So I have been thinking - what are the core cards of Monk's build in the early-mid game? Courier's capsule, armillary sphere, darksteel ingot, and meteorite.

What do they share in common? They are all artifacts, plus there is also an elixer and obelisk. That is 15 artifacts already in the deck.

The coral barrier and gomozoa are frankly rather underwhelming... what if we slotted in myrsmith for increasing the permanent count in the early game, etherium sculptor to make things like meteorite cheaper, and one or two sanctum gargoyles to re-use capsule and sphere.

This might lower the overall defense of the deck somewhat, but the basic idea is to speed into the lategame ASAP.

an artifact WW deck :o

If you can get the mana to work let me know. You might have to add some number of travellers amulet or the 4th sphere. You also could use sanctum gargoyle and the guy that makes artifacts cheaper.

Needing 2 colours of mana early is really tough

Why Sphere over Amulet? Four mana feels like an awful lot compared to two. I guess it's necessary because you're running four colors?

Yeah unfortunately grabbing 2 colours over 1 was very relevant in older build. I will test amulet though because the mana is better in the blue version. Only needing double colours for demon and captain. I think you could go to 23 land with 4 amulet over 3 sphere.

I may test etherium sculptor too. It is a 2 drop that makes you ramp even faster. I could see dropping captain of the watch as master of the waves has been good enough. Inferno titan is also mediocre. Shame I'm away this weekend but we could be on to something.

I think traveller's amulet and sphere are not mutually exclusive. With 3 wardens and possibly some sanctum gargoyles I can see value in having both. Traveller's amulet is cheaper in the early game, but I can also see using it as a way of cheaply converting warden's ability, or the gargoyle's ability, into an additional permanent before you cast warp.

Etherium sculptor should also make sphere more palatable.

The swap I am proposing would look like:
- 4 coral barrier
-3 guard gomozoa
-2 mountain

+4 etherium sculptor
+3 myrsmith
+2 traveller's amulet

This would take out 3 blue permanents, making master of the waves slightly worse, but adds 6 artifacts.

I am not 100% sure about myrsmith. She works well only if you have white mana early on and does nothing if she is flipped by warp world. But in my view your 1st warp is always the most important, and this deck has other ways to increase its permanent count on subsequent warps. I think she is worth a shot. If you warp after drawing 20 cards, then 6 of those should be artifacts on average. Even if myrsmith only uses her ability on the last 4 artifacts we are looking at a huge +4 boost in permanents.

I couldn't find other cards to cut in order to fit in the sanctum gargoyle either.

I have not tested this, and probably will not have the time to do so any time soon. I respect that Monk has tested his list, but I think the artifact angle is worth a shot.

Re: Monk's last post - I agree that Captain and then Inferno Titan are the cards I would cut at the top of the list. After sanctum gargoyle I would look at galvanic arc for some permanent-based removal.

The coral barriers are important for increasing the permanent count pre and post warp and have kept their spot even through multiple changes. Gomozoa is definitely one of the weaker cards in the deck but it can buy you a lot of time. This deck is weak to flyers and gomozoa helps with that.

I think Inferno Titan is probably too good in this deck since you can't play Anger. Gomazoa can buy you the time to resolve him and wreck an aggro board. This is all just theory on my part, btw, I haven't even come close to touching this card in actual play.

Here is what I am testing:



The curve is fairly low compared to the amount of mana fetching and ramp, but a lot of the cards are more mana intensive than they would appear by their cost. Myrsmith is a mana sink, the gargoyle and warden often bring back capsule which costs 4 more.

Obelisk is working very, very well here. It has artifact synergy, you have all 5 colors of mana to activate it, and it basically just smoothes your game out until you can draw into RSD / Warp.

The other card I have been hankering for is shadowborn demon.

This deck is also more fun to play than a typical WW deck. You often have significant choices on how to play out your hand - maximizing speed vs. maximizing myrsmith tokens, etc.

This is a fairly preliminary list but I like the artifact synergy.

Monk finally got me to start mucking around with WW after all this time.

So I decided to slap something together in these colors to see what I could do.

So this deck is basically built around the same concept as the silly Pyxis deck I made some time ago. Seems myself and Steve are the only ones here who have considered Hedron Crab in a WW build, or at least we are the only ones who have mentioned it.



The idea is pretty simple. Survive until you can WW. Cast WW and hopefully hit a Hedron Crab, mill them out for a ton, and again hopefully hit the correct mana to chain into WW again.

Have played about 10 games so far, and it seems like when I hit a Hedron Crab off of WW I average about 6-10 activations (including those provided by any Kor Cartographers we hit with WW as well, and this is assuming we only hit a single Crab). Which is like 18-30+ cards milled per casting of WW.

Should we hit the mana to cast WW again after the initial casting to continue the chain we can mill out entire decks in a single turn pretty consistently.

The deck can flounder a bit against fast aggro decks, and there are times where WW just bricks and you either don't hit a Crab, or don't hit your mana to chain WW, but we have things like Captain of the Watch and Inferno Tits to help us rely a little less on Crabs as a win-con.

Have played about 10 games online with it so far (and a few offline games to muck with the mana a bit) and it has done relatively well. Then again, I have had some terrible luck with opponents so I can't actually say how well it works overall yet. 360 seems to have recently gotten an influx of terrible players. At least 6 out of the 10 games I played online with this deck were against 80+ card fat stacks, all of which I was able to manage to win.

Which I am not sure is a good or bad sign for the deck. On one hand, consistency of those fat stack decks is TERRIBLE so winning against them often isn't exactly too difficult, on the other hand, we are talking about using mill as our main win-con, and those fat stack decks give us another like 20-40 cards we have to mill to be able to get there.

*shrug*

Curious to see what others think of the idea here? The basic concept is to make WW able to win the game for us even in situations where it results in the opponent ending up with the superior position. Casting WW and having your opponent end up with a ton of fat on the board isn't quite as scary when that same WW cast can potentially mill out their entire library and win right there on the spot.

._. wut the actual hell

Haha, I assume you weren't around when Titans were in standard?

That sort of became the colloquial reference for the Titans.

Inferno Tits, Grave Tits, etc.

People started doing it and it just sort of stuck. Not like that is uncommon though, makes me wonder how many new players ask themselves "what the hell" when someone refers to Dark Confidant as Bob or Snapcaster as Tiago or any of the other tons of references people use for cards that likely make no sense at all to an outside observer.

the titans were M11 right? that might have been one of the years I took off

Prodigal Sorcerer was the original "Tim," subsequent cards that do the same thing (Zuran Spellcaster) are also referred to as "Tim." Named after the mage guy in Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail.

I had a paper Tim deck that had Brass Man and Fire Whip as its killer combo.

Eon as far as WW decks are concerned, you can do all sorts of marvellous things once you start warping. Mill is one, a lifegain deck that abuses the 4 mana angel enchant / sanguine bond and WW is also cool - I think winning in a single turn with bond / gladeheart is quite feasible.

But if you start adding additional combo elements it is easy to dilute the deck too much. My deck is already trying to stall to 8 mana, fix the right mana colors, increase its permanent count, and not die. I consider a WW deck with mill to be kinda deliberately janky because a normal WW deck will win 90% of the time anyway when you warp. My own deckbuilding has been much more focused on how to build a deck that survives optimally until it can warp rather than coming up with a deck that performs perfectly when it warps.

So I often test basic things like manabase changes against the AI. I am also stubborn, and if I lose a match I play again and again...

I am now 0-7 against the AI piloting Megabeast's mega beast deck (4 color fattise with - dah dum! Triumph of Ferocity)

I have done reasonably well against standard rush tactics, I can put out a decent number of bodies. But a 3/4 or 5/4 hitting the table on turn three is doom. It doesn't help that the AI drew my singleton wrecking ogre and... well... wrecked me with it in 4 games.

I am thinking arrest, Tidehollow Strix and/or shadowborn demon. The problem is that I have very limited slots to work with.

Dinrova horror has honestly been pretty disappointing. It is a stellar card when you warp but it is pretty disappointing pre-warp. It is a helpful tempo loss for your opponent ... if you are a turn or two away from casting warp. Otherwise I have found that it just leads to BSA being replayed the next turn and beating my face.

This is a fair point.

Although I am not sure if running the mill plan really harms our early game that much. The mill package is basically just 3x Hedron Crab and 4x Kor Cartographer, and working in those 7 cards isn't all too difficult.

Hedron Crab is still an early game creature, obviously we don't want to be chumping with it if we don't have to, but having the option to do so is still nice. It honestly can save a decent amount of damage against some of the token decks as well, blocking those 1/1 tokens early on (just don't get blown out by a combat trick). We are likely already running Armillary Sphere to help make sure we hit land drops, and for the fixing we need, and that works well also as a tool to continually feed Hedron Crab.

Kor Cartographer isn't very good at keeping us alive, being a 4cmc 2/2, but it just does so much that I think it is worth it. It helps us ramp to 8 quicker and more consistently, while still being a creature that can attack/block. It ups our permanent count for WW. There is of course the intentional synergy with Hedron Crab.

Overall the combination of Wall of Omens, Hedron Crab, Guard Gomazoa, and Coral Barrier has done a pretty good job of keeping me alive until I am able to hit 8 and cast WW.

To be honest, it seems like the biggest problem this has is the mana. Most of the games I have lost have been a result of not getting any fixing/ramp early on and just sitting there with a bunch of cards in hand you dont have the mana to play.

Ba dum, tish! Triumph over Hakeem!

Wrecking Ogre is just so good in that list.

I can see Arrest being pretty solid in a WW list. It could be great post-warp in case an opponent flops an Inferno Titan or something.. and it would still have good value pre-warp. Shadowborn too..

How has not having Anger of the Gods been? When I used to run Pikes WW deck it was instrumental st reducing opponents permanents.

This is part of the reason I like the idea of the mill plan. You don't have to worry quite so much about your opponent being ahead of you on permanents, because when you cast WW you either mill them out right there on the spot, or you hit the mana to chain into a second or third WW which usually finishes the job if the first cast doesn't close things out.

It doesn't matter quite as much how many permanents your opponent has when you cast WW, or even what they hit off of the WW because we don't have to actually attack with anything to still be able to win. It is particularly funny against self-mill builds as well, milling them for a ton with Crabs+WW and then watching their own creatures they hit off WW finish the job for you. Having them hit a bunch of Satyrs or Assistants is just too funny.

Although I will admit I have yet to encounter it, and am still dreading.....having the opponent hit Laboratory Maniac off WW right as you mill them out >.> at which point I can only hope I hit Meteorite also lmao.

so how do you get around kozi? just mill him out once you get the WW that drags kozi out?

To be honest I have yet to run into Kozi, I honestly don't see him that often on the 360. Not sure if that is different on other platforms.

Kozi and Colossus do seem like they would be a bit of a roadblock, one I didn't even consider.

Without access to and Suffer I am not sure what we would do in that situation. I mean, we can run Angelic Edict but that means lowering the permanent count. That said, it may not be a TERRIBLE idea to run it as a 1 of to specifically deal with Kozi/Colossus/Maniac, especially since we are already running 3x Warden, which should make it a bit more consistent as a 1 of.

Good call on that. Was something I didn't even consider and I am glad you brought it up.