Hey

So I'm building a deck that to play in 3+ people games and (hopefully in 1 on 1 as well but this isn't it's main purpose) and I think i've come across a strategy that will be at least interesting to play if not a potent killer. Here is the deck:

4 condescend
4 Drift of Phantasms
4 boomerang
4 fabricate
4 Mana leak
4 Wall of tears
3 Arcbound crusher
3 Dross Scorpion
3 nuisance Engine
3 ashnod's Altar


24 island


The point of the deck revolves around the 4 cards at the bottom. The
idea is to generate an infinite amount of pest artifact tokens using
dross scorpion and ashnods alter. These will make my crusher
ridiculously powerful. The problem is that since it's a 4 card combo
i've gotta hold my ground until i can pull it off. So i've packed the
deck with control cards and the two tutors drift of phantasms and
fabricate. What do you think? is there potential here? should i splash
black for disciple of the vault and more transmute, white for that one
leonin, or something else entirely? Any and all advice is welcome.

-thank you

Phil

The core of the combo looks good.  It is, in essence, a three-card combo.  Nuisance Engine produces tokens, and Dross Scorpion and Ashnod's Altar conert the newly spawned Pest into setting up the Engine for another go-round.  Three-card combos are fun, but they can be tricky to pull off.  Especially since the Big Three core of the combo don't win you the game.  Hence the Crusher-- you need some way to convert this endless stream of Pests into profit.  So it's in essence a four-card combo.  How do we make it work?

Well, the first method is with redundancy.  Say you're playing a "combo" deck of small flying creatures and Auras like Blanchwood Armor to put on them.  Well, if you have 12 creatures with flying or other evasion, you're almost guaranteed to have one when you draw that Armor, right?  This is the same concept.  Find a card that fulfills the same role as one of your combo pieces, and you can play both to increase your odds of getting an appropriate piece.  Nuisance Engine and Dross Scorpion don't have analogs that I know of, but you can achieve the same thing as Ashnod's Altar with Krark-Clan Ironworks.  And Arcbound Crusher isn't the only card that will trigger off of all these happenings, even if it is the only one that lets you name the deck, "The Crusher Engine".  As you mentioned, Disciple of the Vault in black or Leonin Elder in white will convert this into direct life loss for an opponent or life gain for you.  In green, Essence Warden will do the same thing as Leonin Elder, and Fecundity will draw you all the cards you need, allowing you to start going off before you draw an actual win condition and just draw your way to one. 

Good counterspells include Rune Snag, Vex, Assert Authority, Wizard Replica, Hinder, Soratami Savant, Remand, Negate, and Dismal Failure.  Once again, I'm leaving it to you to choose your favorite of that list, not to use all of them.  I like to provide my clients with options.  And since I can't be sure if you're relying on Condescend as a counterspell or a Scry engine, I decided to show you options for both.