There are a bunch of Madcap decks recently posted on these forums. As an initial proponent of Madcap --> Emperium, I must apoligize. I've been fooling around with Madcap into Emperion since Madcap got spoiled and there are some issues. First, suprisingly . . . a 4 mana 8/8 even with "life total can't change" just isn't that good in legacy. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not an OMG play. And that play turn 4 is even less impressive, when by turn 4 most legacy decks are already about to win. As such, while I agree that a pure combo route is probably wrong, I do think you need to have some way to consistently power out madcap turn 3 or earlier. Sol lands or mana dorks for example. Additionally, you need to run more ways to get rid of Emprium from your hand than jsut brainstorm. Even though you only run 2 of them in the deck, that's 1 more dead draw than you want. Madcap --> Emperium almost definitely will find a home in Modern, but I don't think it is legacy material. Additionally, Madcap and a bunch of artifacts runs into other problems, in that the deck runs like a less efficent MUD without Chalice.

So what to do? That is to go full combo.

Madcap plus any number of cards is basically a tinker, only that it searches up a random artifact card in your deck instead of a specific one. The most obvious card is of course Blightsteel. . . but that card to seems like putting a bunch of cards into one fragile basket. Additionally, that runs into the issue of "what to do with big guys that you draw."

My solution and proposal is to (1) run Madcap with at least 8 cards that can "combo" with it, and run (2) only blue artifacts to be able to pitch to force of will.

The cards I chose to combo are: Intervention pact which I find the cheapest - having 1WW shoudn't be a problem after you cast Madcap, moreover, even if they wasteland one of your lands, you should still ahve 1WW available, so you won't lose. Additionally, it give you life in exchange so for 3R, you get a good artifact creature and around 12-25 life. The other card is soulfire grand master - which not only combos, but has lifelink by itself and makes lightning helix and bolt even better.

This means that the deck is a lot less explosive with getting out an early turn blightsteel, or getting out an imperium, but you are also running cards that can pitch to FOW. The deck ends up running like other UWR control decks, but one that has an almost Natural Order finish.


4 STP
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Madcap Experiment
4 Intervention Pact
2 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce
2 Lightning Helix

4 Delver
4 Soulfire Grand Master

3 Inkwell Leviathan
or
3 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
(include Inkwell in decks with STP and Sphinx against others)

19 Lands (TBD)


I doubt that the above deck is Tier 2 even yet, but i think it is a start, and a start that is distinct and probably more likely to succeed than Madcap combo into blightsteel or Madcap into Emprion in legacy.

One issue with this approach is I am unsure it is much better than playing S&T, I am stillfooling around with it however.