There is a peculiar species of enthusiasm that comes upon a man when he beholds one invention triumphant and cannot help but wonder whether its neglected cousin might yet be roused from its rest. Such was the singular fever that came upon Plum, our chronicler of curious constructions, when he turned his attention from the celebrated Fight Rigging toward its quieter, neglected relation, Collector’s Cage.
A Statement Before the Turkey
Plum begins with a candid admission: he has espied a package in Historic that no soul appears to have troubled themselves with, and he means to trouble himself with it directly. Fight Rigging, he notes, has of late been the subject of considerable noise across the eternal formats, Historic included, and was even examined in a prior article of his own composition.
Mono-Green decks employing this device have delighted in placing enormous threats upon the field of battle, yet Collector’s Cage, a fellow member of the Hideaway family, has sat forgotten in the shadows.
The Cage Remembered
When Outlaws of Thunder Junction first arrived, Collector’s Cage enjoyed a brief moment of notice, chiefly through the endeavours of AspiringSpike, before falling again into obscurity. But observing Mono-Green’s continued success with its own Hideaway trick set Plum to brooding: might there exist some other avenue by which one could bring forth Emrakul and her terrible Eldrazi companions? Could the same forceful principle be drawn from Collector’s Cage instead? This single question sent him down a most consuming path of thought.
Plum confesses he does not intend to present the settled method of building around the Cage, but rather to lay bare his own progression of ideas, one notion giving rise to the next, however confined that progression may have been. He asks only that the reader recall he is but one man, given to the confinement that besets all who labor alone at such invention.
Choosing the Object
The first question demanding an answer was plain: what, precisely, ought one to be attempting to bring forth? Plum confesses he simply took his objects from the Trudge Decks, reasoning that big, dumb Eldrazi made as fine a beginning as any.
The second question followed close upon the first: how might Collector’s Cage be enabled at small cost and with certainty? For this, Plum’s initial construction turned to a Mono-White Convoke shell, a design he recalled AspiringSpike employing in earlier efforts, and one for which Historic furnishes ample material.
Building the Convoke Shell
Cheap creatures such as Novice Inspector allow the board to fill with bodies on the first and second turns without emptying the purse of mana. Paired with larger arrivals like Loxodon and Knight-Errant, capable of arriving with certainty by the second or third turn, the shell seemed poised to satisfy the Cage’s demand of three creatures bearing differing powers without difficulty.
Plum found himself particularly taken with this notion at the outset, for it offered a proper Plan-A: a white creature Convoke strategy perfectly sound and useful on its own merits.
Yet with Collector’s Cage folded into the mix, there arrived also the happy accident of victory, a means of stealing wins that might otherwise have slipped away. It struck him as a rather neat arrangement indeed — send forth some modest creatures, commence the attack, and should that prove wanting, simply strike the adversary down with an Emrakul.
But should the reader, seated at home, be inclined to protest, “Mr. Plum, surely those Eldrazi have nothing to occupy them and shall merely sit idle in your hand?” — the answer, alas, is yes. They will.
A Melancholy Close
And so the tale does not end in triumph but in the honest acknowledgment of a weakness, the sort of trouble that gives the art of invention its dreadful charm. Plum’s progression continues beyond this point, each new attempt a small amendment upon the last, and those who wish to follow this path of thought to its end shall find him an agreeable, if occasionally wandering, guide.