Intro
Vintage is the format of mana rocks, they have the moxen, black lotus, sol ring, mana crypt and vault. The stuff we have in legacy doesn't even come close to comparing.
But I have to make due with what I have, and attempt to throw together a pile of mana rocks in order to make a workable engine.
Paradox Engine is my favorite card from Aether Revolt, and is climbing the ranks of my favorite cards overall. Unfortunately, this card is really only talked about for commander and, as I said before, vintage
So why try to make this in legacy? Well, it's mostly just a thought experiment, I don't expect it to be competitive, or even good. I just like this card
How to play
This deck is quite untested, so a lot of the information in this section may be wrong or underdeveloped.
This deck becomes "do you have a counter?" against blue controls decks so you may want to wait for a second copy before playing out your first paradox Engine
Against faster combo decks, you can really only pray their draw is slower than yours. I have left out cards like Force of wil and flusterstorm for more card selection. I also didn't think I had enough blue cards to make use of force.
The two above statements will shape your mulligan decisions in game two, but in game one you have no knowledge of your opponents deck. In G1 try to keep hands with at least enough artifact mana to cast Paradox Engine rather early, whether or not it's in your hand. It isn't unreasonable to keep a hand of all cantrips, especially if you know your opponents deck is slow.
After that, there's a few things to note
•With an engine on the battlefield, always play out your mana rocks first.
•Its often better to cycle Whispers of the muse than it is to hold it if you're digging for the engine or are nowhere near having enough artifact mana to pay the buyback cost.
•The only colored sources of mana from artifacts are Talisman Of Dominance and Mox Opal. It's very risky to attempt to go off via Whispers if you only have Talisman on the battlefield, since it can take a while to find a Mox or a tendrils.
The Deck
Artifact mana (17):
4 Paradox Engine
4 Mox Opal
4 Grim Monolith
3 Mox Diamond
2 Basalt Monolith
Card draw (22):
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
2 Whispers of the Muse
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thoughtcast
How to win (4):
4 Tendrils of Agony
Lands (17):
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
Things to note
•I'm unsure if 17 lands is too many, with this many mana rocks
•I'm playing 34 mana sources counting Paradox Engine, 31 not counting it
•I've left out sol lands due to the number of one cmc cantrips, but I don't know if i was wrong to do so
•It's pretty consistent, but fragile, as it relies quite heavily on Paradox Engine, but plays a large number of cantrips
•The deck plays no permission, which is almost certainly wrong, but I couldn't find room for it
Any help is appreciated
Last edited by Lolidk; 01-20-2017 at 11:52 AM.
Honestly, fourteen lands and four Mox Diamonds seems inefficient, even if you are trying to get Engine going. You're better off running Jeweled Amulet if you're opting to keep your land count that low.Originally Posted by Lolidk
What if you made a kill combo out of Codex Shredder and Sensei's Diving Tops?
If you could get a top out and a Codex shredder, you could create a loop with one SDT on top of your library, play it, untap all rocks and codex shredder, use shredder to make your opponent mill, tap top, draw top, play top with mana rock, untap all permanents, tap shredder, make them mill....rinse repeat until you mill them out.
Perhaps set up another potential combo for infinite casting untapping of shredder.
While we are getting spicey, you could use Argivian Archaelogist (oh yeah!) to return a mox opal to your hand, play mox opal sending opal from battlefield to graveyard (after floating a mana) untap all permanents (rocks and codex shredder) make them mill, repeat.
I almost want to build this now as an excuse to play Argivian Archaeologist.
Also, in addition to that you could have won with a grapeshot since u also created infinite storm. Almost sounds like a combo deck centered around helm of awakening.
I see no protection for your Paradox Engine. That's a really bad idea.
I'd also consider the possibility of playing Monastery Mentor as a backup win condition.
I ended up rebuilding the deck entirely, now with 17 lands. Is that still too few? If Mox Diamond would be good in this build, then what would I take out for it?
I second the Mentor idea.
I hate to be that guy, but this looks like a much less reliable version of Storm at this point. Im not sure those mox opals would even be "on" on turns one or two much of the time with this build. You dont have sol lands for your Grim Monolith either.
Have you solitaired with the deck to see how consistently you can get the combo working on turn one or two?
Yeah, its definitely not fast. I haven't tested many games, but I think the fasted I got was a turn 3 kill. I was thinking of maybe only adding 4-6 sol lands to keep the number of blue sources high. And the Mox opals haven't been on frequently, how would I get them to turn on earlier?
Wouldn't you rather just ramp into emrakul and/or the other 2 OP eldrazi's?? Also, Karn and Ugin. Borrowing even more from modern Tron, ancient stirring is probably pretty strong here.
The reason I like the storm plan more is because I get to play so many cheap cantrips, so I can generate a ton of mana. I would consider cutting a few cards for eldrazi because I frequently find myself with more mana than I know what to do with
Turning on the Opals means landing fast artifacts. Affinity uses artifact lands for this as well as a lot of zero and one drops. Thats another reason I suggested Senseis Divining Top and Codex shredder. Youd have cheap artifacts to open with.
It likely still needs mox diamonds (which means more lands) to reliably get your paradox engine on turn two. I guess turn one Ancient tomb>Grim Monolith>mox opal>pass. Turn two Seat of Synod>tap ancient tomb and monolith for Paradox Engine>.... Leaves you with a land and a mox to begin cantripping. Only the mox and the monlith will untap though, so your follow up spells only get one colored mana to utilize unless you hit a diamond.
Mox Diamond seems quite hard to support, according to a quick google search, 25 lands is the optimal number. I don't think this deck is a 25 lands deck
You could do Chrome mox. I think you definitely need two types of rock. The benefit granted by the Paradox Engine is that you are untapping permanents, so you need permanents to untap. Having just one opal and a grim monolith is kind of weak.
Your kill condition of generating storm with blue cantrips seems sort of counterintuitive to me. Of course, blue is great because it supports permission (and even maybe playing Thing in The Ice to bounce their creatures and smash) but strikes me as taking the long way to do something existing decks do better.
That's why I see this more as a mill deck opportunity or something more unexpected.
I'm a little iffy on codex shredder, it does do infinite mill with Top, but it doesn't do much else otherwise. However Top seems like a near natural include, and I'm shocked I missed it. I would like to change the kill condition, and rather than taking advantage of casting a large amount of spells, I think I'd like to take advantage of creating a large amount of mana. My initial thought was to play a large eldrazi like old emrakul. But it is useless if I can't generate 15 mana. But I think 4 Blue Sun's Zenith could possibly replace the 4 Tendrils. Of course, id need more sources of colored artifact mana, but it also allows me to go mono colored. In addition to this, it isn't only useful when finishing the game, but also good at keeping the combo going. All too often I'd get Tendrils stuck in my hand because I was unable to either generate double black or cast 10 spells in a turn.
So if I go with this plan, I'd need to find place for
1.) More colored artifact mana
2.) BSZ (fairly obvious replacement for Tendrils)
3.) permission (60 cards just isn't enough)
If you want to draw them out with BSZ you are making a weirder high tide deck. You could throw in Turnabouts and such, and use Paradox Engine in a High Tide Build and maybe go off faster than turn four. But it might also just be clunky and wasting valuable High Tide slots.
This might be hilarious, but you could play "Tims," aka Prodigal Sorcerer or some other creature that taps to do one damage to target player. If you could untap nineteen times (or get more than one in play) you can Tim them to death (which is pretty hilarious.)
Or go with Deathrite Shaman and cantrips and try to play enough sorceries and instants and let your deathrite eat them to hit for two.
So these numbers could be way off, but here is a stab at a deck that kills with cantripping and deathrite Shaman:
Rube
3 Paradox Engine
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mox Opal
4 Mox Diamond
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
8 Fetchland
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
Maybe go up one P Engine and down an SDT or two. Also might want to bring in an ensnaring bridge.
I think making it work in Legacy is going to be a big challenge:
1. You need to have a large board presence to take advantage of the untap effect.
2. At 5 mana, Paradox Engine more or less needs to win the game when it hits the table
3. You'll need to play spells in addition to Paradox Engine after it's resolved.
Now we can look at a couple of ways to make things work:
Paradox Engine + Buyback. The cheapest buyback spells that will do something cost 5 mana with buyback - you can get a useless Wurmcalling for 4, but you'd need to find 5 mana worth of non-land stuff to go off.
Paradox Engine + Cantrips. There are a large number of inexpensive cantrips in legacy, you can probably start comboing with 1 or 2 mana worh of untap effects, but there's a significant chance of fizzling.
Paradox Engine + Tutor-like effects. There are some 2 and 3 cc tutor effects like Burning Wish or Intuition that can be chained. Though you'll probably need to be untapping for at least 3 mana to go off.
Paradox Engine + Isochron Scepter.
At this point you're looking for 7 mana or, having the engine plus a free spell in order to off. That's getting pretty heavy.
...
It surprises me a little that there aren't any Fatestitchers in people's lists. Stitcher is going to have synergy with most of the stuff that works well with the engine.
Sensei's Divining Top is really powerful in combination with instant speed cantrips and Paradox Engine.
A build that focuses on killing with Monastery Mentor could work with Argivian Archaeologist. Give up the permission of blue, because if they counter your artifacts you just retrieve them from from the graveyard. Lotus Petal could be cracked, sent to the yard, returned with archaeologist, cast, trigger paradadox engine, untap everything, crack lotus petal, repeat until you have a sea of mentor tokens and a Monastery Mentor that is theoretically as big as you want. The loop fould also be achieved with SDT or Mox Opal, so you have several options for finding your loop.
A mill option like codex shredder can be in there too for back up, should you not be able to find Mentor or should they be terminused, etc.
You might even be able to play four Chalice of the Void and set them to one to slow your opponent down. Cast your SDT into the chalice if you have to and bring it back from the yard with Archaeologist.
Playing white could also open up Ghostly prison.
Here is a whackadoodle list for ya:
4 Paradox Engine
4 Grim monolith
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Opal
4 Sensei's divining top
1 Codex Shredder
1 Platinum Angel
4 Argivian Archaeologist
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Ethersworn Canonist
6 Fetchland
4 Horizon Canopy
9 Plains
1 Karakas
There are a few things Im not super sure of here. The one of karakas is for Griselbrand/emrakul decks. I considered Thalia, Heretic Cathar too, to slow down opponents, but shes pretty pointless otherwise. Ethersworn Canonist might be wrong, but its artifact so it turns on opals, it slows down storm and elves, and its fetchable with E. tutor.
4 Canopies are there to help with card draw, especially with E. tutor. Getting to actually have the card the turn you cast the tutor is awesome. Revokers, same, they are artifacts and can help slow the opponent. Platinum Angel is tutorable "dont die" card.
I considered Mother of Runes in place of canonists/revokers to protect Archaeologist and Mentors. Maybe its right, not sure.
Other than that, yeah, you create a loop with Mentor out and commence with a beating, or you fall to plan B and mill them out.
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