MTG Salvation

I see your point about Strionic Resonator. It's also good for drawing extra cards when we use a cantrip (especially the first one), but I could definitely see replacing it with another creature or creature source.

It might be worth testing, but for 1 or 2 more, casting Zada and then Twinflame or Heat Shimmer copies all the creatures.

However, I am curious to test thermopod since it provides R. Sacrificing creatures also sacrifices the scope of other effects, so I think it's viewed as a more desperate option to make sure we go off.

I'm currently testing with Lotus Bloom and Iron Myr for those extra bits of mana to go off. Just got a Chrome Mox to try that. I'm a bit wary of exiling a card though. Also going to be testing with Zap in place of one of the slow cantrips. Mob Rule was quite helpful tonight. Not totally sold on it, but it seems like a good surprise.

I have Gruul Ragebeast and Defense of the Heart on the battlefield. My opponent has 5 7/7 creatures on the battlefield.

At the beginning of my upkeep I sac DoH into Wolfir Silverheart and Terastodon. I put triggers on the stack like this:

• Terastodon's trigger
• Silverheart's trigger from Terastodon
• Silverheart's trigger from Ragebeast
• Ragebeast's trigger for Silverheart
• Ragebeast's trigger for Terastodon

I resolve Terastodon's trigger, destroying 3 of my own lands to make 3/3 Elephant's under my control. Ragebeast and Silverheart trigger again for these 3 and I add them to the stack to yield this:

• Silverheart's trigger for Elephant #3
• Ragebeast's trigger for Elephant #3
• Silverheart's trigger for Elephant #2
• Ragebeast's trigger for Elephant #2
• Silverheart's trigger for Elephant #1
• Ragebeast's trigger for Elephant #1
• Silverheart's trigger from Terastodon
• Silverheart's trigger from Ragebeast
• Ragebeast's trigger for Silverheart
• Ragebeast's trigger for Terastodon

I then resolve the soulbond with Elephant #3 so that it's a 7/7 when it then fights another 7/7. Since it died, I can resolve the soulbond with Elephant #2, have it fight and die to another 7/7, and so on to take out 3 of my opponent's 7/7s, leaving me to soulbond Silverheart finally with either Ragebeast or Terastodon before having them fight and kill the remaining 2 7/7s.

This is all correct and works I expect, yes?

Let's say I have Desperate Ritual and Overblaze in my hand and some Arcane spells in my graveyard such as Unnatural Speed, Blazing Shoal and Path of Anger's Flame.

If I overload Mizzix's Mastery, exiling the above 3 and copying them, can I splice Desperate Ritual and Overblaze onto each of them as I cast the copies? (I understand the copy of Blazing Shoal will not pump power, X will be 0.)

If so, I need enough mana to do all the splicing during the resolution of Mizzix's Mastery, correct? 9 generic mana and 9 red mana, or 3 generic mana and 9 red mana if I have both Helm of Awakening and Ruby Medallion in play?

Quote from crazy monkey »

Mortorpod is interesting, but if I'm paying two mana for a creature, I usually want more than one of them. It would basically play like a mogg fanatic that costs more and lacks the goblin synergy. That's not terrible, but it's also not quite what I'm looking for in a creature/creature source.

Exactly. The biggest advantage to P&K, SGC, and Fanatic is they're repeatable at instant speed. I realized that Fanatic's advantage over Spikeshot Elder is if you've Twinflamed/Shimmered and have multiple Fanatics.

In a goldfish practice run last night, I reached:

• 2200+ goblin tokens (Krenko; haste and card draw from Crimson Wisps; Portent of Betrayal, Traitorous Blood, and Past in Flames for more untapping and tokens and scrying and card draw from Wisps again; then when I did Twinflame and then Heat Shimmer I kept the copy of Krenko and tapped him each time)
• 2000 elemental tokens (Brightstone Ritual into Tempt with Vengeance)
• At this point I started estimating with easy numbers, such as 4000 creatures instead of 4300-something.
• +576,000 power to each creature (very big pumps, including: splicing with Ritual and Overblaze 3 times and then pouring 36,000 into Blazing Shoal (also spliced), copied with Strionic Resonator, making more mana for Balduvian Rage; also 2 Fatal Frenzies due to Mizzix's Mastery)
• 14 instances of Overblaze (also thanks to Mastery)
• grand total damage, with double strike and trample from Temur Battle Rage: almost 80 trillion

Edit: I may have goofed in my math on the 576,000. Can't seem to get above 528,000 with what I think my sequence of plays was. That would result in 72 trillion damage.

My opening hand had Lotus Bloom, Titan's Strength, and no mountains or cantrips.

It's occurred to me that it's pretty important to save Strionic Resonator for something big like Path of Anger's Flame (spliced with DR and OB) or a hugely pumped Blazing Shoal (also spliced). Also, early in the process of going off I had 28 cards left in the library and 27 creatures. Rather than draw all of those with an immediate cantrip (had 3 in hand), I used the scrying from Portent (before tapping Krenko again) to get to the last few needed cards (including 2 Arcane spells), responding to that scry with a cantrip targeting somebody other than Zada to draw 1 card, then continue resolving the scrying.

I've begun to wonder if it's possible to go rather infinite with Shimmer Myr and Elixir of Immortality in the middle of drawing through the deck to repeatedly cast cantrips to continue the drawing, rituals, arcane and pump spells etc. No matter how many card draws are left, are left, one should have the Myr and the Elixir in hand to resolve those, cast some more spells if necessary, and dump the graveyard back into the library to continue drawing. I still like the idea of being able to do as much as we do without infinite combos, but I appreciate that this one takes awareness and timing (compared to Dualcaster Mage + Twinflame).

Happy splicing, folks.

So since they're similar effects to some of the ones we use, I'm curious if anybody has tried these:

Mortarpod: similar effect to Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Siege-Gang Commander, and Mogg Fanatic.
Mana Flare: does it help out opponents too much if we have to play it the turn before the one we go off?

Edit: Nevermind Mortarpod, that wouldn't work at all at instant speed.

Blade is not something I'd run in this deck. There just doesn't seem to be any creatures in this deck that explode when equipped and attack [with multiple opponents, of course].

Some of our creatures are moderate with myriad, such as Duplicant, but I'd rather be able to keep doing that every turn with the Closet than risk losing that card to the graveyard just for two extra triggers. Also wouldn't want to give the blade to my opponent with Confusion. That'd be bad.

Edit:
Actually, perhaps the best creature in this deck for the blade would be Goblin Assassin (6 triggers, though, if you have 3 opponents and make 2 tokens). The formula for the number of triggers, assuming you create a token for each opponent not being attacked by the equipped one: N * (N - 1), where N is the number of opponents. This applies to creatures with the "Whenever <card name> or another <type/subtype> enters the battlefield" pattern. (you can search this on magiccards.info with: t:creature o:"whenever ~ or another" o:"enters the battlefield")

Quote from Kumlekar »

I didn't understand how you were getting high numbers with path. I guess you're splicing a targeting effect onto it, but even so I'd rather not have to draw into a two card combo to have it not be a bad Rouse the Mob. I've cut virtually all of the pump spells that don't give trample or haste with exceptions for ones that are free, or fulfill other things the deck needs. Haze of Rage is still in as a way to repeatedly trigger slide/pyromancer in a pinch, and it can easily hit +8/+0 or higher. I'm still trying to work in better ramp, or mana that can be played mid combo. I'd like to get to a point where I can fairly safely keep two land hands.

A bad Rouse the Mob? Not sure you've understood it's effect.

If you have Zada and 4 other creatures and splice a target creature effect onto Path of Anger's Flame the "Creatures you control get +2/+0 until end of turn" effect happens 5 times to your creatures. They each get +10/+0 for a combined power boost of +50/+0. If you have Zada and 9 other creatures, they each get +20/+0 for a combined power boost of +200/+0. If you have 49 other creatures and Zada, they each get +100/+0 (+5000/+0 together).

And the two-card combos with splicing are not hard when you've drawn most of your library, as is the point of the deck. It's a great buff when you need the arcane spells and splicing anyway for Desperate Ritual and Overblaze.

Much better circumstances. We just have to make sure the inversion happens an even number of times and we're golden.

Quote from crazy monkey »

The largest issue strange inversion has given me is a headache from calculating and tracking power when it was my only splice available for path of anger's flame. It was hard to tell if I had lethal or not.

Indeed, it's ugly. But you probably did have lethal, especially if you did that early and did more power boosting later. I coded up some examples and at least there are calculable patterns to it. For those wanting to know more detail about this interaction and why it's a bloody mess, open the spoiler below.

The simplest pattern to it -- if you're getting targeting on Path with something better like Overblaze -- is that if you have X creatures your boost per creature will be a double of X squared (i.e., 2(X^2)). However, with the stepped pattern produced by using Strange Inversion you end up with an average boost per creature of half that, or just X^2. The very first creature to have it applied has the most power, and Zada (always being last) gets all those pumps and then swaps it to her toughness. So you can just assign creatures to attack opponents round-robin style and it should work out with marginal difference.

Quote from crazy monkey »

In the option to use it as a ritual, it becomes especially effective to remember that each one resolves individually, in the order that you chose. By ordering the copies that zada creates properly, you may be able to use the sudden access to colorless mana to cast something else and keep the critical creatures alive. This application is admittedly narrow, but leaving some of the spells on the stack to respond to comes up surprisingly often.

This is one of the things I need to remember while practicing and playing. I've been tempted to write a program to help keep track of stuff (especially mana and creatures), but it's possibly too complicated even without working things like this use of the stack into it.

Quote from CentralCommand »

I think he's referring to other things that could get stolen. Like "ok so norin doesn't work, but what about this convenient Kiki-Jiki next to him?"

Ah, I see that now. Apologies.

There's solutions for stealing it back, of course.

Quote from Legion564 »

Quote from Meecht »

Quote from Legion564 »

Hey guys quick question. If Norin gets stolen and then he blinks after, who's control does it come back under?

Norin the Wary says "owner's control." There is no way for the owner of a card to change, so Norin will always come running back to you

OK thanks. So for anything else like if it gets stolen then that controller blinks it with Deadeye Navigator he gets to keep it?

1. You brought that card to the game, so you're still the owner. You could always cast a spell yourself to make Norin blink with his own trigger.
2. This is very improbable. They would have to steal Norin without casting a spell to void triggering him. Then because Norin is already on the field they would have to have Navigator enter the battlefield without casting it to avoid Norin's trigger and for the soulbond trigger to go off. Then if they did all this, then sure, they could flicker Norin for 1U. But Norin's trigger will always bring him back to you.
3. Who in their right mind would do #2 at all? They wouldn't get anything out of stealing and flickering Norin. If they do that, laugh at them because they're wasting mana doing incredibly unhelpful things with their Navigator. Which is to your benefit, but it would still be dumb.

Quote from crazy monkey »

I can say confidently that those numbers are completely normal.

My current maximum recorded damage in a game was 2.9 billion, and that definitely wasn't the upper limit. I'd only cast tempt with vengeance once for x=100 or so, and didn't use my last krenko, mobb boss activation, so I only had 300 or so creatures.

I think their power was around 300 with 15 instances of overblaze. It's worth noting that scroll rack basically lets you stack your deck and you can use possibility storm to doublecast most spells before using flashback, and allowing access to the bottom of the deck.

Actually, I have some other curiosities about piloting the deck.

When you go off, do you always go all out and overkill (e.g., 2.9 billion damage)? Or do you go just far enough that you know it's lethal to your opponents?

How long does that final turn typically take you to go off, from untapping to the damage step?

How do you typically deal with Strange Inversion being one of your splice enablers when you've made a bunch of Eldrazi Spawn? Just sac them for colorless mana first?

And Spawning Breath: Do you wipe a bunch of your tokens and replace them, or pump everybody up first? Or either, depending on the circumstance?

This draws a ton of cards. Has anybody considered stuff like Psychosis Crawler and Mindmoil?

Okay. This deck is insane. Is it considered normal to produce over 6500 mana, 8000 creatures, and swing with 65,000,000 total power?

Overblaze was in the bottom of my library that time, but I understand why it's often part of your preferred win sequence.