Tezzeret Ravager Shops (no, seriously)

[Snake Pliskan]

Long time MTG guy. Just this minute registered an account here to see what the reaction is to this deck. It's the result of a handful of overlapping ideas of mine regarding a bunch of cards I happen to like, with strong influences from several specific decks that have defined their respective formats in their time. I'm a student of history when it comes to deck construction. I've solved more than one standard format with a legitimate broken deck. In the case of the most egregious offender, it went completely under the radar until the core rotated. I had just gotten back into MTG at the time, and didn't have an avenue to get it into any major events. Another one went on to see success in the hands of others at the GP and SCG levels. I offered it to a friend of mine who was competing in the PT for that format but it was too far out of his comfort zone, so it wasn't represented. Anyways... I'm not claiming this deck here today is anywhere remotely close to warping the format, but I thought I'd give a little background info for better context.

A couple basic premises that drove the initial concept:

- It's an underappreciated fact that Hangarback Walker with Arcbound Ravager is a powerful interaction regardless of the format.

- Two Vintage restricted cards that play well together and were both found guilty of being degenerate on separate occasions had been cornerstones of the ravager shops deck that sat at the top of the vintage food chain all the way up until it was no longer possible to play more than 2 copies of both cards combined. Naturally I'm referring to Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem, which is among the most oppressive one-two sequences available to open a game of magic.

- All the above cards were complementary pieces of the same overwhelmingly dominant deck. Though it's no longer a possibility to field a vintage deck containing as many of them as you like, it remains an option in legacy for now.

Why hasn't this territory been better explored in Legacy, independent of a metalworker shell and the well known flaws associated with that?

I wanted to answer that question without blindly attempting to recreate the exact parallels to the conditions achieved by a deck having access to a full set of power and Mishra's Workshops. The goal was intended to be realistic as opposed to insurmountable. I considered it likely that there are other applications for a framework containing such a high inherent power level. I knew that it would require a direction to take with the mana base that I didn't expect to find an existing template for. I knew I wanted to play Thoughtcast, for reasons I'll elaborate on at another time, and that colored mana sources would creep in whether they were necessary or not. If I'm already designing a mana base to support Mox Opal and Thoughtcast and deploy Chalice into Lodestone the first two turns, I expect I'll want a bunch of additional game breaking 4 drops and not just Golems. Anyone reading this certainly knows where that road goes. I mocked up a hasty list on MTGO a week or two ago, expecting to have fun with these cards and nothing much past that. The results were far better than I anticipated so I started tuning it for real, and here we are now with the 75 below.

Thoughts?


4 ancient tomb
2 polluted delta
2 UB sea
1 basic U

4 darksteel citadel
4 vault of whispers
4 seat of the synod

4 mox opal
2 mox diamond

4 thoughtcast
2 FOW

4 chalice of the void
1 EE

4 arcbound ravager
4 baleful strix
3 hangarback walker
1 trinket mage

1 sword of fire and ice
4 lodestone golem
3 tezzeret, agent
2 jace, better than all

SB
3 tormod's crypt
1 spellskite
4 phyrexian revoker

1 trinket mage
2 masticore
1 opposition

1 toxic deluge
2 FOW


[edited 9/12 to expand and clarify the description of the basic premise]