Tips & Tricks

Reusable contingencies & conversions you splice into a line.

Trainer Sideboard Checklists Mana Ref Tips

Sac outlet EXILED → rebuild it with Scapeshift + MirrorpoolNEW

If your free sac outlet (Zuran Orb) is exiled (milled is the other trick, below), make a sac outlet on the fly:

Cast Scapeshift.
Hold priority and activate Mirrorpool targeting Scapeshift (copy it).
Let the Scapeshift copy resolve: it sacrifices whatever lands you want, then searches up that many. (The copy IS your sac outlet.)
Repeat as needed.

Replaces "sac all lands to Zuran" with "sac lands to a Scapeshift copy," so the Analyst loop still runs without Zuran. Good vs exile-based hate.

Zuran Orb in the graveyard (milled)

Needs Shifting Woodland + Analyst in GY + delirium + ≥12 mana. Activate Woodland → Analyst, hold priority, activate Woodland → Zuran Orb; let the Zuran copy resolve and sac all other lands; then let it become Analyst and activate to return everything. Repeat if the returned lands beat the next cycle's cost.

Urza's Cave conversions

Cave turns spare mana into the missing land:

a bounceland — mana (with multiple Amulets) and/or bounce TWest
Shifting Woodland — start the Analyst loop
Urza's Saga — enchantment for delirium, then sac it
a utility land — Otawara / Boseiju

Bounceland trigger management

Treat the bounce as a delayed resource:

Bounce TWest after tapping it (to re-transmute).
Hold a bounce on the stack while you make mana / resolve other tutors.
Use multiple Amulet untaps to tap a bounceland several times before its bounce resolves.

Always track whether a held bounce has resolved — many lines depend on returning TWest only after enough mana is made.

Safekeeper as a sac outlet

Repeatable land-sac, but once its ability gives a creature shroud that creature can't be targeted again. Hold priority to sac multiple lands at one target; keep a spare creature (Arboreal Grazer, a Saga Construct, a Titan, Dryad Arbor) to target after Safekeeper shrouds itself. When Woodland is copying Analyst, Safekeeper can target Woodland-as-Analyst.

Cephalid Coliseum = controlled discard

Tap + threshold to draw 3 / discard 3; ignore the draws and discard the lands you need in the graveyard for Aftermath Analyst.