Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor Deck Tech

Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor | Art by Fariba Khamseh

Hello, my fellow cephalopodal inventors! I'm Brian, your usual host of Brew For Your Buck (BFYB), web-slinging into another Marvel's Spider-Man deck tech! I promise, one day we'll get back to full BFYB articles, but we must keep up with the perpetual hype! Last time, I was lucky enough to feature the OG Spider-Man, but this time we're taking a more sinister approach:

I'm not sure about the comics, but I know Lady Oc (as she'll be referred to for most of the article) is a bad gal in one of the animated Spider-Verse movies, which are fantastic if you haven't seen them.

As a Magic card, Lady Oc is pretty awesome, especially as a commander. First of all, she's one mana, so playing her early and recasting her is nice and easy. Her ability to add ingenuity counters does count our draw step, so we're getting at least one counter per turn cycle, with the potential for up to eight (there's the flavor!) if we're drawing two cards on each player's turn. Speaking of ingenuity counters, we have only one other card in the game that uses them:

There are a ton of similarities between these two commanders; namely, using the ingenuity counters to cheat in artifacts. The key difference to note is that Lady Oc casts the artifact spell rather than just putting the artifact onto the battlefield. Since we're casting the spell, it can be interacted with just like any other spell. It can be countered and copied, it contributes to a storm count, etc. We can also cheat timing restrictions with Lady Oc's ability (just like Jhoira), allowing us to cast artifacts at instant speed with her ability. There's a lot of inspiration (pun intended) to draw from Jhoira's page, so don't be surprised to see a lot of overlap!

Based on all this, I see the cards that we'll want to add breaking down into a few groups: ways to draw extra cards (especially on opposing turns), ways to untap Lady Oc to use her ability multiple times per turn cycle, and the artifacts to cheat in with her ability.

Key Cards for Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor

Drawing One or Two Cards

Let's kick things off with "draw two" enablers. The most convenient effects draw us cards for casting artifacts. There are three such cards for us: Vedalken Archmage, Riddlesmith, and the new Uthros Research Craft. Each of these will draw us a card when we activate Lady Oc, adding an ingenuity counter and refilling our hand with more stuff to play. Forensic Gadgeteer will instead make us a Clue, which isn't as good immediately but is useful to "store up" card draws for later. All four will trigger off of any other artifacts we cast normally, so they work great as engine pieces and card velocity options for the deck.

Either mode of Mirrodin Besieged works for Lady Oc. The Mirran mode gives us a Myr while we're casting all of our artifacts, while the Phyrexian mode helps stack ingenuity counters on our turns and gives us straight-up player removal, too. Padeem, Consul of Innovation not only gives our artifacts hexproof but will likely draw us a card on upkeep since our deck is built around cheating large artifacts into play. I also have to mention Unctus, Grand Metatect. He'll make any of our blue creatures help Lady Oc gain counters, but he can also be an insane combo piece; just look at all the possibilities!

For higher-powered brackets, Rhystic Study is a game changer for a reason, and until time of writing I thought Mystic Remora was too. We'll add Remora since it's not one and it really helps to draw cards on opposing turns. Lady Oc actually helps out the fish by leaving our other mana available to pay for the cumulative upkeep cost. I'll leave out Rhystic Study from the final list for the sake of bracket flexibility, but don't forget we can add it later to power up the deck.

Untapping

With ingenuity counters covered, let's shift our focus to untap effects that will allow us to use Lady Oc multiple times per turn cycle. My brain first went to Corridor Monitor. Monitor is great, but the best untapper we have access to by far is Mirran Spy. This little guy will untap Lady Oc every time we activate her ability, giving us basically infinite activations as long as we can continue to cast artifacts.

Moving on, Sting, the Glinting Dagger untaps its wielder each combat. Even if our opponents aren't going to attack, they still technically go to their combat phase, so this will ensure our villainous commander untaps on every turn. We can also activate her on our first main phase and then let her untap during our combat phase as well. Thousand-Year Elixir and Magewright's Stone are two more artifacts that can untap Lady Oc, with the former even giving her pseudo-haste to use her ability.

We're also going to throw in Aphetto Alchemist since it lets us draw our whole deck in conjunction with Unctus and is a fine untapper on its own. Crab Umbra gives Lady Oc some protection and allows for multiple untaps if you have the mana, just like the combo-tacular Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura. Iroeth and Vizier of Tumbling Sands are pretty straightforward, with Vizier's cycling ability enabling the addition of an ingenuity counter and an untap. These two also untap any permanent, so they operate like mana dorks, too. Minamo, School at Water's Edge puts an untap effect into our mana base, so in it goes.

Lastly for this category are one-time effects that can untap Lady Oc but might have some additional utility. As a creature, Lady Oc is fragile. A one-mana 0/2 can get killed by a lot of different things, and if you get the ball rolling early with the ingenuity counters, she's going to become a lightning rod for removal. Shore Up and Magic Damper both protect and untap Lady Oc, useful as opponents want to throw removal your way. While Cerulean Wisps doesn't offer any protection, it does untap Lady Oc and add an ingenuity counter.

Artifacts

Up until this point, only four of the cards I mentioned are artifacts. This is an artifact deck at heart, so we have thousands of options to include to pad the artifact count. Firstly, the haymakers. Portal to Phyrexia, Darksteel Forge, and Cityscape Leveler can be absolutely devastating when cast ahead of schedule, but that's just scratching the surface. Wondrous Crucible is one of the favorite cards printed in the last couple of years, a weird recursion engine that allows for more free spell shenanigans. Chimil, the Inner Sun does something similar, though it's protecting your spells rather than your permanents. I didn't know Arcane Proxy existed before this article, but it's an easy addition to rebuy a key spell from the graveyard.

Shifting gears a bit, we have artifacts that like more artifacts. Simulacrum Synthesizer will generate an army for us in short order, while Encroaching Mycosynth allows us to use Lady Oc's ability on any nonland permanent card in our hand. It also opens up a lot more options for our artifact tutors, like Fabricate and Scour for Scrap, and is absolutely hilarious with our one board wipe, Desynchronization. Finally, Cyberdrive Awakener is a pretty excellent finisher once we've got a massive board of artifacts, animating the noncreatures and giving everything flying.

Don't forget, a lot of our ramp in mono- is going to be artifact-based as well, and there is nothing wrong cheating in an Arcane Signet or Sapphire Medallion in the early game to get things moving along.

There's a ton of additional cards to include for different types of artifact synergies, so much that I can't cover them all. Don't worry, I'll touch on a few more once we get to gameplay and how we can tailor the list to the playstyle that you enjoy. This is a feature rather than a bug of Lady Octopus, there are just simply so many options! Perhaps a Spiderverse of options?

Sweet Tech

For our last category, I wanted to include a few cards that I consider "sweet tech" for this deck. They may not seem super powerful, but they have some cool synergy. First up is Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam. Drafna can bounce an artifact we control in order to re-cast it with Lady Oc's ability, buying back the powerful triggers. Additionally, he can copy an artifact spell for three mana. If we aren't spending any mana to cast Cityscape Leveler, paying for another one is pretty sweet! Mirrorworks does a similar impression and of course can be cheated in with Lady Oc just as easily as our other artifacts.

Energy Tap is a pretty powerful ritual, tapping a big creature that we cheated in for a ton of colorless mana. In all likelihood, we could probably untap the big thing too given our density of those effects. In fact, any card which has an effect tied to the mana value of a permanent or artifact we control is pretty valuable, since we can get them on the battlefield so easily. See cards like One with the Machine, Traverse Eternity, or Dispersal Shield.

Gameplay

Lady Oc's generic gameplay is pretty straightforward: cast her early, collect ingenuity counters, cast big things for free. The way I see it, our card choices are going to cause the gameplay to become a bit more nuanced. I'll go over the two main paths that I see for Lady Oc pilots to pursue.

Control

In a more controlling version of the deck, we're leveraging the fact that Lady Oc cheats both mana and timing restrictions with her ability. This way, we can leave our "normal mana" up to protect her and slowly grind out the game to a win. We can take a draw-go mindset and leave up Counterspells, instant-speed card draw, and protection spells while we accumulate ingenuity counters. Good additions would be Arcane Denial, Thirst for Knowledge, and similar, with Torrential Gearhulk to rebuy them. We could include artifacts like God-Pharaoh's Statue and Lodestone Golem to slow down the game. Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant will double up artifacts that we cast and keep our opponents' spells at bay.

Combo

Of course, we can also play this as a combo deck. We have a few combo pieces in the list already, but we can add more cards like Aetherflux Reservoir, Intruder Alarm, and Ancestral Statue. Together with Lady Oc, these three create a loop to blast your opponents out of the game with the Reservoir. With Hullbreaker Horror, we can loop our own permanents or bounce opposing permanents, with Hammerhead Tyrant as a backup for the latter. Or you can bounce stuff like Knight Paladin to just kill the table.

The combo route is definitely attractive since the deck already plans to draw a bunch of cards to find its combo pieces. You could also throw in some more tutors to find the pieces as well, like Whir of Invention or any of the mages: Trinket Mage, Tribute Mage, Trophy Mage, Transit Mage, and Treasure Mage.

Wrap Up and Mini-BFYB

Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor looks like an extremely fun and flexible commander. Artifact decks have so many directions to go within the archetype, even with a mono-color commander. I think we could build a bunch of decks with very different gameplans, or even have different packages to swap in and out depending on your playgroup's power level or desired playstyle for that day.

As is tradition with my deck techs, I like to do a mini Brew For Your Buck to give some budget options for the expensive cards we added to the final list.

• Simulacrum Synthesizer ($39.77) --> Efficient Construction ($0.35)
• Cityscape Leveler ($10.96) --> Meteor Golem ($0.11)
• Pemmin's Aura ($11.61) --> Tolarian Kraken ($0.16)
• Freed from the Real ($11.26) --> Kelpie Guide ($0.28)

I'd love to hear your feedback about the final list below. What direction would you take it? Did I miss any untappers or powerful artifacts? Would you lean more controlling or focus on assembling a combo? Is there an another approach I'm missing? Drop me a comment below to let me know!

In the meantime, happy brewing, and be sure to use your technological expertise to fight the costumed teenager in your city.

Lady Octopus Commander Decklist

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