Spy of the Mimic

[MaximumC]

So, this happened.



What, you're not excited yet? Oh, that must because you forgot this little gem:



Here's how the two interact.

1. Have two creatures.
2. Equip one of them with Spy Papers.
3. Cast Mimic sacrificing the other one and get Emrakul.
4. Winnar

EDIT: It was brought to my attention that i'm an idiot. Spy Kit does not let you name Legendary creatures for some absurd reason (eg. Emrakul). So, I'm a bit at a loss for a true finisher that gets the job done. Blightsteel, maybe?

A few notes about the finer points of Mask of the Mimic, so that you understand how to use it. It targets anything, meaning you can pull out cards from your own deck based on your opponent's cards. Target a goyf = get your own. Since it targets, it cannot get copies of things that have Shroud or enemy permanents with Hexproof, meaning you cannot copy the opponent's Emrakul yourself. (Which sucks). You CAN target the creature you intend to sacrifice to pay the Mask's effect, but doing that is stupid because the spell will then be countered on resolution.

Is this strong enough for Legacy? Probably not, but maybe! It's kind of like Dreadstill, but instead of needing to have a Naught and a blue spell, you need to have two creatures, an artifact, a spell, and five mana spread out over up to three turns. Even so, if you pull it off, Emrakul pops out of your deck without needing to clutter it up with Show and Tells and nonsense like that.

Mask has another good thing going for it, which is that it can trigger ETB triggers off creatures and can tutor your own dorks to the battlefield if your opponent has one. So you can, potentially, play a deck full of The Most Played Creatures In Legacy and be pretty sure you can tutor up your own friends anytime your opponent has one out there.

Spy Papers makes Echoing Truth and Echoing Decay into sweepers, which is cool.

Here's a first draft:

SPY OF THE MIMIC

Combo (8)
4 Mask of the Mimic
4 Spy Papers

Control (12)
4 Force of Will
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Echoing Decay
1 Echoing Truth

Dig (6)
4 Brainstorm
2 Merchant Scroll

Creatures (13)
1 Tarmagoyf
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Baleful Strix
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Thought-Knot Seer
1 Gurmag Angler
1 SOME WIN CONDITION THAT IS NOT EMRAKUL (Blightsteel? Inkwell? Sphinx of the Steel Wind?)

Other Equipment (1)
1 Batterskull / Umezawa's Jitte

Mana (20)
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Savanna
1 Underground River
2 Yavimaya Coast

The mana base is a bit of a mess, but it gives you some hope that you can cast all of the dorks in your hand if it comes to that.

[Cire]

Can't get emrakul since it doens't have the names of legendary cards

[ahg113]

I think you're doing it wrong...

Spy Kit* - "has all names of nonlengendary creature cards..." So, it's a protection of multiples not legend ruling themselves, ergo, not getting Emmy from deck.

Fun design, wrong finisher.

Edit: Ninja'd

[MaximumC]

I think you're doing it wrong...

Spy Kit* - "has all names of nonlengendary creature cards..." So, it's a protection of multiples not legend ruling themselves, ergo, not getting Emmy from deck.

Fun design, wrong finisher.

Edit: Ninja'd

OH GOD

Thats the worst thing Wizards has ever done.

Well, is there a non-legendary finisher that anyone uses in decks that are not looking to go Natural Order -> Craterhoof?

[adrieng]

I think Worldspine Wurm is the best card, you want two in case of terminus or such, it is also good with cabal therapy.
Something like that might be ok. Though the equipment is expensive that's why I proposed a nic fit plan. BoP can be DRS but I don't think you will often kill with it.
You also need a way against revoker+mother ee might do it toxic deluge also.


4 Mask of the Mimic
4 Spy equipment
2 Merchant Scroll

3 Veteran Explorer
4 Birds of Paradise

3 Gitaxian Probe

2 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Abrupt Decay

3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Batterskull
2 Worldspine Wurm

2 Engineered Explosives

2 Island
2 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Swamp
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Dryad Arbor

[MaximumC]

I think Worldspine Wurm is the best card, you want two in case of terminus or such, it is also good with cabal therapy.
Something like that might be ok. Though the equipment is expensive that's why I proposed a nic fit plan. BoP can be DRS but I don't think you will often kill with it.
You also need a way against revoker+mother ee might do it toxic deluge also.


4 Mask of the Mimic
4 Spy equipment
2 Merchant Scroll

3 Veteran Explorer
4 Birds of Paradise

3 Gitaxian Probe

2 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Abrupt Decay

3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Batterskull
2 Worldspine Wurm

2 Engineered Explosives

2 Island
2 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Swamp
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
3 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

The advantage to using DRS and the other creatures over BOP and Explorer is that your Mimic is live in almost any matchup, though, combo or not.

[Fox]

I think you probably just Strip Mine them out of the game with Sundering Titans. It's not great, but it'd work.

[adrieng]

Yeah just doing some test it is way better in a tempo shell with some khalni garden to abuse cabal and mimic to fetch some TNN.

EDIT : I have found an interaction which makes the deck better with mask of the mimic +phyrexian dreadnought if you have an other creature when you cast the first nought in response to trigger you can cast mask of the mimic
to find an other nought and pay the cost of the 12/12 power to the first one by saccing the fetched one.

It gives something more spicy but with way more combo action and faster I have found the spy equipment to be a bit slowish



4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch

3 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
2 Trinket Mage

2 Worldspine Wurm

4 Brainstorm
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy

4 Mask of the Mimic
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Spy equipment
2 Merchant Scroll

3 Abrupt Decay

3 Khalni Garden
2 Bayou
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest

[rufus]

You could also look for utility stuff like Mystic Snake, Gilded Drake, or Ashen Rider.

....
Does it make sense to look at Young Pyromancer / Monestary Mentor and run Cornered market as well?

Playing Mask of the Mimic is begging to get 2-1 or 3-1 unless it's with hexproof stuff to copy.

[Maeglwn]

just grab blightsteel colossus with mask, swing for lethal the turn after

[adrieng]

the combo is too slow for this format from testing

[Cire]

Well, yeah, any combo that aims to get a big creature out needs to justify itself compared to reanimator. At best this deck can say - it's heavy in blue (could be monocolored) and doesn't use the graveyard.

[Dice_Box]

Could add the Polymorph combo too and run with token generators. In all though 5 mana and two cards, on top of a creature is not where I want to be.

[kombatkiwi]

The combo might be interesting in some sort of UR welder shell:

- If you draw Spy Kit without Mask you can weld it out or discard it to TFK or something.
- If you draw Mask without Spy Kit you can turn for example Welder + Strix into double welder which seems good.
- You can play expensive artifact creatures as tutor targets (Sundering Titan, Inkwell, Battlesphere etc).
- You can play a bunch of small utility creatures which are useful tutor targets as well as random bodies to put the Spy Kit on (Welder, Strix, Revoker, Trinket Mage, Painters Servant (???) etc).

[Poron]

Boseiju into Polymorph for a 1 card combo or Proteus Staff to be recursive.

It's a paradox bit its 1cc is its weakness. 1U would have been much better.

[Der_Endboss]

http://deck.tk/9YjR609s

//Main
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Blightsteel Colossus
3 Deathrite Shaman
2 True-Name Nemesis
4 Noble Hierarch

4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
1 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Will
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Mask of the Mimic

4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Spy Kit
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest

1 Forest
1 Island

2 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea

4 Wasteland


//Sideboard
SB: 1 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 1 Garruk Relentless
SB: 1 Invasive Surgery
SB: 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Meddling Mage
SB: 1 Path to Exile
SB: 1 Echoing Decay
SB: 1 Rest in Peace
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 True-Name Nemesis
SB: 1 Worldspine Wurm
SB: 1 Zealous Persecution

What do you think about something more solid

[Poron]

Go 4 TNN and play it as plan A

That + Hierarch and One equipment are a very fine clock to the victory.

Also TNN + Hirarch + Shaman is a very decent 6dmg x turn

[rufus]

Go 4 TNN and play it as plan A
...

Hmm... maybe in some kind of merfolk shell. Master of Waves is another piece that's got potential in combination with Mask of the Mimic.

[Fox]

I think @Cire hit the nail on the head, Mask of the Mimic makes more sense even as a 1x in traditional Reanimator (vigilance trick with Griselbrand, also puts him back in yard regardless of Mask resolving). Some other options which technically could be explored are Mishra's Factory in a Standstill deck (little is more annoying than having these hit by StP); here is the relevant oracle:

As an additional cost to cast Mask of the Mimic, sacrifice a creature.
Search your library for a card with the same name as target nontoken creature and put that card onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.

So this is a great way to troll someone trying to use Terminus as the new man-land comes in as a land, bonus points if you run Crucible or some way to get the Factory back from the yard. These decks will run Snapcaster so you're potentially reducing the second one's cost by one while staying at instant speed. This approach takes out the requirement for Spy Kit. The other card you might consider alongside Mask is Essence Flux; again, obvious synergy with SCM or Factory dodging Terminus.

There is always stuff like resetting Revoker/Meddling Mage, 3 mana double Nekrataal (evoke Shriekmaw -> Mask -> Shriekmaw that sticks around), the other evoke creatures, etc... Ignoring what Mask says, focusing on what it does instead, you can of course engage in shenanigans regardless of Mask being countered - looking for value "when X goes to graveyard do Y" triggers. That's really more of a trip down the rabbit's hole that can rapidly end at the edges of what is mechanically possible, meaning UBg - this is at least convenient because now we're talking about DRS as the starting point, but very few intrinsically understand such mechanics and fewer still want to run them as such things usually end with Dreadnoughts.

I guess as an honorable mention, I'll throw in Pox/madness style decks (really just heavy black decks with some blue stuff going on). You can do some interesting things built around symmetrical discard; like legacy knights featuring Haakon, Stromgald Scourge as a ~2x protected by Mask, found with Entomb - there is no reason to do this to yourself or your local meta over playing Reanimator, but you can't deny that Haakon/Mask and some knights in the yard doesn't sound fun especially with some good ole Sinkhole action.

A lot of the problem I see arising with Spy Kit is that you probably can't justify running more than one, so you're looking at E. Tutor primarily. If you were trying to find it efficiently with Welder, I think you'd just play Entomb...at which point you just tap your SDT hold priority and weld it out for a Wurmcoil targeted by Entomb (and even then we'd have stopped at Reanimator before getting to this point). Mask by itself featured in a Standstill shell (or even a Leovold one) is probably good enough to prize in a meta with too much UWR control, especially with the Factory trick. There has also been some brewing of Stax-type MUD decks with Inventor's Fair which might also support the 1x Spy Kit and an amount of blue for Mask'd finishers.

[knopfler]

And what about to play it in a high tide type decks?

You could change brain freezes and change how the deck defeats your opponents.

I would keep high tides to cast fast your equipment and instant and I would search Tidespout Tyrant. Once you have it on play you only need to casts spells until you bounce all your opponent permanents.

I'm sure that you will find more creatures that are not legendary that would help you to win easy the game. At this moment Tidespout Tyrant this is the best I can think at the moment.

The issue with your combo is that is a 2 pieces and one of them is a little expensive (2 manas to cast and 2 manas to equip as a sorcery speed) and your opponent can cast creatures removal instants in response you equip spy kit so you should think in try to protect creature is going to be sacrificed with spellkites or something like that but this is only a guess so you will need to test your build and check combo speed, combo victory percentage, combo fortitude. It's clear that most players won't never expect a combo like this one but reminds in some way to Natural Order

I would develop like a high tide deck variant with high tide to accelerate, using 2 manas lands like city of traitors or ancient tombs or maybe natural order deck but also with your combo.

Regards