Immovable Rod

[anjinsan]

I want to make some jank using Immovable Rod.

This funky little artifact lets you Venture when it becomes untapped so you can probably make a combo with it, or at the least you can use Clock of Omens so that you can tap and untap it a lot pretty easily. Cool. More importantly, though, it's the only (straightforward) way to make any permanent lose all its abilities! This means we can "turn off" big global effects. But what?

The Rod will untap on our turn so we probably want stuff that we have "on" during our turn, which we then turn "off" before passing. Stuff that triggers in the upkeep will still happen, but stuff that affects untaps can be turned off if we conversely use the Rod on it in someone else's end step - so sadly the most impactful thing seems to be stax things like Hokori, Dust Drinker. Cards like Winter Orb and Static Orb actually already have this built-in, just by tapping.

We could also have stuff that's "off" during out turn and "on" otherwise, but we need to untap the Rod (or blink it, I guess) at the end of our turn, so we're using something like Manifold Key, Unwinding Clock, Voltaic Construct Voltaic Servant, whatever. There are lots of ways to do this, but it's an extra combo piece. Unwinding Clock specifically is tricky because whilst it's really good, it's not optional so we can't then use the Rod the other way.

Right now the best things I have are "group hug" cards that can be mad asymmetrical, like Font of Mythos or Braids, Conjurer Adept, but I'm struggling to find much that's impactful enough to warrant the second card and four mana per turn. I guess Crescendo of War could be fun? That, or horrible nasty stax cards like Hokori or Dimensional Breach (which is admittedly pretty cool - I didn't even know that existed! - but I doubt opponents would agree...  ).

Am I missing anything? Can anyone come up with something cool to (ab)use with this card?

[CleanBelwas]

Sweet idea, sounds like fun.

My first thought was Myr Welder and basalt monolith for the untap combo. Add in a Zirda to net infinite mana, plus pretty good at cost reduction anyway outside of combos.

These are all permanents that trigger on each upkeep:

https://scryfall.com/search?q=is%3Apermanent+o%3A%22at+the+beginning+of+each+player%27s+upkeep%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name

There's some cool stuff in there at varying levels of mean. I personally like Havoc Festival. Wild Evocation could be fun too if you're the only one getting upside.

Looking forward to see what you come up with. Seems like an interesting idea.

[anjinsan]

Oh, Zirda is a nice idea, just in general. The four mana cost is quite a lot; Font of Mythos is tempting but that's still basically four mana/turn to draw two, which is OK but you need this two-card combo to do it... it's cute but not very good.

I think you want only good things in upkeeps. The play pattern would be to enjoy their benefit, then turn the effect off before the end of your turn, so stuff like Havoc Festival doesn't fit so well. You can turn stuff off before your turn but then you need an untapper to turn it back on.

Wild Evocation did spring to mind, as did Omen Machine (though the latter you probably want to turn off in your upkeep so that you can still draw, which has the same problem as above). It's quite expensive though and still not really buying you that much - I'd rather just Braids, I think. Gate to the Aether is another.

The triggers are pretty easy to search for, but there's also stuff like Crescendo of War or Silent Arbiter which just has a big global effect. Concordant Crossroads, but one-sided versions of that already exist for cheaper.

I think you probably also want blue or at least black regardless for some tutoring power to find the thing in the first place!