TLDR: Altered Ego+Vizier of Many Faces targeting mainly Rogue Refiner or Filigree Familiar, then massing up, trading hits here and there, drawing tons of cards, then use Open into Wonder to close it out. Its silly, but I suspect could be FNM level pretty easily, and who doesnt like to draw lots of cards?
I know its a pretty rough idea and likely has a lot of holes, but I'd love some feedback or thoughts on it. Or if you think this is complete trash, do you have any other ideas for a fun double clone deck in standard?
Thought process/drawn out explanation: Clone is and always has been in my opinion an interesting and pretty powerful ability, albeit you're actually cloning something worth while. Lately we've started seeing some Clones with slight upsides attached to them, and that makes them go from decent to pretty good in certain scenarios. In addition, we currently have 2x 4cmc Clones in standard with an upside to each: Altered Ego && Vizier of Many Faces.
Why on earth does this matter or seem relevant at all? Well, that depends on if there are any good or even decent targets worth cloning, and further if you can make a deck out of those targets. When SOI first came out, I had a Simic Eldrazi deck that used 4x Altered Ego to copy Reality Smasher and Thought-knot Seer, and while it definitely wasnt a Tier 1 deck, it was very easily FNM playable and winnable, and quite frankly a blast to play. It drew lots of cards and pretty much was a constant barrage of hasty 5/5 hard to kill guys. I looked into that again but wasnt convinced it was the correct deck this time around. Firstly, it lost a bit of mana stability in the pain lands, and Ceremonious Rejection is a real SB card (maybe less of with the recent banning). It also has the trouble of being fairly slow not really doing anything until T4 or T5 besides putting out little blockers.
Moving on from that I thought, ok I can get quicker by cloning a 3 cmc creature and looked at all the 3 cmc creatures available and non immediately stood out to me as a superb target, especially with the wanted consistency. We could clone ramp guys, but why not just play more ramp creatures that are 2 or 3 mana. We can clone some utility creatures or value creatures, but is it really worth it, maybe. I also stumbled onto some fun ideas that I will probably try out eventually for giggles, which are to clone lords: Lord of the Accursed, Regal Caracal, and even Chief of the Foundry all seemed like fun little gimmicks. But there was always a bit of a "why" that I asked myself.
-Lord of the Accursed: Why not just play regular zombies, its probably more consistent.
-Regal Caracal: Suffers from the same "too slow" issue, though, would probably be f-n hilarious if it got rolling.
-Chief of the Foundry: Ok, strong artifact creatures, wheres the payoff?
I looked back and thought, well dang, there seems to be a lot of "OK" things we can do, but none of them really stand out as something worth it, so I looked a bit deeper into the roots of Simic thinking maybe I'll find a synergy that is worth it. What does Simic really do well: draws cards, makes mana, does 'silly' things, makes resources (energy/counters/whatever). Out of all this, the only thing that really stands out by itself is drawing cards, flooding your advantage so to speak. Then looking back at two cards I previously passed over as simply "neat, but why" I thought, hmm, maybe something odd could take shape here.
By themselves they look a bit lack luster and could be, testing will show. But it does give us quite a bit of card advantage to keep drawing gas, and a bit of life to stay alive vs decks that are actually doing something. I was then wondering how we would actually win by doing this and figured, well, we have lots of energy, maybe that could help, and we can also go beatdown using Open into Wonder. Finally a deck started to shape itself, and still was very odd, but looked interesting and most importantly, fun.
The ideal curve would be something along the lines of;
T1 - land, go
T2 - land, counter/ramp creature/something
T3 - Rogue Refiner (draw)
T4 - Clone, draw, pretend we arent really doing anything
T5 - Clone counter durdle
T6 - Rogue Refiner
T7 - Open into Wonder for a big hit
Blah blah, kinda durdle around, draw some cards, mass your board as best you can, then Open into Wonder for a decent bit. Of course in practice our creatures very well may be getting targeted with removal, and we'll be getting attacked, but thats fine, we can pack cheap counters to protect us, trade a few hits back and forth while letting them think they'll win the race and getting a tish of life from Filigree Familiar. Then we hit big for 12 or so damage to close out or come close to closing out the game.
I know its a pretty rough idea and likely has a lot of holes, but I'd love some feedback or thoughts on it. Or if you think this is complete trash, do you have any other ideas for a fun double clone deck in standard?
Thought process/drawn out explanation:
Clone is and always has been in my opinion an interesting and pretty powerful ability, albeit you're actually cloning something worth while. Lately we've started seeing some Clones with slight upsides attached to them, and that makes them go from decent to pretty good in certain scenarios. In addition, we currently have 2x 4cmc Clones in standard with an upside to each: Altered Ego && Vizier of Many Faces.
Why on earth does this matter or seem relevant at all? Well, that depends on if there are any good or even decent targets worth cloning, and further if you can make a deck out of those targets. When SOI first came out, I had a Simic Eldrazi deck that used 4x Altered Ego to copy Reality Smasher and Thought-knot Seer, and while it definitely wasnt a Tier 1 deck, it was very easily FNM playable and winnable, and quite frankly a blast to play. It drew lots of cards and pretty much was a constant barrage of hasty 5/5 hard to kill guys. I looked into that again but wasnt convinced it was the correct deck this time around. Firstly, it lost a bit of mana stability in the pain lands, and Ceremonious Rejection is a real SB card (maybe less of with the recent banning). It also has the trouble of being fairly slow not really doing anything until T4 or T5 besides putting out little blockers.
Moving on from that I thought, ok I can get quicker by cloning a 3 cmc creature and looked at all the 3 cmc creatures available and non immediately stood out to me as a superb target, especially with the wanted consistency. We could clone ramp guys, but why not just play more ramp creatures that are 2 or 3 mana. We can clone some utility creatures or value creatures, but is it really worth it, maybe. I also stumbled onto some fun ideas that I will probably try out eventually for giggles, which are to clone lords: Lord of the Accursed, Regal Caracal, and even Chief of the Foundry all seemed like fun little gimmicks. But there was always a bit of a "why" that I asked myself.
-Lord of the Accursed: Why not just play regular zombies, its probably more consistent.
-Regal Caracal: Suffers from the same "too slow" issue, though, would probably be f-n hilarious if it got rolling.
-Chief of the Foundry: Ok, strong artifact creatures, wheres the payoff?
I looked back and thought, well dang, there seems to be a lot of "OK" things we can do, but none of them really stand out as something worth it, so I looked a bit deeper into the roots of Simic thinking maybe I'll find a synergy that is worth it. What does Simic really do well: draws cards, makes mana, does 'silly' things, makes resources (energy/counters/whatever). Out of all this, the only thing that really stands out by itself is drawing cards, flooding your advantage so to speak. Then looking back at two cards I previously passed over as simply "neat, but why" I thought, hmm, maybe something odd could take shape here.
Rogue Refiner && Filigree Familiar
By themselves they look a bit lack luster and could be, testing will show. But it does give us quite a bit of card advantage to keep drawing gas, and a bit of life to stay alive vs decks that are actually doing something. I was then wondering how we would actually win by doing this and figured, well, we have lots of energy, maybe that could help, and we can also go beatdown using Open into Wonder. Finally a deck started to shape itself, and still was very odd, but looked interesting and most importantly, fun.
The ideal curve would be something along the lines of;
T1 - land, go
T2 - land, counter/ramp creature/something
T3 - Rogue Refiner (draw)
T4 - Clone, draw, pretend we arent really doing anything
T5 - Clone counter durdle
T6 - Rogue Refiner
T7 - Open into Wonder for a big hit
Blah blah, kinda durdle around, draw some cards, mass your board as best you can, then Open into Wonder for a decent bit. Of course in practice our creatures very well may be getting targeted with removal, and we'll be getting attacked, but thats fine, we can pack cheap counters to protect us, trade a few hits back and forth while letting them think they'll win the race and getting a tish of life from Filigree Familiar. Then we hit big for 12 or so damage to close out or come close to closing out the game.
We could throw a few value creatures in there like Sylvan Advocate, Tireless Tracker, Channeler Initiate to fill out the curve, or go more of counter style deck. Throw in Blossoming Defense, Negate for some protection and a bit of pump. Then just beat face.