I agree about Throne. It is so much fun and has stolen me a lot of games since I started incorporating it into the deck. I'm glad you are having similar results.
No, I have not tested Walking Ballista yet and that is only because I haven't bought them. I believe you 100% that it is really good in the deck and thinking it through, it should be a much better Molten-Tail Masticore. They each cost 8 mana to play/shoot the opponent for 4 damage and so it could finish off Death's Shadow decks just as well but Ballista is much more flexible than Masticore, you don't have to discard anything to it, and it is fetchable with Trinket Mage which I play in the sideboard. The only downside is that it is generally a smaller body and doesn't have the regenerate ability that turns Masticore into a wall. I really probably should pick up a playset of them.
on Glint-Nest Crane
Yes, i have the crane in past build, but argh, its other card i mixed feelings. Ate the same time she's fast and give Tezz mimic, how many time i do it and see engines go to bottom and slowing me down... then i lost faith in crane.
I would advise against this kind of thinking. The cards that you send to the bottom with Crane are not cards or knowledge that you had access to. So it does not influence your playing. It might feel bad, but try to only focus on the fact that you got a blue flyer and also drew an artifact card.
On Solemn Simulacrum vs Lodestone Golem
Maybe i felt like you in this case, i guess i was much depressed for lost my Golem and/or stuck pieces in hand that i wanted to find somo alternatives, i love Golem, as the same time he win games for me, he lost for the tax .. idk ... only bad day, it will be ? I tried Sokemn because in the Team Unified here, my friend played with golem them i trade to teste and do well, ill return golem and make more games (i play only paper then my play day will week delay)
It is true that you do get stuck with cards like Tezz in your hand when playing Lodestone. But being the player with the tax effects comes with an advantage. We get to have a 5/3 creature in play that is slowing the opponent down. At this point, either we kill them with it, or they spend a lot of resources killing it and then we play Tezz the next turn and continue to be ahead in the game.
IDK if you noticed my post above your, i guess we need some destroys in ur build, like sad, i played with this guy, left him with 2 life, then come virtude, lifelinks and the game changed, baaad, what we can do with it ? we dont have board interations then i guess we need something on this, do not you think?
Some points maybe we need to consider, we need evasive creatures maybe
when i ran Solemn Simulacrum to ramp, i try Sphinx of Uthuun too, good beater and give us 1-3 cards more as a finisher
Scuttling Doom Engine can be put fear in opponents,can evade and if a board wipes comes, its not for free
As far as Molten-Tail Masticore goes, I am still pretty early into testing it out. It did kill a Grixis DS opponent for me once, so that was cool but I'm still unsure.
Edit: For some reason the top half of my comment got cut off. I'll rewrite it below
Sorry it took a little longer for me to get around to this, but here is my return-to-thread wall of text.
First off, congrats on that Force of Will ghgiunco. That is a sweet pull. And Ulka, how did that FNM go for you?
I have been playing around with a few builds in my free time, including one similar to yours ghgiunco, and I have lots of new thoughts about all of the different card choices.
Solemn Simulacrum – I tried this guy out again, and as you said it is helpful in that it ramps us and has some sweet interaction with Trading Post and works well alongside Yahenni’s Expertise. But I do not think it is a viable replacement for Lodestone Golem. In almost every match I played without the golem, I missed it. Yes it does die to bolt and K-command and just about every other kill spell, but it also slows down opponents significantly. It puts off board wipes for an extra turn, single-handedly beats storm and other combo decks, and stops opponents from playing out multiple threats in their later turns. Even if it does eat removal immediately, it wastes extra resources for the opponent and slows them down. And ultimately if you can play multiples, they can easily win you the game. Ghgiunco, I would be extremely hesitant about completely removing Lodestone Golem because it is one of our best wincons.
Trading Post – I’m on the fence with this card. It has some really cool interactions and is extremely powerful once you are set up, but it feels a lot like Vedalken Shackles to me. What I mean by that is it is a higher costing artifact that if we are set up well, we can power it out early and it can do a lot of good work. But if our gameplan is disrupted at all or we just have a slower opening hand, it only slows us down more and isn’t very impactful. That being said, it did win me a game against burn after they got me to 1 life, so I am currently very unsure about it.
Glint-Nest Crane – Another card I noticed you omitted from your list, ghgiunco. This does just about everything we want. It comes down turn 2, draws you an artifact most of the time, gums up the air, and ramps turn 3 with Grand Architect and Chief Engineer. I see you have had it in your list in the past and I’m wondering why you removed it? I can see a slight overlap with Mulldrifter, but I would argue that the two play different roles.
And speaking of mulldrifter….
Mulldrifter – This flying fish is awesome! 2 cards for U with Heartless Summoning on the field is sweet. Also, tapping to make CC in response to the evoke sacrifice trigger with Grand Architect on the field so that you can cast whatever you draw immediately is also incredibly powerful. This card is amazing at refilling our hand and does a lot to keep us fueled in the mid or late game. The difference between this and Glint-Nest Crane is about card selection vs card volume and also timing of when you play it. Crane is incredibly valuable as a turn 2 play when you don’t have Heartless and so think a 4/2 or a 3/3 split is best between the two. I personally am leaning towards 4 Crane and 2 Mull.
Slithermuse and Thoughtcast – I haven’t actually tried either of these out yet because I have been focusing on testing Mulldrifter as my new “refill your hand” spell, but I don’t think they will be quite as good as hoped. I think the fact that Mull comes with a body to either chump block or just tap for mana is important over Thoughtcast and I have been looking at when I would hope to play Slithermuse and most of those times the opponent is low on cards as well. It could shine as a 1 or a 2 of in the sideboard against control decks so that we can keep up with their card advantage, but that’s the best case scenario I see.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh – I have been loving this card. It isn’t a creature, so no Heartless benefit, but it also can’t be destroyed by most removal. Abrupt Decay is the only major threat to it game 1 and if they are wasting their removal on our 2 mana artifact, we have probably come out on top. As far as damage goes, it out performs any other two drop I have tested, like Scrapheap Scrounger, and helps us win any board stall which had previously been an issue for me and gives us an additional out against Ensnaring Bridge. I am playing 2 in the maindeck because sadly it is a Legendary Artifact, but it seems like a good number so far. I highly recommend trying it out, it is a ton of fun.
Yahenni’s Expertise – I have been happy with this so far. As I said before, I generally side it in against really aggressive decks or decks that go wide like Affinity and Collected Company instead of Heartless Summoning. It has taken a little getting used to but when we are not taking the role of the aggro deck, this card does a lot of work. I play 2 in my sideboard and don’t think I’ll change that any time soon.
Etherium Sculptor - Ugh. This card and I have not been getting along well lately. I think I needed a break from the deck to really notice it, but it is the worst of our engine pieces and I am almost never happy to draw it. I am completely cutting it in favor of Chief Engineer for now.
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner – Ulka, you have been talking a lot about Kira lately. I would love to hear how she is performing for you. I had played around with the idea of running her in the board because of the Spellskite interaction but Anger of the Gods had always ruined that plan. But lately Anger has fallen out of style so this might be an awesome sideboard choice.
Now on to some spicy new ideas! I have been playing around with two different cards: Molten-Tail Masticore and Mindless Automaton. I see Masticore as an anti-Death’s Shadow creature. It costs 4 so it is easy for us to play, and you can regenerate it with Grand Architect’s tapping ability so it can sit in front of a Shadow all day long. Then you can finish the opponent off by shooting the opponent for 4 damage. Mindless Automaton is more of an alternative to Solemn Simulacrum. It is a chump blocker that cycles itself. The benefit I see in Automaton is that it also has the ability to filter dead draws from your hand. I haven’t tested this much so it could be terrible, but I think it’s worth a shot at least.
I have a chemistry final tomorrow, so I'm going to make this brief but expect a nice long response tomorrow.
I am excited to see were we are all at with these builds. The deck has a lot of interesting different routes to try out. First things to note, Engineered Explosives and Walking Ballistas are both cards I really want for the deck, but they cost quite a bit and probably won't be able to pick them up until this summer so for now I'll just be building without them. Secondly, Ulka mentioned Throne of the God-Pharaoh to me the other day. I tried them out and it is super fun. I have to test it a lot more before I decide it it's good or not, but its at least exciting to end of turn drain them for 5 or 6. Also, Gate to the Afterlife is really intriguing. If God-Pharaoh's Gift ends up being any good, this could be some sweet tech.
@ghgiunco:
I am really intrigues by your list. It is a sweet value cards build and looks like a blast to play. I picked up Mulldrifters, Trading posts, Thoughtcasts, and Solemn Simulacrums online so I will mess around with the value builds and see what we can pull off here. As Ulka mentioned, I have been a long-time fan of the turn one Thoughtseize plan. What do you normally hit with it in today's meta? Could we be running Inquisition of Kozilek instead?
@Ulka:
Duplicant vs Gearhulk sounds like fun. Start coming up with some pros and cons and lets figure this one out!
Also, Kira + Spellskite means that the opponent needs 3 targeted kill spells to take out a creature (or a board wipe but lets not talk about that...) That is a fun idea and hard to pass up.
P.S. I LOVE SLITHERMUSE!! I messed around with the Spanish Inquisition deck in Legacy a few years back and casting this card was really really fun. I would gladly take it for a spin to see what it can do.
I've had a very busy semester so I've been gone for awhile, but as things have been winding down here at the end I have had some time to play the deck online and I have a few thoughts. So I hope a few of you are still around to read them
I had originally been playing my lower curve list that I posted awhile back in this thread, but the meta has shifted back towards creature heavy decks on the aggro end of the spectrum and frankly, I really missed chaining Sphinx Summoners and slamming Wurmcoil Engines. So now I am back to something that resembles what I've played in the past a little more.
The Perilous Myrs are currently being tested in the place of Scrapheap Scrounger. I have been happy with them in a few cases where they help hold off the opponent, but I think I prefer the aggressiveness of scrounger instead. Overall both are a little underwhelming for 2 drop artifact creatures, but I think they are probably the best we have until WOTC throws us a new toy.
Etherium Sculptor has been letting me down more than anything else. I am frequently unhappy to draw it and a lot of that stems from the fact that it is the only engine piece that needs a second engine piece in order to cast Myr Superion. It does have the upside of being an artifact for Glint-Nest Crane and it is useful when played in addition to any of the other engine pieces. So I am keeping it at 1 right now, but I could be talked into axing it completely.....
In the sideboard, the Ratchet Bomb is acting as a budget Engineered Explosives. I really just need to suck it up and buy the explosives. Havengul Lich is currently being tested alongside Perilous Myr at Ulka's recommendation but I'm still a little unsure of this tech. But time will tell.
Yahenni's Expertise has been sooo much fun. I usually side out 2 Heartless Summonings in place of these against hyper aggressive decks. I think there is a lot of potential with this card within this strategy and I strongly recommend looking into what else we can do with it.
As far as matchups go, Death's Shadow is horrendous. I have found pretty much everything else to be at least winnable, but they're combination of early discard and big death's shadows, they win almost every board stalls against me. The best I can think to do is increase Fatal Pushs and then try to slam Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives for 1. Does anyone have any ideas on this matchup?
Going on from here on out, I would prefer we try to stay more on-topic of the main decklist. While other decklists are appreciated to give a new flair I'd prefer we stay more on topic of the main list.
is this the reason dont have some response about some extra builds ? in so curious and ai like to try more and more cards, but ok, if it is for me not to talk alone, go on.
I can’t speak for Ulka on this, but I believe he is getting at is the question of what discussion should be in this thread and what could be considered ‘off topic’ and would be better suited in another place.
My personal opinion on this matter is that, in this thread, we are working on a fairly specific deck that we have outlined in the primer. That being a deck using the redundancy of the cost reducing effects of Grand Architect and Heartless Summoning and their analogs to produce a board state which overwhelms the opponent with powerful artifacts.
Now, there are a lot of creative deck ideas that use either Heartless Summoning or Grand Architect as they are very fun and powerful cards to brew with but I would consider almost all of those ideas to be different decks and there more than likely already exists a thread that they would fit into and in those cases I will try to politely refer those suggestions to the appropriate place. An example of this is the Eldrazi thread that I directed Sting to in my comment above.
Ultimately everyone’s opinions on what lists and discussions belong in this thread will always be subjective and ignoring people’s suggestions/criticisms/ideas solely because they don’t fit our vision for the deck is foolish and unfair. So in general, when anyone does suggest new cards/decklists I strongly suggest that they include a reason why that card or, for example their alternate control build, could be an improvement over the previous choices that others have made and is worth discussing and/or testing. Including a brief explanation of your thought process helps everyone to see that your post is a contribution to the longer narrative rather than just a new brew that could be cool.
have some FNM ... maybe i any games, we can see something interesting. i just see only 1 os those, and i see a Massacre Wurm ... massacring (pun).
Perilous Myr can help with infect maybe ?
Massacre Wurm is a sweet card but I think it is too slow for this list (it is only good if we have Heartless Summoning) and it wipes our board too. In just a couple weeks we should be looking instead at Yahenni’s Expertise to wipe the board and drop a threat after. If you are still interested in a big Massacre Wurm type ability, check out Contagion Engine it’s actually pretty easy for us to get online especially if you are playing a controlish build and works great with Master Transmuter if you are still on that plan.
Perilous Myr seems to have shown up a lot on here lately. I am pretty much always thinking about playing two of them in my list but I usually don’t end up pulling the trigger on that. In the next couple weeks I’ll be thinking a lot about this vs Walking Ballista in our list. A lot of cool ideas with that one.
the list idea:
Take control of board, dont lose ur enchant, deal with big threads (Perilous myr make a nice "combo" with tragic, make the -13 easy), and like so much how lich make plays
Superion can take control of aggros nice block on turn 2
Torrential Gearhulk + Master Transmuter can double the mount of controls
This is the first try, ideas of thing can improve ? more counter or more removals, in in doubt
I’d love to hear how the control build test has been going. About a year ago I tried out a control build that played Lilianna of the Veil, Mana Leak, some discard spells, and more kill spells. It worked decently well and I won a lot of matches with it but it was really awkward. The deck felt pulled in too many directions. I found that I was basically time walking myself by trying to hold up mana for counter spells instead of playing things like Heartless Summoning or other engine pieces. So if you find a good way to do it, I’m all ears.
Also, this is probably obvious because I’m responding to an older post, but Fatal Push is definitely an upgraded Tragic Slip (except against Tron, but that’s a whole different story)
i Finally create "courage" and remove white, move on the Lodestone Golem to MB, the primary tax works best then i expected, not gonna lie (when i got 3 on game was nice), but tax the tezz too, was boring.
I’m glad you took the leap. It’s a great feeling to see other people fall in love with Lodeston Golem the way I did. Like everyone else, I was skeptical at first but since I took the plunge, it has won me more games than any other card.
Don’t worry about getting cards like Tezzeret stuck in your hand. As long as you have multiple golems out you should be winning the game. And the minute they spend all of their resources removing your creatures, you get to slam a planeswalker down in their face and take over the game again.
Some post above, when you talk about padeem, a was curios, becase the worst interaction with skite and if you moved it to SB? whats happened with the test ?
I haven’t tried Padeem, Consul of Innovation yet but I thought a lot about it and I would much rather test Kira, Great Glass-Spinner instead. It works much much better alongside Spellskite and it comes down a turn earlier, and it protects itself. That being said, I haven’t tested Kira yet either.
Have you consider Pithing Needle as side? is nice againt all matchs:
infetc: Blinkmoth Nexus, Pendelhaven
Tron: Karn, Ugin, oblivion
Burn: Some feths
Viscera Seer and much mor
I think you’ll find if you look at the sideboards of the decklists Ulka and I have posted that we always play at least 1 Pithing Needle in our sideboards alongside Trinket Mage
I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I know mine was very relaxing and even involved a 3-1 FNM at a local game shop back in my home state. Anywho, now it’s back to work and with all of these posts I missed and Aether Revolt spoiled and Wizards surprise ban announcement today I’ll try to write out all of my thoughts over the next few days.
@Sting
Welcome! It’s always nice to hear from more fans of our enchantment! I too miss the days of Heartless Summoning and Priest of Urabrask. As Ulka mentioned above, we used to run them in Standard combo deck where we made infinite mana Havengul Lich and then killed the opponent with Perilous Myr triggers or a big Devil’s Play. It was a janky but powerful combo kill with a ton synergy and soo much fun to play.
With 4 heartless summoning we have something like 40% of find it in our opening hand +4% for each card drawn or scry.
I know, multiple heartless summoning are useless but we can scry down those extra copies or discard them to liliana of the veil or use them as fodder for other cards (like Thirst for Knowledge for ex.)
Heartless Summoning does a great job alongside colorless creatures and there is a thread dedicated to that interaction here. I don’t think the Eldrazi have a place in the these HeartlessArchitect builds that we are focusing on because the rest of ourengines don’t help at all in that game plan.
Yes, Darkslick Shores is a fantastic card and it works so well in guaranteeing both of our colors during those extremely vital first 3 turns. The reason why it got cut over time is two-fold. The first reason was Vedalken Shackles. Although we don’t play it nearly as much anymore (which will probably change if the format slows down again) we wanted to play as few non-islands as possible. The second and still very applicable reason is that we never want our lands to come into play tapped. Drawing a fourth land and having that be a fastland like Darkslick can lose you a lot of games and we don’t need to worry about that when we have access to so many fetches and other duals.
I went over this earlier on in my response to Cuson when they asked about tutoring for Heartless Summoning, but I’ll attach it here to save myself a little typing and save others some searching.
I think that if you play around with the deck a little you may see that we don’t actually need Heartless Summoning and instead it just gives us some of our most explosive plays. Unlike a lot of combo decks that rely on filtering or tutoring for a specific win condition, Heartless Architect plays a full engine package consisting of some number of Heartless Summoning, Grand Architect, Etherium Sculptor, and Chief Engineer. I personally play 12 total engine pieces which all can do well in enabling the deck on their own and most do great things when their effects are added on to each other. So we are not relying on finding one of our 3 heartlesses but instead relying on drawing one or more similar effects from a pool that makes up about 1/5 of the main deck.
I`m interested in building this deck and try it out in the near future. right now i`m playing two combo decks (Time Warp and Titan Bloom ) and i want to play a more creature and combat based deck, but not totally aggro.
I have only two concerns about this deck:
1. How does this deck interact with the fastest deck in the format (Turn 3 kills) ... counter and a little more discard like inquisition of kozilek and maybe chalice of the void 1-2x maindeck. It seems very strong on x=1 in here. the only 1 cmc card would be serum visions...
2. How do we filter into one of the 3 Heartless Summoning this one is hard to fix, muddle the mixtureis the only thing which comes to my mind but it might be to slow. On the other hand it could also counter artefact hate post board
these are the ideas i have in mind right now, but i could be totally wrong. I have not tested anything so please keep this in mind
Welcome Cuson! It's awesome to hear you are interested in the deck. I think Heartless Architect is a lot of fun "fair" deck for the combo-oriented players out there. Hopefully I can address your concerns to your satisfaction.
Interacting with modern's turn 3 kills is an appropriate concern. We have been able to take care of this in a few different ways. Infect is actually a fairly good matchup for us and something that is very easy to tune for if you see a lot of it. 3-4 maindecked Spellskites are extremely effective against them as well as against the Boggles and suicide aggro decks you may see out and about. Additionally we also have been playing around with various numbers of Dismembers, Slaughter Pacts, and otherkillspells which take out threats at instant speed. These alongside applying our own pressure with Myr Superion[/s]s and Lodestone Golems help to make the matchup mostly favorable. Sideboarded Chalice of the Void cast at 1 is also very good here as you pointed out.
Burn is another beast. In the case of burn, we still have Spellskite to take some damage for us and it, Myr Superion, and friends can all stand in the way of Goblin Guides and Monastery Swiftspear while we apply our own pressure. Filigree Familiar and Elixir of Immortality do a great job of stalling the game while we beat down with our larger threats.
I have tried a more counter and discard oriented version of the deck and the problems I found were that you only ever wanted to play an Inquisition of Kozilek or a Thoughtseize turn 1, otherwise they got in the way of your turns 2 and 3 which are, without a doubt, our most important turns. Likewise, holding up mana for Remands and Mana Leaks is extremely awkward because they prevent us from making the early explosive plays we need to win most games. Chalice of the Void has proved to be very good in testing. It works great against a number of decks but mostly in dealing with 1 cmc removal spells. As mentioned above, it hits infect very hard, but it doesn’t do nearly as much against burn. It hits most of their creatures, but those have normally been played before we can drop a Chalice and we also can deal with those threats fairly well with our own creatures. But it unfortunately only hits Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike while the rest of their spells (especially Destructive Revelry) can be cast as normal and we have missed an opportunity to play something more impactful. So I choose to play 1 Chalice of the Void in my sideboard in my Trinket Mage toolbox but I could see an argument for putting that up to 2 or so.
I think that if you play around with the deck a little you may see that we don’t actually need Heartless Summoning and instead it just gives us some of our most explosive plays. Unlike a lot of combo decks that rely on filtering or tutoring for a specific win condition, Heartless Architect plays a full engine package consisting of some number of Heartless Summoning, Grand Architect, Etherium Sculptor, and Chief Engineer. I personally play 12 total engine pieces which all can do well in enabling the deck on their own and most do great things when their effects are added on to each other. So we are not relying on finding one of our 3 heartlesses but instead relying on drawing one or more similar effects from a pool that makes up about 1/5 of the main deck.
I hope this answers a few of your initial questions and I look forward to hearing how your testing goes.
I completely understand that you are making a more modern version of the deck from that article (sorry for the bad pun) and I like all of the steps that you have made already in raising its competiveness. I think Grand Architect is a really good first step in increasing its consistency.
Mulldrifter is a great card to consider for these types of decks, especially with how cheap it is alongside Heartless Summoning but there in the lists that Ulka and I have been playing, there is very little room for cards that do not fit directly into our game plan. The only card slot I could see it contending with is Serum Visions and then Mulldrifter cannot be played turn 1 which is a huge strike against it. Additionally, I think that Glint-Nest Crane fulfills the same purpose as Mulldrifter but it gives us better card selection (I would rather draw 1 artifact than 2 lands) and can be played turn 2.
The reason we play some number of Etherium Sculptor and Chief Engineer is for consistency. That redundancy you mentioned is actually helpful because in our case we effectively run 12 copies of cards that enable our game plan instead of 4. These could be replaced with utility cards like you mentioned, but with the heavy amount of removal that we encounter and the need to execute our game plan as early in the game as possible, I would rather play the smaller vedalken.
Ethersworn Cannonist gets brought up fairly frequently on the Grand Architect thread quite often and for a good reason. It is a very cool card and plays in well with the taxing plan we have with Lodestone Golem. I don't ever play against much Ad Nauseam but if you see a lot of it and storm, then I think it is a very good choice. It also works very well against decks like Suicide Bloo and Infect. So, if you end up testing it, I would be very interested to know how it works for you and what decks it is the best against and against which ones it isn't very helpful.
My reasoning for not including cards like Kraken Hatchling even though they fit into the amazing possibilities of having a blue 1-drop is that decks like these already have enough bad top decks. If the card is only good if it is played turn 1, then I think it will only end up hurting us more than it helps because it will be completely awful when drawn later in the game.
There is a reason why Wizards doesn't give us strong cards at {u} and it has to do with the roles that each color plays. Blue creatures do not get printed at 1cmc unless they are very fragile. What we need to cross our fingers for is something along the lines of Judge's Familiar that they give a toughness of 2 to as some sort of a buff, but I don't think we can hope for anything else.
Steel Hellkite has been discussed in the Grand Architect thread, but it hasn't been mentioned in a very long time so I'm not surprised you haven't seen any of those conversations. Steel Hellkite is an extremely powerful card alongside Grand Architect. A 5/5 flier is nothing to scoff at and its effect is a repeatable one-sided Engineered Explosives. The main problem is twofold. First, it is a 6cmc artifact and it frankly just lost when competing against Wurmcoil Engine for that slot. Other notable cards that have been played in the past but haven't made the contemporary cut include Contagion Engine and Mindslaver. The second problem with Steel Hellkite is that it's pseudo-Engineered Explosives effect doesn't really hit what we want it to hit Once we are connecting with a 5/5 firebreathing flier, the chances are we are already winning and the cards that we would most often be using its effects against are Ensnaring Bridge, Stony Silence, and Lingering Souls (amongst others) and all three of those actually prevent us from using its ability.
Alright I’ve missed a lot on here but I’ll try to respond to everything. I apologize in advance for the novel I’m about to write but hopefully I don’t ramble too much. @Ulka
I feel the Etherium Sculptor vs Chief Engineer is a debate that we are going to have for a long time as both have their merits but in vastly different ways.
Etherium Sculptor
1. Is an artifact: this helps us keep a higher density when we Tezzy or glint nest which is huge. Also he can be -1ed by Tezzy to become huge late game when we stall out.
2. His passive ability works with grand Architect's to allow for a 3 mana reduction just by himself.
Chief Engineer
1. Can power out Myr Superion easier: this allows us to slam a more aggressive board plan earlier which is always nice.
2. Has an addition toughness: this can when paired with Grand Architect can make him bolt proof.
Let me know if I missed any points on either but I personally like the ability to have 3 mana reduction of Sculptor and not have Engineer's ability negated by having a Grand Architect out.
I vote we agree to disagree about this question for right now. I think we are both playing splits of each of these so it’s really only a discussion around changing 1 card or so between the two. We can really delve into this another time.
So I maybe weird but I really have been loving having Veldaken Shackles Mainboard and my Black removal sideboard. I have found Shackles makes more decks play nervously which is good for us while the black removal is better in the infect match-up it seems.
I understand this sentiment, but frankly I almost always need the speed of the black removal spells in the current meta. When so much of the meta is dominated by decks that 9 times out of 10 are faster than us, we need quick answers and we also need our ability to use those answers to not be impeded by disruption. I don’t want to rely on one of our vedalkens to make Vedalken Shackles fast enough to keep me alive. Additionally, I think I am finally deciding that I like Slaughter Pact the best out of the removal spells because of the 0 cmc but it does occasionally come out a turn or two too slow, so I will still keep 1 Dismember somewhere in the 75
I can understand dropping Sphinx Summoner and Noxious Gearhulkbut I think dropping Wurmcoil Engine is a huge mistake. Wurm is our main plan against most decks and honestly is the only reason I win most of my games that are close. He is too powerful with his 6 life swap that he gives us. Further he may eat removal a lot but we still most of the time get our tokens which I would play him just if he dropped the tokens. I think
Coil is something you should have sideboard at minimum as he does wonders in many aggressive match-ups such as Dredge and Burn if we can resolve him. I like him so much I have been debating on adding a 3rd Coil.
The Wurmcoil Engine concern is real and I completely understand that. Powering really punishes aggro decks and also helps in some of our longer grindier matchups. I am only testing not having them in the list and I am doing for the sole purpose of lowering the curve. The way that this deck operates, it almost always needs to have engine pieces in order to power out larger threats. That is great because it goes over most decks, but unlike Tron, our engine pieces are much easier to interact with and a large amount of the time they will not sit around for more than a turn. That means that you want to be playing a threat the same turn that you are playing your engine piece (which just so happens to be my biggest issue with Etherium Sculptor) and this is something that is not guaranteed with Wurmcoil Engine. Until I can guarantee turn 3 Wurmcoil Engines or the modern metagame slows down, I think we should keep thinking about dropping our 6 drops as an option.
Update on Scrapheap Scrounger: The little robot is a great threat against control and it also works great alongside Chief Engineer to pay convoke costs. The pressure it adds in many games is also useful. But overall it still feels like a filler card while I wait for a replacement 1 or 2 cost artifact creature like a Myr Superion or a playable Lupine Prototype.
@ghgiunco
Good to hear from you again and I’m sorry that your Master Transmuter thread hasn’t taken off yet. Continuing from my posts in there and emphasizing what Ulka has said, the first thing I would do is consolidate your wincons. That means pick the big artifacts that you think are the best and realistically win you the most games and put several copies of those in instead of running 1 of each.
with some adaptations, like Glint-Nest Crane, i like so much how this card can filter, attacking and block.
but my doubt is about how Lodestone Golem can act, yes taxing the opponent is very strong, but when you need to cast your non-artifact spells? most time would to cast him early to break opponent, but it can breake you curve, guess
and other thing .. the -1 of heartless int he skite, make him bolt vunerable, it dont make fragile and lost some efficience?
Foundry Inspector in this case, for use only generic mana can be an option vs Scultor even not being blue
I think the main thing to consider from that article is that it was written in 2011 and at that time, modern was a significantly slower format at that time. I know I keep harping on the speed of the format, but I think that is its defining feature at the moment (in the past it has been more combo heavy), but I digress. The optimal play in that deck is a turn 2 Heartless Summoning into a turn 3 Master Transmuter and then you still have to wait a turn to activate it unless you have found some way to get a Lightning Greaves into play before that. So, the main thing I would work on is finding what cards (like Grand Architect) make your deck faster and more consistent.
Ulka covered Lodestone Golem pretty well and I have discussed this card at length in the Grand Architect thread in the past. The most I will say at this time is that if you haven’t tried playing with it, you should. A lot of people need some convincing, but once they start playing the golem, the never stop.
The 3 toughness on Spellskite when you have a Heartless Summoning in play can be a real bummer. Just as you said, it makes it vulnerable to bolt, but the thing to keep in mind is that it still plays the role of a lightning rod and pulls away removal from taking out higher value targets like Grand Architect, Lodestone Golem or Tezzeret.
I agree with Ulka that Foundry Inspector is not worth it. It is at its best during a Sphinxchain when you want to cast a cost reduction ability but you only have access to colorless mana, but otherwise it is an overcosted nonblue Etherium Sculptor which is already, in my opinion, the worst enabler we have in our deck.
Ensnaring Bridge is a auto-win innumerous matches to see it out the list, can be transmuted beat and do it again, when you flood or have a creature is hard to deal like ulamogs (indestrutible this @#$%$) hahah
Not gonna lie, this Master Transmuter/Ensnaring Bridge tech is awesome. I think this plus the [c]Epserzoa[/s] that you mentioned could make for a really cool deck. I think I’ll work on putting that together. It sounds wayyy too much fun for me to pass up at least making an a attempt at it.
why we dont have a blue drop 1 like Kraken Hatchling, he can block things like a .. guide .. and turn 3 can play something like treasure mage + wurmcoil + greveas or a creature up to 8 CMC
I think that Torpor Orb/Eater of Days is cool but not good enough to be modern playable. The main reason I have for that is that without Torpor Orb, Eater of Days is really really bad. Skipping two turns is basically conceding, because your opponent will win in that time. Now, if Splinter Twin was still around I would consider Torpor Orb as an option and then a case could be made to play a few Eater of Days and Trickbinds but currently it is too difficult to guarantee getting that specific combo in play.
I think what spawnofhastur is trying to get at is that this is an awesome synergistic sequence you have put together and when you can assemble it, it will completely take over the game and do some nuts things. But it requires a lot of time and 2 out of the 3 pieces are fairly fragile. Competitive Modern is fairly unforgiving and by the time you can use the activated ability of the 4-cost artifact most other opponents will have already taken over the game and many may argue that you might as well play an established dredge list which does smaller amounts of what you are trying to achieve but does it earlier and possibly mre reliably.
so it may be hard to make this particular combo competitive in modern, but I am huge supporter of brewing and assembling your own decks. I think you have good ideas about a BGx Lotleth Troll dredge list and I would imagine it would play somewhat similarly to the Legacy Nic Fit decks from awhile back. This is an intriguing idea I think you should pursue and I'll try to do some brainstorming about some of the possibilities.
No, I have not tested Walking Ballista yet and that is only because I haven't bought them. I believe you 100% that it is really good in the deck and thinking it through, it should be a much better Molten-Tail Masticore. They each cost 8 mana to play/shoot the opponent for 4 damage and so it could finish off Death's Shadow decks just as well but Ballista is much more flexible than Masticore, you don't have to discard anything to it, and it is fetchable with Trinket Mage which I play in the sideboard. The only downside is that it is generally a smaller body and doesn't have the regenerate ability that turns Masticore into a wall. I really probably should pick up a playset of them.
4 Grand Architect
3 Heartless Summoning
3 Chief Engineer
4 Myr Superion
3 Spellskite
2 Throne of the God-Pharaoh
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Lodestone Golem
2 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Sphinx Summoner
2 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Mulldrifter
2 Tezzeret Agent of Bolas
2 Fatal Push
1 Darksteel Citadel
3 Ghost Quarter
4 Polluted Delta
2 Sunken Hollow
4 Watery Grave
7 Island
1 Swamp
2 Trinket Mage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Spellskite
2 Watchers of the Dead
2 Filigree Familiar
2 Yahenni's Expertise
Also, Scuttling Doom Engine is only 1 cent on MOTO so I'll pick up a playset and try them out a little.
I would advise against this kind of thinking. The cards that you send to the bottom with Crane are not cards or knowledge that you had access to. So it does not influence your playing. It might feel bad, but try to only focus on the fact that you got a blue flyer and also drew an artifact card.
It is true that you do get stuck with cards like Tezz in your hand when playing Lodestone. But being the player with the tax effects comes with an advantage. We get to have a 5/3 creature in play that is slowing the opponent down. At this point, either we kill them with it, or they spend a lot of resources killing it and then we play Tezz the next turn and continue to be ahead in the game.
I did see your post above. I don't think Ethersworn Adjudicator is very good, because I think that by the time you play it and it is able to use its abilities, you are already loosing the game. Engineered Explosives does a similar job of blowing up enchantments and we can play it a lot sooner. Also, Ghost Quarter does a good job taking care of pesky lands like Vault of the Archangel and Yahenni's Expertise/Engineered Explosives are pretty good at cleaning up tokens.
Glint-Nest Crane, Sphinx Summoner, and Mulldrifter all have evasion. Also I have been finding Throne of the God-Pharaoh to be even better than evasive creatures in board stalls. It pumps out a lot of damage and we don't even have to connect with the opponent. Sphinx of Uthuun doesn't make much sense in our deck imo. If you want a big flying beater there are a lot of other good choices like Steel Hellkite and Herald of Anguish. And I'm intrigued by Scuttling Doom Engine. If you try it out, I'd love to hear how well it works!
As far as Molten-Tail Masticore goes, I am still pretty early into testing it out. It did kill a Grixis DS opponent for me once, so that was cool but I'm still unsure.
Edit: For some reason the top half of my comment got cut off. I'll rewrite it below
First off, congrats on that Force of Will ghgiunco. That is a sweet pull. And Ulka, how did that FNM go for you?
I have been playing around with a few builds in my free time, including one similar to yours ghgiunco, and I have lots of new thoughts about all of the different card choices.
Solemn Simulacrum – I tried this guy out again, and as you said it is helpful in that it ramps us and has some sweet interaction with Trading Post and works well alongside Yahenni’s Expertise. But I do not think it is a viable replacement for Lodestone Golem. In almost every match I played without the golem, I missed it. Yes it does die to bolt and K-command and just about every other kill spell, but it also slows down opponents significantly. It puts off board wipes for an extra turn, single-handedly beats storm and other combo decks, and stops opponents from playing out multiple threats in their later turns. Even if it does eat removal immediately, it wastes extra resources for the opponent and slows them down. And ultimately if you can play multiples, they can easily win you the game. Ghgiunco, I would be extremely hesitant about completely removing Lodestone Golem because it is one of our best wincons.
Trading Post – I’m on the fence with this card. It has some really cool interactions and is extremely powerful once you are set up, but it feels a lot like Vedalken Shackles to me. What I mean by that is it is a higher costing artifact that if we are set up well, we can power it out early and it can do a lot of good work. But if our gameplan is disrupted at all or we just have a slower opening hand, it only slows us down more and isn’t very impactful. That being said, it did win me a game against burn after they got me to 1 life, so I am currently very unsure about it.
Glint-Nest Crane – Another card I noticed you omitted from your list, ghgiunco. This does just about everything we want. It comes down turn 2, draws you an artifact most of the time, gums up the air, and ramps turn 3 with Grand Architect and Chief Engineer. I see you have had it in your list in the past and I’m wondering why you removed it? I can see a slight overlap with Mulldrifter, but I would argue that the two play different roles.
And speaking of mulldrifter….
Mulldrifter – This flying fish is awesome! 2 cards for U with Heartless Summoning on the field is sweet. Also, tapping to make CC in response to the evoke sacrifice trigger with Grand Architect on the field so that you can cast whatever you draw immediately is also incredibly powerful. This card is amazing at refilling our hand and does a lot to keep us fueled in the mid or late game. The difference between this and Glint-Nest Crane is about card selection vs card volume and also timing of when you play it. Crane is incredibly valuable as a turn 2 play when you don’t have Heartless and so think a 4/2 or a 3/3 split is best between the two. I personally am leaning towards 4 Crane and 2 Mull.
Slithermuse and Thoughtcast – I haven’t actually tried either of these out yet because I have been focusing on testing Mulldrifter as my new “refill your hand” spell, but I don’t think they will be quite as good as hoped. I think the fact that Mull comes with a body to either chump block or just tap for mana is important over Thoughtcast and I have been looking at when I would hope to play Slithermuse and most of those times the opponent is low on cards as well. It could shine as a 1 or a 2 of in the sideboard against control decks so that we can keep up with their card advantage, but that’s the best case scenario I see.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh – I have been loving this card. It isn’t a creature, so no Heartless benefit, but it also can’t be destroyed by most removal. Abrupt Decay is the only major threat to it game 1 and if they are wasting their removal on our 2 mana artifact, we have probably come out on top. As far as damage goes, it out performs any other two drop I have tested, like Scrapheap Scrounger, and helps us win any board stall which had previously been an issue for me and gives us an additional out against Ensnaring Bridge. I am playing 2 in the maindeck because sadly it is a Legendary Artifact, but it seems like a good number so far. I highly recommend trying it out, it is a ton of fun.
Yahenni’s Expertise – I have been happy with this so far. As I said before, I generally side it in against really aggressive decks or decks that go wide like Affinity and Collected Company instead of Heartless Summoning. It has taken a little getting used to but when we are not taking the role of the aggro deck, this card does a lot of work. I play 2 in my sideboard and don’t think I’ll change that any time soon.
Etherium Sculptor - Ugh. This card and I have not been getting along well lately. I think I needed a break from the deck to really notice it, but it is the worst of our engine pieces and I am almost never happy to draw it. I am completely cutting it in favor of Chief Engineer for now.
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner – Ulka, you have been talking a lot about Kira lately. I would love to hear how she is performing for you. I had played around with the idea of running her in the board because of the Spellskite interaction but Anger of the Gods had always ruined that plan. But lately Anger has fallen out of style so this might be an awesome sideboard choice.
Now on to some spicy new ideas! I have been playing around with two different cards: Molten-Tail Masticore and Mindless Automaton. I see Masticore as an anti-Death’s Shadow creature. It costs 4 so it is easy for us to play, and you can regenerate it with Grand Architect’s tapping ability so it can sit in front of a Shadow all day long. Then you can finish the opponent off by shooting the opponent for 4 damage.
Mindless Automaton is more of an alternative to Solemn Simulacrum. It is a chump blocker that cycles itself. The benefit I see in Automaton is that it also has the ability to filter dead draws from your hand. I haven’t tested this much so it could be terrible, but I think it’s worth a shot at least.
I am excited to see were we are all at with these builds. The deck has a lot of interesting different routes to try out. First things to note, Engineered Explosives and Walking Ballistas are both cards I really want for the deck, but they cost quite a bit and probably won't be able to pick them up until this summer so for now I'll just be building without them. Secondly, Ulka mentioned Throne of the God-Pharaoh to me the other day. I tried them out and it is super fun. I have to test it a lot more before I decide it it's good or not, but its at least exciting to end of turn drain them for 5 or 6. Also, Gate to the Afterlife is really intriguing. If God-Pharaoh's Gift ends up being any good, this could be some sweet tech.
@ghgiunco:
I am really intrigues by your list. It is a sweet value cards build and looks like a blast to play. I picked up Mulldrifters, Trading posts, Thoughtcasts, and Solemn Simulacrums online so I will mess around with the value builds and see what we can pull off here. As Ulka mentioned, I have been a long-time fan of the turn one Thoughtseize plan. What do you normally hit with it in today's meta? Could we be running Inquisition of Kozilek instead?
@Ulka:
Duplicant vs Gearhulk sounds like fun. Start coming up with some pros and cons and lets figure this one out!
Also, Kira + Spellskite means that the opponent needs 3 targeted kill spells to take out a creature (or a board wipe but lets not talk about that...) That is a fun idea and hard to pass up.
P.S. I LOVE SLITHERMUSE!! I messed around with the Spanish Inquisition deck in Legacy a few years back and casting this card was really really fun. I would gladly take it for a spin to see what it can do.
I had originally been playing my lower curve list that I posted awhile back in this thread, but the meta has shifted back towards creature heavy decks on the aggro end of the spectrum and frankly, I really missed chaining Sphinx Summoners and slamming Wurmcoil Engines. So now I am back to something that resembles what I've played in the past a little more.
3 Heartless Summoning
3 Chief Engineer
1 Etherium Sculptor
4 Myr Superion
4 Spellskite
2 Perilous Myr
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Lodestone Golem
2 Sphinx Summoner
2 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Academy Ruins
1 Darksteel Citadel
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Polluted Delta
4 Watery Grave
2 Sunken Hollow
1 Swamp
7 Island
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Filigree Familiar
1 Duplicant
1 Havengul Lich
2 Fatal Push
2 Yahenni's Expertise
The Perilous Myrs are currently being tested in the place of Scrapheap Scrounger. I have been happy with them in a few cases where they help hold off the opponent, but I think I prefer the aggressiveness of scrounger instead. Overall both are a little underwhelming for 2 drop artifact creatures, but I think they are probably the best we have until WOTC throws us a new toy.
Etherium Sculptor has been letting me down more than anything else. I am frequently unhappy to draw it and a lot of that stems from the fact that it is the only engine piece that needs a second engine piece in order to cast Myr Superion. It does have the upside of being an artifact for Glint-Nest Crane and it is useful when played in addition to any of the other engine pieces. So I am keeping it at 1 right now, but I could be talked into axing it completely.....
In the sideboard, the Ratchet Bomb is acting as a budget Engineered Explosives. I really just need to suck it up and buy the explosives. Havengul Lich is currently being tested alongside Perilous Myr at Ulka's recommendation but I'm still a little unsure of this tech. But time will tell.
Yahenni's Expertise has been sooo much fun. I usually side out 2 Heartless Summonings in place of these against hyper aggressive decks. I think there is a lot of potential with this card within this strategy and I strongly recommend looking into what else we can do with it.
As far as matchups go, Death's Shadow is horrendous. I have found pretty much everything else to be at least winnable, but they're combination of early discard and big death's shadows, they win almost every board stalls against me. The best I can think to do is increase Fatal Pushs and then try to slam Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives for 1. Does anyone have any ideas on this matchup?
I can’t speak for Ulka on this, but I believe he is getting at is the question of what discussion should be in this thread and what could be considered ‘off topic’ and would be better suited in another place.
My personal opinion on this matter is that, in this thread, we are working on a fairly specific deck that we have outlined in the primer. That being a deck using the redundancy of the cost reducing effects of Grand Architect and Heartless Summoning and their analogs to produce a board state which overwhelms the opponent with powerful artifacts.
Now, there are a lot of creative deck ideas that use either Heartless Summoning or Grand Architect as they are very fun and powerful cards to brew with but I would consider almost all of those ideas to be different decks and there more than likely already exists a thread that they would fit into and in those cases I will try to politely refer those suggestions to the appropriate place. An example of this is the Eldrazi thread that I directed Sting to in my comment above.
Ultimately everyone’s opinions on what lists and discussions belong in this thread will always be subjective and ignoring people’s suggestions/criticisms/ideas solely because they don’t fit our vision for the deck is foolish and unfair. So in general, when anyone does suggest new cards/decklists I strongly suggest that they include a reason why that card or, for example their alternate control build, could be an improvement over the previous choices that others have made and is worth discussing and/or testing. Including a brief explanation of your thought process helps everyone to see that your post is a contribution to the longer narrative rather than just a new brew that could be cool.
Massacre Wurm is a sweet card but I think it is too slow for this list (it is only good if we have Heartless Summoning) and it wipes our board too. In just a couple weeks we should be looking instead at Yahenni’s Expertise to wipe the board and drop a threat after. If you are still interested in a big Massacre Wurm type ability, check out Contagion Engine it’s actually pretty easy for us to get online especially if you are playing a controlish build and works great with Master Transmuter if you are still on that plan.
Perilous Myr seems to have shown up a lot on here lately. I am pretty much always thinking about playing two of them in my list but I usually don’t end up pulling the trigger on that. In the next couple weeks I’ll be thinking a lot about this vs Walking Ballista in our list. A lot of cool ideas with that one.
I’d love to hear how the control build test has been going. About a year ago I tried out a control build that played Lilianna of the Veil, Mana Leak, some discard spells, and more kill spells. It worked decently well and I won a lot of matches with it but it was really awkward. The deck felt pulled in too many directions. I found that I was basically time walking myself by trying to hold up mana for counter spells instead of playing things like Heartless Summoning or other engine pieces. So if you find a good way to do it, I’m all ears.
Also, this is probably obvious because I’m responding to an older post, but Fatal Push is definitely an upgraded Tragic Slip (except against Tron, but that’s a whole different story)
I’m glad you took the leap. It’s a great feeling to see other people fall in love with Lodeston Golem the way I did. Like everyone else, I was skeptical at first but since I took the plunge, it has won me more games than any other card.
Don’t worry about getting cards like Tezzeret stuck in your hand. As long as you have multiple golems out you should be winning the game. And the minute they spend all of their resources removing your creatures, you get to slam a planeswalker down in their face and take over the game again.
I haven’t tried Padeem, Consul of Innovation yet but I thought a lot about it and I would much rather test Kira, Great Glass-Spinner instead. It works much much better alongside Spellskite and it comes down a turn earlier, and it protects itself. That being said, I haven’t tested Kira yet either.
I think you’ll find if you look at the sideboards of the decklists Ulka and I have posted that we always play at least 1 Pithing Needle in our sideboards alongside Trinket Mage
@Sting
Welcome! It’s always nice to hear from more fans of our enchantment! I too miss the days of Heartless Summoning and Priest of Urabrask. As Ulka mentioned above, we used to run them in Standard combo deck where we made infinite mana Havengul Lich and then killed the opponent with Perilous Myr triggers or a big Devil’s Play. It was a janky but powerful combo kill with a ton synergy and soo much fun to play.
Welcome Cuson! It's awesome to hear you are interested in the deck. I think Heartless Architect is a lot of fun "fair" deck for the combo-oriented players out there. Hopefully I can address your concerns to your satisfaction.
- Interacting with modern's turn 3 kills is an appropriate concern. We have been able to take care of this in a few different ways. Infect is actually a fairly good matchup for us and something that is very easy to tune for if you see a lot of it. 3-4 maindecked Spellskites are extremely effective against them as well as against the Boggles and suicide aggro decks you may see out and about. Additionally we also have been playing around with various numbers of Dismembers, Slaughter Pacts, and other kill spells which take out threats at instant speed. These alongside applying our own pressure with Myr Superion[/s]s and Lodestone Golems help to make the matchup mostly favorable. Sideboarded Chalice of the Void cast at 1 is also very good here as you pointed out.
Burn is another beast. In the case of burn, we still have Spellskite to take some damage for us and it, Myr Superion, and friends can all stand in the way of Goblin Guides and Monastery Swiftspear while we apply our own pressure. Filigree Familiar and Elixir of Immortality do a great job of stalling the game while we beat down with our larger threats.
- I think that if you play around with the deck a little you may see that we don’t actually need Heartless Summoning and instead it just gives us some of our most explosive plays. Unlike a lot of combo decks that rely on filtering or tutoring for a specific win condition, Heartless Architect plays a full engine package consisting of some number of Heartless Summoning, Grand Architect, Etherium Sculptor, and Chief Engineer. I personally play 12 total engine pieces which all can do well in enabling the deck on their own and most do great things when their effects are added on to each other. So we are not relying on finding one of our 3 heartlesses but instead relying on drawing one or more similar effects from a pool that makes up about 1/5 of the main deck.
I hope this answers a few of your initial questions and I look forward to hearing how your testing goes.I have tried a more counter and discard oriented version of the deck and the problems I found were that you only ever wanted to play an Inquisition of Kozilek or a Thoughtseize turn 1, otherwise they got in the way of your turns 2 and 3 which are, without a doubt, our most important turns. Likewise, holding up mana for Remands and Mana Leaks is extremely awkward because they prevent us from making the early explosive plays we need to win most games.
Chalice of the Void has proved to be very good in testing. It works great against a number of decks but mostly in dealing with 1 cmc removal spells. As mentioned above, it hits infect very hard, but it doesn’t do nearly as much against burn. It hits most of their creatures, but those have normally been played before we can drop a Chalice and we also can deal with those threats fairly well with our own creatures. But it unfortunately only hits Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike while the rest of their spells (especially Destructive Revelry) can be cast as normal and we have missed an opportunity to play something more impactful. So I choose to play 1 Chalice of the Void in my sideboard in my Trinket Mage toolbox but I could see an argument for putting that up to 2 or so.
Mulldrifter is a great card to consider for these types of decks, especially with how cheap it is alongside Heartless Summoning but there in the lists that Ulka and I have been playing, there is very little room for cards that do not fit directly into our game plan. The only card slot I could see it contending with is Serum Visions and then Mulldrifter cannot be played turn 1 which is a huge strike against it. Additionally, I think that Glint-Nest Crane fulfills the same purpose as Mulldrifter but it gives us better card selection (I would rather draw 1 artifact than 2 lands) and can be played turn 2.
The reason we play some number of Etherium Sculptor and Chief Engineer is for consistency. That redundancy you mentioned is actually helpful because in our case we effectively run 12 copies of cards that enable our game plan instead of 4. These could be replaced with utility cards like you mentioned, but with the heavy amount of removal that we encounter and the need to execute our game plan as early in the game as possible, I would rather play the smaller vedalken.
Ethersworn Cannonist gets brought up fairly frequently on the Grand Architect thread quite often and for a good reason. It is a very cool card and plays in well with the taxing plan we have with Lodestone Golem. I don't ever play against much Ad Nauseam but if you see a lot of it and storm, then I think it is a very good choice. It also works very well against decks like Suicide Bloo and Infect. So, if you end up testing it, I would be very interested to know how it works for you and what decks it is the best against and against which ones it isn't very helpful.
My reasoning for not including cards like Kraken Hatchling even though they fit into the amazing possibilities of having a blue 1-drop is that decks like these already have enough bad top decks. If the card is only good if it is played turn 1, then I think it will only end up hurting us more than it helps because it will be completely awful when drawn later in the game.
There is a reason why Wizards doesn't give us strong cards at {u} and it has to do with the roles that each color plays. Blue creatures do not get printed at 1cmc unless they are very fragile. What we need to cross our fingers for is something along the lines of Judge's Familiar that they give a toughness of 2 to as some sort of a buff, but I don't think we can hope for anything else.
Steel Hellkite has been discussed in the Grand Architect thread, but it hasn't been mentioned in a very long time so I'm not surprised you haven't seen any of those conversations. Steel Hellkite is an extremely powerful card alongside Grand Architect. A 5/5 flier is nothing to scoff at and its effect is a repeatable one-sided Engineered Explosives. The main problem is twofold. First, it is a 6cmc artifact and it frankly just lost when competing against Wurmcoil Engine for that slot. Other notable cards that have been played in the past but haven't made the contemporary cut include Contagion Engine and Mindslaver. The second problem with Steel Hellkite is that it's pseudo-Engineered Explosives effect doesn't really hit what we want it to hit Once we are connecting with a 5/5 firebreathing flier, the chances are we are already winning and the cards that we would most often be using its effects against are Ensnaring Bridge, Stony Silence, and Lingering Souls (amongst others) and all three of those actually prevent us from using its ability.
@Ulka
I vote we agree to disagree about this question for right now. I think we are both playing splits of each of these so it’s really only a discussion around changing 1 card or so between the two. We can really delve into this another time.
I understand this sentiment, but frankly I almost always need the speed of the black removal spells in the current meta. When so much of the meta is dominated by decks that 9 times out of 10 are faster than us, we need quick answers and we also need our ability to use those answers to not be impeded by disruption. I don’t want to rely on one of our vedalkens to make Vedalken Shackles fast enough to keep me alive. Additionally, I think I am finally deciding that I like Slaughter Pact the best out of the removal spells because of the 0 cmc but it does occasionally come out a turn or two too slow, so I will still keep 1 Dismember somewhere in the 75
The Wurmcoil Engine concern is real and I completely understand that. Powering really punishes aggro decks and also helps in some of our longer grindier matchups. I am only testing not having them in the list and I am doing for the sole purpose of lowering the curve. The way that this deck operates, it almost always needs to have engine pieces in order to power out larger threats. That is great because it goes over most decks, but unlike Tron, our engine pieces are much easier to interact with and a large amount of the time they will not sit around for more than a turn. That means that you want to be playing a threat the same turn that you are playing your engine piece (which just so happens to be my biggest issue with Etherium Sculptor) and this is something that is not guaranteed with Wurmcoil Engine. Until I can guarantee turn 3 Wurmcoil Engines or the modern metagame slows down, I think we should keep thinking about dropping our 6 drops as an option.
Update on Scrapheap Scrounger: The little robot is a great threat against control and it also works great alongside Chief Engineer to pay convoke costs. The pressure it adds in many games is also useful. But overall it still feels like a filler card while I wait for a replacement 1 or 2 cost artifact creature like a Myr Superion or a playable Lupine Prototype.
@ghgiunco
Good to hear from you again and I’m sorry that your Master Transmuter thread hasn’t taken off yet. Continuing from my posts in there and emphasizing what Ulka has said, the first thing I would do is consolidate your wincons. That means pick the big artifacts that you think are the best and realistically win you the most games and put several copies of those in instead of running 1 of each.
I think the main thing to consider from that article is that it was written in 2011 and at that time, modern was a significantly slower format at that time. I know I keep harping on the speed of the format, but I think that is its defining feature at the moment (in the past it has been more combo heavy), but I digress. The optimal play in that deck is a turn 2 Heartless Summoning into a turn 3 Master Transmuter and then you still have to wait a turn to activate it unless you have found some way to get a Lightning Greaves into play before that. So, the main thing I would work on is finding what cards (like Grand Architect) make your deck faster and more consistent.
Ulka covered Lodestone Golem pretty well and I have discussed this card at length in the Grand Architect thread in the past. The most I will say at this time is that if you haven’t tried playing with it, you should. A lot of people need some convincing, but once they start playing the golem, the never stop.
The 3 toughness on Spellskite when you have a Heartless Summoning in play can be a real bummer. Just as you said, it makes it vulnerable to bolt, but the thing to keep in mind is that it still plays the role of a lightning rod and pulls away removal from taking out higher value targets like Grand Architect, Lodestone Golem or Tezzeret.
I agree with Ulka that Foundry Inspector is not worth it. It is at its best during a Sphinx chain when you want to cast a cost reduction ability but you only have access to colorless mana, but otherwise it is an overcosted nonblue Etherium Sculptor which is already, in my opinion, the worst enabler we have in our deck.
Not gonna lie, this Master Transmuter/Ensnaring Bridge tech is awesome. I think this plus the [c]Epserzoa[/s] that you mentioned could make for a really cool deck. I think I’ll work on putting that together. It sounds wayyy too much fun for me to pass up at least making an a attempt at it.
Yes it does. Evoke is an alternate cost and Heartless Summoning affects all casting costs.
The main reason for not playing a 1-drop like Kraken Hatchling is that all of them are either bad (like Kraken Hatchling or Steel Wall) or they die to Heartless Summoning (like Judge’s Familiar or Mausoleum Wanderer). If Wizards ever prints us a good utility 1-drop artifact and/or blue creature, I will be throwing that into the deck in a heartbeat.
I think that Torpor Orb/Eater of Days is cool but not good enough to be modern playable. The main reason I have for that is that without Torpor Orb, Eater of Days is really really bad. Skipping two turns is basically conceding, because your opponent will win in that time. Now, if Splinter Twin was still around I would consider Torpor Orb as an option and then a case could be made to play a few Eater of Days and Trickbinds but currently it is too difficult to guarantee getting that specific combo in play.
so it may be hard to make this particular combo competitive in modern, but I am huge supporter of brewing and assembling your own decks. I think you have good ideas about a BGx Lotleth Troll dredge list and I would imagine it would play somewhat similarly to the Legacy Nic Fit decks from awhile back. This is an intriguing idea I think you should pursue and I'll try to do some brainstorming about some of the possibilities.