3.5 Colorless Card Monte
Deck Designer: Daniel Worobec
Format: Legacy
Last Updated: February 10, 2023
3.5 Colorless Card Monte (Version 1.0)
Main Deck:
4x Karn, the Great Creator
4x Grindstone
4x Painter’s Servant
4x Dark Depths
4x Thespian’s Stage
4x Phyrexian Dreadnought
4x The Mycosynth Gardens
4x Serum Powder
1x Expedition Map
4x Grim Monolith
4x Lion’s Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
4x Mox Opal
4x Urza’s Saga
4x Ancient Tomb
3x City of Traitors
Sideboard:
1x Mycosynth Lattice
1x Liquimetal Coating
1x Torpor Orb
1x Expedition Map
1x Helm of Obedience
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Tormod’s Crypt
2x Pithing Needle
1x The Stone Brain
1x Haywire Mite
Introduction
The idea behind 3.5 Colorless Card Monte is to put a bunch of colorless game winning combos into one deck along with a bunch of mana to enable it. The deck features three combos: Grindstone/Painter’s Servant, Dark Depths/Thespian’s Stage, Phyrexian Dreadnought/The Mycosynth Gardens and the one card combo (the 0.5) Karn, the Great Creator (Mycosynth Lattice lock) and 35 mana sources (along with 4x Serum Powder) to enable one or more combinations to work. The idea behind it is that you keep taking mulligans along with Serum Powder till you get one or more combos into your hand. Though the deck has little disruption and evasion, the idea is to keep applying pressure, constantly playing threat after threat till the game is over. The sideboard can be utilized for an additional combo with Leyline of the Void and Helm of Obedience that are located in the sideboard.
The cards of 3.5 Colorless Card Monte
Grindstone/Painter’s Servant: Classic mill the opponent’s deck combo
Dark Depths/Thespian’s Stage: Create a 20/20 Flying Indestructible, Marit Lage token. Thespian’s Stage can also produce mana.
Phyrexian Dreadnought/The Mycosynth Gardens: Cast Phyrexian Dreadnought, copy it with The Mycosynth Gardens then sacrifice the copy to the original Phyrexian Dreadnought. The original can then be copied by future The Mycosynth Gardens. The Mycosynth Gardens can also be used as a mana source as well as other utilities.
Karn, the Great Creator: Use Karn, the Great Creator’s last ability to wish for a Mycosynth Lattice is usually enough to lock the opponent out of the game. Karn, the Great Creator has other uses for enabling other combos as well as some disruption and/or evasion and can get cards exiled with Serum Powder.
Serum Powder: Used to help start the opening hand with one or more card combinations with mulligans. Can also be used as a mana source.
Expedition Map: Can be used to get a combo land card or other mana source.
Urza’s Saga: Mana source. Alternate win condition with Construct tokens. Last ability can be used to tutor for Grindstone, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Expedition Map or other artifact mana source.
Grim Monolith, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Mox Opal: Fast mana.
Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors: Mana sources.
Sideboard Cards
Mycosynth Lattice: Wished for by Karn, the Great Creator and combos with Karn to create a lock.
Liquimetal Coating: Wished for by Karn, the Great Creator and combos with Karn to destroy lands. Liquimetal Coating can also make Dark Depths into an artifact to be copied with The Mycosynth Gardens to create a Marit Lage token.
Torpor Orb: For stopping opponent win conditions as well as preventing your own Phyrexian Dreadnought’s sacrifice ability. Wishable by Karn, the Great Creator
Expedition Map: Wishable by Karn, the Great Creator and see above.
Helm of Obedience: Wishable by Karn, the Great Creator for an addition game winning combo when a Leyline of the Void is on the battlefield.
Leyline of the Void: Sideboard as graveyard hate and also combos with Helm of Obedience. Good to get with Serum Powder.
Tormod’s Crypt: Graveyard hate. Can also be wished for by Karn, the Great Creator and/or tutored for with Urza’s Saga.
Pithing Needle: More hate to stop the opponent. Can also be wished for by Karn, the Great Creator and/or tutored for with Urza’s Saga.
The Stone Brain: More hate that can stop combo decks. Can also be wished for and reoccurred with Karn, the Great Creator.
Haywire Mite: Utility that can be wished for by Karn, the Great Creator and/or tutored with Urza’s Saga.
Other
3.5 Colorless Card Monte can be altered into 4.5 Card Monte by taking out the 4x Grim Monolith and adding 4x Leyline of the Void.
I'm looking at a similar colorless approach to garden saga Dreadnought but I also included chalice of the void and then cavern of souls to cast Dreadnought onto chalice
In these hard times, I think that 4 Torpor Orb intestad of 4 Serum Powder is a better choice. You're also missing a Shadowspear, that can easly take the place of one Grindstone to move in the sideboard.
Do you really need 4 Lion's Eye Diamond? You can just play one of them to gain some space for an additional City of Traitors, an Inventors' Fair and a Soul-Guide Lantern to help you PainterStone combo against some decks. You also have space for a Welding Jar, a Pithing Needle or an Haywire Mite, expecially if you don't like the idea of wasting some space for two lands.
So, Dreadnought and Painter do not play nicely together. One attacks life total (completely unsupported by Painter stuff) and the other attacks library total (completely unsupported by Nought stuff). The tech each combo uses doesn't work together...like we have a Trinket Mage'y overlap kind of happening with the lands and Karn, but that's the end of it.
We also have to ask what exactly the point of Mycosynth is in Painter. Copying a Painter gives you a 1/3 that can't paint. Copying a Grindstone is pointless.
On the Dreadnought side, this is not how Mycosynth works. There is zero point to Rain of Salt'ing yourself (Saga dies, Mycosynth as Stifle + sac the tutored Nought) into a predictable removal spell. This is how Mycosynth works: EoT Dress Down -> untap and make land drop #3 -> play Dreadnought -> always hold up Mycosynth to copy Nought in response to kill spell.
Knowing how little Painter and Nought work together, we need to take a moment and recognize just how many slots are lost. Contrast that slot investment to being a 4x Saga deck + Expedition Map x1. Understand the interaction of Stage copy Saga -> turn into Mountain for perma-token maker. You need exactly one slot invested in Stage. You don't need to invest a second slot into a Depths...but you can I guess...knowing that Mycosynth can copy a Map and turn itself into a way to maximize ability to 20/20.
So drop the Dreadnought package and invest just 2 slots into Depths/Stage (knowing that Stage copy Saga is the better line). Spend slots on playing Painter consistently and with redundance (Welder-types) +/- abusing banned card Timetwister (Echo/LED). Your deck isn't great at using Mycosynth, consider something else unless you have a reason to copy LED.
I've done this style before because the rental limit on cardhoarder wouldn't let me run my more typical version with force.
https://mtgmelee.com/Decklist/View/87230
Planeswalker 4 cards
4 Karn, the Great Creator
Creature 16 cards
4 Eater of Days
4 Goblin Engineer
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Painter's Servant
Artifact 20 cards
4 Scroll of Fate
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Torpor Orb
4 Grindstone
4 Grim Monolith
Land 20 cards
5 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Prismatic Vista
4 Wasteland
3 City of Traitors
Sideboard 15 cards
3 Leyline of the Void
3 Blood Moon
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Illusionary Mask
I went 1-3 but the components actually do work better together than fox will tell you, but that's because fox is very insistent you play either their exact Dreadstill 75 or you don't play Dreadnought at all.
Close, but no. What I will always say is that you need to do something better than just trying to face people with 12/12s, because that is not competitive. The question is always whether or not you can play differently/can you force the opponent to play a not-12/12 subgame. That subgame is pretty much always revolves around CA, since Nought requires that you fix that deficit (which means blue cards). The fix is not adding packages that don't work at all with the plan, like Painter.Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit
If you have Ark4n's patreon you can watch our 4-1 league with UR Stiflenought from yesterday. Here's the list:
4x Nought
4x DRC
1x Lavamancer
2x Currency Converter
1x Phyrexian Furnace (re-read DRC)
2x Scroll of Fate
4x Dress Down
4x Stifle
4x Brainstorm
4x FoW
4x Bolt
3x Minor Misstep
4x Vista
4x Tarn
4x Mycosynth
3x Island
2x Saga
2x Wasteland
2x Otawara
1x Mountain
1x Volcanic Island
Main issue with the deck is that Mycosynth #4 needed to be Mountain #2, but the point was to test Mycosynth. The thing about CA is that is can come from a lot of places. Just 4x Dress Down was never good enough, but when you add a land that blanks removal + decreases mulls (more access to color) + can turn itself into a CA artifact with useful text, suddenly we have something new to think about. Unlike trying to augment Dress Down with unreliable and extremely expensive mana bases + Uro/Kroxa to achieve sufficient CA, we have everything in the deck counting to 20 including non-combat. That shared plan is not something an opponent can stop [everything is on the same count to 20 plan], they just need to keep trading on my terms until they can't [relentless hammering that plan thanks to CA], and they don't get mana variance outs [basics and 83.5% odds to open a hand with a minimum of 2x lands]. Notice how this is better than "I sure hope they don't Surgical my Noughts and either interact with my Titan's GY or mana while I don't do anything meaningful on 1 mana" out of other Stiflenought decks.
As far as the minor optimizations go, you don't need the 4th copy of Nought or Stifle. Misstep is pretty bad, but generally feels better than Daze (which you shouldn't run with Mycosynth). The fourth copy of Dress Down is also a little suspect with Saga. The question is really if this enough CA hidden in the mana base to pass on Standstill. Furthermore, does Shark'nado x2 over Stifle #4 and Dress Down #4 change the CA equation (without Standstill). After that just swap Dreadnought #4 to Lavamancer #2 and test 2x FoN over 2x copies of Misstep to determine max winrate.
The only other question with Mycosynth is if other Ux color combos can use Saga as well as UR's count to 20 can (so that Mycosynth has access to CA pathway). The most promising is UW b/c you easily get to extra colors for Ending without picking up loss percent to manabase.
The viability of any Dreadnought deck cannot be completely matchup dependent if you want to compete in this format - and that means having access to a meaningful CA subgame. If Mycosynth gets us there, that's great...otherwise we have to stick with trimming cantrips to make room for the raw CA (Standstill vs something less powerful like Iteration). The thing about having 23 lands at baseline + game effects that work with Standstill, is that Standstill is probably still the way to go. That said, the combination of cards like Otawara, Shark'nado, and Timeless create huge problems for other decks in the context of Currency Converter. Notice how legacy decks are very poorly equipped to handle highly asymmetric construction featuring themes like "no casting spells" or "yeah uh Converter is a 1 mana Gideon of the 2/2s".
So bringing this back to Painter, you guys need to stay on your plan. You're not a Dreadnought deck, and you're not blue.
Yeah yeah, a whole lot of words to say you've never played the cards and have no clue what you're talking about. Classic Fox.
Literally on the discord call, calling the shots with Ark4n.... Literally making the deck....
So keep going. Tell us all about the wonders of losing a Saga to age 3, then losing a second land to double as a Stifle, then sacrificing the tutored Nought and losing everything to 1x Plow. Then tell us how it's going to work out great stacking Torpor Orb effects while also getting Wasteland'd out of the format when you're not Rain of Salting yourself.
Your list above is trash my guy. We need zero testing to know exactly how it has to go down.
Put your mouth where your money is. You just floated a horrid idea with 2k completely wasted on City and Monolith.
Back to the OP topic: this is a fun idea, but it has a lot of anti-synergy and non-overlapping combos without much card draw or card selection. It looks very much luck of the draw to see which combo you can randomly open. Maybe that is the ppoint of the deck as 3.5 card Monte? But it feels too random.
You could keep the same ideas while increasing synergy. For example, if you have Karn and Saga then they should be exploited to help assemble your combos & reduce nonbo draws.
- You can put 1 Painter & 1 Grindstone in the SB to get with Karn
- Use Expedition Map to assemble Stage + Depths, then cut down to 1 Dark Depths (because it doesn't tap for mana). Stage is still OK in multiples because it taps for mana and can copy Saga for Construct beatdown.
- Instead of Serum Powder (which could exile key pieces), use Echo of Eons for mulligans. It's a better card overall and has better synergy with LED.
- Use Scroll of Fate to also enable Dreadnought. It also helps convert dead cards into 2/2s, when you draw the wrong combination of combo pieces. You can use it to get Echo out of hand and into the GY (die in combat).
- You may want 1x Crucible of Worlds in the Karnboard with that many self-sacrificing lands and that many nonbasics.
- Another tutor like Inventors Fair or Goblin Engineer (red splash) should help assemble combos. Or you could go blue for Narset, which digs for pieces and also combos with Echo.
Correct. Thank you.
I accept your apology.
You've missed the opportunity to explain to us why - in a thread about Painter, Dreadnought, and Dark Depths - you are floating the idea that blowing $2000 on 4x Monolith and 3x City is beneficial to any deck at all using these three archetypes. We are waiting to be blown away by this revelation because MUD, TurboKarnForge, and Zirda are dead...and I don't even think DETH-type decks use Monolith with Dark Depths.
You have said Dreadnought and Sol Lands together - something that has never ever had anything resembling lasting success or viability at any point since legacy began multiple decades ago. This is profound, heady stuff. Why are you floating this idea? What changed? Not gonna lie, flooding out on extra copies of Torpor Orb isn't the answer to the entire history of legacy telling you your idea isn't competitive.
I wouldn't say I'm missing it, Bob.
Thank you FTW for your response. I have had some time to go over your post and would like to respond to it.
I have tested versions of 3.5 Colorless Card Monte and I have updated it to this below:
3.5 Colorless Card Monte vs. 1.1
Combos:
4x Karn, the Great Creator
3x Painter’s Servant
3x Grindstone
4x Thespian’s Stage
2x Dark Depths
4x The Mycosynth Gardens
3x Phyrexian Dreadnought
Draw/Tutor:
4x Serum Powder
4x Echo of Eons
3x Expedition Map
1x Inventors’ Fair
Mana:
4x Lion’s Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
4x Mox Opal
3x Grim Monolith
4x Urza’s Saga
4x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
Sideboard:
1x Mycosynth Lattice
1x Liquimetal Coating
1x Torpor Orb
1x Phyrexian Dreadnought
1x Painter’s Servant
1x Grindstone
1x Expedition Map
1x Helm of Obedience
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Pithing Needle
1x The Stone Brain
To address FTW’s Concerns:
-The deck does have some anti-synergy it is such as Mycosynth Lattice and Painter’s Servant. My solution is that with all the options available to you, you can simply choose not to use a combination of options that conflict.
-Yes it is the point of Monte to draw into combos in the opening hand. The original version did not have as much card draw so you would have to rely on your draw step to find cards and often draw bricks. In Version 1.1 I have added Echo of Eons, more Expedition Maps, more wishable options for Karn, the Great Creator and an Inventors’ Fair for more draw and/or tutor options.
-I have chosen to use Serum Powders and Echo of Eons in this version because there is room for both.
-I have chosen to use Torpor Orb over Scroll of Fate because it is good against other decks in the current format, it is one less mana and it can be used with Urza’s Saga.
-I have not experimented with Crucible of Worlds yet in the sideboard however am not ruling it out.
-Inventors’ Fair has proven to be useful.
I did take 4th place in a tournament that I think is quite good considering it being a first test in tournament conditions.
I come to the conclusion based on my experience and research that 3.5 Colorless Card Monte has potential and deserves further consideration and innovation.
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