MTG Salvation

Well, I suppose a surviving Mimic Vat could be acceptable, if we found a way to use up an extra hyperstage token / Engineered Explosives. For example, the Razorfin Abolisher deck uses up two tokens in preparation of the megastage transition, so it can work with the Smite the Monstrous configuration. If we went to a configuration which couldn't return Goblin Dark-Dwellers to our hand (e.g. used Into Thin Air to create more hyperstage tokens rather than Smite the Monstrous), the extra token that that would create could be replaced with a surviving Mimic Vat. Although, if we went with Mirrorworks and multiple Mimic Vats, we would have to worry about an extra Metallurgeon token as well.

So it may be possible - but, what benefit do we get from switching away from Child of Alara? Perhaps switching to a different creature would free up some targeting in the hyperstage, like colors - we could target Boggart Mob as a black creature, for instance. Although, we didn't really find anything that good leading into black creatures.


Edit: Sphinx of Enlightenment is a possible upgrade of Words of Wisdom; but maybe not, since it seems harder to recycle in our current deck.

The problem with not killing off artifacts is that you don't have to kill off Mimic Vat and Vedalken Orrery.

Mimic Vat not getting killed off means it could survive while being imprinted with a hyperstage creature. If you can only have one Vat, I guess it's possible if you can soak up one more hyperstage creature usage in the megastage transition.

Vedalken Orrery surviving definitely seems bad, we can generally put the benefit ability below the destructive ability then, since we can recover after the destructive ability resolves. In the case of Smite the Monstrous, we can destroy with the first Monstrous, then the later ones can gain for the lower hyperstage.


Edit: Hmm, I guess going infinite if Vedalken Orrery survives is not necessarily that easy, since we won't have any stage creature tokens to facilitate things. Maybe it's worth some additional thought.

Oh, you're right - we can't make tokens of both with just one Mimic Vat. So not having Mirrorworks saves us!

It looks like there is a problem in the Soul Foundry deck: When we use an Engineered Explosives to kill Wirewood Herald, we can also kill off Metallurgeon, to gain a hasted token. This will also kill all the Metallurgeon tokens, so we would have to tap all of our Metallurgeon tokens beforehand. But, I don't see anything stopping us from tapping all of the Metallurgeon tokens, bouncing the original Metallurgeon, and replaying it to get Bloodbond March triggers. At that point, we can use Engineered Explosives to destroy both Wirewood Herald and Metallurgeon, getting token copies of both. Then we can use a Bloodbond March trigger to return the original Metallurgeon, and we're one token ahead. We can now use Godtoucher to enter the hyperstage transition, and get the Engineered Explosives back.

Yeah, Emry allowing Engineered Explosives to be cast from the graveyard seems to eliminate it.

Sharuum the Hegemon goes infinite with Rust Tick, or whatever we're using as an artifact stage creature: We can tap a Rust Tick token to create a lot of Psychic Battle triggers, then repeatedly destroy the nontoken Rust Tick, creating a Rust Tick token, and bouncing Sharuum, allowing us to return Rust Tick to the battlefield.

Arcum Dagsson is another possible replacement for Muzzio. The main problem seems to be the same as Muzzio's: We can bring one hasted copy down below a hyperstage transition, and use it to get another Rust Tick token. So, like Muzzio, we need to be forced to use the hasted copy on something else, like retrieving Chalice of the Void or Vedalken Orrery.

Oh, shucks. So I don't really know how to replace Mirrorworks, which means I don't know how to work Muzzio, Visionary Architect into the other decks.

Oh, right, we could make a Rust Tick token be sacrificing Mirrormade / Copy Artifact, and then imprinting it on Mimic Vat. Shoot.

I'm not sure how to fix that. Switching out Mirror of Fate for Pull from Eternity means bringing Izzet Guildmage back in, which unfortunately allows us to cast Goryo's Vengeance too cheaply.


Edit: Oh, I think that Mirrormade is actually okay without Mirrorworks. Yes, we can imprint Mirrormade with a Mimic Vat to get a token copy of Rust Tick. But that puts Mirrormade in the exile zone. To get it out, we would have to sacrifice the actual Mirror of Fate. And then to get Mirror of Fate back, we would have to tap a Muzzio, Visionary Architect. So we can get a Rust Tick token at the cost of using a Muzzio, but that is allowed.

Yes, it looks like eight stages is the lead. The Chalice of the Void deck had eight stages, but it looks like we currently need to add at least 4 cards to restore progress, so that would take it down to six stages.

But, there may be many changes that need to be made, in all the decks.

Ooh, nice - so we can take out Saproling Cluster and Consecrated Sphinx, and add Devout Chaplain and Royal Assassin as an eighth stage.

Hmmm... so the idea of having Muzzio, Visionary Architect be required to bring back Vedalken Orrery doesn't work in the Chalice of the Void deck, due to being able to Champion it under Changeling Hero. But maybe it can work for the other decks?

The Godtoucher deck is the obvious one to look at, since it already doesn't have Mirrorworks. So after removing Copper Gnomes, the only way we can save Vedalken Orrery is to put it in the library, so that it can be fetched by Muzzio. But Rebuild brings the Orrery to our hand, so it isn't easy to get it into the library from there. We need a sacrifice or discard outlet. Saproling Cluster should work. On the other side, having Muzzio means we don't need Wormfang Behemoth, since we can get back artifacts? So we will have something like:

Rebel Informer is definitely too good. With Lin Sivvi, it doesn't seem like we can create tokens of Lightbringer - same with the other Rebels.

Indeed, or we could use Krosan Constrictor. However, we would have to get rid of Horobi, Death's Wail, since that can also destroy Child of Alara. So we would have to go to the Soul Foundry version, I think.

So Lightbringer or Krosan Constrictor could serve as our resource creatures, but we need a way to hook them into Engineered Explosives. Unfortunately, Kor, Rebel, and Snake, don't look so promising. I can't find a good way to hook in via white or green creatures either; cards like Hazduhr the Abbot and Paragon of Eternal Wilds are too expensive. Maybe I'm missing something though.

Yeah, perhaps the idea is to have a creature that is not CMC 2, and make us require Bloodbond March triggers from it? (presumably because we need to sacrifice it) I guess the worry there is, if we can cast it earlier, then proceed with the hyperstage transition, and set the Chalice to 2 then. Then we get to the Bloodbond March trigger after the hyperstage transition.

Concerning the Forerunner of Slaughter idea - if we do switch to Metallurgeon and Cenn's Tactitian, what is required of the instants? Would they both have to be CMC 1? Or would it be enough to have Retract be CMC 1, and use something like Goryo's Vengeance or Rend Spirit for the other instant? If we leave the Chalice at 1, then we can't get Retract out, so we don't get Engineered Explosives back. So it seems like that would not be repeatable, even if we get more Metallurgeons using the other instant.

I'll think about that some more. In the meantime though, I've had an idea. What about using Forerunner of Slaughter to bounce our artifacts using mana? Of course, we would have to go back to using Metallurgeon, which I guess has a problem due to needing a CMC 1 resource creature. Perhaps we could keep Cenn's Tactician though, if we avoided using Battle Cry. But perhaps Goryo's Vengeance is no good with Metallurgeon being the same CMC? Still, we had some other artifact creating combos which used CMC 3 instants, like Rend Spirit and Yuki-Onna.

Well, we want to target Boggart Mob without targeting Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So far, the ways I have found have been to target Boggart Mob are as a Warrior, using Razorfin Abolisher / Bramblewood Paragon, or as a 5/5 creature using Godtoucher / Soul Foundry. So those are the other two deck versions.

Another possibility is to use Moggcatcher, which can retrieve Goblin Dark-Dwellers rather than Champion it. There, you can use the fact that it is Human, which leads to our Human deck. Since Moggcatcher has a tap ability, we can actually use Moggcatcher as our resource creature, but hooking into Humans turned out to be complicated. I guess we didn't figure out a way to hook into Mercenaries.

Other than that, I dunno... maybe target a red creature? Then we would have to go back to Soul Foundry, since Child of Alara is red, and it would cut off further red creatures.

Stakfish's idea was to use a self-targeting creature as our resource creature, which can save on card slots. But there doesn't seem to be a way to use a creature to target itself and also Boggart Mob or Moggcatcher. So the idea was to switch to a Changeling creature that can Champion. That makes it work, but unfortunately, we've found that Changelings lead to all sorts of problems.