I'm still tweaking the basic land slot and possibly the 4th remand slot.
So it is a Hive Mind/Possibility Storm deck. Emrakul gets cheated in with Zoetic Cavern morph. The big mana engine is Amulet/Summer Bloom. However, Amulet is fine without summer bloom. Turn 1/2 Amulet, bounce land into Prism gives you 5/6 mana on turn 3. Once you have explosive mana, then the fun begins.
The magic mana numbers to win are 6 (hard cast Hive Mind with pact), 8 (Possibility Storm with Morph), 9 (Hive Mind and transmute), 11 (hard cast Possibility Storm, transmute and morph). At 5, you can have a near win with Possibility Storm hard cast and draw/bounce/transmute into Caverns.
It's a lot of fun but the deck has a very steep learning curve because of all of the interactions. If you can figure out the interactions, the deck will do extremely well for a fringe deck.
For example -
Tolaria West --> Pact/Zoetic Cavern/Bounce Land.
Bounce Lands --> bounce Tolaria West or Zoetic Cavern or another bounce land to correct mana colors.
With Possibility Storm in play, all of your Pacts become free cantrips. The 16 instants are a combination of 11 counterspells (4 Remand, 3 Izzet, 4 Pact) or 9 drawing effects (Remand, Izzet, Telling Time). You play the percentages. The deck packs as much counter magic as other permission decks.
Pact of Titan/Remand = Cantrip.
With double Amulet, Emrakul can be hard cast on Summer Bloom.
Pros of Playing -
#1 - The deck wins out of nowhere both late game and early game. You can set up the win by turn 2.
#2 - Requires lots of thinking. There is a lot of synergy built into the deck. Everything interacts with each other for redundancy. Pacts become disposable for Possibility Storm (see above).
#3 - "Cheap" to build. No fetch lands. Pact of Negation is down to $8 so Grove is the only big ticket left, along with Emrakul. Remand is stupidly expensive though.
#4 - Frustrate your opponent since the deck is very non-intuitive and your opponent has to guess. Opponents also have lots of dead cards. Zero obvious creatures. No graveyard use except for flashback Looting. Minimal use of searching (2 Tolaria West). Resistant to Tectonic Edge as the deck can operate on 3 lands due to bouncing. Once Possibility Storm hits play, everything becomes erratic. With two distinct victory conditions, your opponent will have difficulty siding in correct hate.
#5 - Frustrate your opponent's win strategy. Opponents' life totals are almost irrelevant since they die to Pact or annihilation. In all of the games I've played, I've won with 4/4 Titan tokens exactly twice. It's always been Emrakul scoop or Hive Mind.
Cons of Playing -
#1 - Too much thinking involved. You need to know how Hive Mind and Possibility Storm interacts with everything, including stacking Pacts. The deck doesn't "misplay" as much as sub-optimal play. Without practice and knowing your opponent's deck, you can easily find yourself winning on turn 4/5 rather than 3/4. Knowing which hands to keep is a big deal as well.
#2 - Misfires. The deck is fairly consistent because it has 22 lands (7 of which bounce), 4 Amulets and 4 Prisms to support the mana base. That said, it's a combo deck so you can occasionally misfire and simply not draw what you want. You end up sitting there drawing dead. I used to have a dedicated Hive Mind deck and added in the 3 Storms/Emrakul to give it an alternate win condition. Now you have 7 combo outs.
#3 - Shuffle your deck thoroughly. The deck needs to be very randomized.
hey guys, it's nice to see that there's still conversation happening regarding this deck. I have a few updates for you:
My friend built possibility storm with the win con being gitaxian probe > dragonstorm. The deck was extremely fun but there was so many dead draws because of the dragon package. So we switched the win con to gitaxian probe > enter the infinite. Which is just as fun and a slightly better deck. Still not competitive however. But here is the list for reference:
Here is an explanation on a few card choices. Norin the Wary over ornithopter: Norin the Wary lets you run artifact ramp and time of need to support the combo. Time of need gives the deck some needed consistency and the artifact ramp can accelerate you to 6 mana on turn 4 so this is on par with the ornithopter plan.
I have heard some complaints that the artifact ramp is vulnerable to removal but in my experience if they are using their turn to kill your artifacts rather that deploy more threats that's actually okay for you.
Time of Need is perfect for this deck. It finds Emrakul, the Aeons Torn if you have a through in hand and it finds norin. Plus it has awesome flavour… Time of Need: I need help, should I call a scared explorer or a giant spaghetti monster?
Tolaria West is uncounterable and can act as a land drop in a pinch. It can also tutor for Academy Ruins in case they make you discard your singleton Ornithopter.
So the goal is to cast (yes cast!) emrakul on turn 4. Meaning you take an extra turn and can destroy 6 permanents!
The combo works by casting ornithopter with possibility storm on the battle field, the only other creature in the deck is emrakul.... so you may cast him without paying his mana cost.
The deck is fairly resilient to hate because of the 12 tutors. If you accidentally draw the emrakul you can shuffle it back in with a faithless looting. If they make you discard the ornithopter you can always get it back with the academy ruins (which of course is tutorable with tolaria West).
Forgive my ignorance but how does Myr Servitor combo with Artificer's Intuition? To me it seems like there really isn't a whole lot of synergy there since the Servitor's effect sends it from the GY to play. I can see how it would work with Academy Ruins but I'm not really seeing the big picture with it otherwise. One thing that I don't like about the servitor is that it's just a chump blocker. It doesn't have flying, reach, and it definitely won't stop a big green trampler. It seems like for it to have any decent effect you need to use the Intuition to search for another servitor which isn't what you want to be doing imo. You wanna find your lantern, codex, bell, mox, or welding jar.
Yeah you usually only tutor for the myr after you find the 'lock'
The combo works by using Artificer's Intuition to pitch an artifact to find a Myr Servitor then discarding that myr to the Artificer's Intuition to find another myr, repeat until you have 3 Myr Servitor in the grave and one in hand, cast the myr then during your next upkeep that myr will return the rest of the myr to the battle field.
If they kill the 4th myr you can restart the combo with your Academy Ruins
The one issue I've found with using this combo as creature control / finisher is fliers still give you a hard time. So I made room for a few Fabricate and a Timesifter in my list
Here is the list I've been theory play testing. The Artificer's Intuition + Myr Servitor combo seems really strong. It helps find the "lock" and the myr can block all day negating the need for creature removal. They are also an alternate win con, even if all 4 are in the grave you can easily restart the mini combo with your Academy Ruins
So, I'm a little new to using this deck (I just finished building mine the other day) and I've been having mana issues in the few games I have played with it. I'm running 4x wastelands and 4x ports 1x karakas 1x mutavault and 12x plains. Many games I struggle to cast double white cards like mangara, serra avenger and flickerwisp. So, what would you guys recommend I try to fix this?
I know the obvious answer is to take out some ports for more plains, but that just seems so bad, especially when my meta has several land dependent decks...
For those that don't see it right away morphing a Zoetic Cavern with a Possibility Storm in play lets you hard cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn for free
My friend built possibility storm with the win con being gitaxian probe > dragonstorm. The deck was extremely fun but there was so many dead draws because of the dragon package. So we switched the win con to gitaxian probe > enter the infinite. Which is just as fun and a slightly better deck. Still not competitive however. But here is the list for reference:
20 Land
I'll quickly explain how it wins for those that are new to possibility storm. Cast Possibility Storm. Cast gitaxian probe, it will get exiled and reveal enter the infinite. Put lightning storm on top of your deck while resolving enter the infinite. Cast noxious revival or lightning bolt, it will get exiled and reveal lightning storm. Discard enough lands to kill them.
So anyways... that deck is a blast but not very competitive. If you wanted something that wins I'd give this list a try:
This deck is admittedly not as fast as reanimator but it is more resilient as it isn't affected by graveyard hate including deathrite shaman. Also Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded > Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is a win vs some decks which is nice.
Here is an explanation on a few card choices. Norin the Wary over ornithopter: Norin the Wary lets you run artifact ramp and time of need to support the combo. Time of need gives the deck some needed consistency and the artifact ramp can accelerate you to 6 mana on turn 4 so this is on par with the ornithopter plan.
I have heard some complaints that the artifact ramp is vulnerable to removal but in my experience if they are using their turn to kill your artifacts rather that deploy more threats that's actually okay for you.
Combo Piece 1:
Combo Piece 2:
Ramp:
Dig:
Land:
2 Haunted Fengraf
20 RUG Lands
Both Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom allow for turn 4 casting of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn off of Possibility Storm.
The Pentad Prism can even let you Through the Breach your Emrakul, the Aeons Torn turn 3!
Time of Need is perfect for this deck. It finds Emrakul, the Aeons Torn if you have a through in hand and it finds norin. Plus it has awesome flavour… Time of Need: I need help, should I call a scared explorer or a giant spaghetti monster?
Faithless Looting is better than it seems in this deck. You have so many redundant combo pieces and Faithless Looting essentially lets you cycle them away. You can pitch the second Time of Need, the second Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, the second Possibility Storm, excess ramp artifacts, excess land, and pitching a Faithless Looting to a Faithless Looting is almost like getting value.
Haunted Fengraf is for anti discard. I think one or two is good in metas with lots of Thoughtseize because we can only run a single Norin the Wary.
If we did cut the number of Ornithopter tutors I'd say Tolaria West is better than Fabricate.
Tolaria West is uncounterable and can act as a land drop in a pinch. It can also tutor for Academy Ruins in case they make you discard your singleton Ornithopter.
The Norin the Wary, Time of Need, Goryo's Vengeance package is interesting. I like the alternate wincon and it also lets us use those 'ritual' artifacts mentioned earlier.
I don't know which version is better yet however.
Right away I wanted to break this card. So here's what I came up with:
The Combo:
The Tutors:
The Dig:
The Rituals:
The Land:
So the goal is to cast (yes cast!) emrakul on turn 4. Meaning you take an extra turn and can destroy 6 permanents!
The combo works by casting ornithopter with possibility storm on the battle field, the only other creature in the deck is emrakul.... so you may cast him without paying his mana cost.
The deck is fairly resilient to hate because of the 12 tutors. If you accidentally draw the emrakul you can shuffle it back in with a faithless looting. If they make you discard the ornithopter you can always get it back with the academy ruins (which of course is tutorable with tolaria West).
Comment with your thoughts and side board ideas.
Yeah you usually only tutor for the myr after you find the 'lock'
The combo works by using Artificer's Intuition to pitch an artifact to find a Myr Servitor then discarding that myr to the Artificer's Intuition to find another myr, repeat until you have 3 Myr Servitor in the grave and one in hand, cast the myr then during your next upkeep that myr will return the rest of the myr to the battle field.
If they kill the 4th myr you can restart the combo with your Academy Ruins
The one issue I've found with using this combo as creature control / finisher is fliers still give you a hard time. So I made room for a few Fabricate and a Timesifter in my list
I know the obvious answer is to take out some ports for more plains, but that just seems so bad, especially when my meta has several land dependent decks...