Cool looking list, Abdullah. A few things..
What advantages are there to running 2 colors as opposed to 4-5?
If you are going to run Tinker I think it is actually required by law that you to play with Mana Crypt. If you don't, Richard Garfield will instantly teleport behind you and smack you upside the head.
If you don't put Time Walk in an aggro deck then he merely points at you while shaking his head.
Have you considered Orb of Dreams? None of your critters have haste anyways and you don't run fetchlands.
If red(or the rainbow lands) were added back in you could squeeeeze in 2 Welders.
Stifle looks odd in here, but cool if you can make it work.
I really think Karn is currently the best Aggro creature.
Mike
Ahoy Mike,
Great points all around. I agree with half of them!
This list could easily be ported into 4-5 colors, if you drop some of the non-artifact disruption. I'm thinking that on paper this deck plays like fish used to, back in the day, without the 2cc beaters and more just plain mana denial, so stifles are key to this plan. Being that the Tier 1 decks of today are so mana-light, stifling a fetchland from the prison deck point of view is utterly devistating. The fact that stifles stop a variety of other vintage relevant effects makes them much better than they oddly appear. They are like aven mindcensors, to some degree. They don't stop a Demonic Tutor, but they do mess up a hulk trigger, a matron, lackey or ringleader. They timewalk against oath (whether it be the oath trigger itself, or the token that an orchard produces). They kill the tempo of wastelands, make opposing welders stupid and turn duplicant into Mr. Frownypants 2/4. They're not too horrible in the ichorid matchup, either; stifling that opening bazaar activation and then wasting it immediately is pretty hot. Not to mention you can ramp up a smokestack to some arbitrarily stupid number, and stifle your own sack trigger. I just see them as all around great utility, and an ability to give a shop deck the potential to say "No" in an effective enough manner. Unless you're playing against flash, if your opponent is wasting counterspells on a stifle, you're probably winning.
Timewalk is an interesting issue. The reason why I drop it from stax listis is that it has poor synergy with tangle wire, which is usually a key component to the gameplan. The extra turn nullifies the effect of the card. It's not too bad with smokestack, however, as it gives you that one turn to pop another counter on it to make it "lethal." It could be added back in at any point.
Mana Crypt should be in the deck without a doubt and was an oversight on my part -- I literally took my UR list (which doesn't run it because I'm scared of dying to it) and changed out a few cards to make it UB. In testing I saw that the UR list was too slow to play with crypt. I didn't have any tutors to find tinker quickly enough to get rid of it. A lot of games ended with me at 5 or less life. With crypt on the board, that's too much of a gamble. I know it can be welded out or sacked to smokestack, but I felt that because I wanted to have the mana up for a stifle or REB, I needed Lotus Petal in it's place to keep the colors online more consistently, especially in the early game. So lets drop, say, Urborg for the crypt of pain.
On this list and only being 2 colors: I think you need consistency to draw into thoughtsiezes and stifles. These cards take the place of the 7-9 spheres that people have been running for the past couple of months -- they sever similar functions in denying the opponent access to components of their gameplan. Except instead of delaying it, you more or less cut it's head off. You could drop any number of these for things like balance, crop rotation, ray of revelation, aven mindecsor, etc, to accomodate a 5 color base. I just think that the disruption would be online faster with a higher quantity of 1cc "poke" spells.
Could we change the lands to rainbow ones and add in 2 welders, Hell Yes we can! And probably should. Then you can sideboard good cards, like balance, ray of rev and so forth.
Orb of dreams: I haven't played with the card at all this year, but you seem to have had great success with it. I'm anxious to fit them in somewhere, at least post-board. How has it been against flash and oath for you?
@Everybody: This deck has never even been played or even sleeved at this point. It's just kind of an idea base to get the discussion ball rolling. I should be able to throw it together in the coming week and give it a whirl, probably with Red included for welder tricks and post-board REBs. I like the idea of UB because the hand disruption effects are more proactive than the Rebs, which have been somewhat blase even in a heavily blue enviornment. Then again, I built the UR deck, tested it one evening and took it to one tournament. My results are shallow as hell and nothing is tried and true at this point. It's all ideas and conjecture here. I'll repost a list (URB) once I get some actual game play in. Then I'll know for sure exactly how much my rear end has been leading this discussion.
Thank you all for contributing thus far and keeping the shops alive. They're always on the cusp of becoming irrelevant.
PS - Who is Pbear and why are they disgusting and an atrocity to all mankind?
