@protoaddict said in Tiny Forgebots:

LED does not feel combo to me, since you are playing off the top for the most part. I guess part of my question would be how many cards are you holding in hand on average and saving for later vs how much are you just trying to draw gas to make things go.

There's basically not any reason to hold anything in your hand. You're kind of playing everything you can cast, whether you have a combo draw or an aggro draw, so that part of LED isn't really a problem. My concern with LED is that it's "win more", only working with Forge which is probably already going to win you the game whether or not you have LED.

This is different than Cranial Plating, which can do something with Memnite or your other threats that they can't do on their own. Plating probably turns your 7-turn clock into a 2 or 3-turn clock, but LED turns your Forge from a 1-turn clock into ... a slightly more consistent 1-turn clock. It's a lot less bang-for-your-dead-card. This is all conjecture though, if it turns out that LED or another pure-combo card consistently speeds the deck up a turn, then it's probably worth it.

I suspect getting metalcraft to be very important to both builds, so even the idea of a led that is nothing more than a trinket seems fine to me.

Speaking of combo, has anyone tried throwing a salvagers in here? If you have both lotus and led it could help enable you to go off at times where you cannot otherwise push through. Infinite ballista gets the job done unless your opponent is behind a leyline and an ensnaring bridge at hellbent.

On what number would you typically play Chalice of the Void? Everything from 0 through 4 seems to hurt your combo in some way.

@boerma said in Tiny Forgebots:

On what number would you typically play Chalice of the Void? Everything from 0 through 4 seems to hurt your combo in some way.

Yeah, specially if you play more than 1. That would be so bad, I bet they wouldn't even let you enter a vintage tournament with such deck.

@gutocmtt said in Tiny Forgebots:

@boerma said in Tiny Forgebots:

On what number would you typically play Chalice of the Void? Everything from 0 through 4 seems to hurt your combo in some way.

Yeah, specially if you play more than 1. That would be so bad, I bet they wouldn't even let you enter a vintage tournament with such deck.

He meant if you play it for 0, 1, 2 counters, etc.

My thinking on Chalice is that you play it at 0 and just run your 0 drops into it. You basically get to cycle your dead-to-Chalice cards and your opponent doesn't. If you assemble the combo you're still lethal with a Chalice-0 in play, and if necessary you can sack it to a Ravager. Playing it at 1 cuts off the combo, but could still be sometimes correct, as you can cycle your 1's and the rest of your deck is just workshop aggro.

Remains to be seen if it's worth the slot in practice, but Chalice 0 on the play is so strong it's hard to pass up.

@protoaddict said in Tiny Forgebots:

Speaking of combo, has anyone tried throwing a salvagers in here?

Surely not in this Workshop build, right? The deck has Petal/Pearl/Lotus/Opal for 4 total white sources (assuming the 2nd Opal gets cut for Lotus). LED would make it 5, but you can't cast Salvagers with LED. You'd need to change a lot of cards before you could ever expect to cast a white spell consistently, even if you didn't mind the fact that you can't play Salvagers off of Forge.

Maybe there's a Salvagers/Forge deck but I'm guessing it wouldn't share a lot of cards with this one.

@boogdish said in Tiny Forgebots:

I think Reality Hemmorage or Complete Disregard may be possible sideboard cards to remove a Collector Ouphe as they can both be played off the top of the deck while Forge is in play. Might need to rejigger the manabase a little for it though.

This is interesting, I hadn't considered the Devoid spells, but I'm not sure you could run them with the mana as-is. This post reminded me of Spatial Contortion. It should be easier to cast Contortion than Hemmorage or Disregard, but amusingly it's ALMOST as hard to get colorless mana as it is to get a specific color. The list has 8 colorless sources, vs 4 of any specific color. Neither seems that consistent. I think if you really wanted a removal spell, you might have to just run Dismember and accept the fact that you can't play it off of Forge. A handful of extra colorless mana (Wastelands? Grim Monoliths?) could change that though.

@gutocmtt Right, Chalice is obviously a card you play in your combo deck. That’s totally synergistic. Silly me for asking.

@brass-man said in Tiny Forgebots:

Surely not in this Workshop build, right? The deck has Petal/Pearl/Lotus/Opal for 4 total white sources (assuming the 2nd Opal gets cut for Lotus). LED would make it 5, but you can't cast Salvagers with LED. You'd need to change a lot of cards before you could ever expect to cast a white spell consistently, even if you didn't mind the fact that you can't play Salvagers off of Forge.
Maybe there's a Salvagers/Forge deck but I'm guessing it wouldn't share a lot of cards with this one.

I don't think it is that outlandish. 5-6 white sources plus a singleton copy of salvagers. You can play them off LED if they are on the top of your deck. Just float 3 white then top them to your hand. Since the decks combo right now is the ability to draw your deck just a single salvagers lets you pretty consistently go infinite for as large a ballista as you need.

I mean, there are any number of ways to win once you draw your deck but as it stands your list does not have any way of beating a resolved infinite life combo, be it Zuran Orb/Fastbond/Crucible or some sort of Soul sisters or whatever. Salvagers would allow you to. That being said, could be a sideboard option as opposed to main deck.

As for Chalice, your deck has no 3s or 5s which is where the free counters live, so that could be the play. I think it might be a better sideboard card in this list than the main though, since what you are doing is not Shops in a traditional sense.

I think it would be better if they just decided not to print this card. There is no point of going into the technical discussion of balance or qualitative values for the format because they are obviously moving away from these things.

@jimtosetti that's fine, but this is a thread specifically talking about how to use the new card in a specific workshop aggro/combo deck. It'd be better if we kept metadiscussions about whether wotc is doing a good job in the community board, or at least the single-card-discussion thread about Mystic Forge.

I think it makes quite a bit of sense to get into the technical qualitative values of a card if you're trying to figure out how to play with it, or against it. I would hope that most TMD users are interested in that sort of thing.

If every decklist thread was filled with commentary about which cards are mistakes, it would be impossible for anyone to talk about Vintage between all of the "Black Lotus is too good" posts.

@jimtosetti said in Tiny Forgebots:

I think it would be better if they just decided not to print this card. There is no point of going into the technical discussion of balance or qualitative values for the format because they are obviously moving away from these things.

too bad, it's getting printed whether you like it or not!

@brass-man Sorry, I was looking for the single card discussion thread, and thought I had found it. I just clicked on this thread from the unread section.

@jimtosetti no problem, there's a lot of Forge threads going on at once right now

My hunch is that this wouldn't work out, but do you think there is any merit to Orb of Dreams as a form of disruption in this type of deck?

You speculated that Sphere might be necessary in the board for some match-ups, like combo, but I wonder if Orb could be a better choice. Both cards are comparable in that they both slow down combo/fast starts from the opponent, but also can slow you down, too. However, I think Orb may have some advantages that are at least worth considering.

Let's get the obvious out of the way and point out why Orb would seem be terrible here: you don't want your mana rocks coming into play tapped when you're trying to go off, it doesn't do Sensei's Divining Top any favors, it can impact the game less if you're on the draw and the opponent drops a bunch of mana on the first turn, and it's more expensive than Sphere. Those are pretty serious drawbacks.

But I do see a couple of potential benefits.

The main benefit, I think, is what it does to the opponent's creatures. If you can't go off and kill the opponent, you can drop this and prevent your opponent from building an effective mass of blockers or lethal counterstrike (sorry zombies and Vengevines, no blocking/attacking for you). Sphere won't do that.

Another benefit is that Orb could be more immediately impactful than a single Sphere in some circumstances. For example, a single Sphere does not prevent the opponent from playing an untapped Black Lotus with a single land, or even playing an Academy, and hitting just enough mana to do something relevant. Although Although Sphere has the advantage of impacting the game for longer, Orb can make the bigger impact for a shorter period of time, which seems more important for a deck that's not in it for the long game.

Perhaps using Orb would require a substantially different list that tries to leverage its effect more fully, like adding in Jhoira's Familiar or Helm of Awakening so you don't really care if your mana rocks enter the battlefield tapped or having additional sac outlets beyond Ravager to manage it better when you are trying to go off.

@zias I think Orb of Dreams stops the Divining Top from being a kill entirely. It comes into play tapped, so you can't use it to draw a card the turn you play it, so you can't use it to draw your whole library with Foundry Inspector.

You could still just draw a bunch of cards with Forge, and maybe sacrifice the Orb to Ravager on a turn you plan on winning, but I suspect you wouldn't want to run Orb and Top in the same list.

Another approach to the deck could be using Forge just as a value play instead of a kill, in which case adding Orb and cutting Top isn't so bad. Sphere might not be terrible in that sort of list either.

@brass-man

Yeah, it definitely kills Top combo immediately without a Ravager. That's why I was focused on playing it as late as possible, only when you haven't managed to go off completely/can't quite kill the opponent in a turn. It would never be an issue when you have Inspector-Top-Forge. But I suppose Orb could be a problem in cases when you can't play it at the end of a solid creature chain, when it's on top of the deck with only a tapped Forge out there etc. Sphere is probably just better all around.

This deck needs no disruption if you can kill your opponent on turn 2/3 consistently.

@vaughnbros is it really realistic to think that this deck, which as far as I can tell still requires an un-disrupted three card combo, can win on turn 3 let alone 2 consistently.

Decks like DPS used to consistently win within that range and play draw 7s, tutors, necro/bargain and so forth.

I think expectations should be tempered to thinking of this deck as an aggro deck with a potential combo finish undisrupted, then a consistent turn 2/3 deck.

Just my thoughts.