Now, we’re going to need to find something to fill out the shell that I talked about in Part 1. Taking inspiration from Imperial Painter, 7 sol lands seemed like a good place to start, particularly when it comes to playing Chalice on turn one. I filled this out with a pile of Islands and some Lotus Petals as monkey impersonators, Trinket Mage, as a three mana tutor that tutors for half the combo, looks somewhat like Imperial Recruiter. Jace, the Mind Sculptor has four abilities, just like Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and so on.

I’m going to go into the card choices in some depth, but first, this is the list as I’m currently playing it.

Painter Stompy

Painter’s Servant

Painter’s Servant is, obviously, half of the game-winning combo. In the case that you have the combo in hand, it’s sometimes correct to cast it turn one off a sol land because this enables you to cast Grindstone and activate it on turn two if you have another sol land. Even if you don’t have another sol land in hand, the chances of drawing another with six left in the deck is a little over ten percent, which is nothing to sniff at.

Traditionally, in decks with Pyroblast, you would obviously name blue. We don’t run Pyroblast becuase of Chalice of the Void, so what do we name instead? It turns out the answer is often still blue, particularly in game one. This is because doing so allows you to pitch any card in your hand to Force of Will. It’s worth noting that it allows your opponents to do the same. However, in some situations, it is still correct to name blue even when you don’t have a Force in hand and you suspect that they do. Because of Chalice, against decks like Delver and Miracles, the chances of them having a stranded cantrip that they would all too happily pitch to Force of Will is high, and your blue count is likely lower than theirs anyway, so you gain more from a ‘blind’ naming of blue.

Why might this change in game two? Many of the premier decks in the format run Pyroblast, including Grixis Delver, Czech Pile and some builds of Miracles, and naming blue allows them to destroy your artifacts and lands with it, as well as making it a one-mana counterspell. Despite this, I find myself naming blue a reasonable percentage of the time. This is because a) you have Chalice and b) a lot of your best cards in matchups with Pyroblast are countered by it anyway. Whir of Invention, Jace, and Thirst for Knowledge are all blue, so sometimes the value of being able to pitch excess lands to Force will outweigh the impact of getting a combo piece blown up by Pyroblast. Still, a couple of caveats apply: the above build only runs two Grindstones, and getting them destroyed is a risk. Also, you can find yourself leaning on lock cards like Ensnaring Bridge or Sorcerous Spyglass, and giving your opponent more outs to them is dangerous.

If you don’t want to name blue for the above reasons, I would recommend naming black for the occasional Snuff Out that some decks run. I also like naming pink, although technically you can’t (so, uh, don’t).

Another thing I’d like to point out regarding Painter’s Servant is that it is an artifact. Fairly obvious, yes, but it means you can tap it to improvise when casting Whir of Invention. The reason I point this out is because it can be tempting to swing in with Painter’s Servant when the coast is clear. Just be sure you weren’t counting on it to provide mana for a Whir before you do so.

One final neat tip to bear in mind is that most of the Eldrazi cards like Eldrazi Temple, Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Mimic say ‘colourless’ Eldrazi. With a Painter’s Servant in play, nothing will be colourless anymore, meaning that Mimic can’t copy P/T values, Eldrazi Temple only makes one mana and Eye of Ugin’s does stone-cold nothing, both in terms of cost-reduction and fetching Eldrazi. It turns out that Thought-Knot Seers and Reality Smashers are a lot less scary when they’re not coming out on turn 2 and 3, so you should prioritise getting a Painter’s Servant in play against Eldrazi. Just watch out for Warping Wail, and be aware that your opponent can choose to reset the entire board (including lands!) with All is Dust if they choose to.

Grindstone

Grindstone is, also obviously, the other half of the combo. First things first: if you have a Chalice in play, don’t cast Grindstone. You laugh, but it can be easy to forget. Once again, though, there are corner cases in which you want to. First, if you think that Ensnaring Bridge might be relevant later in the game but also that you’ll be constrained on mana. It can also be correct if you might want to recur it with Academy Ruins in order to be able to fetch it out with Whir, Transmute Artifact or Tezzeret the Seeker.

Sequencing hands that have a Grindstone and a Chalice can be difficult. The baseline play would of course be to cast Grindstone first, and Chalice on a following turn. However, having a Chalice in play is extremely significant in a number of matchups, particularly if you’re on the play. It is therefore often correct to lead with a Chalice, even if you strand a Grindstone in your hand by doing so. Cutting your opponent off cantrips, Deathrite Shaman, and threats can more than even out the fact that you’ll eventually have to whir (henceforth a generic term for Whir/Transmute/Tezzeret) for your other Grindstone. Also, decks can and do have answers to Chalice. Sometimes, they will destroy your Chalice and thereby give you a window to drop your Grindstone (which you might even get to follow up with another Chalice, if you’re not winning on the spot).

When you actually have the combo in play, you may still not necessarily want to activate it right away. If they remove your Painter’s Servant in response to the activation, everything will stop being the same colour and you’ll have paid three mana to mill them for a few cards. Ideally, you’d like to have protection in form of Force of Will or Spellskite. If you don’t, but you still want to go for it, wait until their upkeep. This forces them to use mana on their turn but doesn’t let them draw an extra card. Of course, if they’re tapped out or don’t have enough mana to cast their most likely answer (say, Abrupt Decay), then do it before they untap!

Grindstone also has some niche usefulness when you don’t have Painter’s Servant in play. Back in the day, it was great with top for getting rid of useless cards off the top of your library. Along similar lines, if your opponent is fatesealing you with Jace, Grindstone can mitigate the effects of that. If you have an active Academy Ruins, you may want to mill yourself to increase your chances of finding a Painter. (If you do this on mtgo, make sure to set a stop on your own upkeep so that you can recur it before your draw step.) You can also interfere with opposing Brainstorms and Predicts, and attempt to tilt your opponent by milling away critical cards (even though this is statistically pointless). In corner cases, like against Standstill, mill can actually be a relevant win condition even without Painter’s Servant because the game can stall out if you have an Ensnaring Bridge in play.

But! a few caveats: Be wary of providing your opponent with delve, Snapcaster Mage or Kolaghan’s Command fodder, as well as milling cards that have flashback. Also, it’s always worth remembering that Grindstone targets and will give them a draw off Leovold, Emissary of Trest if they have one in play.

Chalice of the Void

It goes without saying that Chalice of the Void is an extremely powerful card. You have seven sol lands which allow you to play it for x=1 on turn one, but Chalice on one is good at later stages as well. Playing a Chalice later in the game still turns off lots of the most common removal for Painter’s Servant and turns a significant portion of many decks into dead draws. Because of this, you can play a control game with Chalices, gaining virtual card advantage by invalidating your opponent’s cards and piecing together other lock pieces as well as the combo.

Chalice on zero is an extremely potent tool against storm decks, making them unable to cast Lion’s Eye Diamonds and Lotus Petals, and if you can’t make a Chalice with one counter on turn one, putting it on zero can buy you a significant amount of time, possibly even to find another Chalice to further lock them out.

Trinket Mage

Although it may seem anti-synergistic with Chalice, Trinket Mage increases the virtual copies of Grindstone without being dead while you have Chalice it play. It also fetches Chalice, which is frequently the correct play. Against decks with a lot of removal but without a quick win, you are more concerned about making sure your combo actually goes off than about comboing off as quickly as possible, and Chalice goes a long way towards making that happen by blanking Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push.

Trinket Mage also fetches Engineered Explosives and Seat of the Synod in the maindeck and gives you extra copies of sideboard cards like Walking Ballista and Meekstone if you run them. Fetching Seat of the Synod is useful to the point where I’ve considered running more than one, as blue mana can be somewhat of a choke point for the deck given the number of sol lands.

Finally, as a grey ogre, Trinket Mage does work in pressuring opposing planeswalkers as well as opponents’ life totals if you lock them out. It trades with Young Pyromancer and stonewalls elemental tokens and is an acceptable chump blocker, as well as being a blue card for Force of Will.

Force of Will

Much has been written about Force of Will, so I won’t go too much into detail here. As mentioned above, naming blue for Painter’s Servant allows you to pitch even lands to it. It protects the combo as well as giving you interaction against other combo decks. Be mindful of your blue count, despite Painter’s Servant—it can be difficult to keep it high despite being mono-blue because of the number of artifacts in the deck.

Thirst for Knowledge

Thirst for Knowledge is a powerful source of card selection in a deck without cantrips, as well as often accruing card advantage. (Just don’t cast it into a Leovold, Emissary of Trest.) Being an instant plays well with Whir of Invention, and it can be cast off a sol land + an island or talisman. Pitching excess Chalices is nice, and there are certain matchups where Sorcerous Spyglass does little to nothing. If you have a Chalice in play, you may wish to ditch a Grindstone that’s stuck in your hand. (Although do bear in mind the scenarios discussed in the Grindstone section above that might mean you want to keep your Grindstone in hand despite the Chalice in play.) You can also pitch Seat of the Synod or a Talisman in situations where you have plenty of mana already. Don’t forget the second mode, either, which allows you to just pitch any two cards.

If you have an Ensnaring Bridge in play, know that you can choose to discard two cards even if one of them is an artifact. This is because you choose during resolution whether to ‘discard two cards’ or ‘discard an artifact’—it doesn’t check whether the cards you discarded are artifacts if you choose the former.

Whir of Invention

The card that makes it possible for this deck to play Chalices at all, Whir of Invention looks and is slightly clunky, but makes up for it with flexibility in spades. I was initially running four, but the triple blue cost is challenging. I think three is the right number despite this. A reasonably common line of play is to lead with islands into Painter’s Servant, and at the end of their turn three whir + improvise for a Grindstone. Then it’s as simple as untapping and grinding them out. Being an instant allows you to catch people unawares with the combo, or even a surprise creature in form of Painter’s Servant or Lodestone Golem. For example, unsuspecting DnT opponents might swing in with their Phyrexian Revoker naming Grindstone, allowing you to pick it off with your trusty 1/3 scarecrow. Similarly, an opponent might pass with a planeswalker unprotected, and Lodestone Golem can come in and clean up.

Sorcerous Spyglass

Spyglass deals with a number of problematic cards including Sneak Attack, Jace, Deathrite Shaman and Griselbrand. I mean, you know what activated abilities there are in legacy, so there’s little point in my listing them all. Just be wary of naming Jace given that you play them yourself. Know that you can name fetches—I’ve locked opponents out of colours by naming fetches I’ve seen in their hand. It’s cheesy, but it works. Also know that looking at their hand and naming a card is not a trigger and cannot be responded to. If they let you resolve a whir effect and you put spyglass into play, they can’t respond by activating any abilities. It also doesn’t target, so they don’t get to draw off Leovold, Emissary of Trest.

Transmute Artifact

Transmute is a strange old card. Things to note: you sacrifice as part of the revolution and you can search for a higher CMC artifact than you can afford to pay for. Once transmute is resolving, they can’t respond. If transmute gets countered, you don’t have to sacrifice the artifact. This makes it superior to Reshape, although if budget is a concern you could run Reshape and get similar functionality a fair amount of the time. I think I’d probably run a second Tezzeret over the first Reshape, but it’s possible that being able to Reshape into a Grindstone for 3 is better.

The reason that the deck doesn’t run many of these effects is that you don’t run many redundant artifacts. You rarely want to sacrifice your Chalices or Spyglasses because doing so leaves you open. Of course, if it means you’re going to win, go ahead.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Jace, being the best planeswalker ever printed, helps you dig for the combo and provides you with an alternate win condition if you combo gets surgically extracted or you can’t combo off for another reason, all while being able to buy you time against large threats like Gurmag Angler. Pillowforting behind an Ensnaring Bridge and ticking up Jace is a legitimate win condition, and other than that, being able to put back Grindstones to be able to whir them out is very useful.

Tezzeret the Seeker

Tezzeret plays somewhat like a fourth Whir of Invention that trades instant speed for being slightly easier to cast and being able to get both parts of the combo over two turns if left alone. Tezzeret can also be an alternate win condition by making whatever artifacts you have lying around into an army of 5/5s. Being able to threaten the ultimate within one turn is pretty threatening. Just make sure you either don’t have an Ensnaring Bridge in play or you have five cards in hand!

Being able to get both parts of the combo from one card is powerful enough that I’ve considered playing another copy of Tezzeret somewhere in the 75. On the other hand, five mana is a fair bit, and the plus ability does little for the deck. Still, I think it’s worth testing.

Ensnaring Bridge

Ensnaring Bridge is extremely difficult for some decks to deal with, particularly in game one, and can prompt concessions all by itself. Sometimes, it will be a temporary rather than a permanent solution, but being able to buy time makes it well worth playing. You have five ways to tutor for it, three of which are instant speed. Having access to it in the maindeck is therefore extremely valuable. Sometimes it can be tricky to empty your hand. Remember that you can cast cards into Chalice even if they will be countered.

Engineered Explosives

Explosives is another card that I like having access to in the maindeck because it answers a host of problematic permanents, including Deathrite Shamans, Delver of Secrets, Pithing Needle and hordes of tokens that would otherwise make short work of your life total. Once again, it can be tutored for, this time with Trinket Mage. It can be awkward to play Explosives on 1 given that you will blow up any Grindstones you have in play. Note that you can play it for two or even three colours if you are running Talismans or Mox Diamonds. (Although playing it for 2 will of course take Talismans with it.) Also, importantly, you can cast it for one colour even with a Chalice in play by overpaying for x but with only one colour.

Ratchet Bomb

A card that plays a similar role to Engineered Explosives but isn’t tutorable by Trinket Mage. It trades that and speed for flexibility and the ability to destroy much larger targets. It can also be whirred into play, unlike Explosives (for anything other than zero). This means that you can whir end of turn, add a counter, untap and make things go boom, potentially catching your opponent with their guard down.

Additionally, the threat of activation can sometimes buy you enough time to combo off by stopping your opponents from deploying further threats. Also, while niche, remember that you can untap it with Tezzeret. The same caveats about blowing up your own stuff apply!

Search for Azcanta

My initial draft of the deck played Search, but I wound up cutting it in favour of ‘quicker’ card advantage cards like Thirst for Knowledge. However, it was always in the back of my mind, and when I decided I wanted to try a build without artifact mana (see the Talisman section in Part 3), Search for Azcanta seemed a good fit. In some ways, it fills a similar role in helping you towards mana sources, as well as flipping into a mana source later in the game.

It’s also higher impact and much better late game, making it a very strong card in the grindier matchups. It even plays well with Academy Ruins, and Grindstone helps it flip in a pinch. One thing I’d like to point out, though, is that without fetches and cantrips, it takes considerably longer to flip.

Spellskite

Spellskite protects both halves of the combo as well as other key artifacts like Ensnaring Bridge, forcing your opponent to have multiple answers. I particularly like that Spellskite can be played proactively, allowing for mana efficiency on combo turns. It also protects against Abrupt Decay, unlike Force of Will, and having four toughness is excellent against Lightning Bolt. Don’t forget that you don’t have to pay 2 life given that you’re a blue deck. This makes Spellskite a potent card against burn, particularly as one burn spell will rarely be enough. It’s also extremely useful against infect for obvious reasons. As far as I’m aware, you can redirect both parts of Kolaghan’s Command, which is otherwise often a beating against you, to Spellskite.

Despite all the upsides, you often don’t want to tutor for Spellskite in the matchups where it is good but not game-winning on its own, both because that can be too slow and because you have other targets that will have a more immediate impact on the board state. You’d rather draw it naturally, leading me to wonder whether it would be worth playing another copy of it. I have experimented with a copy of Padeem, Consul of Innovation in the maindeck to fulfil a similar purpose while also providing card advantage. Still, four mana is a lot, and although Padeem is probably slightly better against removal, doesn’t die to Abrupt Decay and pitches to Force, he doesn’t have some of the additional utility of Spellskite and may be just too clunky to run in the main.

Thopter Spy Network

A card that has popped up a few times, and one that I have only recently started playing with. It seems cool, and perhaps an endless stream of chump blockers is just what the doctor ordered for otherwise tricky matchups like Grixis Delver. Other highlights include stonewalling Marit Lage even through Sejiri Steppe. It’s also immune to Abrupt Decay and there are fewer commonly played answers to enchantments than there are to artifacts. Still, four mana is a lot and often not having any impact on the board until your upkeep makes me question how good it can really be—the jury is still out on its effectiveness.

Ancient Tomb

Powering out Chalices on turn one as well as the combo several turns earlier is worth the painful aspect of playing Ancient Tomb, despite the fact that it sometimes loses you games. Be conservative with your life total—you don’t want to end up in a situation where you would win if you activated Grindstone, but can’t afford to because you need the mana from an Ancient Tomb and you’re at 2.

City of Traitors

The key to City of Traitors is sequencing. You needn’t always be making land drops if you have City in play. If you have two two mana plays and a three mana play, and your only lands are City and Island, it is likely to be well worth waiting until turn three to play your Island, utilising the City for mana before sacrificing it, in order to be able to play out your cards. In general, if you don’t have that many lands in hand, it may be worth waiting until you are sure you can reach the number of mana you will need to cast your spells with other lands.

Academy Ruins

Academy Ruins is very powerful in grindy matchups and it is worth trying to protect it from Wasteland if you can by not playing it out too early. Remember that you can untap for the turn and put an artifact on top with Academy Ruins before your draw step. I have experimented with running Tolaria West as an additional copy of Academy Ruins that can also tutor for Chalice. It’s pretty sweet flavour and tech, but sometimes it can really hurt that one of your blue sources, should you need it as such, will come into play tapped. It can also be tricky to find the time to transmute, particularly given the awkward 1UU cost.

Seat of the Synod

Seat of the Synod is mainly in the deck to be fetchable by Trinket Mage as well as being sacrifice fodder for Transmute. Given the lack of other synergies, unlike in decks that run Goblin Welder or Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, I think one is probably the right number. It’s frustrating when you’d love to be able to find another blue source with a Trinket Mage, but given the vulnerability to Wasteland and Blood Moon, it’s nice to keep your blue sources as robust as possible.

Island

I mean, the key decision here is which artwork and border to choose. I don’t have the time to go into it here, but do choose wisely. You are playing a fair few of them, after all. I’m currently experimenting with cutting one and going down to 21 lands total. In the limited testing I’ve done, I think that 22 may be better because you do really want to hit those Island drops for Whir of Invention.

Sideboarding

What about the sideboard? Join me in Part 3 to find out what the options are, and when you might want what!

Like last time, please do get in touch with questions, and if anyone has any colourful ideas for deck names, shout. Bonus points for puns on art, artists, or painting.

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