Cloning Engine

Posted on September 9, 2014

In this experiment, we take advantage of new cloning technology to replicate an engine.

Clone is a pretty sweet, if unexciting card. Its versatility is its strength, and its weakness is its reliance on the existence of worthwhile creatures to copy. But being able to copy a creature from any player keeps it in the mix. Cards like Phantasmal Image, Dack's Duplicate, and Progenitor Mimic all provide various upsides from the standard Clone.

Recently, however, we’ve seen a lot of variance in terms of the power level of Clone variants. Innistrad’s Cackling Counterpart had flashback, was an instant, and only cost 3, but we could only copy our own creatures, and that’s a serious drawback. Gatecrash’s Stolen Identity was actually pretty reasonable, but at 6 mana, its upside isn’t as good as Progenitor Mimic’s, even if it let us copy artifacts. Fated Infatuation from Born of the Gods was another 3-mana instant, but again, we could only copy our own creatures.

However, Khans of Tarkir is bringing us something innocuous but quite powerful. Phyrexian Metamorph was a card that made a notable impact in its Standard format, as it could copy any player’s artifact or creature for only 3 mana and 2 life, and you didn’t even have to play blue to use it. That versatility was especially powerful in a format full of artifacts from Scars of Mirrodin block.

And now we have Clever Impersonator.

“Want to see my impression of a wizard?”

Well, actually, impressions are done of nonhuman objects and creatures. If you do an impression of a person, it’s actually an impersonation. So this new Clone’s ability to impersonate an artifact or enchantment is quite odd. Indeed, this card name would have been much better served on a card that could only copy creatures. To represent a Shapeshifter who can take the form of objects and formless zones of magic, I feel a different concept than an impersonator should have been used.

However, this column is to discuss neither card concepting nor word definitions. We’re discussing Clever Impersonator, which is pretty exciting. Unlike Phyrexian Metamorph, we’re required to spend 4 mana on it, and 2 of that must be blue. However, it has the same versatility of the Metamorph once we’ve cast it: It can become any creature or artifact. It even has the added upside of being able to copy enchantments or Planeswalkers.

We could copy an Archaeomancer. We could copy a Gilded Lotus. We could copy a Jace, the Living Guildpact.

And what if we could copy all of those things? Imagine we control a Clever Impersonator, a Gilded Lotus and a Jace, the Living Guildpact. We use Jace to bounce an opponent’s permanent, and we cast a kicked Rite of Replication, using the Lotus for 3 of the mana, so we only have to tap six lands.

Our target for the Rite was the Clever Impersonator, so we are able to copy five things. We make an Archaeomancer—to return the Rite—and four Gilded Lotuses. Now we can use three of the Lotuses to cast our next Rite and still have 3 mana available. From there, we can repeat until we have as many Archaeomancers and as much mana as we want.

And since we have Jace, the Living Guildpact, we can spend our infinite mana on continuing to cast Rite of Replication—as long as we copy an Archaeomancer each time—over and over, this time copying Jaces. Each time, we’ll have to put a previous Jace into our graveyard due to the Planeswalker uniqueness rule, but we’ll be able to use a new loyalty ability each time. We can bounce all of our opponents’ nonland permanents until they’re all gone and then use repeated +1s to find our win condition: Supreme Inquisitor.

Of course, there are plenty of options for win conditions at this point, such as an infinite Stroke of Genius at an opponent, or even Comet Storm due to Gilded Lotus’s ability to generate red mana, but Supreme Inquisitor is a fun alternative that lets us take advantage of all those Archaeomancer Impersonator tokens we’ll have made. Also consider Nameless One.

Cloning Engine ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

Planeswalkers (3)
3 Jace, the Living Guildpact

The astute among you will have noticed a distinct flaw in my plan. And that’s that I had us copying a Clever Impersonator with Rite of Replication. If the Clever Impersonator is impersonating something, the Rite will just give us five copies of that. For example, if we’d already copied a Archaeomancer with our Impersonator, casting Rite of Replication on it will just give us five more Archaeomancers. That doesn’t sound all bad, but it does mean we won’t have Gilded Lotuses with which to afford our Rite for repeated Replication.

That means we’ll need to cast the kicked Rite on an Impersonator that’s not impersonating. But a non-impersonating Impersonator is just a 0/0, so we have to include some cards that will let us control the Shapeshifter without copying anything with it as it enters the battlefield. This puts a distinct weakness in our plan, as we’ll have to resolve a Hall of Triumph (or Paragon of Gathering Mists, were we to run that instead) before we can even think about spending

on a 1/1.

The good news is that Jace gives us a little bit of leeway. If we want to cast Clever Impersonator early, we won’t necessarily have to wait for a second Impersonator since Jace’s -3 can let us pick up the Clone variant for no mana before we recast it as a vanilla.

A few more cards round out the deck. Divination and Fabricate serve as ways to find the cards we’re looking for, and they make fine options for early-game returns with Archaeomancer. Mulldrifter and Pestermite make good choices for copying with solid enters-the-battlefield triggers, and both can be used during the combo sequence to either put us in a great position or further worsen our opponents’ positions.

It dawns on me that the infinite-mana element of this combo is doable with Phyrexian Metamorph, though the ability to copy a Planeswalkers such as Jace gives the deck the ability to find the cards it’s looking for and shut opponents down all with one additional card.

If you love cloning, if you like the idea of an endless succession of dying Jaces, or if you just wish you had a vanguard of Archaeomancers, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com