Gain Control of All Permanents | Brewer's Kitchen
Well, hello there! Brewer’s Kitchen here and today we’re gaining control of all permanents… If our opponents don’t scoop the game before that. Turns out the way to get there is creating infinite copies of all permanents as well so let’s hope for some very scoop-tolerant opponents for this one!
The Gameplan
Ok, let’s be real here, to steal every permanent we have to do some intensive setup and deck building. Even though “Gain control of all permanents” is technically possible rules text, so far it has not made it on a single Magic card. And to be honest, besides being locked behind a very high loyalty ultimate of a planeswalker, I don’t think we’ll every see this effect on a card.
Stealing only one permanent is relatively easy though. Agent of Treachery is one of my favorite cards and found one of his best friends in new card Doppelgang.
For only “very large number” of mana, we can create enough copies of the Agent to steal every permanent on the battlefield. As you can imagine, the hard part about this one is gonna be the mana. Luckily, the Timeless format grants us access to fetch lands. Combined with the various creatures that create mana with every land entering the battlefield, we can generate absurd amounts of mana. Lotus Cobra and Tireless Provisioner will just add mana, while Nissa, Resurgent Animist and Omnath, Locus of Creation will even draw us some cards along the way.
Growth Spiral and Explore serve as efficient ramp without much card disadvantage.
This engine can lead to some crazy turns that get exponentially more ridiculous once we begin casting Doppelgang. As fun as the “win condition” of copying a bunch of Agents with the Gang might sound, the real juice is in copying lands and mana generators. Let’s say we only have a Lotus Cobra and cast Doppelgang for X=2 targeting the Cobra and a Land. This will result in two new Cobras and two land entering the battlefield, triggering all three Cobras for 6 mana and leaving us with 2 untapped lands. If this is all we had on the battlefield at this time, we just made back the eight mana we used to cast the Doppelgang.
As soon as we have anything else going, it gets out of hand real quick. A Doppelgang for X=3 usually results in absurd mana and as soon as we copy an Omnath, Locus of Creation with it, we might not even need the Agent to finish the game. That’s right, even though Omnath copies will die to the legend rule, all of them see all the lands entering the battlefield, triggering all their abilities. That means, once we copy Omnath and a land 4 times, we just straight up kill the opponent with its 4-Damage ability.
I’m sorry to admit it, but while none of my opponents sat through the value party long enough to steal everything, a lot of games ended in an army of Omnaths and Lands hitting the board.
That being said, we still got the Agent in the deck as an alternative Win con, just don’t create too many copies or you will draw from an empty library in the end step. To find it, we have Archdruid's Charm, which does triple duty in this deck as a creature tutor, ramp spell, and removal.
Most of the time we tutor for Timeless Witness though. Once we throw this in the Doppelgang mix, we’ll use the copies to return the Doppelgang back to our hand to create an infinite loop and an exponentially growing mana pool. Sadly, that’s the moment where everybody scoops, but technically, this creates infinite copies of every permanent.
Wrap up
Since we had to play the Timeless format for this one, I was worried that we would get slaughtered by efficient combos, interaction and aggro. While this was certainly the case for some games, once we get a chance the untap with one of our mana creatures, we can do some messed up stuff as well. I wouldn’t advice crafting this deck to grind ranked mode, but it’s definitely one of those dacks that I’ll always keep in my collection because it is just a blast to play with.
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.
