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Endless Artifice

Commander / EDH Artifact Artificer Casual Sacrifice Tokens Value Engine

phoenix2448

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Land (42)

Creature (36)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Breya, Etherium Shaper

Artifact (13)

Enchantment (4)

Planeswalker (3)

Sorcery (1)

Sideboard

Land (42)

Creature (29)

Artifact (10)

Planeswalker (3)

Enchantment (3)

Maybeboard

Creature (27)

Artifact (20)

Enchantment (5)

Planeswalker (3)

Sorcery (3)

Instant (1)

Been wanting to make an artifacts deck for a long time. My initial thought was always to limit the number of colors since artifacts is such a deep archetype, first red with daretti, then blue with someone else. But I’m realizing more and more that really linear artifact strategies, whether they be recursion or affinity, bore me, and that ultimately I need access to multiple colors to play the artifact cards that are truly engaging and fun. So now I’m going in the opposite direction, maximizing colors by playing Breya. Shes not spectacular on her own but i think thats fine with how strong artifacts can be in general.

The goal is to lean heavy into sac synergies during building and go from there.

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Oh man, this was actually a blast to make! I mostly built the list just looking up cards I already knew and finding a few more from there. “I know i want scrap welder, what other welders are there?” I thought having lots of colors would make it hard but it actually made it easier in the sense that I only had to worry about taking the best, anything that wasn’t as good as anything else made for an easy cut. Unfortunately not all the cuts were easy, but I don’t think I’m missing out on anything either. My breakthrough came when I realized running stuff like Shrapnel Blast was a bit redundant with Breya, so I cut all of those. I went for multi-turn value wherever possible, favoring triggers over one time effects. The goal of the deck is to be an engine above all else, making tokens and saccing them for benefit ad infinitum. No affinity, no growth, just value and damage from that value. As such, interaction is light, but the interaction that does exist is robust and repeatable. While most of the deck is committed to efficiency to feel as smooth as possible, there are a few cards like Mirran Spy and Skill Borrower that have smaller odds of functioning. I usually wouldn’t run something like these that have ~25% compatibility with other cards in the deck, but they’re potentially very explosive and also just cool cards, so for now at least I’m willing to run them over another value piece like Circuit Mender (but I am still ordering him in case I wanna swap :p)

The manabase proved a bit more demanding than I initially expected. Since tappedout doesn’t show colorless mana as part of the mana cost breakdown, i took the list over to moxfield just to see. Over 40% of the total costs were colorless, and given that pretty much all of the colored costs are singular (at most one of each kind on a given card) I figured I would be fine running a decent number of basics and some other utility lands that aren’t as great at making colors. Well fortunately I did some goldfishing and found out, thats not the case at all. My unoptimized mana base often found it hard to cast Breya on four, had to mulligan hands that were otherwise sweet bc I was missing a necessary color, and missed out on sweet early plays bc I couldn’t cast say Goblin Welder on one. Needless to say this had to be fixed. However, I didn’t want to go the usual fetches+triomes+shocks route for a few reasons. One, thats already what I do for my five color decks and I like variety and challenge. Two, I want the mana to always be untapped in this list because its so great at using it (minus artifact lands of course). Three, the only hard ramp in the deck is Solemn Simulacrum, so I want some number of basics to make him work, hence my trying to run a good chunk of them to start with. While fetches would be good for Toggo, I don’t feel one card is worth making the manabase more boring and not to mention potentially worse! If we run fetches and shocks we’re paying 2-3 life for an untapped land, but its not like we need that much color anyways! We just need access to one of each color by turn 4 and we’re basically good. So, all these notions taken into consideration, I think the best lands for the deck are painlands and odyssey filter lands. Painlands are fast and minimally painful in a deck with a lot of colorless cost, and the odyssey filter lands are great at making 1 of each color out of any other source. I rounded these out with painless rainbow lands and battlebond lands, as those are fast and pain free (and basically alpha betas). I kept shaving down the basics count (from 10 to 6 to 4) until I was happy with things. And now the mana base is quite nice, and quite fun to use! No endless fetch shuffling or choosing tapped or untapped, just quick nice efficient duals that get the job done well so that we can afford to play all the artifact lands. Proxying is my first time having access to anything more than guildgates :p so I’m looking forward to expanding my understanding of what makes a good mana base moving forward. As always I want to challenge myself and don’t just want to jam triomes shocks and fetches into everything, but to explore all the possible combinations out there.

I’m actually so stoked to play this list, I’ve wanted an artifact deck for a long time but mono blue affinity is a broken snoozefest and mono red with Daretti rubbed me the wrong way (recursion on a permanent stick). Meanwhile this deck lets me run all the coolest artifact cards (Thopter Foundry, Daretti Iconoclast, etc) without necessarily breaking any of them, just using them for full value (although there are definitely some infinite combos lurking with enough pieces in play >:)

Very much looking forward to playing, now I just need to proxy and pickout sleeves! I’m thinking the dual matte glacier dragon shields :3

(foil=proxy btw)

Farid, enterprising something (red artifact legend)

Invasion of Kaladesh Hedron Deteonator

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33% Casual

67% Competitive