General Archetype Discussion - Boros Artifact Aggro

inscho

inscho

Hey guys,

I've been looking to flesh out the identity of Boros in my cube lately. Historically, I've been a big advocate of prowess tokens on the back of Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor. As I'm looking to shave the top of my power band down a bit, Mentor is on the chopping block, and I'm considering pivoting the strategy away from strictly prowess. I know it's been discussed and implemented in cubes here, but I wanted to begin a larger assessment of artifact aggro in boros colors.

Cornerstone Creatures:


Stoneforge Mystic Package:

any others?

Goblin Welder Package:


Various Ancillary Support:


I tried to paint with a broad stroke to encompass most power levels.

I'm particularly interested in using Ranger of Eos, Stoneforge Mystic, and Goblin Welder as a means to develop a resilient toolbox aggro deck that can squeak out a lot of card advantage during a game and maintain a lot of pressure in combat.

That's all I have for now, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts and any firsthand experiences with the archetype.
 
W

wahoopride

I have been trying to make a similar archetype available in my cube. One thing I did to make the archetype more flexible and also more expansive is to add some "equipment matters" themes that can kind of overlap with the artifacts matter. Any deck that like has a strong equipment component can include cards like Toolcraft Exemplar, Shrapnel Blast, Galvanic Blast, or another card with metalcraft. I created the equipment matters theme by adding a few cards that were obvious support for equipment:



And then some more subtle support with creatures that have double strike or other abilities that strongly benefit from any type of stat enhancement:



The thing I like about these is that lots of other decks are going to fight over these (+1/+1 counters, heroic themed decks, vampires, etc).

Also, not sure if you also run these cards but I like them for this type of theme:

 
inscho

inscho

Pia and Kiran! I knew I was overlooking something obvious....as well as




EDIT: Double strike creatures are great and definitely slot in well. Adorned Pouncer can be added to that list. However, the equipment matters bros aren't very appealing to me. There aren't enough equipment cards that I want to devote cube slots to, and those cards require a certain density to be useful. Whereas with Stoneforge you only really need 2 targets to be in business (1 if that target is something game shaping like Batterskull).
 
W

wahoopride

If I were playing a prowess themed deck I would want like a maximum of 10 creatures in it, but probably closer to like 6-8. In which case it feels like it would be hard NOT to trigger prowess.
 
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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
yan said:
captain lannery storm

quicksmith rebel
aether chaser

yea ive found prowess has too many conditions to trigger. mana open, card in hand, enough noncreatures at the right time. my swiftspear is usually just a 1/2 and monastery mentor makes a token or two before it offs
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Quicksmith Rebel is amazing! Definitely great if you support artifacts in red!

Aether Chaser is very solid as well. I've never been disappointed with it in a red aggro deck. It's especially good with equipment, because it can keep attacking into the mid game courtesy of first strike.

I'm also missing



One of the funnest and most balanced planeswalkers.
 
frostymoose

frostymoose

Love the idea of Phylactery Lich. Skeptical about triple black.



I don't think I've ever seen this mentioned, but has anyone tried this card? The floor is obviously abysmal, but the ceiling could be very impressive.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'm trying a lot of artifact subthemes at the moment so that might be warping my perspective but I've really liked this deck even in Cubes that don't give it explicit support. It's strong and interesting in its own right but also ties together other WR themes: the tokens/go-wide deck loves Thopters/Splicers, and those token makers are stapled to creatures so they work with blink/Alesha/Reveillark etc. Equipment, Vehicles, and cheap artifacts give you lots of ways to trigger prowess, and equipment in particular is great for the go-large decks. There have been enough artifact blocks and artifacts scattered through individual sets that you can find artifact-based version of any classic effect: Kuldotha Rebirth and Shrapnel Blast are the absolute best at what they do if you put the effort in, but even just switching a random burn spell to Pyrite Spellbomb gives you the support you need without disrupting anything else. You end up with a flexible aggro deck that can compete in longer games and presents tough sequencing decisions.

Sample deck:

WR Artifact Tokens








 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

McMenno said:
Could this new guy from unstable slot into this archetype?
Click to expand...

I'm planning to test him, so hopefully I can answer this question in the next two weeks. However, I'm also patching in contraptions as well, which will give him quite a boon in the wedge he should belong to ({W}{R}{U}), and I think the potential for getting lifelink off of Contraptions is probably significant in making him desirable.
 
VincePendrell

VincePendrell

Has any of you tried this?

Seems like a free equip with almost half of the creatures mentioned here.

And what's the general opinion of supporting this in a cube over 360 cards? I think I'd have a hard time supporting this at 645 along with a Humans theme (though I'm already saving this discussion for when I'm able to try a theme attachment). Maybe there are enough cards for someone with a 540 cube to just plug this in, and make it happen, but what would be the important cards to break singleton with to better support this strategy?

EDIT: Also:

If the route to artifact aggro is more artifact creatures and Myr/Servo/Thopter tokens.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

I've wanted to run Tempered Steel for a long time. It was in a former draft of my current list. I may be trying it out after I iron out this Unstable update; I love how much power it offers, and it seems very well-conditioned in the right environment, but it does need a lot of things to go a particular way before it becomes a worthwhile include.

Inventor's Goggles is just really, really low-powered. I think the free equip text is just misleading; it doesn't really have a home imo, as most of these decks aren't looking to spend their mana paying such a hefty equip cost for such a marginal boost.

On the question of breaking singleton, I think there's enough pieces that it can be easily done without any duplication, but it's really more a question of how much of the cube gets seen each draft, rather than how big the cube is. If you're drafting 85%+ of your cube each time you play, archetype support is fairly easy to develop; if you're seeing less than 70% of your cube each draft, archetypes don't really come together very consistently without significant support. So really, the question you'd need to answer is what sort of variance you have each draft, and then account for that in determining if you need to break singleton (or even consider scaling down the cube size to a point where you don't have to).
 
VincePendrell

VincePendrell

Point taken with the Inventor's Goggles.

RavebornMuse said:
On the question of breaking singleton, I think there's enough pieces that it can be easily done without any duplication, but it's really more a question of how much of the cube gets seen each draft, rather than how big the cube is. If you're drafting 85%+ of your cube each time you play, archetype support is fairly easy to develop; if you're seeing less than 70% of your cube each draft, archetypes don't really come together very consistently without significant support. So really, the question you'd need to answer is what sort of variance you have each draft, and then account for that in determining if you need to break singleton (or even consider scaling down the cube size to a point where you don't have to).
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Yes, sure, that's pretty much my question, but I've tried short-cutting it with the size to give a general idea. My concern is that, with <75% cube visibility per normal draft (~540 cards), not enough of the key cards would show up, and synergies would be diluted into oblivion, as you pointed out. If that's the case and I still want to support the archetype, then what cards would the best at signaling and/or pulling the draft into this direction? I was thinking that multiples of Toolcraft Exemplar could help support this, or even Inventor's Apprentice, since it could even promote some cross-synergies with Humans.

My list has a card availability per draft of about 50% (let's say 0.5 ca/d), but I'm still interested in playing this. Instead of adding to my list, I've been thinking of having this as theme attachment (basically, an appendix with 1.0 ca/d, seeded in every draft), but with some leanings towards Affinity (both the ability and the cards played in the Modern deck). Maybe with some contortionism, Frogmite, Arcbound Ravager and the Artifact lands could match well with this theme. Anyone has good suggestions for cross-synergies there? I'm already thinking of a Pick-1-Get-2 deal for Court Homunculus.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

NimbusToad said:


Does this kick ass? I can't tell...
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Outrageously narrow and the 1-mana activation is for a color that was already very fringe for artifact synergies and already very great at recursion effects through other means. That it hits only artifact creatures means it's really doing far too little outside of an explicit artifact-themed cube. If you want that effect, Fortuitous Find is amazing, and even better for a format is Remember the Fallen.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated


Have you had an experience of running this in cube? I heard very different opinions. I want to widely spread artifacts through my cube to make them sort of a (sub-)theme, but I doubt if this one is worthy.
 
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