Artificer's Clamp

[Jacob Orlove]

For the lazy:

Suicide Virus Type I
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Mana Crypt

4 Ornithopter
4 Disciple of the Vault

1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fastbond
1 Crop Rotation
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring

4 Skull Clamp
4 Myr Servitor

1 Burning Wish
3 Arcbound Ravager
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk

4 Artificer’s Intuition
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4 Thoughtcast

4 Seat of the Synod
2 Vault of Whispers
2 Glimmervoid
2 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy

Sideboard:
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Balance
1 Mind Twist
3 Hydroblast
1 Zuran Orb
3 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Regrowth
1 Time Spiral
1 Overload

[Eddie]

Ok, here are my thoughts on the limited playtesting with this deck.

First of all: the mulligan. It is hard to decide to mulligan or not with a deck you don't know. But hands like: Glimmervoid, Ravager, Ornithopter, Skullclamp, Seat of the Synod, Myr Servitor, Myr Servitor come up very often. Do you mull this? When playtesting this deck I kept hands when I was in doubt to see where the deck would take me. Often, it was nowhere so you need to mulligan quite aggressively. The above hand would be a lot better with crop rotation or academy.

The mulligan and when playing the deck made me think of Belcher and it's inconsistency. I believe this deck is even worse in regards to that.

Also, as Hi-Val pointed out, you just randomly bend over to Null Rod. 1 Overload in the side is not going to help you out on this. 2 Cunning Wish main and oxidize in the side can help out, but this will slow the deck (sorry for stating the obvious). You can also change the manabase and remove some artifact land for regular land. But every solution to the Null Rod problem will slow the deck down.

On the plus: academy is a bomb here and you will have more than 10 artifacts in play in no time. Also, the draw engine in Artificer’s Intuition, Servitor and Skullclamp is very good (not considering Null Rod). Thoughtcast is not bad. I paid 1U to cast it at the most.

I would also cut some sorceries from the side. No need to have all those options with only one Burning Wish.

Some more testing might be worth the time. Anyone else with some testing?

[Toad]

I've been fucked up a couple of times in goldfishing because Disciple of the Vault is pretty bad under Yawgmoth's Will.

[Thug]

I second Toad, and I think the Disciples are totally overkill. With the deck already running 11 blue cards FoW really start to make sense.
The servitor engine is cute, but the deck is not made for winning over several turns, it lacks all the tools to do so.
I think this deck isn't all that hot, but it does bring up some ideas that might work out somehow.

Koen

[Toad]

Cutting the Disciples would make the Skullclamp worse though. You need to keep a high creatures count. And Disciple would allow some instant win when Arcbound Ravager would often require you to wait for a full turn (summon sickness) during which the opponent can deal with it.

I'm not really fond of Burning Wish either.

And the engine, while being good, needs a few turns to set up and is really fragile (It dies to a single removal targetting the Servitor you kept in play). [/quote]

[Thug]

Cutting the Disciples would make the Skullclamp worse though. You need to keep a high creatures count. And Disciple would allow some instant win when Arcbound Ravager would often require you to wait for a full turn (summon sickness) during which the opponent can deal with it.

The disciples could be replaced by other creatures though, like Welders. I have toyed around a lot with Skullclamp-Combo versions and never found the Disciples pulling their weight, they just do too little. It wouldn't be too hard to find a kill method other than Disciples since there are various options.

Koen

[Smmenen]

Candleabra sounds awesome.  What are you going to cut?  

How do you generally win?  It seems to me like the win condition is basically perfunctory - almost anything will do.  I would try and see about just playing 1-3 Tendrils instead of Disciples.

Did you notice that Mike Long has 61 cards?

[Thug]

Candleabra sounds awesome. What are you going to cut?

Yeah it does   (I guess it's time to go through all 0 and 1cc artifacts to see if there are some other nice toys)

I went different directions with the deck, but in the end I came to a version that only has like 5 different cards.

I basicly cutted the Disciple's for a Tendrils and some FoW's. I also ditched the LED 'cause it was more of a win-more card (but I might be wrong on this). Hmmm, I only have 3 thopter and thats about it. I actually liked the Burning Wish, since it allows you to play with only 1 Tendrils maindeck and can get pretty neat tools.

How do you generally win? It seems to me like the win condition is basically perfunctory - almost anything will do. I would try and see about just playing 1-3 Tendrils instead of Disciples.

Yeah, the win condition doesn't really matter, since you'll draw a huge number of cards by abusing the engine more than once, and getting some thopters to double clamp. By that time anything could serve as a win condition. With FoW in my version it also doesn't really matter if your opponent holds a Stifle etc.

Did you notice that Mike Long has 61 cards?

Yeah I did, at first I thought the deck was really put down in a hurry, but after a while things started to make sense, 61 cards in a combo-deck stays pretty bad though.

I wonder if anyone should start a discussion on versions of this deck in the open forum, or that we should continue in this thread? I guess a Mod could best answer this.

Koen

EDIT: I just realised, I also replaced Thoughtcast with Brainstorms, this may sound strange but Brainstorm is superior in almost any way.

[Smmenen]

Candleabra sounds awesome. What are you going to cut?

Yeah it does   (I guess it's time to go through all 0 and 1cc artifacts to see if there are some other nice toys)

I went different directions with the deck, but in the end I came to a version that only has like 5 different cards.

I basicly cutted the Disciple's for a Tendrils and some FoW's. I also ditched the LED 'cause it was more of a win-more card (but I might be wrong on this). Hmmm, I only have 3 thopter and thats about it. I actually liked the Burning Wish, since it allows you to play with only 1 Tendrils maindeck and can get pretty neat tools.

How do you generally win? It seems to me like the win condition is basically perfunctory - almost anything will do. I would try and see about just playing 1-3 Tendrils instead of Disciples.

Yeah, the win condition doesn't really matter, since you'll draw a huge number of cards by abusing the engine more than once, and getting some thopters to double clamp. By that time anything could serve as a win condition. With FoW in my version it also doesn't really matter if your opponent holds a Stifle etc.

Did you notice that Mike Long has 61 cards?

Yeah I did, at first I thought the deck was really put down in a hurry, but after a while things started to make sense, 61 cards in a combo-deck stays pretty bad though.

I wonder if anyone should start a discussion on versions of this deck in the open forum, or that we should continue in this thread? I guess a Mod could best answer this.

Koen

EDIT: I just realised, I also replaced Thoughtcast with Brainstorms, this may sound strange but Brainstorm is superior in almost any way.

My thoughts.  I think our experience with Combo decks, Koen, gives us a huge advantage, but I think there is a steep learning curve to this deck.  I was missing things like double-clamping Ornithopters to draw 4 cards.  The deck is quite fast, but may not be fast enough.  As we get more efficient with the deck, it will be interesting to se what we can do with it.   I might play Duress before playing with FOW, fyi.

[Matt]

I might play Duress before playing with FOW, fyi.

Or even Cabal Therapy, which has great synergy with Clamp.

[Smmenen]

Another thing about Candleabra is that it can turn mana crypt or Mox pearl mana into the blue to cast Thoughtcast or black to cast Disciple.
Maybe we should just cut the Fastbond for Candleabra.

I wouldn't play Therapy becuase too often you won't get what you need to it.  You often need to hit a specific card like Mana Drain if they don't have FOW, Null Rod if its Fish - but they may not have it so you want Standstill or FOW instead, etc.  Against Workshops, Trinipshere is lethal, but if they don't have it, you sure may want that Tangle Wire instead.

[dandan]

I tried the Long deck. A few impressions

Disciples save your butt a lot in games where you stall. Yes, they are there to dodge the hate but cards that shine in close games are better than cards that are golden in games you win easily.

The Long deck is fragile. A single FoW stalls it most of the time. Obviously Trinisphere and Null Rod do it no favours, but CotV and even Gorilla Shamen can give it a very bad day.

The engines work very well when they work. There is undoubtedly potential in the Skullclamp card drawing engine and the Thoughcasts were usually 2 cards for U and 2 cards for 1U at worst. I think there is room for both in this deck as you can shutdown Skullclamp by cutting off the creature supply (indeed clamp tends to keep their numbers down anyway) so it is good to have a plan B.

The AIs were usually the most disappointing cards. The second one doesn't help and you always feel you are wasting mana.

Tendrils seemed to be the card you fetch almost all of the time so it would be good to have it maindeck.

The Ravagers actually got me a good number of kills. It is hard to guard against combo and aggro!

I didn't like the 'thopters. Double clamp is good but against an active opponent it doesn't happen often enough. I would prefer something that could do a bit of damage on its own and that died to a single clamping. On an aggro version, Workers seem the logical choice although the clamp engine is fast enough that I can imagine builds completely leaving the cards that turn sideways to damage out of the deck.

I found that the Disciple damage and Ravager/Disciple attacks were doing significant damage to an opponents life total without comboing out - the first game I played with the deck, I hit 4CC for 17 before they had their first turn. Although I couldn't combo them out, I judged that no FoW was there and so abused Will, Walk to make a 10/10 Ravager (Disciple took a clamp for the team to keep the cards coming). Despite 4CC managing to Balance it away, fetchlands and FoW became too hard to use and the Skullclamp on the table became too much to handle after the topdecking.
Do not ignore the aggro aspect of the deck!!

I think the Long deck has a number of suboptimal card choices but there is certainly some meat there.

[Smmenen]

Ok, here are my thoughts on the limited playtesting with this deck.

First of all: the mulligan. It is hard to decide to mulligan or not with a deck you don't know. But hands like: Glimmervoid, Ravager, Ornithopter, Skullclamp, Seat of the Synod, Myr Servitor, Myr Servitor come up very often. Do you mull this? When playtesting this deck I kept hands when I was in doubt to see where the deck would take me. Often, it was nowhere so you need to mulligan quite aggressively. The above hand would be a lot better with crop rotation or academy.

The mulligan and when playing the deck made me think of Belcher and it's inconsistency. I believe this deck is even worse in regards to that.

Also, as Hi-Val pointed out, you just randomly bend over to Null Rod. 1 Overload in the side is not going to help you out on this. 2 Cunning Wish main and oxidize in the side can help out, but this will slow the deck (sorry for stating the obvious). You can also change the manabase and remove some artifact land for regular land. But every solution to the Null Rod problem will slow the deck down.

On the plus: academy is a bomb here and you will have more than 10 artifacts in play in no time. Also, the draw engine in Artificer’s Intuition, Servitor and Skullclamp is very good (not considering Null Rod). Thoughtcast is not bad. I paid 1U to cast it at the most.

I would also cut some sorceries from the side. No need to have all those options with only one Burning Wish.

Some more testing might be worth the time. Anyone else with some testing?

I've been testing this deck some more.  I'm still learning it after three sessions with it now but I'm slowly getting better and seeing more plays that I was missing before.  

I rarely mulligan and I generally win on turn two now.  I use turn one to set up a turn two win.  Sometimes I win on turn three though.  If I don't win on turn two its becuase someone heavily disrupted me.

The only changes I have made are to cut the Burning Wish entirely until I understand the deck more and cut Fastbond for Candleabra (which is FAR superior).

[Thug]

Yes, it's so good, noone uses it! Sucked in every format.

Good cards don't necessairy built good decks (well not outside of Type 1  )

You do realize you were still wrong with a load of your other choices right?

I you know it all, why not share that immense wisdom with us measy peasants?

---

Steve have you tried Brainstorms yet?
I really find them amazing

Koen

[Bram]

I've been goldfishing Long's build all night and it's fast. It's really fast. Toaddy seems to have no confidence in this whatsoever though, having tried and published an almost identical build in May (only 4 different cards...way to innovate, Mike :-). This deck dies to almost any hate that's out there. It's a combo deck that bends over to friggin' creature removal! Not to mention the obvious Null Rod and consorts that have been mentioned time and again. Now a combo player at heart, I'd usually say: no problem, we just need to make it faster. Make it go off before the hate reasonably sees play. I can't see a way to do this, however, because of the nature of the engine. You always need a (vulnerable) setup-turn. And I also don't see any ways of making this deck somehow stop the hate. There just isn't room. So do we just throw the concept away? It'd be a shame because the engine is way cool. Steve, has your testing made you see any way around all this?

[majestyk1136]

While entertaining, this deck fails several critical tests in my opinion.  It falls under the same category of decks that I was enamored of as a Budget player, decks that rely upon 1 card resolving.  My first combo Deck relied upon resolving Fluctuator as its draw engine.

The point of that deck was twofold - to fill your graveyard with creatures for free, while drawing all of the business spells of your deck so you could storm them out.  This even seems inferior to that deck, as instead of drawing cards for free you now have to pay 1 each time you want to draw.

How about adding Songs of the Damned to the deck to abuse the huge quantity of creatures you put in the bin? Maybe Reaping the graves to pull all of the one drops back out of your graveyard and keep on playing them?

Of course you still have huge fundamental problems - Null Rod, Damping Matrix, CotV and even Night of Soul's Betrayal (Yes, I have seen this played as Oath hate.  It also works quite well against Affinity, Goblins 4CC and any deck that relies on Dorks)

Just some thoughts.

[MisterShark]

Trying to not go off-topic, I'd like to share a bit of my RAffinity deck's mechanics which seem like they would integrate into this deck's engine quite effectively:

Disciples: amazing and even better in multiples.  Once Ravager hits and can eat your artifact lands, etc.. damage piles up like crazy.  These little guys are usually my win condition more often than not.

got creatures?: I use Genesis Chamber for clamp fodder to great affect.  Keep the Thopters in this instance to provide for quick and free Myr Token Clamp targets.  It's a good way to up the creature count without taking up too many slots.

Artificer's Intuition: rather run some draw-7s as they are almost always the death stroke for the guy across the table when they resolve.  My RAf deck utilizes Wheel (the only Red card), Twister, and Tinker/Jar.  After resolving one of these you'll lay down crazy artifacts, draw retarded amounts of cards (utilizing Clamp w/ Myr Tokens) , and then sack em all to Ravager (even if summoning-sick) for Disciple(s) to lay down lethal hurts.
Attacking is generally secondary and not always necessary.

Frogmite: Not immediately Clampable unless Ravager is there to assist, but generally a free spell counting towards Storm count and generating Myr Tokens under Gen Chamber.  When thinking about Frogs, it's best to regard them as part of the draw/storm engine than little beaters.  

I hope I am not Champion of the Obvious in attempting to lend this deck some of RAffinity's tech, but I think that the synergies are impossible to ignore.  
The biggest question that comes to mind in merging the two deck's approaches is if this deck can effectively exploit all that RAffinity does without sacrificing too many slots to creature spells (which I get the sense , you are trying to avoid).

Sometimes it's hard to fit an Impala's big block into a Nova, but in the hands of the right mechanic you'll end up with pure monster material.  It'll just take some inspired tweaking and maybe a good hammer

[Purple Hat]

I realize it can't run AI, but given how mana intensive this deck is has anyone tried gaea's cradle in this thing?  I don't have any testing to back this up but it seems like the cradle could really help you dig with clamp/creatures.  It would function like a worse, colorless version of academy that could also cast rotation.  

Hale

[Sarcasmic]

I thought the TMD moderators locked threads that just posted a decklist.  What am I missing?

I pulled the posts in this discussion out of the longer basic user thread. I left in the post with the decklist for reference, so that people wouldn't have to go looking for it just to understand the thread.

-Jacob

[jpmeyer]

People wanted to know what TEH SEKRIT DEKC was, so it was posted.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

While we're at it, where does this come from? Is there an article about it or something? Or just a cool deck Mike Long talked about irc?

[goober]

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20217

that is the origonal thread, for those of you too good to look at the basic user community forum

[rozetta]

I'm not too impressed with this deck. It's got some neat ideas, but nothing we haven't already seen in other decks on this site. Artificer's Intuition just doesn't seem worth it any which way you look. Also, this deck's susceptibility to a handful of popular cards has already been mentioned. Basically, if you want to build a skullclamp deck that has a chance of winning you either have to a) make sure it always goes off turn 1 (and win the coinflip against Trinisphere.dec) or b) put a decent amount of artifact hate/disruption main to try and avoid the problem.

The decks we've been working on here: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20294 are faster, don't rely on conditional situations like having to double-clamp an Ornithopter, wait for Myr Servitors to return to play or draw an artifact to pitch to AI, and they're still probably not feasable.

I'd probably even prefer to play IronWorks over Ravager in this deck, but it has the same problem in that you can't fetch it with AI.

Besides the PDF itself looked like some spam sales pitch or something and was full of typos and mistakes (not even counting the Overload as a Burning Wish target). To be honest, it looks like this was developed some time ago (like when the spoiler for 5th Dawn came out).

[chosen_one]

This deck could be the future of Vintage. Didn't Smmenen himself admit that it runs over most decks?

[Trollstorm]

stuff that doesn't run trinisphere. but I guess it could be tuned against those. also nullrod is a big problem.

[andrewpate]

I don't see any way to tune this against Trinisphere.  As some others have mentioned, it is too tight to bring in any anti-hate.  The whole deck is built around things that cost 1 mana, so when they all cost 3, it starts to look really bad, really fast.  I'm open to suggestions, but I can't figure out how "Workshop, Trinisphere" doesn't equal "gg" with this.

[effang]

because if you go first you win...

[ruken]

Why in the name of God, with this deck being as mana-hungry as it is, does it not include Sol Ring?

*scratches head*

[ruken]

Never mind, missed it.  That is so easy to discover that it suggests conspicuousness or little need for perspicacity in the observer.

[rozetta]

I have a theory that Sensei's Divining Top might somehow fit into this deck. I played around with the list a little more and it seems the deck, while occasionally broken, does lack consistency, especially with it's opening hands. Also, goldfishing the deck is not perhaps the best way to evaluate it's playability. Once you pilot this against another deck, you realise that it's actually better than it looks. I think the problem against this deck, aside from Trinisphere is the fact that it runs no disruption and since it rarely wins on the first few turns, Null Rod will eventually hit play.

I believe that a more stable build can be found, perhaps involving Workshops to negate the problem of the turn 1 Trinisphere, but it needs some research.

Edit
I emailed Mike Long and he acknowledged that Trinisphere is a danger to the deck and that the sideboard duresses are currently the best option the deck has post-sideboard.