pie chart

The Machine is Turning Me

Commander / EDH Artifact Bracket 3 RGWU Sacrifice Tokens

boba2989

Upvote 0
0

Artifact (30)

Sorcery (4)

Creature (26)

Enchantment (4)

Planeswalker (1)

Instant (1)

Commanders (2)

Commander: foil Akiri, Line-Slinger
Commander: foil Thrasios, Triton Hero

Land (32)

Deck concept: the deck is a personal passion project, built out of my fascination with the Krark-Clan Ironworks lists that more or less dominated Modern back in 2018. At its core, it aims to replicate the Scrap Trawler-enabled Myr Retriever loops within the confinements of a singleton format.

Restrictions: none, currently, although I wanted to build a deck tha could feel as proactive as possible, so there is a fundamental lack of interaction in the list – e.g.: removal, Counterspell effects…

Strengths and weaknesses: under the right circumstances, the deck can be extremely fast and explosive. Dropping an early Krark-Clan Ironworks provides a huge burst of colourless Mana, which can be converted into more artifacts, that in turn can be sacrificed to Krark-Clan Ironworks, and so on. This explosiveness comes at the cost of turning the entire list into a huge glass cannon: an early Stony Silence essentially shuts off the majority of the deck’s combos and synergies, while an overloaded Vandalblast can take out the majority of the list’s nonland permanents.

How to play the deck: the typical play pattern for the deck focuses on simply dropping the bulk of the list’s cheap artifacts on the board during the first few turns of the game. Cycling through Chromatic Star and Chromatic Sphere, drawing cards off of Vedalken Archmage and Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain should result in at least one or two tutors becoming available as soon as possible. These can be used to complete the assembly of the Krark-Clan Ironworks engine, resulting in either infinite Mana, infinite tokens or, at the very least, infinite artifacts looping between the battlefield and the graveyard. Closing the game becomes a matter of finding the remaining piece of the puzzle.

Key cards and notable interactions: Krark-Clan Ironworks works best with at least two loopers: Myr Retriever, Junk Diver and Workshop Assistant continuously disentomb each other, ensuring a constant flow of artifacts to be fed to the engine. Adding at least one cost reducer in the form of Enthusiastic Mechanaut, Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, Stenn, Paranoid Partisan or Voyager Quickwelder guarantees the loop to be Mana positive and will result in infinite colourless Mana. The same result can be achieved with either Scrap Trawler and any other one-Mana artifact, or with at least one artifact token creator, such as Sai, Master Thopterist, Mirrodin Besieged or Forensic Gadgeteer. Infinite Mana can be turned into infinite number of Thrasios, Triton Hero’s ability activations, drawing the entire deck and putting all Lands on the battlefield. Closing the game out might require a HYDRA Assault Robot or, if infinite artifacts tokens are being created as part of the loop, a Ghirapur AEther Grid. The latter also works wonders with Smothering Tithe, basically weaponizing Treasure tokens. Akiri, Line-Slinger *f-etch* serves as either an alternative Voltron finisher or a cheap deterrent, discouraging opponents from attacking you during the first turns of the game. Shadowspear is essentially a jack of all trades: either an impactful equipment to suit Akiri, Line-Slinger *f-etch* up with, or a one-Mana artifact to loop with Krark-Clan Ironworks.

Evolving the deck: as things stand, the entire Krark-Clan Ironworks engine is at the mercy of your opponents’ removals. Fortunately, many of the engine’s key components natively get back artifacts from your graveyard. That been said, even cards like Return to Dust or Farewell can really hurt your gameplan, especially if Krark-Clan Ironworks isn’t already out to eat up your artifacts in response and prevent them from being exiled. Therefore, increasing the power level of the deck can be achieved by including more pieces of interaction in the list, especially in the form of free Counterspell effects that can protect key combo pieces. It gets quite tricky, as you still need a critical mass of artifacts for the engine to work, but a fairly standard Force of Will, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation and Fierce Guardianship would probably be very welcome, should you want to push the deck’s power level upwards. With that mindset, you may want to switch to a more competitive Commander, such as Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain or Urza, Lord High Artificer, for a more traditional artifact storm strategy. Should you instead want to power the deck down, removing tutors is probably the safest route.

Origin of the deck's name: a verse from "Wax Wings" by Periphery.

Last updated: September 11th, 2026.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment