I realize any artifact that does not somehow make mystic forge better is going to be mostly ignored until forge gets restricted, but this seems like a vintage playable.

Discount the 10/10 thing, that's trinket text, but in any deck running pyromancer, saheeli, mentor, this is personal howling mine that gives you a card the moment it comes down for 2 mana. That seems very good.

I think there are some more cards that likely should be on this list, if only because are well positioned to blow up.

Shenangigans
Goblin Engineer
Some of the Canopy lands, probably not the white ones but I don't know.

@fsecco said in [C19] Elsha of the Infinite:

I don't think this has a place right now if Forge keeps dominating

Honestly, what would have a place if forge keeps dominating? The deck can win turn 1 with Defense grid in play, or more often a pretty safe turn 2 if it goes off. 5 mana, 3 color creatures are not typically the answer to that.

Probably to dependent on what your opponent is doing but it is a lot of free mana against shops.

I think Anje is only playable if you can pull off a kill on the spot. Shes ripe for that because of the haste and re-usability, but I am not sure what actual madness cards you can pair with her to make it work. Maybe some rituals / Songs of the dead style thing but it all just collapses against leyline.

Side note, you don't have to actually cast the card with madness, just discard it, so I think conceivably there is a small CA/filtering engine to be had with Call to the Netherworld and any black madness creature, and maybe a psudeo doomsday thing where you can just craft your whole hand in one cast, but without a madness land it is probably a pipe dream.

Narset feels better because outside of the draw killing static she is also

Easier to cast that Leo or Notion Thief
Harder to kill than any of them
Is Blue unlike Spirit

It's very much a confluence of things. I suspect if Spirit of the Labyrinth was blue this conversation would have been happening a while ago.

Dumb question maybe, but Wrenn and Six in most lists reads like a 2 mana personal howling mine every turn. There is a lot more to that obviously but at its core it's a CA engine, not to mention the tutoring aspect.

People are looking for ways to make it better but how much better would a 1 sided howling mine need to be? If WOTC printed a literal 2 CMC artifact that said T: Draw a card. Only playable at sorcery speed. people would be besides themselves and I don't think that is even as good as this card.

What is it that the card does not do that people want it to do to meet their criteria for a good, playable card in vintage.

@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.

@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.

Not interested. I don't feel like I have the same nostalgia for old formats that many do, I would rather play my older cards in new compelling ways.

The thing about vintage that compels me more so than Legacy is the restricted list. I find that I like the skill that is required from a player to deal with the variance that comes from having powerful bomb cards that only can come up every so often. I thought I would like that about Commander but it turns out I'm not a fan of multiplayer, nor am I a fan of house rules style stuff. Commander games are actually surprisingly consistent when you factor in the fact that you start with an 8 card hand that always has 1 legend of your choice in it.

The most compelling vintage format to me would be singleton vintage, where everything except basics is restricted but it is otherwise identical to this current format. I think in a format with that much variance not only would you see real reliance on player skills you would also see decks that are slightly worse but more consistent have a much better shot at winning.

It would also limit the number of degenerate lists that have one game plan (mull to X for Bazaar, Shops lock on turn 0, Oath orchard turn one win) and would force players into playing well rounded decks which I suspect would include control as well as creature based lists. The format also now has enough free, turn 0 counters with the printing of Force of Negation that I suspect it can handle degenerate turn 0's.