pie chart

Ashnod's Powerstone Factory

Commander / EDH Mono-Black Sacrifice Tokens

Rotlung

Upvote 0
0

Creature (25)

Planeswalker (2)

Artifact (21)

Enchantment (3)

Commander (1)

Commander: Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist

Sorcery (9)

Land (36)

Instant (3)

Oh Boy! Another Artifacts Deck

Welcome to my primer for the sadistic stitcher herself, Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist. This is a mono black deck that focuses on sacrifice (big shocker) but more interestingly, ramping. This deck is able to get expensive threats out early to terrorize our opponents.

Why Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist?

Ashnod probably doesn't come to mind when you think ramp. Hell, black mana probably doesn't come to mind when you think of ramp either. I chose Ashnod because of the fact that she isn't a common commander and she probably won't draw too much attention. A 1/1 that makes powerstones? Yeah real scary...

Will you like this deck?

This deck's strategy can vary from game to game depending on how things go, but I'd say that it is not too complicated for the most part.

You may like this deck if you:

  • Like ramping into big threats

  • Are okay with playing in a single color

  • Like a gameplan that can start early

  • Like playing with artifacts

You may NOT like this deck if you:

  • Want a deck with a more complex game plan, possibly involving combos

  • Prefer playing in 2 or more colors

  • Aren't great with understanding the board/game state

  • Don't like having subpar interaction

How do I play this deck

This deck plays pretty simply but the complications with it have to do with gameplay decisions and understanding the board state

In the early game we will play our commander alongside cheap creatures that make great fodder. Cards like Discordant Piper, Doomed Dissenter and Myr Sire make creatures when they die to help us have a sacrifice target each turn. Ophiomancer and Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia on the other hand supply us with creatures so long as we use them.

In the mid-game we will continue to sacrifice fodder creatures and grow our collection of powerstones which will help us play additional artifacts. Skullclamp, Transmogrant's Crown and Morbid Opportunist will help us draw additional cards so that we don't run out of gas. This is where things start to get a little tricky. By now we should have enough mana to start playing powerful artifacts like Wondrous Crucible, Kaldra Compleat or Steel Hellkite. Great, right? Well if we decide to play these cards super early our opponents will notice that we have powerful threats and start to target us. We need to make sure that we play our threats when the time is right. Making sure we play our threats at an opportune time so that they won't draw hate is exactly what we need. Is there an opponent with a crazy board that needs to be dealt with? Steel Hellkite can easily deal with problematic boardstates or even tokens. A control player with too many cards in hand? Wurmcoil Engine or Triplicate Titan can attack into removal while providing with leftover bodies. Doing these things will give us good will with the table and once we help deal with the problematic player and gain the good will from the rest of the table, that's when we start to advance.

In the late game we will hopefully have a card draw engine that will satisfy our needs and plenty of mana to start dropping powerful threats. Noxious Gearhulk, Cityscape Leveler and Meteor Golem will remove problematic cards from play while leaving behind a body that can attack or be recycled for later. Phyrexian Reclamation, Wondrous Crucible and Altar of Bhaal can recur these creatures so that we can gun down board states. By now we should have a big board of powerful creatures and value engines that will throw us ahead enough to be able to take out the rest of the table.

Other noteworthy things

Powerstones are a little bit strange in their mana restriction "This mana can't be spent to cast a nonartifact spell". This doesn't mean that you can only spend it on artifact spells though. Powerstone mana can be used to activate abilities on cards like Steel Hellkite, Reassembling Skeleton, Skullclamp, or Mirrorworks just to name a few. I think one of the coolest cards in this deck, though, is Bog Initiate. You can filter the restrictive mana of powerstones through the Initiate to get black mana that can be spent on anything you want essentially turning each powerstone into a Mox Jet!

That's a wrap!

I don't have this deck in person and I may or may not buy it, so I'm not sure if I will update it or not. Regardless, I have wanted to make an Ashnod list for a while now and I think that this one is pretty fun to pilot. Hopefully, this primer helped you see how powerful Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist can be and whether or not you'd want to play her as well. Thanks for reading!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

93% Casual

Competitive

Revision 1 See all

(1 year ago)

+1 Altar of Bhaal main
+1 Arcane Signet main
+1 Bog Initiate main
+1 Bojuka Bog main
+1 Braids, Arisen Nightmare main
+1 Carrier Thrall main
+1 Charcoal Diamond main
+1 Cityscape Leveler main
+1 Crawlspace main
+1 Crowded Crypt main
+1 Crypt Ghastfoil main
+1 Curtains' Call main
+1 Damnation main
+1 Darkness main
+1 Darksteel Forge main
+1 Defile main
+1 Discordant Piper main
+1 Doomed Dissenter main
+1 Duplicant main
+1 Feed the Swarm main
and 66 other change(s)