@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.

@nba84

I’m more saying what I think this decks needs to than what I think it necessarily currently is. A plating or Ravager can kill someone early, without the need to assemble any combo.

That’s why regular Ravager Shops has some turn 3/4 kills with much more disruption at their disposal. Tiny robots needs to be faster and more consistent with that speed.

@vaughnbros we are in agreement

The list absolutely needs some more testing and tuning, but don't let the "3 card combo" fool you. True, 3 card combos are traditionally weak, but when you play Mystic Forge you rapidly start churning through 6 or 7 cards in a turn, so your chance of finding the other two cards shoots up. Having either Top or Inspector means you draw even more. In almost all of these games I end up playing Ballistas and Walkers at 0 mana, putting them right into the yard, to dig for the kill cards.

My sample size is still low, but in something like 20 goldfishes, I've never had slower than a turn 3 kill. Sometimes it comes from the full Forge/Inspector/Top combo, sometimes it's Forge drawing a bunch of moxes to sack to a Ravager, sometimes it's just an early plating with no Forge at all.

I'm sure many (if not all) of these draws would be slowed or stopped by Force of Will, Force of Vigor, Shattering Spree, etc, and when you're talking about Memnites even the smallest blockers can make a difference, but if we're JUST measuring goldfish speed, the deck is easily a consistent turn 3, if not faster.

If you removed all the disruption from the original list shown above in post 1 and went with say:

-4 revoker
-1 chalice
-1 thorn
-1 skull clamp

And added:
+4 frogmite
+2 Helm of Awakening
+1 Mox Opal

How much would it speed it up?
Just theory crafting here, but dropping a helm shouldn't be an issue since you "should" win that turn most of the time, right? Or is it too much a liability?

This deck used to run Genesis Chamber. That seems like the #1 card Id look to add back in.

@serracollector said in Tiny Forgebots:

If you removed all the disruption from the original list shown above in post 1 and went with say:

-4 revoker
-1 chalice
-1 thorn
-1 skull clamp

And added:
+4 frogmite
+2 Helm of Awakening
+1 Mox Opal

How much would it speed it up?
Just theory crafting here, but dropping a helm shouldn't be an issue since you "should" win that turn most of the time, right? Or is it too much a liability?

I'm not actually sure removing the disruption would make it faster by any measurable stat. Most of the disruption already makes the deck faster by virtue of being an artifact in play and contributing as ravager food.

There are also some other interesting cost reduction cards that could be used other than cloud key and Helm of awakening:

Locket of Yesterdays - The deck has a lot of 4 ofs and does bin a lot of cards
Mycosynth Golem - It does not seem unreasonable that this could come into play on turn 2 if you start to combo off
Semblance Anvil - I Believe this was in a few artifact combo decks in the past.

That being said I'm not sure its worth dropping disruption to play them in the least, because the deck is already so low on CMC that I don't think they do that much more to reduce cost than just having another rock in play.