Discover in terms of its core mechanics, is hardly the first of its kind in MTG. But whenever using similar effects, there is always a high risk of not getting the most optimal card for the situation at hand. Quite different from completely whiffing, since you still get more or less the intended effect at least, just not the best. This is normal, of course, since the targets tend to vary greatly if the deck is not specifically built to optimize the effect’s results.

Take the somewhat recent-ish Bramble Familiar/Invasion of Alara deck for example. It makes sure that all you ever get for the battle card is the familiar by using cards with mana values higher than the effect allows. And to prevent hand bricking, a good portion of these cards have alternative effects that still allow you to use them at costs that should have been eligible for the battle card.

^{As exciting as his ultimate is... it's not the topic of this deck brew, sorry.}

Now, as anyone might have thought already, Quintorius Kand isn’t exactly the type of card you try to build on solely for its Discover loyalty ability. But… being a permanent of formidable stats and interesting passive ability, one MTG Arena content creator took it upon himself to apply the strategy we mentioned earlier to abuse this supposedly middle-line ability to its utter maximum.

A good thing to note about Discover is that it essentially casts the eligible card from exile. This means that cards like Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival can efficiently use their trigger abilities for it. Even better if that particular card has other gimmicks within exile territory, such as adventure cards, allowing you to double the triggers even further.

Of course, this effect also includes our venerable elephant planeswalker. Anything freely cast by its Discover loyalty ability will trigger its passive, draining each opponent for 2. Repeat this enough times, and you won’t even need to attack, dealing a lethal 20 eventually.

For the featured deck, the strategy chosen to achieve this is to copy Quintorius Kand. Putting another fresh Quintorius on the battlefield allows the owner to use its Discover loyalty ability once again, potentially creating a loop. A continuous cycle that hopefully drains to lethal in a single turn.

^{It also gets an additional loyalty counter! Unfortunately, that’s not relevant for the combo…}

The primary card chosen for this role is Spark Double. Conveniently, it is a four-mana creature that enters the battlefield as a copy of a creature or planeswalker you control. This card is perfect for the objective of the deck, because the copy created isn’t considered legendary. Therefore, multiple Quintorius Kand pieces can activate their trigger effects together for just a single exiled card cast, speeding up the drain lethal process even further.

Now, the deck isn’t going to fill itself with just Spark Doubles, and we significantly diminish the consistency of this combo once we add other pieces that would not directly support the deck’s main objective. As such, this deck adds other cloning cards as alternatives:

^{The bummer part is that even if Mythos simply creates a token, it is still considered legendary depending on the target}

Both of these fulfill around 75% of Spark Double’s original objective. However, both cards leave the most important part of NOT being legendary. This means that if you hit these two for the Discover loyalty ability, you have to instead follow the legend rule and choose the card that remains (since we don't have Spark Double copies yet). Be, very, very careful to select the newer copy, so that you can still continue the combo, albeit just hitting one by one (since there’s only one copy of a still-legendary Quintorius for this situation).

If a non-legendary Spark Double copy happens to be available already, you simply select that copy to be copied, so that multiple copies can exist on the battlefield. You then once again multiply the passive trigger effects as originally planned.

^{Keep choosing the new copy until Spark Double appears, then you can start copying the copies}

Don’t worry if Spark Double didn’t come up early. So long as you successfully activated the card's Discover loyalty ability without interruptions (and you don’t accidentally choose the copy that already used its ability), the deck will still cycle targets continuously until Spark Double itself is found, and then you can start copying the copies, hopefully until a quick lethal.

As for its other supporting pieces, we also have a slew of high mana-value cards in this deck to bypass Quintorius Kand's Discover loyalty ability, while still providing low mana support for your early-game survival:

^{No, don’t even bother reading the main effects}

Specifically, Magma Opus and Creative Outburst ramp up the deck to be able to execute the combo as early as turn four. And yes, you can primarily ignore their main effects, as they are not relevant to the combo used by the deck (just keep using them to generate Treasure tokens).

^{If you are forced to hard cast these, you essentially lost the game}

Lastly, Doomskar, Trumpeting Carnosaur, and Horned-Loch-Whale provide color-appropriate dual mana costs. One is your typical board wipe with an optional Foretell cost, while the other two are generic double-purpose single-target removal. These will be your additional survival tools while waiting for any single copy of Quintorius Kand to be successfully cast and activated.

Tips and Tricks

• As always, aim for a tapped-out situation for more or less a non-interruptible finish.
• As with most jank decks of this caliber in MTG, being interrupted is a game over unless you have extra copies.
• You can mulligan up to three times. If no Quintorius appears… hopefully those removal options let you survive long enough.
• Quite funnily, the deck is named Zō-san Zōsan by its original creator, a Japanese pun on the words “mister elephant” and “production increase” (both of which are spelled and pronounced similarly).

TL;DR

You can infinitely reuse Quintorius Kand’s drain passive by using its Discovery 4 loyalty ability and restricting the deck to only catch Spark Double, Mythos of Illuna, and Clever Impersonator with it. Keep in mind to always select the newly cast copy, or select the copy itself if it is already available on the battlefield per Discover 4 cycle. You also instantly lose if you can't find any Quintorius Kands on time, or if your last (maybe only) copy on hand was interrupted by a removal effect or counterspell.

Gameplay Video

^{(credit by Toska via Toska-shiki Game Life, video is in Japanese)}

Featured Cards:

Zo-san Zosan: Infinite Quintorius Drain

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Main 60 cards (20 distinct)

Lands - 26

Main 60 cards (20 distinct)

Lands - 26

$€Tix

Main 60 cards (20 distinct)

Planeswalker (4)
4 Quintorius Kand			$2.00
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (14)
4 Doomskar			$1.29
4 Creative Outburst			$0.21€0.130.03
4 Magma Opus			$1.91€4.010.93
2 Mythos of Illuna			$0.34€0.210.02
Creature (16)
4 Horned Loch-Whale			$0.30
4 Trumpeting Carnosaur			€1.53
4 Clever Impersonator			$2.69€2.170.21
4 Spark Double			$4.84€3.840.02
Land (26)
4 Raugrin Triome			$14.07€13.121.27
4 Hallowed Fountain			$8.80€9.400.17
4 Steam Vents			$12.70€12.210.96
4 Sacred Foundry			$17.99€15.020.76
2 Sundown Pass			$7.00
2 Stormcarved Coast			$5.99
2 Deserted Beach			$4.40
1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire			$6.97
1 Plains			$0.34€0.180.04
1 Island			$0.40€0.160.03
1 Mountain			$0.36€0.180.03

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