Just when I thought the format was going to devolve into a stale mess of W/U Flash, GP Providence saved us. After a whopping six copies of the deck made the Top 8 of GP Kuala Lumpur, Providence presented us with a much more diverse Top 8 that suggests a more open format as we head into the meat of the Standard season. That means more creativity, more surprises, more brewing, and more fun on Friday evenings than we’re used to getting. For brewers everywhere, that’s like finding two toys in your Kinder egg.
Sorry, American readers. That’s a penalty for taunting.
With something of an idea of the format, it’s easier for us to find those unexplored, fun, and powerful niches in which to build our decks. If W/U Flash is the best deck, we have at least anecdotal evidence that B/G Delirium is strong against it. Various Vehicles and Dynavolt Tower decks exist, and Aetherworks Marvel is still a powerful option.
The last of those is what led me to today’s topic. Of the four four-cost artifact rares in the set, Aetherworks Marvel is the only one that has seen any competitive success so far. I think all of them are very powerful build-around cards that can give us the surfeit of fun we crave.
Wait. Do we really want a surfeit of fun? I personally do, but perhaps you could settle for an abundance of it? Beware the thesaurus menace!
As you enter the battlefield of your LGS this weekend to play FNM, these brews will make your opponents twice as likely to taste defeat. Let’s get trigger happy!
Panharmoni-combos
We’ve spoken before about some of the things we can do with Panharmonicon. We only scratched the surface, though, as it is one of the most versatile combo machines since Intruder Alarm. Every time I look through random cards, I come up with something else the card can do. My top combos with Panharmonicon:
These cards on their own have been part of some lightning-fast creature decks. When they produce twice as much mana as they cost, though, they should be able to do horrible, horrible things. A turn 3 Panharmonicon into a turn 4 Priest of Urabrask gives us seven mana to play with. Both can be hit with Collected Company, which provides us some ideas for how to build.
Cloudstone Curio will enable us to go off if we have either another red creature (with the Priest) or a two-mana creature (with Burning-Tree Emissary). From there we can cast Banefire for the win or drop a Storm Entity and attack for a lot. Temur Sabertooth could be part of the combo as another way to bounce the mana-producing creature, but we would need a way to turn red mana into green. The only way I know of to get green mana out of this loop is with Tangleroot, which does the trick but notably does not double with Panharmonicon. Maybe we can play an Aetherflux Reservoir along with it too?
Okay, let’s back off a little. We went too deep.
The difficulty with building this deck looks like it will be in finding the balance between payoffs for the extra mana and aggressive enough starts. We can look to Keldon Marauders or Blisterstick Shaman as a way to win with Cloudstone Curio, with the Marauders being the better choice if we want to be an aggressive deck. We can also play Kitchen Finks (if we add Tangleroot) to get infinite life. Mogg War Marshal gives us infinite Goblins and some extra bounce triggers, and both Purphoros, God of the Forge and Impact Tremors can help us win without needing to attack. Given that we can cast Chord of Calling for Purphoros, we might want to go that route. Eternal Witness can be looped once we have all the mana we need but can also retrieve the combo.
Oh Storm Entity, why don’t you have trample?
We’ve all seen the combo with Brood Monitor and Eldrazi Displacer before. Until now, we’ve needed something fragile like Zulaport Cutthroat to finish that combo. Panharmonicon changes that, letting us double our Scion generation and netting us creatures each time around the circuit. Incidentally, we also get infinite mana this way if we want it.
With the need for colorless mana, the desire to ramp, and the fact that Eyeless Watcher and Brood Monitor cost four and six respectively, we might want to look into Eldritch Evolution along with Primal Druid and Wild Wanderer. Not only do both of those cards happen to be at exactly the right spot on the curve to find us our combo pieces, they also can fetch us a Wastes if we need to start the combo by tapping lands.
The rest of this deck is proving very hard to build. Brad Nelson once taught me that a deck should either go “2-4-6” mana or “1-3-5” mana but rarely both. That generally applies to ramp decks, but I think Eldritch Evolution decks will want to follow the same rule, although perhaps not as slavishly. As neither Eyeless Watcher nor Brood Monitor is a particularly desirable card on its own, Eldritch Evolution allows us to keep the number of copies down to a minimum.
However, I am definitely looking to find room for powerful chains like Filigree Familiar into Arborback Stomper or Ishkanah, Grafwidow. Remember that sacrificing the Familiar to Evolution puts you 3/4 of the way to delirium by itself! This might mean we occasionally sacrifice a creature to find something that costs only one more, but six Spider tokens? That’s just too good. Hidden bonus: having Wild Wanderer and Primal Druid lets us play a Swamp to activate Ishkanah.
If we want to adhere more strictly to the even mana costs, Hedron Crawler and Thought-Knot Seer are two excellent options. There’s close to zero chance I omit Verdurous Gearhulk regardless of what we do, especially because of the ability to grow a number of Scions each time we blink it. Aetherstorm Roc gives us a bunch of energy if we want it for anything, like making a very large Bristling Hydra. That is likely not enough on its own to warrant going that route, however. Greenwarden of Murasa and Linvala, the Preserver are powerful utility cards that will have a place in your 75, and Wispweaver Angel just does silly things with Panharmonicon.
The biggest problem with this deck is actually finding Panharmonicon. We don’t have access to Glint-Nest Crane, but we do have Vessel of Nascency that can dig us through our library to some degree. As an Eldritch Evolution deck, we are also in a position to win without the artifact by value overload. Much like the gameplan of the old Pod decks, we are a value deck with an incidental “I win” button.
This one is tricky, so bear with me. The imprint ability is a trigger, so we get to exile two cards with it. Because the two abilities on Isochron Scepter are linked, when you activate it, the card looks for “the exiled card” and gets two answers. So we get to choose one? Well, sure, you could choose just one to cast. Or, you know, cast both of them. In any order. This interaction is 100% guaranteed rules-wise to work, certified by an actual rules scientist.
Armed with this knowledge, how can we use it to win the game? Given than two-mana instants are unlikely to be powerful enough to win the game if we can cast two on the same turn, we’re going to need…shenanigans! Fortunately, we don’t need to look too far for those shenanigans, as Dramatic Reversal is in the exact same set! For two mana and a tap of Isochron Scepter, we can cast Dramatic Reversal and untap the Scepter. All we need then is a way to make sure we can then tap the Scepter again. Any combination of no-land mana sources that make two or more mana will do the trick, along with any instant that deals damage. Oh, if only such things existed in Magic!
I think my Sarcasmatron 5000 just exploded.
Panharmonicon, Isochron Scepter, mana rocks…hmmm. Are these all artifacts? Well, what do you know, they are! Glint-Nest Crane and Tezzeret the Seeker (or even Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas if you want) can both find a home in this deck to find our combo pieces while also enabling us to build a toolbox-style deck with hate cards like Torpor Orb and Grafdigger’s Cage.
Our damage-dealing spells are easy to find, of course. We could even get by without one if we play something like Chalice of Life, though I recognize people will have an aversion to that card. I, however, am the opposite.
The fun doesn’t end with mana rocks, oh no. We are blessed with two two-mana spells in Modern that make three mana, Desperate Ritual and Pyretic Ritual. Either of those combined with Dramatic Reversal is of course a way to make infinite red mana (again). Add in Prophetic Prism and we can make that mana into any color we want. I’m sure you clever folks can think of some ways to spend all that mana…
One of these things just doesn’t belong here…
We don’t have to go infinite to make a doubly-imprinted Isochron Scepter into a fun machine that never ends. Any of the Return to Ravnica Block Charms could make fine choices, especially in tandem. Funeral Charm and Boomerang is a nasty combination. Atarka’s Command and Boros Charm is a quick path to victory, and Angel’s Grace plus Silence is just funny. There’s a great deal of flexibility available here, although as always the vulnerability of the Scepter is the sticking point. In fact, that vulnerability is doubled as we are exiling two cards, but when the payoff is winning the game, it’s a risk we might be able to stomach.
Unleash the Value
I’m not proud. We can forego the fancy combos, the instant win buttons, and the cuteness and just win with just pure old-fashioned value. Who doesn’t love value? Communists, that’s who. Aside from the clearly excellent Reflector Mage and Cloudblazer, we have access to things like Angel of Invention, which can allow us to go very wide very quickly. If only we had a way to make all those little Servos bigger…oh. Right.
“But Lansdell,” you are likely wondering, “why would we play this over W/U Flash?” Well, friends, there are a couple of reasons. If we are building our deck to extract maximum value from our enters-the-battlefield effects, we’re going to want Eldrazi Displacer. As blue seems to be the most logical companion color, we are also going to play Drowner of Hope and probably Eldrazi Skyspawner. Now we have a combo that still plays good cards but also an “I win” button. The flash decks don’t have that, as great as they are. Also, W/U Flash is the kind of deck I respect and could never play. I find that style of deck boring and a chore to play, and that leads to mistakes. If you’re not having fun with your deck, play a different one! We are hardly constrained for choice right now.
The interesting question is whether or not we want Glint-Nest Crane. On one hand, I see value in the ability to find Panharmonicon, Filigree Familiar, and potentially Hedron Crawler or Hedron Archive, or perhaps even one of the Module cycle if we feel particularly spicy. Whirler Virtuoso is a possibility but requires a lot of pieces to do its thing and therefore might not make the cut.
In Modern we have the added bonus of being able to use Aether Vial. Something like Venser, Shaper Savant then becomes a reusable free bounce spell, Flickerwisp makes an even bigger impact on the battlefield, and Snapcaster Mage is even more ridiculous. In some cases, this might seem like winning more, but as we like to say here, it sure beats winning less. There’s also the application in R/W Soul Sisters with Genesis Chamber and Norin the Wary, which is going to make a mess on the battlefield in a hurry.
That’s all we have for this week, folks. I am looking forward to this upcoming break in travel so I can play some Magic and get these deck ideas tested. Panharmonicon is just too much fun to not play.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and until next time…Brew On!