Archetype Spotlight: Blue Red Artifacts (Midrange/Combo)
Hey guys! It's been a while since I've done an in-depth primer (almost 3 years, wow) but I've been having a lot of fun with implementing and tweaking an artifacts archetype into my cube environment over the last two months and figured that now was as good a time as any to put my thoughts to writing.
A few years back I tried to make Grixis Artifacts a thing in my cube around the time of Kaladesh/Aether Revolt. The payoff of being able to turbo out a big threat ahead of the curve via Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant was apealing, but the issue was that the deck would either be clunky or just run out of gas far too often. The problem with synergistic builds in cube are that at a higher power level until you can assemble your machine and get the cogs turning, you're kind of just durdling around and not doing anything proactive. In the time you spend crafting a card advantage machine or developing synergy driven interactions, you could be getting beaten down by a few 2/1s or some midrange-y 4/4s and just lose the game. There just weren't enough ways to slow the game down and impact the board prior to assembling your engine. You needed a way to impact the board while still setting up for your late game, but how do you that with durdly artifacts?
Another issue was that the payoffs and powerful cards were very niche in their applications. Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is a very powerful planeswalker in a complementary shell, but UB decks have better payoffs and easier enablers in control and reanimation strategies that don't synergize with him at all. He just wasn't in the right colors to be able to thrive as a centerpiece in an artifact centric strategy, at least not in my cube environment. With the lack of busted artifact ramp or fast mana rocks to enable an early Tezzeret like you'd see in a powered list, you wouldn't normally have the means of generating value and protecting him as soon as you deployed him. To plug these holes, you would end up playing mediocre playables like Vault Skirge that were artifacts just to hit a critical mass.
That's not a sustainable strategy for archetype design; you shouldn't just put in a bunch of narrow cards just to enable something potentially powerful. You'll just end up whiffing more often than actually coming together with your ideal build. You need more universal appeal through enablers that can slot into a variety of builds while also thriving in particular archetypes. The less dead cards within a given draft environment, the better (which is why Modern Horizons is such a sweet draft format). I eventually removed him from cube because I had only seen the deck come together every now and then without any real consistency (aside from me forcing it every blue moon). It was just too hard to make work consistently. The best iteration may have been the following:
Grixis Artifact Control [Addison]
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This deck was mostly held together by a handful of powerful planeswalkers who do end up playing off each other very well alongside good removal, but there were very few artifacts as a whole. It was set up more like a grindy Grixis deck featuring some artifact interactions on the side. That wasn't quite what I was hoping for so I moved away from trying to support it in my cube and I tabled it for a while.
3 years later, however, I think it's a great time to revisit the archetype but focus upon it being centered in UR. We've gotten so many new tools in recent years that I think we've reached a critical mass to explore the archetype in depth. Modern Horizons was the biggest boon we've gotten as a cube community in a very long time and inspired me to revisit a lot of design elements in my cube. MH1 and WAR helped to fill in a handful of holes that existed a few years ago and have really given this deck some staying power.
U/R Artifacts is an archetype that can shift from the axis of midrange to combo on a whim and can apply plenty of pressure on your opponent keeping them honest. You're no longer just durdling around trying to get something set up; you can still make active plays while working towards your final gameplan. It can shift from an R/x reanimation plan focused on cheating out a big beater to a grindy combat centric gameplan if necessary. For this strategy, the two main ideas to focus upon when building your deck is to create a solid curve to ensure that you're making proactive plays and to maximize the abilities of your win-cons.
I. Curving Out Effectively In cube, the most important thing to do is to effectively curve out with your deck and this is even more important when you're trying to push forward a strategy that relies upon synergy and a combination of moving parts to reach its full potential. You need early drops that will help you reach your later game and payoff cards even quicker.
Goblin Welder, although fragile, is the best representative of what this archetype can be capable of at its peak; playing cards ahead of the curve and maximizing artifact value. On its own it's not going to do much T1, but follow it up with ways to pitch cards to graveyard and you can be bringing out something way ahead of curve as early as T2 with the right plays (say, an artifact land?). Following it up with either Faithless Looting or Tormenting Voice allows you to set up for a huge swing in momentum if you can bin an impactful creature early. Obviously, this isn't going to happen in every game, but the possibility exists ala T1 Entomb, T2 Animate Dead. Even if you don't get to start of with some nut draw to cheat out a giant artifact creature early, a mid-game Welder also opens up a variety of possible gameplay decisions and will quickly become a must-kill target if you have anything worth recurring.
For a long time I felt that this strategy was missing the impact 2 and 3 drops necessary to branch into the mid-game effectively, but Goblin Engineer is pretty much everything I was looking for. For the longest time I thought this deck was a Trash for Treasure on a body away from being viable and Engineer delivers on that an then some. It gives you an artifact Entomb on a stick and does a mini-Welder impression on its own while stapled to a 1/2 body. That's just excellent value and gives more consistency in getting your engine set up.
What more is there to say about Perilous Myr that hasn't been said on these forums? It's just a great card and the innocuous little Myr that could carries more than its weight across a variety of archetypes. You need a T2 to stymie aggro? Need curve filler to branch into the mid-game? Need to shoot down an annoying creature and a single block just won't do it? The Myr is here! It just slots in excellently into this deck and provides you the necessary roadblock to build up the board and give your opponent something to reconsider when moving into combat.
Retrofitter Foundry is a very powerful card that looks durdly on first glance until you realize that it's just a self-contained engine that can pump out 4/4s if it's allowed to live long enough. You don't really see the full potential of it until you've had it out on the field from T1 onwards. I had it in my UR Artifact deck in one of my recent drafts and it just straight up won games. It's an engine that creates bodies for you without requiring any further commitment of resources aside from mana. You can quickly just advance your boardstate by upgrading your tokens and putting your opponent on the back foot without having to use up cards from your hand. That's just wild. I had it lying around in my binder for the longest time without giving it a second thought but after putting it through a few trials runs, I think it's absolutely here to stay. It can be incredibly nutty in the late game when you can combo it with cards that naturally produce Thopter tokens like Whirler Rogue or Pia Nalaar and just upgrade them into 4/4 Constructs right away. This card is incredibly powerful at all stages of the game, it's never dead. Being able to do everything at instant speed is just wild.
Filtering! Aside from individually powerful cards, the big thing to take advantage of with this strategy is the ability to filter through the deck to hit the pieces you need. On a raw power level there isn't anything too over the top about the finishers in this deck that will outright dominate games when played on curve, most are actually very reasonable, but the ability to consistently dig through the deck to them in the two colors most capable of churning through large chunks of a deck should not be underestimated. When you can combine these with Welder effects to effectively cheat out a creature early, that's when things get a little crazy. The card quality you get access to in U/R colors is unparalleled in cube.
More so than one-shot effects, having the ability to loot being stapled onto a body helps you to filter through your card quality while still impacting the board. Jace is a card that will slot into pretty much every U/x deck in cube, but he can especially shine in this archetype by transitioning into a card that can stymie your opponent's offense and give you time to gum up the board and branch into the late game. Looter Il-Kor and Champion of Wits function similarly by providing you more looting options with which to curve out and place cards into the graveyard. Champion is especially great as a Careful Study on a body that can chump for a turn and then also return in the late game with a sizable body and letting you draw 4 and discard 2.
Seasoned Pyromancer is a very strong card and it performs double duty here giving us a means of pitching cards into the graveyard and giving us some board presence by going wide with elementals on occasion. I think the underrated part of it is actually the ability to cash it in from the graveyard in the late game to make additional bodies that can help close the game out. It's just a great card on its own that just happens to advance the gameplan further. MH1 truly is the gift that keeps giving.
Filtering wise, I feel like you want 2-3 of these effects in your build consistently to ensure a smooth flow of proactive plays.
II. Board Presence and Set-Up Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is the type of multi-archetype support player that I love to see printed. She slots well into both UR Artifacts and Spellslinger builds, creates artifact tokens with her static ability, and has a very interesting minus ability that can close out games quickly dependent upon what she is copying. She's the perfect roleplayer in a variety of decks and comes early enough in the curve that she can help bridge the gap between the early set-up and latter game finishing portions. Being able to curve right into Daretti, Scrap Savant and generate an artifact body that can be sacked for a reanimation target is excellent, exactly what you want out of your 3 mana play when curving out. She fills a major role here taking the place of what would usually just be a mediocre playable to use as reanimation fodder. These are the type of cards that help you generate the consistency necessary to make a more narrow card like Daretti reach its maximum potential.
Picture this: T2 Engineer to bin a Myr Battlesphere, T3 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer with the Engineer available as blocker, and a T4 Daretti to trigger Saheeli and make a Servo that can then be sacked to bring back the Battlesphere. The following turn you can -2 Saheeli on a small Myr token to copy whatever you might be casting that turn (any creature, not just limited to copying artifacts!) and then get in for big beats. This isn't even a ridiculous sequence of plays; this some thing can be accomplished with looting or discard outlets.
Hangarback Walker and Feldon of the Third Path are both just value plays that can generate artifact bodies. Hangarback gives you a mana sink and forces your opponent to deal with early before it gets out of hand (also great wrath insurance) while Feldon can help you generate early copies of creatures you may have looted away to gain some extra value. It's all about gaining little edges and both of these cards let you maximize the efficiency of your earlier plays.
All three of these creatures perform similarly in that they provide you with a base body with an additional activated ability on the ground and 1+ bodies in the air that can get in there for some chip damage. The thopter tokens play many roles within the archetype including reanimation fodder for bigger bodies, growing the size of Karnstruct tokens for combat purposes, being copies by Saheeli into a more impactful creature, or even being churned through the Retrofitter Foundry into big 4/4 bodies. They're just very versatile and have more applications than ever before.
Karn, Scion of Urza was actually the card that got my wheels turning on this archetype when it was first printed in Dominaria a little over a year ago. It's not super impressive as a finisher on its own, but it's a consistent form of card advantage that goes into almost any deck in cube and is a great roleplayer. It will not outright dominate the game on its own, but will help you inch closer to the finish line through consistently giving you some for of card advantage. It can also generate large bodies depending on your board and will draw you the lesser of two cards every turn at minimum. One of the big problems that synergy driven archetypes run into is just running out of gas and Karn ensures that you'll gain some sort of resource or dig you closer to whatever you're looking for. And if you've assembled a board of durdly artifacts? No problem, Karn's just going to drop a Karnstruct or two and close out the game.
Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer is a newcomer but in the short time I've had her in cube, I've become very fond of her. Being able to -2/0 a creature on the other side of the field should not be underestimated, it's much more powerful when attached to a source that can "cast" it repeatedly over a game. We've seen what a flipped Jace, Telepath Unbound and Liliana, the Last Hope are capable of and Mu slots into the same role. Unlike those two, however, she can threaten to finish games after a few turns of using her plus ability by cashing her loyalty in for 4/4 fliers. Often times the right gameplay pattern isn't to just tick up and tick down ASAP, but rather tick up until you reach the point where you can generate 4/4 fliers on back-to-back turns to close the game out. She's just an excellent utility walker that is splashable and versatile enough to fit into the majority of blue strategies without warping the entire game around her.
Daretti, Scrap Savant is the 2nd copy of Goblin Welder functioning as his own engine being able to dig through the deck, lay targets in the grave for future reanimation, and will serve as a life buffer once your opponents realize that they can't let this crazy goblin live for too long. It seems pretty durdly on first glance, but Daretti plays better than he looks by ensuring your card quality and at worst giving you a Welder activation before biting the dust. I've been a fan of it ever since I first saw spoiled for commander a few years ago, it's the ideal design of an archetype support walker.
This trio of artifact creatures really help you to keep the gas flowing and keep on advancing your gameplan. Overseer lets you shift your axis of play from development to aggressively attacking by growing your artifact army. A pair of 1/1 thopters generated off a 4 drop is middling and not very impressive the majority of the time, but once they begin to rack up the +1/+1 counters, they can become a serious clock. Even just doubling the size to 2/2 makes it into a creature that can apply some pressure over time in the air, especially if you're facing down opposing planeswalkers on the opposite side of the board.
Both of the land fetching golems have great utility in helping you to ramp one turn quicker into your big payoff cards while also providing bodies to block on the floor. Simulacrum will likely just chump an attack and draw you a card while Golos's 3/5 body actually blocks a ton of creatures on the ground and will be a target for your opponent's spot removal. I've seen this first-hand, that body is at a weird point in the curve where it isn't quite enough of a threat to kill on site, but if it blanks enough swings with a 4/4 it incentivizes the opponent to quickly use up whatever they canto clear the way. Don't underestimate the land tutoring ability either, especially if you run a handful of utility lands or have your own ULD. Fetching up something like Academy Ruins is the dream, but even something as unassuming as Great Furnace or Seat of the Synod help you establish even more synergistic interactions with the rest of the deck. I haven't yet had the chance to activate the 5C ability, but I imagine that it'll be a good way to close out the game when it does work if M20 Limited is any kind of indicator.
The mid-game strategy is entirely about prepping your boardstate for one of your bigger finishers. The most important thing is to get more permanents out on the battlefield that happen to be artifacts. Instead of mediocre filler like we've had for a long time, we now have the proper density of impact cards to make things work and develop the board without just durdling around. Even better than that? A lot of these cards are already in the majority of our cubes and with just a little more support they can provide the base for an entirely different archetype than you might be currently running in U/R colors.
III. Closing out the GameWe've gotten our hands on so many great potential finishers in the recent years. I remember when Myr Battlesphere was the only good artifact finisher of choice (not counting busted stuff like Blightsteel Colossus) before Gearhulks were printed. Since then, we've gotten a handful of other great finishers to give this deck the ability to finish on many different axes. Battleball is still a classic finisher, but the new options have breathed much needed life into this strategy.
First, let's start off with probably the most intriguing card for this archetype with Urza, Lord High Artificer. As soon as I saw this card during spoiler season, I knew I had to give it a run someway somehow. This card just does it all at 4 mana by providing two sizable bodies on the board, turns every single artifact you have into a copy of Mox Sapphire, and he even has a potentially game winning ability stapled on top of it. The Karnstruct Token should not be underrated because in a dedicated shell it could grow to a very large size depending upon what you've played in previous turn. Even following it up with a creature that produces 2+ artifact bodies like Pia and Kiran Nalaar or Whirler Rogue can be a beating (especially if you make it unblockable!). Even if you end up in a board stall, the activated ability let's you try to Mind's Desire your way to an out and adds a fun little game within the match. I've had some insane flips into Daretti and Chandra, Torch of Defiance to close out games before. Pro Tip: activate at Sorcery speed because the ability does not change the timing restrictions of a given card type. You may be sad otherwise when you pick up the card to read it more closely.
Sagas are pretty much the fixed version of planeswalkers and one that does an imitation of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas while being easier to splash into decks is one that I am all in on. The Antiquities War is the perfect curve-topper at 4 mana and can close out a game incredibly quickly once it goes off. Curving into it with rocks, artifact lands, and creatures that also generate artifact tokens is simple enough to pull off. You don't feel like you're really durdling around because in the worst case scenario you've likely just spent 4 mana for a sorcery speed Impulse to draw an artifact card. Not exactly where you want to be, but it's not the most embarrassing rate if you've already got something on board. Remember those 1/1 thopters? They're a lot more scary when they turn into 5/5 mechanical dragons that will crush anything in the air as you swing out. Also the card frame and art are both pretty fucking sweet so you should just run it on that metric since it's the most important of all, obviously.
Finally, we've got Ancient Stone Idol which has been more impressive that I thought it would be. Initially you see it as just a gigantic body with some weird flash interactions, but when you realize that you can turn it into a hacky sack by flipping it back and forth from the grave with Welder effects, it can get pretty nutty. At 10 mana for a 12/12 it's not very appealing, but if you can get it out for 7 or even 6 mana, it becomes very very good. Leaving being a 6/12 is nothing to sneeze at either. Funky P/T ratio, but it'll get the job done. Funnily enough, Idol plays very well off Urza who can turn your chumps and crappy artifacts on the defensive end into Mox Sapphires and give you the mana necessary to drop this guy into play and completely ruin your opponents alpha strike. Sometimes you just need ways to close out games and I can't think of anything more effective or efficient than an artifact copy of Ghalta, Primal Hunger.
IV. Sample DecklistsNow let's take a look at some sample decklists. There's a variety of different ways to construct a competitive deck:
UR Artifacts [Shamim]
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This deck has a little bit of everything ranging from interaction to some loot effects to bin big artifact finishers in the grave, and a Daretti to bring them back early. I played this deck in a very recent draft and honestly the biggest workhorse was the Foundry. That card just ticks so many boxes and synergizes with the Antiquities War, Daretti, and will sometimes just carry you in a game on its own if you drop it T1.
UR In A War
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This deck is more all-in on artifacts and you can see that there are just so many different avenues to attack from. You've got action all along the curve and plenty of interaction. So many different ways to close out a game ranging from Urza himself to the Antiquities War or even just going extremely wide with Steel Overseer + Saheeli, Sublime Artificer.
URzafacts
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This one is reaching a bit deeper into the artifact well for playables, but at its core it's still just a solid U/R deck that can tempo out the opponent before you stabilize the board and finish them off.
How about we try a few beyond the basic U/R shell?
UB Artifacts
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Grixis Artifacts
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This last one is a little weird, but hey, the possibilities are endless! This deck would really love a Verdurous Gearhulk.
UG Counters
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V. Conclusion This is the 2nd big archetype that I've taken an interest in deploying into my environment from the ground up and thus far I've been really pleased with the various avenues for deckbuilding and the possible depth. There's so much decision-making and sequencing to maximize your plays, I've really enjoyed playing it in recent drafts. If you're already running most of the these cards or just looking to spice up your U/R offerings, give it a run in your cube. Thanks for reading!
