Ever since Thermo-Alchemist I've had Nettle Drone in the back of my mind as a possible nasty combo to ping down the whole table. However, the only common thread between the two is that a colorless instant or sorcery would trigger them both, not just any devoid creature or artifact. I didn't want to add more colors to the pile so I scrapped the idea and moved on.
Then comes along the Reckless Fireweaver who shares Artifacts as a colorless cousin to the Drone and he brings along Panharmonicon. Those guys really know how to party, but the original party animals were the Nettle Drone and
Molten Nursery
. Why not put them all together and see what happens, shall we?
A lot of freakin' damage is what happens.
The best way to set everything off is with some old friends from Gatewatch and Eldritch Moon:
Bone Saw
and Cathar's Shield. Neither of these are intended to be picked up by any of your creatures, though. No, the idea here is to hold a couple in your hand and basically wait to call "Gin!". These are free colorless burn spells. I'll explain.
Obviously things are more powerful in pairs, but I'll break down the interactions as if we just have one copy of each.
So, lets assume that you played a Reckless Fireweaver on turn two, a Nettle Drone on turn three, a
Molten Nursery
on turn four, and then a Panharmonicon on turn five and you have a
Bone Saw
s and a Cathar's Shield left in your hand. A completely plausible start.
Playing the Nursery would have allowed you to tap the Drone for a damage and trigger an untap to tap again for a second damage so they are at 18. Playing the Panharmonicon will trigger all 3 of your other permanents. Starting with the Fireweaver the Artifact will trigger a damage and then trigger again because it is a permanent effected by another Artifact entering the battlefield so they are at 16. The Nursery is effected the exact same way so they take 2 more damage and will be at 14. The Drone is a little trickier, but still works in a similar fashion. You should have tapped it before playing Panharmonicon for 1 damage, then it gets two untap triggers from the Panharmonicon that are added to the stack. You can tap the Drone after the first trigger resolves to deal a second damage, then the second trigger resolves and you can tap him again for a third damage which would put them at 11.
A quick summary of damage: 3 damage from each Drone, 2 damage from each Fireweaver, and 2 damage from each Nursery every time an Artifact (specifically) enters the battlefield. In this setup by turn 5 that's 7 damage for each artifact drop.
Back to our turn which still isn't over. We are still holding onto two more artifacts, and each of them happens to only cost 0 mana. They are only at 11 health so dropping both of them is another 14 damage. In a multiplayer setting that'll pretty much kill the table since 7 damage per drop hits one opponent, but 5 damage hits all opponents.
Add any combination of duplicate cards and the damage only goes up from there. Pretty neat.
Now, both pairs work decently without the other (Molten Nursery
+
Nettle Drone
/ Reckless Fireweaver + Panharmonicon), but the old pair is the strongest with the rest of the deck being Devoid instants and sorceries. These will all trigger Drones and Nurseries and all of them can do direct face damage in true RDW fashion, and in true RDW fashion you can completely dominate your opponent in as little as 5 turns. The nice part of this setup that turns RDW on it's head a little bit is that it uses more permanents and even once top decking you can still unload a ton of damage for one cheap spell. Attacking with a Cathar's Shield on a Nettle Drone is even a thing which means you can ping and attack with vigilance to add 3 more damage if the board is clear, which you can use
Reality Hemorrhage
or
Touch of the Void
to do, and using those to burn creatures instead of face damage can yield better results if it keeps them off of you and they still take face damage from all the pings activated by colorless spells plus the added attack damage.
The only two cards not explained here are the Hedron Crawler and the Bomat Courier. The Crawler is obviously just ramp, but as a colorless artifact creature that ramps, it also triggers every single part of the combo. The Courier also is a cheap way to trigger all 4 pieces, but has the added bonus of being able to attack on turn one and eventually replaces itself with at least one card but possibly more. You could give them sword and shield with Bone Saws and Cathar's Shield if you needed to, but Couriers are best on either your very first turn, or saving until you can use them to trigger multiple ETB effects a few turns later.
The sideboard may look a little funky. The Thermo-Alchemist is there to sort of enhance all the pinging that is going on but wasn't quite tight enough with the other cards to make the main board since there aren't a ton of instants and sorceries. If you anticipate your opponent adding some directed artifact removal, which they should, then you can take some out and add more ping with the Alchemists.
The rest of the sideboard is a completely alternate strategy that still springboards off of the rest of the deck but should be a complete surprise if you go through with it. I'd probably run a more serious sideboard with more direct burn and removal options if taking this to FNM, but this as it stands if for maximum lols.
This is two turns slower for lethal, but it is hilarious and difficult to do anything about. So first all you have to do is play a Lupine Prototype any time between turns 2 and 4. Turn 5 you'll want to play
Barrage Tyrant
and turn 6 you'll want to play
Demolition Stomper
. Turn 7 you can Crew the Stomper with your Prototype, attack with the Stomper and the Tyrant for 15 damage, then use the Tyrant to throw the Stomper and the Prototype for 15 more face damage and hopefully lethal. If it's not quite lethal than you have several other face damage spells to follow up with or just repeat the process as needed. It's dumb and unexpected, but man is it a lot of damage. Even if you don't have a clear shot to attack without defenders you could just throw the two of them right away, or if you don't have the Stomper at least every Prototype is 5 damage for 5 mana (2 to play it and 3 to activate the Tyrant). I was going to create a whole deck around this type of play, but I actually like it as a surprise pulled in from the sideboard.
And there you have it, a RDW deck that turns Equipment into burn spells with enough punch to wipe out the whole table which is likely to be flipped over after a few repeated wins with this ridiculously budget combo. Just the way I like it ;)
Let me know what you think in the comments below and don't forget to vote! Thanks for reading!
