Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

Friday got some MIS EZN carts for my old C86 and started to play: K was only cart to be recognized. Left the eboni k in, replaced my old YMC from epson and all were recognized. Printed the head-testing zigzag pattern and saw no Y, ok M, gappy C and no eboni! Ran a bunch if clean cycles and still no progress. Sent a small jpeg, page came out blank. So, new carts but busted printer...  Hence starting from scratch. And I would really appreciate some advice. Here's a wish list. 

I'd like to print nice BW on matte fine art papers. 
I'd like it to be as easy as possible: have zero experience with profiling etc. 
I'd like to maintain colour capabilities if possible. 

Here are options I am considering:

0. Clean or fix the c86?
1. A workforce 30. With epson inks. Durabrite on photorag 308? Maybe using black only? Durabrite are pigments, so I expect decent archival quality?
2. Above plus ezn inks again. Maybe buy empty carts and move ink from my now useless c86 carts? How hard would it be to switch back to durabrite eventually?
3. A slightly fancier epson with MIS inks but still using simply the epson driver?
4. A  fancy r2880 (or r3000? with rebate!), epson inks in ABW mode, no tinkering but most expensive. 

As you can see I am all over the place. On the one hand there's a 8x11 project I am itching to get done soon, cheaply. On the other is the idea of investing in a decent printer and start learning all this profiling business...

I would be so grateful for any input, or even questions to help me figure out his to proceed...

Many thanks,
Gianguido