Marvin, Murderous Mimic Deck Tech
Murderous Marvin's Mechanical Machinations
The title and inspiration for this decklist is an arcade and museum near me that I grew up loving: Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum.
Marvelous Marvin's is a key remnant of my childhood: a majestic emporium of archaic arcade games and an ode to the beauty and simplicity of the days before console and handheld games. A place where you can play first-person shooters and get made fun of by foul-mouthed elementary schoolers that aren't hiding behind a screen.
When I saw that there was an alliterative commander built around collecting machines and putting them together, it seemed like a perfect fit!
Core Synergy
Marvin, Murderous Mimic reads like a combo commander: he gains all activated abilities of creatures that don't share a name with him. Finding the right pieces and putting them out together kind of feels like finding a cheat code in an old-school video game.
Most of the combos involve either tapping and untapping or +1/+1 counters, and being colorless means that we have lots of artifacts. As a result, Arcbound Ravager shenanigans go a long way towards facilitating wins, and Marvin can use the sacrificing ability.
One of the cute synergies in the deck is using Karn, Silver Golem to animate noncreature artifacts giving Marvin their abilities. Doing something like animating a mana rock with a card that untaps itself out can make infinite mana for any of a number of mana sinks.
Drillworks Mole is an interesting piece that adds an intriguing twist to Lieutenant decks. It taps to put a counter on itself and a commander, so it could grow itself and Marvin. Where things get nutty, however, is that Marvin gets the ability, too, so it grows itself twice with the same ability!
Staff of Domination is a potent combo-enabler and a common card to include in decks that have extra mana to sink. Since this is a deck that can produce infinite mana, it's a solid card. Where it goes beyond that, however, is when it's animated, either by Karn or by Toymaker. Toymaker happens to be a member of my favorite creature type, Spellshaper, turning any card in hand into an animated artifact!
Win Conditions
The two synergies we have going have some convergence, but can pay off in slightly different ways. If we lean into the counters aspect, Walking Ballista is a brilliant mana sink and source of repeatable damage. If we lean into tapping and untapping, Ulamog's Dreadsire can create a giant Eldrazi army.
The Millennium Calendar might sound like it's something out of Yu-Gi-Oh lore, but it's a reference to the Mayan calendar which foretold the end of great ages (not the end of days in general, as people often thought). When it is dropped on the table, however, it foretells the end of days for opponents. When we get infinity, it's just like when Thanos does: we become inevitable.
Draw
Card advantage in a deck like this isn't necessarily simply about drawing the right cards or drawing in high volume. We need ways to get certain pieces back, as Marvin cares about what's out on the battlefield. Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler can help us get back the pieces we need when we need them.
Mystic Forge is a really cute card in a colorless deck, as lands are colorless and so are all cards in our library by definition of the color identity rule, unless someone pulls some cheeky shenanigans with Painter's Servant or something. It can even go infinite with Sensei's Divining Top putting itself on top of the library, if we have enough mana!
Ramp
Pili-Pala is one of the key untapping cards in the deck, enabling us to untap our commander and create infinite mana combinations. It does wonders with cards like Palladium Myr, which is like a Sol Ring we don't have to go through hoops to animate. When both are out, our commander collects both of their abilities; it's worth noting that Marvin doesn't specify non-mana, as many similar cards are known to do.
Metalworker is our most explosive card, as most of the cards in our library are artifacts. We can also keep our hand stocked with artifacts by returning them from grave to hand with Scrap Trawler engines.
Heartstone reduces the mana that's required for activating abilities, which is helpful for both the creatures themselves and the abilities Marvin gains. Be careful, though: Marvin gains the ability as written, not as adjusted. Otherwise, it would seem like it'd be able to double up on the cost reduction.
While this isn't a graveyard-based deck, Ashnod's Altar and Krark-Clan Ironworks enable both infinite mana shenanigans and graveyard-to-hand loops. Cost-reducers, like Cloud Key, make it so Sol Ring and Wayfarer's Bauble can be rebought for free. While there are questions over whether every deck needs Sol Ring, this one can use it in its combos!
The general plan is to set up combinations of synergistic abilities that involve tapping and untapping or adding or removing counters to turn Marvin into a machine that goes infinite. Once we have that setup, we can make infinite mana, draw infinite cards, deal infinite damage, or make infinite Eldrazi. Because the pieces can be picked apart, we have ways to recover key parts from the grave or draw into replacements.
