[Deck] Green Machine

[iOWN]

I built this deck about a week and a half ago when I was pondering how to turn Transmute Artifact into an almost-Tinker. The idea was to make use of the LP abilities of creatures like Su-Chi and Cathodion, allowing Transmute to find much bigger ones. Granted, it still can't recreate Tinker, but it can try.

I've made some changes since then and have goldfished it a lot, but unfortunately can't find anyone to test it with and so the 'progress' is kind of stagnant. I have played it online a little and it seems to have a lot of potential, but right now it really needs help from other people on deciding and fixing the deck choices.


// Lands
2 [R] Underground Sea
3 [R] Tropical Island
1 [MR] Seat of the Synod
1 [R] Bayou
1 [MR] Tree of Tales
1 [TE] Island (3)
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [US] Gaea's Cradle
1 [PC] Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [US] Forest (1)

// Creatures
4 [AQ] Su-Chi
4 [P2] Sea Drake
3 [TO] Arrogant Wurm
1 [MR] Solemn Simulacrum
4 [FD] Trinket Mage
1 [DS] Sundering Titan

// Spells
1 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
3 [AQ] Transmute Artifact
1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
1 [TSP] Lotus Bloom
2 [RAV] Life from the Loam
2 [FD] Crucible of Worlds
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [LG] Sylvan Library

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
SB: 4 [UD] Phyrexian Negator
SB: 1 [ON] Words of Wilding
SB: 3 [AP] Pernicious Deed
SB: 3 [UL] Engineered Plague

This is an odd-looking deck on paper, so I'll start with the card choices before strategy.

Fetches, Duals, Basics: This is the given part of the land base. This deck isn't that color intensive, but the few cards that are (Explosives, Transmute) do want their mana. Most of the cards only need one colored mana to play or are artifacts.

Artifact Lands: To be fetched by Trinket Mage. These also can be sacrificed or found by Transmute Artifact.

Ancient Tomb: Lets you play out all the big beefy spells.

Gaea's Cradle: This deck isn't as creature-heavy as I had initially planned, but Cradle is still a decent mid to late game card which is an Ancient Tomb in color.

Academy Ruins: I absolutely love this card. It recurs threats, cards sacrificed to TA, removal, and more!

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: This patches up the manabase some, and allows all those nonbasics to tap for one without any negative effect.

2/2 between Loam and Crucible: Both cards serve the same purpose of stabilizing mana, but both have their own advantages. Loam is essentially uncounterable, and can dredge more lands into your graveyard (and artifacts, to return via Ruins). Crucible costs more, but ends up being less intensive, and can be fetched out by TA.

Transmute Artifact: Because it has cool art. Really, I looove that art! Oh, and it kind of has a deck based around it.

Transmute Su-Chi --> Sundering Titan, which comes and bashes everything in play. Luckily it does nothing to the nonbasics, and you have some mana stabilization to fix up.

Transmute anything --> Lotus Bloom, to net 1 mana! Wow!

Transmute Solemn Simulacrum --> Draw a card and get something big.

Transmute something --> Solemn Simulacrum, to manafix.

It would be better if there was some equipment in here (explain later) but it is still pretty nice.

Sylvan Library: This fixes some consistency issues, and is pretty nice in dredging Loam.

Cabal Therapy: Therapy got maindeck over Chalice because it is a little faster, better with Loam, and can abuse the leaves play effects just as much as TA.

Lion's Eye Diamond: I've found this a semi-useful Trinket Mage target. It doesn't care about Loam, is good in conjunction with TA, and plays Arrogant Wurm.

Engineered Explosives: Three color deck, Trinket Mage, Academy Ruins... is there a reason that this shouldn't be played?

Trinket Mage: One of my favorite cards in here; it can fix mana, accelerate/chain into Wurms, and get any utility.

Su-Chi: Tricks with TA and Cabal Therapy; I've found it's mana and body to be a bit more abusable than Cathodion.

Sea Drake: At first I thought this would be a great way to beat with evasion (WHERE ARE THE EQUIPS), but without 8 Ancient Tombs I'm not finding it quite so appealing. Fetchlands still give an additional way to negate the drawback, though.

Arrogant Wurm: Again, right now this will look a little messed. It goes with LED and was supposed to go with Mask of Memory. (")

Sundering Titan = Darksteel Colossus, only about 10 bajillion times better.

The sideboard basically consists of anticombo tools (Chalice comes in, as does Negator), and then the rest of the slots are dedicated to stopping faster aggro decks. Although the creature base makes it look like an artifact aggro/Faerie Stompy type deck, it really isn't, being more combo/aggro-control deck that disrupts the opponent a bit and randomly throws a huge threat onto the board.

I'm starting to think a change in the creature base may be beneficial. Sea Drake isn't playing so hot, but it may change with equipment, and Arrogant Wurm is seeming too circumstantial. I'm thinking Phantom Centaur and more Solemn S.'s might be an optimal choice.

Lastly, it hasn't been tested at all, but two cards I've been thinking of are Crop Rotation, and Volrath's Stronghold. Stronghold would make every single threat recurrable, and Rotation can either mana fix or fetch utility lands when needed.

And...
Okay. Now you may have noticed that equipment seems to be missing from that list. Good observation! Yeah, that needs to be fixed. This is one of the main issues right now, and I can't find any way to make room to fit some in without completely screwing the deck up. I wanted to run something like Angel Stompy with Mask of Memory, Sword of Fire and Ice, and Jitte, which all would fit nicely in with everything else. Just what to cut so they still have use?...

On another note, MWS seems to randomly be throwing fits, sometimes, and giving horrible distribution of lands - I'm going to assume it is just the shuffler (...damn shuffler!) because when that doesn't happen it plays out very nicely.

So I think that would be everything about the deck so far. It is in need of major plastic surgery, so any advice or constructive criticism would be appreciated.

[Eldariel]

I've tried to build a similar deck but I ended up in a more 5/3ish direction (running Cathodions in addition to Su-Chis along with Welders). Anyway, I really think the Arrogant Wurms need to go if you're running only LED and Trinket to get it out. I think, you'd want a Slaver there somewhere. Also, Titan's chumpblockability appears an issue, considered something big with trample?

Anyway, Cathodion is something to consider for more Transmutability (for 2UU, you can turn it into a DSC). I've personally found Thirst for Knowledge pretty good here and with the amount of mana you can produce and the manacosts of your creatures, Rush for Knowledge, as janky as it sounds, tends to draw a lot of cards (usually 4 or so).


But I think your list needs a tad bit of focus there, Life and Transmute seem to drag the deck to bit different directions. Also the lack of tutoring/draw outside Library is an issue, Sensei's Divining Top?

Anyway, cards I think are right outside the manabase:
Trinket Mage
Su-Chi
Solemn Simulacrum
Sundering Titan
Transmute Artifact
Engineered Explosives
Lotus Bloom

For the rest, Crucible might want to do a bit more than it presently does, Life and Library force you into otherwise rather irrelevant green, Cabal Therapy seems incredibly random, but especially if Cathodion got added, I can appreciate the 'sacrifice this guy for mana'-play to power out large critters. Still, for combo-hate, I'd imagine you could rather find some artifacts seeing that you run Trinket AND Transmute to get artis. 1-2 Chalices MD? Transmuting a Chalice at 0 in isn't a stupid play and costs 0, and then there's the whole Trinket Chalice thingy. Also, if Chalice is getting prohibitive, you can Transmute it into something else.

I think you can get a deck that produces lots of mana out of this, but you need means to do crazy stuff with that mana. Your low curve seems to leave you short sometimes, unable to seal the game just because you have nothing broken to do with your mana (no chainable draw, no huge bombs, no monster recursion, etc.)

[Mirrislegend]

So now that Mask of Memory isnt in the decklist, why is Arrogant Wurm still in there?

[iOWN]

Although the deck was originally made because of Transmute Artifact, it wasn't really supposed to be centric around it. I am however seeing the points about what the deck can and can't do.


I think you can get a deck that produces lots of mana out of this, but you need means to do crazy stuff with that mana. Your low curve seems to leave you short sometimes, unable to seal the game just because you have nothing broken to do with your mana (no chainable draw, no huge bombs, no monster recursion, etc.)

Hm, this point definitely got me thinking. As long as you have Transmute to fetch whatever, you can use that mana, but I guess I hadn't included anything that would work noticeably well that would typically sit in hand. When I think broken, I think Affinity. Maybe a 5/3ish Affinity build that sacrifices the early game explosiveness for immunity to hate and saves the explosiveness till later in the game? Affinity would also offer some nice Transmute creatures - namely Myr Enforcer but also anything with Modular.

Top seems like a really solid choice, and would probably replace Library. I hadn't realized that 4 Tops would really be 8, because of Trinket Mage. The only is that it would mean more vulnerability to Pithing Needle, but I guess that can be handled.

I do love Chalice, but there just wasn't a reason to maindeck it as extra combo hate when it couldn't always be played due to the low curve. If the Affinity idea comes through than one might make it maindeck with the rest staying the SB (I'd predict Affinity is even more fragile around it).

Mirrislegend: Exactly. :)

I had been wanting to make room for Masks, but just couldn't find a place. They could still be chained through Trinket Mage, but it is true that it would be safe to replace them with a less situational creature.