MTG Salvation

Longtime paper architect player here,

My current list splashing green for everything wrong with Magic. Now including a little Tribute Mage package that's been stellar. Really revived the deck for me. Disrupt their gameplan and turn stuff sideways. Smuggler's Copter and Throne of the God-Pharaoh are the real payoffs in a deck full of durdly 1/x's.



I spent a long time playing with the taxing one drops for this deck, but have now eschewed them entirely in favor of "Cantrip Creatures" to increase the likelihood of curving out in the way the deck needs to. When this deck doesnt line up its curve properly, it's just not doing anything powerful enough for Modern. Saccing the creatures you need to produce Mana and Crew triggers is also just very counterproductive a lot of the time, and i've seen much more success with Faerie Seer and Sage of Epityr than I ever did with Wanderer and friends. Together with Once Upon A Time and Tribute Mage, the deck becomes much more consistent at assembling its pieces and reaching its goal every game. It also allows some lands to be shaved. Incubation // Incongruity is another card I've been playing a few copies of since dipping into green, and with 29 very relevant hits for its first mode, and the occasional gamechanging removal spell on the backend, I've been impressed so far.

As far as the sideboard goes, Veil Of Summer is a messed up card, and this deck loves it. Does tremendous work against the Thoughtsieze/Fatal Push decks that Blue Steel normally struggles to beat, UW, Shadow, etc. The rest of the sideboard is just Wurmcoils for aggro, and targets for Tribute Mage that slot in against a lot of matchups nicely. Trinket Mage package has been okay so far, but the board is a little bloated with so many things going on.

A final note; I've been thoroughly unimpressed with Etherium Sculptor over the years. The third artificer just doesnt have what it takes a lot of the time, and his impact on the game is very low compared to Chief Engineer or Grand Architect. Loading up the deck with card selection to consistently reach the real payoffs of the deck at the right times has vastly improved the amount of explosive starts this deck thrives off of. The christmasland hands where Etherium Sculptor lets you dump your hand on turn 2 just arent worth all the realistic ones where he's a 1/2 you dont need. Going t1 dork, t2 Engineer + Copter, or t3 architect + payoff consistently every game is just going to win you more games of magic.

Have been testing this a little bit and trying some different card choices. Just looking to get a second opinion and maybe hear some cards I may have missed.
London Mulligan really helped this deck, TE is not much of a challenge to find nowadays and lots of people just aren't packing ways to deal with it maindeck.

So, this is a Tortured Existence brew that aims to close the game by locking your opponents out of the game using Thoughtpicker Witch. It uses a variety of creatures as sac fodder, primarily Myr Servitor, Mulldrifter, and Trinket Mage. All of them mitigate or negate card disadvantage normally associated with repeated sacrificing. Mesmeric Fiend is another common sacrifice target that can be looped to both control the library and permanently deal with cards that are already in hand. A pair of Grave Scrabblers can really run away with the game with a sac outlet on board, and provide more natural card advantage and free blockers. Myr Servitor itself can wall out some decks with blocks that arent able to clear away enough copies, buying you time while you assemble a lock. Golgari Brownscale is also included to give us a way to simply loop Thoughtpicker Witch with itself every turn in tight situations, and can allow us to gain a lot of life to delay further. Forbidden Alchemy, Mulldrifter and Careful Study help us find cards we need while filling the yard with tutor targets. The shell has a lot of resilience, and dodges edict effects. It feels unique, and perhaps strong enough to take some games off of established archetypes. Trinket Mage itself brings a lot to the table, and being able to loop its effect to find more lands, removal, or hate is quite strong in a shell where one can cast almost as many copies as you can afford.

Here's my current, albeit minimally refined, list;


Probably going to be brewing this for a bit, would love suggestions, will update it as I go.
I'd compare this deck to Lantern Control, but it's really a Tortured Existence deck at heart. You do close games with library manipulation, but the execution and tutoring are lacking compared to Modern's streamlined Ensnaring Bridge centric lists. Creature combat is important, and often a Thoughtpicker Lock is icing on the cake. This configuration does not play hellbent magic, and generally has a lot more access to potential utility cards, but lacks the speed and card selection of Modern Lantern. It's probably not something that could exist outside of the pauper environment, and personally I think that's really cool.

Would love to hear your opinions and suggestions on this. Don't do pauper too often but brewing this a side project to my modern stuff has turned me onto the format and i've been playing a lot recently and grinding out games with it. Here's my sort of WIP mini-primer on the deck, updated for the current list.

This is a grind-heavy B/R midrange deck that typically falls into more controlling roles. It preys on creature based decks, but has the resilience to beat more traditional black and blue based control archetypes. It plays mostly at instant speed despite running upwards of 25 creatures. The black base uses old favorites like Tortured Existence, Grave Scrabbler, and Stinkweed Imp, but dips into red for UMA newcomer threat Reckless Wurm, and its removal package. It leans on Lightning Axe and other discard outlets to create swing plays in combat with madness blockers and dispose of powerful opposing creatures like Gurmag Angler and Ulamog's Crusher with ease. Death Spark completes the removal suite, helping to grind out smaller bodies and utility creatures (see Delver of Secrets, Llanowar Elves, etc.) while also spearheading the deck's card advantage plan. Utility creatures like Insolent Neonate, Mad Prophet and Kris Mage/Plague Witch can be utilized by minimizing downsize with cards the deck wants to discard, fueling repeatable value plays. The graveyard is a resource for this build, dredging often and accessing the cards it wants to see with Tortured Existence. It also uses binned lands to loop Gurmag Angler, and allows you to access most sideboard cards multiple times in a single game, even if you only see one copy. When the deck gets going it has access to double or triple the amount of cards that the opponent does, and doesnt have issues finding its 1-2 ofs and sideboard cards. It hopes to create an "unnwinnable gamestate" quickly before closing games with large creatures or looping Death Spark ad nauseam. It's adept at turning the corner, and heavily rewards good sequencing.

(Sample Build)
- Land (22) - Instant (7) - Creature (27) - Enchantment (4) -



The Stinkweed Imp/Golgari Brownscale + Tortured Existence Engine allows us to fuel the graveyard, creating a tutorable library of creatures, and helping to loop cards like Gurmag Angler, Death Spark, and Monstrous Carabid. Stinkweed digs 5 deep every draw, and Golgari Brownscale just wins a lot of games by itself due to the pauper metagames general inability to overcome life gain. With this combo we can turn any madness creature into a selective cantrip that can be played every turn while churning through your deck. We play at instant speed using our madness effects, and gain huge amounts of psuedo card advantage to win via attrition with the help of our enablers. Defensively, the deck can drop Stinkweed Imp and friends early to gum up the board, strike down threats with burn, control the game, and hopefully pull the boardstate into a grindy topdeck situation, where we have an incredible advantage in most matchups. Some of the deck struggles against hate in games 2/3, though we can fall onto a backup beatdown plan with our efficient 4 power creatures.

This deck spends a lot of time grinding its way to victory. Opponents will often scoop it up in the face of our engine across a finally empty board, and the grind is the portion of the deck you have to get good at maneuvering around if you want to see success. The MTGO clock is a real factor in some matchups if you're playing online. An understanding of sequencing is absolutely key to winning with this list. I'd like to add that the list feels super fun and skill intensive, leading to a replayable rewarding grind. A lot of the time it plays out like a control deck against aggro plans, slowly stabilizing as it brings the gamestate to a standstill and allows your engine to do its thing until you overwhelm them. Against control, you can sort of play the aggressor, and Mournwhelk puts in work from the board, fighting card advantage from enemy Mulldrifters and demanding an answer. I find the deck is better positioned against creature based strategies, which is often fine, as that's not unpopular in pauper.

These colors and the shell allow ufor some awesome sideboard plans that create post board configurations that feel like intuitive functioning decks with better matchups, rather than a pile of silver bullets you have to make space for that don't fit into the plan. There's potential for a lot of synergy, and interesting cards like Ingot Chewer, Mournwhelk, and Faerie Macabre combine with Tortured Existence to give the deck repeatable "spells" that provide premium value when slotted into the engine against many common meta decks. Cards like Golgari Brownscale and Crypt Rats come in against aggressive decks to sustain you, but again, don't dilute your plan when drawn.

Red Madness Creatures - Bloodmad Vampire and Reckless Wurm are secret all stars. They can be played at instant speed with all of your enablers, and are an Ambush Viper worthy of pauper's powerlevel. Wurm is a solid blocker, and he spearheads the beatdown plan that the deck executes to win if your opponent doesnt scoop it up, plowing through smaller creatures with trample. Using the resilience provided by the deck's engine, a few copies can clear away any defense given time, or boardstall opponents for multiple turns with a wall of 4/4's. Bloodmad can come down as early as turn 2 against more controlling decks with weaker board presence, and punch in for a lot of damage. The vampire spends much more time dying than Wurm on ambush duty, but can also be reasonably played without it's madness cost in the earlygame, and is less mana intensive to loop, making it an effective removal spell after your engine gets going. Notably, both Reckless Wurm and Bloodmad Vampire trade up to Gurmag Angler easily with the help of Death Spark, Kris Mage, or Plague Witch.

Death Spark - This card is a whole mess of fun, but requires proper sequencing to get the most out of. Essentially a repeatable Gut Shot, Death Spark is an effective answer to popular creatures from many meta decks across pauper, easily clearing away 1 and 2 toughness creatures for the entirety of the game. It dominates Delver of Secrets, Spellstutter Sprite, and anything out Elves or Goblins. Its a hose against most cheap utility creatures and being able to have all your copies every turn really wins some games by itself. It takes some practice to use properly, but Death Spark is almost always going to stick around once you nab a copy, and even when its not removing things you can be using it to chip at their life total every time a creature is about to hit your bin. There are a lot of turns in the earlygame where you'll have spare mana to use it, and it really shines. It's felt so good I've even cut the omnipotent Lightning Bolt from the maindeck, as it was feeling mediocre compared to Lightning Axe at mopping up larger threats, and inefficient next to Death Spark for smaller ones. When you're dredging through your deck, you actually have the option to order the cards that hit the bin, so you can often snag extra copies of the useful utility spell when you're using Stinkweed Imp to see more cards. Death Spark is also facilitated by most of our discard enablers, most notably Monstrous Carabid and Tortured Existence. It's not too hard to keep a constant flow of them going, and 2-3 copies can be looped every turn with some consistency in the later turns. The best part about Death Spark is that it does so much more than just removal and damage for this build. It's recursion offers a great synergy with the list, allowing you to discard the spark for value, and recur it later into the game, really helping to combat the inherent card disadvantage that some of the cards the deck uses inflict. Paying a mere 1 on upkeep to pseudo-draw a card is an incredible effect to have in a list full of discard outlets.

Heres a few relevant synergies and ways to enable Death Spark's recursion for anyone who hasnt played with the card:
- Undertaker - Discard Death Spark and a creature using another source to effectively pay 1B to tutor a creature from your graveyard every turn.
- Mad Prophet - Discard Death Spark to Mad Prophet and a creature using another source to effectively pay 1 to draw a card every turn.
- Insolent Neonate - Discard Death Spark to pay for an Insolent Neonate activation. Because of the sequencing of the Neonate's ability, Death Spark is put into the graveyard below Insolent Neonate, resulting in an easy recurrence that allows you to pay 1 any future turn to recoup some of your card advantage loss on the Neonate's ability.

- Recur Death Spark after its put into your yard by any means by timing activations of any discard outlet like Tortured Existence, Undertaker, Mad Prophet, etc. to place creature cards above it. (Be careful not to dredge away creatures you're using to recur it if you're dredging at instant speed with Insolent Neonate or Monstrous Carabid.)
- Recur Death Spark after its put into your yard by any means by cycling a Monstrous Carabid.


Undertaker - My current version is happily running a pair of Undertakers. This card is functionally very similar to Tortured Existence and is in many ways copies 5-8, chipping in for consistency. The two drop however has the advantage of being a creature. This allows you to recur him from the graveyard with our Grave Scrabblers if you need to get the engine running, and can be grabbed in response to your Tortured Existence being removed, allowing you to continue your gameplan in dire situations. He can even be set up beside a Tortured Existence to allow us to exchange extra lands or spells (like the self recurring Death Spark) for creatures. Well worth some number in the main.

Monstrous Carabid - I'll admit, it took me a while to really understand how good cycling creatures like Monstrous Carabid and Horror of the Broken Lands are in this deck. Part of it is that I didnt quite get at first that it needs creatures in the bin, and often, our opponent just isn't going to oblige. Both Tortured Existence and Undertaker require a target, and sometimes you find yourself sitting on a handful of Grave Scrabblers with nothing to recur. Monstrous Carabid allows us to have something to do during our often durdly early turns, cycling itself for no immediate drawback and thinning our deck. When we do need a target for our engines, you maintain card parity in the graveyard by simply grabbing the Carabid, and cycling it right back. Not only does this allow us to cast our Madness creatures, it ends up creating tons of card advantage, and is something you're always happy to do when you have spare mana. It helps enable Death Spark recursions with ease, and is a great target for Grave Scrabbler/Tortex if you dont particularly need anything and you want to dig for answers instead. Carabid also allows us to get as many dredges as we can afford, at instant speed to boot. In an absolute worst case scenario, his 4/4 body isnt even irrelevant in pauper, trumping 90% of the creature base. Probably one of the secret best cards of the deck.

Mad Prophet - So, my defense of UMA draft chaff. Frankly, I wish this card was Merfolk Looter, but red doesn't have great repeatable rummage effects at common. Mad Prophet's mana cost is excessive, and I wont debate that. However, I think an on-board rummage brings something to this deck that it truly needs. Being able to rummage enables a ton of relevant interactions with cards like Death Spark, Stinkweed Imp, and any madness creature. The card advantage provided by turning the negative half of rummaging into an upside is invaluable, and I think its well worth running the clunky 4 drop to get. I considered and tested Rummaging Goblin in his place, but found it much worse. Both of these creatures are bolt bait. They die a lot, and have a lot of removal pointed at them. Now, this isnt too much of an issue for a deck that has as much recursion as this one does, but it means Haste is relevant text, allowing us to get at least some immediate use every time it's cast. Being a 2/2 is also relevant, allowing Mad Prophet to block much better than the goblin, live the occasional Crypt Rats activation from our side of the board, and dissuade Gut Shot effects, so Mad Prophet made the cut instead.

Rakdos Carnarium - I have not built a lot of pauper manabases. I'll be the first to admit it. However, I do think Rakdos Carnarium is an awesome include here. This is a deck that is very greedy with its mana, and it likes having 5-8 mana every turn in the later stages of the game to really get the most out of the engine. Its also a deck that really wants a lot of effects, cramming outlets/dredgers/value/removal/etc , and happens to pass up on turn 2 plays for the most part, or put another 1 drop into play. Carnarium seems like a no brainer, allowing us to lower the total land count and still see enough sources. You can also cheekily use it to get Madness creatures into play by discarding due to hand size without missing land drops, but that's a rare application.

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Lemme know what you think, Is this any good? Am I just a crazy Modern player who has no idea what hes talking about? Any neat cards i've missed? Been playing this a ton on MTGO recently with more success than I expected. How could I improve it?

Thank you both for your detailed suggestions, Much appreciated.

Quote from lujo86 »

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- There's VERY likely a functional black metalcraft deck out there that just needs someone to put it together properly. Dhund Operative and Salvage Slasher come to mind immediately, backed up by Tooth & Scale, and possibly Night Market Lookout and Springleaf Drum for acceleration.

Went at this for a few hours last night. I tried monocolored for a while, played some games with a rough list centered around Glaze Fiend, Defiant Salvager, and testing some cute interactions with Myr Servitor. Stand out cards were Vault Skirge/Bonesplitter and Glaze Fiend, but the deck was missing top heavy threats, and lacking evasion otherwise, resulting in losses to decks with a lot of ground presence. It also had issues running out of gas, to which I tried Resourceful Return. Eventually I gave up on Monoblack for more artifact lands and better draw, and dipped into blue for Thoughtcast, Etherium Sculptor, Gearseeker Serpent, and Seat of the Synod. Etherium Sculptor lets you dump your entire hand for free or 1 mana basically, and fueled some really busted draws, I think it has potential. Salvage Slasher felt mediocre in practice honestly. I went down to 2 and played more games with the UB list, and think they probably should just be cut. Being an x/1 is a hard life with no evasion or trample in a world full of disposable blockers and Bird Tokens. I think the black creatures have promise, but they have mostly undercosted bodies, and when using nonartifact cards like Dhund Operative, Defiant Scavenger, Aether Poisoner, etc too heavily, it pulled some of the artifact synergy out of the mix and was a nonbo with other pieces. I think this deck has promise, and I intend to keep tinkering, but its sorely lacking another evasive threat and a creature with instant speed sac artifacts for relevant value (No thanks Rusted Slasher). I'd go into red, because that's where all those are at common, but I'm worried that would devolve into strictly worse Affinity. Any thoughts on these points?

My personal top picks for this archetype:
Etherium Sculptor
Glaze Fiend
Vault Skirge
Bonesplitter
Thoughtcast


While playing the above, I was inspired to build something else with some of the pieces. Experimenting with Myr Servitor and Glaze Fiend produced cute results, cute enough that I wanted to build with it. Glaze Fiend itself was more strategy specific, but Myr Servitor seems like a creature that's honestly lacking play in Pauper. The effect is very powerful, providing 1-4 free recurring sac fodder creatures at the risk of removal blowouts. Obviously the card is a natural fit with sacrifice outlets like Brine Shaman, Plagued Rusalka, and Thoughtpicker Witch. I'm surprised to have not seen it at all yet. A search through the pauper forums yielded minimal results, though I did find a thread that attempts to use Servitor and Witch to close games, it was housed by a very fragile part U/B Control part Wizard Tribal shell. What the engine really needs is a way to counteract or become resilient to removal based blowouts, and a lot of redundancy. Tortured Existence brings all that to the table and a lot more. Here's what a morning of tinkering put forth:



A lock can be assembled quickly and efficiently, with Stinkweed Imp, Forbidden Alchemy, and Trinket Mage digging out the Myr Servitor copies needed. Tortured Existence provides needed pseudo-redundancy and naturally blanks most removal-based answers. It can loop Thoughtpicker Witch by itself if need be, and Trinket Mage can even help bolster TE's natural rough times making land drops, by being looped to find Artifact lands while still controlling the opponent's library. The list closes games with Horror of the Broken Lands or simply by milling them out. There's also no shortage of card advantage with Mulldrifter/Grave Scrabbler, and solid lifegain to recover from aggressive starts with Golgari Brownscale. Mesmeric Fiend takes care of possible answers permanently thanks to stack+trigger manipulation and a sac outlet. Think it has any promise? Might post this in its own thread.

Quote from einhorn303 »

The Eidolon cycle from Dissension, ala Verdant Eidolon. Could be an awesome card advantage engine with looting, Last Rites/Delirium Skeins, or Tortured Existence. Also can have a bit of a combo kill with Vampire Hounds/Wild Mongrel and cards like Manamorphose. With Torex, they make a Putrid Leech or other gold creatures infinitely unkillable.

Spent a few minutes on the train scouring scryfall about this, I think there's a an aggressive build here with some combination of cards like Wild Mongrel, Naya Hushblade and friends, Shield of the Oversoul, Basking Rootwalla, Lightning Axe, etc + Verdant Eidolon. I'm having trouble getting the pieces to fit together, but the concept feels solid. The ratio of multicolored to monocolored is the biggest issue I think, Pauper's creature-base is a little limited when it comes to efficient playable 1-2 drops that are also Multicolored. Black might just end up being a better Idea with Putrid Leech and Tortured Existence, but I think the aggro plan could be more fun.

edit: card tags, wording

I feel you're missing a way to really abuse Enchanted Evening. Frankly the card is not worth paying 5 for unless you are getting a lot of value out of it as a prison deck. Lands cantripping in the late game if your eidolons aren't removed is nice, but why not include some sort of more motivating reason to play the clunky 5 drop? Every other card in your deck for the most part is already an enchantment and receives no benefit, and you aren't using it to dissuade your opponent from doing anything by packing enchantment hate. As it stands, your namesake could be removed with minimal, arguably positive impact on success.

Quote from lujo86 »

I've seen Curfew in Anti-Bogles sideboards, but i'm reluctant to go all-in on it since it doesn't really do the trick against go-wide, and my local meta is infested with it. I've seen Edicts do nothing against Bogles, too, since they often have a token or simply a non-pantsed Bogle to bounce. The only way edicts work is if you have a lot of them and use them as follow-up to a mini-boardwipe, and a mono blue deck doesn't have a mini-boardwipe. And too many decks which aren't even aggro have something to sac/pick as a curfew target (think Thraben Inspector in Boros and Tooth & Claw, Augur of Bolas in blue decks, hasty and ETB critters in Red and Green, Gary and Chittering Rats in black decks, Basking Rootwalla and Grave Scrabbler in madness / Tort/Ex, Icatian Javelineers in Rebels, or even just random undecosted dudes), and at the same time there are may matches where you really want to pick your target / targets for bounce (Atog , Gurmag Angler , Tireless Tribe , Wild Mongrel , whoever the goblins pump up with sledder/raider, Ghostly Flicker targets, Spore Frog, the Infect guy who's about to receive the pumps, etc.)

Withdraw, however, has been hilarious against most things, and Rushing River is there to step in when non-creature permanents are what's giving you trouble / you need more bounce. With Faerie Miscreant, Ninja, Spellstutter Sprite and Faerie Duelist in the deck, there's just no end to shennanigans with those two. You can even use either to save 2 guys from a Crypt Rats activation.

Sure if your local meta is rife with go wide, id agree, though i'd say you're overselling Curfew's downsides. The card is more than just a Vapor Snag, and if i wanted that effect i'd run Snag, and I do, snag is good. Being likely a blue tempo list and running creatures that minimize downside for a spell with both broad defensive, removal, and effect recursion applications for U is a nice package. The flexibility and cost are hard to beat, and i'd actually say its easier to maintain an empty edict prime boardstate playing blue-based Tempo against most decks that dont go wide. If you're using the card to recur a Spellstutter Sprite, Ninja of the Deep Hours, or Faerie Duelist, or save a dude, who cares what they're bouncing in some matchups? Its free tempo as long as they dont have etb payoffs.

Faerie Duelist is a strong card i've had my eye on. Really makes Spellstutter Sprite shine, I agree.

Have you tried Curfew for bounce instead? At only U it seems extremely strong in Spellstutter lists, but really havent seen much of it at all. Its a pseudo edict effect in monoblue against decks like bogles, and a huge tempo positive play a lot of the time.

Rejoice, budget Liliana has arrived, with an amazing effect, and at uncommon to boot.

http://mythicspoiler.com/war/cards/davrielrogueshadowmage.html

Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage

Here's my list after a little more exploring.

Undertaker is an absolutely sweet little piece of tech. Often, we are only using the ability from Tortured Existence once per turn, and running Undertaker in place of, or in addition to, the 4th Tortured Existence allows us to bin cards like Fiery Temper/Psychotic Episode and additional redundant copies of Existence/Bolt/Axe/Land while still maintaining card parity and generating value. He's also a creature, so if we get him in the yard via the dredge plan, he can be recurred with Grave Scrabbler.

Kris Mage feels absolutely great every time im finding it. It's winning so many matchups by itself, and totally controls the midgame. Its a super relevant ability and it allows constant Reckless Wurms to dominate opposing Gurmag Anglers and let you get tons of other profitable blocks with your disposable creatures. And when you get one, you can kind of just keep it, its super hard to remove and we have so much recursion. Im almost tempted to try a sort of small graveyard toolbox where the deck just bins synergy utility creatures that are good enough on their own to come down, but can also be dredged with Stinkweed Imp and power a sort of tutorable list of answers and value accessible with Grave Scrabbler and Tortured Existence.

Lightning Axe is an all star, really enjoying just mopping the floor with gurmag decks and making crazy tempo swing plays with it. Turns out unconditional Roast for one mana is pretty good if you can mitigate the downside.

Honestly, im thinking of dipping into 1 main 1 side uncastable Golgari Brownscale. The card feels so value in some matchups, it just gains you so much life. I've snuck one in the side just to test and its really been quite strong.

Edit: I've been playing some games tonight and trying really random cards in the sideboard. Psychotic Episode is actually feeling very powerful against a lot of decks. Not only does it give you perfect information, it allows you to tuck any card, even lands from tron

In general, the phrase "exiled card" on Spell Queller's fourth ability refers only to cards exiled due to its third ability in the same pair, and not due to any other ability, including another ability with the same text as Spell Queller's third ability (C.R. 607.2a).

1. Yes, since Spell Queller no longer has the linked ability pair that exiled the card in question.
2. Yes; for the purposes of the linked ability rules, Spell Queller's original abilities are different from the abilities Spell Queller acquires from itself (C.R. 613.1, 613.1a, 607.2a), so that the "exiled card" on the relevant ability Spell Queller acquires from itself won't refer to any cards, unlike Spell Queller's ordinary ability with the same text, which Spell Queller no longer has.
3. Yes. Since Spell Queller and Metamorphic Alteration leave the battlefield at the same time, Spell Queller will still be a copy of something at the last moment it's on the battlefield, so that Spell Queller won't have any abilities from the pair that exiled the card in question by the time it leaves the battlefield (C.R. 603.10a, 603.10, 603.6c, 613.1, 613.1a).

EDIT: Correctness edit after comment 3 was posted.

This looks like something worth looking into. I've had a BG Madness-Delve-Tortured Existance deck in my meta which had it's fans, but I haven't even considered going RB with it. What green does is get you random silly flashback gamewinners like Gnaw to The Bone and Moment's Peace to go with Wild Mongrel and Basking Rootwalla. But Lightning Axe and Faithless Looting (to help set up) might actually be great.

A card I found does wonders in some matchups with RG Madness is Kris Mage. It's slower than the Neonate so I tend to keep it in the sideboard, but when going up against Delvers and general Blue Skies nonsense it feels like it wins games on it's own.