[SCD] - Umbral Mantle

[MaximumCDawg]

It combos, it aggros, it gets fetched by Stoneforge, it slices, it dices, it's... Umbral Mantle!

This is a fun little equipment that I've been running in casual decks since forever and I've been starting to poke around with testing it in Vintage.  Currently I'm very, very happy with it in Elves, but I wonder if Metalworker shops or Stoneforge/Wizard decks might use it, too.

This equipment gets silly when you attach it to creatures that tap for mana.  If they tap for one or two mana, then it essentially reads: 1 or 2: +2/+2, which is fine in the aggro matchup.  If they tap for three mana, you got yourself an infinity-big dude.  If they tap for four mana you have infinity-all-the-dudes-you-can-tap.

Creatures that go infinite with Mantle (and are reasonable in Vintage) include:

Metalworker
Priest of Titana
Elvish Archdruid
Bloom Tender (maybe)

One concept I like is running Metalworker and Mantle in one of those affinity/robot shop shells.  It seems pretty awesome if you can manager Turn 1 Worker, and maybe a Ornithopter, and then turn 2 drop Mantle for infinite beats.  This is more reliable than Staff of Domination, since Staff requires more mana to go infinite.  Worker + 3 artifacts in hand gives you your own Blightsteel replica, and 4 gives you an army of them.  

Mantle is best in Elves, of course, since it makes your 1 drop dorks or Dryad Arbor pretty menacing without any combo shenanigans.

Anyone else screwed around with this card?

Added Pictures....Everybody likes pictures...
-MM

[Samoht]

It was a kill in my Rofellos EDH deck before Sheldon decided it wasn't very fair again. I'm not sure that it's where you want to be in Vintage, as it's at best a 2 card combo that is reliant on other things going well and can be stopped by either Art hate or Creat hate.

[wiley]

I miss this deck http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36027.0

Umbral mantle was great with worker, but without the easy time vault rings combo it stopped being anything close to competitive (even though it was really hard to fight a force to begin with).

[xouman]

I think I prefer staff of domination, but this one is easier to fire. Surely I'll get some to try them, specially with 7 archdruids/priests in my elves deck. Control decks usually limite board so it's easy to have 2-3 elves but not so easy to have 5. any priest or archdruid becomes an aggro menace, but not unblockables. Still, with 4 elves seems a clear win condition.

[MaximumCDawg]

That's exactly where I stuck the umbral yesterday; big mana elves.  Worked out great against dark times and standstill.

[xouman]

It was a kill in my Rofellos EDH deck before Sheldon decided it wasn't very fair again. I'm not sure that it's where you want to be in Vintage, as it's at best a 2 card combo that is reliant on other things going well and can be stopped by either Art hate or Creat hate.

Well, in elves! it's nice. I cannot see it as "a 2 card combo that is reliant on other things going well and can be stopped by either Art hate or Creat hate". If you want to rely on artifact destruction or targeted creature removal against elves!, you are having a bad time.

@MaximumCDawg : How many mantles did you use? how many priests/archdruids? any staff of domination?

[zeus-online]

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[MaximumCDawg]

It was a kill in my Rofellos EDH deck before Sheldon decided it wasn't very fair again. I'm not sure that it's where you want to be in Vintage, as it's at best a 2 card combo that is reliant on other things going well and can be stopped by either Art hate or Creat hate.

Well, in elves! it's nice. I cannot see it as "a 2 card combo that is reliant on other things going well and can be stopped by either Art hate or Creat hate". If you want to rely on artifact destruction or targeted creature removal against elves!, you are having a bad time.

@MaximumCDawg : How many mantles did you use? how many priests/archdruids? any staff of domination?

I did this:

Big Mana Elves

The mana dorks (17)
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Heritage Druid
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Elvish Mystic

4 Priest of Titania
2 Elvish Archdruid

The utility dorks (12)
3 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Quirion Ranger
3 Elvish Visionary
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Quasali Pridemage

Card draw (5)
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature

Tutor (7)
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Natural Order
2 Weird Harvest

Win Cons (4)
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Mirror Entity
1 Umbral Mantle

Mana (14)
1 Savanna
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Gaea's Cradle
4 Forest
1 Mox Emerald

Sideboard (was mostly irrelevant, but had more Oozes, etc)

The concept here was to play the aggressive role but have so many options that an opponent cannot simply lock you out with Plague or Chalice and move on. The deck's goal is to land a Priest or Archdruid and then go bonkers with mana production. I won in various contexts by hardcasting Craterhoof, going off with GSZ and Heritage druid, beating with Umbral Mantle on a dude, beating with a big Ooze through two Plagues naming Elves, etc.

I did tie for first in a teeny tiny Vintage tourny with five people using this; decks were a Dark Times variant, a Standstill variant, traditional Dredge and UW Angels.  I only lost to Dredge, went to time against Angels.  

Umbral Mantle is better than Staff of Domination because it lets you win aggro battles with your small dorks.  I'm impressed enough I think I wanna go up to two of em.  Probably cut the Entity, I dunno.

[xouman]

Umbral Mantle is better than Staff of Domination because it lets you win aggro battles with your small dorks

Well, active staff (with >4 elves and priest/archdruid) means gg in 99% of scenarios. I only lost to blazing archon.

With no priest/archdruid, or with less than 3 elves: Umbral mantle gives +2/+2 to an attacking creature. maybe +4/+4. Staff draws a card, or taps creatures (for example, bsc). I prefer staff.

With priest/archdruid and 3 elves in total: Umbral makes priest a 1001/1001 (hope your opponen does not have something with deathtouch). Staff just draws or taps creatures. I prefer umbral, but it's still blockable, not instant win in a good number of cases.

With priest/archdruid and 4 elves in total. Umbral makes all your creatues 1001/1001. Staff just draws or taps creatures. Here is where umbral shines, because blocking 4 or more creatures is not as easy as blocking 1. However they shouldn't have summoning sickness! I of course prefer umbral mantle

With priest/archdruid and 5 elves or more in total. Umbral makes all your creatues 1001/1001.However they shouldn't have summoning sickness! Staff draws all your deck if you want to, gives you infinites lives if you need to, allows you to tap all your opponent creatures. Playing emrakul, in my eyes this is safer. Win more? Well, safer.

I'm not discarding mantle at all. In fact, mantle is a little quicker than staff, allowing:

T1: forest + llanowar
T2: forest + priest + elf
T3-A: umbral mantle. At that point priest attacks for 890389083
T3-B: forest + elf + umbral mantle. At that point 3 creatures attack for 890389083

With staff it's not reasonable to have 5 elves by turn 3 AND have the mana to untap priest.


About the list, I like a lot Mirror entity, but if you are not playing any other white spells I won't play mirror, specially if you are not playing caverns (with caverns and birchlore+gsz it's another call).

you play 2 behemot+1 mirror entity +2 weird harvest to use huge mana. I play 3 genesis wave +1 emrakul. I'd probably try weird harvest, but I'm a bit afraid to fetch snapcasters for my opponents. Genesis wave has been great in some tournaments but meh in my last one. Genesis wave with less than 6 mana is stupid. With 6-7 mana is a bit desperate. With 8-9 mana most of the time gives a good advantage, but not enough to close the deal. For 10-17 mana you should won in the spot, or maybe the next turn. With 18 or more i lost once, and because I missplayed it (I put emrakul into play, not winning the extra turn, instead shuffling it in my deck and fetching it with fauna shaman).


How about playing 8 priests and 3/4 umbral/staffs? It makes the deck more quick imho.

[zeus-online]

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[xouman]

Ah, yes. The first match against combo is lost if they know what are they playing. Post side you can play thorns, cages to hose grave, mindbreaks... Still is a bad pairing for sure. If is burning-oath this deck has even more options. But pure storm combo is not that much played nowadays, is it? And you can expect one deck to have a nemesis. You can also ask "how does combo deal with mud?"

And I'm not saying this deck could be a T1 dominator by any means :p I just agree that umbral mantle is a decent Win Condition in a aggro-combo (one of the few probably?) deck.

[zeus-online]

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[xouman]

Tbh there is a little change to get combo: gsz > gaddock (if included). Though it lacks synergy (gsz is annuled from that point), it's a 3 mana answer to fows, tendrils, gush, gifts and so. tinker is still a bane in the very early turns.

Also artifact/graveyard destruction could buy few turns that can be precious.

[MaximumCDawg]

I'm not discarding mantle at all. In fact, mantle is a little quicker than staff.

Its not just how fast it is to combo out.  Without a Priest, Mantle makes your mana dorks into legitimate threats.  This won me at least one game against Dark Times, which was smart enough to Seize my Priests as quickly as it saw them.

you play 2 behemot+1 mirror entity +2 weird harvest to use huge mana. I play 3 genesis wave +1 emrakul. I'd probably try weird harvest, but I'm a bit afraid to fetch snapcasters for my opponents. Genesis wave has been great in some tournaments but meh in my last one. Genesis wave with less than 6 mana is stupid. With 6-7 mana is a bit desperate. With 8-9 mana most of the time gives a good advantage, but not enough to close the deal. For 10-17 mana you should won in the spot, or maybe the next turn. With 18 or more i lost once, and because I missplayed it (I put emrakul into play, not winning the extra turn, instead shuffling it in my deck and fetching it with fauna shaman).

I agree, Harvest for Snapcaster blows.  In those matchups, hopefully I've landed Leyline to stop countermagic.  Anyway, the potential benefit of Harvest over Wave is that Harvest can go off with as little as 4 or 5 mana.  You grab those untappers and your priest goes to town...


How about playing 8 priests and 3/4 umbral/staffs? It makes the deck more quick imho.
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