Conspiracy Storm

Conspiracy Theorist combos with Artificer's Intuition to let you chain through a large number of Lotus Petal, Mox Opal, Chrome Mox and Lion's Eye Diamond to build storm and then go off using LED mana.

It also turns Lion's Eye Diamond into Black Lotus, letting you use the mana to cast a card in hand.

It turns Gamble into Demonic Tutor, letting you get any card in your deck for 1 mana without any drawback of losing the card.

LED+Gamble already works well in an Echo of Eons storm shell. Theorist makes each card even better even without the Artificer combo. Without Theorist, Artificer's fair mode still lets you convert Baubles into LEDs or SB pieces.


//Lands: 14
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tundra
1 Plateau
1 Island
1 Mountain

//Artifacts: 20
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
1 Chrome Mox
3 Defense Grid

//Creatures: 4
4 Conspiracy Theorist

//Enchantments: 4
4 Artificer's Intuition

//Spells: 18
4 Gamble
4 Brainstorm
4 Burning Wish
3 Orim's Chant
3 Echo of Eons

//Rough Sideboard: 15
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Echo of Eons
1 Pulverize
1 Pyroclasm
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
3 Wear // Tear
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Silence
1 Chain of Vapor


The combo engines are fragile to instant speed interaction. Echo gives them cards. Theorist dies to everything. But the combo engines are also very light on mana, which makes them easier to protect using proactive shields like Orim's Chant and Defense Grid.

I see many problems (sadly, bc the engine si really cool), mainly the fragility as you mentioned on top on being a a+b with not many upside value.
Maybe in a painter lists, where you can exploit Intuition way more?
Another possibility, for more consistency and midrange, could be play Emry and 2-3 Sevinne reclamation, amazing with led and can recur both pieces of the combo (or grid), t3feri too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Memories of the Time

I see many problems (sadly, bc the engine si really cool), mainly the fragility as you mentioned on top on being a a+b with not many upside value.
Maybe in a painter lists, where you can exploit Intuition way more?
Another possibility, for more consistency and midrange, could be play Emry and 2-3 Sevinne reclamation, amazing with led and can recur both pieces of the combo (or grid), t3feri too.

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I started with 3 Emry and cut it. Could be good. Instead I went for the Gamble + LED + Echo + Wish shell, which is often enough to storm kill on its own without either Theorist or Intuition. I didn't have enough room to make that other shell good and still keep Emry.

Yeah the A+B plan is fragile.
The upside of this version is the deck can storm kill as early as turn 1 without either A or B. A and B each make those other lines better. Theorist powers up Gamble and LED. Intuition converts bad artifacts into LED (often the bottleneck because Wish finds Echo). Grid and Silence both protect the Echo storm lines well. There's a lot of synergy to make up for the fragility of A+B.

I've been brewing with versions of Echo storm for a while now. Before I was using Song of Creation as the 2nd engine to Echo/Wish. That shell was quite good, the most limiting part being that Song cost too much mana and demanded RUG colors (Veil does not protect it from REB, which was everywhere in the Oko meta). This version tries to do sort of the same thing with Theorist+Artificer (convert 0 cmc artifacts into storm kill), but has less demanding mana and lets you play Jeskai colors for Silence effects (which protects from a wider range of hate on the combo turn than Veil can).

I don't know if that's enough to be viable over a grindier midrange version with Sevinne and Emry. Needs testing.

Is there an argument to playing faithless looting instead or addition to brainstorm?
Or hope of giraphur instead of silence?

I really want cosmic intervention in here.

These ideas all deserve testing. I'll need to run test a couple dozen matches and get a feel for where the weaknesses are for how to tweak the support slots.

Faithless Looting has better synergy with Echo and Theorist, though digs less deep on its own. The card disadvantage may hurt the natural storm lines that need a critical mass of spells cast to win. With Looting over Brainstorm I can legitimately consider sleeving up Boros Storm with 2 Plateau as the ultimate troll move. "0 Underground Sea, 2 Plateau, Tendrils you".

Hope of Ghirapur seems good. At the worst it'll draw removal off Theorist. In the Song version I never maindecked Hope to dodge G1 creature removal. Here we are open to removal anyway so why not maindeck Hope. Hope could mean cutting white for better mana and makes Emry look better.

With Conspiracy Theorist only letting you exile 1 card per discard instance, do we exile burning wish off LED to go up on mana or how do we fetch the tendrils for the storm kill? Also there's kinda a nombo between LED and Artificer's Intuition since we need to empty the hand before we can enter the pay-for-ability step, so we can only ever end the chain with LED.

I think we need a second wincon other than relying on our 2/2 sticking on board, preferably something fetchable with Artificer's Intuition, but I couldn't find anything that seemed any thing that fit the bill. Or even something that could tutor up Burning Wish off Artificer's. I just don't like the idea of having to rely on echo finding me the right cards if I'm committing my fragile combo to the board. I'd suggest Mentor again, but this isn't like breach where they're going to cut their removal.

I do really like the chain though.

Engineered Explosives might be worth looking at since It's fetchable and we can make 5 colors with moxen (or 3 normally).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemon

With Conspiracy Theorist only letting you exile 1 card per discard instance, do we exile burning wish off LED to go up on mana or how do we fetch the tendrils for the storm kill? Also there's kinda a nombo between LED and Artificer's Intuition since we need to empty the hand before we can enter the pay-for-ability step, so we can only ever end the chain with LED. ...

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It takes a little bootstrapping, but you can stack the LED activation over the AI activation so that the AI card ends up in hand with the LED mana, and, with Elixir of Immortality, it's even infinite mana, life, and storm. Armed with that something like chromatic star draws the whole deck, or the deck can burn out with Walking Ballista.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rufus

with Elixir of Immortality, it's even infinite mana, life, and storm. Armed with that something like chromatic star draws the whole deck, or the deck can burn out with Walking Ballista.

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Can you walk me through how this works? I'm having trouble visualizing this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemon

Can you walk me through how this works? I'm having trouble visualizing this.

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Suppose that you have Conspiracy Theorist and Artificer's Intuition in Play, an artifact in hand, and LEDs and the Elixir in the library, and UUU free.

1. Activate AI discarding the artifact, find LED when it resolves.
2. Activate AI discarding the LED and find another LED when it resolves.
3. Cast the LED you discarded from Exile.
4. Activate AI discarding LED, and then activate the LED that you have in play for UUU in response. Find LED #3 when it resolves.
5. Cast LED from exile.
6. Activate AI discarding LED#3, and then activate the LED that you have in play for UUU in response. Find Elixir of Immortality when it resolves.
7. Cast LED#3 from exile.
8. Activate AI discarding Elixir, and then activate the LED that you have in play for UUU in response. Find LED or Lotus Petal when it resolves.
9. Cast Elixir of Immortality from exile for :1:
10. Activate Elixir of Immortality for :2:

Now you have an artifact (LED or Lotus Petal) in hand, have gained net +1 mana, 4 storm, and 5 life, and the LEDs and Elixir that you used are back in the library so the cycle can be repeated. That loop can be repeated until there's a lot of mana floating.

Oh I like this. And after you loop 3 times you can crack 1 of the LED for R and grab a Pyrite Spellbomb as your random last artifact for 2 damage per loop.

EDIT: Just did a bunch of testing, and this is a deterministic loop for infinite damage, life, and storm.

Start state: UUU available, both the above combo in play and any artifact in hand.
Discard artifact to AI for LED (UU)
Discard LED to AI for LED (U)
Cast LED
Discard LED to AI for LED hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUU)
Cast LED
Discard LED to AI for Elixir of Immortality hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUUUU)
Cast LED
Discard Elixir of Immortality to AI for Lotus Petal hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUUUUUU)
Cast Elixir of Immortality and crack it (UUUU)
Discard Petal to AI for LED (UUU)
Cast Petal and crack for R (UUUR) (we're now at state 2 with UR extra)
Discard LED to AI for LED (UUR)
Cast LED
Discard LED to AI for LED hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUUUR)
Cast LED
Discard LED to AI for Elixir of Immortality hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUUUUUR)
Cast LED
Discard Elixir of Immortality to AI for Pyrite Spellbomb hold priority crack LED for UUU (UUUUUUUUR)
Cast Elixir of Immortality and crack it (UUUUUR)
Discard Pyrite Spellbomb to AI for LED (UUUUR)
Cast and crack Pyrite Spellbomb for 2 damage (UUU) (we're now back at the start)

We can keep looping that order (LED, LED, LED, Elixir, Petal, LED, LED, LED, Elixir, Pyrite).
This only takes UU to start if our starting artifact can make blue mana (Petal, Mox, Etc) or if we have an LED in hand already.

EDIT2:
This is my proposed deck list:

4 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tundra
1 Island
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace

3 Gamble
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Echo of Eons

4 Silence
2 Orim's Chant
3 Defense Grid

4 Conspiracy Theorist
4 Artificer's Intuition

4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
1 Elixir of Immortality
2 Pyrite Spellbomb

// Sideboard
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pithing Needle
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Grapeshot