Hi, I'm new to the forums. Used to play Magic from Beta to Mercadian Masques. Very happy to see there's a way to keep playing with the new cards without having to spend a fortune on them!
Anyway, I was stuck on this challenge for a long time. Lots of unlucky draws and game crashes (especially when trying charbelcher decks). I eventually settled on the following control build that made the challenge absurdly easy! Can't believe I didn't figure it out earlier.
12x
Island4x
Tundra4x
Underground Sea1x
Mox Emerald1x
Mox Jet1x
Mox Pearl1x
Mox Ruby1x
Mox Sapphire1x
Sol Ring1x
Black Lotus4x
Tangle Wire (easy enough to unlock it in
March of the Machines 1)
4x
Vedalken Shackles4x
Meekstone4x
Thopter Foundry4x
Sword of the Meek4x
Ichor Wellspring4x
Mycosynth Wellspring3x
Smokestack2x
MortarpodThe deck is designed around control and synergy, and you get more and more options while your opponent keeps getting less. In the beginning, use
Tangle Wire,
Meekstone,
Mortarpod and
Vedalken Shackles to shut down the opponent. Use the Wellsprings to gain card (to draw into combo) and land (for the
Shackles) advantage. Drop a
Smokestack as soon as possible. You can sacrifice Wellsprings, Mortarpods, 'empty'
Tangle Wires, surplus Meekstones and land to it. Keeping them between 1 and 3 counters should usually do the trick. Keep in mind you can tap most of your artifacts to
Tangle Wire and they'll still work, except the mana ones and the
Vedalken Shackles.
The
Thopter Foundry/
Sword of the Meek combo gives you blockers, attackers,
Smokestack fuel and lifegain (very important against the burn deck!). The
Thopter Foundry is the important part of the engine, as you can also sacrifice the Wellsprings,
Tangle Wires and surplus artifacts (Moxes, Meekstones). You can use it to get rid of a redundant
Smokestack as well. If direct damage is needed, you can ping creatures and players by equipping the Mortarpods to the thopter tokens.
Mulligan until you get a hand that either has the combo or plenty of control options. If you have a
Mycosynth Wellspring you can afford to keep a low land hand. I used the
Shackles mostly defensively. You'll have enough islands to grab their best creature every turn.
The burn deck is the only difficult match-up. Keep it locked down with
Tangle Wire and
Smokestack and make sure you get a
Thopter Foundry for the life gain! The rest of the decks should be easy. You'll be assisted a bit by crappy computer AI. It never seems to
Disenchant/
Naturalize the Thopter Foundries, but wastes them on the tokens or
Sword of the Meek. The mirror match is laughable, since the AI immediately sacrifices the
Thopter Foundry to itself.
Hope this deck/guide helps people out. I was getting very frustrated until I built this.