passing priority). In the event of hexproof or shroud you can simply generate millions of tokens using Hangarback Walker and win the following turn, just like I'd do with Myr Turbine, Clock of Omens, Basalt Monolith, and Rings of Brighthearth in the event of someone having indestructible permanents or an indestructible Commander with Plate and other nonsense.
That's generally been my thoughts in the last couple days. The only thing that Forge/Disk/Lattice deals with that Ballista can't is player-hexproof effects, which thus far have been highly uncommon to begin with because they're so expensive (they certainly haven't discouraged any storm players from picking up Aetherflux Reservoir), and they're beatable by infinite token attack anyway. If we've already gone infinite we're nigh-invincible anyway and I really doubt we'll have an issue waiting the one extra turn to get the tokens un-sick (infinite Null Brooch, just counter everything?).
I've left in Rings of Brighthearth-Monolith-Staff combo.
You can leave in Disk-Forge-Lattice if you want the old win conditions. I no longer think that Possessed Portal is necessary- if you get that single tap of Arcum, then you can make the attempt to win rather than attempt to stall, ergo I don't see Portal being necessary any longer at all (and anything that'd remove Engine removes Portal). The downside to Portal is: You grab it, you're done for the turn. You grab Engine and then you can untap Arcum and try again for another win con after they remove it (as the active player, you get priority to cast another spell- it doesn't have to be an instant, and you get the untap from it being cast, not resolving).
Yes, you're right about that, if you have anything in hand you can cast, you're basically guaranteed at minimum one Arcum untap from Paradox Engine. Even if they counter your thing, or blow up your Paradox Engine in response, you still get the one untap at the time of casting (so if you're willing and able, you could actually respond in turn with Null Brooch).
But if Engine gets blown up for any reason, you're playing pre-Paradox arcum--you're just as vulnerable to the same shenanigans as you were last month and one year ago. You'll want Rings/Monolith/Staff or Rings/Monolith/Top to finish the game. You'll want Possessed Portal to put a full stop to any douchery, hard-counter any deck that relies on drawing cards or that hits goldfish early, and immediately shift board parity in your favor (a la Cataclysm). You'll want Myr Turbine to never-ever miss an Arcum tap, Clocks for tempo, and so on.
And a card as meta-shifting and as vulnerable as Engine, immediately drawing hate from every single person sitting at the table, will be blown up in a non-negligible percentage of your games, no matter what you do. That's why I'm not quite ready yet to go all-in around Engine. It's not the same as going all-in around WGD or AN or DD, spells which are considerably more challenging to disrupt as you need to deal with them on the stack or you lose. And I'm not convinced that making your Engine game 30% stronger (by focusing the whole deck around it rather than only devoting a minimal package) is worth making your non-Engine game 70% weaker.
But maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm eager to see how your experience plays out.
My weakest card is probably Isochron Scepter. I just haven't found what additional cards I want to run in my current meta (the decks equally as fast as mine don't care about attacking or are Yisan, so I dropped Ensnaring Bridge). I'm still one turn behind Doomsday castings unless I get a good hand rather than an average one (average being mana dork + lands). I haven't really tried optimizing my list, yet; I've just trimmed a *lot* of the fat. I'd be tempted to re-add some of my old cards, though, I just can't think of too many cases where some of them are valuable any longer, like in the case of Possessed Portal.
Cutting things like Ensnaring Bridge is of course entirely a meta call. From your posts it sounds like no one's consistently playing Zur/Narset/Brago/other commanders that rely on the combat step, so cutting it seems like the right choice for you.
How do you observe the AN/Doomsday decks usually winning? For me the piles are usually Labman-based. Possessed Portal hoses any Labman pile by simply disabling all draws. And as clunky as it is, I've seen such decks scoop to a well-placed and well-timed Jester's Cap, as they're usually very all-in style. You'd probably even also get more consistent mileage out of a simple draw spell like Thirst or FoF over Isochron Scepter, but then I'm biased because I never really got could wrap my head around putting Isochron in this deck in the first place (Dramatic Reversal existing wasn't good enough reason for me).
Oh, and p.s., above you apologized because you like talking about the deck. Don't sweat it, that's what this thread has always been for.
Well, the largest reason I don't worry about my non-Engine game is because even the more... unknowledgeable players (the types who play super powerful decks but make really questionable plays) figured out that Arcum is the lynchpin, not Engine. Really, the largest weakness of the deck hasn't changed: We need to resolve our Commander and get him tapped ASAP in order to stand a chance much of the time, but Engine made the deck a lot easier in that you no longer need 2~ turns of tapping Arcum, you can simply do it once. Everyone basically learned the first night of me playing post-changes that hitting Paradox Engine isn't a great idea since I get at least one untap (one guy cast Grip expecting me to not get my untap, so I had to explain priority and how triggers don't care about Split Second even though that didn't matter in this instance), so casting another creature lets me go grab something else, which would typically be Rings anyway. Hitting Arcum puts a stumbling block up- they don't seem to go after Engine unless artifact removal is all they have, which, that's more rare. Krosan Grip is sideboarded while Swords to Plowshares in maindeck in each deck of those colors around here, and a card/effect that I used to fear, Revoke Existence, is now worthless since I combo out the turn I pull Engine.
More general removal, like Anguished Unmaking is in several decks here and they always hit Arcum which seems to delay me more than hitting Engine. It's not very hard to assemble Rings+Monolith when you can tap Arcum to grab one of the pieces with removal on the stack. What I mean is: Hitting Arcum after pulling Engine when you cast a spell = you untap but have no Arcum any longer to tutor (because they cast removal with the first Paradox trigger on the stack. In order to do anything with Arcum here, you need an instant in hand *and* an artifact creature on board). Hitting Engine when you cast a spell = After it resolves, you untap Arcum and get to sac a new creature, including one that was just cast, to go get Rings which puts you 1/2 or 1/3rd of the way toward another game-winning combo. Exiling/Destroying Engine is the strictly inferior method of play, or at least that's what players around me have convinced themselves. Might be something they're missing, though, so I'm sure your experience may differ. They may destroy/exile Engine after Arcum has already been removed, however, just to keep me out of the game longer, but I don't see what a lot of the older cards like either Clock, Portal, etc., would do in this situation to help (but I'm also not very imaginative so you probably already have ideas, I just am unaware of them lol).
From what I've seen, I'm not sure how Portal is a good way to stop Doomsday. Unless you leave Arcum open for several turns at the possibility of them casting Doomsday, which means more time for Arcum to get removed and cuts off an Engine play until you hit your own turn unless you have a bunch of instants and creatures on board. Actually... I may look into this. Running more low-cost instants (Chain of Vapor and the like) and maybe Shimmer Myr to go off at instant speed may be a decent plan against Doomsday decks since I can have the potential to grab Portal to stop them from drawing *after* they set up their pile (if I do it before they're just going to bounce my Portal with one of their flex cards, usually Chain of Vapor, then draw and win anyway), or pull Engine, Flute, and then cast through whatever I need with a kill spell on the stack. The real problem with Doomsday I'm having is... they can cast Doomsday before or at the same speed I cast Arcum- I generally require a god hand to beat a 2nd or 3rd turn Doomsday if they have protection. Really, unless I can land Static Orb, Tangle Wire, or Back to Basics, I feel pretty unconfident against the average Doomsday deck.
For Ad Nauseam... I'm not sure I see how Portal does anything to stop it? It's not draw, so they just sac one thing when they untap and then cast Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Lotus Petal, and any number of signets to filter colorless into colored mana, and then cast the Chain of Vapor every single one of them run, then Lab Man with all the protection, and then an ungodly number of draw spells. Ad Nauseam is simply a must-counter, which is why I ramped up the number of counters significantly. I probably shouldn't be playing Arcum in a meta where 2 out of 10 decks runs Ad Nauseam, but I just find it fun to counter spells and then combo out of nowhere (I don't do the barenaked combo very often- my counter spells are often used offensively, to counter Food Chains and Ad Nauseams, than they are used to defend my Commander. Last night I let Arcum die because the player before him Mystical Tutored for Ad Nauseam and didn't cast it yet. He figured, "Well, you let Arcum die so there's no way you have a counter." Well, surprise, motherf***er, you get a 2/2 bird. Arcum came down two turns later with haste and won me the game, because everyone spent their counters early trying to stop straight up win attempts). Is there maybe something I'm missing with Portal that'd make them better against these cards (Ad Nauseam/Doomsday)? I have yet to try Portal out against any of them, so I don't exactly have any experience with it, I'm just theorycrafting at the moment based off of what I see them do and play.
Also, yeah, the Zur list here does not really attack. If Zur swings, it is at most to get Necropotence and get the ball rolling on that Ad Nauseam nonsense. His power is also low enough that Bridge, by itself, wouldn't stop him anyway, so I just brace myself and deal with whatever spells he's going to cast. Though, I have to say, against basically anything that isn't Doomsday, I think Arcum does a fantastic job against. I have had basically 0 trouble with Karador Boonweaver lists as a quick Transmute Artifact into Grafdigger's Cage or Torpor Orb basically shuts that deck down until he draws his one removal card, and now I tend to win before he can do so. Arcum can straight up race turn 1 Yisan without a god hand, which is nice. Pretty much if the Commander doesn't have black in it or is Stax, Arcum can run straight through its nonsense so long as you play smart.
On the subject of being smart:Jester's Cap is in my sideboard but I basically forgot about it as I haven't been boarding at all for the last week. Cap to remove Lab Man, Ad Naus, Doomsday (both decks here with one run the other too), or... well, whatever else I don't like... seems good. Seems solid- especially given what I play against right now. It's not unreasonable for me to hit 4 mana to drop it, though I'm unsure I can both drop and activate it the same turn before someone can DD though I'd gladly exchange an Arcum tap to force a player into the long game if I had to do so. Thirst is a fine idea as well, I'm going to cram that back in too.
The whole reason I left Scepter in, still, was because Engine is Dramatic Reversal except we can tutor it. That's pretty much it, lol. Everyone kills Arcum rather than removing my artifacts, generally speaking, so Scepter is a quick-and-dirty way to continue the Engine plan without Arcum (since Flute only works at sorcery speed in my deck- I'm basically talking myself into running Shimmer Myr- removal on Arcum stops the combo even if you get to pull Engine), so long as I have mana rocks. Though, I definitely need stuff like Impulse, Anticipate, etc., to actually make that worthwhile, so I'll make the switch to Cap, for now. Lol, it's funny, while you're building to win without Engine, I'm building to win without Arcum because everyone kills the Commander before the things the Commander tutors, here. I know the right way to build it is going to probably be somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, sorry, long post again. I've been typing on this on and off while at work, too, so some of the sentences may not make much sense. The excitement still hasn't worn off, if you can't tell.
Well, the largest reason I don't worry about my non-Engine game is because even the more... unknowledgeable players (the types who play super powerful decks but make really questionable plays) figured out that Arcum is the lynchpin, not Engine. Really, the largest weakness of the deck hasn't changed: We need to resolve our Commander and get him tapped ASAP in order to stand a chance much of the time, but Engine made the deck a lot easier in that you no longer need 2~ turns of tapping Arcum, you can simply do it once.
So, just to be clear, not needing to keep Arcum alive for as many turns is very different than "building to win without Arcum" like you mentioned at the end of your post. As you said, the basic paradigm of the deck hasn't changed: either we stick Arcum and generally start winning, or we can't stick Arcum and generally start losing.
Why are they casting instants after Paradox is already on the field? Why aren't they slaying Arcum in response to the tap to fetch Paradox in the first place, so you don't even get the guaranteed 1 untap? Making Paradox Engine work isn't the issue nearly as much as simply protecting Arcum, and that's precisely why I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head, at least conceptually, around your approach to the deck: how does loading up on more than the bare minimum of 1 zero-drop and Moonvessel required for the combo (in your most recent list you've got Memnite, Ornithopter, and Shield Sphere) help stick Arcum or protect him? Loading up on countermagic, mainboarding Defense Grid, those I can get behind. I would absolutely do those things if I were in a heavy draw-go meta like yours. But loading up on cards whose singular function is to interact with Paradox Engine, that's what I don't quite yet understand.
For me, when I'm getting piled on by the whole table, my opponents will force me to exhaust all of my countermagic and other defensive options just to get Arcum on the field and with a pair of shoes on him, then when I'm spent and Arcum is well-fortified they hit my most important combo piece (previously Rings of Brighthearth, though now I guess it's Paradox Engine) with a Nature's Claim or Revoke Existence, thereby ideally buying them the 1-2 extra turns they need to outrace me. Having zero-drops in my hand wouldn't fix that problem either--only effective and quick-response backup plans do.
Speaking of backup plans, to address your point on Possessed Portal and Ad Nauseam: when Portal hits the field on T3 or T4, if they haven't yet managed to combo off, it forces them to either a) discard their hand, including all their tutors/sculpting/countermagic, or b) degenerate their board, which, since they tend to play draw-go and keep a light field, usually directly hits their lands and mana. It punishes them for playing the draw-go game. It also blanks many of their best tutors, Mystical and Vampiric and Imperial Seal and so forth (anything that goes to the top of the library).
Similar story for DDay. If you manage to get Portal out before they cast it, then finding DDay becomes much harder, and even if they do find it, Portal prevents them from retrieving anything from their pile (even Brainstorm says "draw") and blanks Labman.
Of course, both of those are predicated on getting out Portal before they cast their signature game-winning cards, and that's the hard part (there's a reason nobody is decrying Portal as meta-countering tech lol). If they blaze into T2 DDay or T3 AN, the only thing that solves those is a counterspell or you're boned anyway. There's a reason those cards are format-dominating. But if you manage to get past that phase (and Paradox Engine is unavailable), Possessed Portal oftentimes ends up being the fastest solution--one Arcum tap stops the game, as opposed to the 2 needed for Rings into basalt/staff.
If you really are focused on trying to maximize your instant-speed win power, why not throw in Vedalken Orrery? Let's take your situation--Arcum's on the field tapped, having just fetched Paradox Engine; for some reason your opponents didn't slay him there, so it's your priority. You cast a spell, and now they cast their Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Paradox Engine trigger goes on the stack, resolves, now your board is untapped and it's your priority with Unmaking sitting on the stack. You have precisely one Arcum tap before he goes back to the CZ, and you've got some dork in your hand and the mana to cast him (or, alternatively, you have another dork on the field already, and the mana to cast any spell in your hand), and you don't want to resort to spending that mana on Null Brooch quite yet.
Tap Arcum, fetch Vedalken Orrery. Cast the dork (or any other spell). Tap Arcum saccing your one surplus dork, fetch Flute. Tap Flute for the one zero-drop in your deck. Cast the zero drop, untap everything. Tap Arcum, fetch vault or basalt, tap it for 3. Tap Flute for Moonvessel, play Moonvessel, untap everything. Sac Moonvessel for Rings. Now you've got infinite mana, an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and all the spells in your deck have flash. Proceed to win the game while Anguished Unmaking never leaves the stack.
Again, if your opponents were already teed up to remove Arcum don't know why your opponents would be casting their removal in response to your casting a spell after Paradox has already been fetched, rather than casting it in response to the Arcum activation in the first place. But if that happens to be the case, all you'd need is Vedalken Orrery to fix the problem.
Paradox Engine in the field, Arcum tapped. You cast a spell, Engine trigger goes on the stack, Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Arcum dies to Unmaking before the Engine trigger resolves.
However, I do agree with you in the sense that I'd like to keep Portal for now. But I really am struggling to find another cut.
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Oh, I guess that's true. The removal would go on the stack on top of the paradox trigger, which would itself be on top of the spell that was cast. That was a mental misstep on my part. So Vedalken Orrery would have to be out on the field to begin with, or otherwise you'd have to cast some sort of instant in response to the removal (which would in turn put another Paradox trigger on top, which would resolve first, and then you could do the whole thing with Arcum and Orrery). Shimmer Myr would also accomplish the same thing if you had it in hand or on the board, which I guess is why Pook mentioned it, though as an artifact creature it would be much harder for us to consistently retrieve compared to something like Orrery.
In fairness I still don't know why they'd be trying to slay Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell instead of earlier in the turn in response to the initial Arcum tap to fetch paradox in the first place. But yes, slaying Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell actually wouldn't get you any free arcum taps at all, as the slay spell would resolve before the paradox trigger.
What's your current list mrjumbo? We could consider potential cuts for you if we saw it.
Why are they casting instants after Paradox is already on the field? Why aren't they slaying Arcum in response to the tap to fetch Paradox in the first place, so you don't even get the guaranteed 1 untap?
It was an example because the artifact you fetch isn't going to be Paradox Engine in the scenario you mentioned, right? You'd go get Basalt Monolith or Rings of Brighthearth if someone cast removal with Arcum's activation on the stack, because it's not like you have to announce what you're tutoring when you activate the ability, so you don't have to devote to a combo line. That statement was for *after* you had devoted to the Paradox combo line. Still, though, it makes sense that leaving you partway into one combo line without two of your important pieces (Engine by itself, with no Arcum and Flute) is a pretty big deal compared to getting half of the infinite mana combo after removal resolves, which also lets you get your Commander back more easily- maybe even the same turn.
and that's precisely why I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head, at least conceptually, around your approach to the deck: how does loading up on more than the bare minimum of 1 zero-drop and Moonvessel required for the combo (in your most recent list you've got Memnite, Ornithopter, and Shield Sphere) help stick Arcum or protect him?
Are you asking me to defend my first deck list? I realized I had jumped the gun with the 0 drops and dropped down to two of them, but apparently I posted the wrong list a couple posts ago. My list has been in flux every single night I've played it (I played that Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, at least 5 games each night. Didn't get to play last night due to work). I've dropped Phyrexian Walker and Shield Sphere, kept Ornithopter and Memnite, but replaced the other two with Lodestone Golem and Hope of Ghirapur. My list last posted must've been one from the day before, because Walker had been out of the deck for at least a day before that point (but that's the problem: My list has changed at least 5-6 times, once or twice per night, as I notice what works and what does not. Apparently I forgot to update my deck list before copying and pasting). Some changes are as small as swapping Grafdigger's Cage for Relic of Progenitus, though the largest issue is that the deck needs artifact creatures, and running about 20 seems right to me (I have roughly 25 creatures or cards that turn into creatures I can sacrifice, making the chance of hitting two high enough that I am comfortable running without Myr Turbine, which I wouldn't want to waste a turn tutoring, now). Some have been switched to cards like Phyrexian Revoker, etc., over the last few days, but I explained my reasoning in another post above (I know it's easy to get lost, and I did apparently post the wrong list).
Getting Portal down before Ad Nauseam or Doomsday is basically an impossibility at this point: If I have the speed to do it, it means they have a bad hand or aren't drawing what they need in order to cast it early. Ad Nauseam only costs one mana more than Arcum, but can happen at any time, load up their hand, and let them pitch whatever they want to Portal after they've drawn absurd numbers of cards (and I don't find shutting off 1cmc tutors to be that valuable when they're common t1-3 occurrences, when Portal is t4 without a god hand). Compare this to a 4 drop creature that has to survive a whole turn in order to even interact with Ad Nauseam, and you have roughly the same speed when factoring in acceleration, except theirs completely blanks ours. Rather than focusing on working an 8 mana card in for the purpose of stopping those decks when they're not running optimally, I'd prefer to use a different approach entirely. I've been running Lodestone Golem since maybe Saturday, and that blanks Ad Nauseam/Doomsday harder, though it still suffers the same problem (all it takes is a Chain of Vapor and it's gone, and both Ad Naus and Doomsday give them their Chain). I can at least ramp into Golem on turn 2/3, versus landing t2/3 Arcum and spending fodder to grab Portal for t3/4, when 4 is sometimes too late for the rare instances they're ballsy and go for the early win.
The worst I can do is try it out again. My list on Tapped Out hasn't been updated since Friday, I think, which is where I got the last list from too. I'm meeting players again tomorrow night to play for a while, so I'll post a more up to date list after that. What cards do you think I should be running that I am not, just to get that out of the way? I know Portal is one of them, and it will be played tomorrow night over Jester's Cap temporarily, which was taking Winter Orb's place, lol.
It was an example because the artifact you fetch isn't going to be Paradox Engine in the scenario you mentioned, right? You'd go get Basalt Monolith or Rings of Brighthearth if someone cast removal with Arcum's activation on the stack, because it's not like you have to announce what you're tutoring when you activate the ability, so you don't have to devote to a combo line. That statement was for *after* you had devoted to the Paradox combo line. Still, though, it makes sense that leaving you partway into one combo line without two of your important pieces (Engine by itself, with no Arcum and Flute) is a pretty big deal compared to getting half of the infinite mana combo after removal resolves, which also lets you get your Commander back more easily- maybe even the same turn.
If Arcum is getting blown up in response to a tap, there's a number of ways you could go about that. You could either a) fetch some sort of mana rock, generally either Lotus or Basalt Monolith, in order to cast Arcum again the next turn; b) fetch a combo piece like Rings or Staff if you've already got some other way to finish it off (or a Fabricate or whatever in hand to find the other piece); or, lastly, c) drop Possessed Portal and try for a reset, holding it out for a few turns and then sacrificing it to itself. It depends on what you've still got in your hand, if anything, and how close you feel your opponents are to winning.
Are you asking me to defend my first deck list? I realized I had jumped the gun with the 0 drops and dropped down to two of them, but apparently I posted the wrong list a couple posts ago.
That may simply be me looking at your outdated decklist then. Sorry about that.
Getting Portal down before Ad Nauseam or Doomsday is basically an impossibility at this point: If I have the speed to do it, it means they have a bad hand or aren't drawing what they need in order to cast it early.
Or that you've slowed their clock enough to play on your terms. Like I said and as you noted, Portal is in no way a hard counter to those decks, as they're simply faster than us (than anything else in the format, let's be honest). And if they get AN in hand before your first Arcum tap, then the only thing that will save you is Null Brooch, because other than that you've basically lost already anyway.
But if you can slow them down enough to get to that point, which what stax cards and countermagic are for, then Portal puts the nails in the coffin faster and more safely than rings/monolith/top or paradox/flute in that even if Arcum gets Anguished Unmakinged in response to his first tap the Portal still hits the board and demands an immediate answer or destroys their hand or precious few permanents.
That's why originally I was running Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void. Dropping Chalice for 1 typically blanked upwards of a third of their entire deck (including Chain of Vapor, lol) and our one-drops have always been highly limited as our curve truly starts at 2. With either of those in an opening hand I would always feel much more confident against AN/DD (ok, I never feel truly "confident" against those decks, but I would feel more stable than I would otherwise at least). If possible I'd still like to fit those cards back in at some point, but it'll require more brainstorming as the Paradox Engine combo has now added some relevance in our deck to 0-1 drops.
Golem is an interesting choice. For a while I ran Thorn of Amethyst, which keeps our dorks and Arcum at their normal cost while our noncreature artifacts aren't usually being cast anyway (rather cheated into play). I'll have to give those kinds of cards another round of consideration while I'm thinking what to do about Chalice and 3ball (or replacements).
What cards do you think I should be running that I am not, just to get that out of the way? I know Portal is one of them, and it will be played tomorrow night over Jester's Cap temporarily, which was taking Winter Orb's place, lol.
Well, since the most recent list you posted is three days old and has Shield Sphere still in it, it's difficult for me to say. Can you give the tappedoutlink or paste your current iteration?
I still think Trinisphere is worth running despite the non-bo with the Engine-Flute line. While it may hinder us, it will be hindering the opponent as well, probably even more. We can choose to go the normal route of fetching Rings-Basalt line over several turns if need be.
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Still running two 0 drops, Tangle Wire got dropped for Thorn of Amethyst since an optimized Yisan is already an easy deck to win against anyway even if it may potentially be more consistent (and that was the largest reason I ran it, so... yeah). Thorn curves nicely, Tangle didn't, really, and since Arcum doesn't need 2 turns anymore I find the need to slow down Karador, Selvala, etc., to be less useful. Sidisi Food Chain can be a bit of a problem, though I don't know Tangle Wire would really even help that sometimes.
Thorn and Lodestone = best in show against Leovold, Breya, Zur, and Jeleva/Yidris. The difference between 5 and 6 mana for a Jeleva deck to draw 20+ cards is pretty tremendous, and Thorn has the convenient upside of not hurting this deck as badly as most others in tier 1.5+ Commander. Yisan, Selvala, and to an extent, Edric don't care about it for the most part, but Arcum can combo with Engine before Selvala can (unless she has a god hand and you an average or worse hand), can reliably combo out before Yisan can murder the table unless he gets a god hand, and Edric really has to focus you down with counters. At least, this is my experience anyway. The Yisan list I play against weekly was built almost directly from Land Destruction's site (which, um, I can't get to anymore. He added Null Rod after last week though, which is kind of amusing to me).
Actually, more hate cards cropped up this week than last. I saw several Stony Silence and Null Rod, but I still managed to take 3/5 games. A Leovold deck planned to Ad Nauseam after Mind Twisting everyone on the third turn, but a Thorn of Amethyst (off of a topdecked Reshape, IIRC) kept him from doing it at all because I stripped one of his lands while I was at it. Next turn, Arcum came down, nobody had anything in hand, and my land creatures + Millikin won it for me.
There were a few more games, but they were less eventful really. Zur didn't show up this week, but Jeleva did, and that was one of the losses. I took the following game from it, but it wasn't really spectacular: I got first turn Metalworker (Island + Mana Crypt), which was second turn hasted Arcum into a win since everyone was tapped out and I was willing to risk a Force since I had Pact in hand. It was the goddiest godhand I have had since I started tinkering with this deck again.
Firstly and foremostly, I do sincerely apologize for skipping over your post earlier. Welcome to MTGS!
I would not recommend Servo Schematic over Myr Sire or any other card. I believe your analysis of the pros and cons is correct--the way I see it, it would be trading early-game consistency in landing those tokens for a little extra late-game power in interacting with our finishers. Thing is, the former is much more important than the latter: we're much more vulnerable in the early game when we need to get Arcum online and tapping asap, before we've got anything like Clock or Portal on the board; and if we've already got one of those cards out, we're usually already winning anyway. If Servo Schematic had something like "1: sac this" built in, I'd give it closer consideration, but as it is right now I'd take Myr Sire over it every time.
I still think Trinisphere is worth running despite the non-bo with the Engine-Flute line. While it may hinder us, it will be hindering the opponent as well, probably even more. We can choose to go the normal route of fetching Rings-Basalt line over several turns if need be.
I would like to think so, too. You could very well be right that Trini into our old gameplan is still good enough to justify losing access to Paradox for that particular game. I'll have to see. I agree that apart from Paradox/Flute we're still just as unhurt by Trini as we were before (and it was always an extremely powerful parity play for us).
In the meantime, Thorn of Amethyst isn't such a bad replacement; I'd say the parity gain on it is almost as good as Trini, since there are no mission-critical noncreature spells in this deck. Chalice of the Void may still be workable also; usually in my games it comes out set to 1, and insofar as Paradox/Flute is concerned the only thing that blocks is Myr Moonvessel. Actually that whole problem could be circumvented by just having 1 extra mana:
Firstly, tap Arcum for Paradox and cast any spell (combo starter).
Tap Arcum for Citanul Flute, tap flute for 0drop, play 0drop, everything is untapped.
Tap Arcum for Basalt Monolith, tap Monolith to add 3, pay 2 and tap flute for Myr Retriever. Get 1 from literally anywhere else (this is the one extra mana I was talking about), play Retriever, everything is untapped.
Tap Monolith again for 3 more. Tap Arcum for Rings of Brighthearth, returning 0drop to the hand as Retriever hits the grave. Play 0drop. Everything is untapped. Now you've got Rings, untapped Basalt, and 3 in the pool--the combo is complete.
Having one extra mana during the combo is hardly very much to ask. Any spare nonland permanent that taps for mana, of which we have many in this deck, would be untapped repeatedly from all the Paradoxing and would pay that cost, or even just a single extra untapped land, or a Lotus Petal or whatever else.
So, I think Chalice of the Void set to 1 is still very playable in this deck, and I'd like to add it back in if possible.
Since you trimmed down on artifact synergies and beefed up on MUC, I assume you're able to consistently pay FoW? If so you may consider also running Chrome Mox too. My list is still running ~30 artifacts, so I'm still reluctant to run FoW or Chrome for lack of blue.
How have Rhystic Study and Back to Basics been working out for you? I'm particularly curious about Rhystic Study, as that's not a card I tend to see very often. Also regarding BtB, in spite of our deck being monocolored, a majority of our manabase is usually nonbasic, as we run all manner of 2 lands to maximize Arcum ramp.
Actually, I just noticed your deck runs twice as many basic islands as mine does; is that by choice or due to budget constraints? I suppose part of that is simply because you run Islands in place of fetchlands, which is what I would do if I were mainboarding BtB, but at the same time you're not running common selections like City of Traitors, Svyelunite Temple, and Buried Ruin (the lack of CoT is especially surprising).
I don't run City of Traitors simply because I don't have one (same for Flusterstorm and Mana Drain). If I get the extra cash, I will be picking one up, but I have Mana Drain on my list first. Well, and a Nintendo Switch lol.
I removed a lot of my nonbasics over time, when I began running Back to Basics on and off to combat things in my new meta from where I moved in November. I actually dropped Svyelunite Temple back when I added in Mox Diamond, because it ETB tapped and kept causing me issues during what would have otherwise been solid starts. Buried Ruin was the last one I dropped.
Rhystic Study was added in for this Wednesday's play and it performed exemplary. I landed it t2 when I cast it, and due to the sheer volume of cards everyone casts I was rolling in cards at all stages of the game (one guy taxed himself out of the game, which was amusing. Drawing cards or taxing is fine with me lol). Thirst may be better, but it performed great this week so I'm thinking about keeping it for a while. It's either a good source of cards or it slows people down enough that you can slide past them and win, and honestly, I'm fine with both.
I've only cast Back to Basics twice and it was backbreaking both times to the most dangerous decks at the table. I really liked seeing Zur not able to win the following turn with his pass the turn pile (and he was obviously hurting for mana if he passed when he cast Doomsday), and seeing Tazri and Jeleva flail and do nothing for two turns was great.
The Tazri deck here runs 0 basics, and the Zur deck only runs Islands (for Gush) and a singular Swamp, etc., if that tells you how greedy the mana bases are here. Jeleva, I think, runs 1 of each basic, but fetches Volcanic Island and Sea before anything else, etc.. The four color Commanders, like Thrasios (okay, he is only UG but he's always run with some black partner), Yidris, Breya are just as greedy, so Back to Basics can work wonders if cast at the right time. I like it a lot more than Winter Orb right now, for whatever that's worth.
Also, yes, Chrome Mox is definitely worth a shot. I've had two sitting in my binder for a while and will try it out come Monday (I have one in my own Breya and one in Zur); I think that'll be a great idea and I'm not sure why I overlooked it even after opting to add a Force. I'll plop it in Guardian Idol's place, I think? I dunno, it's kind of a pain to check my list as I'm passing time on my phone while at my in-law's place right now lol.
I think I'll try chalice as well, though I'll have to check what I want to remove for it. Shutting off 1 mana tutors, Rituals, etc., is super handy.
I don't run City of Traitors simply because I don't have one (same for Flusterstorm and Mana Drain). If I get the extra cash, I will be picking one up, but I have Mana Drain on my list first. Well, and a Nintendo Switch lol.
That's fair. I figured it was a budgetary thing. I do a lot of playing on cockatrice--even when I'm playing with friends, most of us are sort of scattered across the country right now so we play on Cockatrice to link up long-distance. And on top of that, even when I'm playing tabletop, most of my paper playgroups allow proxies anyway, so budget is never something I've had to worry about (nor, technically speaking, should it be a relevant consideration when writing the primer on a deck).
A side effect of the cockatrice/proxies thing is that I get a lot of nonbasic-heavy decks too. 5c FC or 5c AN decks or 4c storm decks and things like that, the kind of decks that run almost no basic lands if not none at all, because when you've got an unlimited budget it's very feasible to run 1 of every dual/shock/fetch/filter/etcetera and trim the basics down to singletons or otherwise eliminate them entirely. The only decks I see with lots of basics are a handful of mono-U ones like Azami and Teferiwalker as well as the occasional mono-G or mono-B deck, but overall they're not that common relative to the 3c/4c/5c contenders. The 99% nonbasic manabases are pretty ubiquitous.
Since the primer has to be written for the "global meta" and it assumes unlimited budget, I'll have to think about whether Back to Basics with a nonbasic-light manabase is overall better for Arcum than leaving it out and keeping all the nonbasics like CoT/Ruin/Svyelunite/Workshop/so forth in. But in the right meta, and if you're already running more Islands than usual anyway due to budget/availability reasons, I could definitely understand Back to Basics being a clutch play.
I removed a lot of my nonbasics over time, when I began running Back to Basics on and off to combat things in my new meta from where I moved in November. I actually dropped Svyelunite Temple back when I added in Mox Diamond, because it ETB tapped and kept causing me issues during what would have otherwise been solid starts. Buried Ruin was the last one I dropped.
Svelyunite Temple and Buried Ruin I could understand, they're situational enough that they're probably on par with Island rather than an upgrade. The absence of Workshop I could understand also, both because it's $1000 and because your artifact count is overall a little lower now with your expanded MUC package.
Rhystic Study was added in for this Wednesday's play and it performed exemplary. I landed it t2 when I cast it
That's precisely what it's dependent on, in my experience. Either it comes down T1 or T2 and it's pretty good, or it comes down T3 or later and is underwhelming. That's why I tend not to see it very often as opposed to more traditional draw spells that are always good cards no matter what turn you cast them.
Also, yes, Chrome Mox is definitely worth a shot. I've had two sitting in my binder for a while and will try it out come Monday (I have one in my own Breya and one in Zur); I think that'll be a great idea and I'm not sure why I overlooked it even after opting to add a Force. I'll plop it in Guardian Idol's place, I think? I dunno, it's kind of a pain to check my list as I'm passing time on my phone while at my in-law's place right now lol.
I've never been much a fan of Guardian Idol. I really don't put it on the same level as the bread-and-butter 2-tap-for-1 dorks like Manakin. Swapping out Idol for Chrome Mox is probably exactly what I'd do in your list.
I think I'll try chalice as well, though I'll have to check what I want to remove for it. Shutting off 1 mana tutors, Rituals, etc., is super handy.
^What are your thoughts on Sphere of Resistance? I still don't like running Chalice for some reason.
Chalice of the Void has performed very well in my games, almost as good as Trinisphere. Prior to Paradox/Flute it would come out for either 0, 1, or on rare occasion 2, to devastating effect each time. We really don't run a lot of 1drops--I think my deck has about 10? And even your deck with its larger MUC package runs, what, 14 by my count? Not much more than mine. Meanwhile low-curve 3-5c decks like AN, doomsday, storm, etc. regularly run 20-25 1drops and potentially even a little more, such that Chalice for 1 can literally blank 1/4th or even 1/3rd of their entire deck if it isn't countered. It's no joke.
I dunno what you'd cut for it; you'd have to figure out what's not performing as well as you'd like. How's Mox Opal doing for you? As the flip-side of expanding your MUC package in order to enable color-centric effects like FoW and Chrome Mox, you've also significantly reduced your artifact count which makes it harder to hit metalcraft (meanwhile, in my artifact-heavy deck, I'm hitting metalcraft so consistently that once in a while I've even considered adding Stoic Rebuttal, though I never did commit to that yet). I dunno if you'll run into any problems with that or if you have already.
Mrjumbo, in my humble opinionSphere of Resistance isn't half the card that Chalice is in this deck, because on its own it doesn't give us any parity advantage. It's made to be combo'd with other forms of mana denial and/or land destruction, which aren't things we can guarantee (unlike in, say, Derevi or Teferiwalker, where mana denial is definitely something they can guarantee as it's like 80% of their strategy). I'd much sooner choose Chalice and/or Thorn of Amethyst, both of which directly shift parity in our favor all on their own because our deck is built such that the reciprocal effect barely hurts us while being much worse for everyone else. What's holding you back about Chalice?
I don't run City of Traitors simply because I don't have one (same for Flusterstorm and Mana Drain). If I get the extra cash, I will be picking one up, but I have Mana Drain on my list first. Well, and a Nintendo Switch lol.
That's fair. I figured it was a budgetary thing. I do a lot of playing on cockatrice--even when I'm playing with friends, most of us are sort of scattered across the country right now so we play on Cockatrice to link up long-distance. And on top of that, even when I'm playing tabletop, most of my paper playgroups allow proxies anyway, so budget is never something I've had to worry about (nor, technically speaking, should it be a relevant consideration when writing the primer on a deck).
Well, I just moved to a new meta game about two states away from where I used to play; my group before wouldn't have cared, but the place I play now is at a card shop, because I don't really have anywhere else to go nor do I know anyone else in the area in which I moved (we moved for my wife's job, and while I work at the same place, I have jack in common with any of them since I'm a 29 year old gamer and avid MTG player). No Legacy events at the shop, but everyone there has a Legacy deck, oddly enough, lol. Anyway, most people at this shop are pretty anti-proxy if they're expensive cards: Meaning, if I want to use a Mana Drain, I better go out and buy one. It's why my Zur and Breya lists don't have Scrubland, Badlands, etc.: I have 4 Underground Sea, 4 Tundra, 4 Volcanic Island, etc., but 0 Scrubland/Badlands because I never wanted to play a Legacy deck in those colors (aaaaaand I also bought them when they were cheap. My Seas cost me $30 a pop back in 2008 or so). So I'm at a weird place, budget-wise. Mishra's Workshop is probably just never going to happen for me; while I see it's excellent in the deck I at least have to be reasonable with my aspirations, lol. It is for this same reason I will never play a Grand Arbiter or Teferi list with Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. So don't mind me if my lists aren't 100% optimal; I'm working on it, slowly, as time goes on and I do acknowledge that an optimal list will perform better than what I'm able to play right now. I'm thinking about nabbing one of those nice Judge foil Mana Drains this check- or an Imperial Seal. Honestly, I can't decide and I have (at least) 3 decks that want Drains, and (at least) 2 that want Seals. -_-;
I dunno what you'd cut for it; you'd have to figure out what's not performing as well as you'd like. How's Mox Opal doing for you? As the flip-side of expanding your MUC package in order to enable color-centric effects like FoW and Chrome Mox, you've also significantly reduced your artifact count which makes it harder to hit metalcraft (meanwhile, in my artifact-heavy deck, I'm hitting metalcraft so consistently that once in a while I've even considered adding Stoic Rebuttal, though I never did commit to that yet). I dunno if you'll run into any problems with that or if you have already.
Mox Opal still taps pretty reliably for a colored mana when I need it: I still run 43 artifacts in the deck among my creature and noncreature artifacts, so I have roughly the same chance of it being useful as I do of Mox Diamond, so that's really not that bad. For anecdotal evidence's sake, though, I don't recall any times after turn 1 that I've had difficulty tapping it for mana, though that could change. I probably won't go below 40 artifacts overall, though, just because artifact creatures are so integral to the plan, and all of those little silver bullet artifacts come in handy a large number of times so I don't see myself removing too many of them further.
Rhystic Study in my list is probably just going to become Windfall. Study is valuable if landed on turn 1/2 or if Arcum gets removed, while Windfall boasts all of that + if I grab Paradox Engine, but have no second artifact creature, it would be a "Break in case of emergency for creature" card in a strictly vs Study sense, and let me draw 3-4 more to win immediately. Also, I'm thinking about exchanging Dramatic Reversal (a little less useful now that it can be repeated with one tap) for Chalice or another random mana rock. Last couple times I've drawn Reversal, I've just used it to reset my Monoliths/Vault at EoT so I untap with all available mana the turn before. While that's not bad, Voltaic Key would basically serve the same purpose for that end and wouldn't require blue mana.
Back to Basics is still testing out extremely well since it works fairly well against most decks that are good against Arcum, and with 19 or so Islands, my mana ramp, and my mana dorks, I feel pretty comfortable when that gets slammed on the second or third turn that I'll be the one ahead after it the most (I always try to lay it out after the deck I believe will cause me most trouble taps out, or mostly taps out). Usually one or so of my lands won't untap, while other players wind up with 3~ lands being stuck tapped and them needing to scramble to readjust their gameplan. I adore laying it out after someone taps their lands to cast a tutor, lol. Honestly, though, it probably plays very close to how you would utilize Trinisphere in the same slot, as it is absurdly good at maintaining a mana denial effect. Decks with very low land counts but with high numbers of mana rocks can be hurt very badly by an early BtB, so you wind up with powerful decks just sitting around with their deck in the hands, unable to do anything due to an earlier counter war, tutor, or something, and all they have is a Mox Diamond or something. BtB doesn't hurt multi-rock godhands or anything (then again, neither does Trini), but Trini and BtB punish the same kinds of decks and create equivalent outcomes (being taxed 3-6 mana on one or two spells is similar to only being able to cast one of the spells due to only having a mana rock/dork available). Chalice at 1 + BtB sounds absolutely delightful given the greedy mana bases played around me, lol.
For now, the changes I settled on are as follows:
Out: Forge, Disk, Kuldotha, Dross Scorpion, Trinisphere, Gilded Lotus, Impulse, Darksteel Citadel. Bridge out to the SB.
In: Paradox, Flute, Memnite, Ornithopter, Thorn of Amethyst, Whir of Invention, Walking Ballista, Static Orb. DGrid in from the SB.
We'll see how this works out. I'm a little worried about my mana since I cut 2 sources (lotus and a land) and put 0 sources back in, but I wanted to squeeze in both Thorn and Static Orb in the wake of removing Trinisphere (though I hope I can work Trini back in eventually...)
I know I was originally talking about Myr Moonvessel instead of a 2nd zero drop. I eventually changed my mind and decided on 2 zero drops instead in order to be able to consistently and without hesitation throw down Chalice for X=1, but I really don't think it matters, we can play around it either way.
I also need to keep thinking about Dramatic Reversal. I might cut Static Orb back out for it. Not sure yet.
Lastly in recent months I haven't seen as many Narsets, Bragos, and swinging Zurs around as I used to in years past, so I moved Bridge out to the SB and put DGrid in its place. It's still our go-to solution for any deck that cares about the combat step, and I would just as quickly switch it back in if I knew someone at the table would be playing one of those decks.
First of all I just realized in my last update I forgot to mention that a while ago I took out Tolaria West for Inventors' Fair. That was an old change but it slipped my mind to mention it until now, my mistake. Primer has been updated to reflect that.
I am curious to read your guys's on my list of Arcum, and to your opinions on where he stands on the tier list.
Heap Doll: Worth it? You're mainboarding Grafdigger's Cage so I'm assuming grave-based decks are a significant threat in your meta, but even so he's a pretty mediocre dork. I'd much rather have a second grave hoser like Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progentius/Scrabbling Claws rather than a little mini-gravehate stapled to a dork, but maybe it's been working well for you, I dunno.
Personal Tutor: also pretty bad imo. Sorcery speed tutor for a sorcery only that goes to the top of the library. You only have 6 sorceries in the whole deck and P. Tutor is one of them; what do you usually grab with this? Another sorcery-speed tutor? Isn't that a little slow?
Timetwister: Interesting choice. I used to run it mainboard back in like 2012, but as the meta evolved I came to the conclusion it usually helps other people more than us. I'd rather run a more traditional draw spell like Thirst for Knowledge.
Glacial Chasm: What are you countering with this? If this is a silver bullet for something, I suspect you're better off finding an artifact solution, something you can easily tutor for and that synergizes with everything else in your deck and that isn't as costly as the Chasm. Ensnaring Bridge stops combat damage, Witchbane Orb stops targeted damage.
Isochron Scepter: See previous posts for my thoughts on this. I was never a big fan, and while Stick + Dramatic Reversal was a neat trick we've got Paradox Engine for that now anyway. If it's been working for you then by all means keep it in, but it's never been consistent enough for my tastes.
Hedron Crawler. 2cmc dorks that tap for 1 are the second-best dorks in this deck, and we should be running every single one. You already run all the others, but you're missing this one.
Copy Artifact. The one enchantment I think belongs in every Arcum deck. At worst, you copy a 2cmc dork that taps for 1, so you can basically think of it like an extra copy of Manakin or your favorite dork. At best, you copy something that wins you the game. Also the lowest cmc of all artifact copy effects (Sculpting Steel and Phyrexian Metamorph both cost 3).
Tezzeret the Seeker. Hefty at 5cmc, but often enough pays for himself immediately after he comes out by untapping 2 mana rocks with his +1, or just pay -3 to put Rings of Brighthearth on the battlefield and win the game. In your deck description you talk about winning without Arcum; cards like Tezzeret are how you do that.
Pithing Needle. It's hard to find any deck this doesn't belong in, but as an artifact, it especially belongs in ours. I'm actually really surprised you're not running this one already--is there nothing in your meta for you to needle? Necropotence? Food Chain? Survival of the Fittest? Any commander with an activated ability?
Other cards I endorse like Possessed Portal/Clock of Omens/Skullclamp/etc. are ultimately optional choices and are entirely up to you and your playstyle and preferences. Silver bullets I run like Defense Grid are meta-dependent. But those cards in that list are pretty much mandatory, I don't think there's a single competitive Arcum deck out there that shouldn't have them.
As for the tier list, I'd prefer not to get into that myself. A lot of people are of the firm and unshakable opinion that any deck which doesn't run either Ad Nauseam or Doomsday or both isn't a tier 1 deck, so by that metric Arcum and everything else is tier 2 (or 1.5 at best). But if you ask the Rules Committee, cards like Braids, Cabal Minion and Recurring Nightmare are tier 1--or rather even tier 0, so good they don't even deserve to be played. Point being, it's an extremely subjective process to rank things into tiers, and it's the kind of discussion that quickly degenerates into nonsense. I'd rather not comment.
It a lot less valuable to talk about tier positions than it is to talk about viability. In Commander, it's pretty clear that Doomsday/Ad Nauseam decks, storm decks that use either of the aforementioned, and Food Chain decks reign supreme. I don't find Arcum to be expressly viable in a meta game where every other deck is tuned to abuse those cards, with the exception of maybe Food Chain. You *can* win, but it'll probably say more about your play skills and your ability to slip things in during counter wars than it will anything about the deck.
Beyond the tippy-top most decks abusing the above cards, though?
Arcum is a freaking beast. You'll at least be on par with tuned Breya (and yes, this is speaking of the Doomsday/Ad Nauseam versions- she's simply not better at that than Zur's "I can draw 20 cards from the command zone during a bad game" or Leovold's built in LabMan protection), Yisan, Karador, Teferi (Arcum gives no s*** about stax), Azami, Grand Arbiter Augustin, etc., and you can hang around with Zur, Yidris, Thrasios, etc., if you have the proper responses or they don't have a god hand.
So, there are clearly decks that outperform Arcum. However, there are plenty of which now Arcum outperforms and can easily pack silver bullets for any in the same relative level of strength. If you're talking about that tier list on Tapped Out (lol), then the 1.5 placement they've given Arcum is perfectly fair. You can win against what are essentially the most powerful decks in the format, and you can consistently t4 now which puts you at the same turn as Karador, et al. Our t1-3s are extremely inconsistent, however, and occur more rarely than, say, Zur, which is why I'd put Arcum beneath those in viability but above most other decks.
Viability is key, not sheer tier placement. And, mind you, viability changes by meta. If every white deck in your meta packs Idyllic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, and Stony Silence or Null Rod, then Arcum and Sharuum are going to be loads worse than many other Commanders. It's kind of like how people considered Yisan to be tier 1 because in extremely fast meta games removal was hardly run or undervalued- allowing Yisan to thrive. If you've got a meta where every deck packs 10+ removal, then Yisan becomes one of the fairest decks in the format, bordering on unviable.
I'm working on a pretty tight budget playing a Padeem, Consul of Innovation list, and Scrap Trawler has been amazing for me, and it would seem like it would add extra value to this list as well, since it sacrifices so frequently. Of course, it might be a win more. What are your thoughts?
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: Mono-U Tron, Skred
Legacy: ANT, Death and Taxes
EDH: Jori En, Ruin Diver Fast Combo
Pauper: Affinity
Oversight or is there a reason your list is missing Scalding Tarn?
That's strange. It was in there before, and it's definitely in the list I actually play with. Must have been a copy+paste error that it somehow ended up not on there. Thanks for pointing that out.
I go back and forth on whether or not fetchlands are actually worth it. Their deck thinning power was long ago shown to be mathematically negligible, so the only other remotely notable reason to have them in there is to get free lib shuffles so as to synergize with Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, and similar. Is that minor utility worth getting blanked by Suppression Field and LD'd by Stifle? Not sure.
I'm working on a pretty tight budget playing a Padeem, Consul of Innovation list, and Scrap Trawler has been amazing for me, and it would seem like it would add extra value to this list as well, since it sacrifices so frequently. Of course, it might be a win more. What are your thoughts?
I touched on Scrap Trawler a little bit in an earlier post. I'm not quite sure how it would work here. The vast majority of the artifacts (80%+) that hit our GY before the combo turn are cmc 2, while only a small few (2 in my decklist, iirc, maybe 3 in some others) are cmc 0. There are usually no cmc 1 dorks we run, unless a particular decklist chooses to run Myr Moonvessel or Hope of Ghirapur at which point you'd have one or two at most. So unless you've already found one of the couple 0 ones, or one of the couple 1 ones if you run those (in total, what, 4 cards maximum?) and pitched them in the grave beforehand, with Trawler out you'd simply either a) sac one of our usual 2 drop to return absolutely nothing, or b) sac Scrap Trawler itself to return a 2drop, at which point you mind as well be playing Junk Diver so you could at least retrieve 3cmc artifacts if something like Rings of Brighthearth gets blown up. Basically the fact that it says "lesser" rather than "lesser than or equal to" kills it imo, otherwise we could use 2drops to return other 2drops and Trawler itself could safely retrieve our most valuable pieces, but as it stands now saccing 2drops could only return our nonexistent 1drops or one of 2-3 0drops, and saccing Trawler itself can only fetch a 2drop at best.
I did remove 2 of the 0 drops for Myr Moonvessel and Hope of Ghirapur on Thursday. I find it more necessary to run *more* artifact creatures now that we'll be wanting two of them faster than we ever did before, so I'm up to 20 creatures. I've been able to consistently get two creatures on the board and Arcum tapped on turn 4.
I used Disk-Forge-Lattice to win most of my games on Wednesday, though come Thursday I had already removed the three cards in favor of using Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker as my win conditions since they're just easier and to-the-point, not to mention less of dead draws if I get them from turns 1-3. Ballista has the same weakness as Disk against activation-stoppers (Pithing Needle for example), basically, except you can cast it and put millions of damage on the stack with opponents having no real way of stopping it (just activate it multiple times in a row without passing priority). In the event of hexproof or shroud you can simply generate millions of tokens using Hangarback Walker and win the following turn, just like I'd do with Myr Turbine, Clock of Omens, Basalt Monolith, and Rings of Brighthearth in the event of someone having indestructible permanents or an indestructible Commander with Plate and other nonsense.
Basically, now with Engine, t3 and t4 Arcum with protection is easier than ever because you only need him for one turn- no more do you have to protect him over the course of 2-3 turns, depending on if Rings of Brighthearth got removed.
I still run two 0 drops in the event of having to cast Arcum on the fourth turn with haste, etc.. I may replace another of them with something simple, though, since the one to get either Monolith or Mana Vault is what's most important.
I've left in Rings of Brighthearth-Monolith-Staff combo. Actually, to save time, here's my current list:
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Citanul Flute
1x Defense Grid
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Monolith
1x Guardian Idol
1x Isochron Scepter
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Paradox Engine
1x Pithing Needle
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
1x Staff of Domination
1x Static Orb
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Thousand-Year Elixir
1x Torpor Orb
1x Winter Orb
Creature (20)
1x Hangarback Walker
1x Hedron Crawler
1x Hope of Ghirapur
1x Junk Diver
1x Manakin
1x Memnite
1x Metalworker
1x Millikin
1x Myr Moonvessel
1x Myr Retriever
1x Myr Sire
1x Ornithopter
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Plague Myr
1x Shield Sphere
1x Silver Myr
1x Spellskite
1x Trinket Mage
1x Walking Ballista
1x Arcane Denial
1x Brainstorm
1x Counterspell
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Delay
1x Dispel
1x Dramatic reversal
1x Force of Will
1x Muddle the Mixture
1x Negate
1x Pact of Negation
1x Spell Pierce
1x Swan Song
1x Turn Aside
1x Whir of Invention
Sorcery (4)
1x Fabricate
1x Preordain
1x Reshape
1x Transmute Artifact
Enchantment (3)
1x Back to Basics
1x Mystic Remora
1x Power Artifact
Planeswalker (1)
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
Land (32)
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Blinkmoth Nexus
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Crystal Vein
1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Inventors' Fair
19x Island
1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Saprazzan Skerry
1x Seat of the Synod
1x Strip Mine
I'm not settled on the numbers of anything, really, yet. You can leave in Disk-Forge-Lattice if you want the old win conditions. I no longer think that Possessed Portal is necessary- if you get that single tap of Arcum, then you can make the attempt to win rather than attempt to stall, ergo I don't see Portal being necessary any longer at all (and anything that'd remove Engine removes Portal). The downside to Portal is: You grab it, you're done for the turn. You grab Engine and then you can untap Arcum and try again for another win con after they remove it (as the active player, you get priority to cast another spell- it doesn't have to be an instant, and you get the untap from it being cast, not resolving). You can then directly go into Rings-Monolith-Staff if you really need a backup win, and both primary wins in my build do their thing with infinite mana. Oh, and I guess I'm running Isochron Scepter, still, as well. I haven't found anything worth taking out for it, yet.
I probably am running too many counters and not enough draw. Maybe swapping Delay for Scroll Rack- to put Flute/Engine back into the library, would be valuable.
My weakest card is probably Isochron Scepter. I just haven't found what additional cards I want to run in my current meta (the decks equally as fast as mine don't care about attacking or are Yisan, so I dropped Ensnaring Bridge). I'm still one turn behind Doomsday castings unless I get a good hand rather than an average one (average being mana dork + lands). I haven't really tried optimizing my list, yet; I've just trimmed a *lot* of the fat. I'd be tempted to re-add some of my old cards, though, I just can't think of too many cases where some of them are valuable any longer, like in the case of Possessed Portal.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
Also, I think Memnite>Ornithopter in this deck for being skullclamp-able.
WorkshopsLegacy:
Death and Taxes
EDH:
Arcum DagssonMake Paradox Engine Great Again!Urza, Lord High Artificer
Also, more games to report that I updated on elsewhere last night:
We had a game that went very long yesterday: The whole table had to fight through a resolved Stasis lock and we just kind of sat there while he dug for stuff to kill us (Derevi tutored into Stasis to stop myself and FC Tazri from comboing off). My Engine was removed, so I had to go for Rings-Monolith-Staff I basically just sat back until the Stasis player countered another player's spell. I used Arcum to get Basalt Monolith on that player's end step, Dramatic reversal'd on my turn tapping down my last U source, got my Rings, then generated a few million using the floating mana. Then I tutored into Staff and drew my whole library, finishing the table with Ballista. Several players had counters in hand to stop me with no way to cast them thanks to Derevi's Stasis.
Krosan Grip on Paradox Engine was no fun (three players moved them from board to main due to me testing Arcum lol), but I did get to untap as I was the active player at the time (priority is fun), so I got to leave most of my permanents untapped while waiting to draw into a tutor or Staff. I did have to cast a counter to stop Tazri from going off with Ad Nauseam a couple turns before, though, which is largely why I was biding my time.
I won a big chunk of the games even through disruption thanks to casting Arcum on the second/third turn with protection while everyone else was trying to resolve big spells (even though I've moved, I cannot escape people trying to cast Land Equilibrium on the second turn off of 1-2 land. A couple players tried for early Doomsdays only for them to get countered, etc.). Though, since these were decks like FC Tazri, Yisan, Leovold, etc., all I really have to fight through are 1-2 removal spells in each deck, total (several of them were cursing having Abrupt Decay in hand, for example, since removing my artifact creature is not enough since I've upped the count- it's like removing one of Yisan's Llanowar Elves, now). Watching Brago spend his Mystical Tutor to grab Swords to Plowshares just to stop me from untapping with my Commander was very entertaining- and usually made me thankful I didn't have to protect Arcum multiple turns anymore.
This deck still needs some work to tangle with Doomsday builds- even the pass piles are hard to get around since they can be turn 1-2, and this deck isn't quite that fast (so my only answer is counter magic, hence why I've upped the numbers). Any non-Doomsday deck, though, I feel fairly confident when sitting across, now. Especially Yisan, now that I've had a few more games against it. Karador is pretty fun, as well, since a lot of the early wins with that deck involve binning Boonweaver which is something this deck can easily tutor to stop. Arcum plays significantly well through Stax now, though, so that's been pretty valuable against Brago, Derevi, Teferi, etc..
So far I haven't run into an issue using Ballista and Hangarback as my win conditions. I'm expecting this to change, though, because I'm winning a fair amount due to people not quite knowing how to deal with this Arcum build- that's obviously going to change and my record of wins will normalize a bit once people get used to dealing with Arcum again, but I have been greatly enjoying this. Most games end around turn 4-6; maybe an occasional one on turn 3 or later than 6 if the Stax decks are involved. There's enough disruption that most players delay their wins until the fourth or fifth turn, myself included (even if I can gun straight for the 3rd turn win, I slow my roll a bit because I may get screwed).
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
I agree that the case for keeping it in is weaker without Forge and Disk alongside it, but for the time being I still think it can pull its weight. I always considered it the most individually useful of the three pieces--Forge outside of the combo was deadweight, and Disk outside of the combo was useful only when we were already losing and needed a reset.
You're absolutely right that Memnite would be the superior 0-drop for Skullclamp synergy, I'd forgotten about that. Also, Pook, I also strongly recommend the clamp if your deck is hurting for draw power; the weakest component of Arcum has always been the lineup of mediocre artifact dorks and tokens we need to spit out, and a 1cmc artifact that adds "1, sac this: Draw 2" to all of them is a big deal.
That's generally been my thoughts in the last couple days. The only thing that Forge/Disk/Lattice deals with that Ballista can't is player-hexproof effects, which thus far have been highly uncommon to begin with because they're so expensive (they certainly haven't discouraged any storm players from picking up Aetherflux Reservoir), and they're beatable by infinite token attack anyway. If we've already gone infinite we're nigh-invincible anyway and I really doubt we'll have an issue waiting the one extra turn to get the tokens un-sick (infinite Null Brooch, just counter everything?).
Yes, you're right about that, if you have anything in hand you can cast, you're basically guaranteed at minimum one Arcum untap from Paradox Engine. Even if they counter your thing, or blow up your Paradox Engine in response, you still get the one untap at the time of casting (so if you're willing and able, you could actually respond in turn with Null Brooch).
But if Engine gets blown up for any reason, you're playing pre-Paradox arcum--you're just as vulnerable to the same shenanigans as you were last month and one year ago. You'll want Rings/Monolith/Staff or Rings/Monolith/Top to finish the game. You'll want Possessed Portal to put a full stop to any douchery, hard-counter any deck that relies on drawing cards or that hits goldfish early, and immediately shift board parity in your favor (a la Cataclysm). You'll want Myr Turbine to never-ever miss an Arcum tap, Clocks for tempo, and so on.
And a card as meta-shifting and as vulnerable as Engine, immediately drawing hate from every single person sitting at the table, will be blown up in a non-negligible percentage of your games, no matter what you do. That's why I'm not quite ready yet to go all-in around Engine. It's not the same as going all-in around WGD or AN or DD, spells which are considerably more challenging to disrupt as you need to deal with them on the stack or you lose. And I'm not convinced that making your Engine game 30% stronger (by focusing the whole deck around it rather than only devoting a minimal package) is worth making your non-Engine game 70% weaker.
But maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm eager to see how your experience plays out.
Cutting things like Ensnaring Bridge is of course entirely a meta call. From your posts it sounds like no one's consistently playing Zur/Narset/Brago/other commanders that rely on the combat step, so cutting it seems like the right choice for you.
How do you observe the AN/Doomsday decks usually winning? For me the piles are usually Labman-based. Possessed Portal hoses any Labman pile by simply disabling all draws. And as clunky as it is, I've seen such decks scoop to a well-placed and well-timed Jester's Cap, as they're usually very all-in style. You'd probably even also get more consistent mileage out of a simple draw spell like Thirst or FoF over Isochron Scepter, but then I'm biased because I never really got could wrap my head around putting Isochron in this deck in the first place (Dramatic Reversal existing wasn't good enough reason for me).
Oh, and p.s., above you apologized because you like talking about the deck. Don't sweat it, that's what this thread has always been for.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
More general removal, like Anguished Unmaking is in several decks here and they always hit Arcum which seems to delay me more than hitting Engine. It's not very hard to assemble Rings+Monolith when you can tap Arcum to grab one of the pieces with removal on the stack. What I mean is: Hitting Arcum after pulling Engine when you cast a spell = you untap but have no Arcum any longer to tutor (because they cast removal with the first Paradox trigger on the stack. In order to do anything with Arcum here, you need an instant in hand *and* an artifact creature on board). Hitting Engine when you cast a spell = After it resolves, you untap Arcum and get to sac a new creature, including one that was just cast, to go get Rings which puts you 1/2 or 1/3rd of the way toward another game-winning combo. Exiling/Destroying Engine is the strictly inferior method of play, or at least that's what players around me have convinced themselves. Might be something they're missing, though, so I'm sure your experience may differ. They may destroy/exile Engine after Arcum has already been removed, however, just to keep me out of the game longer, but I don't see what a lot of the older cards like either Clock, Portal, etc., would do in this situation to help (but I'm also not very imaginative so you probably already have ideas, I just am unaware of them lol).
From what I've seen, I'm not sure how Portal is a good way to stop Doomsday. Unless you leave Arcum open for several turns at the possibility of them casting Doomsday, which means more time for Arcum to get removed and cuts off an Engine play until you hit your own turn unless you have a bunch of instants and creatures on board. Actually... I may look into this. Running more low-cost instants (Chain of Vapor and the like) and maybe Shimmer Myr to go off at instant speed may be a decent plan against Doomsday decks since I can have the potential to grab Portal to stop them from drawing *after* they set up their pile (if I do it before they're just going to bounce my Portal with one of their flex cards, usually Chain of Vapor, then draw and win anyway), or pull Engine, Flute, and then cast through whatever I need with a kill spell on the stack. The real problem with Doomsday I'm having is... they can cast Doomsday before or at the same speed I cast Arcum- I generally require a god hand to beat a 2nd or 3rd turn Doomsday if they have protection. Really, unless I can land Static Orb, Tangle Wire, or Back to Basics, I feel pretty unconfident against the average Doomsday deck.
For Ad Nauseam... I'm not sure I see how Portal does anything to stop it? It's not draw, so they just sac one thing when they untap and then cast Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Mox Opal, Mox Diamond, Lotus Petal, and any number of signets to filter colorless into colored mana, and then cast the Chain of Vapor every single one of them run, then Lab Man with all the protection, and then an ungodly number of draw spells. Ad Nauseam is simply a must-counter, which is why I ramped up the number of counters significantly. I probably shouldn't be playing Arcum in a meta where 2 out of 10 decks runs Ad Nauseam, but I just find it fun to counter spells and then combo out of nowhere (I don't do the barenaked combo very often- my counter spells are often used offensively, to counter Food Chains and Ad Nauseams, than they are used to defend my Commander. Last night I let Arcum die because the player before him Mystical Tutored for Ad Nauseam and didn't cast it yet. He figured, "Well, you let Arcum die so there's no way you have a counter." Well, surprise, motherf***er, you get a 2/2 bird. Arcum came down two turns later with haste and won me the game, because everyone spent their counters early trying to stop straight up win attempts). Is there maybe something I'm missing with Portal that'd make them better against these cards (Ad Nauseam/Doomsday)? I have yet to try Portal out against any of them, so I don't exactly have any experience with it, I'm just theorycrafting at the moment based off of what I see them do and play.
Also, yeah, the Zur list here does not really attack. If Zur swings, it is at most to get Necropotence and get the ball rolling on that Ad Nauseam nonsense. His power is also low enough that Bridge, by itself, wouldn't stop him anyway, so I just brace myself and deal with whatever spells he's going to cast. Though, I have to say, against basically anything that isn't Doomsday, I think Arcum does a fantastic job against. I have had basically 0 trouble with Karador Boonweaver lists as a quick Transmute Artifact into Grafdigger's Cage or Torpor Orb basically shuts that deck down until he draws his one removal card, and now I tend to win before he can do so. Arcum can straight up race turn 1 Yisan without a god hand, which is nice. Pretty much if the Commander doesn't have black in it or is Stax, Arcum can run straight through its nonsense so long as you play smart.
On the subject of being smart:Jester's Cap is in my sideboard but I basically forgot about it as I haven't been boarding at all for the last week. Cap to remove Lab Man, Ad Naus, Doomsday (both decks here with one run the other too), or... well, whatever else I don't like... seems good. Seems solid- especially given what I play against right now. It's not unreasonable for me to hit 4 mana to drop it, though I'm unsure I can both drop and activate it the same turn before someone can DD though I'd gladly exchange an Arcum tap to force a player into the long game if I had to do so. Thirst is a fine idea as well, I'm going to cram that back in too.
The whole reason I left Scepter in, still, was because Engine is Dramatic Reversal except we can tutor it. That's pretty much it, lol. Everyone kills Arcum rather than removing my artifacts, generally speaking, so Scepter is a quick-and-dirty way to continue the Engine plan without Arcum (since Flute only works at sorcery speed in my deck- I'm basically talking myself into running Shimmer Myr- removal on Arcum stops the combo even if you get to pull Engine), so long as I have mana rocks. Though, I definitely need stuff like Impulse, Anticipate, etc., to actually make that worthwhile, so I'll make the switch to Cap, for now. Lol, it's funny, while you're building to win without Engine, I'm building to win without Arcum because everyone kills the Commander before the things the Commander tutors, here. I know the right way to build it is going to probably be somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, sorry, long post again. I've been typing on this on and off while at work, too, so some of the sentences may not make much sense. The excitement still hasn't worn off, if you can't tell.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
Why are they casting instants after Paradox is already on the field? Why aren't they slaying Arcum in response to the tap to fetch Paradox in the first place, so you don't even get the guaranteed 1 untap? Making Paradox Engine work isn't the issue nearly as much as simply protecting Arcum, and that's precisely why I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head, at least conceptually, around your approach to the deck: how does loading up on more than the bare minimum of 1 zero-drop and Moonvessel required for the combo (in your most recent list you've got Memnite, Ornithopter, and Shield Sphere) help stick Arcum or protect him? Loading up on countermagic, mainboarding Defense Grid, those I can get behind. I would absolutely do those things if I were in a heavy draw-go meta like yours. But loading up on cards whose singular function is to interact with Paradox Engine, that's what I don't quite yet understand.
For me, when I'm getting piled on by the whole table, my opponents will force me to exhaust all of my countermagic and other defensive options just to get Arcum on the field and with a pair of shoes on him, then when I'm spent and Arcum is well-fortified they hit my most important combo piece (previously Rings of Brighthearth, though now I guess it's Paradox Engine) with a Nature's Claim or Revoke Existence, thereby ideally buying them the 1-2 extra turns they need to outrace me. Having zero-drops in my hand wouldn't fix that problem either--only effective and quick-response backup plans do.
Speaking of backup plans, to address your point on Possessed Portal and Ad Nauseam: when Portal hits the field on T3 or T4, if they haven't yet managed to combo off, it forces them to either a) discard their hand, including all their tutors/sculpting/countermagic, or b) degenerate their board, which, since they tend to play draw-go and keep a light field, usually directly hits their lands and mana. It punishes them for playing the draw-go game. It also blanks many of their best tutors, Mystical and Vampiric and Imperial Seal and so forth (anything that goes to the top of the library).
Similar story for DDay. If you manage to get Portal out before they cast it, then finding DDay becomes much harder, and even if they do find it, Portal prevents them from retrieving anything from their pile (even Brainstorm says "draw") and blanks Labman.
Of course, both of those are predicated on getting out Portal before they cast their signature game-winning cards, and that's the hard part (there's a reason nobody is decrying Portal as meta-countering tech lol). If they blaze into T2 DDay or T3 AN, the only thing that solves those is a counterspell or you're boned anyway. There's a reason those cards are format-dominating. But if you manage to get past that phase (and Paradox Engine is unavailable), Possessed Portal oftentimes ends up being the fastest solution--one Arcum tap stops the game, as opposed to the 2 needed for Rings into basalt/staff.
If you really are focused on trying to maximize your instant-speed win power, why not throw in Vedalken Orrery? Let's take your situation--Arcum's on the field tapped, having just fetched Paradox Engine; for some reason your opponents didn't slay him there, so it's your priority. You cast a spell, and now they cast their Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Paradox Engine trigger goes on the stack, resolves, now your board is untapped and it's your priority with Unmaking sitting on the stack. You have precisely one Arcum tap before he goes back to the CZ, and you've got some dork in your hand and the mana to cast him (or, alternatively, you have another dork on the field already, and the mana to cast any spell in your hand), and you don't want to resort to spending that mana on Null Brooch quite yet.
Tap Arcum, fetch Vedalken Orrery. Cast the dork (or any other spell). Tap Arcum saccing your one surplus dork, fetch Flute. Tap Flute for the one zero-drop in your deck. Cast the zero drop, untap everything. Tap Arcum, fetch vault or basalt, tap it for 3. Tap Flute for Moonvessel, play Moonvessel, untap everything. Sac Moonvessel for Rings. Now you've got infinite mana, an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and all the spells in your deck have flash. Proceed to win the game while Anguished Unmaking never leaves the stack.
Again, if your opponents were already teed up to remove Arcum don't know why your opponents would be casting their removal in response to your casting a spell after Paradox has already been fetched, rather than casting it in response to the Arcum activation in the first place. But if that happens to be the case, all you'd need is Vedalken Orrery to fix the problem.
How's all that sound to you?
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Paradox Engine in the field, Arcum tapped. You cast a spell, Engine trigger goes on the stack, Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Arcum dies to Unmaking before the Engine trigger resolves.
However, I do agree with you in the sense that I'd like to keep Portal for now. But I really am struggling to find another cut.
WorkshopsLegacy:
Death and Taxes
EDH:
Arcum DagssonMake Paradox Engine Great Again!Urza, Lord High Artificer
In fairness I still don't know why they'd be trying to slay Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell instead of earlier in the turn in response to the initial Arcum tap to fetch paradox in the first place. But yes, slaying Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell actually wouldn't get you any free arcum taps at all, as the slay spell would resolve before the paradox trigger.
What's your current list mrjumbo? We could consider potential cuts for you if we saw it.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
It was an example because the artifact you fetch isn't going to be Paradox Engine in the scenario you mentioned, right? You'd go get Basalt Monolith or Rings of Brighthearth if someone cast removal with Arcum's activation on the stack, because it's not like you have to announce what you're tutoring when you activate the ability, so you don't have to devote to a combo line. That statement was for *after* you had devoted to the Paradox combo line. Still, though, it makes sense that leaving you partway into one combo line without two of your important pieces (Engine by itself, with no Arcum and Flute) is a pretty big deal compared to getting half of the infinite mana combo after removal resolves, which also lets you get your Commander back more easily- maybe even the same turn.
Are you asking me to defend my first deck list? I realized I had jumped the gun with the 0 drops and dropped down to two of them, but apparently I posted the wrong list a couple posts ago. My list has been in flux every single night I've played it (I played that Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, at least 5 games each night. Didn't get to play last night due to work). I've dropped Phyrexian Walker and Shield Sphere, kept Ornithopter and Memnite, but replaced the other two with Lodestone Golem and Hope of Ghirapur. My list last posted must've been one from the day before, because Walker had been out of the deck for at least a day before that point (but that's the problem: My list has changed at least 5-6 times, once or twice per night, as I notice what works and what does not. Apparently I forgot to update my deck list before copying and pasting). Some changes are as small as swapping Grafdigger's Cage for Relic of Progenitus, though the largest issue is that the deck needs artifact creatures, and running about 20 seems right to me (I have roughly 25 creatures or cards that turn into creatures I can sacrifice, making the chance of hitting two high enough that I am comfortable running without Myr Turbine, which I wouldn't want to waste a turn tutoring, now). Some have been switched to cards like Phyrexian Revoker, etc., over the last few days, but I explained my reasoning in another post above (I know it's easy to get lost, and I did apparently post the wrong list).
Getting Portal down before Ad Nauseam or Doomsday is basically an impossibility at this point: If I have the speed to do it, it means they have a bad hand or aren't drawing what they need in order to cast it early. Ad Nauseam only costs one mana more than Arcum, but can happen at any time, load up their hand, and let them pitch whatever they want to Portal after they've drawn absurd numbers of cards (and I don't find shutting off 1cmc tutors to be that valuable when they're common t1-3 occurrences, when Portal is t4 without a god hand). Compare this to a 4 drop creature that has to survive a whole turn in order to even interact with Ad Nauseam, and you have roughly the same speed when factoring in acceleration, except theirs completely blanks ours. Rather than focusing on working an 8 mana card in for the purpose of stopping those decks when they're not running optimally, I'd prefer to use a different approach entirely. I've been running Lodestone Golem since maybe Saturday, and that blanks Ad Nauseam/Doomsday harder, though it still suffers the same problem (all it takes is a Chain of Vapor and it's gone, and both Ad Naus and Doomsday give them their Chain). I can at least ramp into Golem on turn 2/3, versus landing t2/3 Arcum and spending fodder to grab Portal for t3/4, when 4 is sometimes too late for the rare instances they're ballsy and go for the early win.
The worst I can do is try it out again. My list on Tapped Out hasn't been updated since Friday, I think, which is where I got the last list from too. I'm meeting players again tomorrow night to play for a while, so I'll post a more up to date list after that. What cards do you think I should be running that I am not, just to get that out of the way? I know Portal is one of them, and it will be played tomorrow night over Jester's Cap temporarily, which was taking Winter Orb's place, lol.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
That may simply be me looking at your outdated decklist then. Sorry about that.
Or that you've slowed their clock enough to play on your terms. Like I said and as you noted, Portal is in no way a hard counter to those decks, as they're simply faster than us (than anything else in the format, let's be honest). And if they get AN in hand before your first Arcum tap, then the only thing that will save you is Null Brooch, because other than that you've basically lost already anyway.
But if you can slow them down enough to get to that point, which what stax cards and countermagic are for, then Portal puts the nails in the coffin faster and more safely than rings/monolith/top or paradox/flute in that even if Arcum gets Anguished Unmakinged in response to his first tap the Portal still hits the board and demands an immediate answer or destroys their hand or precious few permanents.
That's why originally I was running Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void. Dropping Chalice for 1 typically blanked upwards of a third of their entire deck (including Chain of Vapor, lol) and our one-drops have always been highly limited as our curve truly starts at 2. With either of those in an opening hand I would always feel much more confident against AN/DD (ok, I never feel truly "confident" against those decks, but I would feel more stable than I would otherwise at least). If possible I'd still like to fit those cards back in at some point, but it'll require more brainstorming as the Paradox Engine combo has now added some relevance in our deck to 0-1 drops.
Golem is an interesting choice. For a while I ran Thorn of Amethyst, which keeps our dorks and Arcum at their normal cost while our noncreature artifacts aren't usually being cast anyway (rather cheated into play). I'll have to give those kinds of cards another round of consideration while I'm thinking what to do about Chalice and 3ball (or replacements).
Well, since the most recent list you posted is three days old and has Shield Sphere still in it, it's difficult for me to say. Can you give the tappedoutlink or paste your current iteration?
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
WorkshopsLegacy:
Death and Taxes
EDH:
Arcum DagssonMake Paradox Engine Great Again!Urza, Lord High Artificer
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Citanul Flute
1x Defense Grid
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Monolith
1x Guardian Idol
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Paradox Engine
1x Pithing Needle
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
1x Staff of Domination
1x Static Orb
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Thousand-Year Elixir
1x Torpor Orb
Creature (20)
1x Hangarback Walker
1x Hedron Crawler
1x Hope of Ghirapur
1x Junk Diver
1x Lodestone Golem
1x Manakin
1x Memnite
1x Metalworker
1x Millikin
1x Myr Moonvessel
1x Myr Retriever
1x Myr Sire
1x Ornithopter
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Plague Myr
1x Shimmer Myr
1x Silver Myr
1x Spellskite
1x Trinket Mage
1x Walking Ballista
1x Arcane Denial
1x Brainstorm
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Counterspell
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Dispel
1x Dramatic reversal
1x Force of Will
1x Muddle the Mixture
1x Negate
1x Pact of Negation
1x Spell Pierce
1x Swan Song
1x Turn Aside
1x Whir of Invention
Sorcery (4)
1x Fabricate
1x Preordain
1x Reshape
1x Transmute Artifact
Enchantment (4)
1x Back to Basics
1x Mystic Remora
1x Power Artifact
1x Rhystic Study
Planeswalker (1)
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
Land (32)
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Blinkmoth Nexus
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Crystal Vein
1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Inventors' Fair
19x Island
1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Saprazzan Skerry
1x Seat of the Synod
1x Strip Mine
Still running two 0 drops, Tangle Wire got dropped for Thorn of Amethyst since an optimized Yisan is already an easy deck to win against anyway even if it may potentially be more consistent (and that was the largest reason I ran it, so... yeah). Thorn curves nicely, Tangle didn't, really, and since Arcum doesn't need 2 turns anymore I find the need to slow down Karador, Selvala, etc., to be less useful. Sidisi Food Chain can be a bit of a problem, though I don't know Tangle Wire would really even help that sometimes.
Thorn and Lodestone = best in show against Leovold, Breya, Zur, and Jeleva/Yidris. The difference between 5 and 6 mana for a Jeleva deck to draw 20+ cards is pretty tremendous, and Thorn has the convenient upside of not hurting this deck as badly as most others in tier 1.5+ Commander. Yisan, Selvala, and to an extent, Edric don't care about it for the most part, but Arcum can combo with Engine before Selvala can (unless she has a god hand and you an average or worse hand), can reliably combo out before Yisan can murder the table unless he gets a god hand, and Edric really has to focus you down with counters. At least, this is my experience anyway. The Yisan list I play against weekly was built almost directly from Land Destruction's site (which, um, I can't get to anymore. He added Null Rod after last week though, which is kind of amusing to me).
Actually, more hate cards cropped up this week than last. I saw several Stony Silence and Null Rod, but I still managed to take 3/5 games. A Leovold deck planned to Ad Nauseam after Mind Twisting everyone on the third turn, but a Thorn of Amethyst (off of a topdecked Reshape, IIRC) kept him from doing it at all because I stripped one of his lands while I was at it. Next turn, Arcum came down, nobody had anything in hand, and my land creatures + Millikin won it for me.
There were a few more games, but they were less eventful really. Zur didn't show up this week, but Jeleva did, and that was one of the losses. I took the following game from it, but it wasn't really spectacular: I got first turn Metalworker (Island + Mana Crypt), which was second turn hasted Arcum into a win since everyone was tapped out and I was willing to risk a Force since I had Pact in hand. It was the goddiest godhand I have had since I started tinkering with this deck again.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
I would not recommend Servo Schematic over Myr Sire or any other card. I believe your analysis of the pros and cons is correct--the way I see it, it would be trading early-game consistency in landing those tokens for a little extra late-game power in interacting with our finishers. Thing is, the former is much more important than the latter: we're much more vulnerable in the early game when we need to get Arcum online and tapping asap, before we've got anything like Clock or Portal on the board; and if we've already got one of those cards out, we're usually already winning anyway. If Servo Schematic had something like "1: sac this" built in, I'd give it closer consideration, but as it is right now I'd take Myr Sire over it every time.
I would like to think so, too. You could very well be right that Trini into our old gameplan is still good enough to justify losing access to Paradox for that particular game. I'll have to see. I agree that apart from Paradox/Flute we're still just as unhurt by Trini as we were before (and it was always an extremely powerful parity play for us).
In the meantime, Thorn of Amethyst isn't such a bad replacement; I'd say the parity gain on it is almost as good as Trini, since there are no mission-critical noncreature spells in this deck. Chalice of the Void may still be workable also; usually in my games it comes out set to 1, and insofar as Paradox/Flute is concerned the only thing that blocks is Myr Moonvessel. Actually that whole problem could be circumvented by just having 1 extra mana:
Having one extra mana during the combo is hardly very much to ask. Any spare nonland permanent that taps for mana, of which we have many in this deck, would be untapped repeatedly from all the Paradoxing and would pay that cost, or even just a single extra untapped land, or a Lotus Petal or whatever else.
So, I think Chalice of the Void set to 1 is still very playable in this deck, and I'd like to add it back in if possible.
Since you trimmed down on artifact synergies and beefed up on MUC, I assume you're able to consistently pay FoW? If so you may consider also running Chrome Mox too. My list is still running ~30 artifacts, so I'm still reluctant to run FoW or Chrome for lack of blue.
How have Rhystic Study and Back to Basics been working out for you? I'm particularly curious about Rhystic Study, as that's not a card I tend to see very often. Also regarding BtB, in spite of our deck being monocolored, a majority of our manabase is usually nonbasic, as we run all manner of 2 lands to maximize Arcum ramp.
Actually, I just noticed your deck runs twice as many basic islands as mine does; is that by choice or due to budget constraints? I suppose part of that is simply because you run Islands in place of fetchlands, which is what I would do if I were mainboarding BtB, but at the same time you're not running common selections like City of Traitors, Svyelunite Temple, and Buried Ruin (the lack of CoT is especially surprising).
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
I removed a lot of my nonbasics over time, when I began running Back to Basics on and off to combat things in my new meta from where I moved in November. I actually dropped Svyelunite Temple back when I added in Mox Diamond, because it ETB tapped and kept causing me issues during what would have otherwise been solid starts. Buried Ruin was the last one I dropped.
Rhystic Study was added in for this Wednesday's play and it performed exemplary. I landed it t2 when I cast it, and due to the sheer volume of cards everyone casts I was rolling in cards at all stages of the game (one guy taxed himself out of the game, which was amusing. Drawing cards or taxing is fine with me lol). Thirst may be better, but it performed great this week so I'm thinking about keeping it for a while. It's either a good source of cards or it slows people down enough that you can slide past them and win, and honestly, I'm fine with both.
I've only cast Back to Basics twice and it was backbreaking both times to the most dangerous decks at the table. I really liked seeing Zur not able to win the following turn with his pass the turn pile (and he was obviously hurting for mana if he passed when he cast Doomsday), and seeing Tazri and Jeleva flail and do nothing for two turns was great.
The Tazri deck here runs 0 basics, and the Zur deck only runs Islands (for Gush) and a singular Swamp, etc., if that tells you how greedy the mana bases are here. Jeleva, I think, runs 1 of each basic, but fetches Volcanic Island and Sea before anything else, etc.. The four color Commanders, like Thrasios (okay, he is only UG but he's always run with some black partner), Yidris, Breya are just as greedy, so Back to Basics can work wonders if cast at the right time. I like it a lot more than Winter Orb right now, for whatever that's worth.
Also, yes, Chrome Mox is definitely worth a shot. I've had two sitting in my binder for a while and will try it out come Monday (I have one in my own Breya and one in Zur); I think that'll be a great idea and I'm not sure why I overlooked it even after opting to add a Force. I'll plop it in Guardian Idol's place, I think? I dunno, it's kind of a pain to check my list as I'm passing time on my phone while at my in-law's place right now lol.
I think I'll try chalice as well, though I'll have to check what I want to remove for it. Shutting off 1 mana tutors, Rituals, etc., is super handy.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
WorkshopsLegacy:
Death and Taxes
EDH:
Arcum DagssonMake Paradox Engine Great Again!Urza, Lord High Artificer
A side effect of the cockatrice/proxies thing is that I get a lot of nonbasic-heavy decks too. 5c FC or 5c AN decks or 4c storm decks and things like that, the kind of decks that run almost no basic lands if not none at all, because when you've got an unlimited budget it's very feasible to run 1 of every dual/shock/fetch/filter/etcetera and trim the basics down to singletons or otherwise eliminate them entirely. The only decks I see with lots of basics are a handful of mono-U ones like Azami and Teferiwalker as well as the occasional mono-G or mono-B deck, but overall they're not that common relative to the 3c/4c/5c contenders. The 99% nonbasic manabases are pretty ubiquitous.
Since the primer has to be written for the "global meta" and it assumes unlimited budget, I'll have to think about whether Back to Basics with a nonbasic-light manabase is overall better for Arcum than leaving it out and keeping all the nonbasics like CoT/Ruin/Svyelunite/Workshop/so forth in. But in the right meta, and if you're already running more Islands than usual anyway due to budget/availability reasons, I could definitely understand Back to Basics being a clutch play.
Svelyunite Temple and Buried Ruin I could understand, they're situational enough that they're probably on par with Island rather than an upgrade. The absence of Workshop I could understand also, both because it's $1000 and because your artifact count is overall a little lower now with your expanded MUC package.
That's precisely what it's dependent on, in my experience. Either it comes down T1 or T2 and it's pretty good, or it comes down T3 or later and is underwhelming. That's why I tend not to see it very often as opposed to more traditional draw spells that are always good cards no matter what turn you cast them.
I've never been much a fan of Guardian Idol. I really don't put it on the same level as the bread-and-butter 2-tap-for-1 dorks like Manakin. Swapping out Idol for Chrome Mox is probably exactly what I'd do in your list.
Chalice of the Void has performed very well in my games, almost as good as Trinisphere. Prior to Paradox/Flute it would come out for either 0, 1, or on rare occasion 2, to devastating effect each time. We really don't run a lot of 1drops--I think my deck has about 10? And even your deck with its larger MUC package runs, what, 14 by my count? Not much more than mine. Meanwhile low-curve 3-5c decks like AN, doomsday, storm, etc. regularly run 20-25 1drops and potentially even a little more, such that Chalice for 1 can literally blank 1/4th or even 1/3rd of their entire deck if it isn't countered. It's no joke.
I dunno what you'd cut for it; you'd have to figure out what's not performing as well as you'd like. How's Mox Opal doing for you? As the flip-side of expanding your MUC package in order to enable color-centric effects like FoW and Chrome Mox, you've also significantly reduced your artifact count which makes it harder to hit metalcraft (meanwhile, in my artifact-heavy deck, I'm hitting metalcraft so consistently that once in a while I've even considered adding Stoic Rebuttal, though I never did commit to that yet). I dunno if you'll run into any problems with that or if you have already.
Mrjumbo, in my humble opinionSphere of Resistance isn't half the card that Chalice is in this deck, because on its own it doesn't give us any parity advantage. It's made to be combo'd with other forms of mana denial and/or land destruction, which aren't things we can guarantee (unlike in, say, Derevi or Teferiwalker, where mana denial is definitely something they can guarantee as it's like 80% of their strategy). I'd much sooner choose Chalice and/or Thorn of Amethyst, both of which directly shift parity in our favor all on their own because our deck is built such that the reciprocal effect barely hurts us while being much worse for everyone else. What's holding you back about Chalice?
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Well, I just moved to a new meta game about two states away from where I used to play; my group before wouldn't have cared, but the place I play now is at a card shop, because I don't really have anywhere else to go nor do I know anyone else in the area in which I moved (we moved for my wife's job, and while I work at the same place, I have jack in common with any of them since I'm a 29 year old gamer and avid MTG player). No Legacy events at the shop, but everyone there has a Legacy deck, oddly enough, lol. Anyway, most people at this shop are pretty anti-proxy if they're expensive cards: Meaning, if I want to use a Mana Drain, I better go out and buy one. It's why my Zur and Breya lists don't have Scrubland, Badlands, etc.: I have 4 Underground Sea, 4 Tundra, 4 Volcanic Island, etc., but 0 Scrubland/Badlands because I never wanted to play a Legacy deck in those colors (aaaaaand I also bought them when they were cheap. My Seas cost me $30 a pop back in 2008 or so). So I'm at a weird place, budget-wise. Mishra's Workshop is probably just never going to happen for me; while I see it's excellent in the deck I at least have to be reasonable with my aspirations, lol. It is for this same reason I will never play a Grand Arbiter or Teferi list with Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. So don't mind me if my lists aren't 100% optimal; I'm working on it, slowly, as time goes on and I do acknowledge that an optimal list will perform better than what I'm able to play right now. I'm thinking about nabbing one of those nice Judge foil Mana Drains this check- or an Imperial Seal. Honestly, I can't decide and I have (at least) 3 decks that want Drains, and (at least) 2 that want Seals. -_-;
Mox Opal still taps pretty reliably for a colored mana when I need it: I still run 43 artifacts in the deck among my creature and noncreature artifacts, so I have roughly the same chance of it being useful as I do of Mox Diamond, so that's really not that bad. For anecdotal evidence's sake, though, I don't recall any times after turn 1 that I've had difficulty tapping it for mana, though that could change. I probably won't go below 40 artifacts overall, though, just because artifact creatures are so integral to the plan, and all of those little silver bullet artifacts come in handy a large number of times so I don't see myself removing too many of them further.
Rhystic Study in my list is probably just going to become Windfall. Study is valuable if landed on turn 1/2 or if Arcum gets removed, while Windfall boasts all of that + if I grab Paradox Engine, but have no second artifact creature, it would be a "Break in case of emergency for creature" card in a strictly vs Study sense, and let me draw 3-4 more to win immediately. Also, I'm thinking about exchanging Dramatic Reversal (a little less useful now that it can be repeated with one tap) for Chalice or another random mana rock. Last couple times I've drawn Reversal, I've just used it to reset my Monoliths/Vault at EoT so I untap with all available mana the turn before. While that's not bad, Voltaic Key would basically serve the same purpose for that end and wouldn't require blue mana.
Back to Basics is still testing out extremely well since it works fairly well against most decks that are good against Arcum, and with 19 or so Islands, my mana ramp, and my mana dorks, I feel pretty comfortable when that gets slammed on the second or third turn that I'll be the one ahead after it the most (I always try to lay it out after the deck I believe will cause me most trouble taps out, or mostly taps out). Usually one or so of my lands won't untap, while other players wind up with 3~ lands being stuck tapped and them needing to scramble to readjust their gameplan. I adore laying it out after someone taps their lands to cast a tutor, lol. Honestly, though, it probably plays very close to how you would utilize Trinisphere in the same slot, as it is absurdly good at maintaining a mana denial effect. Decks with very low land counts but with high numbers of mana rocks can be hurt very badly by an early BtB, so you wind up with powerful decks just sitting around with their deck in the hands, unable to do anything due to an earlier counter war, tutor, or something, and all they have is a Mox Diamond or something. BtB doesn't hurt multi-rock godhands or anything (then again, neither does Trini), but Trini and BtB punish the same kinds of decks and create equivalent outcomes (being taxed 3-6 mana on one or two spells is similar to only being able to cast one of the spells due to only having a mana rock/dork available). Chalice at 1 + BtB sounds absolutely delightful given the greedy mana bases played around me, lol.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
For now, the changes I settled on are as follows:
Out: Forge, Disk, Kuldotha, Dross Scorpion, Trinisphere, Gilded Lotus, Impulse, Darksteel Citadel. Bridge out to the SB.
In: Paradox, Flute, Memnite, Ornithopter, Thorn of Amethyst, Whir of Invention, Walking Ballista, Static Orb. DGrid in from the SB.
We'll see how this works out. I'm a little worried about my mana since I cut 2 sources (lotus and a land) and put 0 sources back in, but I wanted to squeeze in both Thorn and Static Orb in the wake of removing Trinisphere (though I hope I can work Trini back in eventually...)
I know I was originally talking about Myr Moonvessel instead of a 2nd zero drop. I eventually changed my mind and decided on 2 zero drops instead in order to be able to consistently and without hesitation throw down Chalice for X=1, but I really don't think it matters, we can play around it either way.
I also need to keep thinking about Dramatic Reversal. I might cut Static Orb back out for it. Not sure yet.
Lastly in recent months I haven't seen as many Narsets, Bragos, and swinging Zurs around as I used to in years past, so I moved Bridge out to the SB and put DGrid in its place. It's still our go-to solution for any deck that cares about the combat step, and I would just as quickly switch it back in if I knew someone at the table would be playing one of those decks.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
I am curious to read your guys's on my list of Arcum, and to your opinions on where he stands on the tier list.
Heap Doll: Worth it? You're mainboarding Grafdigger's Cage so I'm assuming grave-based decks are a significant threat in your meta, but even so he's a pretty mediocre dork. I'd much rather have a second grave hoser like Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progentius/Scrabbling Claws rather than a little mini-gravehate stapled to a dork, but maybe it's been working well for you, I dunno.
Personal Tutor: also pretty bad imo. Sorcery speed tutor for a sorcery only that goes to the top of the library. You only have 6 sorceries in the whole deck and P. Tutor is one of them; what do you usually grab with this? Another sorcery-speed tutor? Isn't that a little slow?
Timetwister: Interesting choice. I used to run it mainboard back in like 2012, but as the meta evolved I came to the conclusion it usually helps other people more than us. I'd rather run a more traditional draw spell like Thirst for Knowledge.
Glacial Chasm: What are you countering with this? If this is a silver bullet for something, I suspect you're better off finding an artifact solution, something you can easily tutor for and that synergizes with everything else in your deck and that isn't as costly as the Chasm. Ensnaring Bridge stops combat damage, Witchbane Orb stops targeted damage.
Isochron Scepter: See previous posts for my thoughts on this. I was never a big fan, and while Stick + Dramatic Reversal was a neat trick we've got Paradox Engine for that now anyway. If it's been working for you then by all means keep it in, but it's never been consistent enough for my tastes.
Important things you're missing:
As for the tier list, I'd prefer not to get into that myself. A lot of people are of the firm and unshakable opinion that any deck which doesn't run either Ad Nauseam or Doomsday or both isn't a tier 1 deck, so by that metric Arcum and everything else is tier 2 (or 1.5 at best). But if you ask the Rules Committee, cards like Braids, Cabal Minion and Recurring Nightmare are tier 1--or rather even tier 0, so good they don't even deserve to be played. Point being, it's an extremely subjective process to rank things into tiers, and it's the kind of discussion that quickly degenerates into nonsense. I'd rather not comment.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths
Beyond the tippy-top most decks abusing the above cards, though?
Arcum is a freaking beast. You'll at least be on par with tuned Breya (and yes, this is speaking of the Doomsday/Ad Nauseam versions- she's simply not better at that than Zur's "I can draw 20 cards from the command zone during a bad game" or Leovold's built in LabMan protection), Yisan, Karador, Teferi (Arcum gives no s*** about stax), Azami, Grand Arbiter Augustin, etc., and you can hang around with Zur, Yidris, Thrasios, etc., if you have the proper responses or they don't have a god hand.
So, there are clearly decks that outperform Arcum. However, there are plenty of which now Arcum outperforms and can easily pack silver bullets for any in the same relative level of strength. If you're talking about that tier list on Tapped Out (lol), then the 1.5 placement they've given Arcum is perfectly fair. You can win against what are essentially the most powerful decks in the format, and you can consistently t4 now which puts you at the same turn as Karador, et al. Our t1-3s are extremely inconsistent, however, and occur more rarely than, say, Zur, which is why I'd put Arcum beneath those in viability but above most other decks.
Viability is key, not sheer tier placement. And, mind you, viability changes by meta. If every white deck in your meta packs Idyllic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, and Stony Silence or Null Rod, then Arcum and Sharuum are going to be loads worse than many other Commanders. It's kind of like how people considered Yisan to be tier 1 because in extremely fast meta games removal was hardly run or undervalued- allowing Yisan to thrive. If you've got a meta where every deck packs 10+ removal, then Yisan becomes one of the fairest decks in the format, bordering on unviable.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
Legacy: ANT, Death and Taxes
EDH: Jori En, Ruin Diver Fast Combo
Pauper: Affinity
I go back and forth on whether or not fetchlands are actually worth it. Their deck thinning power was long ago shown to be mathematically negligible, so the only other remotely notable reason to have them in there is to get free lib shuffles so as to synergize with Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, and similar. Is that minor utility worth getting blanked by Suppression Field and LD'd by Stifle? Not sure.
I touched on Scrap Trawler a little bit in an earlier post. I'm not quite sure how it would work here. The vast majority of the artifacts (80%+) that hit our GY before the combo turn are cmc 2, while only a small few (2 in my decklist, iirc, maybe 3 in some others) are cmc 0. There are usually no cmc 1 dorks we run, unless a particular decklist chooses to run Myr Moonvessel or Hope of Ghirapur at which point you'd have one or two at most. So unless you've already found one of the couple 0 ones, or one of the couple 1 ones if you run those (in total, what, 4 cards maximum?) and pitched them in the grave beforehand, with Trawler out you'd simply either a) sac one of our usual 2 drop to return absolutely nothing, or b) sac Scrap Trawler itself to return a 2drop, at which point you mind as well be playing Junk Diver so you could at least retrieve 3cmc artifacts if something like Rings of Brighthearth gets blown up. Basically the fact that it says "lesser" rather than "lesser than or equal to" kills it imo, otherwise we could use 2drops to return other 2drops and Trawler itself could safely retrieve our most valuable pieces, but as it stands now saccing 2drops could only return our nonexistent 1drops or one of 2-3 0drops, and saccing Trawler itself can only fetch a 2drop at best.
Legacy: GWR Enchantress <--That's my banner! (lol tinypic removed it)
Casual: WB [[Primer]]Clerics Tribal; BU Affinity
EDH: ...U [[Primer]]Arcum Dagsson; BG Legal Stax; B Illegal Stax
Proxy: .WX TriniStax
Other stuff: [[Official]]Shuffling, Truth + Maths