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Bow Down to My Totem.

Description of deck by its author (quoted):
Hmmmm, looks like he has a Leonin Abunas in play, shall we make our artifacts untargetable? How about that big, scary Bringer of the Red Dawn on the other side of the board? You mean at the beginning of my upkeep I get to control one of his other monsters, give it haste and attack? Sure you can! Or better yet take control of his Ms. You Can’t Lose the Game and the Other Guy Can’t Win, Platinum Angel.

What’s yours is mine, what’s mine is mine - Most of the spells here are either 1 to 3 mana spells with the exception of Solemn Simulacrum so you will be able to put down most of the pieces fairly quickly in the game. The combo mainly relies on you setting up Avarice Totem and having Tel-Jilad Stylus on the table. With five mana free you will initiate a “trade” by activating the Totem and pointing to one of their permanents. Once the bargain has been entered into, you will activate your Stylus to take the Totem back from his side of the board and place it at the bottom of your library. Note that the Stylus’ text states “Put target permanent you OWN on the bottom of your library.” It does not state that you must have control of the permanent at the time you activate the Stylus. Sneaky sneaky.

Putting the pieces together - So how do we pull this off? That’s where Artificer’s Intuition comes in. For one mana you can basically tutor up the parts of the puzzle that you need. The drawback is that you have to discard an artifact card from your hand. Might as well use an artifact that comes back into play, hmmm how about those Myr Servitors? That’s a better use for them than coasters for your Dad’s Friday night poker game. The trick is to tutor up a Servitor, discard it to tutor up the other three and play the fourth one. At beginning of upkeep the other three come up! You can use the other three to block and leave one behind to call the others back at the beginning of your turn. How about the other components of the deck? Let’s break it down:

Solemn Simulacrum - He has a two part use, either as a 2/2 attacking/blocking creature that will let you thin out the lands in your deck, thereby ensuring that you will be drawing cards you can use instead of having a mana heavy hand. He has the added bonus of allowing you to draw a card when he goes to the graveyard. Or you can save him using these next few cards.

Aether Spellbomb - This thing should read 1U sacrifice and return target creature to owner’s hand. For example, say your opponent just finished casting Tooth and Nail and brought down two Darksteel Colossi, if you have the Spellbomb in play, use one blue to bring one of the Colossi back to his hand. Untap and cast the other bomb to bring back the other to his hand. Now that is a heavy hand indeed. He’ll either have to find another Tooth and Nail or -gasp- cast those golems in the normal method, I can’t believe lightning has not yet struck me down! In any case this will give you some time to strategize, plan or otherwise confound your opponent while you lay down your own combo. Oh yeah, you can use the bomb on your own creatures too, block then bring back to hand and recast. Can you say Solemn Simulacrum? ***Warning*** Use this only if you really need to, otherwise use these other options.

Vedalken Mastermind - Aaah yes, the Mastermind. Block then bring back to hand or block using another creature and bring that one back to hand. Can be used on any permanent you control. Best used with Solemn Simulacrum to thin out your basic lands while building up your mana base. Or the ever useful Trinket Mage.

Trinket Mage - The mage has two uses here. The card text states “When Trinket Mage comes into play, you may search your library for an artifact card with converted mana cost 1 or less...” but wait, most of our combo pieces are 1 mana to cast! Even better, artifact lands are also artifacts and they cost less than one to cast so feel free to thin the lands in your deck even more while readying that combo.

Crystal Shard - Remember I talked about using your Aether Spellbomb to bring a creature back to hand? It’s not half as fun when you use this during the Tooth and Nail guy’s turn (make sure he does not have any mana to pay with) to bring one Colossus, untap and bring the other one back. Sure to make the guy across from you put “tooth to nail”, smile, the fun’s just getting started. Can also be used on your own creatures, like Solemn Simulacrum aka Commander Data from Star Trek (you know I’m right). Or Trinket Mage if you have no artifacts to give out to Artificer’s Intuition.

Conjurer’s Bauble - Used either as fodder for your Intuition or as a way to get a card back into your library. You can also spring this little artifact as a save for your priceless Totem or Stylus by putting them at the bottom of your library and Intuit back to your hand. This has saved the game for me a few times.

Chimeric Coils - All right, this is a last resort. Hopefully you have been listening all this time and have the combo working nice as you please. You have your opponent’s creatures and you’re bashing him with his own guys. In the case that there aren’t any creatures on the board (ahem, Evacuation perhaps) the Coils can be activated to basically be a Ball Lightning on steroids. But wait you say, you have to sacrifice it at end of turn! Vedalken Mastermind, Aether Spellbomb, Crystal Shard and Tel-Jilad Stylus. Or if you don’t have any of those then you can Bauble it back to your library where you can Intuit it back or use your Trinket Mage to pull it out.

One thing this deck surely has is redundancy. That plus the cheapness of the combo pieces and the relative ease in pulling them out should be able to help you pretty much control the board. Add some denial spells for spice while taking out some redundant parts won’t hurt. Something cheap like Mana Leak to counter or Annul to stop that artifact coming down. I thought of putting in a few Isochron Scepters and imprinting Mana Leaks but the possibility of not having both in hand at the time I needed them kind of threw me off the idea. Last Word was also an option.

Here are a few tips on playing this deck. This deck is mainly about CONTROL. When he stops playing permanent’s for you to steal then start stealing his lands. With more mana, who knows what other mischief you can come up with. You can cast those cheap artifacts AND deny him his mana base. Take his creatures while you’re at it and use them to chump block the bigger guys and gain control of the fatty after he’s done his job. Better yet take all his nice artifacts and either play them on your side or bring them back to hand and Intuit for the other Totems, Stylus’ or Coils. You can even take those pesky enchantments of his and either play them on your side or bring back to hand and keep it there, many thanks to Vedalken Mastermind.

Lastly, bringing Simulacrum back to hand is good but it’s usually later in the game that it helps, unless you’re mana starved at that point. I mean you can do it early, it’s your mana, just don’t blow it all in one place. You gotta think, wealth. You also gotta think about your pocket so I checked on our own beloved Cardshark and found out that with the exception of the two rares, all commons in this deck are $0.05 and all the uncommons are $0.10. The Artificer’s Intuition is under a dollar. With the exception of Commander Data (Simulacrum) all the cards here are inexpensive. You can of course substitute Ur-Golem’s Eye for the Simulacrum for the mana accel. or you can put in a little money and add in a few Last Words. Or you can use Conjurer’s Bauble instead of Solemn simulacrum because it fits the whole low mana cost theme of the deck AND you can Intuit a more useful artifact if you’re not needing the mana. To stop the fatties you might want to add an Ensnaring Bridge or a few Sun Droplets for early game defense (or life boost if you have more than one in play, yes it will trigger for all of them).

And watch out for those Colossi, they will get churned back to the library if they are not in play or in his hand so why not put it in play on your side or keep it in your hand. **Warning** DO NOT Intuit the Colossus as it will “shuffle it into it’s owner’s library” meaning the other guy. Ouch! For true redundancy you might want to include some Fabricate’s (I opted against putting some in there only because of the fact that it’s a sorcery and it cost 3 mana to cast, I figured the other parts would do well by themselves). Since you’re playing with blue you can go the card advantage route by adding some Serum Visions in there. Draw a card AND set up for the next two draws AND it’s a common, what else can I say? Or better yet, after you’ve scryed for the right cards, draw them with Thirst of Knowledge and discard an artifact from your hand.

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by Randy Villarica @ www.cardshark.com

CONTROL: Avarice Toem - Tel-Jilad Stylus