Tal

No, the ability comes into effect when he enters play (which is different from being cast btw), but just like any other static ability it goes away when Painter goes away.

You need both combo pieces simultaneously on the board to go off.

I like that you are trying here, but there is a reason Fauna Shaman has seen basically 0 play even after Survival of the Fittest was banned.

I feel like summoning sickness just kills this deck. The deck's engine is a permanent that dies to every removal spell in the format and cant be used until you pass the turn. Ouch.

I think you just need to have Imperial Recruiter to build this sort of mono-red toolbox deck. (ok, well Goblins can be a mono-red toolbox too, but thats a totally different deck and has its own engine).

If the Blood Moon strategy works well in your local meta, you might want to just drop the combo and go all in on the "hate everything" plan. Ancient Tomb, playsets of Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon, Chalice of the Void (cast on 1), perhaps Trinisphere and other hate. Run the Simian Spirit Guides, Chrome Mox, maybe Lotus Petal. Just get Blood Moon and Chalice in play as quickly as possible and hope that screws your opponent over. Then beat them in the face with hate creatures. Try looking into old Stompy decks, some people still play them with sporadic success.

Left you a pretty long-winded analysis, hopefully you find something in there useful. I like Painter, but your build really needs more consistency.

Its always nice to see Painter decks, Painter is the deck that started me off in Legacy. Making it super budget is getting sort of hard though since a lot of cards have jumped up in price over the last couple years.

I'll start off just trying to give some constructive criticism of some of your decisions and which cards I think should be replaced. Keep in mind here that I'm looking at the overall Legacy card pool and what cards are just more efficient than others, all judgements should be made based on the decks people around you play and what works best against them.

Power Artifact just doesnt add very much for you. The infinite mana loop is cute, but its just unnecessary. The entire combo here costs 6 colorless mana. If you already have a Monolith, and 2 blue mana to cast Power Artifact, thats already 5 mana. You will find yourself cursing this card when you top-deck it.

Isochron Scepter really doesnt help you much either. I get why you want it, but its just not going to help you against a serious deck. Playing a card that lets you cast Counterspell next turn is just not where you want to be, especially in a format with Abrupt Decay. The ease with which you can get 2 for 1'd on Iso-Scepter without actually accomplishing anything is a serious issue for the card.

There are some other cards I'll come back to, but those two are both easy cuts as they dont really align with the rest of the deck that well.

I'll try to jump into budget suggestion mode now:

Goblin Welder. Its a major benefit of playing red. Have two Grindstones but your opponent already managed to kill your only Painter? Its back now! Need some mana but you already used your Grim Monolith? Swap it into the graveyard end of turn and then back into play during yours.

A Wurmcoil Engine in the deck with Welder also enables a grindy alternate win-condition. (non-budget aside: Transmute Artifact on Grim Monolith into Wurmcoil Engine is a fun interaction, and Transmute Artifact is much better than Fabricate)

Now the issue of consistency. I think you need more library manipulation. Without it you might as well just not play blue at all and go all in on Moon effects instead. If you had blue fetchlands, I would say Brainstorm. But staying on a budget, Preordain would be a good choice. Thirst for Knowledge may be a better overall card for you than Fabricate. Especially if you have Welder to use any artifacts you pitch in the graveyard.

I'd also suggest Ensnaring Bridge and Spellskite somewhere in the 75. And you just need to have something sideboard to deal with Emrakul triggers. Betting on 3x Surgical Extractions isnt going to be good enough. Something like Tormod's Crypt is just going to be a lot easier to work with and its an artifact.

As for splashing a color, if you think your manabase can support 3 colors, I would go with black over white. Enlightened Tutor isnt bad, but Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas gives you a lot more options. It digs for cards, makes blockers/attackers, and can randomly win the game with his -4. Baleful Strix is also a decent card.

I actually have a (definitely not budget at all) Grixis build that I've been tuning, though it focuses less on the Painter angle since thats not a guaranteed win against certain decks. The specific cards probably wont be that helpful to you working on a budget, but some of the interactions are worth considering as they can often be mirrored on a less efficient budget scale.
http://www.mtgvault.com/tal/decks/transmute-artifact/

Also, while working on Painter, keep in mind that the deck you originally cloned here is an attempt to make a budget version of a very specific Legacy deck called Imperial Painter. A lot of that deck's design revolves around getting a turn 1 Blood Moon effect as often as possible. Against a lot of Legacy decks, Blood Moon can be essentially a win condition, but against many others it is not. Make your decisions about it depending on what types of decks people around you play.

Hopefully you find something in this massive wall of text helpful or informative.

Yeah, its not infinite in any way, but the storm counts that the deck can achieve are quite ridiculous. When it works, it often works very dramatically.

The biggest problem I'm working on right now is its consistency relative to top tier Legacy decks in playtesting. It still needs work, possibly even a redesign but Im hoping to get it there.

I seriously want this to be competitive. But even if it turns out it cant be, its still literally the most fun thing to goldfish ever.

The Legacy meta has definitely shifted quite a bit. Its pretty open really, but some of the commonly represented decks are what I'll call the "Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay" decks: Shardless Bug, Jund, Deathblade, etc. Basically Midrange.

Overall though a pretty wide variety of decks have been placing well in tournaments, you pretty much have to be prepared for anything. Also Lingering Souls seems to be seeing a lot less play, though I suppose that could always change.

I see you are running mostly just 1 of each card here.

Do your friends play some sort of Highlander format? And if so, what are the deck construction rules you use?

A couple things here. First you should definitely be running 4 Visionary and a 1 of Dryad Arbor. Visionary is just awesome and can really help you get out of some awkward situations when combined with Symbiote. A single Dryad Arbor gives you a turn 1 play of Green Sun for 0 if you dont have a Llanowar Elf or equivalent mana elf.

The Archdruids I'd honestly cut since they can break up your combo chain. And I'd run green fetchlands if you have any to thin your forests out. This is one of the few decks that actually wants to thin a monocolor deck just because of how the Glimpse chain works.

If you could actually find one I'd suggest a Gaea's Cradle with a couple Crop Rotations too.

Also worth noting that you can actually start a combo chain turn 2, its just not nearly as stable until you can get a couple Nettle Sentinels
ex:
Turn 1
play forest
play a mana generating elf

Turn 2
play second forest
play Glimpse
play Heritage Druid - draw a card
play Quirion Ranger - draw a card
return forest to hand to untap the mana elf
tap 3 elves for 3 mana
3-4 cards + 1 forest left in hand to continue chain

You need some form of exile like Tormod's Crypt or Leyline of the Void/Rest in Peace. Or even just Surgical Extraction/Extirpate to take out certain targets.

Without anything you just auto-lose to anyone who can cycle their graveyard.

Haunting Echoes doesnt really work for this because its sorcery speed.

Pretty good deck. Personally I run a UR version that is more control/tempo.

I dont think I'd want to go all in on the combo in a competitive Legacy environment. There's just a lot of removal flying around right now. Abrupt Decay is mainboard in some of the top decks. Also, without any disruption faster combo decks generally just beat you in a race. Stiflenought's best case scenario is a turn 3 win, which is way behind most Storm decks, Belcher, Show and Tell, etc. Even Burn can potentially race you.

FoW honestly seems pretty much a requisite for this style of deck. Without it you end up either too slow, too fragile, or both in many matchups. And Standstill can really help give you some card advantage if you use the right suite of lands to support it.

Also, here is an awesome card for Dreadnought that a lot of people miss:
Vision Charm. It functions as a Stifle for Dreadnought, freeing you up to use your Stifles to disrupt the opponent. It also does double duty by protecting Dreadnought from removal, including the dreaded Abrupt Decay. Plus you get to see the confused look on your opponent's face when they see the word "phasing". Even its other two abilities are occasionally useful in weird corner-case situations.

Here you can see one of the more recent iterations of my build, I still have to edit it to reflect its current state when I have time.
http://www.mtgvault.com/tal/decks/legacy-stiflenought-2/

No, this is entirely theoretical and untested at this point. The ideas just sort of started popping into my head and I had to lay out the design.

Considering trying to assemble a budget version to experiment with the concept some more. Still not sure whether or not this design is the best way of abusing the infinite recursion to actually end up winning.

Im sure this deck is fun casually, but its really not something you'd want to play in a reasonably competitive Legacy setting. You are very vulnerable to a lot of disruption, and have none of your own. The deck is less consistent than something like Belcher or Cheeri0s, and thats a problem.

Other combo decks are faster and more reliable than you. Control decks and tempo decks and even midrange decks will generally disrupt you too much for you to have a decent chance. Your best hope would be against "fair" aggro, but even there you'll probably run into the same sideboard hate they have prepped for Show and Tell matchups.

Tinfins as a deck doesnt really care about Karakas. You just use Griselbrand's ability on the stack to draw more cards and keep playing. Getting to swing with him is just a bonus, its not required to win.

You can always just cast Tendrils.

Admittedly my contribution here is only a few minor tweaks that I felt were needed. The basic layout is from another decklist.

And honestly there are better versions of the deck out there as well, this is just one take on it.

To be honest this feels like a weaker version of Legacy Cheeri0s.

You really dont want to be in a position of "I combo out with Glimpse to draw and play half my library, then I pass the turn".

Since you have some storm decks on your profile I figure you might be interested in a combination of reanimator with storm:
http://www.mtgvault.com/tal/decks/legacy-tinfins/

I wouldnt add Ad Nauseam. SI has pretty much always revolved around using the draw 4's. Using Ad Naus effectively requires a very different deck. Way too many ways to end up killing yourself if you put it in here.

What do you do if you end up drawing into some of your Dragons?

I hate to say it, because I've tried messing around with Dragonstorm myself, but I honestly think the deck would probably be more consistent just using Empty the Warrens and Goblin War Strike instead.

At the least though I think you should be running Burning Wish so you can use a wishboard.

Yeah I can see where you are coming from there, its been awhile since I really played much of any modern, but I definitely felt the loss of some of the key legacy pieces.

I like your use of Tectonic Edge in a format where people generally arent expecting land destruction.

The only suggestion that comes to mind right now would be running more than 1 Coralhelm Commander. He might not be a great lord, but the ability to fly can certainly make up for that. But again I suppose that would be a meta dependent choice as well.

Overall you seem to be leaning slightly more towards the control elements of the deck than a lot of other modern merfolk designs I've seen.

Some interesting choices here, have you playtested with Cosi's Trickster? How does it perform in modern?

Its fairly complicated and can be a bit time consuming to play out, but the Heritage Druid engine can actually win the game turn 2, though its more stable turn 3-4.

ex:
Turn 1
play forest
play a mana generating elf

Turn 2
play second forest
play Glimpse
play Heritage Druid - draw a card
play Quirion Ranger - draw a card
return forest to hand to untap the mana elf
tap 3 elves for 3 mana

At this point you've started the combo chain and just need to keep drawing 1 drop elves to play. Once you've gotten 2-3 Nettle Sentinels in play you start building up extra mana very quickly and the engine becomes a lot more reliable. Or if youre unlucky and dont draw any, a Crop Rotation into Gaea's Cradle will also generally save you.

Admittedly if you are just playing for fun with friends, they might not find you repeatedly tapping and untapping elves until you win to be very interesting. But thats essentially how elves are generally played in Legacy.