A mono-blue take on the Myr Retriever + Ashnod's Altar loop.
I like the theme of a really Blue wizard trying to cast some mind-erasing ritual magic on his enemies using a pair of Altars with the help of a bunch of little helper robots and his Crane familiar.
Myr Altars is a budget deck for kitchen table legacy; Tezzeret is kind of expensive but the next most costly card is Fabricate at $3 and the rest are around a dollar or less.
If you swap Ashnod's Altar for Krark-Clan Ironworks, Impulse for Strategic Planning, and Seat of the Synod for something like Buried Ruin the deck should be Modern legal and function almost the same.
The Combo
Ashnod's Altar lets us sacrifice a creature for 2 mana. Myr Retriever costs 2 mana and returns a second Myr Retriever from our graveyard to our hand when it dies. With Altar of the Brood in play every casting of Myr Retriever mills each opponent for 1.
With an ideal hand of Land, Land, Land, Altar of the Brood, Myr Retriever, Myr Retriever, Ashnod's Altar we can win on turn 3 if we don't get disrupted. Realistically, we get there turn 4 to 6 through light disruption.
Supporting Cards
Filtering:
With only the bare essentials of the combo included with no redundancy (Disciple of the Vault, Aetherflux Reservoir, Impact Tremors, Krark-Clan Ironworks) filtering is incredibly important.
Impulse is great, replacing itself with the best card in the top 4 of our library. Glint-Nest Crane is very similar, but can only get artifacts. The Crane also comes with a 1/3 Flying body for stalling and sacrificing to Ashnod's Altar. Usually to pay for a tutor for the last combo piece without tapping all our lands, or maybe to get Tezzeret out a turn early to get the last 2 pieces. Preordain and Thoughtcast are pretty self-explanatory.
Tutoring:
Standard artifact tutoring fare, 3/3/2 works well but I haven't settled on the ratios yet. Tezzeret and Whir of Invention often win the game on the spot since they put the artifact directly into play, but they're more expensive. Fabricate makes us pay to cast the artifact, but often only costs a Myr Servitor and an Island. Once in a blue moon we can even use Tezzeret's ultimate to attack with a bunch of lands and Altars for a win.
Misc:
While somewhat underwhelming, Myr Servitor adequately fills a few roles here:
- Repeatable chump blocker
- Counts for Thoughtcast
- Counts for Whir of Invention
- Repeatable uses of Ashnod's Altar
- Plays for 1, sacrifices to Altar for 2
- Small amounts of mill with Altar of the Brood
- I was desperate to use the adorable Myr Servitor in something
The artifact lands count for Thoughtcast and Glint-Nest Crane, and can be used with all three of Tezzeret's abilities.
Evacuation and one Island are flex slots. The deck really needs a couple cards to interact with the opponent's board and stall, I just haven't found quite the right inexpensive card yet. For now Evacuation is flavorful (fleeing from the Altar of the Brood), often buys us two turns, and lets us reuse our Glint-Nest Cranes.
