Oversight or is there a reason your list is missing Scalding Tarn?
That's strange. It was in there before, and it's definitely in the list I actually play with. Must have been a copy+paste error that it somehow ended up not on there. Thanks for pointing that out.
I go back and forth on whether or not fetchlands are actually worth it. Their deck thinning power was long ago shown to be mathematically negligible, so the only other remotely notable reason to have them in there is to get free lib shuffles so as to synergize with Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, and similar. Is that minor utility worth getting blanked by Suppression Field and LD'd by Stifle? Not sure.
I'm working on a pretty tight budget playing a Padeem, Consul of Innovation list, and Scrap Trawler has been amazing for me, and it would seem like it would add extra value to this list as well, since it sacrifices so frequently. Of course, it might be a win more. What are your thoughts?
I touched on Scrap Trawler a little bit in an earlier post. I'm not quite sure how it would work here. The vast majority of the artifacts (80%+) that hit our GY before the combo turn are cmc 2, while only a small few (2 in my decklist, iirc, maybe 3 in some others) are cmc 0. There are usually no cmc 1 dorks we run, unless a particular decklist chooses to run Myr Moonvessel or Hope of Ghirapur at which point you'd have one or two at most. So unless you've already found one of the couple 0 ones, or one of the couple 1 ones if you run those (in total, what, 4 cards maximum?) and pitched them in the grave beforehand, with Trawler out you'd simply either a) sac one of our usual 2 drop to return absolutely nothing, or b) sac Scrap Trawler itself to return a 2drop, at which point you mind as well be playing Junk Diver so you could at least retrieve 3cmc artifacts if something like Rings of Brighthearth gets blown up. Basically the fact that it says "lesser" rather than "lesser than or equal to" kills it imo, otherwise we could use 2drops to return other 2drops and Trawler itself could safely retrieve our most valuable pieces, but as it stands now saccing 2drops could only return our nonexistent 1drops or one of 2-3 0drops, and saccing Trawler itself can only fetch a 2drop at best.
First of all I just realized in my last update I forgot to mention that a while ago I took out Tolaria West for Inventors' Fair. That was an old change but it slipped my mind to mention it until now, my mistake. Primer has been updated to reflect that.
I am curious to read your guys's on my list of Arcum, and to your opinions on where he stands on the tier list.
Heap Doll: Worth it? You're mainboarding Grafdigger's Cage so I'm assuming grave-based decks are a significant threat in your meta, but even so he's a pretty mediocre dork. I'd much rather have a second grave hoser like Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progentius/Scrabbling Claws rather than a little mini-gravehate stapled to a dork, but maybe it's been working well for you, I dunno.
Personal Tutor: also pretty bad imo. Sorcery speed tutor for a sorcery only that goes to the top of the library. You only have 6 sorceries in the whole deck and P. Tutor is one of them; what do you usually grab with this? Another sorcery-speed tutor? Isn't that a little slow?
Timetwister: Interesting choice. I used to run it mainboard back in like 2012, but as the meta evolved I came to the conclusion it usually helps other people more than us. I'd rather run a more traditional draw spell like Thirst for Knowledge.
Glacial Chasm: What are you countering with this? If this is a silver bullet for something, I suspect you're better off finding an artifact solution, something you can easily tutor for and that synergizes with everything else in your deck and that isn't as costly as the Chasm. Ensnaring Bridge stops combat damage, Witchbane Orb stops targeted damage.
Isochron Scepter: See previous posts for my thoughts on this. I was never a big fan, and while Stick + Dramatic Reversal was a neat trick we've got Paradox Engine for that now anyway. If it's been working for you then by all means keep it in, but it's never been consistent enough for my tastes.
Hedron Crawler. 2cmc dorks that tap for 1 are the second-best dorks in this deck, and we should be running every single one. You already run all the others, but you're missing this one.
Copy Artifact. The one enchantment I think belongs in every Arcum deck. At worst, you copy a 2cmc dork that taps for 1, so you can basically think of it like an extra copy of Manakin or your favorite dork. At best, you copy something that wins you the game. Also the lowest cmc of all artifact copy effects (Sculpting Steel and Phyrexian Metamorph both cost 3).
Tezzeret the Seeker. Hefty at 5cmc, but often enough pays for himself immediately after he comes out by untapping 2 mana rocks with his +1, or just pay -3 to put Rings of Brighthearth on the battlefield and win the game. In your deck description you talk about winning without Arcum; cards like Tezzeret are how you do that.
Pithing Needle. It's hard to find any deck this doesn't belong in, but as an artifact, it especially belongs in ours. I'm actually really surprised you're not running this one already--is there nothing in your meta for you to needle? Necropotence? Food Chain? Survival of the Fittest? Any commander with an activated ability?
Other cards I endorse like Possessed Portal/Clock of Omens/Skullclamp/etc. are ultimately optional choices and are entirely up to you and your playstyle and preferences. Silver bullets I run like Defense Grid are meta-dependent. But those cards in that list are pretty much mandatory, I don't think there's a single competitive Arcum deck out there that shouldn't have them.
As for the tier list, I'd prefer not to get into that myself. A lot of people are of the firm and unshakable opinion that any deck which doesn't run either Ad Nauseam or Doomsday or both isn't a tier 1 deck, so by that metric Arcum and everything else is tier 2 (or 1.5 at best). But if you ask the Rules Committee, cards like Braids, Cabal Minion and Recurring Nightmare are tier 1--or rather even tier 0, so good they don't even deserve to be played. Point being, it's an extremely subjective process to rank things into tiers, and it's the kind of discussion that quickly degenerates into nonsense. I'd rather not comment.
For now, the changes I settled on are as follows:
Out: Forge, Disk, Kuldotha, Dross Scorpion, Trinisphere, Gilded Lotus, Impulse, Darksteel Citadel. Bridge out to the SB.
In: Paradox, Flute, Memnite, Ornithopter, Thorn of Amethyst, Whir of Invention, Walking Ballista, Static Orb. DGrid in from the SB.
We'll see how this works out. I'm a little worried about my mana since I cut 2 sources (lotus and a land) and put 0 sources back in, but I wanted to squeeze in both Thorn and Static Orb in the wake of removing Trinisphere (though I hope I can work Trini back in eventually...)
I know I was originally talking about Myr Moonvessel instead of a 2nd zero drop. I eventually changed my mind and decided on 2 zero drops instead in order to be able to consistently and without hesitation throw down Chalice for X=1, but I really don't think it matters, we can play around it either way.
I also need to keep thinking about Dramatic Reversal. I might cut Static Orb back out for it. Not sure yet.
Lastly in recent months I haven't seen as many Narsets, Bragos, and swinging Zurs around as I used to in years past, so I moved Bridge out to the SB and put DGrid in its place. It's still our go-to solution for any deck that cares about the combat step, and I would just as quickly switch it back in if I knew someone at the table would be playing one of those decks.
I don't run City of Traitors simply because I don't have one (same for Flusterstorm and Mana Drain). If I get the extra cash, I will be picking one up, but I have Mana Drain on my list first. Well, and a Nintendo Switch lol.
That's fair. I figured it was a budgetary thing. I do a lot of playing on cockatrice--even when I'm playing with friends, most of us are sort of scattered across the country right now so we play on Cockatrice to link up long-distance. And on top of that, even when I'm playing tabletop, most of my paper playgroups allow proxies anyway, so budget is never something I've had to worry about (nor, technically speaking, should it be a relevant consideration when writing the primer on a deck).
A side effect of the cockatrice/proxies thing is that I get a lot of nonbasic-heavy decks too. 5c FC or 5c AN decks or 4c storm decks and things like that, the kind of decks that run almost no basic lands if not none at all, because when you've got an unlimited budget it's very feasible to run 1 of every dual/shock/fetch/filter/etcetera and trim the basics down to singletons or otherwise eliminate them entirely. The only decks I see with lots of basics are a handful of mono-U ones like Azami and Teferiwalker as well as the occasional mono-G or mono-B deck, but overall they're not that common relative to the 3c/4c/5c contenders. The 99% nonbasic manabases are pretty ubiquitous.
Since the primer has to be written for the "global meta" and it assumes unlimited budget, I'll have to think about whether Back to Basics with a nonbasic-light manabase is overall better for Arcum than leaving it out and keeping all the nonbasics like CoT/Ruin/Svyelunite/Workshop/so forth in. But in the right meta, and if you're already running more Islands than usual anyway due to budget/availability reasons, I could definitely understand Back to Basics being a clutch play.
I removed a lot of my nonbasics over time, when I began running Back to Basics on and off to combat things in my new meta from where I moved in November. I actually dropped Svyelunite Temple back when I added in Mox Diamond, because it ETB tapped and kept causing me issues during what would have otherwise been solid starts. Buried Ruin was the last one I dropped.
Svelyunite Temple and Buried Ruin I could understand, they're situational enough that they're probably on par with Island rather than an upgrade. The absence of Workshop I could understand also, both because it's $1000 and because your artifact count is overall a little lower now with your expanded MUC package.
Rhystic Study was added in for this Wednesday's play and it performed exemplary. I landed it t2 when I cast it
That's precisely what it's dependent on, in my experience. Either it comes down T1 or T2 and it's pretty good, or it comes down T3 or later and is underwhelming. That's why I tend not to see it very often as opposed to more traditional draw spells that are always good cards no matter what turn you cast them.
Also, yes, Chrome Mox is definitely worth a shot. I've had two sitting in my binder for a while and will try it out come Monday (I have one in my own Breya and one in Zur); I think that'll be a great idea and I'm not sure why I overlooked it even after opting to add a Force. I'll plop it in Guardian Idol's place, I think? I dunno, it's kind of a pain to check my list as I'm passing time on my phone while at my in-law's place right now lol.
I've never been much a fan of Guardian Idol. I really don't put it on the same level as the bread-and-butter 2-tap-for-1 dorks like Manakin. Swapping out Idol for Chrome Mox is probably exactly what I'd do in your list.
I think I'll try chalice as well, though I'll have to check what I want to remove for it. Shutting off 1 mana tutors, Rituals, etc., is super handy.
^What are your thoughts on Sphere of Resistance? I still don't like running Chalice for some reason.
Chalice of the Void has performed very well in my games, almost as good as Trinisphere. Prior to Paradox/Flute it would come out for either 0, 1, or on rare occasion 2, to devastating effect each time. We really don't run a lot of 1drops--I think my deck has about 10? And even your deck with its larger MUC package runs, what, 14 by my count? Not much more than mine. Meanwhile low-curve 3-5c decks like AN, doomsday, storm, etc. regularly run 20-25 1drops and potentially even a little more, such that Chalice for 1 can literally blank 1/4th or even 1/3rd of their entire deck if it isn't countered. It's no joke.
I dunno what you'd cut for it; you'd have to figure out what's not performing as well as you'd like. How's Mox Opal doing for you? As the flip-side of expanding your MUC package in order to enable color-centric effects like FoW and Chrome Mox, you've also significantly reduced your artifact count which makes it harder to hit metalcraft (meanwhile, in my artifact-heavy deck, I'm hitting metalcraft so consistently that once in a while I've even considered adding Stoic Rebuttal, though I never did commit to that yet). I dunno if you'll run into any problems with that or if you have already.
Mrjumbo, in my humble opinionSphere of Resistance isn't half the card that Chalice is in this deck, because on its own it doesn't give us any parity advantage. It's made to be combo'd with other forms of mana denial and/or land destruction, which aren't things we can guarantee (unlike in, say, Derevi or Teferiwalker, where mana denial is definitely something they can guarantee as it's like 80% of their strategy). I'd much sooner choose Chalice and/or Thorn of Amethyst, both of which directly shift parity in our favor all on their own because our deck is built such that the reciprocal effect barely hurts us while being much worse for everyone else. What's holding you back about Chalice?
Firstly and foremostly, I do sincerely apologize for skipping over your post earlier. Welcome to MTGS!
I would not recommend Servo Schematic over Myr Sire or any other card. I believe your analysis of the pros and cons is correct--the way I see it, it would be trading early-game consistency in landing those tokens for a little extra late-game power in interacting with our finishers. Thing is, the former is much more important than the latter: we're much more vulnerable in the early game when we need to get Arcum online and tapping asap, before we've got anything like Clock or Portal on the board; and if we've already got one of those cards out, we're usually already winning anyway. If Servo Schematic had something like "1: sac this" built in, I'd give it closer consideration, but as it is right now I'd take Myr Sire over it every time.
I still think Trinisphere is worth running despite the non-bo with the Engine-Flute line. While it may hinder us, it will be hindering the opponent as well, probably even more. We can choose to go the normal route of fetching Rings-Basalt line over several turns if need be.
I would like to think so, too. You could very well be right that Trini into our old gameplan is still good enough to justify losing access to Paradox for that particular game. I'll have to see. I agree that apart from Paradox/Flute we're still just as unhurt by Trini as we were before (and it was always an extremely powerful parity play for us).
In the meantime, Thorn of Amethyst isn't such a bad replacement; I'd say the parity gain on it is almost as good as Trini, since there are no mission-critical noncreature spells in this deck. Chalice of the Void may still be workable also; usually in my games it comes out set to 1, and insofar as Paradox/Flute is concerned the only thing that blocks is Myr Moonvessel. Actually that whole problem could be circumvented by just having 1 extra mana:
Firstly, tap Arcum for Paradox and cast any spell (combo starter).
Tap Arcum for Citanul Flute, tap flute for 0drop, play 0drop, everything is untapped.
Tap Arcum for Basalt Monolith, tap Monolith to add 3, pay 2 and tap flute for Myr Retriever. Get 1 from literally anywhere else (this is the one extra mana I was talking about), play Retriever, everything is untapped.
Tap Monolith again for 3 more. Tap Arcum for Rings of Brighthearth, returning 0drop to the hand as Retriever hits the grave. Play 0drop. Everything is untapped. Now you've got Rings, untapped Basalt, and 3 in the pool--the combo is complete.
Having one extra mana during the combo is hardly very much to ask. Any spare nonland permanent that taps for mana, of which we have many in this deck, would be untapped repeatedly from all the Paradoxing and would pay that cost, or even just a single extra untapped land, or a Lotus Petal or whatever else.
So, I think Chalice of the Void set to 1 is still very playable in this deck, and I'd like to add it back in if possible.
Since you trimmed down on artifact synergies and beefed up on MUC, I assume you're able to consistently pay FoW? If so you may consider also running Chrome Mox too. My list is still running ~30 artifacts, so I'm still reluctant to run FoW or Chrome for lack of blue.
How have Rhystic Study and Back to Basics been working out for you? I'm particularly curious about Rhystic Study, as that's not a card I tend to see very often. Also regarding BtB, in spite of our deck being monocolored, a majority of our manabase is usually nonbasic, as we run all manner of 2 lands to maximize Arcum ramp.
Actually, I just noticed your deck runs twice as many basic islands as mine does; is that by choice or due to budget constraints? I suppose part of that is simply because you run Islands in place of fetchlands, which is what I would do if I were mainboarding BtB, but at the same time you're not running common selections like City of Traitors, Svyelunite Temple, and Buried Ruin (the lack of CoT is especially surprising).
It was an example because the artifact you fetch isn't going to be Paradox Engine in the scenario you mentioned, right? You'd go get Basalt Monolith or Rings of Brighthearth if someone cast removal with Arcum's activation on the stack, because it's not like you have to announce what you're tutoring when you activate the ability, so you don't have to devote to a combo line. That statement was for *after* you had devoted to the Paradox combo line. Still, though, it makes sense that leaving you partway into one combo line without two of your important pieces (Engine by itself, with no Arcum and Flute) is a pretty big deal compared to getting half of the infinite mana combo after removal resolves, which also lets you get your Commander back more easily- maybe even the same turn.
If Arcum is getting blown up in response to a tap, there's a number of ways you could go about that. You could either a) fetch some sort of mana rock, generally either Lotus or Basalt Monolith, in order to cast Arcum again the next turn; b) fetch a combo piece like Rings or Staff if you've already got some other way to finish it off (or a Fabricate or whatever in hand to find the other piece); or, lastly, c) drop Possessed Portal and try for a reset, holding it out for a few turns and then sacrificing it to itself. It depends on what you've still got in your hand, if anything, and how close you feel your opponents are to winning.
Are you asking me to defend my first deck list? I realized I had jumped the gun with the 0 drops and dropped down to two of them, but apparently I posted the wrong list a couple posts ago.
That may simply be me looking at your outdated decklist then. Sorry about that.
Getting Portal down before Ad Nauseam or Doomsday is basically an impossibility at this point: If I have the speed to do it, it means they have a bad hand or aren't drawing what they need in order to cast it early.
Or that you've slowed their clock enough to play on your terms. Like I said and as you noted, Portal is in no way a hard counter to those decks, as they're simply faster than us (than anything else in the format, let's be honest). And if they get AN in hand before your first Arcum tap, then the only thing that will save you is Null Brooch, because other than that you've basically lost already anyway.
But if you can slow them down enough to get to that point, which what stax cards and countermagic are for, then Portal puts the nails in the coffin faster and more safely than rings/monolith/top or paradox/flute in that even if Arcum gets Anguished Unmakinged in response to his first tap the Portal still hits the board and demands an immediate answer or destroys their hand or precious few permanents.
That's why originally I was running Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void. Dropping Chalice for 1 typically blanked upwards of a third of their entire deck (including Chain of Vapor, lol) and our one-drops have always been highly limited as our curve truly starts at 2. With either of those in an opening hand I would always feel much more confident against AN/DD (ok, I never feel truly "confident" against those decks, but I would feel more stable than I would otherwise at least). If possible I'd still like to fit those cards back in at some point, but it'll require more brainstorming as the Paradox Engine combo has now added some relevance in our deck to 0-1 drops.
Golem is an interesting choice. For a while I ran Thorn of Amethyst, which keeps our dorks and Arcum at their normal cost while our noncreature artifacts aren't usually being cast anyway (rather cheated into play). I'll have to give those kinds of cards another round of consideration while I'm thinking what to do about Chalice and 3ball (or replacements).
What cards do you think I should be running that I am not, just to get that out of the way? I know Portal is one of them, and it will be played tomorrow night over Jester's Cap temporarily, which was taking Winter Orb's place, lol.
Well, since the most recent list you posted is three days old and has Shield Sphere still in it, it's difficult for me to say. Can you give the tappedoutlink or paste your current iteration?
Oh, I guess that's true. The removal would go on the stack on top of the paradox trigger, which would itself be on top of the spell that was cast. That was a mental misstep on my part. So Vedalken Orrery would have to be out on the field to begin with, or otherwise you'd have to cast some sort of instant in response to the removal (which would in turn put another Paradox trigger on top, which would resolve first, and then you could do the whole thing with Arcum and Orrery). Shimmer Myr would also accomplish the same thing if you had it in hand or on the board, which I guess is why Pook mentioned it, though as an artifact creature it would be much harder for us to consistently retrieve compared to something like Orrery.
In fairness I still don't know why they'd be trying to slay Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell instead of earlier in the turn in response to the initial Arcum tap to fetch paradox in the first place. But yes, slaying Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell actually wouldn't get you any free arcum taps at all, as the slay spell would resolve before the paradox trigger.
What's your current list mrjumbo? We could consider potential cuts for you if we saw it.
Well, the largest reason I don't worry about my non-Engine game is because even the more... unknowledgeable players (the types who play super powerful decks but make really questionable plays) figured out that Arcum is the lynchpin, not Engine. Really, the largest weakness of the deck hasn't changed: We need to resolve our Commander and get him tapped ASAP in order to stand a chance much of the time, but Engine made the deck a lot easier in that you no longer need 2~ turns of tapping Arcum, you can simply do it once.
So, just to be clear, not needing to keep Arcum alive for as many turns is very different than "building to win without Arcum" like you mentioned at the end of your post. As you said, the basic paradigm of the deck hasn't changed: either we stick Arcum and generally start winning, or we can't stick Arcum and generally start losing.
Why are they casting instants after Paradox is already on the field? Why aren't they slaying Arcum in response to the tap to fetch Paradox in the first place, so you don't even get the guaranteed 1 untap? Making Paradox Engine work isn't the issue nearly as much as simply protecting Arcum, and that's precisely why I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head, at least conceptually, around your approach to the deck: how does loading up on more than the bare minimum of 1 zero-drop and Moonvessel required for the combo (in your most recent list you've got Memnite, Ornithopter, and Shield Sphere) help stick Arcum or protect him? Loading up on countermagic, mainboarding Defense Grid, those I can get behind. I would absolutely do those things if I were in a heavy draw-go meta like yours. But loading up on cards whose singular function is to interact with Paradox Engine, that's what I don't quite yet understand.
For me, when I'm getting piled on by the whole table, my opponents will force me to exhaust all of my countermagic and other defensive options just to get Arcum on the field and with a pair of shoes on him, then when I'm spent and Arcum is well-fortified they hit my most important combo piece (previously Rings of Brighthearth, though now I guess it's Paradox Engine) with a Nature's Claim or Revoke Existence, thereby ideally buying them the 1-2 extra turns they need to outrace me. Having zero-drops in my hand wouldn't fix that problem either--only effective and quick-response backup plans do.
Speaking of backup plans, to address your point on Possessed Portal and Ad Nauseam: when Portal hits the field on T3 or T4, if they haven't yet managed to combo off, it forces them to either a) discard their hand, including all their tutors/sculpting/countermagic, or b) degenerate their board, which, since they tend to play draw-go and keep a light field, usually directly hits their lands and mana. It punishes them for playing the draw-go game. It also blanks many of their best tutors, Mystical and Vampiric and Imperial Seal and so forth (anything that goes to the top of the library).
Similar story for DDay. If you manage to get Portal out before they cast it, then finding DDay becomes much harder, and even if they do find it, Portal prevents them from retrieving anything from their pile (even Brainstorm says "draw") and blanks Labman.
Of course, both of those are predicated on getting out Portal before they cast their signature game-winning cards, and that's the hard part (there's a reason nobody is decrying Portal as meta-countering tech lol). If they blaze into T2 DDay or T3 AN, the only thing that solves those is a counterspell or you're boned anyway. There's a reason those cards are format-dominating. But if you manage to get past that phase (and Paradox Engine is unavailable), Possessed Portal oftentimes ends up being the fastest solution--one Arcum tap stops the game, as opposed to the 2 needed for Rings into basalt/staff.
If you really are focused on trying to maximize your instant-speed win power, why not throw in Vedalken Orrery? Let's take your situation--Arcum's on the field tapped, having just fetched Paradox Engine; for some reason your opponents didn't slay him there, so it's your priority. You cast a spell, and now they cast their Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Paradox Engine trigger goes on the stack, resolves, now your board is untapped and it's your priority with Unmaking sitting on the stack. You have precisely one Arcum tap before he goes back to the CZ, and you've got some dork in your hand and the mana to cast him (or, alternatively, you have another dork on the field already, and the mana to cast any spell in your hand), and you don't want to resort to spending that mana on Null Brooch quite yet.
Tap Arcum, fetch Vedalken Orrery. Cast the dork (or any other spell). Tap Arcum saccing your one surplus dork, fetch Flute. Tap Flute for the one zero-drop in your deck. Cast the zero drop, untap everything. Tap Arcum, fetch vault or basalt, tap it for 3. Tap Flute for Moonvessel, play Moonvessel, untap everything. Sac Moonvessel for Rings. Now you've got infinite mana, an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and all the spells in your deck have flash. Proceed to win the game while Anguished Unmaking never leaves the stack.
Again, if your opponents were already teed up to remove Arcum don't know why your opponents would be casting their removal in response to your casting a spell after Paradox has already been fetched, rather than casting it in response to the Arcum activation in the first place. But if that happens to be the case, all you'd need is Vedalken Orrery to fix the problem.
@TrueNub, why are you keeping Lattice if you're already dropping Disk and Forge?
Also, I think Memnite>Ornithopter in this deck for being skullclamp-able.
Mycosynth Lattice, even without Disk and Forge to accompany it, is still an extremely strong combo piece. Clock of Omens is easy to cast from the hand, and if you ever stick it, you can often just tutor out Lattice and win (or vice versa in the one-in-a-million games where you actually hardcast lattice). Similar to Paradox Engine+Citanul Flute, it's not directly game-ending in itself, but it immediately gives you such huge tempo and 3-4 Arcum taps so you can typically build whatever game-ending combo you want that same turn.
I agree that the case for keeping it in is weaker without Forge and Disk alongside it, but for the time being I still think it can pull its weight. I always considered it the most individually useful of the three pieces--Forge outside of the combo was deadweight, and Disk outside of the combo was useful only when we were already losing and needed a reset.
You're absolutely right that Memnite would be the superior 0-drop for Skullclamp synergy, I'd forgotten about that. Also, Pook, I also strongly recommend the clamp if your deck is hurting for draw power; the weakest component of Arcum has always been the lineup of mediocre artifact dorks and tokens we need to spit out, and a 1cmc artifact that adds "1, sac this: Draw 2" to all of them is a big deal.
I used Disk-Forge-Lattice to win most of my games on Wednesday, though come Thursday I had already removed the three cards in favor of using Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker as my win conditions since they're just easier and to-the-point, not to mention less of dead draws if I get them from turns 1-3. Ballista has the same weakness as Disk against activation-stoppers (Pithing Needle for example), basically, except you can cast it and put millions of damage on the stack with opponents having no real way of stopping it (just activate it multiple times in a row without passing priority). In the event of hexproof or shroud you can simply generate millions of tokens using Hangarback Walker and win the following turn, just like I'd do with Myr Turbine, Clock of Omens, Basalt Monolith, and Rings of Brighthearth in the event of someone having indestructible permanents or an indestructible Commander with Plate and other nonsense.
That's generally been my thoughts in the last couple days. The only thing that Forge/Disk/Lattice deals with that Ballista can't is player-hexproof effects, which thus far have been highly uncommon to begin with because they're so expensive (they certainly haven't discouraged any storm players from picking up Aetherflux Reservoir), and they're beatable by infinite token attack anyway. If we've already gone infinite we're nigh-invincible anyway and I really doubt we'll have an issue waiting the one extra turn to get the tokens un-sick (infinite Null Brooch, just counter everything?).
I've left in Rings of Brighthearth-Monolith-Staff combo.
You can leave in Disk-Forge-Lattice if you want the old win conditions. I no longer think that Possessed Portal is necessary- if you get that single tap of Arcum, then you can make the attempt to win rather than attempt to stall, ergo I don't see Portal being necessary any longer at all (and anything that'd remove Engine removes Portal). The downside to Portal is: You grab it, you're done for the turn. You grab Engine and then you can untap Arcum and try again for another win con after they remove it (as the active player, you get priority to cast another spell- it doesn't have to be an instant, and you get the untap from it being cast, not resolving).
Yes, you're right about that, if you have anything in hand you can cast, you're basically guaranteed at minimum one Arcum untap from Paradox Engine. Even if they counter your thing, or blow up your Paradox Engine in response, you still get the one untap at the time of casting (so if you're willing and able, you could actually respond in turn with Null Brooch).
But if Engine gets blown up for any reason, you're playing pre-Paradox arcum--you're just as vulnerable to the same shenanigans as you were last month and one year ago. You'll want Rings/Monolith/Staff or Rings/Monolith/Top to finish the game. You'll want Possessed Portal to put a full stop to any douchery, hard-counter any deck that relies on drawing cards or that hits goldfish early, and immediately shift board parity in your favor (a la Cataclysm). You'll want Myr Turbine to never-ever miss an Arcum tap, Clocks for tempo, and so on.
And a card as meta-shifting and as vulnerable as Engine, immediately drawing hate from every single person sitting at the table, will be blown up in a non-negligible percentage of your games, no matter what you do. That's why I'm not quite ready yet to go all-in around Engine. It's not the same as going all-in around WGD or AN or DD, spells which are considerably more challenging to disrupt as you need to deal with them on the stack or you lose. And I'm not convinced that making your Engine game 30% stronger (by focusing the whole deck around it rather than only devoting a minimal package) is worth making your non-Engine game 70% weaker.
But maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm eager to see how your experience plays out.
My weakest card is probably Isochron Scepter. I just haven't found what additional cards I want to run in my current meta (the decks equally as fast as mine don't care about attacking or are Yisan, so I dropped Ensnaring Bridge). I'm still one turn behind Doomsday castings unless I get a good hand rather than an average one (average being mana dork + lands). I haven't really tried optimizing my list, yet; I've just trimmed a *lot* of the fat. I'd be tempted to re-add some of my old cards, though, I just can't think of too many cases where some of them are valuable any longer, like in the case of Possessed Portal.
Cutting things like Ensnaring Bridge is of course entirely a meta call. From your posts it sounds like no one's consistently playing Zur/Narset/Brago/other commanders that rely on the combat step, so cutting it seems like the right choice for you.
How do you observe the AN/Doomsday decks usually winning? For me the piles are usually Labman-based. Possessed Portal hoses any Labman pile by simply disabling all draws. And as clunky as it is, I've seen such decks scoop to a well-placed and well-timed Jester's Cap, as they're usually very all-in style. You'd probably even also get more consistent mileage out of a simple draw spell like Thirst or FoF over Isochron Scepter, but then I'm biased because I never really got could wrap my head around putting Isochron in this deck in the first place (Dramatic Reversal existing wasn't good enough reason for me).
Oh, and p.s., above you apologized because you like talking about the deck. Don't sweat it, that's what this thread has always been for.
Or even just 2 0-drops, by using Walking Ballista at the end. Basically, you sac fodder for Paradox Engine, cast-fodder then sac it for Citanul Flute, tap Flute for 1st 0-drop, cast then sac for Monolith, tap Flute for 2nd 0-drop, cast then sac for Rings, tap Flute for Walking Ballista, cast for infinite then win from there.
I actually think the sheer number of artifact spells could probably drop, so we run only the most valuable of cards. I do believe I'll put Back to Basics in, and I'll lurk around this thread again like I've done for the last three years while everyone settles on what the best artifact spells to run actually are. A *lot* more flexibility is available now in building Arcum, thanks to Paradox Engine.
Firstly, Paradox Engine + Citanul Flute shenanigans are legit. Props to whoever came up with that idea. (I'm not even sure it was the guy on reddit as I think he mentioned he saw someone else playing it, but maybe I'm remembering wrong--props to whoever anonymous thinker out there thought of it, in any case).
Secondly I agree with mrjumbo that you actually don't need to load up on *that* many 0cmc dorks because it's so easy to pull a Grim or Basalt Monolith and tap Flute for 1 a few times instead of constantly tapping it for 0.
I would have no qualms gutting some of the mainstays of the deck thus far to make room for this new interaction, but I'm naturally quite reluctant to get too "glass cannony" without sufficient testing. I will be eager to hear how your games go, Pook and Pie, because if with enough playtesting the case becomes self-evident that all-in Arcum is the way to go then I will happily re-write this primer to reflect that. But in the meantime I'm going to be working up to that point more slowly.
Put into the context of this combo I can also begin to see the usefulness of Walking Ballista. Still not entirely sold on Hope of Ghirapur, mrjumbo, even with the point you made; it doesn't actually guarantee you one tap out of Arcum or guarantee him any protection at all, as it only works against the one player who you attacked when the whole table will be gunning for Arcum.
If the primary strat is going to be "tap arcum, fetch engine, cast a thing" here's the best possible progression I can think of--it's basically what you said, mrjumbo, although I'm not sure if you mixed up your math as I can only see it working with Myr Moonvessel rather than Hope of Ghirapur without additional mana investment:
Tap Arcum for Citanul Flute, tap flute for 0drop, play 0 drop, everything is untapped.
Tap Arcum for Basalt Monolith, generate 3, tap flute for Myr Moonvessel and play it, paying 2 total, with 1 remaining in pool, everything is untapped.
Tap Arcum (saccing Moonvessel to add 1 for a total of 2 in pool) for Rings of Brighthearth. Now we've got all the prereqs for infinite mana (rings, untapped basalt, and 2 free mana), which we proceed to generate.
Stop right there for a second. Even without Walking Ballista, we've got an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and infinite colorless mana. That in itself equates to as many board untaps/Arcum tutors as we have colorless creatures in the deck, or infinite board untaps/Arcum tutors if we loop Junk Diver and Myr Retriever as Pook pointed out. We can set up whatever combo we want. And that whole sequence takes 1 arcum tap and 1 cast spell afterward. The only new cards required are Engine, Citanul Flute, Moonvessel, and a single zero-drop. That's it.
So, once again, if we wanted to, we could gut the whole deck and make it fixed entirely around the Paradox Engine combo in an ultra glass-cannony build--and maybe that's the better thing to do, we'll find out with testing. But in the meantime, we could just make 4 cuts, add those 4 cards, and get the entire benefit of "1 arcum tap + spell = win" without sacrificing any of the deck's toolbox or versatility. We could keep Possessed Portal in for the "break glass in case of douchery." We could keep the Tangle Wires and Orbs to play the stax game before resolving Arcum (though we'd have to avoid Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void as 0 and 1 drops actually matter to us now).
We could even keep Disk + Forge in, if we so choose--but we could also simply replace them both with Walking Ballista, thereby freeing up a card slot. Unlike Ballista, Disk/Forge/Lattice works at instant speed and doesn't target anything, but I'm still willing to give it a try without them; Forge is the last piece of uncastable clunk still in there after I removed Spine a while back, and while having an artifact-based board wipe is a good thing I think we can maybe get by without it.
That's what I'm thinking of starting with for the time being, at least for the current round of tests.
With those changes alone, pretty much all of the benefits of the Arcum we've known and loved for years are preserved--the only thing I lose is a little bit of early stax power, i.e. Trini and Chalice, in order to be able to consistently hit those 0 and 1 drops--but I make up for that slightly by adding Static Orb, which is powerful stax that plays much more nicely with Paradox. We avoid packing the deck full of 0 drops, which, while better now with Paradox Engine, are still useless on their own. And most importantly we pick up the entire utility of "tap Arcum, cast any spell, win game" with Paradox Engine and the rest of the cards. Citanul Flute and Ornithopter are the only real "dead draws" where outside of the combo they aren't nearly as useful--and even then, they're still much more playable outside the combo than, say, Darksteel Forge, a dead draw in the most literal sense where we can't even play it.
I'm feeling good about this. I think it's time to finally update the primer.
Thoughts on the new set? Personally, I think I'll go this way,
Scrap Trawler - Include
Walking Ballista - Likely include
Hope of Ghirapur - 50/50 include
Whir of Invention - not sure due to the UUU cost
Why Scrap Trawler mrjumbo? How many 0-1cmc artifacts can you see yourself regrowing with it? Sac a token, grab nothing; sac a 2cmc dork, grab a 0-1cmc thing (how many of those do we have?); sac Trawler itself, mind as well be playing Junk Diver. Also why Walking Ballista? Paying 2 for 1 damage or 4 for two damage?
I think Paradox Engine will make the cut in my list. In moderate testing, pulling Engine with Arcum when you have 4-5 mana is a better call than trying to cast it from hand as 5 is a lot to put down for an artifact (I have a hard time justifying Forgemaster, at times, lol). Engine is just a card you can randomly grab with Arcum and perform a clean blowout with if you have 2-3 spells in your hand that you can cast that turn
There's a noticeable lack of synergy with Paradox Engine and Null Brooch, however.
(I hardly ever have to stop Storm spells in my new meta- the Storm decks here have pretty consistently won through Aetherflux Reservoir and the like instead of Grapeshots, and a lot of the times, tossing my hand to stop one guy's Ad Nauseam just left me vulnerable for another guy to take both of us out rather than me still being in position to defend myself).
Hope of Ghirapur seems worthwhile to include. It's one mana, has an extremely relevant ability, and can be fodder for Arcum. There's literally no reason I can think of not to include it when generally less useful cards are played for situational benefit in this deck.
Inspiring Statuary is... a card. An Etherium Sculptor that Arcum can tutor but it requires you tap down your artifacts. Not sure it's worthwhile, but I don't see anyone else mentioning it so I thought I'd bring it up.
Commenting on all of these in order, firstly yes, I've been seeing a lot of good things from Paradox Engine (henceforth referred to as PE or Engine). The 5cmc is obnoxious, but it appears to be the same type of huge tempo-boosting play as Clock of Omens+Mycosynth Lattice--where, if it sticks, it's not an infinite combo on its own, but it immediately lets us do so many actions and tutor so many things that our winclock drops to 0 or 1 (like a Time Stretch, mechanically speaking). I also like the synergy with one-shot rocks; I've had a few games where I played it from hand T2 using Mana Vault or Grim Monolith and being able to re-use the rocks all game with additional spells.
Antisynergy with brooch is valid, but hopefully you won't be using them in the same situations. Brooch is the "oh bleep" card for the counter-or-lose spells. Engine is the card you use to pre-empt the "oh bleep" moment by simply outracing it. If both Harry and Sally get Ad Nauseam at the same time and are both primed to win with it, and Harry goes first and plays his, you brooch it, and then Sally goes second, plays hers and wipes you both out, I don't think there's really much that can be done about that sort of situation with the tools presently available to us. If you didn't stop Harry, wouldn't he have won anyway? In that sort of situation the best you can do is play kingmaker and brooch either Harry or Sally, leaving the other to win. That's just a symptom of a meta dominated by a 5cmc instant that basically reads "put your deck into your hand." If Sally is even one turn slower than Harry, though, or you have Voltaic Key or a clock effect in order to get multiple Negates per turn out of Brooch, then you're much safer.
(Don't get me wrong, I'd get rid of Brooch in a heartbeat if I could. My stomach turns over having to defend it as much as I do. But "spell hate artifacts" are few and far between--without W we don't get things like Nevermore and Meddling Mage--so there's just nothing else quite like it, and if you can get over the steep initial hurdle of discarding your hand, squeezing out 3+ Negates a turn is very attainable.)
Hope of Ghirapur is funny. I'm actually leaning somewhat against it by its concept. Needing to attack means it can't work on the turn its played, it only works on your turn (unlike most Silence effects which can be used either defensively on your turn or offensively on an opponents'), if they have any chump flyers it doesn't work at all, and it only works on one person. It's a blend of Spellskite and Silence, except it's much more situational than Spellskite and much less protective than Silence. None of our dorks are fantastic, obviously, but which dork would you cut for it? A 2cmc-tap-for-1 dork like Manakin? An advantage-dork like Myr Sire or Myr Retriever? Those are dorks that I'm never unhappy to see in a hand; they're not amazing, but they're always useful. I can foresee many possible situations where HoG is played and does nothing but sit there like a 1cmc Ornithopter. I dunno, maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I'll need a better sales pitch than what I've heard thus far.
What I see in Inspiring Statuary, meanwhile, isn't a card that Arcum can tutor, but rather a card that can help cast Arcum. Think about it this way: T1 Island, Pithing Needle; T2 Island, Etherium Sculptor; T3 Island, Inspiring Statuary tapping 2 islands, Arcum Dagsson tapping 1 island and 3 artifacts. All that said, at 3cmc it falls prey what I would call Palladium Myr syndrome, where even though it can effectively tap for multiple colorless, it can often do so too late to actually accelerate Arcum pre-T4 unless you've already got some other form of ramp (in that example it was Etherium Sculptor) to play Statuary sooner. As well, similar problem with other Inspiration spells, until we start churning out tokens--which isn't generally until after is already set up--most of the artifacts on our board are already tapping for mana on their own anyway (i.e. all the Manakin-type dorks and mana rocks are useless with it). So, not an auto-include by any definition. Being able to tap down cards like Winter Orb on the end step before your turn using instant spells is amusing, but not really viable (we don't run enough instants).
So of course I say "I'll do it all tomorrow" but then I get super busy with more finals and everything else, and then holiday celebrations, and blah blah, and nothing happens. Finally, finally, finally, I'm done with everything and my schedule is back to normal now (happy 2017 btw), so I can get back into Magic again along with it (and make good on my promise to update my several MTGS threads).
Static Orb is viable, but it's more difficult for us to work around than Winter Orb. The good thing about Winter Orb is that it's basically always useful to us, the situations in which we can't play it because it would hurt us more than it helps are very few and uncommon. Static Orb not so much--as you say, with Lattice we can turn Arcum into an artifact and then untap him, or just use Clock of Omens to tap down Static on the previous player's end step and get all our untaps, but it needs that extra bit of setup or else Static Orb will more likely give more advantage to our opponents than to us. It's not always a guaranteed droppable piece, there will be some occasions when it's a dead draw, and for that reason I don't run it mainboard. But it's still viable should you choose to include it in your list.
The reason I've lately been running the list without mainboard Sculpting Steel isn't because the card isn't good, but because I haven't found it to be good enough. Yes, the staff+copy+lotus+clock combo is a thing in concept, and including Steel lets Arcum tutor all those pieces by himself, but I don't think I've ever actually had that combo come up in any of my games--maybe once? In all time? More combo options aren't always a good thing if those combo options are so clunky as to never actually happen. And like Spine of Ish Sah, while it's a cool Arcum tutor, if your best Arcum tap in that particular moment is "copy a thing" (or, in the case of spine, "destroy a thing,") you've probably already lost the game. In other words, the 1-3 Arcum taps you get per game should be huge game-enders like Possessed Portal, Mycosynth Lattice, Rings of Brighthearth, and so on; if those aren't options, and you're reduced to spending your taps on "destroy 1 permanent" or "copy 1 artifact," then your deck is already pretty much decimated and your chances of winning are small to 0. So why waste card slots for that scenario?
In my personal gameplay, more often than not, rather than tutoring for Sculpting Steel, I mostly found myself casting it from hand--and all too often it was used to copy a Silver Myr or some mana rock for lack of any better targets, which was a terribly inefficient play. I would rather have Copy Artifact, which can at least copy a 2cmc dork like Silver Myr at efficient cost in addition to its other uses, or Phyrexian Metamorph, which can copy creatures as artifacts as well as artifacts directly, than Sculpting Steel, whose only benefit is that it's potentially tutorable by Arcum in the rare circumstances where you'd actually use Arcum to drop anything but a nuclear bomb.
All that said, onward to my preliminary thoughts on new cards:
Planar Bridge -- It's a jumbo Planar Portal. For a more laid-back big mana build I can see it, but barring Metalworker shenanigans we should never have 8 to throw around, and if we've got infinite colorless we'd be looking for Staff of Domination instead.
Paradox Engine -- Interesting. 5cmc makes me nervous, that's pretty much the upper limit of what we should be casting from the hand, reserved only for those cards which are strong enough as to justify it (Turbine, Kuldotha, Tezzeret). But stapling a Dramatic Reversal to every spell is quite something. I can see it being potentially "Reversal on a stick, almost" in the way Brooch is "Negate on a stick, almost." Worthy of testing for sure.
Reverse Engineer -- Tap two artifacts and you draw 3 for 1UU. Tap 3 artifacts and you draw 3 for UU. The fact that you actually need to tap the artifacts is a significant nerf relative to the old affinity/metalcraft mechanics where it was sufficient to simply control the artifacts, particularly since usually our early-game artifacts all tap for mana in the first place anyway. Even so, I think it's worth a test and potentially very promising: once we get non-mana-producing artifacts rolling, like Turbine tokens, Arcum's shoes, etc, the task becomes much easier.
Whir of Invention -- This is some power. Even without the "Improvise," it's a Reshape with no sac cost at instant speed for just one more mana. That's significant. Then you've got the Improvise on top. Neato.
Trophy Mage -- See previous post. Leaning against it, but won't knock it 'till I try it.
Over 100 spoilers yet to go as of this post. Let's see what else we get.
So I had a big long post typed up and then I accidentally hit back and the whole thing was lost. Hate it when that happens. Now I'm all sleepy and should go to bed, but I'll still try to get most of my previous thoughts in before I do.
Firstly, I've been super busy this last month with work and final exams, so I've only played a handful of games on each of my decks. Scepter didn't come up at all, Dramatic Reversal did once and I loved it and I'm leaning toward adding it in officially but I want to test it more to be sure.
Not worth its space. If I wanted a blue creature that tutors for artifacts, I'd play one that does it from the command zone. Oh wait...
Will still be giving this one a playtest. Agree that the lack of "or less" really hurts it (albeit the only thing keeping it balanced with Trinket Mage), but in fairness 3cmc alone is nothing to scoff at: Staff, Rings, Metalworker are three game-ending targets that we pretty much always have a use for at any point in the game, and also to lesser importance we can fetch Tangle Wire, Trini, Thousand-Year, Bridge. I'm still skeptical and leaning against it, but it's "good enough" that I think it at least deserves a fair chance to prove itself if it can.
So, I know it's been a minute, but I've been playing the deck for the past month off and on (I've only been really playing Arcum and Zur lately), and I can safely say: Dramatic Reversal is nuts. There was literally never a time in which I drew it that I was not satisfied with its performance.
Like I said, it only came up once for me because I haven't had a chance to playtest much lately, but yes, at least from what little I've seen it appears very promising. Glad you're positive about it, your thoughts sound similar to mine (or what I expect mine to be after a few more games).
Isochron Scepter was a little more underwhelming, however.
As I feared. For all the bashing we do of Null Brooch, and deservedly so, there's something to be said for having "Negate on a Stick" in a single artifact that is tutorable by Arcum. Suffering through the not-so-uncommon dead draw Stick, or having to blow a tutor just to find something to use with it, is a huge deal. And often enough you'll be in that situation where there's a spell on the stack that you just absolutely need to counter right that moment or the game is over (classic example is obviously Ad Nauseam), and only Brooch lets you tap Arcum and discard hand to Negate, no questions asked. When you get hit with Duress -> discard your countermagic -> Ad Nauseam, you'll want Brooch in your deck, not Stick.
It's the reason I just haven't been able to kick the Brooch. As much as I hate it, it does something important--countermagic on demand, with no "if"s (discarding your hand is a cost, but not an "if," because you can always do it)--that I've found literally no other card in the game capable of doing in the same way.
I'll still be giving the Stick its due testing. Like I said, it hasn't actually come up in any of my games yet because I haven't had more than a couple chances to play Arcum in the last month. But all the concerns I have about it now are the same ones I did before, and I'm not sure the printing of Dramatic Reversal by itself is enough to change my mind.
First of all, welcome to MTGS and thanks for posting in my thread (I see it's your first post on this account).
Secondly, unlike DR and Stick I have no ambivalence about this one, I just can't see it working in this deck. Nearly every artifact that hits our GY is either cmc2 (that is, our dorks) or cmc0 (myr tokens, as well as Lotus Petal). Saccing a cmc 2 dork with this on the field usually won't let us grab anything, as we have nothing in our GY of cmc 1 and only one card in the deck ends up in the GY as cmc 0. We could sac the Scrap Trawler itself to grab something cmc2, but then we're only getting that single use out of it, so it mind as well be a Junk Diver that lets us get any cmc.
I've also done a little playtesting on Braids and Breya and will be updating those lists. But, tomorrow. Too sleepy now.
I've been waiting for a thread like this, and while Thopter tribal is more "fair" I think the idea of assembling doomsday machines (infinite combos) is too perfect to pass up.
I dunno how perfect it is compared to Arcum Dagsson, is my one beef. Below is my updated list after playing it for a few days. It's harder than it looks to consistently land WUBR early on to play Breya ASAP (at least to get some tokens if not to combo off), so I had to cut more of the toolboxy pieces like Ensnaring Bridge/some of the staxxy artifacts/a few combo pieces to replace with color fixers like signets. I'm trying to get the mana base to the point where I don't need suboptimal mana rocks like Chromatic Lantern, but in my first 10-15 games there were just too many occasions where I was missing a color. It's much easier in a deck like Arcum to run the full suite of utility/stax artifacts to complete the "artifact tribal" theme when you don't have to worry nearly as much about mana and color fixing, as the only colored thing you'll ever need to cast is your commander for 3U.
1) Conspiracy Daretti instead of Daretti, Scrap Savant? I think Savant combos better with Yawgmoth's Will, although Iconoclast making tokens to sac to KCI is pretty great.
It's the tokens that I was going for. He's a 3cmc artifact token machine, and this deck needs artifact tokens to make up for the relatively lower number of actual artifacts it runs (more on that re: metalworker). The only thing that can produce tokens as efficiently as he can is Myr Turbine and that's 5cmc. His "destroy" ability is relevant, too. I thought about Commander Daretti, but in my head I couldn't rationalize his +2, it's not bad or anything but pay 3R for a "Faithless Looting machine" I don't think is nearly as good as paying 1BR for a pseudo-Myr Turbine.
2) How do you feel about Cloud Key instead of Etherium Sculptor? Two mana to three is a big jump, but Cloud Key is more resilient and can come out turn one off Mana Vault or Mana Crypt.
In a vacuum, I'd still prefer Etherium Sculptor; you're absolutely right that she's more vulnerable, but it's really tough to beat that 2cmc. If I had to rank the effects, it would be Sculptor > Cloud Key > Foundry Inspector. I'd say they're close enough, though, that if you really wanted to run Cloud Key instead of Sculptor, you absolutely could, and if there were room I'd probably run both.
Not yet. Again, if there's one thing I've learned over the last week, it's that Breya doesn't actually play as similar to Arcum as I originally expected; with so many instants, sorceries, enchantments, planeswalkers, and non-artifact combo pieces like Disciple of the Vault and Auriok Salvagers and Architect and Displacer and so forth, this deck in its current iteration only has about 30 artifacts in it...compared to my Arcum deck, which currently runs upwards of 60 artifacts. In my Arcum deck I can plop down Metalworker and 90%+ of the time tap him for 4-6 mana, which can then be used to help cast Arcum with his 3U cost. In this deck though I'm not sure I'd be able to consistently tap him for more than 2, and colorless mana isn't quite as useful here compared to generating WUBR for casting breya and color-based combo pieces like Foundry and so on to get those artifact tokens rolling ASAP.
How do you feel about Faerie Artisan's. Overall cost is a bit high but the ability to copy potentially relevant creatures and have them be Arcum targets as a bonus seems like a strong package.
It competes with Arcum at 4 mana, can't be recurred short of Timetwister, and eats removal like nobody's business. I doubt I would run it in a competitive event, but despite that it does seem like an incredibly fun card.
Those are pretty much my exact criticisms. It's an amusing card and would surely be a lot of fun to play at a more laid back table but I just can't see it ever being worth its cost at a competitive table. It suffers from Padeem, Consul of Innovation-syndrome in that it's a not-game-changing ability that directly competes with Arcum in terms of cost, is not itself an artifact, and does not come with any intrinsic protection. Besides Conqueror's Flail I don't see any cards in Commander 2016 that are relevant for Arcum (or mono-blue decks in general, really); most of the significant releases, including all the new commanders, are in the multicolor department.
Speaking of, here's my Breya thread in some shameless cross-promotion. To make that list, I started off with my Arcum list and retooled it from there, so you'll find many similarities between the two decks for that reason.
My expectations are still low, but I'll be interested to see whether WUBR artifacts with a killcard commander is more fun and powerful than mono-U artifacts with a tutor-on-a-stick commander. Arcum will remain dear to my heart no matter what, but if--big if--Breya really does prove to be the better choice, I won't be above making her my main deck and fleshing out my thread for her.
I go back and forth on whether or not fetchlands are actually worth it. Their deck thinning power was long ago shown to be mathematically negligible, so the only other remotely notable reason to have them in there is to get free lib shuffles so as to synergize with Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, and similar. Is that minor utility worth getting blanked by Suppression Field and LD'd by Stifle? Not sure.
I touched on Scrap Trawler a little bit in an earlier post. I'm not quite sure how it would work here. The vast majority of the artifacts (80%+) that hit our GY before the combo turn are cmc 2, while only a small few (2 in my decklist, iirc, maybe 3 in some others) are cmc 0. There are usually no cmc 1 dorks we run, unless a particular decklist chooses to run Myr Moonvessel or Hope of Ghirapur at which point you'd have one or two at most. So unless you've already found one of the couple 0 ones, or one of the couple 1 ones if you run those (in total, what, 4 cards maximum?) and pitched them in the grave beforehand, with Trawler out you'd simply either a) sac one of our usual 2 drop to return absolutely nothing, or b) sac Scrap Trawler itself to return a 2drop, at which point you mind as well be playing Junk Diver so you could at least retrieve 3cmc artifacts if something like Rings of Brighthearth gets blown up. Basically the fact that it says "lesser" rather than "lesser than or equal to" kills it imo, otherwise we could use 2drops to return other 2drops and Trawler itself could safely retrieve our most valuable pieces, but as it stands now saccing 2drops could only return our nonexistent 1drops or one of 2-3 0drops, and saccing Trawler itself can only fetch a 2drop at best.
Heap Doll: Worth it? You're mainboarding Grafdigger's Cage so I'm assuming grave-based decks are a significant threat in your meta, but even so he's a pretty mediocre dork. I'd much rather have a second grave hoser like Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progentius/Scrabbling Claws rather than a little mini-gravehate stapled to a dork, but maybe it's been working well for you, I dunno.
Personal Tutor: also pretty bad imo. Sorcery speed tutor for a sorcery only that goes to the top of the library. You only have 6 sorceries in the whole deck and P. Tutor is one of them; what do you usually grab with this? Another sorcery-speed tutor? Isn't that a little slow?
Timetwister: Interesting choice. I used to run it mainboard back in like 2012, but as the meta evolved I came to the conclusion it usually helps other people more than us. I'd rather run a more traditional draw spell like Thirst for Knowledge.
Glacial Chasm: What are you countering with this? If this is a silver bullet for something, I suspect you're better off finding an artifact solution, something you can easily tutor for and that synergizes with everything else in your deck and that isn't as costly as the Chasm. Ensnaring Bridge stops combat damage, Witchbane Orb stops targeted damage.
Isochron Scepter: See previous posts for my thoughts on this. I was never a big fan, and while Stick + Dramatic Reversal was a neat trick we've got Paradox Engine for that now anyway. If it's been working for you then by all means keep it in, but it's never been consistent enough for my tastes.
Important things you're missing:
- Trinket Mage. Forget that it's not an artifact, it's basically almost Fabricate #2.
- Thirst for Knowledge. One of the best draw spells ever printed, made for artifact decks like ours.
- Inkmoth Nexus/Mishra's Factory. These are among the best dorks we've got. You already run Blinkmoth Nexus, you need all 3, these are the best dorks we've got in this deck.
- Hedron Crawler. 2cmc dorks that tap for 1 are the second-best dorks in this deck, and we should be running every single one. You already run all the others, but you're missing this one.
- Copy Artifact. The one enchantment I think belongs in every Arcum deck. At worst, you copy a 2cmc dork that taps for 1, so you can basically think of it like an extra copy of Manakin or your favorite dork. At best, you copy something that wins you the game. Also the lowest cmc of all artifact copy effects (Sculpting Steel and Phyrexian Metamorph both cost 3).
- Tezzeret the Seeker. Hefty at 5cmc, but often enough pays for himself immediately after he comes out by untapping 2 mana rocks with his +1, or just pay -3 to put Rings of Brighthearth on the battlefield and win the game. In your deck description you talk about winning without Arcum; cards like Tezzeret are how you do that.
- Pithing Needle. It's hard to find any deck this doesn't belong in, but as an artifact, it especially belongs in ours. I'm actually really surprised you're not running this one already--is there nothing in your meta for you to needle? Necropotence? Food Chain? Survival of the Fittest? Any commander with an activated ability?
Other cards I endorse like Possessed Portal/Clock of Omens/Skullclamp/etc. are ultimately optional choices and are entirely up to you and your playstyle and preferences. Silver bullets I run like Defense Grid are meta-dependent. But those cards in that list are pretty much mandatory, I don't think there's a single competitive Arcum deck out there that shouldn't have them.As for the tier list, I'd prefer not to get into that myself. A lot of people are of the firm and unshakable opinion that any deck which doesn't run either Ad Nauseam or Doomsday or both isn't a tier 1 deck, so by that metric Arcum and everything else is tier 2 (or 1.5 at best). But if you ask the Rules Committee, cards like Braids, Cabal Minion and Recurring Nightmare are tier 1--or rather even tier 0, so good they don't even deserve to be played. Point being, it's an extremely subjective process to rank things into tiers, and it's the kind of discussion that quickly degenerates into nonsense. I'd rather not comment.
For now, the changes I settled on are as follows:
Out: Forge, Disk, Kuldotha, Dross Scorpion, Trinisphere, Gilded Lotus, Impulse, Darksteel Citadel. Bridge out to the SB.
In: Paradox, Flute, Memnite, Ornithopter, Thorn of Amethyst, Whir of Invention, Walking Ballista, Static Orb. DGrid in from the SB.
We'll see how this works out. I'm a little worried about my mana since I cut 2 sources (lotus and a land) and put 0 sources back in, but I wanted to squeeze in both Thorn and Static Orb in the wake of removing Trinisphere (though I hope I can work Trini back in eventually...)
I know I was originally talking about Myr Moonvessel instead of a 2nd zero drop. I eventually changed my mind and decided on 2 zero drops instead in order to be able to consistently and without hesitation throw down Chalice for X=1, but I really don't think it matters, we can play around it either way.
I also need to keep thinking about Dramatic Reversal. I might cut Static Orb back out for it. Not sure yet.
Lastly in recent months I haven't seen as many Narsets, Bragos, and swinging Zurs around as I used to in years past, so I moved Bridge out to the SB and put DGrid in its place. It's still our go-to solution for any deck that cares about the combat step, and I would just as quickly switch it back in if I knew someone at the table would be playing one of those decks.
A side effect of the cockatrice/proxies thing is that I get a lot of nonbasic-heavy decks too. 5c FC or 5c AN decks or 4c storm decks and things like that, the kind of decks that run almost no basic lands if not none at all, because when you've got an unlimited budget it's very feasible to run 1 of every dual/shock/fetch/filter/etcetera and trim the basics down to singletons or otherwise eliminate them entirely. The only decks I see with lots of basics are a handful of mono-U ones like Azami and Teferiwalker as well as the occasional mono-G or mono-B deck, but overall they're not that common relative to the 3c/4c/5c contenders. The 99% nonbasic manabases are pretty ubiquitous.
Since the primer has to be written for the "global meta" and it assumes unlimited budget, I'll have to think about whether Back to Basics with a nonbasic-light manabase is overall better for Arcum than leaving it out and keeping all the nonbasics like CoT/Ruin/Svyelunite/Workshop/so forth in. But in the right meta, and if you're already running more Islands than usual anyway due to budget/availability reasons, I could definitely understand Back to Basics being a clutch play.
Svelyunite Temple and Buried Ruin I could understand, they're situational enough that they're probably on par with Island rather than an upgrade. The absence of Workshop I could understand also, both because it's $1000 and because your artifact count is overall a little lower now with your expanded MUC package.
That's precisely what it's dependent on, in my experience. Either it comes down T1 or T2 and it's pretty good, or it comes down T3 or later and is underwhelming. That's why I tend not to see it very often as opposed to more traditional draw spells that are always good cards no matter what turn you cast them.
I've never been much a fan of Guardian Idol. I really don't put it on the same level as the bread-and-butter 2-tap-for-1 dorks like Manakin. Swapping out Idol for Chrome Mox is probably exactly what I'd do in your list.
Chalice of the Void has performed very well in my games, almost as good as Trinisphere. Prior to Paradox/Flute it would come out for either 0, 1, or on rare occasion 2, to devastating effect each time. We really don't run a lot of 1drops--I think my deck has about 10? And even your deck with its larger MUC package runs, what, 14 by my count? Not much more than mine. Meanwhile low-curve 3-5c decks like AN, doomsday, storm, etc. regularly run 20-25 1drops and potentially even a little more, such that Chalice for 1 can literally blank 1/4th or even 1/3rd of their entire deck if it isn't countered. It's no joke.
I dunno what you'd cut for it; you'd have to figure out what's not performing as well as you'd like. How's Mox Opal doing for you? As the flip-side of expanding your MUC package in order to enable color-centric effects like FoW and Chrome Mox, you've also significantly reduced your artifact count which makes it harder to hit metalcraft (meanwhile, in my artifact-heavy deck, I'm hitting metalcraft so consistently that once in a while I've even considered adding Stoic Rebuttal, though I never did commit to that yet). I dunno if you'll run into any problems with that or if you have already.
Mrjumbo, in my humble opinionSphere of Resistance isn't half the card that Chalice is in this deck, because on its own it doesn't give us any parity advantage. It's made to be combo'd with other forms of mana denial and/or land destruction, which aren't things we can guarantee (unlike in, say, Derevi or Teferiwalker, where mana denial is definitely something they can guarantee as it's like 80% of their strategy). I'd much sooner choose Chalice and/or Thorn of Amethyst, both of which directly shift parity in our favor all on their own because our deck is built such that the reciprocal effect barely hurts us while being much worse for everyone else. What's holding you back about Chalice?
I would not recommend Servo Schematic over Myr Sire or any other card. I believe your analysis of the pros and cons is correct--the way I see it, it would be trading early-game consistency in landing those tokens for a little extra late-game power in interacting with our finishers. Thing is, the former is much more important than the latter: we're much more vulnerable in the early game when we need to get Arcum online and tapping asap, before we've got anything like Clock or Portal on the board; and if we've already got one of those cards out, we're usually already winning anyway. If Servo Schematic had something like "1: sac this" built in, I'd give it closer consideration, but as it is right now I'd take Myr Sire over it every time.
I would like to think so, too. You could very well be right that Trini into our old gameplan is still good enough to justify losing access to Paradox for that particular game. I'll have to see. I agree that apart from Paradox/Flute we're still just as unhurt by Trini as we were before (and it was always an extremely powerful parity play for us).
In the meantime, Thorn of Amethyst isn't such a bad replacement; I'd say the parity gain on it is almost as good as Trini, since there are no mission-critical noncreature spells in this deck. Chalice of the Void may still be workable also; usually in my games it comes out set to 1, and insofar as Paradox/Flute is concerned the only thing that blocks is Myr Moonvessel. Actually that whole problem could be circumvented by just having 1 extra mana:
Having one extra mana during the combo is hardly very much to ask. Any spare nonland permanent that taps for mana, of which we have many in this deck, would be untapped repeatedly from all the Paradoxing and would pay that cost, or even just a single extra untapped land, or a Lotus Petal or whatever else.
So, I think Chalice of the Void set to 1 is still very playable in this deck, and I'd like to add it back in if possible.
Since you trimmed down on artifact synergies and beefed up on MUC, I assume you're able to consistently pay FoW? If so you may consider also running Chrome Mox too. My list is still running ~30 artifacts, so I'm still reluctant to run FoW or Chrome for lack of blue.
How have Rhystic Study and Back to Basics been working out for you? I'm particularly curious about Rhystic Study, as that's not a card I tend to see very often. Also regarding BtB, in spite of our deck being monocolored, a majority of our manabase is usually nonbasic, as we run all manner of 2 lands to maximize Arcum ramp.
Actually, I just noticed your deck runs twice as many basic islands as mine does; is that by choice or due to budget constraints? I suppose part of that is simply because you run Islands in place of fetchlands, which is what I would do if I were mainboarding BtB, but at the same time you're not running common selections like City of Traitors, Svyelunite Temple, and Buried Ruin (the lack of CoT is especially surprising).
That may simply be me looking at your outdated decklist then. Sorry about that.
Or that you've slowed their clock enough to play on your terms. Like I said and as you noted, Portal is in no way a hard counter to those decks, as they're simply faster than us (than anything else in the format, let's be honest). And if they get AN in hand before your first Arcum tap, then the only thing that will save you is Null Brooch, because other than that you've basically lost already anyway.
But if you can slow them down enough to get to that point, which what stax cards and countermagic are for, then Portal puts the nails in the coffin faster and more safely than rings/monolith/top or paradox/flute in that even if Arcum gets Anguished Unmakinged in response to his first tap the Portal still hits the board and demands an immediate answer or destroys their hand or precious few permanents.
That's why originally I was running Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void. Dropping Chalice for 1 typically blanked upwards of a third of their entire deck (including Chain of Vapor, lol) and our one-drops have always been highly limited as our curve truly starts at 2. With either of those in an opening hand I would always feel much more confident against AN/DD (ok, I never feel truly "confident" against those decks, but I would feel more stable than I would otherwise at least). If possible I'd still like to fit those cards back in at some point, but it'll require more brainstorming as the Paradox Engine combo has now added some relevance in our deck to 0-1 drops.
Golem is an interesting choice. For a while I ran Thorn of Amethyst, which keeps our dorks and Arcum at their normal cost while our noncreature artifacts aren't usually being cast anyway (rather cheated into play). I'll have to give those kinds of cards another round of consideration while I'm thinking what to do about Chalice and 3ball (or replacements).
Well, since the most recent list you posted is three days old and has Shield Sphere still in it, it's difficult for me to say.
In fairness I still don't know why they'd be trying to slay Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell instead of earlier in the turn in response to the initial Arcum tap to fetch paradox in the first place. But yes, slaying Arcum in response to the post-paradox spell actually wouldn't get you any free arcum taps at all, as the slay spell would resolve before the paradox trigger.
What's your current list mrjumbo? We could consider potential cuts for you if we saw it.
Why are they casting instants after Paradox is already on the field? Why aren't they slaying Arcum in response to the tap to fetch Paradox in the first place, so you don't even get the guaranteed 1 untap? Making Paradox Engine work isn't the issue nearly as much as simply protecting Arcum, and that's precisely why I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head, at least conceptually, around your approach to the deck: how does loading up on more than the bare minimum of 1 zero-drop and Moonvessel required for the combo (in your most recent list you've got Memnite, Ornithopter, and Shield Sphere) help stick Arcum or protect him? Loading up on countermagic, mainboarding Defense Grid, those I can get behind. I would absolutely do those things if I were in a heavy draw-go meta like yours. But loading up on cards whose singular function is to interact with Paradox Engine, that's what I don't quite yet understand.
For me, when I'm getting piled on by the whole table, my opponents will force me to exhaust all of my countermagic and other defensive options just to get Arcum on the field and with a pair of shoes on him, then when I'm spent and Arcum is well-fortified they hit my most important combo piece (previously Rings of Brighthearth, though now I guess it's Paradox Engine) with a Nature's Claim or Revoke Existence, thereby ideally buying them the 1-2 extra turns they need to outrace me. Having zero-drops in my hand wouldn't fix that problem either--only effective and quick-response backup plans do.
Speaking of backup plans, to address your point on Possessed Portal and Ad Nauseam: when Portal hits the field on T3 or T4, if they haven't yet managed to combo off, it forces them to either a) discard their hand, including all their tutors/sculpting/countermagic, or b) degenerate their board, which, since they tend to play draw-go and keep a light field, usually directly hits their lands and mana. It punishes them for playing the draw-go game. It also blanks many of their best tutors, Mystical and Vampiric and Imperial Seal and so forth (anything that goes to the top of the library).
Similar story for DDay. If you manage to get Portal out before they cast it, then finding DDay becomes much harder, and even if they do find it, Portal prevents them from retrieving anything from their pile (even Brainstorm says "draw") and blanks Labman.
Of course, both of those are predicated on getting out Portal before they cast their signature game-winning cards, and that's the hard part (there's a reason nobody is decrying Portal as meta-countering tech lol). If they blaze into T2 DDay or T3 AN, the only thing that solves those is a counterspell or you're boned anyway. There's a reason those cards are format-dominating. But if you manage to get past that phase (and Paradox Engine is unavailable), Possessed Portal oftentimes ends up being the fastest solution--one Arcum tap stops the game, as opposed to the 2 needed for Rings into basalt/staff.
If you really are focused on trying to maximize your instant-speed win power, why not throw in Vedalken Orrery? Let's take your situation--Arcum's on the field tapped, having just fetched Paradox Engine; for some reason your opponents didn't slay him there, so it's your priority. You cast a spell, and now they cast their Anguished Unmaking on Arcum. Paradox Engine trigger goes on the stack, resolves, now your board is untapped and it's your priority with Unmaking sitting on the stack. You have precisely one Arcum tap before he goes back to the CZ, and you've got some dork in your hand and the mana to cast him (or, alternatively, you have another dork on the field already, and the mana to cast any spell in your hand), and you don't want to resort to spending that mana on Null Brooch quite yet.
Tap Arcum, fetch Vedalken Orrery. Cast the dork (or any other spell). Tap Arcum saccing your one surplus dork, fetch Flute. Tap Flute for the one zero-drop in your deck. Cast the zero drop, untap everything. Tap Arcum, fetch vault or basalt, tap it for 3. Tap Flute for Moonvessel, play Moonvessel, untap everything. Sac Moonvessel for Rings. Now you've got infinite mana, an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and all the spells in your deck have flash. Proceed to win the game while Anguished Unmaking never leaves the stack.
Again, if your opponents were already teed up to remove Arcum don't know why your opponents would be casting their removal in response to your casting a spell after Paradox has already been fetched, rather than casting it in response to the Arcum activation in the first place. But if that happens to be the case, all you'd need is Vedalken Orrery to fix the problem.
How's all that sound to you?
I agree that the case for keeping it in is weaker without Forge and Disk alongside it, but for the time being I still think it can pull its weight. I always considered it the most individually useful of the three pieces--Forge outside of the combo was deadweight, and Disk outside of the combo was useful only when we were already losing and needed a reset.
You're absolutely right that Memnite would be the superior 0-drop for Skullclamp synergy, I'd forgotten about that. Also, Pook, I also strongly recommend the clamp if your deck is hurting for draw power; the weakest component of Arcum has always been the lineup of mediocre artifact dorks and tokens we need to spit out, and a 1cmc artifact that adds "1, sac this: Draw 2" to all of them is a big deal.
That's generally been my thoughts in the last couple days. The only thing that Forge/Disk/Lattice deals with that Ballista can't is player-hexproof effects, which thus far have been highly uncommon to begin with because they're so expensive (they certainly haven't discouraged any storm players from picking up Aetherflux Reservoir), and they're beatable by infinite token attack anyway. If we've already gone infinite we're nigh-invincible anyway and I really doubt we'll have an issue waiting the one extra turn to get the tokens un-sick (infinite Null Brooch, just counter everything?).
Yes, you're right about that, if you have anything in hand you can cast, you're basically guaranteed at minimum one Arcum untap from Paradox Engine. Even if they counter your thing, or blow up your Paradox Engine in response, you still get the one untap at the time of casting (so if you're willing and able, you could actually respond in turn with Null Brooch).
But if Engine gets blown up for any reason, you're playing pre-Paradox arcum--you're just as vulnerable to the same shenanigans as you were last month and one year ago. You'll want Rings/Monolith/Staff or Rings/Monolith/Top to finish the game. You'll want Possessed Portal to put a full stop to any douchery, hard-counter any deck that relies on drawing cards or that hits goldfish early, and immediately shift board parity in your favor (a la Cataclysm). You'll want Myr Turbine to never-ever miss an Arcum tap, Clocks for tempo, and so on.
And a card as meta-shifting and as vulnerable as Engine, immediately drawing hate from every single person sitting at the table, will be blown up in a non-negligible percentage of your games, no matter what you do. That's why I'm not quite ready yet to go all-in around Engine. It's not the same as going all-in around WGD or AN or DD, spells which are considerably more challenging to disrupt as you need to deal with them on the stack or you lose. And I'm not convinced that making your Engine game 30% stronger (by focusing the whole deck around it rather than only devoting a minimal package) is worth making your non-Engine game 70% weaker.
But maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm eager to see how your experience plays out.
Cutting things like Ensnaring Bridge is of course entirely a meta call. From your posts it sounds like no one's consistently playing Zur/Narset/Brago/other commanders that rely on the combat step, so cutting it seems like the right choice for you.
How do you observe the AN/Doomsday decks usually winning? For me the piles are usually Labman-based. Possessed Portal hoses any Labman pile by simply disabling all draws. And as clunky as it is, I've seen such decks scoop to a well-placed and well-timed Jester's Cap, as they're usually very all-in style. You'd probably even also get more consistent mileage out of a simple draw spell like Thirst or FoF over Isochron Scepter, but then I'm biased because I never really got could wrap my head around putting Isochron in this deck in the first place (Dramatic Reversal existing wasn't good enough reason for me).
Oh, and p.s., above you apologized because you like talking about the deck. Don't sweat it, that's what this thread has always been for.
Firstly, Paradox Engine + Citanul Flute shenanigans are legit. Props to whoever came up with that idea. (I'm not even sure it was the guy on reddit as I think he mentioned he saw someone else playing it, but maybe I'm remembering wrong--props to whoever anonymous thinker out there thought of it, in any case).
Secondly I agree with mrjumbo that you actually don't need to load up on *that* many 0cmc dorks because it's so easy to pull a Grim or Basalt Monolith and tap Flute for 1 a few times instead of constantly tapping it for 0.
I would have no qualms gutting some of the mainstays of the deck thus far to make room for this new interaction, but I'm naturally quite reluctant to get too "glass cannony" without sufficient testing. I will be eager to hear how your games go, Pook and Pie, because if with enough playtesting the case becomes self-evident that all-in Arcum is the way to go then I will happily re-write this primer to reflect that. But in the meantime I'm going to be working up to that point more slowly.
Put into the context of this combo I can also begin to see the usefulness of Walking Ballista. Still not entirely sold on Hope of Ghirapur, mrjumbo, even with the point you made; it doesn't actually guarantee you one tap out of Arcum or guarantee him any protection at all, as it only works against the one player who you attacked when the whole table will be gunning for Arcum.
If the primary strat is going to be "tap arcum, fetch engine, cast a thing" here's the best possible progression I can think of--it's basically what you said, mrjumbo, although I'm not sure if you mixed up your math as I can only see it working with Myr Moonvessel rather than Hope of Ghirapur without additional mana investment:
Stop right there for a second. Even without Walking Ballista, we've got an untapped Citanul Flute, Paradox Engine, and infinite colorless mana. That in itself equates to as many board untaps/Arcum tutors as we have colorless creatures in the deck, or infinite board untaps/Arcum tutors if we loop Junk Diver and Myr Retriever as Pook pointed out. We can set up whatever combo we want. And that whole sequence takes 1 arcum tap and 1 cast spell afterward. The only new cards required are Engine, Citanul Flute, Moonvessel, and a single zero-drop. That's it.
So, once again, if we wanted to, we could gut the whole deck and make it fixed entirely around the Paradox Engine combo in an ultra glass-cannony build--and maybe that's the better thing to do, we'll find out with testing. But in the meantime, we could just make 4 cuts, add those 4 cards, and get the entire benefit of "1 arcum tap + spell = win" without sacrificing any of the deck's toolbox or versatility. We could keep Possessed Portal in for the "break glass in case of douchery." We could keep the Tangle Wires and Orbs to play the stax game before resolving Arcum (though we'd have to avoid Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void as 0 and 1 drops actually matter to us now).
We could even keep Disk + Forge in, if we so choose--but we could also simply replace them both with Walking Ballista, thereby freeing up a card slot. Unlike Ballista, Disk/Forge/Lattice works at instant speed and doesn't target anything, but I'm still willing to give it a try without them; Forge is the last piece of uncastable clunk still in there after I removed Spine a while back, and while having an artifact-based board wipe is a good thing I think we can maybe get by without it.
That's what I'm thinking of starting with for the time being, at least for the current round of tests.
Right now I'm leaning toward the following changes:
- Dross Scorpion, Kuldotha Forgemaster, Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Darksteel Forge, Nevinyrral's Disk to SB. Chalice and Trini out because we care about 0-1 drops now, Forge/Disk out to try using Ballista in their place, Scorpion and Forgemaster out because they were always good but not great. Moving these to the SB rather than simply removing them so as to emphasize that they're all still totally viable possibilities for different decks.
- Impulse out. Not as good as I'd hoped.
- In: Dramatic Reversal, Paradox Engine, Citanul Flute, Ornithopter, Whir of Invention, Walking Ballista, Myr Moonvessel.
- Something out for Static Orb to cover for removing Chalice/3ball. Has to be another instant or sorcery. Maybe Pact of Negation?
With those changes alone, pretty much all of the benefits of the Arcum we've known and loved for years are preserved--the only thing I lose is a little bit of early stax power, i.e. Trini and Chalice, in order to be able to consistently hit those 0 and 1 drops--but I make up for that slightly by adding Static Orb, which is powerful stax that plays much more nicely with Paradox. We avoid packing the deck full of 0 drops, which, while better now with Paradox Engine, are still useless on their own. And most importantly we pick up the entire utility of "tap Arcum, cast any spell, win game" with Paradox Engine and the rest of the cards. Citanul Flute and Ornithopter are the only real "dead draws" where outside of the combo they aren't nearly as useful--and even then, they're still much more playable outside the combo than, say, Darksteel Forge, a dead draw in the most literal sense where we can't even play it.
I'm feeling good about this. I think it's time to finally update the primer.
Commenting on all of these in order, firstly yes, I've been seeing a lot of good things from Paradox Engine (henceforth referred to as PE or Engine). The 5cmc is obnoxious, but it appears to be the same type of huge tempo-boosting play as Clock of Omens+Mycosynth Lattice--where, if it sticks, it's not an infinite combo on its own, but it immediately lets us do so many actions and tutor so many things that our winclock drops to 0 or 1 (like a Time Stretch, mechanically speaking). I also like the synergy with one-shot rocks; I've had a few games where I played it from hand T2 using Mana Vault or Grim Monolith and being able to re-use the rocks all game with additional spells.
Antisynergy with brooch is valid, but hopefully you won't be using them in the same situations. Brooch is the "oh bleep" card for the counter-or-lose spells. Engine is the card you use to pre-empt the "oh bleep" moment by simply outracing it. If both Harry and Sally get Ad Nauseam at the same time and are both primed to win with it, and Harry goes first and plays his, you brooch it, and then Sally goes second, plays hers and wipes you both out, I don't think there's really much that can be done about that sort of situation with the tools presently available to us. If you didn't stop Harry, wouldn't he have won anyway? In that sort of situation the best you can do is play kingmaker and brooch either Harry or Sally, leaving the other to win. That's just a symptom of a meta dominated by a 5cmc instant that basically reads "put your deck into your hand." If Sally is even one turn slower than Harry, though, or you have Voltaic Key or a clock effect in order to get multiple Negates per turn out of Brooch, then you're much safer.
(Don't get me wrong, I'd get rid of Brooch in a heartbeat if I could. My stomach turns over having to defend it as much as I do. But "spell hate artifacts" are few and far between--without W we don't get things like Nevermore and Meddling Mage--so there's just nothing else quite like it, and if you can get over the steep initial hurdle of discarding your hand, squeezing out 3+ Negates a turn is very attainable.)
Hope of Ghirapur is funny. I'm actually leaning somewhat against it by its concept. Needing to attack means it can't work on the turn its played, it only works on your turn (unlike most Silence effects which can be used either defensively on your turn or offensively on an opponents'), if they have any chump flyers it doesn't work at all, and it only works on one person. It's a blend of Spellskite and Silence, except it's much more situational than Spellskite and much less protective than Silence. None of our dorks are fantastic, obviously, but which dork would you cut for it? A 2cmc-tap-for-1 dork like Manakin? An advantage-dork like Myr Sire or Myr Retriever? Those are dorks that I'm never unhappy to see in a hand; they're not amazing, but they're always useful. I can foresee many possible situations where HoG is played and does nothing but sit there like a 1cmc Ornithopter. I dunno, maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I'll need a better sales pitch than what I've heard thus far.
What I see in Inspiring Statuary, meanwhile, isn't a card that Arcum can tutor, but rather a card that can help cast Arcum. Think about it this way: T1 Island, Pithing Needle; T2 Island, Etherium Sculptor; T3 Island, Inspiring Statuary tapping 2 islands, Arcum Dagsson tapping 1 island and 3 artifacts. All that said, at 3cmc it falls prey what I would call Palladium Myr syndrome, where even though it can effectively tap for multiple colorless, it can often do so too late to actually accelerate Arcum pre-T4 unless you've already got some other form of ramp (in that example it was Etherium Sculptor) to play Statuary sooner. As well, similar problem with other Inspiration spells, until we start churning out tokens--which isn't generally until after is already set up--most of the artifacts on our board are already tapping for mana on their own anyway (i.e. all the Manakin-type dorks and mana rocks are useless with it). So, not an auto-include by any definition. Being able to tap down cards like Winter Orb on the end step before your turn using instant spells is amusing, but not really viable (we don't run enough instants).
Static Orb is viable, but it's more difficult for us to work around than Winter Orb. The good thing about Winter Orb is that it's basically always useful to us, the situations in which we can't play it because it would hurt us more than it helps are very few and uncommon. Static Orb not so much--as you say, with Lattice we can turn Arcum into an artifact and then untap him, or just use Clock of Omens to tap down Static on the previous player's end step and get all our untaps, but it needs that extra bit of setup or else Static Orb will more likely give more advantage to our opponents than to us. It's not always a guaranteed droppable piece, there will be some occasions when it's a dead draw, and for that reason I don't run it mainboard. But it's still viable should you choose to include it in your list.
The reason I've lately been running the list without mainboard Sculpting Steel isn't because the card isn't good, but because I haven't found it to be good enough. Yes, the staff+copy+lotus+clock combo is a thing in concept, and including Steel lets Arcum tutor all those pieces by himself, but I don't think I've ever actually had that combo come up in any of my games--maybe once? In all time? More combo options aren't always a good thing if those combo options are so clunky as to never actually happen. And like Spine of Ish Sah, while it's a cool Arcum tutor, if your best Arcum tap in that particular moment is "copy a thing" (or, in the case of spine, "destroy a thing,") you've probably already lost the game. In other words, the 1-3 Arcum taps you get per game should be huge game-enders like Possessed Portal, Mycosynth Lattice, Rings of Brighthearth, and so on; if those aren't options, and you're reduced to spending your taps on "destroy 1 permanent" or "copy 1 artifact," then your deck is already pretty much decimated and your chances of winning are small to 0. So why waste card slots for that scenario?
In my personal gameplay, more often than not, rather than tutoring for Sculpting Steel, I mostly found myself casting it from hand--and all too often it was used to copy a Silver Myr or some mana rock for lack of any better targets, which was a terribly inefficient play. I would rather have Copy Artifact, which can at least copy a 2cmc dork like Silver Myr at efficient cost in addition to its other uses, or Phyrexian Metamorph, which can copy creatures as artifacts as well as artifacts directly, than Sculpting Steel, whose only benefit is that it's potentially tutorable by Arcum in the rare circumstances where you'd actually use Arcum to drop anything but a nuclear bomb.
All that said, onward to my preliminary thoughts on new cards:
Over 100 spoilers yet to go as of this post. Let's see what else we get.
Firstly, I've been super busy this last month with work and final exams, so I've only played a handful of games on each of my decks. Scepter didn't come up at all, Dramatic Reversal did once and I loved it and I'm leaning toward adding it in officially but I want to test it more to be sure.
Will still be giving this one a playtest. Agree that the lack of "or less" really hurts it (albeit the only thing keeping it balanced with Trinket Mage), but in fairness 3cmc alone is nothing to scoff at: Staff, Rings, Metalworker are three game-ending targets that we pretty much always have a use for at any point in the game, and also to lesser importance we can fetch Tangle Wire, Trini, Thousand-Year, Bridge. I'm still skeptical and leaning against it, but it's "good enough" that I think it at least deserves a fair chance to prove itself if it can.
Like I said, it only came up once for me because I haven't had a chance to playtest much lately, but yes, at least from what little I've seen it appears very promising. Glad you're positive about it, your thoughts sound similar to mine (or what I expect mine to be after a few more games).
As I feared. For all the bashing we do of Null Brooch, and deservedly so, there's something to be said for having "Negate on a Stick" in a single artifact that is tutorable by Arcum. Suffering through the not-so-uncommon dead draw Stick, or having to blow a tutor just to find something to use with it, is a huge deal. And often enough you'll be in that situation where there's a spell on the stack that you just absolutely need to counter right that moment or the game is over (classic example is obviously Ad Nauseam), and only Brooch lets you tap Arcum and discard hand to Negate, no questions asked. When you get hit with Duress -> discard your countermagic -> Ad Nauseam, you'll want Brooch in your deck, not Stick.
It's the reason I just haven't been able to kick the Brooch. As much as I hate it, it does something important--countermagic on demand, with no "if"s (discarding your hand is a cost, but not an "if," because you can always do it)--that I've found literally no other card in the game capable of doing in the same way.
I'll still be giving the Stick its due testing. Like I said, it hasn't actually come up in any of my games yet because I haven't had more than a couple chances to play Arcum in the last month. But all the concerns I have about it now are the same ones I did before, and I'm not sure the printing of Dramatic Reversal by itself is enough to change my mind.
First of all, welcome to MTGS and thanks for posting in my thread (I see it's your first post on this account).
Secondly, unlike DR and Stick I have no ambivalence about this one, I just can't see it working in this deck. Nearly every artifact that hits our GY is either cmc2 (that is, our dorks) or cmc0 (myr tokens, as well as Lotus Petal). Saccing a cmc 2 dork with this on the field usually won't let us grab anything, as we have nothing in our GY of cmc 1 and only one card in the deck ends up in the GY as cmc 0. We could sac the Scrap Trawler itself to grab something cmc2, but then we're only getting that single use out of it, so it mind as well be a Junk Diver that lets us get any cmc.
I've also done a little playtesting on Braids and Breya and will be updating those lists. But, tomorrow. Too sleepy now.
It's the tokens that I was going for. He's a 3cmc artifact token machine, and this deck needs artifact tokens to make up for the relatively lower number of actual artifacts it runs (more on that re: metalworker). The only thing that can produce tokens as efficiently as he can is Myr Turbine and that's 5cmc. His "destroy" ability is relevant, too. I thought about Commander Daretti, but in my head I couldn't rationalize his +2, it's not bad or anything but pay 3R for a "Faithless Looting machine" I don't think is nearly as good as paying 1BR for a pseudo-Myr Turbine.
In a vacuum, I'd still prefer Etherium Sculptor; you're absolutely right that she's more vulnerable, but it's really tough to beat that 2cmc. If I had to rank the effects, it would be Sculptor > Cloud Key > Foundry Inspector. I'd say they're close enough, though, that if you really wanted to run Cloud Key instead of Sculptor, you absolutely could, and if there were room I'd probably run both.
Not yet. Again, if there's one thing I've learned over the last week, it's that Breya doesn't actually play as similar to Arcum as I originally expected; with so many instants, sorceries, enchantments, planeswalkers, and non-artifact combo pieces like Disciple of the Vault and Auriok Salvagers and Architect and Displacer and so forth, this deck in its current iteration only has about 30 artifacts in it...compared to my Arcum deck, which currently runs upwards of 60 artifacts. In my Arcum deck I can plop down Metalworker and 90%+ of the time tap him for 4-6 mana, which can then be used to help cast Arcum with his 3U cost. In this deck though I'm not sure I'd be able to consistently tap him for more than 2, and colorless mana isn't quite as useful here compared to generating WUBR for casting breya and color-based combo pieces like Foundry and so on to get those artifact tokens rolling ASAP.
Here's the list v2 that I'm currently testing:
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Arid Mesa
1x Badlands
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Buried Ruin
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Brass
1x City of Traitors
1x Command Tower
1x Flooded Strand
1x Forbidden Orchard
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Glimmervoid
1x Grand Coliseum
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Inventors' Fair
1x Mana Confluence
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Plateau
1x Polluted Delta
1x Reflecting Pool
1x Scrubland
1x Snow-Covered Island
1x Tundra
1x Underground Sea
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volcanic Island
1x Watery Grave
1x Windswept Heath
Enchantment (2)
1x Artificer's Intuition
1x Necropotence
1x Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
1x Saheeli Rai
Artifact (27)
1x Azorius Signet
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Chrome Mox
1x Clock of Omens
1x Dimir Signet
1x Grim Monolith
1x Krark-Clan Ironworks
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Mycosynth Lattice
1x Myr Turbine
1x Orzhov Signet
1x Pithing Needle
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Talisman of Dominance
1x Talisman of Progress
1x Thopter Foundry
1x Voltaic Key
Creature (8)
1x Auriok Salvagers
1x Disciple of the Vault
1x Eldrazi Displacer
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Goblin Welder
1x Grand Architect
1x Pili-Pala
1x Trinket Mage
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Anguished Unmaking
1x Brainstorm
1x Counterspell
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Flusterstorm
1x Mana Drain
1x Muddle the Mixture
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Negate
1x Remand
1x Shred Memory
1x Swan Song
1x Tainted Pact
1x Thirst for Knowledge
1x Vampiric Tutor
Sorcery (12)
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Fabricate
1x Gamble
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Ponder
1x Preordain
1x Reshape
1x Transmute Artifact
1x Vindicate
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Speaking of, here's my Breya thread in some shameless cross-promotion. To make that list, I started off with my Arcum list and retooled it from there, so you'll find many similarities between the two decks for that reason.
My expectations are still low, but I'll be interested to see whether WUBR artifacts with a killcard commander is more fun and powerful than mono-U artifacts with a tutor-on-a-stick commander. Arcum will remain dear to my heart no matter what, but if--big if--Breya really does prove to be the better choice, I won't be above making her my main deck and fleshing out my thread for her.