I had some success with through the breach during my testing, in effectively the same capacity that others have used sneak attack. It needs a deck with more creature cards (~25) as opposed to my current 15-20 style. It just a matter of choice in creature sources.
I'll need to re-sleeve the creatures that I've tested over time and try the breach build again.
I've now updated the list in the OP. I've been testing a build with more of a lean towards make mischief and spawning breath styles of token generation via toughness based pump, because I can play out more tokens from a seemingly less threatening board position. I think it is less explosive, but more sudden. I'm still not entirely convinced that I prefer it, but it has been my build for the past couple months.
Unfortunately, it is not up to date with my current list and lacks a significant number of the recently printed cards that have made it into my deck. I had been putting it off until it would be compiled into a collaborative primer.
I should be able to find time to post my current list this week.
I wouldn't cut Inner Fire; the deck needs all the mana production it can get its hands on - no pun intended.
I had to really think about where the pun was.
My impression from my times running the deck was that I was casting Inner Fire when I already had plenty of cards and mana (10-20 or more mana) when starting to go off. So for me it was often along the lines of, "eh, might as well so I don't have to worry for a bit". I'll test without it for a while and see. Depends on how the rebuild goes.
I need to write a program to do the math on Precursor and Twinflame/Heat Shimmer so we have that available for the primer stuff.
The balance point between going off entirely and going off enough to win is where inner fire is the most useful in my opinion. There will be times when probability is maintained and the 25-5% chance to run out of cantrips as we go off happens. In these circumstances, inner fire can win a game by fueling a larger hand of 10-15 cards and going with simple pump spells and combat.
I think, in writing up some thoughts on the shooters like SGC and Spikeshot, I convinced myself to find a spot for Thermo-Alchemist and see how it pans out.
What do you think?
The biggest drawback I see is defender, so it can't follow the backup plan if we stall out with only pump spells. I'd actually consider guttersnipe before it for myself, but I believe you run more untap effects than I do.
I think I agree with the inner fire cut for expertise, and will be testing accordingly.
As a short aside, if your playgroup lets you, I suggest the testing of Mons's waiters. It's only half as efficient as the prospector, but the broader requirements allow it to produce just enough mana to keep going. It's done well enough in my own testing.
Paradox Engine
compared to Dream Halls or Mind over Matter. these need cards in hand to cheat the mana.
MoM likes Gilded lotus but doesnt need it. PE needs cards on the battlefield but if those are plenty its more like an omniscience.
if PE wants to be abused the same turn its cast it needs a CHEAP card to untap straight after casting the PE.
to look at the potential of a card i like to think about what would be a very broken scenario. so...
sidisi mono black
turn 1 swamp play mana vault
turn 2 mishra's workshop play gilded lotus play paradox engine play tormod's crypt UNTAP
tap lotus and vault for 3BBB cast Sidisi, Undead Vizier UNTAP fetch Reanimate and let sidisi die. B in the pool tap and add3BBB cast reanimate UNTAP +3BBB so at 6BBBBBB now.
chain animate dead, dance of the dead and exhume to get to 24 mana and put sidisi in the command zone.
recast sidisi for 7 UNTAP tap have 23 mana get doubling cube play UNTAP tap have 27 mana.
use the cube 24x2=48 mana. sidisi costs 9 and gets any card: 48-9=39 39+3(+3-3)=42 42x2=84mana .....
TLDR
in the end it depends on how much nonland-mana-sources there are in play but something like a reanimate chain can add loads of mana without much handcards needed.
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about a ban. it might be less powerfull than ad nauseam BUT that is not the question. thus i aggre with others its like prophet of kruphix. a mana engine that could potentially warp casual games by accident. adNaus will rarely break a battlecruiser deck. atleast griselbrand was playable 3 months so lets enjoy it as long as it will be there.
I got distracted halfway through when I realized that the whole deal just goes infinite if the reanimation (that can be tutored for) is corpse dance?
Make tokens anyway and use them to steal entire battlefields. With enough mana, for the low cost of 10 per permanent you trade a token for a win condition.
It does more work if you're building around activated abilities. I run patron of the orochi.
With the three cantrips out of Kaladesh, I've been playing without balduvian rage, panic, and aleatory to ensure I draw my cards that turn. I play enough instants in that the combat restriction on chaotic strike can be played around to a slight degree.
While we're on the topic of cantrips, I've been testing fateful showdown as a massive draw effect. Unfortunately, I've been so busy with work that I haven't had much of a chance to do significant testing.
Has anyone else been trying not to deck themselves with fateful showdown?
I forgot to mention Fateful Showdown when I first drew up my section of the primer hopeful but when I reread it to proofread on last time I noticed it wasn't there. There first time I played it I almost decked myself were it not for Elixir of Immortality. If you're hand is too big when you play it you lose all your creatures and you deck yourself fairly frequently. With a mere 7 cards in hand and 10 creatures, you can easily wheel until getting 70 cards into your deck - assuming you're not casting instants along the way. You'd have to be casting instants in order to reduce your hand between each copy of Fateful Showdown. I mean, it could be run and could get a lot of mileage out of it but it is definitely not for amateurs. It requires extensive knowledge of the stack in order to take full advantage of and you have to be very careful not to deck yourself. I only tested it a couple of times and it was in my normal deck (which doesn't run Psychosis Crawler as an alternative wincon) but I feel that I could test it some more in my Extreme Budget Build. Something tells me that I want to draw into 85% of my deck when I have Psychosis Crawler in play, lol.
Oh, and I agree on Balduvian Rage, Chaotic Strike, Aleatory, and Panic. I have not missed any of them since finding suitable substitutions from Oath of the Gatewatch onward.
I actually got to test fateful showdown several rounds and have come to what I believe to be the best way to play it. It is one of the best cantrips (ignoring mana cost) if my hand size was smaller, between 4-6. I was usually able to draw into a pump spell that would reduce my hand while also boosting toughness enough. Because we choose the order for the copies, we can lose our least critical tokens first, cycling our hand enough to hit ways to keep later copies to resolve not kill their targets. This also kept me from decking out entirely. Conversely, it can also be the last cantrip to be cast if you've drawn slightly less than half your library. After emptying your hand of useful spells, simply target a token with the initial cast and discard all the excess lands.
I was repeatedly forced to discard powerful cards with no route to recur them (young pyromancer) and lost about half of the arcane spells, but there are enough redundant effects that it simply made my finish a slightly smaller number.
If it wasn't a dead card for me, I'd consider library of leng to discard my deck while filling my hand with exactly the cards to win. By repeatedly discarding the lands and less critical non-instants to the graveyard and discarding the best cards and arcane to the deck, it could end up being serious hand sculpting. It would almost be a mono-red doomsday.
With the three cantrips out of Kaladesh, I've been playing without balduvian rage, panic, and aleatory to ensure I draw my cards that turn. I play enough instants in that the combat restriction on chaotic strike can be played around to a slight degree.
While we're on the topic of cantrips, I've been testing fateful showdown as a massive draw effect. Unfortunately, I've been so busy with work that I haven't had much of a chance to do significant testing.
Has anyone else been trying not to deck themselves with fateful showdown?
I built a Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar deck at one point that used the replacement effects to stack up with shared fate type effects with a large amount of symmetric draw effects. My plan was to do mono-blue draw based mill and win via tommorow's replacement effect keeping me alive. The deck lasted about three games before it got old.
I currently play Tommorow in Nin, the pain artist where the higher toughness lets an X=4 on tomorrow is a repeatable way to look at 12 cards. It does cause some significant time to be added when resolving mindmoil though.
EDIT: to the OP's discussion on digging for combo pieces, I remember there being a deck in the MGTS decklist database that, while older, had a similar gameplan. EDIT2: I found it.
Nearly all of my decks are in solid color dragon shield sleeves. I try to make the sleeves to the color/concept of the deck. Mono-color is easy, and artifact decks fit well with brown sleeves in my opinion. My morph focused deck is in silver sleeves due to the colorless focus.
The difficulty is in multicolor, and I had wanted to find sleeves with the Ravnica guild symbols on them for the two-color combinations. Unfortunately, these do not seem to be licensed as they do not seem to exist.
Renegade Tactics is yet another awesome addition. I want to figure out a way to break fateful showdown by chaining spells and emptying my hand as the copies resolve. It doesn't work out well for arcane, but you'd better believe that the follow up mizzix's mastery will be a blowout.
built to smash is another brute force that gives thopers trample but has a timing restriction. I might test it, but the attacking requirement makes it less synergistic with make mischief.
I said it earlier, but the number of cards being printed recently for Zada has been phenomenal between Kaladesh and Eldrich Moon.
I'll need to re-sleeve the creatures that I've tested over time and try the breach build again.
With all these very interesting conversation on precursor golem and heat shimmer, I may try out through the breach again, which I had tested with chancellor of the forge.
Unfortunately, it is not up to date with my current list and lacks a significant number of the recently printed cards that have made it into my deck. I had been putting it off until it would be compiled into a collaborative primer.
I should be able to find time to post my current list this week.
The balance point between going off entirely and going off enough to win is where inner fire is the most useful in my opinion. There will be times when probability is maintained and the 25-5% chance to run out of cantrips as we go off happens. In these circumstances, inner fire can win a game by fueling a larger hand of 10-15 cards and going with simple pump spells and combat.
The biggest drawback I see is defender, so it can't follow the backup plan if we stall out with only pump spells. I'd actually consider guttersnipe before it for myself, but I believe you run more untap effects than I do.
I think I agree with the inner fire cut for expertise, and will be testing accordingly.
These were the first things I thought of with it as well. Krenko also fills the same mana role with the inclusion of either phyrexian altar or skirk prospector. Playgroup dependent, but mons's goblin waiters and blast from the past would work with it as well.
As a short aside, if your playgroup lets you, I suggest the testing of Mons's waiters. It's only half as efficient as the prospector, but the broader requirements allow it to produce just enough mana to keep going. It's done well enough in my own testing.
I got distracted halfway through when I realized that the whole deal just goes infinite if the reanimation (that can be tutored for) is corpse dance?
It does more work if you're building around activated abilities. I run patron of the orochi.
I actually got to test fateful showdown several rounds and have come to what I believe to be the best way to play it. It is one of the best cantrips (ignoring mana cost) if my hand size was smaller, between 4-6. I was usually able to draw into a pump spell that would reduce my hand while also boosting toughness enough. Because we choose the order for the copies, we can lose our least critical tokens first, cycling our hand enough to hit ways to keep later copies to resolve not kill their targets. This also kept me from decking out entirely. Conversely, it can also be the last cantrip to be cast if you've drawn slightly less than half your library. After emptying your hand of useful spells, simply target a token with the initial cast and discard all the excess lands.
I was repeatedly forced to discard powerful cards with no route to recur them (young pyromancer) and lost about half of the arcane spells, but there are enough redundant effects that it simply made my finish a slightly smaller number.
If it wasn't a dead card for me, I'd consider library of leng to discard my deck while filling my hand with exactly the cards to win. By repeatedly discarding the lands and less critical non-instants to the graveyard and discarding the best cards and arcane to the deck, it could end up being serious hand sculpting. It would almost be a mono-red doomsday.
While we're on the topic of cantrips, I've been testing fateful showdown as a massive draw effect. Unfortunately, I've been so busy with work that I haven't had much of a chance to do significant testing.
Has anyone else been trying not to deck themselves with fateful showdown?
I currently play Tommorow in Nin, the pain artist where the higher toughness lets an X=4 on tomorrow is a repeatable way to look at 12 cards. It does cause some significant time to be added when resolving mindmoil though.
EDIT: to the OP's discussion on digging for combo pieces, I remember there being a deck in the MGTS decklist database that, while older, had a similar gameplan. EDIT2: I found it.
The difficulty is in multicolor, and I had wanted to find sleeves with the Ravnica guild symbols on them for the two-color combinations. Unfortunately, these do not seem to be licensed as they do not seem to exist.
built to smash is another brute force that gives thopers trample but has a timing restriction. I might test it, but the attacking requirement makes it less synergistic with make mischief.
I said it earlier, but the number of cards being printed recently for Zada has been phenomenal between Kaladesh and Eldrich Moon.