{"ops":[{"insert":"~how do we break this guy~\n\nInitial outings: the deck won 2 out of 4 games, and very nearly won a third game. Win 1 had a 2nd IM via Impostor Syndrome, topdecked Dark Depths, and player removed both opps (3-player game) over 2 combats. Win 2 had Irma, IM, and multiple fliers, made 2 copies of an opp's Angel of Destiny, and gained enough life in combat to win on end step.\n\nThe easiest plan to play with IM is to copy the best thing on the board. The major drawback of this strategy is that, outside of Timmy mode in the boring lower brackets, most good cards people play are good because of ETBs, which IM can't make use of, in others' decks and in our own. This limits the availability of value categories we can build around because 3 mana for activating a continuous effect over a turn is a LOT. The value benchmark I tried to use was Divination (am I getting 2 cards worth from this activation?) and instead I settled for a floor benchmark of 1 card, some combat damage, and the value in the ability to do it again next turn lacking anything better to do.\n\nThe deck also needs mana in mono blue. The first place to go for that is artifacts and that made the deck just another Urza deck without Urza in it. Blue has been getting a lot of common and uncommon mana dorks lately, some of which tap for more than 1 mana but it can only be spent conditionally. One of those spend conditions is on artifacts or abilities of artifacts so I considered to cut those. The rest are great as they activate abilities, but the density of dorks was too low, so I added a few of the most powerful untappers and hope that with 12 total mana boosts above sol ring par we will have access to 2U in the mid to late game when that mana spend returns above benchmark.\n\nThis is also challenging to gauge because we can't goldfish vs. opponents, so this deck will be one that needs a lot of in-person testing to find the best and most fun decks to sit down against, and which stuff to look for to copy. Because of our inability to get value out of ETBs with IM that may relegate us to Bracket 2 decks (yuck) but I hope to fine tune the deck to be a strong Bracket 3. The deck was built to enable plenty of room for the strategy of copying opps' stuff.\n\nOpps will burn removal on IM before they learn. If you're holding up 2U, you can blank most type-targeted removal. Swords to Plowshares? Just copy a land, fizzles because of illegal target. I added some hexproof and indestructible lands in there to help him survive \"destroy/exile target permanent\" or aura removal. But I am thinking (with no reps in yet) that he will either have a chilling effect on players running out their good copy targets for him to copy with pseudohaste if he's already on the field, or the good copy target will draw the table's hate more than IM will. Assessment post-goldfishing: Smart opps will sandbag spot removal to deal with IM and look for their window to respond after one of your own offensive combat activations, so if you suspect this, it can be correct to bait them with combat and then just not activate IM offensively, in order to win the game of priority chicken. You can just as effectively direct suspected opp spot removal to the table's threat by targeting to copy it, and argue that your copy will go away at eot while the main threat stays. Less astute or experienced players will still learn when they burn removal on him, or even a board wipe, and you turn him into a land. There will almost always be a greater threat at the table poor/unsporting play (vendetta from past games or shame from being defeated by on-board interaction) seemed to be the biggest ire-drawing risk, IE an opp saying \"I know what he can do\" when they don't actually know what he can do they just want to reduce the mental load.\n\nPre-first outings goldfishing phase: I'm expecting the deck to require its own backup wincon so I tried to build a unique one. It's pretty cool that IM can copy planeswalkers, but if he has no loyalty counters on the resolution of his activation, he dies to state-based effects. So in order to make use of this at all we have 1 cards that can give him starting loyalty: Nesting Grounds (Tolaria West tutors for this). Now he can copy a Planeswalker to dodge removal, but also make use of a PW plus ability on your own turn. It's a shame that most of the PWs we can run are roughly useless for this deck and its theme, but in looking through the other pieces in the deck I got a decent idea for a wincon via The Enigma Jewel, which was already in there for its mana ability. I selected looting effects (draw and discard) over straight draw wherever I could, and we have natural choices to dump planeswalkers into our yard as an easy default decision (sometimes you will just want to resolve a planeswalker though). We have so much ability mana, including from The Enigma Jewel that pay its own craft cost (craft is a keyword activated ability) and our untappers, we can aim to have 4 planeswalkers in yard and craft with 4 of them. Notably Locus of Enlightenment (backside of EJ) grants *every* activated ability of cards used to craft it, so it gets multiple loyalty abilities "},{"attributes":{"strike":true},"insert":"and *no once-per-turn-limit on activations*"},{"insert":" (I read rule 306.5D which states loyalty abilities have to be activated on your turn, stack empty, and if no other loyalty abilities belonging to that permanent have been activated that turn) AND *LoE naturally doubles each activation* though sadly not the cost of adding loyalty counters. There may be some fine tuning still, but the planeswalkers I selected were primarily ones that had a +2 or better ability (Karn Liberated's +4 is the best here). "},{"attributes":{"strike":true},"insert":"You may not get enough loyalty from 3 plus activations to spike an ultimate the same turn you craft"},{"insert":", but LoE's doubling of your other untapper abilities and activated abilities should draw you toward a win. Basalt Monolith gives infinite mana with LoE out, Chromatic Orrery lets it be used as blue, and Faerie Mastermind will make your opps draw from empty libraries (ask for Trickbind or a split second kill spell and if nobody's running them you can shortcut) if you don't do it first and win with Jace Wielder. POST GOLDFISHING ASSESSMENT: nobody will expect you to spend 9 mana and craft with the EJ. What you end up getting out of it is not super gamebreaking because any mana abilities the EJ gets, which are the most useful things it can get, can't be copied. Pili-Pala and Leech Bonder are fine to add to it so you have access to multiple tap abilities that represent onboard tricks that are way too complicated for opps to assess. Most of those tricks will be untapping to access mana to activate IM more times than expected.\n\nAlternatively you can just drop Dark Depths t4, copy it with IM just like he was a Thespian's Stage, and swing with your 20/20.\n\nOther notable cards:\n\nLotus Field I never run in any deck, but it's excellent in here. I'll of course change my mind once it eats nonbasic land destruction, but it's great for the untappers. Lotus Vale is too risky to run and it doesn't have an etb to stifle.\n\nPropaganda I also really dislike, I think it's almost always a lazy brewer's inclusion, but we are super weak to combat. We can chump or possibly bounce Voltron, and we can threaten to block and trade with a clone, Propaganda gives us more breathing room against go wide. It's the first card I will cut if I find a better strategy, but I have a feeling this is a deck it will stay in.\n\nGlen Elendra Archmage is a challenging police piece to run, but I'm thinking the -1/-1 counter will often get removed to use again from Irma, Iron Man, or Lyla. The last 2 are egregiously boring cards but they do the job. \n\nNev's Disk I am really excited about. It's old alpha magic that always gets cut but we might get some gotchas with it. I want someone to Teferi's Protection or similar in response, then change IM into another Nev's Disk and go overtop with a second activation. Most good opps will be wise to these onboard tricks but I'm trying to present a mental load that they will miss. There's a chance that it underperforms as it seems to do generally in EDH, but worth a try in here.\n\nLike Mirage Mirror, once IM's ability resolves once, he's the thing he copied and you can't use his copy ability again that turn, so you have to stack activations first, and then add to the stack after the newest one resolves. Mirage Mirror mostly only did this with infinite mana anyway, and IM's mana requirements to do this are even bigger, so it's unlikely you'll be muddling through some non-deterministic on-stack mana untapping loop to find your way to infinite mana or drawing your deck without it naturally hitting a wall. But once we do go infinite mana, your Mirage Mirror playbook works.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"strike":true},"insert":"Malcolm is unlikely to ever cast a bomb for free but he's a great looter on curve."},{"insert":" He was cut.\n\nIrma is good if you want to keep a copy of someone else's bomb for the whole go around the table. You just make IM that thing first in precombat main, then use her trigger to make her into a copy of the copy-but-named-IM. \n\nI am incredibly happy to be running Attunement in commander. If your hand has Planeswalkers, dump them and draw into The Enigma Jewel. Even better, dodge removal by turning IM into Attunement and then activating him (or not).\n\nAt infinite mana, you can present Capsize plus any onboard attacker as a soft lock win.\n\nIf you do rack up a lot of counters on IM (loyalty or +1/+1), copying Nardole can earn you a ritual of blue mana.\n\n"},{"attributes":{"strike":true},"insert":"Trinket Mage tutors for Enigma Jewel but Retrofitter Foundry is fine if you have the Jewel already. This whole package was cut."},{"insert":" There's enough draw that we don't care about tutors.\n\nRemoved a lot of planeswalkers in v07 and onward because of 306.5D making the Enigma Jewel wincon underpowered from what it needed to be. The combo is still there but it has been augmented with more artifacts and related dorks to empower an infinite mana situation with Ioreth and two of Nykthos, flipped Jewel making mana, Orrery, or an IM copy of the above to go off. Best shot is to ult Mordenkainen, get infinite mana plus Dream Halls, play, Jace Wielder and Prosperity so everyone dies to decking at the same time you win. This will need some animate artifact/land abilities to be added to the deck, in order to work, as Ioreth needs 2 legendary creatures to function.\n\nMirage Mirror was also removed in favor of Torpor Orb which is an attempt to bring good ETB card players down to our level, as well as be better on curve. IM doesn't need a replacement in Mirage Mirror, he should not be targeted often.\n\nSome less synergistic flex slots or worst-in-category cards were cut in v15 for:\n\nUntap via Pili-Pala and Leech Bonder, as these cards up the utility for a crafted Enigma Jewel (even though that can't go infinite).\n\nMarvin, Murderous Mimic is suddenly infinite mana if you have him and one of the unassuming abilities-only 2 mana dorks on board, then resolve a Pili-Pala. \n\nv20 cuts:\n\nQuantum Riddler (not really ever turned on as we have a ton of card draw) --> Agatha's Soul Cauldron, which removes the U for activating IM which is sometimes in short supply, and which also supports more p1p1 counters, graveyard hate, and infinite combos with our own untappers AND other people's stuff\n\nGlasspool Mimic (nonbo with our legendary creatures much of the time) --> Elrond, Moon-Reader, which can often get a card during opps' turns plus late-game blink ability might be held up to rebuy a Contagion Engine etb or untap some blockers.\n\nv22 cuts: Island for Hall of Echoes (free inclusion of commander effect backup, if only it could go under Enigma Jewel!); Mechan Navigator for Arni, Humble Scribe\n"}]}