Card draw seems to be the main issue I see but that's not always an easy solution in mono white. You mentioned you were trying out Endless Atlas but if those don't work, in my mono white or Boros type decks, I usually just default to Mind's Eye. Especially in decks that I already plan to run with Enlightened Tutor.
But if you don't wanna go that direction some other suggestions might be Treasure Map since you'll basically be printing treasures with your Smothering Tithe. It'll also turn into a mana producing land. Or another option could be Karn, Scion of Urza for both card draw and the ability to create fat artifact creature tokens.
Kor Haven could also be an addition if you wanna cut back on the Maze of Iths for more mana producing lands.
Woah!, that's a pretty good combo. I also have one more question. In the case of me using Melek, Izzet Paragon, if I were to cast a card like Banefire and I paid, say I was lucky, 15 as the value for X, would the copy effect from Melek, Izzet Paragon copy the spell including the X value I paid?
Yes, copying an X spell with Melek, Izzet Paragon would copy the value of X. Just be aware that casting X spells with the card you mentioned in your first post (Galvanoth) would cause those X's to be 0 since you're casting without paying the mana cost so the Melek copies would also be 0.
If the intent of the deck is to build around Scroll of Fate, then you want creatures with good stats or flip abilities but have a very low CMC. Hooded Hydra is a good example. Using the Scroll of Fate you get a 5/5 that produces tokens on death for only two mana.
I'd also rather run a few Fabricates to fetch your scrolls rather than turning to random manifestation cards like Whisperwood Elemental. Fabricate can also help ya fetch up those Phyrexian Dreadnoughts that you should definitely be running.
Gift of Doom is too cute and is an easy cut. I don't think mana creatures are needed either if you're focusing on cheating fatties into play with Scroll of Fate.
You might not be getting many responses because this might not be the correct forum for the info you seek. "Multiplayer" in Magic Duels usually refers to playing against one other human opponent (unless you're doing the 2 headed dragon variant). Technically any game of magic vs a human is considered multiplayer so the forum name being "Multiplayer" is a bit of a misnomer. This forum focuses more on, what I refer to as MultiOPPONENT magic, where you play against 2 or more human opponents at the same time. So the card suggestions can become vastly different than ones for just typical 1v1s.
Hopefully someone was keeping him in check if he tried to use cards like Arc Mage, Deepglow Skate, or Inferno Titan to steal permanents using Dack Fayden's emblem since that only works with casted spells.
The ultimate is near game ending if you can get it off. Especially on the same turn you play him. Then with cards like Sea Kings' Blessing/Dwarven Song, Gigadrowse, Gridlock or Clockspinning you can basically steal everything. Those are pretty terrible cards on their own though, so you'd have to be building the deck around getting Dack Fayden's ultimate off which would classify the deck as a mediocre combo deck. Based on the meta, this might work for some and not so well for others.
Unfortunately trying to attach your own equipment to opponents creatures at instant speed is a tough ask. I think WOTC realized the shenanigans that could take place with equipment being randomly attached to anything via cards like Magnetic Theft and started wording all their 'equipment moving' cards to only affect your own stuff ("equipment you control"/"onto a creature you control" etc).
I do like the idea of surprise extra damage when your opponents attack each other though. However, even if everything goes right, a big problem I see is that the +10/10 double striking creature you create for an opponent can just easily be chump blocked. Once you've played this deck more than once your opponents will know to always chump whenever there's a hammer, stoneforge or sigarda's aid in play, just in case.
The only other way I see getting your own equipment onto an opponents creature is to equip the hammer onto a creature you control then give the creature to your opponent. But that loses the surprise factor and there's no way to stop the opponent from just attack you with your own hammer. Assault Suit does solve some of those issues but again you'd have to be giving them one of your own creatures. Maybe a creature with trample...?
Love the card but how would it work with instants and sorceries of your opponents that you cast?
Lets say I activate my Chaos Wand and my opponent flips a Giant Growth which I then successfully cast on one of my creatures. The Giant Growth would get exiled but I know it can't go back to my hand.
"400.3. If an object would go to any library, graveyard, or hand other than its owner's, it goes to its owner's corresponding zone."
So if the Giant Growth was supposed to go to my hand, does it then return to my opponents hand since it's their card or would it remain exiled?
Or maybe it doesn;t work with opponents spells since it says "instead of putting it into your graveyard"...?
I did the opposite lol. Skullclamp is oppressive and trivializes decision making for everyone in the game. Use Clamp, remove Clamp or lose to Clamp; those are your options. That's ridiculous given that it can hit as early as turn 1 lol. I'm saying this as someone who plays with the card and suggests that decks to include it, so I'm not insulting anyone or anything, but at no point do I feel like I'm playing a challenging game of Magic when I'm Clamping. That's why I prefer to build decks that don't include it so that you have some legitimate play and deckbuilding decisions to make.
Ahh, I see. When you were talking about testing the 0-2-4 methods I thought that was in reference to the Experimental Frenzy not the Skullclamp, lol. While Skullclamp is a very powerful card, I guess I just don;t try to abuse it as much as I could. When playtesting the deck, if I had both frenzy and clamp in play at the same time, I'd always use frenzy first then only use the clamp if a key combo piece was on top to save in my hand.
But yeah I completely understand what you're saying. I have a personal restricted list for some cards that I try not to play cause they're so good but if I do play them I'll only ever play em as a one of. Cards like Exsanguinate and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
Yeah, Light Up the Stage is a great replacement for Faithless Looting. Hadn't experimented with it before now but gold-fished a few games with it in the rakdos list and was pleasantly surprised.
I gave the first deck a shot with some minor tweaks. Added a land ( I like hitting 3 land drops in Clamp decks), cut the Faithless Lootings (the deck doesn't use them for anything) and removed some of the 1 drops for things like Phyrexian Altar, Pawn of Ulamog and Pitiless Plunderer. I also tested Risk Factor, Light Up the Stage and Theater of Horrors because why not? Experimental Frenzy was great when I had nothing else going on but I never wanted to use it if I had a Skullclamp going because that was always a better use of my resources. I tried 0-2-4 (testing 1 and 3 doesn't help much in my experience) over 6 games (total) and preferred the 0/2 the best. Basically, Clamp should be your go-to engine but you also need backups in games where you fail to draw one and/or they get removed.
I was trying to build a different deck that revolved around Experimental Frenzy since it seemed like a fun card and I saw a number of people saying they were excited about frenzy and wanted to see a multiplayer version. I originally tried cards like Pawn of Ulamog in the deck but as I playtested, the more "higher" cmc cards I had, the more often they'd get stuck at the top of my library stopping the frenzy from digging deeper and forcing me to pass. That might not seem like a big deal but the more turns you pass with your key pieces in play, the higher percentage chance that an opponent will have some sort of removal for it. This is why there are a few marginal 1cmc cards like Footlight Fiend and Goblin Arsonist. They aren't the most OP cards but they allow me to continue to frenzy.
Granted, if we removed Experimental Frenzy altogether and just focused on using Skullclamp for our card draw, then it makes sense to add in all those higher cmc cards like Pawn of Ulamog and Living Death but then that's a completely different deck than what I was trying to create.
If you're talking about the goblin version then yeah you wouldn't need to attack but then that's another combo piece to add onto the list. Right now that deck is a 3 card combo (Experimental Frenzy, Runaway Steam-Kin and Goblin Recruiter). Adding a 4th card to that combo just makes it that much harder to pull off.
As for the rakdos version, that seems like a borderline win more card since it fits into the same slot as Zulaport Cutthroat as an AE dmg dealer. Although it could potentially be a replacement for the Zulaport Cutthroat since it's on color for the Runaway Steam-Kin counters but then you're givin up the life gain which might not be a great idea.
I'd look into some sort of Discard outlets. since you can't play cards from your hand, they're useless. something like Scroll Rack or Credit Voucher can cycle your hand- put the discard fodder into your hand, and get the things you want to cast topdecked.
Scroll Rack did cross my mind when I was originally thinking of cards to go with Experimental Frenzy but I realized those effects aren't needed for either versions of the deck. For the rakdos version, you want to keep backup versions of your key pieces in your hand in case your stuff gets removed and for the goblin version it shouldn't matter since once you resolve Experimental Frenzy, the game should be over.
Skullclamp + Experimental Frenzy is a bit of an odd pairing as they have rather negative synergy with one another. It means that your deck is constantly digging into 12 dead cards once you factor Faithless Looting into the equation.
At their cores, both decks are basically combo decks. The main use of Skullclamp is to quickly draw into your combo pieces as I'm not running white for Enlightened Tutor type effects. (Same goes for Faithless Looting.) In the Goblin version, once you have the combo pieces you don't really need to use the Skullclamp anymore as the deck is built to go off in a single turn.
In the rakdos version Skullclamp has two other functions besides just drawing into the combo pieces. 1) It can be used as a backup sac outlet in case you don't have your Viscera Seers. 2) Since the rakdos version probably won't go off all in a single turn, it's good to draw into backups of your combo pieces instead of just scrying them to the bottom in case you run into removal when you pass your turn.
What does Boggart Forager beat that your 2nd, 3rd and 4th copies of Goblin Recruiter doesn't? Seems like a wasted deckslot to me, with the caveat that I've never tried your version of the deck.
So the goblin version is intended to be a 1-turn combo. With a Runaway Steam-Kin in play, cast Goblin Recruiter to stack your deck, cast Experimental Frenzy and then put all your other goblins into play ending of course with the two Goblin Bushwhackers. Boggart Forager is an odd choice and maybe it's a bit of a meta call but I know there are people in my playgroup that would love nothing more than to let me cast the recruiter, put 30 goblins on top of my deck and then counter my frenzy to watch me sit there and draw 1 cmc creatures the rest of the game.
You're right in that Goblin Recruiter has a similar function to Boggart Forager. The main difference being the cmc and that one extra mana is a huge difference. When first starting out playing your goblins off the top with frenzy, your'e very limited on mana and can only afford the 1 cmc creatures because you need three red spells to get 3 mana off the Runaway Steam-Kin. All the goblins are 1 cmc besides the recruiter. Yes even the Mogg War Marshal is a pseudo-1cmc card because you can sac him to the Skirk Prospector without losing a body and bodies are important at the end when you're mass attacking.
You might be thinking, well why don't we just use the recruiter with the Skirk Prospector? Can't you just put him on top and put Goblin Recruiter second? Yes, you can, but if your frenzy gets countered, that's two turns you'll then have to wait to reshuffle instead of just the one if you had Boggart Forager instead. But lets say nothing was countered and you play the Skirk Prospector, sac it then play the Goblin Recruiter and go off from there. You'll then have lost an attacker (the sacced prospector) AND you've put the Foundry Street Denizens further back in the order which will at the end make them smaller.
My attempt with a Rakdos version of Experimental Frenzy. Just a warning, if your playgroup frowns upon people taking 10 minute turns, then they might not like this deck.
Have a card you can't cast on top of your library cloggin up your Experimental Frenzy? Just sac a creature to Viscera Seer, scry it to the bottom and probably do some damage in the process. Or maybe you wanna keep that top card in case your Experimental Frenzy gets destroyed. Then throw one of your creatures under the Skullclamp to save it for later.
Another idea I had with this deck was to make it heavily goblin focused and then stack the deck with Goblin Recruiter. It looked like something like this.
A single mizer Boggart Forager cause there's always that guy who knows what deck you;re playing and will let you put all the goblins on top of your deck only to then counter your Experimental Frenzy to watch you sit there playing single 1/1s every turn.
Card draw seems to be the main issue I see but that's not always an easy solution in mono white. You mentioned you were trying out Endless Atlas but if those don't work, in my mono white or Boros type decks, I usually just default to Mind's Eye. Especially in decks that I already plan to run with Enlightened Tutor.
But if you don't wanna go that direction some other suggestions might be Treasure Map since you'll basically be printing treasures with your Smothering Tithe. It'll also turn into a mana producing land. Or another option could be Karn, Scion of Urza for both card draw and the ability to create fat artifact creature tokens.
Kor Haven could also be an addition if you wanna cut back on the Maze of Iths for more mana producing lands.
Yes, copying an X spell with Melek, Izzet Paragon would copy the value of X. Just be aware that casting X spells with the card you mentioned in your first post (Galvanoth) would cause those X's to be 0 since you're casting without paying the mana cost so the Melek copies would also be 0.
However cards like Brine Elemental and Kheru Spellsnatcher cost a good deal of mana to flip so they're not really gaining anything from the Scroll of Fate.
You should be focusing on cards like Phyrexian Dreadnought and Hunted Phantasm to "cheat" into play.
I'd also rather run a few Fabricates to fetch your scrolls rather than turning to random manifestation cards like Whisperwood Elemental. Fabricate can also help ya fetch up those Phyrexian Dreadnoughts that you should definitely be running.
Gift of Doom is too cute and is an easy cut. I don't think mana creatures are needed either if you're focusing on cheating fatties into play with Scroll of Fate.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is also a flash card I'd consider.
Hopefully you'll have a bunch of sac-lands to go along with those Brainstorms or I'd consider using Ponder/Preordain instead.
Unfortunately trying to attach your own equipment to opponents creatures at instant speed is a tough ask. I think WOTC realized the shenanigans that could take place with equipment being randomly attached to anything via cards like Magnetic Theft and started wording all their 'equipment moving' cards to only affect your own stuff ("equipment you control"/"onto a creature you control" etc).
I do like the idea of surprise extra damage when your opponents attack each other though. However, even if everything goes right, a big problem I see is that the +10/10 double striking creature you create for an opponent can just easily be chump blocked. Once you've played this deck more than once your opponents will know to always chump whenever there's a hammer, stoneforge or sigarda's aid in play, just in case.
The only other way I see getting your own equipment onto an opponents creature is to equip the hammer onto a creature you control then give the creature to your opponent. But that loses the surprise factor and there's no way to stop the opponent from just attack you with your own hammer. Assault Suit does solve some of those issues but again you'd have to be giving them one of your own creatures. Maybe a creature with trample...?
Lets say I activate my Chaos Wand and my opponent flips a Giant Growth which I then successfully cast on one of my creatures. The Giant Growth would get exiled but I know it can't go back to my hand.
"400.3. If an object would go to any library, graveyard, or hand other than its owner's, it goes to its owner's corresponding zone."
So if the Giant Growth was supposed to go to my hand, does it then return to my opponents hand since it's their card or would it remain exiled?
Or maybe it doesn;t work with opponents spells since it says "instead of putting it into your graveyard"...?
Ahh, I see. When you were talking about testing the 0-2-4 methods I thought that was in reference to the Experimental Frenzy not the Skullclamp, lol. While Skullclamp is a very powerful card, I guess I just don;t try to abuse it as much as I could. When playtesting the deck, if I had both frenzy and clamp in play at the same time, I'd always use frenzy first then only use the clamp if a key combo piece was on top to save in my hand.
But yeah I completely understand what you're saying. I have a personal restricted list for some cards that I try not to play cause they're so good but if I do play them I'll only ever play em as a one of. Cards like Exsanguinate and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
Yeah, Light Up the Stage is a great replacement for Faithless Looting. Hadn't experimented with it before now but gold-fished a few games with it in the rakdos list and was pleasantly surprised.
Yeah in an aristocrat type deck, Skullclamp will almost always be better when compared to Experimental Frenzy but I already have SOO many decks that revolve around good ol Skullclamp/Bloodghast/Reassembling Skeleton type combos for card draw.
I was trying to build a different deck that revolved around Experimental Frenzy since it seemed like a fun card and I saw a number of people saying they were excited about frenzy and wanted to see a multiplayer version. I originally tried cards like Pawn of Ulamog in the deck but as I playtested, the more "higher" cmc cards I had, the more often they'd get stuck at the top of my library stopping the frenzy from digging deeper and forcing me to pass. That might not seem like a big deal but the more turns you pass with your key pieces in play, the higher percentage chance that an opponent will have some sort of removal for it. This is why there are a few marginal 1cmc cards like Footlight Fiend and Goblin Arsonist. They aren't the most OP cards but they allow me to continue to frenzy.
Granted, if we removed Experimental Frenzy altogether and just focused on using Skullclamp for our card draw, then it makes sense to add in all those higher cmc cards like Pawn of Ulamog and Living Death but then that's a completely different deck than what I was trying to create.
If you're talking about the goblin version then yeah you wouldn't need to attack but then that's another combo piece to add onto the list. Right now that deck is a 3 card combo (Experimental Frenzy, Runaway Steam-Kin and Goblin Recruiter). Adding a 4th card to that combo just makes it that much harder to pull off.
As for the rakdos version, that seems like a borderline win more card since it fits into the same slot as Zulaport Cutthroat as an AE dmg dealer. Although it could potentially be a replacement for the Zulaport Cutthroat since it's on color for the Runaway Steam-Kin counters but then you're givin up the life gain which might not be a great idea.
Scroll Rack did cross my mind when I was originally thinking of cards to go with Experimental Frenzy but I realized those effects aren't needed for either versions of the deck. For the rakdos version, you want to keep backup versions of your key pieces in your hand in case your stuff gets removed and for the goblin version it shouldn't matter since once you resolve Experimental Frenzy, the game should be over.
At their cores, both decks are basically combo decks. The main use of Skullclamp is to quickly draw into your combo pieces as I'm not running white for Enlightened Tutor type effects. (Same goes for Faithless Looting.) In the Goblin version, once you have the combo pieces you don't really need to use the Skullclamp anymore as the deck is built to go off in a single turn.
In the rakdos version Skullclamp has two other functions besides just drawing into the combo pieces. 1) It can be used as a backup sac outlet in case you don't have your Viscera Seers. 2) Since the rakdos version probably won't go off all in a single turn, it's good to draw into backups of your combo pieces instead of just scrying them to the bottom in case you run into removal when you pass your turn.
So the goblin version is intended to be a 1-turn combo. With a Runaway Steam-Kin in play, cast Goblin Recruiter to stack your deck, cast Experimental Frenzy and then put all your other goblins into play ending of course with the two Goblin Bushwhackers. Boggart Forager is an odd choice and maybe it's a bit of a meta call but I know there are people in my playgroup that would love nothing more than to let me cast the recruiter, put 30 goblins on top of my deck and then counter my frenzy to watch me sit there and draw 1 cmc creatures the rest of the game.
You're right in that Goblin Recruiter has a similar function to Boggart Forager. The main difference being the cmc and that one extra mana is a huge difference. When first starting out playing your goblins off the top with frenzy, your'e very limited on mana and can only afford the 1 cmc creatures because you need three red spells to get 3 mana off the Runaway Steam-Kin. All the goblins are 1 cmc besides the recruiter. Yes even the Mogg War Marshal is a pseudo-1cmc card because you can sac him to the Skirk Prospector without losing a body and bodies are important at the end when you're mass attacking.
You might be thinking, well why don't we just use the recruiter with the Skirk Prospector? Can't you just put him on top and put Goblin Recruiter second? Yes, you can, but if your frenzy gets countered, that's two turns you'll then have to wait to reshuffle instead of just the one if you had Boggart Forager instead. But lets say nothing was countered and you play the Skirk Prospector, sac it then play the Goblin Recruiter and go off from there. You'll then have lost an attacker (the sacced prospector) AND you've put the Foundry Street Denizens further back in the order which will at the end make them smaller.
4x Viscera Seer
4x Zulaport Cutthroat
4x Runaway Steam-Kin
4x Footlight Fiend
4x Goblin Arsonist
4x Mogg War Marshal
2x Goblin Bushwhacker
2x Judith, the Scourge Diva
2x Manaforge Cinder
4x Experimental Frenzy
4x Skullclamp
3x Faithless Looting
Land (19)
4x Blood Crypt
4x Luxury Suite
4x Bloodstained Mire
2x Dragonskull Summit
3x Graven Cairns
1x Mountain
1x Swamp
The deck takes advantage of low cmc creatures (mostly 1 cost) with Runaway Steam-Kins ability to generate an absurd amount of mana. Flood the board with creatures and sac them with Viscera Seer/Skullclamp while your damaging everyone via Zulaport Cutthroat/Judith, the Scourge Diva.
Have a card you can't cast on top of your library cloggin up your Experimental Frenzy? Just sac a creature to Viscera Seer, scry it to the bottom and probably do some damage in the process. Or maybe you wanna keep that top card in case your Experimental Frenzy gets destroyed. Then throw one of your creatures under the Skullclamp to save it for later.
Non-Obvious Card Choices:
-Manaforge Cinder - to help convert some of that red Runaway Steam-Kin mana into black. Plus it's a red 1 cmc card.
-Mogg War Marshal - 3 bodies to sac for only 2 mana.
-Goblin Bushwhacker - in case you need/want to attack
Another idea I had with this deck was to make it heavily goblin focused and then stack the deck with Goblin Recruiter. It looked like something like this.
4x Foundry Street Denizen
2x Goblin Bushwhacker
4x Goblin Guide
4x Goblin Recruiter
4x Legion Loyalist
4x Mogg War Marshal
4x Runaway Steam-Kin
4x Skirk Prospector
1x Boggart Forager
4x Faithless Looting
4x Experimental Frenzy
4x Skullclamp
Land (19)
19x Mountain
Just get an Experimental Frenzy and Runaway Steam-Kin into play then cast Goblin Recruiter and stack your deck with the rest of the goblins putting the Foundry Street Denizens at the top and the Goblin Bushwhackers at the bottom for haste.
A single mizer Boggart Forager cause there's always that guy who knows what deck you;re playing and will let you put all the goblins on top of your deck only to then counter your Experimental Frenzy to watch you sit there playing single 1/1s every turn.