UR Trash for Treasure - Toolbox Edition

[SakuraTribeAlderman]

What happens when you squish two fringe decks together? Blowouts. Blowouts happen.

Try this brew if you like big dumb idiots that generate value while being massive headaches to deal with. Try this brew if you like to tutor up silver bullets and skew matchups you have no business winning. Try this brew if you like the look on your opponent's face when for your first turn you shock in Steam Vents and discard Sharuum the Hegemon and Sundering Titan with your Faithless Looting.

Without further ado, this is our list:


//Jank Enabler:
4 Trash for Treasure

//Trinkets & Bullets:
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Expedition Map
4 Mox Opal
4 Engineered Explosives

//Dig & Discard
4 Faithless Looting
4 Izzet Charm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Artificer's Intuition
2 Trinket Mage
2 Treasure Mage

//Payoff:
2 Sundering Titan
2 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Sharuum the Hegemon

//Super Fun Mana Base:
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Steam Vents
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Flooded Strand
2 Mountain
1 Island
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Academy Ruins

//Sideboard:
3 Vandalblast
3 Dispel
3 Pyroclasm
2 Counterflux
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Platinum Angel
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind


If playing a deck with 4(!) Engineered Explosives and the ability to sacrifice a Sundering Titan to reanimate(/reassemble?) another Sundering Titan isn't for you, then I just don't know what to tell you. I guess you have no soul.

As you can probably guess, our plan A is to cast [cards]Trash for Treasure[/cars] to cheat out a game-winning threat. Luckily, some of the best big mana threats in the game happen to be artifact creatures, so we're not left wanting for targets. However, these targets also need resliency. A single Terminate shouldn't be able to undo everything, otherwise we just spent multiple resources finding, setting up, and resolving a Trash for Treasure. This leads us to threats that either resist or punish spot removal. Killing a Sundering Titan is basically incurring an Armageddon on yourself. Wurmcoil Engine leaves its components behind to clog up the board and stall until we can find another threat. Inkwell Leviathan has good old-fashioned shroud the way Garfield intended it, and Sharuum the Hegemon is great value – it fixes the 2-for-1 of casting a Trash for Treasure and resists removal by bringing a more resilient friend to the party. Of course, if the game goes long enough, it's not unreasonable to just cast these threats.

The dig package is mostly self-explanatory: find a Trash for Treasure while discarding targets along the way. Thirst for Knowledge gets a shoutout for being one of the few honest forms of card advantage in the deck, which is refreshing after a second or third Faithless Looting. Izzet Charm can also stand in as a removal spell in fast matchups and a Spell Pierce when we need to resolve our win in a pinch. Treasure Mage and Trinket Mage find the appropriate pieces while providing warm bodies for blocks.

Artificer's Intuition is a great addition to the shell, as it exactly sets up a Trash for Treasure. Discard your Sundering Titan, find a Mox Opal, and that's a wrap. Alternatively, we can tutor for value. Grafdigger's Cage is very well positioned in the current metagame. It stops Dredge, Nahiri, the Harbinger, Snapcaster Mage, Collected Company, and Chord of Calling. Worried about it cramping your game plan? Cage not doing enough? Just Trash it. Pithing Needle deals with several problem permanents, most notably Liliana of the Veil and the multiple manlands in tier 1 decks. Additionally, Expedition Map is a toolbox in and of itself: grab Urborg to jack up Engineered Explosives and Sundering Titan; grab Boseiju to force your win condition to resolve; grab Academy Ruins to loop map into every land in the deck, recover a threat or an answer, or create a soft lock with an Engineered Explosives. Speaking of the Explosives, they're a pretty important part of the deck. They stop aggro and answer other problematic permanents while turning on Mox Opal's Metalcraft at 0. This is big, as simply having a free artifact can make all the difference when trying to go off on time. This concession is why I've included 4 in my list.

Finally, the sideboard is a work in progress. The 3 Vandalblast are there because most of the relevant graveyard interaction in modern comes in the form of cheap artifacts (Relic of Progenitus, Grafdigger's Cage, and Tormod's Crypt). Nabbing them before they can do too much damage is crucial. Having as many as 3 is simply because I want one in my opening hand post-board. 3 Dispel and 2 Counterflux help to force through a Trash for Treasure while disrupting my opponent. 3 Pyroclasms come together with Engineered Explosives to stop aggro. Sphinx of the Steel Wind comes in against decks that struggle to remove it, like Jund and Grixis. (Liliana and Path to Exile would be why Sharuum is in the main over Sphinx.) Ad Nauseam, Infect, and other combo decks simply struggle to deal with a Platinum Angel. Finally, Chalice of the Void seriously harms several decks on 0 and 1. On 0, It counters Ancestral Vision, Pact of Negation, Summoner's Pact, Lotus Bloom, and plenty of Affinity's opening hands. Putting it on 1 makes it significantly harder for Infect and a slew of other aggressive & combo decks to win. This will usually hurt them more than it will us, because this list doesn't strictly need its 1 drops to win.

There's the deck and my reasoning behind it. Have fun putting an Inkwell Leviathan on board as early as turn 2, and thanks for any feedback.

[CaptainTwiddle]

Threw this together and it's definitely fun. The list actually felt much more tuned than I thought it would based on my first read over. Here are my initial thoughts after just a handful of games:

I'm not a huge fan of Trinket/Treasure Mage. I think it might be OK to cut them to x1 each. The same goes for Artificer's Intuition.

Some cards I'm contemplating trying to slot in:

Pentad Prism - it's solid ramp that provides a "free" artifact on to turn on metalcraft for Mox Opal and is additional sac fodder for Trash for Treasure.
Master Transmuter - it's super fragile, but it provides another means of cheating the artifatties into play and basically insures you bad karma when combined with Sundering Titan.
Ensnaring Bridge - Some decks just can't beat a Bridge. I you have Master Transmuter, you can remove the Bridge at will enable your fatties to attack or you can sac it to Trash for Treasure once you have a fatty in the yard that trumps their threats.
Platinum Emperion - I like this in the board in place of or alongside Platinum Angel. Burn needs to have Path to Exile or a piece of boarded artifact removal to beat the Emperion. It's just harder for them to handle than the Angel. (If using the Emperion, remember that you can't activate fetchlands while it's in play. Playing Urborg allows you to offset that somewhat. You also can't have shocklands enter untapped.)

[CaptainTwiddle]

This deck is one of the most fun I've played. After playing a few dozen games with the list in the OP, I started making some tweaks and have arrived at the following list:

Trash for Treasure
CREATURES
2 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Master Transmuter
1 Sharuum the Hegemon
2 Sundering Titan
1 Trinket Mage
2 Wurmcoil Engine
SPELLS
1 Artificer's Intuition
4 Engineered Explosives
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Expedition Map
4 Faithless Looting
4 Izzet Charm
4 Mox Opal
1 Pentad Prism
1 Pithing Needle
1 Taigam's Scheming
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Trash for Treasure
1 Unburial Rites
LAND
2 Island
2 Mountain
1 Academy Ruins
1 Battlefield Forge
4 Darksteel Citadel
1 Desolate Lighthouse
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Counterflux
1 Dispel
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Platinum Angel
1 Platinum Emperion
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3 Vandalblast

The core and strategy are the same, but I moved a few of the 1-ofs to the board and and added some pieces for redundancy. Master Transmuter and Unburial Rites are alternate ways to cheat the payoff artifact creatures into play. Taigam's Scheming lets you dump cards into the yard while digging for a Trash for Treasure. Pentad Prism can ramp you into hardcasting a Wurmcoil Engine or Sharuum, leaves itself behind to sac to Trash for Treasure, and can be cast early to turn on Mox Opal's metalcraft. The mana base has been adjusted and streamlined. I'm running fewer shock and fetch lands to avoid the collateral damage from Sundering Titan and included a Battlefield Forge to have slightly more reliable access to white so Sharuum can be hardcast and Unburial Rites can be flashed back, it also allows you to set Engineered Explosives to a higher number. Desolate Lighthouse rounds things out providing yet another means of digging for TfT while discarding artifacts.

[(nameless one)]

I think this new Kaladesh hulk could help this deck:



I usually hate "opponent choose" cards but both card draw and self mill (and CMC damage) is a win-win situation for this deck.

[CaptainTwiddle]

Combustible Gearhulk is cool, but I think it might be cuter than it is good in this deck. While card draw or self mill are both desirable, it's a 6 mana monster, which is where we're starting to look for payoff cards, not additional enablers. While a 6/6 first strike is certainly good, is it better than Wurmcoil Engine? I don't think so. The Gearhulk is really cool with Master Transmuter though, as it really does just turn into Ancestral Recall each turn, unless your opponent just wants to get burnt out.

I was thinking about our new planeswalker friend from Kaladesh...



I like the flavor, but I think she fits better in more of a Lantern Control type deck. The lists in this thread thus far are looking to be a bit more explosive and wouldn't be able to do a great job of protecting a planeswalker. I do love her suite of abilities though.

[AriiMoose]

This deck looks so damn sweet.

Now that Kaladesh is here are there any other cards we would want from it? Filigree Familiar looks like it could be a useful sac target, and could be decent against aggro. Also, is it worth splashing White for Refurbish?

[CaptainTwiddle]

This deck looks so damn sweet.

Now that Kaladesh is here are there any other cards we would want from it? Filigree Familiar looks like it could be a useful sac target, and could be decent against aggro. Also, is it worth splashing White for Refurbish?

I think Filigree Familiar is a reasonable choice for the sideboard against Burn or other aggro decks. Depending how you build the maindeck, it might be worth including in some number. As for Refurbish, I think Unburial Rites is a better choice. If you're dumping cards into the graveyard anyway, Rites costs the same as Refurbish when flashed back and it's not out of the question to hard cast, especially if you're running mana rocks (I've been playing a single Pentad Prism to help with color fixing).