Myr madness

[bruizar]

posted this over at themanadrain, my usual hideout.

MYR MADNESS

Land 18
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Tree of Tales
1 Vault of Whispers
Artifact Mana 10
1 Mox Opal
4 Metalworker
2 Grim Monolith
3 Palladium Myr

Disruption 14
4 Tangle Wire
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Engineered Explosives

Combo 22
4 Coretapper
4 Myr galvanizer
3 Sculpting Steel
2 Voltaic Key
3 Rings of Brightheart
3 Magistrate's Scepter
3 Staff of Domination

Sideboard
x All is Dust
x Umezawa´s Jitte
x Ensnaring Bridge
x Relic of Progenitus / Tormod's Crypt
x Contagion Clasp
x Engineered Explosives
x Crucible of Worlds?



SCARS OF MIRRODIN PICTURES
http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAG_SOM/MyrGalvanizer.jpghttp://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAG_SOM/PalladiumMyr.jpg

CARD EXPLANATION

Mox Opal - No card disadvantage and helps power Sunburst for Engineered Explosives
Metalworker - Leads to lots of mana. Combos with Staff of Domination to draw deck, take turns and beat your opponent to a pulp.
Grim Monolith - Efficient acceleration that can be played with Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors. Untaps with Voltaic Key.
Palladium Myr - More mana fixing, but also an infinite mana combo with Myr Galvanizer
Tangle Wire - Early disuption. Myr Galvanizer untaps your dudes for 1 mana, so try to tap as many myr as you can.
Chalice of the Void - Most of our relevant spells cost 3 mana. You can safely put this on 0 or 1, try to play atleast 1 coretapper or an energy chamber before playing it for 2. Don't play it for 3.
Trinisphere - Slows the game down, buys you time to assemble. Assymetrical due to mana fixers and lands.
Engineered Explosives - Dodges Counter Balance and resets the board.

Coretapper - These can alter Chalice of The Void, Engineered Explosives or sideboard Umezawa's Jitte. Primary use is adding counters to Magistrate's Scepter to take infinite turns.
Myr Galvanizer - Untaps coretapper for extra charge counters on magistrate's scepter. These also Untap Palladium Myr. If you have 2 Galvanizers and a Palladium Myr, you have infinite mana. If you have 2 Galvanizers and a Coretapper, you will be able to take infinite turns with Magistrate's Scepter.
Sculpting Steel - Sculpting Steel helps you combo quicker. It acts as Myr Galvanizer 5-7 or as Coretapper 5-7. Can also copy a Tangle Wire to stall the game more.
Voltaic Key - Voltaic Key can untap Grim Monolith, Palladium Myr, Coretapper and Myr Galvanizer. Chalice on one disables Voltaic Key, but I predict it is still good enough to run.
Rings of Brightheart - These are here to copy the effects of Coretapper, Magistrate's Scepter, Voltaic Key, Thousand Year Elixir and Staff of Domination.
Magistrate's Scepter - Gives you infinite turns when you combo out. Can also slow roll into extra turns (And therefore draws)
Staff of Domination - Gives you infinite mana, life, entire deck in hand, thus also turns and a gigantic army to attack with.

REMOVED
Energy Chamber - These help your Magistrate's Scepter, Chalice of The Void, Umezawa's Jitte or Engineered Explosives. It can also be used to make your Myrs a little beefier so that you can block creatures and live. Probably too slow but I can't play more coretappers
Thousand-Year Elixir - This can give you hasty creatures and untap a creature to add mana or get extra charge counters
Candelabra of Tawnos - A test to see if I can use it with Rishadan Ports to disrupt my opponent more. Also untaps City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb. This is on the chopping block.


INTERACTIONS

Rings of Brightheart makes Energy Chamber give Magistrate's Scepter 2 counters.
Rings of Brightheart makes Contagion Engine give 4 counters. (Or Contagion Clasp 2 Counters, also on Enchantress)
Rings of Brightheart makes Coretapper give 2 counters or 4 counters or 6 counters.
Rings of Brightheart gives 2 turns with Magistrate's Scepter
Myr Galvanizer Untaps Coretapper and Mutavault and Palladium Myr.
Myr Galvanizer is a Lord for Coretapper Mutavault and Palladium Myr.
Sculpting Steel can copy anything that will give you enough counters to take infinite turns, or copy Rings of Brightheart
Metalworker with Staff wins the game without giving the turn to your opponent (Sack coretappers and/or proliferate for an extra turn)

2x Myr Galvanizer and Palladium Myr is infinite mana
1x Myr Galvanizer, 1x Palladium Myr, 1x Sculpting Steel is infinite mana
2x Myr Galvanizer 2x Mutavault is infinite mana
1x Myr Galvanizer 1x Sculpting Steel 2x Mutavault is infinite mana
1x Metalworker, 1x Staff of Domination is infinite mana

Infinite mana can be sunk into Staff of Domination, Contagion Engine, Rishadan Port or Magistrate's Scepter

Myr Galvanizer + Coretapper + Rings of Brightheart + Magistrate's Scepter
Myr Galvanizer + Thousand Year Elixir + Coretapper + Magistrate's Scepter
Sculpting Steel + Coretapper + Thousand Year Elixir + Magistrate's Scepter
Etcetera, you get the idea, it doesn't really matter WHAT you draw, or WHAT they counter, you will achieve critical mass and combo out with any combination of spells.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAG5DA/energy_chamber.jpghttp://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGLOR/thousand-year_elixir.jpg http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/scarsofmirrodin/40pe37exgy_en.jpg

[rufus]

Assuming you want to keep the deck mono-artifact - and possibly even if not - you've basically got to suck it up and play
+4 Chalice of the Void
+4 Trinisphere
(and possibly more of that sort of stuff like Tanglewire)
otherwise your slowness will make you uncompetitive.

Barring some kind of revelation, I'm not sure that any of the proliferate cards will be legacy playable - if for no other reason that there aren't many 'counter' cards that are legacy playable without it, and the proliferate cards we've seen so far are expensive to play and use.

Infinite mana is typically a 3-card combo - two cards for the infinite mana, and one to abuse it. You'll note that there aren't any 3-card combos in the competitive decks sections of the site.

Getting two of a card into play is not that easy without tutor effects, especially if your opponent knows to wipe them out. The galvanizers are also slow to start up because of summoning sickness.

It's hard to see why you wouldn't want to splash a color - for example blue offers things like Stroke of Genius, Thoughtcast,Intuition,Copy Artifact and Thirst for Knowledge.

[bruizar]

Thoughtcast is probably worth running though I don't really feel like contaminating the mana base with blue requirements. I don't like stroke of genius, because you don't need it. Same for intuition. Thirst for Knowledge is good, though its better with Goblin Welder.

I changed the list and removed the Contagion Engines, added Voltaic Key, Chalices and Tangle Wires and a single All is Dust. When you draw your entire deck, you can cast all is dust to get rid of things like Moat. The way you win is by attacking every turn and resetting the board and taking infinite turns. If you need bigger creatures (time limit, 5 turns left), pump with Energy Chamber. Perhaps Umbral Mantle should be added to make the combo with Coretapper or Myr Galvanizer more redundant. Thorn of Amethyst / Sphere of Resistance should also be looked into.

I am well aware of the fact that competitive decks don't utilize 3 card combos normally (Survival/Loyal Retainers/Iona is one), and for good reason. They are usually too hard to assemble. The strategy of this deck resembles a pre-errata version of Umbral Brightheart combo. Just like Umbral Brightheart and 2 Card Monty, you simply overload on threat redundancy. By making everything combo with each other, it becomes nearly impossible to stop the combo.

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=18380

Chalice of the Void on 1 is really strong, you can even set it on 2 and 3 as long as y ou have an Energy Chamber or Coretapper on the table to get out of your own lock later. Umezawa's Jitte could be sided as creature removal. Currently, Mutavault seems like the weakest land and is the first up for replacement. If I played with Artifact Land I could go heavy on Mox Opals and play with mainboard Engineered Explosives, which is probably effective. I think Engineered Explosives is a must, because sunburst can dodge Counterbalance and blow it up. This means I will need to fool around with my mana base. Cloudpost is an option depending on what Glimmerpost will be, artifact lands are an options too but just for the color requirements on E.E..

[kkoie]

I think it looks like a great deck with lots of potential. I do have one concern. The deck has a heck of a lot of 3-drops. I see that grim monolith is a great way to power them out turn one, but I wonder if mox opal is a good call? It doesn't do anything until you have 2 other artifacts in play, and I think that it may be better served as either grim monolith's #3 and 4 or perhapes as something else? I'm trying to think of some other artifact mana that can be powered out quickly, without stringent requirements, and the only other thing I can think of would be lotus petals, but I think Grim Monolith might be better.

I guess my question is, why 2 mox opals instead of 4 grim monoliths?

[GGoober]

If this deck ever 'warps' the format, Null Rod will single-handedly destroy it. How does the Vintage player play around Null Rod?

Aside from that, I've always wanted to build a deck with Magistrate's Scepter. This is possibly the best deck with the best potential, although I doubt it'll ever get to tier1 simply because of the nature that it's all artifact (i.e. if it does ever become tier, it suffers as much hate as Dredge players will).

I think Voltaic Key is solid in the deck. It allows you to get more activations with Scepter and playing Key + Monolith would be ideal now. In my experience, the seemingly crappy Crystal Ball has actually been a good filtering card in stompy-ish decks. Stompy decks usually don't need too much card advantage, they really just need the right cards, and Crystal Ball has been looking good so far in testing.

However, I'm personally more intrigued with the new blue artifact creature lord's function in a Winter Orb deck. But that's for another discussion :)

[bruizar]

Updated the list and included some card explanations.

@crz87: In vintage there are several classes of workshop decks. There is Stax (Traditional Smokestack/Welder deck), Red Shop Aggro (Moon Effects/Gorilla Shaman/Goblin Welder), MUD (Big beatsticks (ravager, trike, metalworker, lodestones) )with oops I win from staff combo), Workshop Aggro (big beats, usually with Null Rod), RB Shop(Confidants and Welders) and 5c Stax (Workshop with broken cards In the Eye of Chaos, Tinker, Ancestral Recall, Demonic Tutor, etc.). Then there are several less played decks such as blue stax, UR Shop with Esperzoa and 2 Card Monty. The deck this list most closely resembles however is gone, since Time Vault is restricted and the errata made it functionally a different card. The idea was to untap Time Vault to skip a turn, then tap Time Vault to take an extra turn and use Rings of Brighthearth to take an extra turn, so you would have infinite turns. Time Vault was also a combo with flame fussilade back in the days but they restored Time Vault to its former glory and is restricted now.

These can all be divided into Null Rod or Non-Null Rod decks. The Non-Null Rod decks have access to cards like Metal Worker, Triskelion and Karn, Silver Golem while the Null Rod decks rely more on the beat down plan with Lodestone Golems and Removal in the form of Razormane Masticore and Duplicant. What all these decks have in common is the use of sphere effects (A combination of Thorns, Spheres of Resistance, Lodestone Golems, 1 Trinisphere). In general, every vintage deck has artifact hate (Hurkyll´s Recal, Ancient Grudge, Energy Flux) and Dredge hate. The thing is, players can´t prepare for everything, because that will influence there other matchups. You can´t go overboard with sideboard hate versus one matchup because you´ll lose all your other match ups. I think that this deck (If it works in a tournament environment) is a metagame deck. Yes, it dies horribly to Null Rod, or any other mass-bounce. However, I haven't seen artifact hate in legacy the way I've seen it in Vintage and even through all that hate, Workshop is among the best (if not THE best) archetype at the moment.

I am not sure if Crystal Ball will be good. With Key effects and Rings you can probably dig pretty fast, but it doesn´t draw into anything by itself. From my current list, the Energy Chambers seem like the most useless, even though I sort of like them for not requiring any investment after casting them. I think they are too slow, as you will want to quickly tap and untap permanents like coretapper and galvanizer to win. I think that it is too narrow. Perhaps maindeck All is Dust isn't even such a bad idea.

[perm]

This is a possibility just because of interchangeability of combos, but what you need to make sure is that the pieces are
A. Modular and
B. proportional.

having a card that can interact with 1 more card than another is infinitely more useful.

Also what you need is protection to slow your enemy down, whether it be wastelock, trinisphere, chalice etc.

[bruizar]

Striplock would mean moving away from the combo a bit but it would also protect me from opposing wastes.

Right now, I'm not sure if I want rings of brighthearth over energy chamber or not. Energy Chamber is cheap and works on it's own. Rings of Brighthearth copies effects but costs mana. Over all Rings is more versatile but also more mana intensive.

There are 41 hits on Myr in the Orb of Insight so perhaps we will get something else to help this deck out.

[zabuza]

I´m going to test this deck because it seems soooo funny. Anyways, why not including the red Mir wich made possible playing a single copy of banefire or so in order to finish the games?? You are going to draw your entire deck so 1 banefire would be enough.

Another suggestion es playing again mutavaults. they seems lot of synergystic with the entire deck.

I´´ test the deck and post mi conslucions. Any other idea or improvement??

[bruizar]

Hi Zabuza,

I´m waiting for some new myrs to be printed before I update the list. Will update soon!