The first part of Mechanized Production is pretty straightforward: Enchant an artifact, and at the start of each of your upkeeps, you’ll get a token copy of it. But read on, and if you’ve got eight artifacts with the same name, you’ll win the game! Those artifacts don’t all have to be tokens, and in fact, they don’t even need to be the same artifact that’s enchanted by Mechanized Production. So if you’ve enchanted an Ornithopter, but you also control eight garden-variety Thopters (tokens without a specific name have their creature type as their name), you’ve fulfilled the requirement! It doesn’t matter where those Thopters came from, or what other characteristics they have, either.
So, how do you disrupt the assembly line? One might want to destroy either the enchanted artifact or the Production itself. Be careful about doing so on your opponent’s upkeep, however. If you destroy the Production with the trigger on the stack, that might not do as much as you want. The ability will still resolve, using last known information to figure out what artifact the Production was enchanting before it was destroyed, and make a token. A better solution is to destroy the artifact itself. This way, the Production will be put into the graveyard anyway (for being an Aura with nothing to enchant), and when its ability resolves, the last known thing it was enchanting was “nothing,” so no token is made!
Be warned, however, that if your opponent controls the requisite eight artifacts when the trigger resolves, they win the game anyway, whether the Production made a token or is still on the battlefield or not. The flip side to this is that Mechanized Production can only win the game when its trigger resolves on upkeep; it won’t help if you control eight matching artifacts at any other time.
Today’s Rules Tip written by Jen Wong