General Tap/untap Archetype

[MusicalBen]

I cannot figure out whether this can work, whether it makes any sense.

I wanted to have a tap/untap archetype that would flow nicely into different strategies in all five colours.

In red you have the pingers such as Cunning Sparkmage as well as Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, Ghirapur Aether Grid and Quicksmith Rebel that extend the theme into artifacts. Combat Celebrant is also a card but it only untaps your creatures.

With green, however, it makes more sense to make it about lands, with creatures like Voyaging Satyr and Krosan Restorer allowing you to ramp with Heartbeat of Spring style strategies. Cacophodon provides a nice crossover with the red pingers and both play well with mini-wildfire style effects that benefit from big mana, with X-spells that distribute damage (Rolling Thunder) becoming possibly very powerful with the other enrage creatures.

White gives you some good creatures to exert but pushes you mostly in a sort of token generation strategy:



The Bell-Ringer plays nicely with all other colours. Also, white does get some artifact creature producers that can start to bridge the gap:



Black I don't really know. King Macar, the Gold-Cursed works if you care about lots of artifacts but, honestly, I haven't thought of extending the theme away from the other four colours in a very obvious way.

And then there is blue...



These three are the only ones which can untap all permanents that I care about. Vizier and Fatesticher seem good, Trickster Mage can work if you want to discard cards and Captain looks not so good. Blue also gives you all the Peregrine Drake style effects, which play nicely into green's strategy,

And then Aphetto Alchemist can do two out of three, but he doesn't look particularly good. And then there's all of the other incidental untappers, such as Merfolk Skyscout or Pestermite.

However, blue also gives you plenty of good reasons to tap your artifacts:



And then there are the multicoloured cards, mostly blue:



It seems to me that while certain groups of cards overlap perfectly, some clash in the most horrible way, precisely in the same colours where they should overlap. The worst part is that I can't even understand whether there is a problem or if I'm just seeing one where it doesn't exist... Does it make sense to put everything together like this?

Edit: Extra question: what are some good creatures with nice tap abilities?

 

[inscho]

Here is a fun list from my peasant experiment:



I really like the combo potential of blink with bell-ringer, to arms, and negotiations

Some cards that could be fun in a tap/untap subtheme:

+all the bouncelands and storage lands

Sorry for the card dump...I'm a big fan of activated abilities.

Options span a pretty wide range in power obviously

 

[safra]

okay so in my opinion the very very best tap/untap archetype enabler is actually a card we already love here:


It goes off most ludicrously with cards like:


with the convoke/free spells being the tool that really pushes your DJing and abilifying over the edge, and Urza / crystalline crawler / creature-lands acting as rituals/mana replenishers.

I definitely have ' tap/untap ' as a " themeless theme" in my cube, but in general I just amp up its density to better support Jeskai Ascendancy. YMMV but I think this is the way to go here.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

If you want to go really deep, there's the inspire mechanic, the merfolk from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block, and the untap symbol ('{ Q }' without spaces on Scryfall), e.g.



Wake Thrasher is a two-card tap/untap combo with...

 

[Brad]

Inspire pairs well with vehicles to tap them without having to attack.


Gets better with the possibility to multi return.


Has anyone ever repeatedly untapped this before? Could be useful, I dunno. Twin not as good here because it's ineffective to combine with things that are already tapping. Kiki can play as a psuedo untapper or a frequent combo piece.


Anthem-ish and untapper.

I think there's a decent bit to the idea of having a lot of cards with "T: effect" around.

 

[MusicalBen]

Thanks everyone, those are great suggestions and seeing all of the cards together made realise how wide you can go with this "theme" and how well it already plays into some other strategies I had planned. And I can't believe I had missed Intruder Alarm.

Stonybrook Schoolmaster is really cool, I hadn't thought about Lorwyn merfolk. It doesn't really "go infinite" in the white deck - with the convoke and tap flashback token generators -, but Emmara, Soul of the Accord does, which is nice.

To Arms! also made me realise that, in the blue-white spells matters deck, this guy - a personal favourite - is a thing:



With a bounceland To Arms! becomes Manamorphose. And seems to contribute to a general +1/+1 counters theme that the T: creatures favour naturally. That's something the Lowryn untappers also do, but it does seem like it's not the best thing you could be doing with your mana.



This guy seems interesting in the Red-White Go-Wide strategy, since you can use him to pay the convoke and flashback costs of the token generators and still untap to swing for more damage. And the Signaler could also be good in this deck while also allowing you to get out of the Intruder Alarm block without cards in hand. But I don't know, I have a hard time evaluating the Lorwyn untappers.