Hypothetical - building a 0 sphere Workshop.dec

[nataz]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and came up again in the forgemaster thread. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on the matter, but don't want it to run off topic over there.  

Another thought: is WS a strong enough concept that you can leave the entire prison concept behind? Is it possible to build a workshop deck devoid of sphere effects and focus entirely on its superior mana production -> accelerated threats?

The basic premise is that Mishra's Workshop is an amazing card, and enables decks like $T4KS and MUD to exist. Combined with the 0/1cc artifact acceleration (SoLoMoxCryptVault) and the 2 2cc lands (tomb/city), is it possible to build a colorless(or near colorless) decks focused not on sphere effects, but simply on the superior mana development capabilities.

One of the obvious trade-off is the sacrifice of power in color effects for a mono brown mana base. That said, phyrexian mana has provided a unique opportunity. Metamorph, panther, dismember have all seen play in WS decks, with probe and revival seeing play outside the archetype. Also, without the constraints of sphere effects, cards like Mental Misstep and Force of will become more reliable. Is there a "blue tint" WS list that starts 4x Mishra's Workshop, 4x FOW, 4x MM, 4x Metamorph, 4x probe?

Forgemaster also offers a powerful unrestricted "tinker effect", undercosted with a shop out, and with cards like BSC or Staff of dominion can end the game outright.

Recent years have seen some very powerful sphere effect cards. Lodestone + Thorn added a ton of consistency to the stacks archetype, but in doing so narrowed the focus on more prison heavy builds. I think we sometimes forget the rich history that workshop enjoyed, and I'm curious if there is some unexplored design space that could be opened up if every list didn't start with 10-13 sphere effects.

For inspiration I'm looking at true mash ups like Cerebral Assassin which combined the Dragon combo + Reanimator + WS, the original Tools and Tubby lists with Survival of the fittest and welder, GWS's The Man Show (TMS) with pyrostatic pillar, welder, and lightning bolt, the old Meandeck Slaver with draw 7's and gilded lotus (and its evolution into ICBM's gilded claw), Roland Chang's 5-color stax with its heavy enchantment commitment, and more recently 2-card Monty with the Helm line combo built in.

Given the design constraints of no thorn, SOR, or lodestone, what would you build? Does it change if you are allowed SOR OR Thorn OR Lodestone?

[TheWhiteDragon]

GWS's The Man Show (TMS)

This is a big frownz from me...Team Shortbus gets no love.

In short, yes, a straight aggro shop deck is viable.  The problems though are 1) it needs SOME disruption, otherwise faster decks (oath/storm/dredge) just blow it out of the water.  A deck that could consistently land a stream of juggernauts with nothing else would be dead before turn 3.  Blue counters are nice, but I think dredge gets a boost there.  Grafdigger might help in that respect (stops the oath problem too).  Lodestones are acceptable spheres since they advance the beatdown plan.  Chalice is probably good too, though revokers might serve better with the plan.

[nataz]

Totally forgot about the riddler as well. Another great, if now no longer legal example of lateral thinking.

I think tangle wire becomes really important in any kind of control matchup. Chalice is great too with your Manda acceleration and your non traditional curve.

Less spheres also means easier color splashes. What would a modern day green red look like?

[Blue Lotus]

I wonder how vintage affinity would look w/ cage. Ravage/cranial + inkmoth is almost always a t3 kill and raveger / cranial make extra cages essentially 1/1 creatures.

[boggyb]

You might try a blue one, with Esperzoa, Tinker, and some blue cards, e.g.

1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Tangle Wire
4 Uba Mask
4 Esperzoa
4 Master of Etherium
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Island
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

? Not so aggro; can take out counterspells for lodestones and revokers if you want.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Who's GWS by the way? The Man Show was all shortbus...

But I digress...

I think R/G would not be viable for a few reasons:

1) cage stops welder tricks in a shop-aggro deck, so it's not great for welder (especially if you run cage to stop dredge/tinker/oath - your 3 arch nemeses) Gorilla shaman is actually the best reason for red, but Karn fills that niche to kill moxen.
2) REBs are narrow and cut off chalice @ 1 plays as well as costing more under golem.
3) Green only offers noxious revival and nature's claim - neither are really needed.

Blue is the bang for the buck.  You don't need to tutor, so black is out, and you don't need spot removal that you can't get from dismember or blue bounce, so white, green and red are out.  For spot removal, i'd actually run Karn liberated(s).  7 mana will be an easy turn 2/3 play with metalworkers and you can rape their mana with repeated strip mine from 1 card - plus RFG anything they cast that you don't like (even stronger reason for chalice/null rod). metamorphs are golden, and with 4 FoW, 4 mistep you have counter answers. You'll also run tolarian, so blue is the color of choice.  I know you want to up the blue count, but probes don't seem the card for this deck.  They do virtually nothing for anything else in hand.  If 12 blue is too light for your tastes, find a decent blue spell - ancestral, walk, tinker - that needs only U (extra colorless mana is a non-issue for you). Mox opal can/should be in the deck too with so many artifacts to give you a 4th blue source. (I think you'll still need more blue mana or at least find a better blue phyrexian mana card.

Revokers are decent answers with a clock, panthers, lodestone, precursor too. Hellkite MAYBE if you don't run rods. Duplicant is no longer needed with 4 metamorph. Same for trike.  I think kuldotha is a waste of time because you are going for bullets instead of redundant face smashing.  BSC is a waste too.  Sundering is still decent as it is only 8 mana in a fast-mana deck, has a 7/10 body and armageddons.

Tangle wire is auto-4.  I think a trini is not bad either.  You won't run other spheres, so it won't become bad with sphere redundancy...it's only 1 card, so you won't draw it much, but when you open with it, you can slap it down with FoW backup and have crazy tempo since the rest of your draws are threats and mana.  You should also be hitting 3 non-shop mana with tombs/worker/traitors for your own FoW before they get spell mana + 3 for FoW backup.

If you are not running activated thugs, you could always go with rods as well - but I assume you are looking at metalworkers beyond workshops. Crucibles and factories should be there too to stop fish/standstill decks, apply extra beatings, dodge hurkylls, and fight the mirror (a recurring 3/3 is hell on golems and panthers).

Go blue/brown.

[Bibendum]

If your running red green your not running chalice. Green Brings Crop rotation... A lot better then the other cards you named. Red Brings Magus, Magus is a house in a tempo list. Bringing in cage to shut off your welders is fine, but don't think that there are only 4 actual cards for that deck. Grudging your opposing shop deck is pretty neat as is Viashino Heratic. Red Brings shattering spree which is played under chalice on 1 and has massive synergy with magus. Green is meh, but Red without spheres is fine. you can play a super tempo build with Golems being the only sphere effect.

[WhiteWolf]

Beder posted a very interesting non-sphere Shop deck a while ago: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=42090.0

I played something similar for a while. I don't think it's tier 1 but it's certainly VERY explosive and VERY fun to play. I haven't had the chance to test against all match-ups but the deck certainly has its good match-ups (like shops). One of the last lists I settled on looked like this:

4 Metalworker
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Kuldotha Forgemaster
4 Precursor Golem / Wurmcoil Engine
4 Myr Battlesphere
1 Blightsteel Colossus

4 Voltaic Key
4 Lightning Greaves
1 Time Vault

1 Memory Jar

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Mishra’s Workshop
3 Buried Ruin
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
5 Mox
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
4 Grim Monolith

Sideboard

4 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Jester's Cap
3 Wurmcoil Engine / Precursor Golem


The sideboard is geared to shoring up a little the weaknesses against fast blue decks (Jester's Cap) and Null Rod/Waste decks (Crucible and Wurmcoil). I don't think this is a top-deck but it can be surprisingly effective. (Undisrupted) second turn TV/Key combo wins or hasted Myr Battlespheres are pretty normal lines of play. You could go even more over the top and add in some Swiftfoot Boots 

[TheShop]

I put some thought into this a while back-

4 shop
4 tomb
4 traitors
4 waste
1 academy
1 strip

5 moxen
4 lotus/sol/crypt/vault

4 precusor golem
4 forgemaster
1 blighsteel

4 force
4 misdirection
4 misstep
4 minbreak trap
4 metamorph

4 serum powder

With the mass 4-ofs, the list is more conceptual than functional, but the idea remains- utilize best mana lands ever printed to crank out a massive threat and attempt to protect it with mass free counterspells.  I actually goldfished this list some a few months ago and determined that consistency is an issue here.  Kind of a fish adaptation that plays a precursor instead of a goyf and uses all else for tempo/protection.

[Prospero]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and came up again in the forgemaster thread. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on the matter, but don't want it to run off topic over there.  

Another thought: is WS a strong enough concept that you can leave the entire prison concept behind? Is it possible to build a workshop deck devoid of sphere effects and focus entirely on its superior mana production -> accelerated threats?

The basic premise is that Mishra's Workshop is an amazing card, and enables decks like $T4KS and MUD to exist. Combined with the 0/1cc artifact acceleration (SoLoMoxCryptVault) and the 2 2cc lands (tomb/city), is it possible to build a colorless(or near colorless) decks focused not on sphere effects, but simply on the superior mana development capabilities.

One of the obvious trade-off is the sacrifice of power in color effects for a mono brown mana base. That said, phyrexian mana has provided a unique opportunity. Metamorph, panther, dismember have all seen play in WS decks, with probe and revival seeing play outside the archetype. Also, without the constraints of sphere effects, cards like Mental Misstep and Force of will become more reliable. Is there a "blue tint" WS list that starts 4x Mishra's Workshop, 4x FOW, 4x MM, 4x Metamorph, 4x probe?

Forgemaster also offers a powerful unrestricted "tinker effect", undercosted with a shop out, and with cards like BSC or Staff of dominion can end the game outright.

Recent years have seen some very powerful sphere effect cards. Lodestone + Thorn added a ton of consistency to the stacks archetype, but in doing so narrowed the focus on more prison heavy builds. I think we sometimes forget the rich history that workshop enjoyed, and I'm curious if there is some unexplored design space that could be opened up if every list didn't start with 10-13 sphere effects.

For inspiration I'm looking at true mash ups like Cerebral Assassin which combined the Dragon combo + Reanimator + WS, the original Tools and Tubby lists with Survival of the fittest and welder, GWS's The Man Show (TMS) with pyrostatic pillar, welder, and lightning bolt, the old Meandeck Slaver with draw 7's and gilded lotus (and its evolution into ICBM's gilded claw), Roland Chang's 5-color stax with its heavy enchantment commitment, and more recently 2-card Monty with the Helm line combo built in.

Given the design constraints of no thorn, SOR, or lodestone, what would you build? Does it change if you are allowed SOR OR Thorn OR Lodestone?

I think we'd do well to ask ourselves if the benefits of running a version with countermagic are more considerable than the benefits of running a version with Spheres.  

Workshop decks aren't decks that really win off the back of any one spell.  When a Workshop deck kills you, it's probably because there was a weight of threats that you crumbled under; there were Wires, Stacks, Lodestones, Precursors, Spheres, Chalices and more.  

Beyond that, one of the fundamental roles of a Workshop deck is mana denial.  This comes in many forms; Wasteland, Strip Mine, Chalice 0, Tangle Wire and Sphere effects.  A Workshop deck looks to execute the role of mana denial in great part because Mishra's Workshop makes it powerful.  Shop adds three mana while all their lands add one.  Requiring them to drop more lands to play their spells means that you have granted yourself a window in which you can successfully operate without your opponent really interacting with you.  

The strength of Sphere is in hitting all their spells.  Mental Misstep and Force of Will may counter one or two spells, but Spheres, combined with the other pieces of your deck that are all synergistically powerful, can essentially counter many more spells than either Force or Misstep.

It's a very good thing that you're thinking outside the box.  It's important to take radical ideas and put them to use; it's one of the only ways that metagames ever really get shaken up.  Still, I don't think that you want to be a Shop deck that isn't running Spheres, as Spheres work so well with all the other cards that you already want to run/are running.  

[Meddling Mike]

I'm in agreement with Nick on this one. I think you could make the workshop deck with FoW and it could win matches, but I don't think such a list would be optimal. Force of Will is definitely a better card than Sphere of Resistance in terms of power level, but not in the context of the deck that you're suggesting.

[Mr. Type 4]

If your're going to splash color you might as well consider spalshing all five.  The orginal Shop decks from "back in the day" were always mono red or 5-color.  I can certainly see the appeal of having cards like Swords to Plows, Ancient Grudge, Ancestral, Tinker, Time Walk, Demonic Tutor in your Shop deck.  Depending on how much pain youre willing to deal yourself, Bob can also be good.  Twaun used to play Bob all the time despite having a lot of high CMC stuff in his BR Stacks. 

The issue I see with adding colors is that people didnt really play much Ancient tomb when 5c Shop was popular and it seems almost universally accepted that Tombs are where it's at.  So the mana base to support color cards can be pretty awkward. 
You do have Mox Opal now which is an avenue to explore. 

Who's GWS by the way?

GWS was a team a long time ago that formed not too long after Meandeck.  Their better members mostly either quit or ended up on ICBM.  GWS stands for "Girls With Schlongs" because they were into trannies.   

[Shax]

My take on this,( and one similar to mine ala Beder's list) is to play Time Vault in Shops instead. Time Vault plus x4 Voltaic Key, plus x4 Serum Powder give you a dangerous deck combined with Workshops. Go look at the ''Oh- Shit! Tezz-Vault!'' Thread for more info on some kind of Shop combo list to start at. Yes there are other avenues to go down, but if I'm playing Shops without spheres I will be playing Time Vault and Metalworker.

[TheWhiteDragon]

If your running red green your not running chalice. Green Brings Crop rotation... A lot better then the other cards you named. Red Brings Magus, Magus is a house in a tempo list. Bringing in cage to shut off your welders is fine, but don't think that there are only 4 actual cards for that deck. Grudging your opposing shop deck is pretty neat as is Viashino Heratic. Red Brings shattering spree which is played under chalice on 1 and has massive synergy with magus. Green is meh, but Red without spheres is fine. you can play a super tempo build with Golems being the only sphere effect.

The issue isn't that you're not going to get great cards from R/G, the issue is that your not going to get cards that disrupt in a smash-face aggro build with mostly brown mana.  Running red/green means your tombs/traitors are now cities of brass or taigas, your giant beaters now become magus and utility spells, and your beaters become 1/1s and 2/2s.  In a R/G shop list, those are great cards - but in a "tap sideways to kill you FAST" deck, those won't cut it.  The counters/chalice/tangle are there because you need SOME kind of disruption and can't run rod with metalworker.  Even revokers are probably too slow, but they have a versatility that many cards don't.

[yespuhyren]

If building shop aggro without spheres, why not go back to an old standard  Ankh of Mishra, its a lava axe on every fetchland they play, kills gush and autowins dragon randomly, and is just a massive source of damage for 2 colorless mana

Triturator 2K12 - The Ankh is Back

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Ankh of Mishra (Fetchland is 5 damage with 1 Ankh, 9 damage for 2 so it works as a great turn 1 metamorph target if you can ankh/metamorph against blue)
3x Orb of Dreams
1x Trinisphere
4x Slash Panther
4x Lodestone Golem
4x Precursor Golem
3x Steel Hellkite
4x Phyrexian Metamorph
4x Mishra’s Workshop
4x Mishra’s Factory
4x Ancient Tomb
4x Wasteland
2x City of Traitors
1x Strip Mine
1x Tolarian Academy

SB:

4x Jester’s Cap
4x Grafdiggers’ Cage
4x Wurmcoil Engine
3x Relic of Progenitus

[d0rsal]

just a quick question, why run a 4/2 haste dude that does 2 dmg to you just to CIP tapped?  wouldnt it be better to just run juggernauts?  or perhaps Karn to make use of all those inanimate artifacts lying around the battlefield?  also, i think i'd rather run revokers over CoTV in the main.  it goes along more w/ the whole no sphere concept & doubles as a beater

[TheWhiteDragon]

just a quick question, why run a 4/2 haste dude that does 2 dmg to you just to CIP tapped?  wouldnt it be better to just run juggernauts?  or perhaps Karn to make use of all those inanimate artifacts lying around the battlefield?  also, i think i'd rather run revokers over CoTV in the main.  it goes along more w/ the whole no sphere concept & doubles as a beater

Panther doesn't CIP tapped.  He comes into play and smashes for 4 immediately.  This is relevant when A) they only leave enough blockers for what damage is presently on the field to stay alive, or B) have jace that can bounce juggernaut a bunch until they can counter it.

[Ten-Ten]

just a quick question, why run a 4/2 haste dude that does 2 dmg to you just to CIP tapped?  wouldnt it be better to just run juggernauts?  or perhaps Karn to make use of all those inanimate artifacts lying around the battlefield?  also, i think i'd rather run revokers over CoTV in the main.  it goes along more w/ the whole no sphere concept & doubles as a beater

Panther doesn't CIP tapped.  He comes into play and smashes for 4 immediately.  This is relevant when A) they only leave enough blockers for what damage is presently on the field to stay alive, or B) have jace that can bounce juggernaut a bunch until they can counter it.

I think he means once Orb of dreams is out...

[Blue Lotus]

I feel like ankh is a card that would benefit most from spheres. It's cheap, and sphere forces them to play more lands.

[yespuhyren]

While I agree, that wasn’t an option given the thread.  I have an Ankh list that I haven’t shared with the community that I’ve been testing/updating on and off since 2006.  That runs 4 thorn, 0 sphere (like all my lists)

That being said, the strength of Ankh is as a turn 1/2 drop.  Every fetchland in your opponent’s deck become self inflicted lava axes before they even take a turn.  If you play turn 1 double ankh or Ankh/Metamorph, you’re looking at 9 damage PER fetchland.  Combined with Chalices/Thorns it can be insane amounts of damage.

[msg67183]

Like the list u tested against me? Lol

[yespuhyren]

You’ve seen one, there’s a 5c version no one has seen