Sai, Master Thopterist
is one of the most powerful artifact payoff cards to have in your command zone, and has a shot at even making it into competitive circles. The most direct comparison is
Arcum Dagsson
, a very powerful tutoring combo commander, but dagsson requires having artifact creatures, and a 4 drop commander with summoning sickness. Sai works right away, is cheaper, and has a dig ability for grindy games. The all-star card in this deck, that really offers such an enormous value is
Skullclamp
. The deck has 44 artifacts in it. You are going to have some thopters laying around. And pay 1 mana draw two cards is often the push you need to storm out. The deck runs cards with cost reduction effects like
Etherium Sculptor
or
Semblance Anvil
, and those let you freecast or almost freecast most of the spells in your deck. Often, you can have some cost reduction on field,
Skullclamp
, and win that turn.
Now for finding
Skullclamp
, the deck can daw into it while storming, or it runs a healthy amount of artifact tutors. The deck runs many "egg" like artifacts. In mono blue, the deck can't run any actually eggs (
Darkwater Egg
for example), but ones like
Chromatic Star
and
Conjurer's Bauble
can get the job done. Eggs like
Scrabbling Claws
and
Phyrexian Furnace
can also graveyard hate as a mini
Relic of Progenitus
that doesn't hit your graveyard. And
Skullclamp
isn't the only value engine.
Future Sight
,
Kindred Discovery
,
Scrap Trawler
,
Krark-Clan Ironworks
,
Alhammarret's Archive
,
Artificer's Assistant
, and
Riddlesmith
all offer insane, sometimes game-ending storm value.
Now as you are storming there is a few things you can hit that actually result in an instantaneous win.
Aetherflux Reservoir
can win you the game naturally 90% of the time, but the deck also has
Dramatic Reversal
+
Isochron Scepter
combo for getting infinite untaps for all your nonland permanents, and
Future Sight
+
Sensei's Divining Top
+ cost reduction combo for drawing your whole deck. Now some may notice the lack of
Laboratory Maniac
. First of all, it is dead in hand throughout most of the game. Second, getting gibbed by a
Sudden Spoiling
or
Abrupt Decay
kind of sucks, so the deck has back up
Timetwister
combos, to be explained later. Now if you are playing this deck in comp, your opponent's will be just as threatening and controlling you are. But you are in blue, so a healthy slue of counterspells, and mostly asymmetrical stax pieces like
Back to Basics
and
Tangle Wire
can shut down your opponent's until you can win. And all of your storming tends to revolve around several specific cards, so things like
Lightning Greaves
and
Spellskite
can keep your stuff on board as well.
Sai is very strong, and fast, and I would not recommend taking it to casual playgroups, unless they come equipped with lots of interaction. I also don't think sai can out speed things like
Selvala, Explorer Returned
and
The Gitrog Monster
, so I personally would place it with semi competitive-commanders. Artifact storm has been a previously established archetype, but it hasn't been terribly good in edh, and there hasn't really been any good commander's to support the theme. Endless thopter's doesn't directly support an eggs strategy, and blue does't have the
Second Sunrise
effects that other colors might offer, but the payoff cards you can use with your thopters is insane.
Sometimes something goes wrong and you might not have
Aetherflux Reservoir
, in the rare case that happens, not to worry. You have stormed your whole deck in your hand, so you can sceptre reversal for infinite mana. If you have used that up already, there are jankier methods like using
Conjurer's Bauble
on an empty library, targeting a myr retriever, drawing it, then paying it, sacrificing it, and bringing back the bauble, each time, because of
Scrap Trawler
, returning
Mox Opal
to your hand, casting it, tapping it, and sacrificing it to
Krark-Clan Ironworks
, netting one blue mana and some colorless. Ether way you can get infinite mana and infinite thopters which if you want you can use
Timetwister
to shuffle in your graveyard, and your
Skullclamp
or your commander to redraw your deck, and repeat, each time casting a
Reality Shift
to exile each opponents library card by card. Now almost every game, Aetherflux will get you the kill, but, these are the other combos if that gets
Extract
ed or something.
