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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Artifact Combo Deck Help (Standard)
May 10, 2010 

I've usually made it a rule of the Deck Garage that I don't build decks from scratch for you. The reasoning behind this is that I'm here to help you develop and nurture your ideas, not spoon-feed ideas to you and alleviate you of the need to think. 

I'm only made an exception for Dhruv here because he has clearly done a lot of thinking already-- he's discovered a combo he wants to build around. I don't mind filling in the details from there.
---

Hi. Recently, I came up with a combo that uses Open the Vaults, Mirror
of Fate, and Time Sieve to loop and get infinite turns. The combo requires only Open the Vaults in your hand and the rest in the grave.
It goes like:

1.Cast Open the Vaults, reviving Mirror of Fate, Time Sieve, Relic of Progenitus, Onyx Goblet, and any two artifacts.
2. Tap Onyx Goblet.
3. Tap Relic of Progenitus and exile Open the Vaults.
4. Sac Mirror of Fate and Stack Open the Vaults on your deck.
5.Sac Time Sieve and four other artifacts to take another turn.
6. Keep repeating for game.

Can you please build me a deck around this combo? I'm a budget player,
so no Time Warp/Jace/Tezzeret/etc. Thanks!

--
The One and Only, Dhruv

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, the first step is that we've got five unique cards we need to find out of our deck. Step One is drawing and tutoring effects. Fabricate is a perfect tutor for the situation. See Beyond is a great draw spell, since it lets you throw back extra copies of combo pieces you already have, and it's cheaper to cast than Divination for what is basically the same draw potential. Faerie Mechanist is also a good card for fishing out artifacts off the top of your deck, as well as a decent 2/2 body for blocking or swinging in the air.

Attacking for 2 may be more useful than you think. You see, with most "infinite" combos, you can just demonstrate to your opponent how it works and then say "I do it enough times to win". Various judges, however, have ruled that you can't do that with infinite turns. The reasoning? Technically, infinite turns doesn't win. It's what you do during those turns that presumably gets you incrementally closer to winning. If you make a play mistake on any of those turns, or just plain don't do anything, then not only does your combo not automatically make you win, it could make you lose if you draw out your whole deck. So, when you play this deck, you're going to have to manually go through this combo over and over until you win. Since your current win condition is repeated tappings of an Onyx Goblet turn after turn, this could get tedious if your opponent is still at 20 when you go off. I definitely think that a Faerie Mechanist swinging in each turn could help out immensely.

Of course, that means that the Mechanist, or any other artifact creatures you play, can't be one of the five you sack and re-sack to Time Sieve. If it keeps leaving and entering play every turn, it'll have summoning sickness and won't be able to attack. Unless it has a sufficient enter-the-battlefield ability, like Parasitic Strix, of course.

But if you want a creature to win via attacking, you probably want something bigger than a 2/2. I personally like Enigma Sphinx. It swings for 5, it's hard to keep dead (and its ability will put it back in your library as extra insurance against decking yourself once you're exiling your whole library every turn-- with a little careful use of Mirror of Fate and Faerie Mechanist, you'll have no trouble getting it back), and it can cascade into basically any card of your combo, making it card advantage as well.

Since the deck is three colors by necessity, you'll also want to include mana-fixing. Fortunately, this is a forte of artifacts. You could use the newly-printed Prophetic Prism, but beware! If you sack it to Time Sieve in your combo, when you Open the Vaults you'll be forced to draw an extra card, and will lose if you didn't stack an extra card in your library with the Mirror. In fact, any Prisms in your graveyard when you Open the Vaults could cause this-- you'll need to exile them all with the Relics before attempting to go off if you play them. Faerie Mechaist has no such problem because its ability is optional. However, before you go off, the Prism's draw ability is useful to find combo pieces. But if you don't want to risk running the Prism, you could also use Mana Cylix, or Obelisk of Esper, or even just Arcane Sanctum would help.

So, onto a decklist I suppose.

Spells:

4 Fabricate

4 See Beyond

4 Time Sieve

4 Relic of Progenitus

4 Open the Vaults

4 Everflowing Chalice

2 Mirror of Fate

3 Onxy Goblet

Creatures:

4 Faerie Mechaist

2 Enigma Sphinx

2 Parasitic Strix

Lands:

3 Arcane Sanctum

4 Terramorphic Expanse

3 Swamp

3 Plains

10 Island

I suppose that should do it. I added Everflowing Chalice so you'd have extra sacrifice fodder, and to ensure you got enough mana to cast your spells quickly.

The only problem is that none of these cards really slow down opponents. You may want to take out a few cards to make room for removal spells like Path to Exile, or anti-combo strategies like Dispeller's Capsule, Suffer the Past, Perish the Thought, et cetera.

Good luck!

~BMoor