General How to execute a minimalist Artifact theme
- Thread starter FlowerSunRain
- Start date
I just wrote an entire blog post-thing about implementing artifacts matter sub themes into green. I think it could revolutionize the way artifacts are treated in cube:
The Train Station: Mono-Green Artifacts
The Train Station: Mono-Green Artifacts
Wait 5 years : P
Another way that green can play into a minimalist artifact theme is though the lands archetype - search and recursion.
If you have lands that you sacrifice for an artifact related effect, your green land recursion effects let you do it all over again.
For lands, I'm specifically thinking of these:
(I'm playing just Buried Ruin and Foundry, so it can be quite subtle.)
Green recursion effects:
And you have your green cards that let you search for non-basics, eg:
And of course our new M20 friend, Elvish Reclaimer.
you could ALSO have other incidental artifact lands, if your artifact theme requires number of artifacts in play, rather than artifact recursion:
But these aren't strictly necessary, but are an added dimension to think about.
If you have lands that you sacrifice for an artifact related effect, your green land recursion effects let you do it all over again.
For lands, I'm specifically thinking of these:
(I'm playing just Buried Ruin and Foundry, so it can be quite subtle.)
Green recursion effects:
And you have your green cards that let you search for non-basics, eg:
And of course our new M20 friend, Elvish Reclaimer.
you could ALSO have other incidental artifact lands, if your artifact theme requires number of artifacts in play, rather than artifact recursion:
But these aren't strictly necessary, but are an added dimension to think about.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I think I might have already explained this in some other thread, but the reason that Meteorite play better is obvious once you dig into the metrics. Gilded Lotus accelerates you from 5 to either 8 or 9 (depending on whether you play a land on your next turn). Meteorite accelerates you from 5 to either 6 or 7. Given that you are interested in a 5 CMC manarock, I'm asuming you have a top-heavy curve that needs mana fixing. I run a good amount of mana fixing, so the mana fixing issue shouldn't be a problem most of the time. One mana of a color should be just as good as three mana of that color for fixing purposes. Therefore, for Gilded Lotus to be better than Meteorite, the extra 2 mana needs to be more relevant than the 2 damage.
That's your incentive to want more mana. If you have the land, only Devil's Play, Craterhoof Behemoth, Nicol Bolas and Maelstrom Wanderer remain. Meanwhile, there are around 90 creatures with toughness 2 or less, and worst case you burn your opponent for 2. The funny thing is that most cube owners wouldn't think twice about including Gilded Lotus because it is such a powerful and iconic card, but Meteorite isn't even considered.
Five years later, and only Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker remains of that list, but I cut Meteorite long ago, and do run Gilded Lotus nowadays. What happened to your dreams, 5-year younger self! :')
I still play meteorite!
I think Eldraine gave us another tool for a minimalistic artifact theme in middling power levels.
All you need is one mana rock/treasure/food to get a huge upside on top of your wind drake (still a solid base body). That makes it a pretty good choice, especially for the late game in my book. Inaging topdecking her and getting two serious threats from that one draw. And while she only needs one target, she gets more consistent with every other artifact you can get. I can also see her in Wildfire/Upheaval.dec, where she beefs up a mana rock to help you survive and later can still come back from her adventure when the world was blown up already.
All you need is one mana rock/treasure/food to get a huge upside on top of your wind drake (still a solid base body). That makes it a pretty good choice, especially for the late game in my book. Inaging topdecking her and getting two serious threats from that one draw. And while she only needs one target, she gets more consistent with every other artifact you can get. I can also see her in Wildfire/Upheaval.dec, where she beefs up a mana rock to help you survive and later can still come back from her adventure when the world was blown up already.
Emry, Lurker of the Loch is also spectacular. I opened one at the prerelease and played it in my deck, along a Scalding Cauldron and (IIRC) a Golden Egg. That's really all you need to make Emry very good.
Chances are that a Cube with artifact support already plays a number of Spellbombs. Add a Trinket Mage and you have a package ready to go. I also like Aeolipile, which I think is the cheapest colourless source of repeatable damage with Emry.
Chances are that a Cube with artifact support already plays a number of Spellbombs. Add a Trinket Mage and you have a package ready to go. I also like Aeolipile, which I think is the cheapest colourless source of repeatable damage with Emry.
My artifact suite is hilariously bad to recur with Emry. I think Gingerbrute is the most "broken" interaction... With spellbombs or anything like Aeolipile it looks great though!
So, reporting back after a few drafts with the WUR configuration. What I'm currently running is:
Narrow payoffs
Rest of the deck
Plus a ton of artifacts.
I'm very happy with the archetype. As you can see the vast majority of cards are good in other archetypes and are generically playable. Pretty much every draft, someone focuses their deck around artifacts or uses it as one of two themes.
The Splicers are the most modular cards - they go in Artifacts, Tokens, Wide, Blink, Humans, and Golems!
The Artifacts deck can branch into Fliers, Tokens, Wide, Blink, Humans, and Golems. It can be aggro, aggro-control, midrange, or control. It's a huge variety that makes drafting the deck feel far from drafting on rails.
Example list: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/the-elegant-cube.1939/#post-88465
So, reporting back after a few drafts with the WUR configuration. What I'm currently running is:
Narrow payoffs
Rest of the deck
Plus a ton of artifacts.
I'm very happy with the archetype. As you can see the vast majority of cards are good in other archetypes and are generically playable. Pretty much every draft, someone focuses their deck around artifacts or uses it as one of two themes.
The Splicers are the most modular cards - they go in Artifacts, Tokens, Wide, Blink, Humans, and Golems!
The Artifacts deck can branch into Fliers, Tokens, Wide, Blink, Humans, and Golems. It can be aggro, aggro-control, midrange, or control. It's a huge variety that makes drafting the deck feel far from drafting on rails.
Example list: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/the-elegant-cube.1939/#post-88465
I'd argue that Cranial Plating, while very powerful, is more narrow than Thopter Spy Network. That card I like a lot for a small artifact theme, since you often just need one mana rock or artifact token at one point during your early turns to turn it on and from there it just runs itself.
I moved my artifact theme to mono blue, as I wanted to give each color a secondary archetype/theme just for itself. I'll try it for now with these payoffs:
To support this I have 28 (if you count Mishra's Factory) colorless artifacts, that I'd call generally useful (Mana rocks, Equipment, utility creatures, stuff like Icy Manipulator), as well as a bunch of potentially useful cards that either are or create artifacts in most colors:
Now I think (or hope at least), that this is enough to create a new angel to deckbuilding and that it is harmonic with my other blue themes (blink, control, ramp)
I moved my artifact theme to mono blue, as I wanted to give each color a secondary archetype/theme just for itself. I'll try it for now with these payoffs:
To support this I have 28 (if you count Mishra's Factory) colorless artifacts, that I'd call generally useful (Mana rocks, Equipment, utility creatures, stuff like Icy Manipulator), as well as a bunch of potentially useful cards that either are or create artifacts in most colors:
Now I think (or hope at least), that this is enough to create a new angel to deckbuilding and that it is harmonic with my other blue themes (blink, control, ramp)
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Was ist denn das für 'nen Schmutz?
:')I am so confused right now...
The first thing I did, was to dump as many artifacts/artifact creating cards as possible into my cube without them being narrow.
For example, Thirst for Knowledge is a amazing in a deck filled with artifacts. However, it is also great in a deck with few of them too. Galvanic Blast is the same: great even without the payoff, but busted with. Or replacing a Rabblemaster variant with a Pia Nalaar, or a Llanowar Elves with Gilded Goose. Do this enough and you get to a certain density of artifacts present in your environment without trying very hard.
After that, a few choice artifact payoff cards for the themes you are already supporting in that color and you are good to go!
Take this deck for example: (super high power, sorry!)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e27633fb34d413afc8c0fc8
It's a midrange RG deck that plays a Goblin Welder. With Cathartic Reunion, Survival of the Fittest and Sneak Attack, my top end creatures (which happen to be artifacts since we tried to include as many as possible) are likely to hit the GY. Thanks to my Gilded Goose, Pyrite Spellbomb and Pia Nalaar, I have cheap artifacts to use with Welder. It fits right in alongside Feldon of the Third Path as a value reanimation creature because we overloaded the cube with artifacts.
Then you have this deck: (still super high power, still sorry!)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e2619e263c7ef63a8965b69
Which is a slightly more aggressive RG deck that uses the some of the same cards, but no Goblin Welder. The clutch artifacts from the last list do not seem out of place even without the added synergies which was the goal.
The second piece of the puzzle is the artifact section itself.
If you have Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Marionette Master and Goblin Welder as your minimalist artifact theme payoffs, then you will need a bunch of cheap and versatile artifacts that can go to the GY for value. Mishra's Bauble, Chromatic Star and Terrarion, will complement your suite of Witching Well, Executioner's Capsule and Pyrite Spellbomb you already have in the mono-colored sections. They are also just generally useful cards for color fixing, smoothing out draws, delirium, etc. so even a deck without the artifact payoffs will play them.
Last point I want to talk about is avoiding cards like Sai, Master Thopterist that actually care about casting artifacts. Most of the artifact generating cards in your lists aren't artifacts, they are colored spells! You will rarely achieve the needed density of artifacts in your decks to trigger them reliably and it is a frustrating trap for your drafters (unless your colorless section is a large portion of your cube).
TL;DR
For example, Thirst for Knowledge is a amazing in a deck filled with artifacts. However, it is also great in a deck with few of them too. Galvanic Blast is the same: great even without the payoff, but busted with. Or replacing a Rabblemaster variant with a Pia Nalaar, or a Llanowar Elves with Gilded Goose. Do this enough and you get to a certain density of artifacts present in your environment without trying very hard.
After that, a few choice artifact payoff cards for the themes you are already supporting in that color and you are good to go!
Take this deck for example: (super high power, sorry!)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e27633fb34d413afc8c0fc8
It's a midrange RG deck that plays a Goblin Welder. With Cathartic Reunion, Survival of the Fittest and Sneak Attack, my top end creatures (which happen to be artifacts since we tried to include as many as possible) are likely to hit the GY. Thanks to my Gilded Goose, Pyrite Spellbomb and Pia Nalaar, I have cheap artifacts to use with Welder. It fits right in alongside Feldon of the Third Path as a value reanimation creature because we overloaded the cube with artifacts.
Then you have this deck: (still super high power, still sorry!)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e2619e263c7ef63a8965b69
Which is a slightly more aggressive RG deck that uses the some of the same cards, but no Goblin Welder. The clutch artifacts from the last list do not seem out of place even without the added synergies which was the goal.
The second piece of the puzzle is the artifact section itself.
If you have Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Marionette Master and Goblin Welder as your minimalist artifact theme payoffs, then you will need a bunch of cheap and versatile artifacts that can go to the GY for value. Mishra's Bauble, Chromatic Star and Terrarion, will complement your suite of Witching Well, Executioner's Capsule and Pyrite Spellbomb you already have in the mono-colored sections. They are also just generally useful cards for color fixing, smoothing out draws, delirium, etc. so even a deck without the artifact payoffs will play them.
Last point I want to talk about is avoiding cards like Sai, Master Thopterist that actually care about casting artifacts. Most of the artifact generating cards in your lists aren't artifacts, they are colored spells! You will rarely achieve the needed density of artifacts in your decks to trigger them reliably and it is a frustrating trap for your drafters (unless your colorless section is a large portion of your cube).
TL;DR
- Load up on artifacts/artifact creating cards whenever possible (Pyrite Spellbomb, Witching Well, ...)
- Load up on effects that care about artifacts, but don't need them to function (Thirst for Knowledge, Galvanic Blast, ...)
- Choose artifact payoff cards that fit into what themes you are already supporting (Marionette Master for aristocrats, Steel Overseer for counters, ...)
- Use your colorless section to boost the artifact archetypes with generically useful cards (Chromatic Star for Marionette Master, Walking Ballista for the Overseer, ...)
I would advise against running cards like Chromatic Star & friends. Unless your Cube is extremely low power level (which is not the case), these tend to wheel a lot. Almost every other on-colour card is more appealing to the average drafter, and - at least in my play group - people would rather counter-draft something good than pick up a Star which will hardly ever make it to their 40.
Cards like Spellbombs and Capsules (the good ones!) are different, because there is actual demand for them. A player can't just expect them to wheel: if they want them, they have to prioritise picking them up early.
This comes from personal experience. I used to run some of those filtering/cantripping artifacts, and they always ended up in the dedicated artifact deck, making it way too consistent. Once I happened to be the artifact guy, and it wasn't fun even for me. I felt like I was the only one piloting a Constructed deck...
Don't have time to expound at too much length, but I love Chromatic Star - I run two in my list at a Vintage cube power level and would never cut them. Unless you're an aggro deck, they basically let you play 39 cards while fixing your mana for free. In my playgroup, every 3+ color non-aggro pilot will play a star 99% of the time. If you have any emergent artifact synergies (which I try to encourage by design) the stars jump up in the pick order extremely fast. And so during the draft, you have artifact player(s) who really want the stars, and the rest of the drafters who will play them 99% of the time. This is exactly where I want to see my generic cheap artifacts! The best part is that any deck that's not a dedicated artifact deck but dips even a small toe into graveyard synergies can end up leveraging the stars in surprising ways to chew through their library in record time.
I feel like I originally learned this from drafting my Penny Pincher clone, but found those lessons stuck even as I turned the power-level all the way up.
I agree they are never super high picks, but they can really tie a deck together and I'm not just talking about the artifact deck.
Here is a quick list of where I would like to play them.
Prowess
, ...
Sacrifice
GY (delve, delirium, escape)
Revolt
And all of that is disregarding all the artifact synergies. Don't sleep on the Chromatic Star type cards!
Here is a quick list of where I would like to play them.
Prowess
, ...Sacrifice
GY (delve, delirium, escape)
Revolt
And all of that is disregarding all the artifact synergies. Don't sleep on the Chromatic Star type cards!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I think I got there Here's two decks from testing my most recent cube updates. I added Scapyard Recombiner for some additional artifact tricks, and so far I'm not disappointed.
Customs from the second deck:
Both decks run an artifact package as part of their strategy. The first one packs a healthy dose of removal and sacrifice shenanigans, the second runs a self-mill theme, both were a blast to play. Note that Scapyard Recombiner can get the custom Man-o'-War. I added the changeling because I was looking for something to intersect some of the tribal themes that meet in blue, or blue-adjacent colors (ninja's in UB, elementals in RGU, Cryptbreaker in B, dinosaurs in RG), but hey, it's also a Construct!
Here's two decks from testing my most recent cube updates. I added Scapyard Recombiner for some additional artifact tricks, and so far I'm not disappointed. | | | | | |
| |||||
| | | |
| |||
| |||
| |||
Customs from the second deck:
Both decks run an artifact package as part of their strategy. The first one packs a healthy dose of removal and sacrifice shenanigans, the second runs a self-mill theme, both were a blast to play. Note that Scapyard Recombiner can get the custom Man-o'-War. I added the changeling because I was looking for something to intersect some of the tribal themes that meet in blue, or blue-adjacent colors (ninja's in UB, elementals in RGU, Cryptbreaker in B, dinosaurs in RG), but hey, it's also a Construct!
I really like the black deck!
Recombiner is some neat tech, I’ve seen it run in some other lists that I follow, but I always thought it’d suffer from the stoneforge mystic issue of not having an adequate density of targets...Changeling surely mitigates some of that. Like with Trinket Mage, I would want least 2-3 targets in a deck
A couple of those aren’t that exciting to target. I cut most of the gearhulks and hangarback....don’t love the other changeling cards. The custom changeling really kicks it up a notch, but that’s irrelevant for those of us that don’t run customs
Maybe one day I can make it work!
Recombiner is some neat tech, I’ve seen it run in some other lists that I follow, but I always thought it’d suffer from the stoneforge mystic issue of not having an adequate density of targets...Changeling surely mitigates some of that. Like with Trinket Mage, I would want least 2-3 targets in a deck
A couple of those aren’t that exciting to target. I cut most of the gearhulks and hangarback....don’t love the other changeling cards. The custom changeling really kicks it up a notch, but that’s irrelevant for those of us that don’t run customs
Maybe one day I can make it work!
Onderzeeboot that looks great! It's really funny, though, since I have been, since yesterday, typing up a new cube blog which started precisely from the same group of cards: UB ninjas/saboteurs with an artifact strategy, and leading into a discard/self-mill theme.
What made me laugh was that I also included Scrapyard Recombiner. Not only he can get the more powerful constructs so that the discard theme implied in ninjas/saboteurs can also swerve into a reanimator strategy, but I find it very cool that it intersects with Steel Overseer in a kind of Construct/+1/+1 counter tribal, with Triskelion, Pentavus or even Crystalline Crawler providing the light payoffs.
What made me laugh was that I also included Scrapyard Recombiner. Not only he can get the more powerful constructs so that the discard theme implied in ninjas/saboteurs can also swerve into a reanimator strategy, but I find it very cool that it intersects with Steel Overseer in a kind of Construct/+1/+1 counter tribal, with Triskelion, Pentavus or even Crystalline Crawler providing the light payoffs.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
There's big daddy construct, which I'm willing to give another try now that it's a bit harder to cheat it out in my cube:
Other good options:
Other good options:
Since I have a discard theme I'm also running this guy:
Then I have the Changeling utility cards that Scrapyard Recombiner can pick up:
You won't want to tutor for outcast many times, but he also acts as a good ninjutsu target.
Then I have the Changeling utility cards that Scrapyard Recombiner can pick up:
You won't want to tutor for outcast many times, but he also acts as a good ninjutsu target.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Oh, nice, including Nameless Inversion and Crib Swap is pretty clever here!
Tell me about Hope of Ghirapur.
Do you know when to sacrifice it? I’m guessing the turn before villain plays their 5’th land in your cube?
Is it worth to include even without any Ninjas/in a non-black and non-blue aggro deck? Is it worth it in a green, white or red aggro deck?
Do you know when to sacrifice it? I’m guessing the turn before villain plays their 5’th land in your cube?
Is it worth to include even without any Ninjas/in a non-black and non-blue aggro deck? Is it worth it in a green, white or red aggro deck?