When it was first printed, Paradox Engine was a super exciting card with all kinds of combo potential across a number of formats. The ability to use mana rocks to start chaining spells and netting mana is powerful in many formats, but nowhere is it as efficient or degenerate as Vintage. This week, Saturn put together an exciting take on this card for a Vintage Daily Event. Let’s take a look:

Paradox Engine ? Vintage | Saturn, 3-1 Vintage Daily Event

• Creatures (2)
• 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
• 1 Walking Ballista

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Tezzeret the Seeker

• Instants (10)
• 1 Ancestral Recall
• 4 Paradoxical Outcome
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Gitaxian Probe
• 1 Time Walk
• 1 Timetwister
• 1 Tinker

• Artifacts (37)
• 1 Black Lotus
• 1 Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1 Lotus Petal
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Memory Jar
• 1 Mox Emerald
• 1 Mox Jet
• 1 Mox Pearl
• 1 Mox Ruby
• 1 Mox Sapphire
• 1 Paradox Engine
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Time Vault
• 1 Urza's Blueprints
• 3 Sensei's Divining Top
• 3 Voltaic Key
• 4 Defense Grid
• 4 Grim Monolith
• 4 Helm of Awakening
• 4 Mox Opal

• Lands (9)
• 1 Tolarian Academy
• 4 Mishra's Workshop
• 4 Spire of Industry

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 By Force
• 1 Disenchant
• 2 Hope of Ghirapur
• 1 Hurkyl's Recall
• 3 Nature's Claim
• 1 Platinum Angel
• 2 Sapphire Medallion
• 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 2 Tormod's Crypt

Buy This Deck

One of the big advantages to this deck is that you get to play the full four copies of Defense Grid in the maindeck since you want a high density of artifacts for both Paradoxial Outcome and Mox Opal. Defense Grid, particularly in conjunction with Mishra's Workshop and a high density of fast mana, gives you an enormous advantage against opposing Blue decks since you force them to have two or more counterspells into order to interact favorably with your gameplan.

Once you get the Paradox Engine going, there’s a couple of awesome things you can do to start closing out the game. There’s the typical engine of Helm of Awakening and Sensei's Divining Top to allow you to cast infinite spells. That’s not huge on its own, since you don’t really get anywhere, but when you throw Paradox Engine into the mix, you can generate infinite mana with any number of mana rocks. With Urza's Blueprints, you’ve got infinite cards. Eventually you can end the game with either Walking Ballista or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Of course, there’s also always the option of just assembling the Time Vault plus Voltaic Key combo to net infinite turns.

This is a deck that’s in a strange place in the format. You’re vulnerable to an awful lot of the same things as other Mishra's Workshop and Paradoxical Outcome decks, which isn’t necessarily a great place to be, but you have an overwhelming advantage against Blue decks when they don’t have their hate cards and the ability to just race other combo decks like Dredge or Storm. If you’re expecting relatively little artifact hate and want to play a wacky combo deck with lots of interesting interactions, this certainly looks like a fun list to play.