It's time to play Wheel Of Fortune!! First puzzle is on the board, category: Same Name.
The latest few sets have given us a LOT of new toys to play with so I am redoing the entire description, rather than a simple update edit. This deck is still a gloriously
janky Sultai list sure to leave your pod entertained and your parents disappointed in you. So without further ado, Vanna, take it away.
Right off the bat you'll notice that with a couple of exceptions, most of these creatures aren't anything to write home about. The gimmick with this deck is most of the cards
somehow self-replicate or at the very least care about creatures bearing the same name (clever title reference here). The whole deck was inspired by Biovisionary, Mechanized Production and Hedron Alignment (which sadly is impossible to make work in EDH as of yet and is therefore not present at this time) and strives to make as many copies of these and other creatures as possible. With that in mind, how do we make the most of these vain critters in our deck?
Most of our creatures split from one or two ways: those that replicate via combat (or damage triggers) and those that just need a little bit of time; though there are a few outliers. Creatures like Polyraptor, Permeating Mass, and Sprouting Phytohydra grow in numbers with just a little bit of damage, with Permeating Mass acting as a great way to deter attackers in your direction. Bloodforged Battle-Axe, Mist-Syndicate Naga, Spawnwrite, and Giant Adephage all care about being in your opponents faces and all reward you for any unblocked attacks with twins of themselves. Then we have the cards that aren't tied to damage at all. Blade of Selves, Helm of the Host, and Nacatl War-Pride all trigger at either the beginning of combat or as attackers are declared and can easily flood the board with tokens for you.
So that was the first round, but what if we need some tokens that don't revolve around combat? Round Two brings us a suite of permanents that just ask us to be patient and they will work their magic. Chronozoa, Biowaste Blob, and Replicating Ring will sit around and slowly (or rapidly for the Blob) multiply on board giving us plenty of copies. Then we have ways to enchant other creatures to allow them to replicate each turn with Followed Footsteps, Progenitor Mimic, and the Disturbed half of Mirrorhall Mimic
, Ghastly Mimicry
. With all of this at our disposal we have no shortage of value to rake in as turns pass and we attempt to build towards a win.
Okay, so final puzzle time. We have some cards that replicate based off of specific actions, usually activated abilities. Splitting Slime and Pack Rat give us a new body every time we toss some mana and/or cards toward them, as does Araumi of the Dead Tide, though she gives us temporary bodies and only those she finds in Davy Jones' locker. Scute Swarm only replicates if we have enough lands in play and only then when more come into play, but it pairs nicely with Dreadfeast Demon which is looking to trade non-demon bodies for copies of its own. Ochre Jelly is happy to die as well copying and splitting evenly in half if it has enough counters on it. Both of our Planeswalkers get in on the copying action by either being kicked or by Ultimating, creating enough Jace clones to make anyone nervous.
Cool. So we made a bunch of copies of stuff. How do we win?
Well we have three win conditions. One of them is classic combat. Hopefully with the amount of dorks and goons we are making we can swing in for lethal against overwhelmed opponents. This ultimately depends on board states but it isn't completely unheard of, especially with certain creatures which get out of hand VERY quickly (cough warpride cough)
Strat two is with Biovisionary. If we can get to our end step with 4 creatures named Biovisionary we win. And we have a few ways to make a few clones of it. But as a cheeky little nod, I added Spy Kit to the list because when equipped ANY creature becomes a Biovisionary. It puts us half-way towards our goal and has a few other uses so I like it here.
Win three is similar in that Mechanized Production wants us to have 8 artifacts with the same name and grants us a win on our upkeep if we do. We have a lot of artifacts that already want to duplicate but the Production also itself makes copies of whatever it is enchanting so it works double duty.
One last goofy/cheeky/dumb fun combo in this deck is with Evil Twin+Spy Kit. Don't like opponents playing creatures? Well, they are gonna, but at least you can use these two to keep any and all of them in check for as long as Evil Twin stays alive and equipped. With every name in the game, Evil Twin can murder any non-Legendary creature for just a little bit of mana.
All three of these wins are at least feasible in concept , so while this deck is full of jank and filthy casual vibes, it is by no means dead weight at the table. The slots that aren't dedicated to cranking out off brand copies of our permanents is modal and ready for just about any situation, hoping to either answer threats to our game plans or go out swinging. It is a fun Sultai deck with a unique twist.
And to address the elephant in the room, with a deck dedicated to having tons of creatures in play with the same name, there are some pretty obvious exclusions. Namely, why not have cards like Relentless Rats, Colony Rats, or Shadowborn Apostles? The deck would be so much easier to play, win with and have better synergies (other reasons why it would be better here). And honesly, those are excluded for two reasons: One, those cards are too easy to build around and I wanted a challenge and two, they are card for card more expensive than most of the jank in this deck and harder to get bulk copies of (with exceptions of course). Plus, the novelty of a deck that cared about having multiple copies of each card in the deck but made for a singleton format is not lost on me. TL;DR I wanted to do a dumb thing and it made me happy.
