Time Sieve Annuity

I'm trying to think of a deck that can use Time Sieve properly, without already having won the game. I mean, in Type 2, in order to have a lot of artifact token creatures you would most likely need a Sharding Sphinx. In order to have a perpetual Time Sieve, you need Sharding Sphinx to make 5 tokens a turn. In order for that to happen, you have to deal combat damage with 5 artifact creatures every turn, which probably means the opponent is dead already, or they will die the turn after Time Sieve is activated, in which case Time Sieve is just a different "take another turn after this" "SORCERY" rather than a "turn taking ENGINE", which is something which we are trying to abuse, rather than just use once.



So in that case, Time Sieve is a win condition, but I don't think that's what we're trying to do. So instead of thinking about Time Sieveing every turn by sacrificing 5 new artifacts every turn, we have to think of a deck where we can have a reliable Annuity. I think that's what it's called.

What I mean is, is if you put $100 in the bank and you get 5% interest per year, and then at the end of each year you take out $5.00, then you can do this infinite times. But what if you only get 3% interest? Then you can do it a lot of times, but not infinite, but since I don't think you plan to live infinite years, this might be a good solution for you. 1% interest? Same thing. 0% interest? Well, now you're living on a clock, because you'll run out of money in a finite amount of time.

So, what I'm saying is that you don't plan to take infinite turns in a row. In order to win the game, you probably don't need infinite turns; maybe four additional turns is enough. Maybe two additional turns is enough. So you build your deck around that.

Of course, in this case the $5.00 is the number of artifacts you sacrifice, and the % interest is related to the number of new artifacts you make each turn. The $100 is a bit wrong, since you don't control 100 artifacts, but I digress. So instead of making 5 new artifacts and sacrificing 5 artifacts each turn, maybe you can make 4 new artifacts, sacrificing those and 1 of your own, or making 3 new artifacts and sacrifcing 2 of your own. So if you control 6 artifacts and you can make 3 new ones every turn, you can still take 3 extra turns. And that's useful enough. Although on your last turn you probably have nothing left in play...

So what makes artifacts? Well, you can read the Time Sieve article, but basically, in Type 2, you have Sharding Sphinx and Court Homunculus. Both of those should make it into the deck. If possible, we try to get Sharding Sphinx out as soon as possible, so that requires Etherium Sculptor or Master Transmuter, or Tezzeret the Seeker or maybe even Sharuun the Hegemon. Also, it will help if we draw a lot of cards.

Of course, when we find cards to help Time Sieve, we should also find cards that help those cards, or combo well with them; and then we find cards to help these new cards. So, as an additional win condition for when Time Sieve is activated, I turn to Sludge Strider.

I'll call it the "Drain 10+" win condition. Basically, when you activate Time Sieve, 5 of your artifacts leave play, so you can spend 5 mana on Sludge Strider and Drain your opponent for 5 life. And then you get an extra turn! On that extra turn, if you need to, and if you can, you can sacrifice another 5 artifacts and drain for another 5. Thus this could be a win condition too.

So, in a weird way, this Time Sieve deck is more of a Sludge Strider / Master Transmuter / Esperzoa deck; Time Sieve is a nice bonus at the end. I suppose you could take out the Esperzoa to concentrate more on getting Sharding Sphinx and Time Sieve into play, but that extra life drain or Kaleidostone "draw a card" synergy is pretty hard to pass up.