the advantage of Disciple is that you don't have to go infinite to win. You can just pop all of the eggs you have and hope its enough. I use it to win far more often than I do pyrite spellbomb. As for its weakness to creature removal, you can just go off in response to it. Anything except path is entirely irrelevant, and even path you just keep going in response to it.
If your second sunrise gets extirpated, you will lose 99% of the time (one time i went as far as i could with disciple, then used noxious revivals to make the guy kill himself with his two dark confidants on his next upkeep). I wouldn't try to fix that issue, and instead focus on just making the combo more consistent.
By the way, the temple bell win can still be done without the ironworks. just replace the ironworks with a reshape (fetching nothing), a conjurer's bauble, and an extra bloom. Once you hit the end of your deck, you should have no trouble getting every card you need in play, thus this is no harder to do than the temple bell win with the ironworks.
Ichor wellspring is something we have been waffling on. Yes its great when you get a consistent sac outlet, but it positively blows without one. Overall, its just win-more.
Can the new posters post decklists or refer us to links where they are at? It would be useful to see how all of these ideas are incorporated into a working decklist. (my deck is in the link in my sig)
@mshnik I sense a general hate towards Laboratory Maniacand lol. I don't even think it is comparable to Temple Bell as they do two totally different things.
I do agree though that is too many win conditions in one deck. I think game 1 pyrite/grapeshot package and game 2 disciple/maniac package is best way to go about it or vice versa.
Blue Sun Zenith is not great in a deck planning for a turn 3-4 win. Anyone wonder about Trinket Mage for added tutoring since it finds everything, but Elsewhere Flask, maybe as a pseudo 5th or 6th Reshape ability. I honestly would want to reshape for blooms than anything else once I start comboing off than a locket or bauble. I dunno. It will also feed your Riddlesmith artifacts to dig, as well. It is practically the same cost as a Reshape attached to a 2/2 body, which once its fulfilled its tutoring ability, it becomes a chump blocker.
Just an idea to think of and try.
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I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
the advantage of Disciple is that you don't have to go infinite to win. You can just pop all of the eggs you have and hope its enough. I use it to win far more often than I do pyrite spellbomb. As for its weakness to creature removal, you can just go off in response to it. Anything except path is entirely irrelevant, and even path you just keep going in response to it.
Whether you use it more often than Pyrite Spellbomb is irrelevant. If you get your combo off with Second Sunrise, finding your Spellbomb and winning with it is an inevitability. It may take more time if your opponent forces you to go through the motions, but you will still win. This makes Disciple simply a more vulnerable, extraneous condition, and basically just a wasted slot.
If your second sunrise gets extirpated, you will lose 99% of the time (one time i went as far as i could with disciple, then used noxious revivals to make the guy kill himself with his two dark confidants on his next upkeep). I wouldn't try to fix that issue, and instead focus on just making the combo more consistent.
Exactly. Without Sunrise, Disciple is extremely unlikely to get there. Sunrise is what you need to protect. Given a choice between Disciple and Pyrite Spellbomb, I will choose the Spellbomb as it cannot be Path to Exiled.
Again, if you pull off your Sunrise Combo, you're going to win. Without Sunrise, Disciple is still almost never going to allow you to win. He is the weaker of the two "win conditions" and is not necessary. He's taking up a card slot that could be used to protect the Sunrise combo.
Can the new posters post decklists or refer us to links where they are at? It would be useful to see how all of these ideas are incorporated into a working decklist. (my deck is in the link in my sig)
I've been posting from work, so I haven't actually been able to proxy anything up and test. Over the next week, I'll see if I can get a list together, test it by playing as many actual games as I can, then I'll come back with my results. I'll mainly be coming from the minimalist, fully rely on and protect Second Sunrise as the win condition camp for this deck. If I include any other ways to kill someone, it will have to be able to do so completely independently of ever resolving a single Second Sunrise.
GL everyone to your building and testing. I look forward to comparing notes =)
@DirtyDeeds: Enlighten to me, then, how laboratory maniac and temple bell are different. Both are win conditions that bypass leyline of sanctity, which is their main and pretty much only function. Temple bell gets the nod because it can give you a few cards while you are comboing, but it also gives cards to your opponent, which can be bad if they are playing blue.
The issue with trinket mage is it doesn't put the artifacts into play, meaning it can't effectively search for lotus blooms. In order to use it, you need 3 to play the mage, and at least 1 more to play the artifact you search for. You'd need a ton of extra mana to do this on the turn you go off and still have enough to keep comboing. Seems to require too much mana, though it could have a place in lotus cobra builds.
@Ivansmashem:The issue is that you don't truly win after the first sunrise. In testing, i've found that I only sometimes win after the second, and only usually the third. That's when disciple shines, When you can get the first sunrise, but don't see another. Using one second sunrise by no means guarantees a win. I play Pyrite spellbomb because it doesn't really hurt me to play (its a bad egg, but still an egg), and has inevitability. I play disciple because it actually wins way before i find out if i can complete the combo. Keep in mind that the average life total in modern is about 16 due to fetch and shock lands, and that most people upon seeing we are playing a combo deck don't hesitate to sacrifice their life totals, which makes winning by disciple much easier.
Blue Sun Zenith is not great in a deck planning for a turn 3-4 win. Anyone wonder about Trinket Mage for added tutoring since it finds everything, but Elsewhere Flask, maybe as a pseudo 5th or 6th Reshape ability.
It's not a reshape ability because it does not put it into play.
USZ is on par with Disciple in terms of effectiveness in my opinion. You can continue combos you normally wouldn't be able to with USZ, but you can win without finishing a combo with Disciple.
They both have their merits. Spellbomb is still the best.
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Un autre con brandit le drapeau de la nouvelle économie. Agitant sa criminelle thérapie, l'abruti prophá¨te s'en va guerrir le monde de ses maux ! Mais la misá¨re n'a que faire de cette médecine á dose homeopathétique, Il n'y a d'autre cure que l'ablation du liberal-fascisme qui nous ronge. - Amanda Woodward, Un Autre Con
USZ can only help you continue combo-ing if you have an ungodly amount of mana (like all 4 lotus blooms and all untapped lands). with only 3 lotus blooms and no lands, you can only get 3 cards off the zenith, which by no means guarantees a continue of the combo. It seems much more suited to Lotus cobra builds where you do have that amount of mana. In regular builds, it doesn't seem that useful.
I know it doesn't CIP with Trinket Mage...I can read...but it is still a similar to reshape. Im not saying add 4 to the deck but adding 1 might help with its reach get more eggs or your single spellbomb or locketit without using a reshape.
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I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
I would like to take this time to point out that cobra lotus mana DOES have limits.
We can't run USZ even with cobra mana. It's just not a good card to run in this deck, it doesn't help us go off, it can't end the game early like grapeshot or disciple, and it STILL targets the opponent so it doesn't cover our butts incase of leyline of sanctity. If you have enough mana to make USZ useable, you could honestly run ad naseam instead and have much more ridiculous reach to get you to the decks staple kill cards. So we don't run it or naseam (I've tried both). The only high cost card I ever found to be actually useable is Open the Vaults, and only because it is in fact a worse sunrise. You can run it with cobra lotus mana, as it makes finding your next sunrise effect much more probable with 8 of them in there (same mana requirements as running a tutor, btw, the only one we could have in the deck in drift of phantasms, but drift actually thins your deck of 2 possible sunrises every time it's used, so it's a bad return over a straight sunrise effect).
And I've tested trinket mage with and without a sac outlet. It didn't work well enough for me to mention it in the thread, and running only 1 for the possibility that it MIGHT come up when we need it is the same as saying we should run riddlesmith as a 1 of incase we need to dump lotus bloom. Same goes for KCI. I mentioned gargadon because it's strictly better, is actually affordable for the deck, it's nigh untouchable when in use for its effect instead of sitting dumb on the field, and even then I'm really iffy on it's inclusion. And if some of you are getting you ideas from that one article where this dude posted a really janky sunrise combo with terrarion and the 2 mana time vault card that sac 5 artifacts to take an extra turn, and a tezzerator and a bunch of other win-more jank... that guy doesn't know what we NOW know about this deck. That is stuff we have thrown out because it is non-consistent win-more jank that doesn't come online quick enough to beat aggro. And I've never understood terrarion in an eggs deck. Seems like people throw that in before they notice the "ETBT" clause, and then add KCI or some other sac outlet and act like it's all ok.
Some of the other stuff in the card choices section are currently being picked over by me, since it's a straight rip of lectyrs list from when he posted it. I'll be editing it soon for errors and fix some of the reasons listed to be more factual and helpful(though the fixes will be small in number, he did do a good job on most of it).
There's a reason we use locket and not sculptor or the other 3 cost card that makes all artifacts cost 1 less...
Locket is 1 mana, and therefore viably tutorable and castable. We usually have the redundancy in the deck to meet the lockets requirements without skipping a beat. Even elsewhere flask upsets the deck, but we HAVE to run it due to lack of 1 cost eggs in this environment.
Another thing: The toolbox of wincons are synergistic. Pyrite Spellbomb and aether spellbomb protect your disciple/labman from PtE. If you run grapeshot, you can aim copies at disciple/labman in a pinch. And we can just go off in response. Labman is perfect hosing for sanctity. If you play it with zero cards in your library, and 16+ eggs on the field, how on earth is your opponent going to PtE it? If it's countered, we bauble it back and cast it again, easy. You opponent will not have answers to that card in enough numbers to attrition us. We have our entire deck on the board, and they don't.
Extirpate is most definitely going to hit sunrise or conjurers bauble. Without either, we have no way to finish out the combo. The only answer I have found for this in this fomat is silence, which I'm now finding a permanent fixture in my SB against blue counters and against black hosers like extirpate and surgical extraction.
Nicely worded Blitz. I was curious where the new suggestions were coming from. I didn't know there was recently a new article out. I'm glad I suggested LabMan and that it's been getting some serious thought in this thread. I do think he's a good shot versus Leyline, and is very protectable. Just curious Blitz... have you been running Silence over things like Pact of Negation? What does your SB look like these days?
silence replaces defense grid and also comes in to combat other combo, since it either draws a counter or negates the opponents ability to disrupt your combo or play his own combo (which is fun). Too bad it's not abeyance though... that did the same thing but lets us draw a card, so it was played MD in legacy eggs. Also, the article isn't new, but it was posted on i THINK scg a little while ago, as a modern eggs list. Just do a search for sunrise combo/sunny side up on sgc, you might run into it. Here's my currently sideboard for my locksmith build:
Yeah, only 1 pithing needle. Are they really going to have 2 different problem permanents for us that can't realistically be bounced? And wipeaway deals with tormod and progenitus so fast they are in your opponents hand before he can sac them, which is nice =) splitsecond ftw.
the 2/2 split on the bounce is just a mana threshold issue. Statistically, riddlesmith can't deal with that high of a cost, but the effect is worth playing around and the other 2 slots go to a bounce spell that replaces itself, so is friendly to comboing out. Helps protect smith and the unsaccable permanents we play, too.
Silence vs Pact is a long conversation.
But to summarize, The things Pact can't stop and Silence can are more critical to this decks bad matchups than the things that Pact deals with well and silence doesn't. It's nice to be able to say "no" for zero mana, but pact won't stop extirpate. The only issue is getting white mana without cracking an egg, but I run 1 hallowed fountain and 7 islands in the new locksmith build (since it's fetched out with misty, i do have a good chance of grabbing it). Putting a lone plains won't work, the ghost quarters are too important to be hit by extraction or extirpate. It's been working well, despite the damage you take from needing the fountain, and the -1 fetchable land for ghost quarter.
The more I think about Blood Moon, the more backbreaking I think the enchantment is for us. It turns Ghost Quarter and fetchlands dead, and as I think these are the core lands of the deck (since they give you free mana), this seems unforgivable to me. In match-ups where you side in Blood Moon, do you solely depend on Edge of Autumns and Lotus Blooms (and therefore Reshapes) to get you mana or what?
in the wrong matchup, it hurts us more than it helps us. Blood Moon is very powerful and broad hate (which is what a SB should have, especially given the tightness of this deck).
In the right matchup, the opposing deck becomes completely invalidated while we slow roll out a win. Answer.dec gets cut off from it's hate cards that it splashed for, and probably most of it's finishers if it went 4c.
This means that for all those splash heavy metagamed decks, blood moon shuts them off from casting anything at all most times. People scoop to blood moon, plain and simple.
And a few things you have to realize about this deck and why it's not also hosed:
We are an artifact heavy deck. Most of the stuff we are playing doesn't care what color our lands are. Those same artifacts FIX mana for us, and dig through our library. We have reshape and bloom in the deck, and after blood moon you have time to wait for suspended blooms to come online. We can even do 1 iteration and pass the turn after casting second sunrise to help speed up the process.
If you run disciple, this becomes a metagamed prison-combo in itself. Just keep saccing artifacts for more artifacts each turn, and you'll just grind them out in a couple turns anyway.
If your metagame has lots of non-basics and very few actual basics, this card will win you games.
Also, since it does seem like a valid win con, I added Temple Bell to my card choices on Page 3. Blitz Reloaded, can you please adjust the OP with this change?
Funny, i went to go have a cig, and was thinking about something really funny you could do with temple bell as a wincon to ensure it not being taken advantage of in a really over the top way. And then i come back to the thread, and you mention temple bell.
I was thinking of some really bizarre and ridiculous alternating loop to ghost quarter all their lands without them getting anything back, just for kicks.
Then realized that realistically, silence is actually perfect for protecting the bell. If they try to stop silence, you just recur it and cast it again, no big whoop.
Then just loop temple bell + 2 noxious revival + empty reshape with sunrise for the baubles ftw unmolested by all dem cards.
Chances are though, that you won't have to deal with something like that. Temple Bell is kind of funny as a wincon, tbh. It'd work pretty simply in a greater gargadon build, though. Funky order of operations:
1 card(sunrise) in library - Play temple bell, tap and draw sunrise, sac to greater gargadon, play sunrise returning bell, noxious revival the sunrise to top of deck, temple draws sunrise, sac to gargadon, conjurers bauble putting noxious revival into your hand, cast sunrise returning bell and conjurers bauble to play, noxious for sunrise, temple draws sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, burn it to the ground, shun the nonbelieverss shuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnn. nuh.
edit - updated the OP to include bell, along with a few other fixes.
Also, the loop for using reshape is actually this if anyone is interested:
1 card in library(sunrise) after you gain infinite white and infinite blue --
Play temple bell if you haven't yet. Tap temple bell to draw sunrise. Reshape temple bell to sac it, fail to find a card. Cast sunrise returning temple bell to play. Activate conjurers bauble targeting reshape (to hand). Cast noxious revival targeting sunrise. (((Activate temple bell to draw second sunrise. Cast reshape to sacrifice temple bell (fetch nothing). Activate conjurer's bauble targeting reshape (to hand). Activate conjurer's bauble targeting noxious revival(to hand). Cast second sunrise returning 2 conjurer's baubles and 1 temple bell to the battlefield. Cast noxious revival targeting second sunrise.))) x N
Once you know the drill, it's not that complicated.
Wow... I hadn't thought about the whole "draw/sac/draw/sac" thing. Might be too late for me to integrate into my build for this weekend... but is actually a really neat idea. It would still make me very nervous to give them a ton of cards.
Does Path even pose any problem with Lab Maniac? If you play him AFTER youve already drawn through your library whenever someone tries to Path him you just crack an egg in response right? I also feel Temple Bell is a bit extraneous as a win-con since Lab Maniac gets around Leyline and the only way to get rid of him (if you play him after your library is gone) is a counterspell as you cast him to which you just plop him back in your library draw him and play him again easy enough.
^ The more I think about it, the less I think any removal is a problem.
Temple Bell once cast, is pretty difficult to stop as well.
But lab... even though it's sorc speed, what are they really going to do to stop it? Extirpate at that point won't stop the win, but it'll stop temple bell for sure. And even if they had the split second creature kill, lab man can still be hot potatoed between zones to avoid him from being removed afterward. It's nearly foolproof.
Gentlemen, welcome to the first truly viable laboratory maniac deck in modern.
don't get me wrong, I love temple bell. It reallly brings out the johnny in me(can ya tell?), but I think lab is pretty much... the real finisher for this deck. I mean, even pyrite needs to loop, so it's vulnerable to extirpate and such, but lab just gets casted, and then you draw from 1 of your twenty eggs that's game.
I think though, that temple being reshape fodder, coming back and drawing for you, might give it the nod as it isn't just a dead draw during the combo and adds atleast something (the cost to cast seems prohibitive, but it's still more useful than drawing a banefire, lab man, etc. midcombo, and if you can't use it, you could discard to smith if you know they don't have some kind of gy removal in hand).
Yes this deck made me want to play magic again and when I suggested LabMan over 4 days ago...it was because it was an instant alt win condition that can beat path...split second no, but that wont exile it. I also thought Felidar Sovereign, but it s not instant and cost way too much. I was also thinking Hedron Crab maybe combined with Temple Bells instant draw, as another viable win condition along the lines of Disciple because of the loop this deck generates. Any thoughts that this little crab and bellI can do it too or does it just help to many decks like Pyromancers Ascension or Burning Vengeance?
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I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
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If your second sunrise gets extirpated, you will lose 99% of the time (one time i went as far as i could with disciple, then used noxious revivals to make the guy kill himself with his two dark confidants on his next upkeep). I wouldn't try to fix that issue, and instead focus on just making the combo more consistent.
By the way, the temple bell win can still be done without the ironworks. just replace the ironworks with a reshape (fetching nothing), a conjurer's bauble, and an extra bloom. Once you hit the end of your deck, you should have no trouble getting every card you need in play, thus this is no harder to do than the temple bell win with the ironworks.
Ichor wellspring is something we have been waffling on. Yes its great when you get a consistent sac outlet, but it positively blows without one. Overall, its just win-more.
Can the new posters post decklists or refer us to links where they are at? It would be useful to see how all of these ideas are incorporated into a working decklist. (my deck is in the link in my sig)
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I do agree though that is too many win conditions in one deck. I think game 1 pyrite/grapeshot package and game 2 disciple/maniac package is best way to go about it or vice versa.
Blue Sun Zenith is not great in a deck planning for a turn 3-4 win. Anyone wonder about Trinket Mage for added tutoring since it finds everything, but Elsewhere Flask, maybe as a pseudo 5th or 6th Reshape ability. I honestly would want to reshape for blooms than anything else once I start comboing off than a locket or bauble. I dunno. It will also feed your Riddlesmith artifacts to dig, as well. It is practically the same cost as a Reshape attached to a 2/2 body, which once its fulfilled its tutoring ability, it becomes a chump blocker.
Just an idea to think of and try.
I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
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Whether you use it more often than Pyrite Spellbomb is irrelevant. If you get your combo off with Second Sunrise, finding your Spellbomb and winning with it is an inevitability. It may take more time if your opponent forces you to go through the motions, but you will still win. This makes Disciple simply a more vulnerable, extraneous condition, and basically just a wasted slot.
Exactly. Without Sunrise, Disciple is extremely unlikely to get there. Sunrise is what you need to protect. Given a choice between Disciple and Pyrite Spellbomb, I will choose the Spellbomb as it cannot be Path to Exiled.
Again, if you pull off your Sunrise Combo, you're going to win. Without Sunrise, Disciple is still almost never going to allow you to win. He is the weaker of the two "win conditions" and is not necessary. He's taking up a card slot that could be used to protect the Sunrise combo.
I've been posting from work, so I haven't actually been able to proxy anything up and test. Over the next week, I'll see if I can get a list together, test it by playing as many actual games as I can, then I'll come back with my results. I'll mainly be coming from the minimalist, fully rely on and protect Second Sunrise as the win condition camp for this deck. If I include any other ways to kill someone, it will have to be able to do so completely independently of ever resolving a single Second Sunrise.
GL everyone to your building and testing. I look forward to comparing notes =)
The issue with trinket mage is it doesn't put the artifacts into play, meaning it can't effectively search for lotus blooms. In order to use it, you need 3 to play the mage, and at least 1 more to play the artifact you search for. You'd need a ton of extra mana to do this on the turn you go off and still have enough to keep comboing. Seems to require too much mana, though it could have a place in lotus cobra builds.
@Ivansmashem:The issue is that you don't truly win after the first sunrise. In testing, i've found that I only sometimes win after the second, and only usually the third. That's when disciple shines, When you can get the first sunrise, but don't see another. Using one second sunrise by no means guarantees a win. I play Pyrite spellbomb because it doesn't really hurt me to play (its a bad egg, but still an egg), and has inevitability. I play disciple because it actually wins way before i find out if i can complete the combo. Keep in mind that the average life total in modern is about 16 due to fetch and shock lands, and that most people upon seeing we are playing a combo deck don't hesitate to sacrifice their life totals, which makes winning by disciple much easier.
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It's not a reshape ability because it does not put it into play.
USZ is on par with Disciple in terms of effectiveness in my opinion. You can continue combos you normally wouldn't be able to with USZ, but you can win without finishing a combo with Disciple.
They both have their merits. Spellbomb is still the best.
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I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
Sig by DD Awie by CC
We can't run USZ even with cobra mana. It's just not a good card to run in this deck, it doesn't help us go off, it can't end the game early like grapeshot or disciple, and it STILL targets the opponent so it doesn't cover our butts incase of leyline of sanctity. If you have enough mana to make USZ useable, you could honestly run ad naseam instead and have much more ridiculous reach to get you to the decks staple kill cards. So we don't run it or naseam (I've tried both). The only high cost card I ever found to be actually useable is Open the Vaults, and only because it is in fact a worse sunrise. You can run it with cobra lotus mana, as it makes finding your next sunrise effect much more probable with 8 of them in there (same mana requirements as running a tutor, btw, the only one we could have in the deck in drift of phantasms, but drift actually thins your deck of 2 possible sunrises every time it's used, so it's a bad return over a straight sunrise effect).
And I've tested trinket mage with and without a sac outlet. It didn't work well enough for me to mention it in the thread, and running only 1 for the possibility that it MIGHT come up when we need it is the same as saying we should run riddlesmith as a 1 of incase we need to dump lotus bloom. Same goes for KCI. I mentioned gargadon because it's strictly better, is actually affordable for the deck, it's nigh untouchable when in use for its effect instead of sitting dumb on the field, and even then I'm really iffy on it's inclusion. And if some of you are getting you ideas from that one article where this dude posted a really janky sunrise combo with terrarion and the 2 mana time vault card that sac 5 artifacts to take an extra turn, and a tezzerator and a bunch of other win-more jank... that guy doesn't know what we NOW know about this deck. That is stuff we have thrown out because it is non-consistent win-more jank that doesn't come online quick enough to beat aggro. And I've never understood terrarion in an eggs deck. Seems like people throw that in before they notice the "ETBT" clause, and then add KCI or some other sac outlet and act like it's all ok.
Some of the other stuff in the card choices section are currently being picked over by me, since it's a straight rip of lectyrs list from when he posted it. I'll be editing it soon for errors and fix some of the reasons listed to be more factual and helpful(though the fixes will be small in number, he did do a good job on most of it).
There's a reason we use locket and not sculptor or the other 3 cost card that makes all artifacts cost 1 less...
Locket is 1 mana, and therefore viably tutorable and castable. We usually have the redundancy in the deck to meet the lockets requirements without skipping a beat. Even elsewhere flask upsets the deck, but we HAVE to run it due to lack of 1 cost eggs in this environment.
Another thing: The toolbox of wincons are synergistic. Pyrite Spellbomb and aether spellbomb protect your disciple/labman from PtE. If you run grapeshot, you can aim copies at disciple/labman in a pinch. And we can just go off in response. Labman is perfect hosing for sanctity. If you play it with zero cards in your library, and 16+ eggs on the field, how on earth is your opponent going to PtE it? If it's countered, we bauble it back and cast it again, easy. You opponent will not have answers to that card in enough numbers to attrition us. We have our entire deck on the board, and they don't.
Extirpate is most definitely going to hit sunrise or conjurers bauble. Without either, we have no way to finish out the combo. The only answer I have found for this in this fomat is silence, which I'm now finding a permanent fixture in my SB against blue counters and against black hosers like extirpate and surgical extraction.
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4x silence
1x pithing needle
3x bloodmoon
3x mindbreak trap
2x wipeaway
2x repeal
Yeah, only 1 pithing needle. Are they really going to have 2 different problem permanents for us that can't realistically be bounced? And wipeaway deals with tormod and progenitus so fast they are in your opponents hand before he can sac them, which is nice =) splitsecond ftw.
the 2/2 split on the bounce is just a mana threshold issue. Statistically, riddlesmith can't deal with that high of a cost, but the effect is worth playing around and the other 2 slots go to a bounce spell that replaces itself, so is friendly to comboing out. Helps protect smith and the unsaccable permanents we play, too.
Silence vs Pact is a long conversation.
But to summarize, The things Pact can't stop and Silence can are more critical to this decks bad matchups than the things that Pact deals with well and silence doesn't. It's nice to be able to say "no" for zero mana, but pact won't stop extirpate. The only issue is getting white mana without cracking an egg, but I run 1 hallowed fountain and 7 islands in the new locksmith build (since it's fetched out with misty, i do have a good chance of grabbing it). Putting a lone plains won't work, the ghost quarters are too important to be hit by extraction or extirpate. It's been working well, despite the damage you take from needing the fountain, and the -1 fetchable land for ghost quarter.
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In the right matchup, the opposing deck becomes completely invalidated while we slow roll out a win. Answer.dec gets cut off from it's hate cards that it splashed for, and probably most of it's finishers if it went 4c.
This means that for all those splash heavy metagamed decks, blood moon shuts them off from casting anything at all most times. People scoop to blood moon, plain and simple.
And a few things you have to realize about this deck and why it's not also hosed:
We are an artifact heavy deck. Most of the stuff we are playing doesn't care what color our lands are. Those same artifacts FIX mana for us, and dig through our library. We have reshape and bloom in the deck, and after blood moon you have time to wait for suspended blooms to come online. We can even do 1 iteration and pass the turn after casting second sunrise to help speed up the process.
If you run disciple, this becomes a metagamed prison-combo in itself. Just keep saccing artifacts for more artifacts each turn, and you'll just grind them out in a couple turns anyway.
If your metagame has lots of non-basics and very few actual basics, this card will win you games.
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Yes, that's more or less exactly what I am saying.
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Funny, i went to go have a cig, and was thinking about something really funny you could do with temple bell as a wincon to ensure it not being taken advantage of in a really over the top way. And then i come back to the thread, and you mention temple bell.
I was thinking of some really bizarre and ridiculous alternating loop to ghost quarter all their lands without them getting anything back, just for kicks.
Then realized that realistically, silence is actually perfect for protecting the bell. If they try to stop silence, you just recur it and cast it again, no big whoop.
Then just loop temple bell + 2 noxious revival + empty reshape with sunrise for the baubles ftw unmolested by all dem cards.
Chances are though, that you won't have to deal with something like that. Temple Bell is kind of funny as a wincon, tbh. It'd work pretty simply in a greater gargadon build, though. Funky order of operations:
1 card(sunrise) in library - Play temple bell, tap and draw sunrise, sac to greater gargadon, play sunrise returning bell, noxious revival the sunrise to top of deck, temple draws sunrise, sac to gargadon, conjurers bauble putting noxious revival into your hand, cast sunrise returning bell and conjurers bauble to play, noxious for sunrise, temple draws sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, bauble noxious, sunrise bell bauble, noxious sunrise, temple sunrise, sac temple, burn it to the ground, shun the nonbelieverss shuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnn. nuh.
edit - updated the OP to include bell, along with a few other fixes.
Also, the loop for using reshape is actually this if anyone is interested:
1 card in library(sunrise) after you gain infinite white and infinite blue --
Play temple bell if you haven't yet. Tap temple bell to draw sunrise. Reshape temple bell to sac it, fail to find a card. Cast sunrise returning temple bell to play. Activate conjurers bauble targeting reshape (to hand). Cast noxious revival targeting sunrise. (((Activate temple bell to draw second sunrise. Cast reshape to sacrifice temple bell (fetch nothing). Activate conjurer's bauble targeting reshape (to hand). Activate conjurer's bauble targeting noxious revival(to hand). Cast second sunrise returning 2 conjurer's baubles and 1 temple bell to the battlefield. Cast noxious revival targeting second sunrise.))) x N
Once you know the drill, it's not that complicated.
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Temple Bell once cast, is pretty difficult to stop as well.
But lab... even though it's sorc speed, what are they really going to do to stop it? Extirpate at that point won't stop the win, but it'll stop temple bell for sure. And even if they had the split second creature kill, lab man can still be hot potatoed between zones to avoid him from being removed afterward. It's nearly foolproof.
Gentlemen, welcome to the first truly viable laboratory maniac deck in modern.
don't get me wrong, I love temple bell. It reallly brings out the johnny in me(can ya tell?), but I think lab is pretty much... the real finisher for this deck. I mean, even pyrite needs to loop, so it's vulnerable to extirpate and such, but lab just gets casted, and then you draw from 1 of your twenty eggs that's game.
I think though, that temple being reshape fodder, coming back and drawing for you, might give it the nod as it isn't just a dead draw during the combo and adds atleast something (the cost to cast seems prohibitive, but it's still more useful than drawing a banefire, lab man, etc. midcombo, and if you can't use it, you could discard to smith if you know they don't have some kind of gy removal in hand).
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I like current block formats the most.
Its so limited to its power scale against other formats.
Block constructed should be a more competitive format like it was back in Champions or Ravnica.
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