One the cards I was most excited to try in Dominaria is The Antiquities War. Many of the sagas are cool build arounds, but this was card advantage and a win/con rolled into one 3 turn package.
I love artifact heavy builds and Tezzeret the Schemer, so that was kind of my starting point. I then went for artifacts that cantrip or put multiple artifacts on the battlefield to fuel a big Antiquities War attack. After a couple of iterations I realized I was too 'all-in' on the saga kill, so I added some big 'artifacts matter' beaters to be alternate ways to win the game. Herald of Anguish is one of the best cards in standard if it can stick in the battlefield. It deprives opponents of resources and is removal and a very fast clock. The other big flier is Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp. This card can consistently come down on turn 4 and wins the game quickly. It also wins combat with Lyra Dawnbringer which is huge.
The other issue that became apparent after playing some games was the problem other UB builds in previous standards had against artifacts or enchantments. A resolved GPG is often lethal so with all of the fixing (Renegade Map and Prophetic Prism) it seemed easy to splash green for Naturalize which has proven to be one of the best cards in standard out of the board. The green splash also gave me access to the other finisher Vraska, Relic Seeker. She is one of the best walkers in standard and is a legitimate win/con on her own. She can kill almost anything besides other walkers, she protects herself and has a game winning ultimate. She also draws a ton of aggro which keeps you from dying.
This deck plays like a control deck at first. Keep threats off the battlefield, slowly dropping artifacts, until the coast is clear for one of the finishers.
It's a blast to play and wins a fair amount of the time. It feasts on mid range strategies that only can drop one threat per turn and want to play on curve. It has game against control and while it can struggle with real fast aggro starts, it has enough pieces in the board to steal some games.
Let me know what you think and feel free to offer suggestions!
Thanks and happy brewing!
