Wow! Are you serious?

Have you ever seen a spoiler and it just hits you hard? That is going to be a thing. That is major injection.

This card . . . wow . . . 

Look at Mechanized Production:

Isn’t that a great card? I mean, come on, alternate winning conditions are all of the rage, and this one is extremely strong. Why?

Note that this card has a lot of interesting synergies.

Nowhere do you see the non-creature language here. That means you can run synergies that work with creatures to enhance the strength of Mechanized Production. It does a couple of things really nicely, and frankly, it’s a lot easier to build around than Epic Struggle, which needed 20 creatures to win. This requires no setup, play it on a Sol Ring, and 8 turns later you win unless your foes answered it. Plus, unlike other alternate winning conditions, this one will help you now.

Imagine this card without the win-condition. You would still see it get played here and there, right? I mean, it’s like an artifact version of Followed Footsteps. Only the Footsteps would enchant any creature, and this just an artifact you control (although this is also 1 mana cheaper to cast as well, so there’s that going for it). Imagine just simply playing Darksteel Ingot on turn three, and then this on turn four on the Ingot. Even if someone stops this a few turns before you win, you still have some indestructible Ingots out that accelerated your mana. Multiple Solemn Simulacrums? Multiple Armillary Spheres or Expedition Maps? Multiple Seat of the Synod? Even something minor, like Ichor Wellspring suddenly looks downright nasty with this.

And what if you have cards that will push a table around, like Mimic Vat or Mind's Eye? You are going to smash some stuff quickly and powerfully. Right?

So even if the alternate win condition ultimately is stopped the card is still a strong card.

You know what else you are missing?

Yup, that’s right! Nowhere does the card say you need to have 8 copies of the enchanted card. So if you enchanted Ivory Tower, you could win with 8 Scuttlemutts instead. That’s pretty interesting as well!

Now, given its synergy with artifacts and artifact creatures , where do I see some serious additional synergy?

Honorable Mention - _____ aka “Blankman”

If you play with silver-bordered cards, thenBlankman is a great route to hoe. Just one colorless mana and you can copy any other names.

10. Clues and Other Mass Artifact Token Makers — Confirm Suspicions, Tireless Tracker, or Servos and Such.

This is the place a lot of people will start, because both are Standard ready. Check out #3 below for an instant kill from an older card that works faster, more reliably, and instantly. But a Standard combo deck that either puts a bunch of Servos or a bunch of Clues onto the battlefield in one go is something that could be really interesting. And a Standard deck around this is extremely compelling to me. I kind of want to build it just to see how it goes.

9. Sliversmith and Metallic Sliver

While most creature tokens just have the name of their creature type, a few are different. Sliversmith makes a token that’s named Metallic Sliver. That means you can get a number of Metallic Slivers by using its ability. Run that with Metallic Sliver, and you have basically 8 copies of Metallic Sliver in your deck. If you add in four copies of #4 below you can get 12 copies, and then #2 can get you some of those copies quickly into your hand. Unleash the Metallic Sliver combo fun times at your next kitchen table battle!

8. Saheeli's Artistry. Stolen Identity

More Tokens for the Win! Take the Artistry. You can target an artifact creature twice, and make two copies for the one spell. If it’s your major target for duplication to get to 8 copies for wining, then you speed up your eight turn clock by two turns by playing an Artistry. And Stolen Identity yields one immediately, with the promise of more tokens each time you smash with the ciphered creature. And you can copy with other effects, like Mirrorworks.

7. Copy Effects like Clone, Copy Artifact, Sculpting Steel, Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator and Many More!

Copy effects are great in Magic. Ever since the first set gave us Vesuvan Doppelganger, Copy Artifact, and Clone, they were heavily used. People harnessed their power to respond to stuff like bigger creatures, or to duplicate the best creature they had out. A Clone is situationally better than a Mahamoti Djinn most of the time. So running some of these cards will be fine, especially at a table with multiple players giving you multiple targets. And when you have the opportunity, you can turn them on your Mechanized artifact and move quickly to the end game. All done!

6. Strionic Resonator

At first, this may seem like an obvious card. Of course you can copy the triggered ability of Mechanized Production on your upkeep for 2 mana and tapping the Resonator. Get two copies of the enchanted artifact. Yay you! But there is another subtle power here as well that you might miss. Strionic Resonator combos with itself. Here let me show you:

Step 1 — Enchant the Resonator with the Mechanized Production

Step 2 — Upkeep #1, put the Mechanized Triggered Ability on the stack and copy it with the Resonator. Make a copy of the Resonator, copy it, to have two Resonators. (You cannot use the Resonator copy after it was made to copy the trigger than made it, even if the second half the ability has not finished, you cannot do things during resolution of an effect.)

Step 3 — Upkeep #2, put the Mechanized Triggered Ability on the stack and copy it twice to make three Total Resonators. Now these 6 copies are on the battlefield as the final trigger resolves. If you have just two more copies from anywhere else, like #7 above with Sculpting Steel, or #8 with Saheeli's Artistry, or just own two more copies in play, then you will win with 8 Resonators just to turns later.

That’s a pretty solid card, right?

5. Mycosynth Lattice

Everything is an Artifact! This has a lot of sweet combos to bring out! You can spiral up something powerful! Ever hear of non-artifact creatures? Oh yes, they are artifacts too. So you could cycle Decree of Justice for a bunch of Soldiers, and then drop this and win with 8 artifacts of the same name. (Or do that in another order. Play this and the Production, and then in your upkeep cycle the Decree in response to win. You can’t even counter the cycling effect with most abilities.) Have you ever heard of enchantments? Followed Footsteps on an artifact creatures gives you double triggers! Ever heard of lands? How about just playing the Lattice after controlling 8 Islands? There are a ton of ways to break the Lattice all over the place.

4. Spy Kit

Change the Names Folks! This is another soon-to-be-classic card to combo. Spy Kit! The goal here is to equip any creature, it doesn’t even have to be an artifact creature itself. It will still have all of the names, like Stuffy Doll or Silver Myr. Meanwhile your Mechanized Production is doing its thing and getting you closer and closer to actuallywinning. With a full slate of Spy Kits in your deck, you can increase the value of your creatures considerably.

3. Myr Incubator

Here’s your one hit kill, as mentioned by me above. Your deck is clearly going to be running some artifacts already, right? Right! So just run the Incubator as well. Play it, and then pop it ideally when the trigger for the Mechanized Production is on the stack in your next upkeep. Normally, you cannot respond to the upkeep triggers of other win-cons, because they have to have certain requirements to fire off, but not this one. This one fires off to make you a copy, and then if you have 8 or more you when the game. Put it on the stack, and use the 6 mana to play the Incubator to sacrifice it and search that library for any 8 artifacts, create 8 Myrs, and then . . . win!!!

2.Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Honorable Mention to Pack Hunt)

Do you know what Mechanized Production needs? It needs a way to guarantee that you can maximize the copies of a certain card you are spawning. Outside of Commander, you can run up to four of any artifact in your deck. Let’s say you are running Nihil Spellbomb as a four-of in your deck. Great! How can you ensure that you get the full set of Nihil Spellbombs, out? Say hello to Mishra! Cast that Spellbomb, and then search your library for another one and put it into your hand. Then play that Spellbomb and get the 3rd and then 4th. You chain the artifacts together to get the full set out. By having four of an artifact that quickly, you only need four more to win the game. That’s impressive, right? Mishra just breaks this in half. But not nearly as fast as . . . 

1. Myr Servitor

“Good night folks! Thanks for playing!” I mean that’s pretty much what people will be saying when you Servitor this thing for the win. One of the ways to stop the Production from combo-ing out is to kill your copied card. But you can get all of those dead Servitor’s back just by running one. Also note that you can stack these triggers, so if you have enough Servitors to win (or one fewer than the combo to win if you have the Production on a Servitor), you can stack the Production first, then the Servitor, resolve the Servitor, bring then all back, and then win. Sounds great! And there are some powerful other synergies here. Mishra is a powerhouse, making sure you get the full slate of four Servitors for maximum breakage. I’d play all but one, saving that last one in case of a sweeping removal spell.

And there we are folks! Mechanized Production is a powerful way to bring some havoc to your next game night. It’s good on its own as an artifact maker, and then it adds in the winning condition as well. That makes it really unique among winning conditions like Darksteel Reactor, Epic Struggle, Mortal Combat, Chance Encounter, Helix Pinnacle, the simple scry of Hedron Alignment, Near-Death Experience or Barren Glory. Very few, like Maze's End and Mayael's Aria, have real value on the battlefield.

So enjoy this one folks! Because it’s going to be a hot night when you’ve got all eight of your whatsits all ready to break faces at the kitchen table!