But how are They going to Win with No Permanents?
Well, hello there! Brewer’s Kitchen here, and today we are revisiting the deck that got me into creating Magic content about two and a half years ago. As you read in the title, the goal is to destroy all of our opponent’s permanents. This article will go a bit deeper into the individual card choices and the crazy things you can do with this deck. But first, I’d highly suggest watching the video itself to see The Yeetmachine in action.
The Gameplan
The primary gameplan of the deck is to untap with six mana and Fires of Invention. While this sounds like an ambitious goal in Explorer, the payoff is going to catastrophic for our opponent.
First, we need to ramp up to four mana. Growth Spiral and Tangled Florahedron get us there on turn three. While the Spiral ramps with actual lands, it is a little less consistent than the mana dork. Once we have the mana, we slam down Fires of Invention as soon as possible.
Now we can only play two spells per turn, but have the option to cast spells with mana value less then or equal to the number of lands we control for free.
At this point we often find ourselves in a position where every consecutive turn will get exponentially devastating as long as we can keep the Fires on the Battlefield and keep our life total above zero.
After resolving Fires of Invention, we can follow it up with our second spell for the turn as long as we have enough lands to cast it for free. If our opponent pressures us with early aggression, we wipe the board with Sweltering Suns or Storm's Wrath. If the board is still clear, we can use our second spell to set up for the next turn.
Fae of Wishes and Tamiyo, Collector of Tales are great for planning ahead, granting us a card from the sideboard or digging us deeper into our deck and returning cards from our graveyard. I’ll go over details on all these cards later. What we’re trying to set up is a devastating one two punch that can be adjusted to the game state.
It starts with a Repeated Reverberation, an instant that copies the next instant or sorcery we cast two times. So, all we need now is a haymaker spell to copy. Both our sideboard and deck come packed with options for any situation. While the most devastating blow is often a Casualties of War we can also create a value explosion with a triple Escape to the Wilds or take three extra turns in a row with Alrund's Epiphany.
The fastest way to do this is turn four. If we ramp into Fires of Invention on turn three by ramping with a Growth Spiral on two and follow this up with another Spiral to have five lands after turn three. We can just make a land drop and cast Repeated Reverberation and Casualties of War for free on turn four. Needless to say, this will devastate our opponent’s board and most likely lead them to concede the game.
But what if they don’t? And what do we do with all the untapped mana we have from casting our spells for free? Well, here comes the part that the deck was missing two years ago. Back then we just blew our recourses on this devastating blow and hoped to ride this value to victory. Turns out, we got the perfect engine to turn this one-two punch strategy into a relentless cycle of destruction and value. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty brought back a mechanic that works beautifully with this deck: Channel.
Shigeki, Jukai Visionary, Colossal Skyturtle, Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance, Boseiju, Who Endures and Otawara, Soaring City can all be channeled without counting as a spell for the two-spell-clause of Fires of Invention. While the lands offer some great value with low opportunity costs, Shigeki and the Turtle form a loop with each other.
Let’s say we just blew up our opponent’s board with a triple Casualties. This means we had six mana, but didn’t need to tap any of them to cast these spells. We can now channel Shigeki, Jukai Visionary for X = 2 and return both of these cards from the graveyard back to our hand. Next turn, we can hit our opponent with the same spell combo again, but this time spend our open mana to channel Colossal Skyturtle, returning Shigeki back to our hand. The following turn, we can channel Shigeki again to get back our spells to hit our opponent with the triple casualties again. If we make our land drops, we can start channeling Shigeki for X = 3, returning the Sky Turtle back to our hand to repeat this loop, while constantly blowing up our opponent’s boardstate every turn.
If all this destruction doesn’t force our opponent into concession, we of course have other ways to close out the game. Namely, a triple Torment of Hailfire. If we stabilized the game enough, we can use the Granted side of Fae of Wishes to grab a Torment of Hailfire, cast it for as much mana as we have and triple it up. This will most likely drain our opponent completely out of resources and life to end the game.
Individual card breakdown
Tangled Florahedron
This can ramp us into an early Fires of Invention or just provide a land drop if we need it. This deck plays the land side a lot more often than others. Being one of the only creatures we actually cast as such, it will often just eat up our opponent’s removal spells that would otherwise be stuck in their hand. But if we risk it, it can provide some crucial ramp for the early game.
Growth Spiral
The cheapest and most efficient way to ramp a land on turn two in historic. It’s dependent on having excess lands in our hand or is downgrades to a two-mana draw-a-card. Make sure to play Tangled Florahedron as a land drop as it can’t be put on the battlefield by the Spiral. Our most explosive starts involve successfully pulling off a Growth Spiral so keep an eye out for this when drawing your opening and.
Shigeki, Jukai Visionary
The synergies between Shigeki and our gameplan are outstanding. When I looked for upgrades for the original list, this is where I knew I struck gold. We can play it in the early game, chump block with it, return it to our hand to ramp a land and fill our graveyard. If this wasn’t enough engine, its channel ability seems almost too good to be true once we have Fires of Invention on the battlefield. Besides the aforementioned Skyturtle loop, it’s often enough to just return our two big spells to our hand to set up another haymaker play. Since Channel counts as an ability is is sneaky good for uncouterably refilling our hand against control decks in the late game.
Sweltering Suns
Our protection against early aggression. While Anger of the Gods has a better effect at the same mana costs, we can cycle Sweltering Suns with our open mana for a redraw once we notice that it’s not going to be good in the matchup.
Storm's Wrath
Our second main deck board wipe. Four damage is usually enough to stop early to mid-game aggression. Unlike Sweltering Suns it can damage planeswalkers, giving it some use in control matchups.
Tamiyo, Collector of Tales
If the board is clear when we resolve a Fires of Invention, Tamiyo is one of the greatest second spells for the turn. While her (+1) ability doesn’t have the greatest success rate in our deck because of the low number of full playsets, it lets us set up for future turns by protecting against edict and discard effects, filling our graveyard, and returning crucial cards when we need them.
Repeated Reverberation
The star of the show. Once we resolve our Fires, the next step is to find a Reverberations and set up the power play. Pretty much any spell you copy two additional times is insane, but I’ll soon go over which one is best for each situation. It never came up in my games so far, but you can technically use it to triple one of Tamiyo’s loyalty abilities.
Fires of Invention
Banned (and now nerfed) in Historic, this is the card that makes the whole deck work. While we ramp enough to eventually hard cast our haymakers, Fires speeds up the process dramatically. It also turned out to be the basis of the illustrated avatar I use in my videos. It looks nothing like me, but is was the key card from my fist ever video and I just stuck with the Brewer I drew over the artwork over two years ago.
Escape to the Wilds
Card advantage and land ramp, one of the best setup spells in the deck. Don’t hesitate to just fire of a triple Escape if you have Repeated Reverberation. Sure, triple Casualties is brutal, but after exiling the top 15 cards for next turn and getting 3 extra land drops will probably win you the game as well.
Baral's Expertise
Only a one-off, but this card has saved me several times. Bouncing three creatures and putting a Fires on Inventions or Tamiyo on the battlefield is a ridiculous tempo swing in the early to mid-game.
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
Another one-off which serves as a plan B, if everything else goes wrong. We usually use its trigger to get a The World Tree to fix our mana for casting off-color spells. But sometimes we can get a Labyrinth of Skophos to use our open mana to prevent aggression once we got the Fires on the battlefield. Golo’s activated ability is powerful but a bit of a nombo with Fires of Invention since we can only cast two spells every turn anyways. It is a fantastic backup win condition though, if our opponent gets carried away answering our Fires.
Casualties of War
What a card! Destroy one of each permanent type? Triple it up? That’s just absurd. We only play two copies since we usually dig deep enough into our deck before we pull off the combo anyways. Even if it just destroys three lands against a control deck, it’s absolutely devastating; especially if you do it every turn.
Colossal Skyturtle
Besides the Shigeki loops, this one offers some instant speed interaction, even if we can’t play spells on our opponents turn due to Fires of Invention. Is also allows for double casting spells with Fires on the battlefield. Just cast your big spell for free, channel it back into your hand, and cast it again as your second spell.
Fae of Wishes
Most of the time we only play the Granted (Adventure) side of this card. It allows us to grab a noncreature spell from our sideboard and put it into our hand. This can easily set up brutal combinations of spells. If the game drags out or if we get pressured by small creatures, the Fae itself can be played as a blocker and later returns to our hand for another tutor from our sideboard.
Talking about the sideboard, let’s go over our card choices real quick.
The Wish Board
Repeated Reverberation
Not much to say here, grab this if you have a haymaker spell in your hand to set up the one-two punch.
Kaya's Wrath
It might look a bit goofy, having a double off-color wrath as our emergency button. But between The World Tree fixing our mana and Fires of Invention only caring for mana value, we can usually cast it without problems. It’s not rare to spend the turn after resolving the Fires by tutoring for this and blowing up the board before we set up our engine.
Alrund's Epiphany
In the video I play Alchemist's Gambit because I wanted to try out if the non-cleaved version will come in clutch as a final turn before I finish my opponent with Torment of Hailfire. Turns out, the Epiphany has way too much upside to be worse here. We can grab it with the Fae, foretell it and hard cast it for six mana even if we would need 7 lands to cast it for free with Fires. Tripling up on this will be game ending in almost every situation. If nothing else, we get an army of birds.
Invoke Despair
I switched out a copy of Casualties of War for this one as our sideboard option for blowing out the opponent. Being one mana cheaper allows us to cast it a turn earlier while its card draw reloads our hand with value to continue pressuring our opponent after decimating their board. Obviously tripling up on this is most likely going to heavily swing the game in our favor.
Inscription of Insight
I caught myself tutoring for this more often then expected. It doesn’t do anything really well, but it creates card advantage, builds board presence, and bounces our opponent’s creatures. We can cast it with Fires of Invention for free once we got four lands and pay the kicker costs afterwards. While a kicked copy is usually enough to gain a massive tempo advantage in the mid game, getting three copies with only four lands on the battlefield feels like cheating. In this case, the tokens it creates will get bigger with every copy, creating a very powerful board state while bouncing up to six of our opponent’s creatures.
Thought Distortion
Don’t cut this card from the sideboard! I know it seems boring because it doesn’t profit from being copied. But a lot of time, control opponents will let you resolve the Fae of Wishes tutor in the hopes of countering the tutored spell. Well jokes on them, this is when we get the uncounterable nightmare of any control player. They were holing up counters, planeswalkers, removal, discard, every noncreature card will be exiled from their hand and graveyard. While this doesn’t necessarily win the game, most control opponents just scoop it up after seeing us tutor for the Distortion.
Torment of Hailfire
Alright alright, I’ll kill the opponent… Don’t be too rude and just blow up everything the opponent has every turn until they scoop in frustration (or do that, it’s kinda fun). Torment of Hailfire is our way to finish the game for good. Be careful to cast it by actually paying mana costs since X will be 0 if you play it with Fires of Invention. For this, we need a World Tree to get black mana. So far this has never been a problem since we already dug deep into our deck before we bust out the Torment.
Wrap Up
What a deck! About two and a half years ago, it made me produce my fist piece of Magic content ever, starting the Brewer’s Kitchen and creating the Brewer avatar with the artwork of Fires of Invention. When Explorer became a thing on Arena, making Fires legal again, I knew I had to revisit the deck. The Channel package turned out as the perfect addition to give the Yeetmachine the upgrade to push it back into one of my favorite decks to play on Arena. Is it powerful? Well if it does what it does, it’s completely broken. Some well-placed removal, discard and counterspells will slow it down a lot though. It is still super explosive and will clutch out some games in dramatic fashion. If you have the cards or the wildcards, give it a try. I for one will probably never get enough of tripling up of huge spells.
If you have questions or ideas for this or any other deck, you can reach me on Twitter @Brewers_Kitchen or at brewerskitchen@mtggoldfish.com.
