Sram, Senior Edificer and
Puresteel Paladin: Sram is the newest addition to the deck that makes the deck so much more consistent. This is typically a worse version of Puresteel Paladin, though it does have a few advantages. The first advantage is that Sram's cantrip trigger is upon cast, meaning that when you play this and follow it up with a cheerio, assuming Sram and the cheerio resolve, then whether or not your opponent removes Sram in response, you will still get to draw a card. This is useful in case you'd like to test the waters and have the choice between Sram and Puresteel. Another advantage is it is the less mana intensive of the two, which helps when trying to play through cards like
Blood Moon and
Spreading Seas. Where we can cast it off of a single
Mox Opal or basic
Plains,
Puresteel Paladin may have a harder time needing 2 sources. Puresteel is typically better than Sram for several reasons. First, Puresteel's cantrip ability is a may ability, so you dont need to worry about milling yourself out like you might have to from time to time with Sram. Puresteel also has the sweet upside of allowing you to equip for free once you reach metalcraft (which certainly isn't hard to do). This can be excellent for stalling the game or protecting your creatures.
Paradise Mantle: This is a utility cheerio that can become helpful if you manage to untap with a creature, netting you another mana to ensure you can go off or play through cards like Blood Moon.
Bone Saw: While this isn't always the most helpful, having it can help us start picking off attackers when we have a lot of cheerios loaded up onto a creature. For example, if we have a 3/10 Puresteel Paladin against an army of 3/3's rather than a 2/10, we can start killing a few creatures off which could swing in the following turns. It also increases our clock in case we need to go on our beatdown plan.
Kite Shield: This is mainly here for extra creature protection so that a resolved Sram or Puresteel doesn't die to a topdecked Lightning Bolt, and so that we have a little more armor for when we start blocking incoming damage.
Spidersilk Net: Gets us out of bolt range and gives us reach for blocking pesky things like Vault Skirge and Flickerwisp.
Cathar's Shield and Accorder's Shield: It's awesome that we get 8 copies of arguably our best cheerio. This gives us vigilance so we can beatdown (when needed) and gives us the toughness Kite Shield supplies at the same cost.
Mox Opal: Helps us cheat on mana, especially with Retract. It can also help a lot against Blood Moon.
Serum Visions: This gives us a turn 1 play, which in game 1 can make us look like UW Control, Jeskai Control, or Ad Nauseum. It gets us a little bit farther through our deck, and can set us up for our turn 2. If your opponent removes your first creature, then you can use it to find another.Grapeshot: Obviously this is the deck's win condition. Storming off isn't too difficult with this deck, and if you do it right, you can reach well over 100 damage. That being said, you don't need to have everything work out perfectly to win. You can even use this to clear up your opponent's board state! When I was playing against my friend (he was using this deck), I had Stony Silence against him, which really hurt his ability to go off because he needed the free mana from Mox Opal to keep playing Retract. He had a board with creatures to delay me, and 7 cheerios. He played Retract to get them back, played them all out, and then Grapeshot my entire board when I had lethal next turn. Then he used Noxious Revival at the end of my turn to get back Grapeshot, and then killed me with grapeshot having found another Retract from his last go. My point is, don't think that you can't win if you use this card (Noxious Revival is super sweet), and don't think that it can only point at your opponent's face.
Noxious Revival: This is the reuse a card spell. While it typically gets us back a discarded or killed creature or reuses a Retract, it can also be used to get back sideboard cards and even fetches. Note that this is card disadvantage, and the reason we can run it is because we offset that disadvantage through mass cantrip power with our engine. One cool trick is that you can Noxious Revival something in your graveyard in response to being targeted by a Surgical Extraction.
Retract: The spell that allows this deck to work. This bounces all of our artifacts back to our hand, allowing us to go off and reach an incredible storm count.
Silence: This allows you to go off under pressure. If your opponent intends to just kill or counter your creature when you play it, this prevents that and ensures that your turn will run smoothly, safe from removal and countermagic. However, note that this won't turn off abilities like Grim Lavamancer. You can also use this as a don't progress your board this turn if you aren't fearful of them interacting with your during your turn.
The Manabase: We typically need 5 cards we can get with our fetches, the 1 being a basic Plains in case we get Path to Exiled. After that, we want 8 fetches. This high number isn't really because we have a very color intensive manabase, but rather that thinning, while it is arguably irrelevant in other decks, absolutely matters in this deck due to how it functions. Removing 2-3 lands from your deck drastically decreases your chances at bricking when trying to combo. The 1 of Sacred Foundry is there for Ghirapur AEther Grid in the sideboard and giving us a way to still combo off if an opponent disables or removes our Mox Opals (examples being Surgical Extraction and Stony Silence)
