The primary and easier goal is to combo out with
Paradoxical Outcome
in order to get a big
Aetherflux Reservoir
outburst. As a plan B, we get
Commit / Memory
which is functionally a weak
Paradoxical Outcome
since it is playable only lategame together with
Inspiring Statuary
; nonetheless it can win on its own at that point, so it is pretty good overall (i.e. better than any other option).
Support plans that didn't make the cut
There are alternatives left out as for the plan B.
-
Crush of Tentacles
would be meant as a support to
Paradoxical Outcome
early in the game, since it both gains time AND rebuys your 0-mana pieces from the battlefield. If among the rebought pieces there are
Prophetic Prism
,
Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
or
Glint-Nest Crane
you also get value from your play delving deeper into your deck.
Crush of Tentacles
can combo out by itself lategame especially with a double
Aetherflux Reservoir
, which is pretty easy to get since we could easily manage to essentially play 8 of them:
Whir of Invention
is already very strong with
Crush of Tentacles
since the latter rebuys your 0-mana pieces.
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
is particurlarly good because it is the card getting you most of your turn 7 wins, usually after a turn 5
Crush of Tentacles
. However in most games you need to concatenate 2 between your plan A and your plan B enablers, and even with a value-play
Crush of Tentacles
does not really help in getting you there - while
Commit / Memory
easily wins by itself in the lategame (i.e. from turn 6 on); on the other hand, if you heavily commit to the value-plan with
Prophetic Prism
,
Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
or
Glint-Nest Crane
, you do not have sufficient time to get enough value from those interactions to compensate for a worse ratio between the cards you need (lands, artifacts, combo pieces). The only way I see to get enough efficient value from
Crush of Tentacles
is to match it with
Oath of Jace
, which is so much better than the likes of
Prophetic Prism
(even if it doesn't help with Improvise, doesn't get a discount by
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
and cannot be
Whir of Invention
ed out): 3+3 digs so much deeper than 1+1!! However, you are still bound to lose a bit of consistency because
Crush of Tentacles
by itself doesn't do much without
Oath of Jace
exactly in the same way as
Commit / Memory
doesn't do much without
Inspiring Statuary
: the difference lies in that your deck is already equipped for finding artifact (with
Glint-Nest Crane
or
Whir of Invention
), so that you would get
Inspiring Statuary
when needed more frequently than you would get
Oath of Jace
when needed (this is the real tiebreaker). It is true that
Oath of Jace
can draw towards
Crush of Tentacles
whereas
Inspiring Statuary
alone does nothing (apart from upgrading
Paradoxical Outcome
from 'very good' to 'extraordinary'); but drawing a bunch of cards cannot compete with the potential of being fetched out by a full-fledged tutor like
Whir of Invention
(on the converse, the drawing clause makes
Oath of Jace
-builds overall comparable with
Glint-Nest Crane
-builds). Finally, there are situations (and matchups) when playing a turn-5
Crush of Tentacles
(perhaps even with some turn-4 and/or turn-6 bustling with an
Aetherflux Reservoir
) is still not enough to survive: be sure to account for them when choosing your Plan B configuration.
-
Baral's Expertise
cannot win the game alone at any point of the game if not with a perfect hand - whereas, again,
Commit / Memory
easily wins by itself in the lategame. And, as opposed to
Crush of Tentacles
which both gains time AND rebuys both your 0-mana pieces for comboing off and
Prophetic Prism
/
Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
/
Glint-Nest Crane
for value,
Baral's Expertise
practically grants you only one of those effects (even if with a bit of flexibility). Even if
Baral's Expertise
actually helps you cheat
Aetherflux Reservoir
into play instead of bouncing it back (which, anyway, is not a real issue as long as you sport
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
), it does so little by itself that, quite like with
Crush of Tentacles
, instead or providing an additional win-con making more reliable to chain the 2 you need in order to win, it makes you need to concatenate 3 win-cons.
-
Engulf the Shore
both gets you time and rebuys
Ornithopter
or
Glint-Nest Crane
for value or comboing off; yet like
Baral's Expertise
it does so little to help the combo starting that you practically need to chain 3 win-cons together in the end.
-
Leave / Chance
seems to be tailored for this deck; however, much like the other plan B engines (except for
Commit / Memory
)
Leave / Chance
needs an additional engine card (like
Paradoxical Outcome
, or
Baral's Expertise
..) in order to go off. Let's break down the card. The
Chance
part isn't very useful because it needs a bunch of worthless cards in hand and it is literally unplayable without
Inspiring Statuary
, so that it is meant only as a mid-combo help - and a meager one too at any rate. In other words,
Chance
is good only after resolving a
Paradoxical Outcome
AND while having an
Inspiring Statuary
in play; yet all that not only is inconsistent to get together but also unneeded, since a
Paradoxical Outcome
is already enough per se because either it wins or it digs deep in the deck - all the while boasting an off-the-charts power-level with an
Inspiring Statuary
in play. So the
Leave
half is the only reason to play the card; and, much like
Chance
, we should find a way to put it to good use without a
Paradoxical Outcome
. The first cosideration is that
Leave
is useless without a draw engine, and the best one at that is
Sram, Senior Edificer
- even accounting that with
Sram, Senior Edificer
you expose yourself to have him killed (which should be frequent) as well as to get light-equipment draws that end up not drawing you enough card. At any rate,
Commit / Memory
-plays too are actually a two-cards combo since it is useless without an
Inspiring Statuary
; but again, much like in the
Oath of Jace
-
Inspiring Statuary
confrontation, the decisive factor is that
Inspiring Statuary
can be searched for by
Whir of Invention
- even though
Sram, Senior Edificer
can draw some cards. Don't be fooled by
Sram, Senior Edificer
and
Leave / Chance
cheap mana costs: lists including them may seem to have a bit leaner plays than
Inspiring Statuary
+
Commit / Memory
lists have, but in the end improvise is a really powerful ability and realiable to abuse too. Nonetheless, the splash between
Spire of Industry
,
Renegade Map
and
Traveler's Amulet
isn't painful at all: you do not even need any entering-tapped land or
Prophetic Prism
in order to achieve a perfect manabase; so the risk of making your manabase worse is not a strong argument.
Why no value-pieces?
Prophetic Prism
and
Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
would be perfect for this deck, even with only
Paradoxical Outcome
to get them back; yet there is no room for them. And
Glint-Nest Crane
can't find our most important combo pieces (since we need at least 2 of them most of the times, and can dig towards other pieces in a pinch anyway): the drawing/rebuying ones. Playing
Glint-Nest Crane
instead of
Whir of Invention
may grant you smoother plays against aggro as well as a blocker, yet it makes you more vulnerable to counterspells (you would get 8
Aetherflux Reservoir
with
Whir of Invention
); surely control is a bad matchup, but the aggro one is so much worse that I'd would lean towards having some resilience to counterspells than versus attacking creatures. An additional advantage of
Whir of Invention
over
Glint-Nest Crane
is that it grants us real play against random hate-cards like
Abrade
(especially pre-sideboarding, when they should count up at most to no more than a few), searching for a replacement for our lost
Aetherflux Reservoir
or
Inspiring Statuary
(
Glint-Nest Crane
is so bad at that that it is irrelevant for such purpose). Nonetheless, the main reason to play
Whir of Invention
over
Glint-Nest Crane
is that the games in which you lose because you couldn't find
Aetherflux Reservoir
early enough (which is even more important when you are not heavily committed to
Inspiring Statuary
) are more than the games in which
Glint-Nest Crane
actually grants you a turn by blocking (even adding to that the rare games in which you get busted
Baral's Expertise
draws that make full use of an in-hand
Aetherflux Reservoir
found by
Glint-Nest Crane
for a fast win which otherwise couldn't be carried out).
Viability in a competitive enviroment
In the end, I think this is the better
Aetherflux Reservoir
list available in Standard. Yet, though this strategy has been arguably brought here at its full potential, its overall effectiveness is not sufficient to make it good enough for the competitive scene (this also explains why I do not even suggest a sideboard). Every color and strategy packs real hate against us already in the maindeck:
Abrade
,
Manglehorn
/
Dissenter's Deliverance
,
Cast Out
, counterspells, discards and
Lost Legacy
/
Dispossess
; leaving out that focused aggros like MonoRed, Zombies or Vehicles are a pain (=impossible) even when they don't sport any hate since they easily win on turn 4/5 while, on our part, we aren't quite able to affect the board in any way until that longed for turn 6 in which we win or quite so (
Commit / Memory
as a counter/removal spell is very poor in a deck that cannot support it.. if it ever happens to be good in a particular situation, either the matchup is very good or your opponent is already losing to herself..). With the rotation into Ixalan, the best we can do to keep the same core as now will probably be taking out
Bone Saw
and
Cathar's Shield
for cost reducers like
Foundry Inspector
and tailor the deck accordingly. Yet such route is not good enogh to be even taken into consideration. The deck thus dies with Ixalan.
Tricks and tips
Anyways, if you are inclined to give it a try nonetheless, I can provide some tips:
-
While in theory it is possible to win on turn 4, that will never pan out. Turn-5 wins are very rare; on the other hand, turn-6 wins are very consistent and that is what you should aim to carry out.
-
Your turn 4, 5 and 6 are the ones in which you can execute your meaningful plays. That is not a lot of time (and mana), so make sure to actually make those plays; that is, if you spend your whole turn 4 digging for lands, you are probably losing - even if bouncing back your blocking
Ornithopter
s via
Paradoxical Outcome
is a neat trick that never gets old (though a bad one generally speaking).
-
It is fine to spend your turn 1, 2 and 3 making land drops for the most part; don't be embarassed to cast a
Whir of Invention
on turn 3 just to grab a
Renegade Map
: it is not an exiciting play, yet it can be good enough most of the times so to let you win on turn 6 anyway (cases where you need to do it come up often enough). In the same spirit, in rare occasions it is correct to fetch an
Ornithopter
on turn 3 just to block a single big creature and gain some precious time (at times you can throw away some resources just for a little edge somewhere else).
-
The golden rule is to make full use of your mana every time; that implies that you should try to cast at least one improvise spell per turn since it is hard to cast two of them in the same turn midgame. Another consequence is that casting
Commit / Memory
without
Inspiring Statuary
is a losing proposition.
-
Mulligans are the toughest decision (and happen to be very hard ones!) you have to make when playing this deck because, once learned the basic mechanisms, playing it is quite straight-forward. In keeping a hand, make sure to plan out your plays from turn 1 to turn 6 so that you can ascertain both (1) to be able to make your land drops and (2) to be able to carry out meaningful plays on turn 4-6 (i.e. good enough to provide you with your turn 6 win). Also remember that, differently from good decks (!!) as well as from fair decks like aggros (there are intersections of course), it may happen that this deck could not provide a clock with the cards in the starting hand alone: be ready to make a lot of guessing about what the first cards of your deck may be in deciding your lines of play and your keepings overall. I mean that an aggro deck could conceive its drawn cards as a support or follow-up of the cards in the starting hand; and a control deck can dominate the game until being able to represent a real clock - or at least it can, like a combo deck, delve deep towards a threat (which is something this deck cannot always accomplish because of the sheer amount of synergy it demands in order to work properly at least once started).
