Felt like updating a gimmick deck where you chain a bunch of Trumpeting Carnosaur triggers with clones. Was always too slow but maybe there are some ramping options I can try.
The main goal is to get a Carnosaur out, and then the Discover trigger can only find cards that either clone or blink the Carnosaur. Electroduplicate is a recent card that makes a clone with haste, so if you can Discover into a hasty clone early, the rest of the Discovered clones can also get haste. If you can get 5 or so hasty 7/6 tramplers out, that's your shot at a otk.
I like Waxen Shapethief and Scrollshift too. 'thief gives you a play on turn 2, and 'shift isn't a clone but can refresh the Discover trigger on the first Carnosaur.
Quintorius Kand is fine in this shell. If you Discover into Kand, you don't get a clone, but you can immediately Discover 4 into a 'thief or a 'shift or a 'duplicate again, which is good enough. Plus now Kand adds a drain 2 life effect to every Discover hit. You could easily drain the opponent out before you even get to the attack step with your haste clones.
Strangely, Invasion of Alara
is maybe another card that can work fine. It goes and gets a couple of the clone cards, and maybe the flip does enough to make it worth it.
But this deck is hurting for some kind of ramp. I'm trying Spinewoods Armadillo and Moldering Gym / Weight Room. The Armadillo can go get Conduit Pylons and the Surveil helps to dig. The Gym can put the land onto the battlefield immediately, and could be 'shifted to reset the Gym trigger. The Weight Room might be able to do something if you 'shift the manifest card into a useful permanent.
Other cards with cheap modes that might have some value are Steel Seraph and Kogla and Yidaro. Other cards that can cheat out a Carnosaur are Push / Pull, Chaotic Transformation, and Portal to Phyrexia. Maybe The Eternal Wanderer can do a sweeper effect or a pseudo blink effect.
Branch of Vitu-Ghazi maybe could be something? If a 2/2 ward blocker can be of any use to help survive until turn 6. The color fixing on it is slightly more efficient than the Pylons.
Still this is jank supreme. If you survive to pop off, you should win. But you shouldn't survive that long.
