Against the Odds: Mechanized Production (Standard)

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Feb 02, 2017

Against the Odds video standard

Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode seventy-one of Against the Odds. Last week, we didn't have an Against the Odds poll because we have a very special Aether Revolt episode this week featuring one of my favorite cards from Magic's newest set: Mechanized Production! When we get a new card that says "if you do X, you win the game," we pretty much have to test it out as soon as possible, so this week, we are heading to Aether Revolt Standard to see if we can win some games by getting eight or more artifacts with the same name on the battlefield!

If you're a fan of the Against the Odds poll, don't worry—it's back at the end of this episode and features a slew of new options from Aether Revolt, so make sure to vote for what card you want to see next!

Anyway, let's get to the videos, but first a quick reminder. If you enjoy the Against the Odds series and the other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube Channel.

Against the Odds: Mechanized Production (Deck Tech)

Against the Odds: Mechanized Production (Games)

The Deck

When I decided that we were going to build around Mechanized Production, the main question was what artifact we were going to enchant. While I think the idea of copying big artifacts like Panharmonicon or Metalwork Colossus is fun, it's not a realistic way to win the game with Mechanized Production because it's hard to get a bunch of copies on the battlefield. This left us with two options: Servo tokens or Clue tokens. While either could theoretically work, putting a four-mana aura on a 1/1 creature is super risky and not typically a way to build a competitive deck, which left us with Clue tokens as our target of choice for Mechanized Production.

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The best part of Mechanized Production is that, unlike other "you win the game" cards, it actually does something while we're not winning the game by making a token copy of an artifact every turn. In our deck, this is a Clue token, so while we are waiting to get eight Clues on the battlefield to win the game, Mechanized Production works sort of like our own personal Howling Mine. With the help of Inspiring Statuary, Mechanized Production moves from "make a Clue token every turn" to "make a Mind Stone every turn" (since we can not only sacrifice the Clue to draw a card but also tap the Clue for mana), which is an incredibly powerful effect. For this plan to work, though, we need to make sure we have at least one Clue token on the battlefield to get things started.

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Thraben Inspector, Jace's Scrutiny, and Press for Answers are essentially the same card in our deck. Each is one or two mana, makes a Clue token, and keeps one of our opponent's creatures from dealing us damage for a single turn (Thraben Inspector by chump blocking, the other two by targeting the opponent's creatures). With 12 of these cards in our deck, we should almost always have a Clue on the battlefield by the time we are ready to cast a Mechanized Production.

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Our other Clue maker is Confirm Suspicions, which is one of our best ways to get the eight Clues we need to win the game on our upkeep with Mechanized Production. If we can make four clues in the early game and have them sitting on the battlefield, get a Mechanized Production on a Clue, and then counter one of our opponent's spells with Confirm Suspicions, we suddenly have enough Clues to win the game with Mechanized Production on our very next upkeep. Plus, we can often cast Confirm Suspicions for only two mana with the help of our next card...

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Inspiring Statuary is the other key card in our deck, turning all of our Clue tokens into Mind Stones that can tap for mana. Since we usually have a lot of random Clues sitting around, it allows us to do some crazy things (like turn Confirm Suspicions into Mana Drain: UU, counter a spell, get three Mind Stones). It also lets us get a combo kill with Mechanized Production.

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The downside of Mechanized Production is that we need to wait until our upkeep to win the game, which means our opponent has a chance to use sorcery-speed removal to disrupt our plan by killing our Mechanized Production or even just the Clue token. However, with the help of our Clue tokens making a ton of mana with Inspiring Statuary, we can skip over this problem altogether by tapping all of our Clues to cast Part the Waterveil and Mechanized Production in the same turn! Part the Waterveil also gives us a backup plan for winning the game, because we can tap Clues (with Inspiring Statuary) to pay for the Awaken cost as well, allowing us to beat down with a 6/6 land while also taking a turn. With a bit of luck (and help from our Clues drawing us a ton of cards), we can even chain Part the Waterveils together and win in turbo-turns fashion!

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Gonti's Aether Heart and Tamiyo's Journal are just one-ofs, but they can do some pretty sweet things when we happen to draw them. Gonti's Aether Heart is like a backup Part the Waterveil, with our Clue tokens generating the energy needed to power it up. Meanwhile, Tamiyo's Journal not only makes Clues but allows us to sacrifice extra Clues to tutor up our Mechanized Production, Part the Waterveil, or whatever else we happen to need!

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Last but not least, we have Metallic Rebuke, Quarantine Field, and Fumigate, which help us stay alive while we are looking to set up our combo. Quarantine Field and Fumigate specifically work great with our Inspiring Statuary mana, which can let us wrath for only two mana with Fumigate and power up the X cost on Quarantine Field to exile a bunch of permanents at once.

The Matchups

When it comes to matchups, the most important thing is that our opponent is playing some sort of creature-based deck, because many of our Clue makers depend on having a creature on the battlefield, and since we only have four Thraben Inspectors as creatures in our deck, we really need our opponent to help us out. Against creature decks, our combination of Fumigate, Jace's Scrutiny, and Press for Answers does a great job of keeping us alive and slowing our opponent down while we set up the Mechanized Production kill.

On the other hand, creature-light control decks are among our hardest matchups, not just because it makes our Clue production challenging but because counterspells are a good way to ruin our plan of resolving Mechanized Production and Part the Waterveil. While having a bunch of card advantage from Clue tokens helps, these matchups are still not great, especially compared to more aggressive creature builds.

The Odds

The bad news is we only got in four matches this week because a lot of our games went pretty long. The good news is that Mechanized Production performed amazingly in those matchups. All in all, we won three of our four matches (good for a 75% match win percentage) and seven of 10 games (a 70% game win percentage). Our only loss came to a creature-light, planeswalker-heavy Copy Cat build, where we got stuck with a bunch of useless Jace's Scrutiny and Press for Answers in our hand; otherwise, we pretty much cruised through our other three matches. Mechanized Production itself was quite powerful, especially in conjunction with Inspiring Statuary to turn all of our Clues into mana, and Part the Waterveil worked amazingly in the deck! While the sample size is small and it's probably unlikely that we could continue winning 70+% of our games, turning Clue tokens into Mind Stone felt extremely powerful, and I wouldn't be surprised to find it could be part of a "real" deck!

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Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.