Spot on the Build #1 - Mighty vegan Burgers!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Many people out in the internets seem to like the picture-plus-text tutorials/showcases, probably because you can look at them comfortably on your phone while on the bus/metro/etc. so after a discussion with my girlfriend and a little survey on reddit.com/r/feedthebeast, I decided to add another series to my blog called "Spot on the Build".
What I have in mind with this series is to provide little text- and picture-based tutorials of the builds I do in my YouTube-Series, so if you want to see it in action before building it, you can also go to my YouTube-Channel or look up the episodes on my blog.

Luckily my current "FTB Infinity"-Series (which is also my first Minecraft YouTube-Series) isn't that far in that there are a ton of builds to catch up to.

So without further ado let me get started with the first major build of my current playthrough:

 

Introduction

The best thing about the build in my opinion is that it is self-sustaining, which means it will get all ressources it's going to need to run from itself. Some call that a "set it and forget it"-build.. Basically the idea behind this is: You want to have a renewable way to produce mana and/or power while being as efficient as possible.

NOTE: If at some point you can't follow my instructions (which is perfectly reasonable... even I can't do that all the time) there's always the possibility to look up the part in the episodes where I built the system:

1. Farm + Toast
2. Burger Assembly + RF
3. Burger Assembly (2)
4. Gourmaryllis'
5. Soybeans
6. Good Overview

Before I go into too much detail, let me give you a quick overview of what is going to happen in my build...

Green = Farm; Yellow = Flour-Bread-Toast; Grey = Soybeans-Milk-Tofu; Blue = Mana; Red = Burgerassembly

What a view! So let's cook this thing up, shall we?

The Farm (Green)

Let's start with the farm part and what you're going to need for it:

• 120 Crop Sticks (from Agricraft)
• 90 Soybean-Seeds
• 30 (Wheat-)Seeds (If you're wondering about the ratio between Wheat and Soybeans... I will explain that in the "Burger-Assembly"-Section)
• 1 Agricarnation
• 1 Mana Pool
• 1 Harvester
• 1 Copper Upgrade (MFR)
• 1 Chest
• 1 Void Fluid Pipe (Buildcraft)

Now in my playthrough (picture) I kind of derped with the size of the farm (I'm also running a treefarm with the same harvester), but if you want to be as efficient as possible and only care about your burgers, I recommend you to make the farm 11x11 (=121 blocks). Since the Agricarnation has a range of 5 blocks planting it in the middle of the field will make it so it can reach each and every plant of said farm. You then simply plant the Agricarnation in the middle with the Manapool on top set up the crops with the plants in them, plop down the harvester on one side and give it the Range Upgrade so it can cover the whole area. Then don't forget to put down the chest so it can output the harvested items and the Void Fluid Pipe to keep it clear of Sludge.

Then that chest will then output to two little processing units: 1) Toaster-Unit and 2) Presser-Unit.

The Toaster (Yellow)

Ingredients:

• 5 Item Transfer Nodes (ExtraUtil)
• some Transfer Pipes (ExtraUtil)
• 2 Barrels (JABBA)
• 2 Chests
• 1 Crafting Table (Vanilla !!)
• 1 World-Interaction Upgrade (ExtraUtil)
• 1 Item-Filter (ExtraUtil)
• 2 Furnaces
• 1 Exoflame
• 1 Mana Pool
• FMP Covers of some sort

The "Toaster" will turn plain old Wheat into Bread into Toast, but with a twist. Instead of using the vanilla way of getting Bread (which is crafting three Wheat into Bread in a Crafting Table) I turn one Wheat into one Flour which I can then smelt into one Bread. This means at the expense of some fuel, I get a 1:1 conversion instead of 3:1.

Wheat into Flour

After this comes the furnace setup which is fueled by an Exoflame sitting behind the two furnaces. What I am doing here is using the Autocrafting Mechanic from Extra Utilities. It uses the direction of the Transfer Node to look behind the Crafting Table for a crafting pattern. In this case it will see a pattern where you insert one Wheat into the middle slot of a Crafting Table - this crafting step yields Flour so it will output Flour to the Chest attached.

Flour into Toast

Oh and by the way, I recommend using a Wrench/Crescent Hammer on the one Transferpipe between the two furnaces until it is not connecting to them anymore (it gets a little white) just to make sure things don't get derpy.

Moving on...

The Presser (Grey)

Ingredients (per Layer; 2 Layers recommended at least):

• 7 Pressers
• 7 Item Transfer Nodes
• some Transfer Pipes
• some Itemducts (Thermal Dynamics)
• 1 Reinforced Servo (or Signalum/Enderium)
• 2 Chests
• 1 Barrel
• FMP Covers of some sort

Pressing the Soybeans into Tofu and Milk is probably the biggest (/smallest?!) bottleneck of the build. The pressers (from Pam's Harvestcraft) can't be upgraded, there's only the one version of them and they're a little picky with their In- and Outputs.

The key-component here is the Reinforced Servo since it allows you to pull one Item at a time in round-robin-mode (don't forget to set Redstone Control to "Ignore"!). This means that of every three Soybeans, two will get processed into Firm Tofu and one will get processed into Soymilk. The rest is pretty basic "piping" as shown in the picture: Seperate the Transferpipes with Covers and run the Soymilk-Output in the Barrel that will be used to store it.
Additional layers can be added by simply connecting them to the Itemducts on top and to the output Chest below.

 The Burger-Assembly (Red)

Ingredients:

• 5 Cyclic Assemblers + Blue Prints
• 5 Item Transfer Nodes
• 1 Liquid Transfer Node
• 1 World Interaction Upgrade
• some Transfer Pipes
• 3 Rationing-Pipes
• 1 Reinforced Servo
• some Itemducts
• 2 Pots
• 1 Skillet
• 1 Hardened Energy Cell
• some Hardened Fluxducts

Oh darn, what a list. And on top of that, I'm not entirely sure if I can correctly explain how to set this up. But let's see what I can come up with...

We're going to start with the Hardened Energy Cell (preferrably a full one so you can immediately see if you did it right), our power supplier, since all the Cyclic Assemblers will require a small amount of RF. Right next to it, as shown in the picture above, you put down your first Cyclic Assembler - he will produce Salt. What he needs for that are two things: A Pot and some Water. The Pot's easy enough, and the Water you pump directly into it from below using a Transfer Node (Liquids) + World Interaction Upgrade (click the picture on the right to enlarge it). Lastly set the recipe and you should be producing Salt.

Next up you'll need to do a bit of cableing, because the Burger-Aseemblers and the one making Cheese will want some RF from that Energy Cell aswell (the Salt one you can dirrectly feed from the Cell). Connect to the bottom of the Cell and put down your Assemblers on top of the Fluxducts. You should also run the power line over to your Harvester (connect from the bottom)!

To make Cheese you'll need your freshly produced Salt, so connect the Cheese-Assembler with the Salt-Assembler using a Transfer Node (Items) some normal Transfer Pipes and a Rationing Pipe at the end (The picture above shows it pretty good). The Rationing Pipe at the end is very important because else, the Assembler would fill up with Salt, leaving no room for Soymilk to go in which would stop the cheese production. While you're at it you can connect your Soymilk Barrel using the same Transfer Pipe line (as seen in the picture aswell). Lastly put in your second Pot and set the recipe... you should now get Cheese.

Now hook up the Toast Chest/Barrel to your Cyclic Assembler right next to the Energy Cell and the Cheese Assembler to the one next it. Seperate them with Covers and insert a Rationing Pipe. (click the picture to the left to enlarge it). Again the Rationing Pipes are needed so the machines don't  get clogged with one item.

I recommend disconnecting the Salt with the Cheese-Assembler before you do that (like I did in the picture) to prevent any items from going into machines they shouldn't. Once you've made the two connections, put Covers on top and reconnect the Salt.

Now that we've got the raw materials we can make our Burgers. I take it that you know how to set the recipes and the in- and outputs so I won't explain it here. All there's left to explain is that you need to connect your Firm Tofu Chest/Barrel with the left and right Assembler (leave out the middle one) and set your Reinforced Servo to pull out one Item at a time in round-robin-mode. If Bacon Cheeseburgers start appearing in your output Chest you did everything right!

"Eating" the Burgers (Blue)

Ingredients:

• 1 Item Transfer Node
• 4 Item Dropper (OpenBlocks)
• 4 Hyper-Rationing-Pipes
• some Transfer Pipes
• 4 Gourmaryllis
• 4 normal Mana Spreaders
• 1 Elven Mana Spreader
• 1 Potency Lens
• 2 Mana Pools
• some Red Alloy Wire
• 1 Comparator (ProjectRed)
• 1 Timer (ProjectRed)

Our setup is now capable of producing (vegan, kehehe) Bacon Cheeseburgers... except it will need Mana and RF to do it, which we don't have at the moment. So, as the "Grand Finale" (french pronounciation please), let's feed the Burgers to our Gourmaryllises!

For better understanding on how the feeding works, I (again) made a little sketch:

The real thing then looks like this:

The output Chest of your little Burger-Assembly should be connected to the Hyper-Rationing-Pipes which in return will make sure, that there's always exactly one Burger in the Droppers.

Solving the Power Problem

Your setup should be basically running by now, there's one little problem: You don't have any RF generation yet...

Ingredients:

• 1 Comparator
• 1 Timer
• 1 Redstone Mana Spreader
• 1 Mana Pool
• 7 Redstone Dust

Pretty straight forward, pretty easy. The Comparator will output a signal according to the power situation of the Energy Cell which will turn of the timer whenever the Cell reaches a certain "fullness". Once it drops below that value, the timer - set to 0.65 seconds - will start ticking again, so the Mana Spreader starts shooting Mana into the Fluxfield again, which will then output RF into the Energy Cell... and the loop starts again.

Conclusion

If you set up everything according to my explanations AND if I explained everything correctly there shouldn't be much left to do. Hook up the Mana Pool that's distributing mana to your Exoflame and Agricarnation to the Main one on top of the Gourmaryllises, aswell as the one that outputs mana into the Fluxfield to generate RF. The amount of mana you get will - by far- suffice to even run some other small Mana/RF related setups like a Runic Altar, Mana Alchemy or some basic Thermal Expansion Machines.

I hope you liked my very first "Spot on the Build" and didn't get confused by my instructions. Until next time...

See y'all 'round!

FTB Infinity #13 - Small things

FTB Infinity #12 - Blaze Pow(d)er

FTB Infinity #11 - More Resources!

Spoils of Victory #6: Omnath, Locus of Rage

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Spoiler season is here again, and with it my "Spoils of Victory" are back. So let's dive right into the two spoilers I brand "most important" to our format so far:

The most exciting card of the spoilers is Omnath, simply because we get yet another possible card to play as a commander! He seems ok as an alternative for Horde of Notions as a elementals general, even though you obviously loose out on cards like Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw. To be honest with you, the more I look at him though, the more he reminds me of an upgraded Version of Titania. I mean, ok, he costs two mana more, but he also gives you access to another color while the tokens are a little bit better, you don't have to play ways to get rid of lands which means you can just play ramp and fatties aswell and as a bonus you get to burn things when your tokens and/or Omnath die. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me! So don't be surprised if all those Titania players suddenly go upgrade their decks with red spells and more ramp instead of the wierd "Sacrifice a land..." cards.

Hedron Archive on the other hand might not look so splashy but will certainly have a very big impact on the format. Cards like Ur-Golem's Eye or Mind Stone aren't exactly uncommon and having access the inbred on steroids of the two will certainly make many players very very,... very happy! Especially mono-white&-red decks will be pretty glad to get another good source of card draw. Not to speak of all the artifact based decks that will recur the Archive over and over... *cough* Daretti *cough*. And to be honest, I can even see more decks playing it than just the ones that played mana rocks before, just because the card is too good to be true... Earlygame? No problem, I have this awesome ramp card that will let me skip straight to 6 or 7 mana. Lategame? Meh, I'm running out of gas here. If only I had something to do with all my mana.... wait let me just cash in my Archive and see what I can come up with.

As with all the more generic cards, "building around" Hedron Archive isn't really a thing, especially since it fits into so many existing decks as I already mentioned. That's why I will focus on the possibilites of Omnath 2.0.

Being completely honest, the deck I have in mind is basically a hybrid of existing decks with a touch of something new. There's a) my Broborygmos Enraged deck (List over in "My EDH") which sports a commander with similar casting cost while also revolving around lands and b) the already mentioned Titania shells. Those two combined - with a little Elemental theme thrown into the mix to make further use of Omnath's second ability - are what should be a fun and versatile deck. So let's have a look:

The Elementals that care about lands

Now this is probably the most interessting category of cards to play since it will make use of both parts...

I especially love Fertilid here. He's just good in every portion of the game. Early on he ramps you pretty well into Omnath while later he could be 4GGG (2G to play plus two 1G activations) for two 5/5 tokens plus a Lightning Bolt. Seven mana for 10 power plus 3 points of burn I will take every day of the week. Titania of course is still good in the 99 making a very good second source of tokens. The thought of Omnath in play and then playing Titania returning a fetchland... Value! Value everywhere! 

Since the deck will sport a fair number of ramp, just because Omnath will turn the normally odd Rampant Growths on turn 8 into 1G 5/5s, some other elemental cards would like to have a spot in the deck...

All those cards fit so well into the deck it's unbelievable. Zendikar's Roil give you yet another possibility to create tokens out of ramp and Omnath will make sure that removing any one of them hurts. And if the remove Omnath you can just recast him as mana shouldn't be an issue. Avenger has always been an All-Star in green ramp heavy decks and this deck is no exception. And the Guildmage that seems so innocent with is converted manacost of 2 will make sure all those tokens and other creatures will get some damage through while also providing a good manasink for lategame scenarios where you might be able to pull out some unexpected wins with him providing 12+ power out of nowhere. 

The Landfall/Ramp part

Having a commander that requires a lot of mana while also wanting to trigger landfall makes things very easy. Both basically require the same category of cards:

And while in normal ramp strategies these cards get bad after a while, Omnath always transforms them into creatures and very big ones at that. Essentially the dream is to successfully resolve a Boundless Realms with Omnath in play but I guess I'd take an Explosive Vegetation aswell... let's be "humble". 

So why not use all those ramp cards and play some additional landfall cards just to make things a bit more synergetic.

Sundial for some carddraw, the Expedition to be ready for your first set of tokens as soon as you cast Omnath and another Commander All-Star in Rampaging Baloths to create even more tokens. Now with all this pressure you'll manage to create there're only two things left to do before the decks runs like a well oiled machine...

The finishing touches

We have tons of mana, lots of ways to build a sizeable board and a minimum of dead draws. So far, so excellent! 

Now everything that's left to do is to add generic stuff that help finish the game, reload or give the deck more consistency... namely:

Tutors:

Cardraw:

and...

Finishing spells:

You might've noticed that the deck plays out mainly green. That's very true but playing only few red lands shouldn't be an issue due to the amount of fixing your ramp suite will provide. And having the option to "splash" for some red cards, be it for power or simple utility (e.g.:green has no good removal!), is just awesome. Just don't forget to search for some mountains and you should be fine. Other than that you can and should play more lands than normal (40+) so you can consistently hit every land drop - this will help to keep some ramp spells for after you played Omnath - because drawing lands isn't really that bad in any stage of the game anyway thanks to your commander.

Let's see how the rest of the season pans out, maybe we even get more stuff to play with in this deck. And if not (which is very unlikely if you ask me) it's not that big of an issue since we already have a huge arsenal of cards to choose from.

With this I'm off for today! I wish you an enjoyable spoiler season - getting such a good commander so early in the season definitely got my hopes up - and hope you'll come back for some more content on this blog...

See y'all 'round!

Brainstorming Commanders #7: Lord of Tresserhorn

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Isn't he a lovely fellow? Full hair, a taste in fashion like noone else,... so thrifty. Only 4 to play him, only 1 to regenerate. Oh, and nevermind about the drawback, it's hardly noticable. He simply seems like the kind of guy you'd want for a long-term relationship.

Jokes aside, I definitely can see him at the helm of a very potent Grixis deck regardless of the direction you take. Let's look through the options available:

Choosing your Archetype

Going with an aggressive route will most probably mean going Voltron(y). It's just there, ready to get built if you take a look at him. Simply giving him double strike will mean he deals 20 commander damage in one swing and finding a way to up his power by one shouldn't be an issue. But that's not all. Not only does he bring a solid body but he's also pretty good at protecting himself with a very cheap regeneration ability.

Then again, opting for a more controlly build can work just as fine, as - without any enhancements - he'll provide a solid clock once you've ground out the game enough. Especially the ability to live through your own sweepers makes him pretty appealing as the general for a control deck.

And as always you can do something in between and even though each category will likely be weaker than when you would've focused on it, giving the deck the option to switch gears as you see fit during the game could make up for that.

Enabling your Commander

Now of course, it's not all love and flowers. Casting Lord of Tresserhorn (LoT) will require some sort of setup, which shouldn't be a problem when you consider it in your deckbuilding process but it's still something not to overlook. So let's see what I can come up with:

So far, so uncreative. The most interessting interaction is probably Nether Traitor since if you decide to go for a voltrony approach he will be a very good "Plan B"-guy for carrying equipments etc. But don't be afraid here's the real value:

Again, the All-Star here is Baleful Strix, being a very good defensive creature, while having to ability to carry equipments aswell. And on top of that returning the Strix with e.g. a Driver of the Dead seems like good value, especially since to get to the graveyard it will either have traded for a creature or died to a removal of some sort.

 

Essentially the only thing I don't like about good ol' crawley is that he requires you to have a zombie subtheme. And while LoT himself is a Zombie, you'll sometimes want to rebuy your Gravecrawler BEFORE you cast your commander meaning you'll need another Zombie.

Don't get me wrong here, a Zombie subtheme is very likely a good choice for Lord of Tresserhorn but I just don't like the idea of giving up all the sweet synergies between Baleful Strix, Mogg Warmarshall, Nether Traitor, etc. - all for one additional good sacrifice target.

Building around the Enablers

Casting 10/4s for 4 is a nice activity every once in a while but sometimes you'll want to do other things. So why not use our existing creature base - optimized towards getting sacrificed for a greater good - and incorporate somewhat of a sacrifice/"when ~ dies"/"enters the battlefield" theme. The best thing is that you'll be able to tune this part of the deck to fit your archetype.

So for example for an aggressive Voltron deck you'll play cards like these:

Just straight to the face, nothing new here.
The control oriented deck on the other hand will opt for something like this:

Skullclamp is a card I'd play in either version. But since the aggressive version of the deck usually will need the creatures to play Lord of Tresserhorn so you can't always clamp them up (most of the good sacrifices have only one toughness) I figured it would be more suited here.

And then we have obvious allstar-type cards (just to mention a few):

Effects like Dictate of Erebos are very much wanted in either version since they'll either clear the board to let Lord of Tresserhorn get through or... well clear the board so you can take control and finish the game... which will include LoT getting through. Card draw is always welcome aswell and the Thoctar is a card I've come to love very dearly due to the ability to either chain gun the board or just beat face with a few counters.

Assembling the Rest of the Gameplan

Volron

Now for the voltrony approach you'll need something to beef up your commander while also making sure he get's through...

Nothing out of the ordinary here I think, besides maybe the Lashwrithe. The reason I would play it is that there's no reason you shouldn't play the old Urbog-Coffers-Map-package and with that in the deck Lashwrithe on its own can easily pump LoT to 21 power.

As I already mentioned having some form of damage doubling mechanic is pretty key in all voltron strategies...

Aggravated Assault may look a little odd since it costs a bunch of mana until it does something but it has two important features: 1) If your LoT has Lighting Greaves (Shroud) attached, you can still grant him an additional combat phase and 2) its CMC is 3... which is relevant because...

Tutoring for your equipment seems like a good idea, aswell as getting some back when it gets destroyed by using your nice sacrifice creatures. Oh and did I mention CMC = 3? Appart from being able to tutor for Warhammer, Sword of X & Y, Fireshrieker and Aggravated Assault you can get Grim Haruspex and several other sweet cards you might want to run in your deck like Dismember, Dissolve, Crosis's Charm etc. etc. so playing the CMC 3 transmute cards is an all around good idea.

Control

Now if you're more of a grinding player things are a little opposite...

While Damnation is definitely very good, I like Blasphemous Act and any other sweeper that doesn't have "They can't be regenerated" on it even more since LoT can regenerate through it and swing the next turn the board might still be empty. And again Attrition is just too good to pass up with the sacrifice theme. 

The deck will draw the game out pretty will I think so you might aswell plan for a long game:

A Black Market + Urbog-Coffers fueled Exsanguinate makes a really good way to finish games if you can't get through with creatures. 

Essentially building control is all about balancing removal to different card types, card draw and ways to win the game and less about the synergies so I feel a few ideas are enough since the real work would be the actual tweaking of the deck when you're building it.

The rest of the deck in both archetypes needs to be filled with general EDH stuff like Primordials, some removal, tutors, etc. which I won't cover here.

To be honest I'm pretty interessted in how a deck like I imagined it above would turn out, so maybe I'll build it some time in the future. Especially the Voltron version seems to have a high potential for syngery and cohesion.

For now, I hope you enjoyed this little brainstorming session and that I'll...

See y'all 'round!

FTB Infinity #10 - Factorization?!