I think if we are trying to just play an effective beater with good lategame potential, there's always Pride of the Clouds. It can punch for 3-4 in the air, while giving us insurance in the form of endless chump blockers in the mid-late if we haven't drawn another good payoff spell to dump mana into. This would mean taking damage from fetches/shocks, but I like the Bant Eldrazi method of dipping into painlands for Sea Gate Wreckage as a 1-of. It's the only cheap blue creature that can tap into Architect's ability while also playing decently on its own. I would try a full set of Judge's Familar and 3 Pride if I were going to yankee swap cards to replace a set of Masters as a spitball idea. I know it's going a bit deep, but it's a thought. Also makes a singleton Sky Hussar a thing if you just want a value critter for certain matchups.
I like a package of Trinket Mage + triple Aether Spellbomb. Gives us ways to fight creature based shells, bounces delve creatures after they heavily invest in them, and can always be a cheap cantrip if it doesn't give us the most effective lines game one (vs creatureless combo, control, etc)
Also, what are everyone's thoughts on Curiosity as a potential 1x-2x in the SB? It makes for a good trade-off when the opponent has to decide to kill either our Architects or a dinky flier that will eventually bury them in cards.
EDIT: o__o' I just realized Curiosity doesn't trigger from combat damage, but just any damage... wombo-combo with Walking Ballista. As an aside, I jammed Battlesphere in testing where Wurmcoil used to be, as tech against DS to help chump it an extra 4 times. See results in the screenshot below
Can someone help me rationalize the Master of Etherium tech? There are so many games I get him out and he only pumps one other card in play, while being a pretty mediocre 3CMC to show for it.
Hey Keenwa1, no worries man. I enjoy building crazy decks and refining them as much as any of us. I really think this one has potential to take off and do very, very well.
As for the Sages, I would try more but I actually only own one. I played it over the 4th bird the other night and it was pretty good. I suppose it would be a tad better with fetchlands? But I don't exactly want to spend the life if I don't have to. Not sure yet what's optimal. I did have one game where I kept a one-lander (21 total in deck), played Sage turn 1, and saw 4 none lands. That was... really bad lol.
I'm guessing the white splash has been good to you? It means we can't run Shackles, which i think is fine as we handle creature decks well anyways. Fragmentize seems real good. Unsure if I'd play Thalia over Thorn tho...
Hey Zac. We met briefly, I'm friends with Kid and happened across your table at Madness late 2015 while you were going through the motions with your Uw Emeria Midrange. You showed me a Tezzeretor brew afterward as well iirc
At any rate, I really like the shell you developed in the reddit post. I made a few changes based on my testing with Architect lists of the past, and so I figured I'd chime in with some results:
I'll admit I don't have too much reliable data for the changes but maybe spitballing can lead to some tech being found. I've been on Ghost Quarter + Darksteel Citadel as it helps to turn on the Inventors' Fair, shuffle away the chaffe from what Sage of Epityr reveals, gives you a land you can tutor with Trinket Mage if you need to curve out, and thins your deck to reduce dead draws later. They also open up the possibility to use repeating activations of Ghost Quarter against midrange/control if you land a Crucible out of the board.
I opted to play the Sword instead of Shackles as it gives protection from Death's Shadow and I felt the Shackles were redundant against creature decks where Ballista machine guns them down. It also nets cards that we dump to Copter and can help enable Ballista to go face and get thrown back into play to provide better reach. Goes well with our counterspell creatures for additional insurance against spells. In general I just felt it would mesh well as it gives us action and most of the creatures are anemic without Architect hitting the board. It also helps to give us the inevitability we seek with Academy Ruins without time walking ourselves.
Without Shackles, we can also explore additional land options that give us game if we go longer, and I thought it would be mostly helpful to play Abbey as another payoff option as the deck can sometimes fail to apply pressure. It's also nice vs sweepers or just a solid way to add to the board in a stalemate. As we usually try to go hellbent anyway, I figured Wreckage wouldn't hurt to shoehorn into the manabase. Inventors' Fair rounds it out and helps vs burn or as an additional tutor in a pinch for things Trinket Mage fails to find.
Out of the board, I felt Chalice would only hurt our own plan. I could be wrong in thinking that the Lodestones slow combo-oriented strategies enough as it is, but I would rather not have to deal with playing 12 dead 1CC critters if I'm using this at its usual Sunburst count.
I threw in Hibernation without much data in this shell because with my aggro-oriented Architect build, it was usually crucial vs Elves and other decks going wide.
Curiosity is there to help against decks that attrition. At worst, we attract the opponent's removal to the creatures which matter least and keep our important piece(s) out. At best, we can protect whatever carries it by taxing the opponent and using Spellskite as a vitamin, then efficiently drown them in cards to make up for all their 2-for-1s (sweepers, K Comm, etc) Being 1CC helps us hit the ground running early to prepare for the grind of the mid-to-late game.
It can definitely be wrong to leave out Wurmcoil from the main and Chalice from the side but I think these options add a lot of play that can help to push the boundaries of the deck to really capitalize more often when things simply don't fall into place. I'd like to hear what you make of the choices, or if you have any data to make an assertion about them one way or the other.
As an aside, I've been lowkey tweaking my aggro build to include some newer options. I want to see if I can do anything to hedge my weaker matchups, but I'm open to any C&C that involves keeping the shell intact
Jund and Mardu have usually given me a hard time (K Comm while picking apart my hand mostly) so I've come to the point that I know I can only bend my options so far before I play a completely different deck trying to not lose to them lol. Scrounger definitely helps build resiliency though, and hopefully I can jam some more games with Curiosity to see how well it can perform in spite of the combination of Bolt/Push or Path/Push (shrug)
VoodooKick, I honestly think that Lodestone Golem is a very important piece of this deck and could address the wrath issue that you brought up for your list. Keep in mind I don't play the aggro control lists that you are working off of, but rather the midrange Heartless Build so not all of my insight may translate.
In my experience Lodestone Golem has been a key piece of this deck. Yes it is a nonbo with several cards, but it slows down your opponent much more than it slows down you. And in the case where I get something like a Tezz stuck in my hand, I am happy to hold off playing it for a few turns while I have the stronger and more aggressive board state (depending on the matchup) and then dropping it as soon as I can pay the tax or Lodestone gets removed. Also notably, Lodestone is generally the card that wins me most of my games. Lodestone is also 1 of the ways I rely on for "interaction" with the opponent. You mentioned taxing the opponent by turn 3 to 4 which is exactly the point. Lodestone Golem taxes the combo players to push their win conditions back at least 1 turn while also applying pressure and threating to end the game quickly. Similarly, it is effective vs wrath effects because it does come down by turn 4 and pushes wraths back at least 1 turn while you continue to beat down.
I hope that gets across my thoughts on the Golem and I would be happy to pursue this further or any of your other questions (I think they are valid questions to ask) but I don't believe my lists to be similar enough to be very helpful on this thread.
I don't have any problems in a world where the Golems can be slammed one after the other unabated. By and large, multiples would be back breaking for a lot of your likely opponents. But Modern is no such place where I see this recurring line of plays, as people usually have an answer. Like I said before, if you mull to a low hand, and your enabler is shot down, how are you powering out numerous 4CMC cards? How do you fight through discard? You are spending 4 mana at a time compared to an opponent's Path to Exile at 1W and Ancient Grudge at 2R or 1G. It hardly seems like a favorable option when you look at the odds of being able to fight through all of the opposition's answers. Can you highlight a list that breaks him, instead of just featuring him in some Magical Christmas Land scenario?
EDIT: I thought it was a 5/4 before re-inspecting it...at 5/3 it is MILES worse against the field, where you're going to see plenty of Lightning Bolts answer it for 1R. Let's not forget Kolaghan's Command is a card, as well.
This sort of (surprisingly arrogant, condescendant and unwarranted) reply from a newcomer directed to someone who has been playing the deck for longer than you even knew chief enginneer existed does NOT deserve any other answer than this: you are not trying to help, you are not constructive, you will not take advices, you probably barely played the deck and your own deck is full of flaws (you should be able to see them since you know so much). Why are you even posting here?
I'm not willing to humor every off-the-wall card suggestion that anyone might pull out of a hat, as there are dozens of thousands of Magic cards in print. It's easier to deconstruct why the ones which are faulty are faulty to begin with.
That said, I am willing to talk about any potential flaws in my deck, and any suggested builds you might have. Discuss.
(Or are all you just here to stroke your ego, and can't stand to be called out when you need to be? Don't lie to yourself, I'm not here to knock anyone down a peg)
It feels like you're just naming random things to do with your deck. Yeah let's play cards, cards do things, things are good....
1) How does your deck do if you mulligan to a low hand size? Do all of your low impact cards provide returns in those scenarios?
2) How does your deck interact with the opponent and metagame at large? Are you thinking about what you will do to both advance your gameplan against an opponent while trying to defend yourself from their plan? Or do you defer to thinking of the opponent as a training dummy with no autonomy, so that there isn't a force which keeps your deck composition honest? Do you just want to see yourself doing sweet things without being able to envision ways an opponent can interrupt you?
3) Of your card choices, which can be intermingled in a sequence of draws to render your plan useless? (This should be close to 0)
4) What are you expecting to lose to most often, and what are you expecting to beat most often? If the former is a less prevalent archetype than the latter, how are you expecting to string along multiple wins in a tournament?
I could probably think of more deckbuilding mistakes and throw them your way in a series of probing rhetorical questions, but I'll leave with this: if you are going to suggest things, they should be effective. Solemn Simulacrum does 'things' against Wrath effects, why not play him instead of Filigree Familiar? So does Kitchen finks, while we're at it. Why not him? The key in both cases, as is with Filigree Familiar, is that youre devoting a lot for something that doesn't guarantee you victories. I'd rather play Sprouting Thrinax in this format to beat Wrath effects, would be sweet with Garruk. Also, Hangarback Walker is cold to Path, which is consistently one of the most played cards in Modern. Your anti-Wrath plan is not going to follow up to win you any games that weren't otherwise there for the taking anyway. Lodestone Golem is supposed to be taxing people if you do whatever you want, by turn three or four? That's when combo tries to win if it hasn't already. How are you beating them on your next turn if you're on the play? Is that idea spoiled by the slightest of spot removal?
I don't want to come off like a sarcastic misanthrope, but I want to emphasize that unless you crack down on the flaws in your reasons for playing cards, you will not see much success in piloting a deck other than with the flavor of your card choices. The most egregious of the aforementioned flaws is that you don't seem to be concerned with all the scenarios in which your card choices become useless, you seem too fixed on potential situations where they are actually useful. This is the mark of someone hoping for a certain draw, when in Magic you should be able to operate on most of what you're given.
Lodestone Golem is a non-bo with all of your non-artifact blue creatures: Glint-Nest Crane, Chief Engineer, Grand Architect
I've been coming close to the lists floating in this thread as a budget challenge, but here lately I've dipped into a deck idea that is very much non-budget. Has excellent matchups across the board save for Jund and Grixis where I feel like K.Comm is just a house. Will probably jam this at GP Dallas if I can manage to borrow the missing pieces:
Jamming all the fatties is the best way to go since the deck doesn't do anything as broken as Tron or CoCo in the lategame
Lupine Prototype is a fatty as well as Myr Superion, and to lend our deck design to its drawbacks, we need to be able to play everything we draw
This means an aggressive shell, which has diverse lines compared to what the metagame expects
Burn, Infect, Bogles, and a few other lists can be shut down with Chalice while we run circles around them
Crane and Tezzy can help us keep up with cards. I tried every splash, and it was apparent an anti-Wrath effect or contingency was needed. Tezzeret, Collected Company, and Blood Moon were prime contenders. Tezzeret turns our lame draws into gas while also being a very fast and threatening option himself.
The sideboard is very much a prototype, and there needs to be yet more work done to discern whether any dead cards exist in the 75, and then to replace them with better options
Any C&C welcome! will fill in more on the deck design later
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I like a package of Trinket Mage + triple Aether Spellbomb. Gives us ways to fight creature based shells, bounces delve creatures after they heavily invest in them, and can always be a cheap cantrip if it doesn't give us the most effective lines game one (vs creatureless combo, control, etc)
Also, what are everyone's thoughts on Curiosity as a potential 1x-2x in the SB? It makes for a good trade-off when the opponent has to decide to kill either our Architects or a dinky flier that will eventually bury them in cards.
EDIT: o__o' I just realized Curiosity doesn't trigger from combat damage, but just any damage... wombo-combo with Walking Ballista. As an aside, I jammed Battlesphere in testing where Wurmcoil used to be, as tech against DS to help chump it an extra 4 times. See results in the screenshot below
First draft of the list:
3 Judge's Familiar
4 Chief Engineer
4 Etherium Sculptor
4 Grand Architect
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Walking Ballista
1 Trinket Mage
1 Myr Battlesphere
3 Aether Spellbomb
2 Throne of the God-Pharaoh
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Academy Ruins
16 Island
1 Aethersphere Harvester
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinket Mage
2 Curiosity
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Dismember
1 Unified Will
Hey Zac. We met briefly, I'm friends with Kid and happened across your table at Madness late 2015 while you were going through the motions with your Uw Emeria Midrange. You showed me a Tezzeretor brew afterward as well iirc
At any rate, I really like the shell you developed in the reddit post. I made a few changes based on my testing with Architect lists of the past, and so I figured I'd chime in with some results:
4 Grand Architect
4 Judge's Familiar
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Sage of Epityr
3 Trinket Mage
4 Walking Ballista
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
1 Westvale Abbey
11 Island
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spellskite
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Curiosity
2 Hibernation
2 Unified Will
I'll admit I don't have too much reliable data for the changes but maybe spitballing can lead to some tech being found. I've been on Ghost Quarter + Darksteel Citadel as it helps to turn on the Inventors' Fair, shuffle away the chaffe from what Sage of Epityr reveals, gives you a land you can tutor with Trinket Mage if you need to curve out, and thins your deck to reduce dead draws later. They also open up the possibility to use repeating activations of Ghost Quarter against midrange/control if you land a Crucible out of the board.
I opted to play the Sword instead of Shackles as it gives protection from Death's Shadow and I felt the Shackles were redundant against creature decks where Ballista machine guns them down. It also nets cards that we dump to Copter and can help enable Ballista to go face and get thrown back into play to provide better reach. Goes well with our counterspell creatures for additional insurance against spells. In general I just felt it would mesh well as it gives us action and most of the creatures are anemic without Architect hitting the board. It also helps to give us the inevitability we seek with Academy Ruins without time walking ourselves.
Without Shackles, we can also explore additional land options that give us game if we go longer, and I thought it would be mostly helpful to play Abbey as another payoff option as the deck can sometimes fail to apply pressure. It's also nice vs sweepers or just a solid way to add to the board in a stalemate. As we usually try to go hellbent anyway, I figured Wreckage wouldn't hurt to shoehorn into the manabase. Inventors' Fair rounds it out and helps vs burn or as an additional tutor in a pinch for things Trinket Mage fails to find.
Out of the board, I felt Chalice would only hurt our own plan. I could be wrong in thinking that the Lodestones slow combo-oriented strategies enough as it is, but I would rather not have to deal with playing 12 dead 1CC critters if I'm using this at its usual Sunburst count.
I threw in Hibernation without much data in this shell because with my aggro-oriented Architect build, it was usually crucial vs Elves and other decks going wide.
Curiosity is there to help against decks that attrition. At worst, we attract the opponent's removal to the creatures which matter least and keep our important piece(s) out. At best, we can protect whatever carries it by taxing the opponent and using Spellskite as a vitamin, then efficiently drown them in cards to make up for all their 2-for-1s (sweepers, K Comm, etc) Being 1CC helps us hit the ground running early to prepare for the grind of the mid-to-late game.
It can definitely be wrong to leave out Wurmcoil from the main and Chalice from the side but I think these options add a lot of play that can help to push the boundaries of the deck to really capitalize more often when things simply don't fall into place. I'd like to hear what you make of the choices, or if you have any data to make an assertion about them one way or the other.
As an aside, I've been lowkey tweaking my aggro build to include some newer options. I want to see if I can do anything to hedge my weaker matchups, but I'm open to any C&C that involves keeping the shell intact
4 Chief Engineer
4 Grand Architect
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
4 Myr Superion
4 Lupine Prototype
4 Glint-Nest Crane
4 Smuggler's Copter
4 Aether Spellbomb
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Underground River
4 Island
1 Swamp
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
3 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Pithing Needle
2 Curiosity
2 Warping Wail
1 Unsubstantiate
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Trinisphere
Jund and Mardu have usually given me a hard time (K Comm while picking apart my hand mostly) so I've come to the point that I know I can only bend my options so far before I play a completely different deck trying to not lose to them lol. Scrounger definitely helps build resiliency though, and hopefully I can jam some more games with Curiosity to see how well it can perform in spite of the combination of Bolt/Push or Path/Push (shrug)
I don't have any problems in a world where the Golems can be slammed one after the other unabated. By and large, multiples would be back breaking for a lot of your likely opponents. But Modern is no such place where I see this recurring line of plays, as people usually have an answer. Like I said before, if you mull to a low hand, and your enabler is shot down, how are you powering out numerous 4CMC cards? How do you fight through discard? You are spending 4 mana at a time compared to an opponent's Path to Exile at 1W and Ancient Grudge at 2R or 1G. It hardly seems like a favorable option when you look at the odds of being able to fight through all of the opposition's answers. Can you highlight a list that breaks him, instead of just featuring him in some Magical Christmas Land scenario?
EDIT: I thought it was a 5/4 before re-inspecting it...at 5/3 it is MILES worse against the field, where you're going to see plenty of Lightning Bolts answer it for 1R. Let's not forget Kolaghan's Command is a card, as well.
I'm not willing to humor every off-the-wall card suggestion that anyone might pull out of a hat, as there are dozens of thousands of Magic cards in print. It's easier to deconstruct why the ones which are faulty are faulty to begin with.
That said, I am willing to talk about any potential flaws in my deck, and any suggested builds you might have. Discuss.
(Or are all you just here to stroke your ego, and can't stand to be called out when you need to be? Don't lie to yourself, I'm not here to knock anyone down a peg)
1) How does your deck do if you mulligan to a low hand size? Do all of your low impact cards provide returns in those scenarios?
2) How does your deck interact with the opponent and metagame at large? Are you thinking about what you will do to both advance your gameplan against an opponent while trying to defend yourself from their plan? Or do you defer to thinking of the opponent as a training dummy with no autonomy, so that there isn't a force which keeps your deck composition honest? Do you just want to see yourself doing sweet things without being able to envision ways an opponent can interrupt you?
3) Of your card choices, which can be intermingled in a sequence of draws to render your plan useless? (This should be close to 0)
4) What are you expecting to lose to most often, and what are you expecting to beat most often? If the former is a less prevalent archetype than the latter, how are you expecting to string along multiple wins in a tournament?
I could probably think of more deckbuilding mistakes and throw them your way in a series of probing rhetorical questions, but I'll leave with this: if you are going to suggest things, they should be effective. Solemn Simulacrum does 'things' against Wrath effects, why not play him instead of Filigree Familiar? So does Kitchen finks, while we're at it. Why not him? The key in both cases, as is with Filigree Familiar, is that youre devoting a lot for something that doesn't guarantee you victories. I'd rather play Sprouting Thrinax in this format to beat Wrath effects, would be sweet with Garruk. Also, Hangarback Walker is cold to Path, which is consistently one of the most played cards in Modern. Your anti-Wrath plan is not going to follow up to win you any games that weren't otherwise there for the taking anyway. Lodestone Golem is supposed to be taxing people if you do whatever you want, by turn three or four? That's when combo tries to win if it hasn't already. How are you beating them on your next turn if you're on the play? Is that idea spoiled by the slightest of spot removal?
I don't want to come off like a sarcastic misanthrope, but I want to emphasize that unless you crack down on the flaws in your reasons for playing cards, you will not see much success in piloting a deck other than with the flavor of your card choices. The most egregious of the aforementioned flaws is that you don't seem to be concerned with all the scenarios in which your card choices become useless, you seem too fixed on potential situations where they are actually useful. This is the mark of someone hoping for a certain draw, when in Magic you should be able to operate on most of what you're given.
I've been coming close to the lists floating in this thread as a budget challenge, but here lately I've dipped into a deck idea that is very much non-budget. Has excellent matchups across the board save for Jund and Grixis where I feel like K.Comm is just a house. Will probably jam this at GP Dallas if I can manage to borrow the missing pieces:
4x Etherium Sculptor
4x Glint-Nest Crane
4x Myr Superion
4x Lupine Prototype
4x Grand Architect
3x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Spellskite
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Smuggler's Copter
2x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4x Darksteel Citadel
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Underground River
5x Island
2x Ghost Quarter
1x Swamp
1x Sea Gate Wreckage
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Spellskite
3x Thoughtseize
2x Warping Wail
2x Echoing Truth
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Pithing Needle
Playing with the deck leads to a few discoveries:
Jamming all the fatties is the best way to go since the deck doesn't do anything as broken as Tron or CoCo in the lategame
Lupine Prototype is a fatty as well as Myr Superion, and to lend our deck design to its drawbacks, we need to be able to play everything we draw
This means an aggressive shell, which has diverse lines compared to what the metagame expects
Burn, Infect, Bogles, and a few other lists can be shut down with Chalice while we run circles around them
Crane and Tezzy can help us keep up with cards. I tried every splash, and it was apparent an anti-Wrath effect or contingency was needed. Tezzeret, Collected Company, and Blood Moon were prime contenders. Tezzeret turns our lame draws into gas while also being a very fast and threatening option himself.
The sideboard is very much a prototype, and there needs to be yet more work done to discern whether any dead cards exist in the 75, and then to replace them with better options
Any C&C welcome! will fill in more on the deck design later