[mcd] clones

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

i like clones. i like them a lot. they interact hilariously with bombs, have a nice level of variance based on what's on the battlefield, enable mild degeneracy, and, best of all, they're playable blue creatures!

currently i'm running 5 / 405 of these effects. phantasmal image, phyrexian metamorph, spitting image, kiki-jiki, the mimeoplasm. heroes all. what kind of ratio do you guys like?

i've tried mirrorweave, rite of replication, cackling counterpart, evil twin, vesuvan shapeshifter and found them all underwhelming. counterpart is my favorite of these.

i'd like to try progenitor mimic and sakashima's student, has anyone tested these?

i've never gone with clone, vesuvan doppelganger, sakashima the impostor, splinter twin, stolen identity, have these cards got their champions too?

[B4K4157]

• Phantasmal Image: Always strong, but not overpowered. Great for the Pod deck
  
• Phyrexian Metamorph: Everything I want out of a clone. Cheap, Flexible, Goes in almost any deck, Not overpowered
• Spitting Image: I always felt this card should be better than it was. It's stock goes up if you run life from the loam, but I think Progenitor Mimic might be a cooler card for the same general purpose, as spitting image didn't get retraced too often.
• Kiki-Jiki: I suppose he is a clone isn't he :P The only strikes I count against our heroine is the triple red cost (avoidable) and the potential for infinite combos (which my playgroup doesn't enjoy). If your on the fence, look at the ammount of instant speed removal in your cube vs the amount of sorcery speed. The more instants, the easier it is to keep kiki-jiki in check.
  
• Mimeoplasm: Interesting. Personally I don't run any 3 color cards (Just preference) but it seems like it could be sweet. The two things that come to mind are: 1) how often did you not have 2 targets (ish) and 2) is it worth being a 3 color card? (IE is it that much more awesome than body double?)
• Mirrorweave: This one is an interesting one, because a crafty designer could hide it away in the white section doing it's best overrun impersonation. I remember there being some odd interaction with manlands (specifically mutavault) from it's time in standard, but I can't remember what it did. Goes great with tokens, FWIW
• Rite of Replication: Always disappointed me. It got kicked once in its almost 2 year stint in my cube. I don't really support the Big BIG ramp deck (Wake, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, Eldrazi etc), so that may have been the reason why.
  
• Cackling Counterpart: I tried it for a little while, but we kept being stuck on the "target creature you control" part of the card, so it eventually came out.
• Evil Twin: Clone + Terminate, albeit a little slow. I've been on the lookout for a UB win conditiony card that isn't either aging poorly (psychatog) or brutally unfair (Nemesis of Reason), and Oona never really scratched that itch. Maybe it's time to give this a go.
• Sakashima's student: SHGDFASHGDFASH I love this card. Ninjitsu combines very well with ETB creatures, and (since he's a clone) very well with saboteur triggers. My favorite story (not mine) is player A, at one life, swung with a birds of paradise, ninja'd in Sakashima's student copying a flipped ludvik's test subject for the game.

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

quickly:

i think having an infinite combo or two is fine. if you made a kiki and a resto or a conscripts, great job -- those are all high picks, and it adds another psychological element to longer games. somehow most of the infinite combos in my cube involve eternal witness. witness / galepowder mage / time warp was one. witness / evac is a classic.

mimeoplasm is a clear include for me, but for most people i don't think it would make the cut. the three-color cost and graveyard-based conditions are only worth it in a cube with tons of fixing and a large graveyard theme.

spitting image is pretty bonkers, even at cmc 6 it's a high pick in my very fast cube. i wanna try the new guy, but he's harder to cast and not an eventide card.

i gotta buy a sakashima's student.

ub wincon: i suggest havengul lich

[Dom Harvey]

<3 <3 MIRRORWEAVE <3 <3

There's some interesting tension with Mirrorweave in both gameplay and design: you need bodies to make it most effective, which means running more army-in-a-can cards, but none of those cards by themselves are things you'd want to copy with Mirrorweave. It's also less effective in our Cubes than it might be in Cubes that exemplify power-maximization, as we have fewer cards like Hero of Bladehold or w/e that make juicy targets for it; but Cubes like that are less likely to have room for Mirrorweave unless they're large, at which point the Cube is diluted enough that such targets are harder to come by.

Despite all of that though, the card leads to some awesome stories; it's impossible to feel bad about losing to Mirrorweave. Various applications:

- copy something with 0 printed toughness (Phantom Centaur, Mikaeus), or some automatic sacrifice clause (Hellspark Elemental, Hell's Thunder) and kill everything

- copy something with deathtouch and watch the bloodbath (Baleful Strix, Nighthawk, Acidic Slime)

- copy an undying/persist/LTB/dies trigger creature in response to a sweeper (favourites include Geralf's Messenger, Blood Artist, Perilous Myr, Rotlung Reanimator, Yavimaya Elder, Diregraf Captain, Mitotic Slime, Thragtusk, Wurmcoil Engine, Massacre Wurm)

- copy any tribal lord/battle cry creature/similar (highlights include Hellrider, Sublime Archangel (!!), Hero of Bladehold (!!))

- get large and in charge (any dumb animal, preferably a Titan)

[Rob Dennis]

I'm all in on the new 4UG clone + followed footsteps guy, hope I'm not the only one