Mana Seism nets you an insane amount of mana because you can tap all of your lands for mana, float it, then cast Seism for more mana. With a Lotus Cobra in play, casting back a Faith's Reward nearly doubles your mana.
-5 lands in play, along with Lotus Cobra
-Tap to produce 5
-Pay 2 for Mana Seism
-Sac and generate 5 more mana
-8 floating
-Pay 4 for Faith's Reward
-Lands come back untapped
-Five Cobra triggers
-9 Floating
-Tap 5 again
-14 Floating
I love the idea of Ghost Quarter in this deck because you can drop it, get one from Cobra, sac it, go get a land, one more from Cobra, and then tap the land. Sakura-Tribe Elder offers you more rap since he can be reused off of a Faith's Reward. Greater Gargadon offers a big beater that you can feed your lands to in order to get them back with Faith's Reward and retrigger Lotus Cobra. Splendid Reclamation is just Faith's Reward copy five and potentially six. If you've got them, Fetches such as Arid Mesa, Windswept Heath, and Wooded Foothills will be great with your engine.
Okay, so this make look like a conglomeration of oddities, but there's some method here, I swear. Puresight Merrow and Paradise Mantle allow you to churn through your library as you look for a card to exile with Shelldock Isle. Shelldock Isle allows you to cast the card without playing its mana cost, so either Emrakul, the Promised End or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn are perfect here. But since we already have the option to churn through our entire library, why not put Laboratory Maniac in as well?
Angelsong, Hindering Light, and Censor all offer a bit of protection for us to live through our game plan, but they also offer potential wins with a Laboratory Maniac in play. See Beyond let us send away an Emrakul since we're never going to be able to cast it if it starts in our opening hand.
The ideal scenario goes a little something like this:
T1: Land, Paradise Mantle
T2: Land, Puresight Merrow
T3: Tap a land, equip Merrow with Mantle, activate until Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is on top, then play Shelldock Isle to exile Emrakul
T4: Activate Merrow until there are 20 or less cards in your library, then activate Shelldock Isle to cast Emrakul and get your extra turn
T4b: Beat face with spaghetti monster
Obviously this is not perfect, but I feel like it's a start. I have been wracking my brain for a way to speed things up a bit without going too heavy into just janky cards that just take up space.
Why not Myr Servitor, Reassembling Skeleton, and a few copies of Sylvok Lifestaff? Run a couple Memorial to Folly in case all Servitors or Thoughtpicker Witch all hit the yard. Lifestaff nets you the ever necessary lifegain to keep stuff like this viable. Trinket Mage tutors up Lifestaff and Myr Servitor. That leans your more into a lock than just trying to take away their deck and dying to some piddly dude that slipped through. Doomfall is iffy just because edict effects kind of suck in Modern. Path is good. Maybe Mortify or Anguished Unmaking?
You can also run one or two copies of Ophidian Eye instead of adding another color if budget is a concern.
Firebrand Archer is cool, but only has 1 toughness; however, Thermo-Alchemist is a little bit more resilient. Maybe a 2/2 or 2/3 split between the two to add another set of the Electrostatic Field effects? Gelectrode is an option, but he's three mana and as fragile as they come.
Okay, so here's the idea. Use your cards such as Thoughtseize, Dreadbore, Terminate, and Fulminator Mage to slow down combo, mid-range, and Tron/Valakut decks. By the time turn four rolls around, you should have been able to kill a good bit of things, blow up some lands, and make your opponent discard a card or two. Both players' graveyards should be full, and you can drop an Immortal Coil. You can then use Bazaar Trader or Harmless Offering to give them the Coil. After that, use Rakdos Charm, Nihil Spellbomb, or Bojuka Bog to exile their graveyard. State-based actions will kick in and they will lose on the spot.
A perfect game would look like this:
T1: Nihil Spellbomb
T2: Bazaar Trader
T4: Immortal Coil, activate Trader to give the opponent the coil, then crack the Spellbomb, winning you the game!
The Immortal Coil, Harmless Offering, Bazaar Trader, and Demonic Pact offer some redundancy, all except for the Trader and Pact. That's why we don't run too many of either, but Offering combos with both Coil and Pact, giving us some nice redundancy.
We have a good bit of mainboard hate, such as Nihil Spellbomb, Fulminator Mage, and Rakdos Charm. Charm puts in work against artifact decks, token/creature heavy decks such as Humans, and hates on anything that uses the graveyard, from Dredge to Storm.
Magmatic Insight probably seems like the odd man out here, but it was my favorite of the "discard X, draw two" cards, especially since we only really need four lands to win. Jinxed Idol is fun to donate with Bazaar Trader, but it is kind of useless on its own. That's why we only run one.
The deck has many flex slots and the sideboard is just something kind of generic to fit most metas. Bear in mind that running the two copies of Demonic Pact in the sideboard are necessary if you anticipate your opponent is packing any sort of graveyard hate post-sideboard. Immortal Coil's last clause is always on, so the moment we'd drop it, if we're hit with an opposing Leyline of the Void, we'd lose to state-based actions. The extra pacts just give us an effective plan to counteract this potential strategy from our opponent. We can side out the Immortal Coils and Bazaar Traders to bring in some better options, even if those just consist of two Demonic Pacts and whatever four hate cards we have.
I think the deck has potential. I doubt it will change Modern as we know it, but I think it'd be good for a laugh at FNM, maybe in a league on MTGO.
Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas! The only thing I'm adamant about is Immortal Coil being the win-condition.
Scattered Groves, Angelsong, and Renewed Faith all cycle to draw a card. A couple of the Scattered Grove to minimize the number of tapped lands. Angelsong is a bit meh aince you already gain so much life. Renewed Faith isn't golden, but it could pass for bronze since both uses can be helpful.
Peace of Mind might just be a better sideboard type card against Burn and such, but I love it. Blighted Steppe is a good utility land, and Kabira Crossroads is already in your base color. Ephara's Radiance is a little cheeky, but you may be able to find some use for it. Intruder Alarm is a potential combo piece. Paladin of Prahv can give your Famished Paladin Lifelink so that it can machinegun things, such as with Power of Fire or Viridian Longbow. Resplendent Mentor is worth at least a couple of slots since it's got great synergy with all of your game plans. Throne of the God-Pharaoh is neat because it lets you turn all of your tapped dudes into some pings to the face. To wrap things up, I personally like Ajani's Welcome better than any of the Soul Sisters in this deck because it is a bit harder to remove than a creature.
I've been tinkering with a few things and I've liked this particular list so far. Behold, the combo-monstrosity known as "Cyndi Lauper" due to the fact that it goes infinite with Clock of Omens... Time after time...
This deck has multiple infinite combos to close out the game and most of the individual pieces work well on their own. The general combo mechanism is:
[Some two-card combination of Battered Golem and Grinding Station] + [Clock of Omens] + [Myr Turbine].
Most of the deck will help stall or accelerate to the combo. Buried Ruin gets our important artifacts back, while Inventors' Fair helps us find those necessary artifacts.
I have considered Welding Jarin the main since we can go infinite with it and either kill with Ghirapur Aether Grid or regenerate nearly every permanent in our deck.
Make sure to get all of your basic lands mismatched with different art and some white boarders too!
So that you can find the basics you need more quickly and avoid running out the clock? I'd heard of a few decks doing that, but I hadn't considered that for this deck. It's pretty slick. I'll give it a try when I sleeve it up soon!
Super cool idea. Have you done any testing with Reality Acid a la the Acid Trip/Azorius Kitty decks in Pauper? Eating permanents every turn while triggering Revolt seems pretty solid. I know this is mostly elves, but had you considered Invasive Species or the bootylicious Dream Stalker for their synergies with your enchantments?
So I'm sorry if I'm a little late to the party, but I'm fairly certain that this is now my favorite Modern deck of all time. It has everything! Abnormally long turns, a Wish-type sideboard, tons of moving parts, it's Simic colors, and it feels like piloting a giant puzzle, all of which are things I look for in a deck.
I had a couple of tickets on MTGO, so I decided to build it with Opt instead of Serum Visions and 20 basics instead of the fetches. So far I haven't had a problem with consistency due to not having the fetches. I goldfished a bunch of games before I played some folks and it was great!
Just some observations:
1. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben feels so very bad to see across the field. My opponent was on Humans and dropped her turn 2. It slowed me to the point that I wasn't able to combo off. I just kind of sat there and got my teeth kicked in. I'm going to look at potential sideboard cards against the human matchup since it's considered one of the best decks in Modern.
2. Precognition Field is twelve shades of wonderful. There were several games where it was like drawing multiple cards per turn due to the ramp taking out the lands and leaving behind instants and sorceries. One game I used some of my 80 mana to activate the "(3): Exile the top card of your library" to churn through the last four cards of my library to get to the Blue Sun's Zenith that was the second-to-last card. It was exciting to have one card left and win.
3. This deck is a really fun build that you can get for just a ticket or two on MTGO if you swap Serum Visions for Opt and drop the fetches. I'm really excited to build it in paper.
Sorry for the wall. I'm just excited. I haven't found a deck that fascinated me this much since Lantern Control, and before that it was KCI Eggs.
The Battered Golem idea is pretty cute, as is turning Howling Mine into asymmetrical card advantage. Making an ungodly amount of artifacts that gets followed-up with a Ghirapur Aether Grid sounds really solid.
I really appreciate you guys offering suggestions. I had looked at Mechanized Production, but that feels like it wants to be in a different list. I'll start tinkering a bit and post anything I learn. Thanks, guys!
4x Faith's Reward
4x Lotus Cobra
4x Mana Seism
4x Ghost Quarter
1x Splendid Reclamation
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
3x Greater Gargadon
Mana Seism nets you an insane amount of mana because you can tap all of your lands for mana, float it, then cast Seism for more mana. With a Lotus Cobra in play, casting back a Faith's Reward nearly doubles your mana.
-5 lands in play, along with Lotus Cobra
-Tap to produce 5
-Pay 2 for Mana Seism
-Sac and generate 5 more mana
-8 floating
-Pay 4 for Faith's Reward
-Lands come back untapped
-Five Cobra triggers
-9 Floating
-Tap 5 again
-14 Floating
I love the idea of Ghost Quarter in this deck because you can drop it, get one from Cobra, sac it, go get a land, one more from Cobra, and then tap the land. Sakura-Tribe Elder offers you more rap since he can be reused off of a Faith's Reward. Greater Gargadon offers a big beater that you can feed your lands to in order to get them back with Faith's Reward and retrigger Lotus Cobra. Splendid Reclamation is just Faith's Reward copy five and potentially six. If you've got them, Fetches such as Arid Mesa, Windswept Heath, and Wooded Foothills will be great with your engine.
4x Angelsong
4x Censor
2x Hindering Light
4x Opt
4x Peek
4x Laboratory Maniac
2x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Emrakul, the Promised End
4x Puresight Merrow
Artifacts
4x Paradise Mantle
2x See Beyond
Lands
2x Irrigated Farmland
8x Island
4x Hallowed Fountain
2x Mystic Gate
4x Plains
4x Shelldock Isle
Okay, so this make look like a conglomeration of oddities, but there's some method here, I swear. Puresight Merrow and Paradise Mantle allow you to churn through your library as you look for a card to exile with Shelldock Isle. Shelldock Isle allows you to cast the card without playing its mana cost, so either Emrakul, the Promised End or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn are perfect here. But since we already have the option to churn through our entire library, why not put Laboratory Maniac in as well?
Angelsong, Hindering Light, and Censor all offer a bit of protection for us to live through our game plan, but they also offer potential wins with a Laboratory Maniac in play. See Beyond let us send away an Emrakul since we're never going to be able to cast it if it starts in our opening hand.
The ideal scenario goes a little something like this:
T1: Land, Paradise Mantle
T2: Land, Puresight Merrow
T3: Tap a land, equip Merrow with Mantle, activate until Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is on top, then play Shelldock Isle to exile Emrakul
T4: Activate Merrow until there are 20 or less cards in your library, then activate Shelldock Isle to cast Emrakul and get your extra turn
T4b: Beat face with spaghetti monster
Obviously this is not perfect, but I feel like it's a start. I have been wracking my brain for a way to speed things up a bit without going too heavy into just janky cards that just take up space.
Let me know if you guys have any ideas!
Firebrand Archer is cool, but only has 1 toughness; however, Thermo-Alchemist is a little bit more resilient. Maybe a 2/2 or 2/3 split between the two to add another set of the Electrostatic Field effects? Gelectrode is an option, but he's three mana and as fragile as they come.
What about Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand? They'll keep you going just like Opt does, and they work well when Pyromancer Ascension is online.
As far as your issues with things like the Knight and Mage go, Siren Stormtamer, Trickbind, Disallow, and Nimble Obstructionist all offer an option. Turn Aside also helps against spot removal and the like.
DIRTY MATTRESS, a deck that kills with coils.
4x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Bojuka Bog
6x Mountain
7x Swamp
4x Immortal Coil
1x Jinxed Idol
3x Nihil Spellbomb
4x Harmless Offering
4x Magmatic Insight
4x Thoughtseize
2x Rakdos Charm
2x Terminate
2x Bazaar Trader
4x Fulminator Mage
2x Demonic Pact
3x Dragon's Claw
1x Leyline of the Void
3x Slaughter Games
2x Vandalblast
2x Welding Jar
Okay, so here's the idea. Use your cards such as Thoughtseize, Dreadbore, Terminate, and Fulminator Mage to slow down combo, mid-range, and Tron/Valakut decks. By the time turn four rolls around, you should have been able to kill a good bit of things, blow up some lands, and make your opponent discard a card or two. Both players' graveyards should be full, and you can drop an Immortal Coil. You can then use Bazaar Trader or Harmless Offering to give them the Coil. After that, use Rakdos Charm, Nihil Spellbomb, or Bojuka Bog to exile their graveyard. State-based actions will kick in and they will lose on the spot.
A perfect game would look like this:
T1: Nihil Spellbomb
T2: Bazaar Trader
T4: Immortal Coil, activate Trader to give the opponent the coil, then crack the Spellbomb, winning you the game!
The Immortal Coil, Harmless Offering, Bazaar Trader, and Demonic Pact offer some redundancy, all except for the Trader and Pact. That's why we don't run too many of either, but Offering combos with both Coil and Pact, giving us some nice redundancy.
We have a good bit of mainboard hate, such as Nihil Spellbomb, Fulminator Mage, and Rakdos Charm. Charm puts in work against artifact decks, token/creature heavy decks such as Humans, and hates on anything that uses the graveyard, from Dredge to Storm.
Magmatic Insight probably seems like the odd man out here, but it was my favorite of the "discard X, draw two" cards, especially since we only really need four lands to win. Jinxed Idol is fun to donate with Bazaar Trader, but it is kind of useless on its own. That's why we only run one.
The deck has many flex slots and the sideboard is just something kind of generic to fit most metas. Bear in mind that running the two copies of Demonic Pact in the sideboard are necessary if you anticipate your opponent is packing any sort of graveyard hate post-sideboard. Immortal Coil's last clause is always on, so the moment we'd drop it, if we're hit with an opposing Leyline of the Void, we'd lose to state-based actions. The extra pacts just give us an effective plan to counteract this potential strategy from our opponent. We can side out the Immortal Coils and Bazaar Traders to bring in some better options, even if those just consist of two Demonic Pacts and whatever four hate cards we have.
I think the deck has potential. I doubt it will change Modern as we know it, but I think it'd be good for a laugh at FNM, maybe in a league on MTGO.
Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas! The only thing I'm adamant about is Immortal Coil being the win-condition.
Heliod, God of the Sun
Jade Mage
Ledev Champion
Mobilization
Resplendent Angel
Twilight Drover
Oketra, the True
All of those could be potential places to dump excess mana into, especially because they make bodies that can be tapped for more dudes next turn.
Peace of Mind
Blighted Steppe
Kabira Crossroads
Ephara's Radiance
Intruder Alarm
Paladin of Prahv and something like Power of Fire goes infinite
Resplendent Mentor and Famished Paladin go infinite
Throne of the God-Pharaoh
Ajani's Welcome
Peace of Mind might just be a better sideboard type card against Burn and such, but I love it. Blighted Steppe is a good utility land, and Kabira Crossroads is already in your base color. Ephara's Radiance is a little cheeky, but you may be able to find some use for it. Intruder Alarm is a potential combo piece. Paladin of Prahv can give your Famished Paladin Lifelink so that it can machinegun things, such as with Power of Fire or Viridian Longbow. Resplendent Mentor is worth at least a couple of slots since it's got great synergy with all of your game plans. Throne of the God-Pharaoh is neat because it lets you turn all of your tapped dudes into some pings to the face. To wrap things up, I personally like Ajani's Welcome better than any of the Soul Sisters in this deck because it is a bit harder to remove than a creature.
Coretapper + Mimic Vat + Magistrate Scepter goes infinite. Maybe a Vat or two?
4x Battered Golem
4x Memnite
4x Ornithopter
Artifacts (22)
4x Mox Opal
2x Myr Turbine
4x Prototype Portal
4x Clock of Omens
4x Grinding Station
4x Lotus Bloom
2x Ghirapur AEther Grid
Lands (24)
4x Darksteel Citadel
2x Inventors' Fair
14x Mountain
4x Buried Ruin
4x Pyroclasm
4x Scour from Existence
4x Welding Jar
3x Witchbane Orb
This deck has multiple infinite combos to close out the game and most of the individual pieces work well on their own. The general combo mechanism is:
[Some two-card combination of Battered Golem and Grinding Station] + [Clock of Omens] + [Myr Turbine].
You can substitute Myr Turbine for Prototype Portal with a Memnite, Ornithopter, Mox Opal, Lotus Bloom, or Darksteel Citadel imprinted on it. That offers everything from infinite mana of any color to infinite dudes to attack/block with. If you're feeling extra spicy, you can make infinite copies of anything (other than Mox Opal) and hit your opponent for infinite damage with a Ghirapur Aether Grid.
Most of the deck will help stall or accelerate to the combo. Buried Ruin gets our important artifacts back, while Inventors' Fair helps us find those necessary artifacts.
I have considered Welding Jarin the main since we can go infinite with it and either kill with Ghirapur Aether Grid or regenerate nearly every permanent in our deck.
So that you can find the basics you need more quickly and avoid running out the clock? I'd heard of a few decks doing that, but I hadn't considered that for this deck. It's pretty slick. I'll give it a try when I sleeve it up soon!
I had a couple of tickets on MTGO, so I decided to build it with Opt instead of Serum Visions and 20 basics instead of the fetches. So far I haven't had a problem with consistency due to not having the fetches. I goldfished a bunch of games before I played some folks and it was great!
Just some observations:
1. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben feels so very bad to see across the field. My opponent was on Humans and dropped her turn 2. It slowed me to the point that I wasn't able to combo off. I just kind of sat there and got my teeth kicked in. I'm going to look at potential sideboard cards against the human matchup since it's considered one of the best decks in Modern.
2. Precognition Field is twelve shades of wonderful. There were several games where it was like drawing multiple cards per turn due to the ramp taking out the lands and leaving behind instants and sorceries. One game I used some of my 80 mana to activate the "(3): Exile the top card of your library" to churn through the last four cards of my library to get to the Blue Sun's Zenith that was the second-to-last card. It was exciting to have one card left and win.
3. This deck is a really fun build that you can get for just a ticket or two on MTGO if you swap Serum Visions for Opt and drop the fetches. I'm really excited to build it in paper.
Sorry for the wall. I'm just excited. I haven't found a deck that fascinated me this much since Lantern Control, and before that it was KCI Eggs.
I really appreciate you guys offering suggestions. I had looked at Mechanized Production, but that feels like it wants to be in a different list. I'll start tinkering a bit and post anything I learn. Thanks, guys!