I think that you should include one copy of Pili-pala and some Fabricates. They would give you some more toolboxy feel to the deck and have an infinat combo. There must be something that you could be doing with all of that mana as well.
I think that paying multiple Myr Battlespheres is the way to go because of the convoke. They will be better in the long run compared to a Wurmcoil and sorts. By dropping two you can essentially 1-2 shot the opponent.
Another card that has been brought up in every Grand Archatect thread ever is Myr Superion. This deck is oozing with ways to cast it so I felt that it would be worth mentioning.
Like I said, Pili is really bad here. Sure, the one of might work, but we're devoting at least 5, if not more, to a combo that doesn't really synergize with the rest of our deck. As for being "toolboxy", what tools do you plan on including that'd make it worth it?
I'm all for including Myr Battlesphere but I don't think it's better than Wurmcoil. Just like this deck, Urzatron decks have access to 7 mana turn 3 but they play Wurmcoil over Battlesphere. Imagine why that might be. Overall, Wurmcoil is far better value than the sphere. Also, our 7 mana is pretty unreliable since it's coming from creatures and there is a plethera of ways they can die. The faster and more reliably we can play things, the better.
Superion might be worth playing now that we have a second reliable way to cast it.
Back during Scars-Innistrad standard a friend of mine had a Grand Architect "mill" deck which ran the proverbial T3 Grand Architect into Wurmcoil Engine plus Trepanation Blade + SoB&M for extra hurt (Invisible Stalker is still broken btw).
I think keeping it rather conservative is the way to go. I really want to go T2 Chief Engineer into Myr Superion but it's just not good enough for Modern... but this might be:
Vedalken Certarch is on-theme, but maybe something as lowly as Kraken Hatchling is all the deck needs to slow down the boardstate. I like the Light & Shadow here as it recurs Grand Architect or Chief Engineer for the long game and weenie beat down is always an option. Don't need the full 8x Fetches for just Sage of Epityr, but might go to 8x if I want to splash White or Black for sideboard tech. It's possible Phyrexian Metamorph deserves a slot or two, but I think more fat and more card draw (Thirst) comes before that.
I like this list quite a bit. Also, I'd play Judge's Familiar over Certarch simply because Metalcraft is unreliable and a free counterspell can help out in a pinch. In fact, we can tap the bird for mana to cast something, and still use it for counter backup.
Kraken hatchling is my play in my casual deck it replaced the Certarch, but having early blockers isn't really out biggest concern, I'd prefer the judge's familar.
I am finding it hard to not want to play Kira, great glass-spinner and Master of waves just so many tokens for dumping in artifacts, but at that point I am basically playing an aggro deck.
For counterspells I'd want to use mana leak, remand seems ok but I don't think we are aggressive enough, swan song actually seems like great tech.. we can counter our own spells for a blue bird. just realised we don't have an enchantments instants or sorceries haha
Meloku the clouded mirror... this seems.. interesting.... blue tokens deck? mill with Hedron crab? I am probably too deep now... so many options so little space in the deck.
Sure, Kira and MoW are cool, but they're a little too slow for Modern unless we're playing control or using MoW as a finisher. Also, if we did play them for their tokens, what would we use all that mana for. If we're running giant artifacts in our deck, I'm afraid that they'll be dead unless we get a good MoW cast off.
Might as well play tron to have a second way of getting big mana.
I've tried to play test this and I'm not a big fan. Often times you get mana screwed with 1 island and 2 of the Urza lands on the board and you can't play your Grand Architect. I feel like throwing in the Urza lands splits our strategy instead of synergizing. If you were really keen on playing it, I'd maybe only run 2 of each land max and really focus on Expedition Map and recursion to tutor them all out. Even then I fell like it's pretty weak. However, the Mindslaver lock feels like a solid finisher, especially when we're running a bunch of creatures that can hit them turn after turn.
I think Hearless Summoning is something I'd like to avoid for its drawback cost, but get some extra mana with Talisman of Dominance instead. Pili-Pala is defenitely something to include, since it's cheap and adds an option of infinite mana combo. I would also consider running a more expensive finisher - Ulamog.
Like I said in the OP, Pili-Pala just doesn't seem good enough to include. At best, it's an infinite mana engine that needs another card as a wincon. At worst, Pili is a completely dead draw. If we don't devote entirely to the combo, it's not worth running. However, the combo itself is pretty weak. Sure, it can win by turn 3, but that's if you have perfect mana and all the card you need. Pili is difficult to tutor for at 2 mana, Grand Architect can't be tutored for, it needs three cards to win, and there are only 4 of each combo piece in the deck (unlike Twin which runs 8 of each piece). You're devoting a lot of slots to a subpar combo if you run Pili. Heartless Summoning might look bad with it's -1/-1, but what 1/1s are you going to run that it effects? The only real downsides are that you don't really want more than 1, so any extras you draw are dead. And it's not really worth splashing an entire other color for. However, it does give you access to the Myr Retriever combo for infinite storm/graveyard triggers, which is cool. While it's a 4 card combo, all of its pieces aren't really ever dead. Myr Retrievers synergize pretty well as we can play Grand Architect turn 3 and retrieve a killed Etherium Sculptor or other artifact later in the game (like Wurmcoil Engine for more shenanigans). Heartless acts as Grand Architects 5-8. And the kill part of the combo is either Falkenrath Noble, who is an ok creature, or Bitter Ordeal/Grapeshot, which are arguably dead but can shine in certain matchups like Storm or Pod. Talisman doesn't really seem that great here, and like I said in the OP, Chief Engineer makes a perfect replacement for Heartless, though we do drop the combo (which we really didn't care too much about, but it's nice we had the option). Ulamog might seem like a good finisher, but he's too expensive to realistically consider. Our goal should be the 5-7 CMC finishers that we can hit on our explosive turn 3. If we wait longer than that, we run the risk of having all our creature ramp die to Anger of the Gods, Supreme Verdict, Damnation, and Wrath of God, among other things. Plus, we have great finishers in the forms of Wurmcoil Engine, Batterskull, Steel Hellkite, Mindslaver, Myr Battlesphere, and Platinum Angel.
I feel like it's a bit too weak to removal and boardwipes as well as the late game. However, it might not be a bad idea to run Cavern of Souls since we're running 3 different Veldalkens in blue and most everything else is colorless.
Totally forgot about Battlesphere till you mentioned it. This is a brutal turn 3 that can be played even if you swap Chief Engineer and Grand Architect. Thanks for mentioning it.
In fact the only in-theme playable creature for this deck is Vedalken Certarch, altough pretty weaksauce taken alone. Anyways, he is indeed necessary to enable quick chains off Engineer to cast a cmc 2 artifact on turn two and to be used with Grand Architect on turn three to generate 6-7 mana for a fat artifact.
The 2-cmc artifact choices are either Talismans and/or Spellskite or Lightning Greaves. The latter is best suited for versions that attempt to top with Treasure Mage for Platinum Angel. An equipped Angel is hard to deal with, or at least requires most of the upper tier decks to lose serious amount of tempo and going through loops to get rid of it (think of Affinity who has no outs to such a situation unless you attack into a pumped flying blocker). If you add Spellskite to the equation, it gets nearly impossible to all this in time before you usually reach the Mindslaver point.
Topping with artifact fatties naturally calls Solemn Simulacrum too. The Grand Architect part meanwhile calls Phyrexian Metamorph who is your cmc3 blue artifact of choice that gets really better with both Architect and Etherium Sculptor, as well as being able to provide value like copying a Wurmcoil Engine, a Simulacrum, and a Platinum Angel if needed.
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The true problem of the deck lies in the setup.
All Vedalkens are pretty bad alone and they walk straight into Bolts and Anger of the Gods (an additional reason to play Spellskite and drop budget hopes :D). This deck needs ways to keep up the card advantage after a sweeper but the mana that the Vedalkens are able to produce puts constraints on which cards to pick.
If you want to push the deck into a more tribal-esque approach (and minimize the Treasure Mage plan), then yes, Brass Herald is a fine choice.
Six is the perfect cost to be played off Grand Architect and friends. The problem is that to maximize his Ringleader ability, you have pretty much to clog your deck with creatures the most possible and nothing else. This can give problems post-board. You don't have enough inner synergies and tribal punch to justify going exclusively Vedalken/Artificers, in my opinion. Take a look:
Vedalken Certarch;
Etherium Sculptor;
Chief Engineer;
Grand Architect.
That's 16 given you are playing the full set of each. There is Faerie mechanist for the cmc4 Artificer slot, but I found it a risky card and I'd try to avoid wiffing.
There is Vedalken Engineer on the cmc 2 spot, but it does what Chief Engineer does in a worse way (Engineer is indeed an upgrade of that Mirrodin card imo).
The blueprint of a tribal Artificer/Wiz/Vedalken list should be:
But this list is definitely too fair and doesn't do anything impressive. I'd rather eschew the tribal theme and try to go for Treasure Mage.
As you see, there are several choices to be made when considering which cards would enable the most consistent/explosive lines for a possible version of the deck.
I like them printing things to revive the Mirrodin nostalgia, the doubt I'm having is the resulting deck would be a worse version of Pod (midrange creature-based deck with synergies ending in a combo) that sucks hard from red sweepers, fast aggro decks and Twin (i.e. most of the format).
Btw: Treasure Mage is a Human Wizard. This creates tension with Vedalken Artificers when going for the tribal approach.
EDIT: After having seen that cmc 1 + cmc 2 + cmc 3 produces 7 mana with Sculptor, I'm sure that the main win-condition of choice should be Plat Angel indeed with the setup described above. Plat Angel protected only folds to Wrath of God and post-side Shatterstorm/Grudge. We might as well try to maximize that plan.
You bring up a lot of good points. I like the Platinum Angel plan, so I'll look into that for sure. However, if we go for the Plat Angel plan, I think it's less important to have the turn 1 creature out as we can't have Lightning Grieves and Platinum Angel on the board by turn 3 without leaving ourselves open to attack and tapped out or in a position where Lightning Grieves isn't important enough to be out on turn 3.
Anyway, thanks for all the input, I plan on updating the OP really soon. Between work and general business, I wasn't able to add as much as I'd have liked to the OP when I first wrote it.
You're missing one very important thing: 1-drop creatures.
With 1-drops, you can lead T1 land, 1-drop; T2 land, Chief; T3 land, some big threat. Total: 5 mana. Maybe even sneak in Sculptor on T2, for 7 mana on T3.
Without 1-drops? T1 land; T2 land, Chief; T3 land. That only gives you 4 mana to work with on T3. Chief is no better than a Signet or Talisman in this case.
Addressing that, what turn one creatures are worth playing? If you're playing Grand Architect as a main component, ideally you'd want them to be blue. Judge's Familiar seems good, but I'm assuming you'd want at least one other 1 drop to reliably have them in turn 1.
Since it was spoiled, Grand Architect has ticked artificer's imaginations with grand schemes of cheating huge artifacts into play. People have tried many things to try to tap his potential but we've seen little success. The problem isn't Grand Architect itself, it's inconsistency in drawing him early enough to be useful. People have tried finding cards with similar effects to help fill spots 5-8 with cards like Etherium Sculptor and Heartless Summoning, but it's not quite there. However, the announcement of Chief Engineer in M15 might fill those slots well enough to compete against Tier 1 decks.
When Grand Architect was first legal in Standard, players saw potential to play a Wurmcoil Engine as early as turn 3 provided they could play a creature every turn, but definitely on turn 4. Treasure Mage also contributed to the deck by not only searching out cards we can cheat in, but also helping to contribute mana. Unfortunately, the deck didn't see much success as the meta was CawBlade. During the Innastrad block Grand Architect resurfaced slightly when players noticed the similarity in effects that Heartless Summoning had. Again, it was not meant to be and the deck didn't see major success. With the creation of Modern, Grand Architect has been given new life. Immediately players tried to break the combo between Grand Architect and Pili-Pala, however it proved to be slightly too weak for the highly competitive environment that Modern has become. Players have returned to the old strategies of cheating in Wurmcoil Engines. Additionally, many players run Lodestone Golem to get farther ahead.
Like I said, Pili is really bad here. Sure, the one of might work, but we're devoting at least 5, if not more, to a combo that doesn't really synergize with the rest of our deck. As for being "toolboxy", what tools do you plan on including that'd make it worth it?
I'm all for including Myr Battlesphere but I don't think it's better than Wurmcoil. Just like this deck, Urzatron decks have access to 7 mana turn 3 but they play Wurmcoil over Battlesphere. Imagine why that might be. Overall, Wurmcoil is far better value than the sphere. Also, our 7 mana is pretty unreliable since it's coming from creatures and there is a plethera of ways they can die. The faster and more reliably we can play things, the better.
Superion might be worth playing now that we have a second reliable way to cast it.
I like this list quite a bit. Also, I'd play Judge's Familiar over Certarch simply because Metalcraft is unreliable and a free counterspell can help out in a pinch. In fact, we can tap the bird for mana to cast something, and still use it for counter backup.
Sure, Kira and MoW are cool, but they're a little too slow for Modern unless we're playing control or using MoW as a finisher. Also, if we did play them for their tokens, what would we use all that mana for. If we're running giant artifacts in our deck, I'm afraid that they'll be dead unless we get a good MoW cast off.
Remand is better than Mana Leak in most situations.
I've tried to play test this and I'm not a big fan. Often times you get mana screwed with 1 island and 2 of the Urza lands on the board and you can't play your Grand Architect. I feel like throwing in the Urza lands splits our strategy instead of synergizing. If you were really keen on playing it, I'd maybe only run 2 of each land max and really focus on Expedition Map and recursion to tutor them all out. Even then I fell like it's pretty weak. However, the Mindslaver lock feels like a solid finisher, especially when we're running a bunch of creatures that can hit them turn after turn.
Like I said in the OP, Pili-Pala just doesn't seem good enough to include. At best, it's an infinite mana engine that needs another card as a wincon. At worst, Pili is a completely dead draw. If we don't devote entirely to the combo, it's not worth running. However, the combo itself is pretty weak. Sure, it can win by turn 3, but that's if you have perfect mana and all the card you need. Pili is difficult to tutor for at 2 mana, Grand Architect can't be tutored for, it needs three cards to win, and there are only 4 of each combo piece in the deck (unlike Twin which runs 8 of each piece). You're devoting a lot of slots to a subpar combo if you run Pili. Heartless Summoning might look bad with it's -1/-1, but what 1/1s are you going to run that it effects? The only real downsides are that you don't really want more than 1, so any extras you draw are dead. And it's not really worth splashing an entire other color for. However, it does give you access to the Myr Retriever combo for infinite storm/graveyard triggers, which is cool. While it's a 4 card combo, all of its pieces aren't really ever dead. Myr Retrievers synergize pretty well as we can play Grand Architect turn 3 and retrieve a killed Etherium Sculptor or other artifact later in the game (like Wurmcoil Engine for more shenanigans). Heartless acts as Grand Architects 5-8. And the kill part of the combo is either Falkenrath Noble, who is an ok creature, or Bitter Ordeal/Grapeshot, which are arguably dead but can shine in certain matchups like Storm or Pod. Talisman doesn't really seem that great here, and like I said in the OP, Chief Engineer makes a perfect replacement for Heartless, though we do drop the combo (which we really didn't care too much about, but it's nice we had the option). Ulamog might seem like a good finisher, but he's too expensive to realistically consider. Our goal should be the 5-7 CMC finishers that we can hit on our explosive turn 3. If we wait longer than that, we run the risk of having all our creature ramp die to Anger of the Gods, Supreme Verdict, Damnation, and Wrath of God, among other things. Plus, we have great finishers in the forms of Wurmcoil Engine, Batterskull, Steel Hellkite, Mindslaver, Myr Battlesphere, and Platinum Angel.
I feel like it's a bit too weak to removal and boardwipes as well as the late game. However, it might not be a bad idea to run Cavern of Souls since we're running 3 different Veldalkens in blue and most everything else is colorless.
Haha thanks for the info. Though often times looking into things like this are useless, sometimes you find some sweet gems. Keep it up!
Totally forgot about Battlesphere till you mentioned it. This is a brutal turn 3 that can be played even if you swap Chief Engineer and Grand Architect. Thanks for mentioning it.
You bring up a lot of good points. I like the Platinum Angel plan, so I'll look into that for sure. However, if we go for the Plat Angel plan, I think it's less important to have the turn 1 creature out as we can't have Lightning Grieves and Platinum Angel on the board by turn 3 without leaving ourselves open to attack and tapped out or in a position where Lightning Grieves isn't important enough to be out on turn 3.
Anyway, thanks for all the input, I plan on updating the OP really soon. Between work and general business, I wasn't able to add as much as I'd have liked to the OP when I first wrote it.
One final thought, how do you guys feel about Trading Post? It synergizes well with Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere, and Solemn Simulacrum and is rarely dead, especially with the amount of mana at our disposal.
Addressing that, what turn one creatures are worth playing? If you're playing Grand Architect as a main component, ideally you'd want them to be blue. Judge's Familiar seems good, but I'm assuming you'd want at least one other 1 drop to reliably have them in turn 1.
Grand Architect best curve:
T1 land, creature; T2 land, Etherium Sculptor; T3 land, Grand Architect, 7 CMC artifact
Chief Engineer best curve:
T1 land, creature; T2 land, Chief Engineer, Etherium Sculptor; T3 land, 7 CMC artifact
Either way, way you can still get about 6 mana turn 3, even if you swap the Sculptor for any other creature, which is great for us.
Since it was spoiled, Grand Architect has ticked artificer's imaginations with grand schemes of cheating huge artifacts into play. People have tried many things to try to tap his potential but we've seen little success. The problem isn't Grand Architect itself, it's inconsistency in drawing him early enough to be useful. People have tried finding cards with similar effects to help fill spots 5-8 with cards like Etherium Sculptor and Heartless Summoning, but it's not quite there. However, the announcement of Chief Engineer in M15 might fill those slots well enough to compete against Tier 1 decks.
When Grand Architect was first legal in Standard, players saw potential to play a Wurmcoil Engine as early as turn 3 provided they could play a creature every turn, but definitely on turn 4. Treasure Mage also contributed to the deck by not only searching out cards we can cheat in, but also helping to contribute mana. Unfortunately, the deck didn't see much success as the meta was CawBlade. During the Innastrad block Grand Architect resurfaced slightly when players noticed the similarity in effects that Heartless Summoning had. Again, it was not meant to be and the deck didn't see major success. With the creation of Modern, Grand Architect has been given new life. Immediately players tried to break the combo between Grand Architect and Pili-Pala, however it proved to be slightly too weak for the highly competitive environment that Modern has become. Players have returned to the old strategies of cheating in Wurmcoil Engines. Additionally, many players run Lodestone Golem to get farther ahead.
1 Duplicant
2 Etherium Sculptor
4 Grand Architect
4 Lodestone Golem
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
2 Solemn Simulacrum
2 Spellskite
1 Steel Hellkite
4 Treasure Mage
2 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Heartless Summoning
4 Serum Visions
1 Staff of Nin
2 Thoughtseize
LAND
1 Academy Ruins
4 Darkslick Shores
8 Island
2 Phyrexia's Core
4 Underground River
4 Watery Grave
More updates to come along with a list including Chief Architect.