So, as mentioned, I took this out to fnm without play-testing it. I went 2-2, went home and immediately made a few changes to the list mentioned. I’m going to be doing my play-testing tonight and will probably wind up with a slightly different sideboard. More on all this in a bit, first the run down on how things went Friday. This deck is very fast and very aggressive, at least as fast, if not faster, than anything else I've seen in the meta thus far (in my experience at least) it has some glaring weaknesses but I think it can be pretty competitive against most decks.
Round one: Naya (mostly Gruul with a splash of white) aggro brew, 1-2.
This was a pretty solid aggro brew and the games were pretty much races. For me, this meant trying to put a lot of small, very aggressive creatures down, for my opponent it meant ramping into big trample-y creatures. The games were all really close and could have went either way.
After loosing game one, I sideboarded in my kitesail freebooters to help both as fliers to get over their big guys and to help pull some cards from my opponents hand. This worked for game two. Game three was neck and neck but my opponent came out on top.
Rounds 2&3: Gates 2-0, 2-0
I wound up playing against gates decks in rounds 2 & 3 and cleaned house against them both times. This just seems like a very favorable match up in favor of this flavor of pirates. I’m not suggesting that Gates couldn’t win against this brew, it would just be very hard.
Round 4: Boros Aggro, 0-2
This was a combination of a bad (but not un-winable) match up, bad draws and not having the right sideboard cards. Game one involved me getting 10 out of 20 lands and game two saw me mulligan down to five and then have to face a perfect curve with Lyra out on top and him pulling like 11 points of life from lifelink per round. Still, the games were closer than 0-2 might suggest and I’ve got some sideboard plans.
After I got home I changed a few things immediately. I replaced the two risk factors and carnival // carnage with a rigging runner, dire fleet poisoner and light up the stage, making all three four ofs.
The rundown:
Honestly, I was thinking this would be a one week deck for me, a nostalgic look back on pirate tribal but I’m feeling pretty good about the crew after taking them out. I’m working on a more detailed deck primer after I’ve solidified my build a bit more but if you’re at all interested at all in smashing in your opponent’s face with fast and furious creature based aggro this is a deck that you should think about.
Until then here’s a very basic primer. I’ll most likely edit it and make it more presentable in the future, nothing on the sideboard because I’m reworking it.
The cornerstone of this deck is value. The main idea is fairly simple, to pump out more pirates than your opponent can dream of dealing with and pillage away. Generally speaking this deck wants to be using as much manna as possible each turn (unless holding a poisoner ready to flash) making more threats than the opponent can deal with and using aggressive synergy to do massive amounts of damage on the swing and getting maximum value with the spectacle mechanic. Lean on Fathom Fleet Capitan to help fill the board and March of the Drowned and Light up the Stage to help keep the threats coming.
One drop pirates:
Daring Buccaneer: Is the best turn one play (provided you have another pirate in your hand… and you should) it may not have haste but as a 2/2 it’ll catch up on damage the first time you swing with it, it has a better chance to survive as a 2/2 and it frees up your other one drop creatures that can do more for you later.
Fanatical Firebrand: While Daring Buccaneer is a better turn one play, Fanatical Firebrand is not a bad one at all, swinging for 1 on turn one always feels like a small victory. This card can mean a lot more when you’ve got a Dire Fleet Capitan ready to swing, or have either a Judith, Scourge Diva or Dire Fleet Neckbreaker on board. This card can also serve as a one drop spectacle trigger in a pinch.
Rigging Runner: To the point, a 1/1 first striker for 1 is good value but a 2/2 first striker for 1 is amazing value and most turns this deck wants to attack so getting the raid trigger is no hard task.
Two drop pirates: Dire Fleet Poisoner: This will often function as this deck’s primary source of removal, either flash it in to block your target or to pump up one of your attackers that’s being blocked by something you want to kill.
Dire Fleet Captain: This creature is a real powerhouse in this deck, at it’s worst it’s just a grizzly bear but in most cases it’ll be much larger on the attack with each other pirate giving it +1.
Fathom Fleet Captain: This card should, in most cases be your first option if it’s reasonable to cast and activate the trigger. It dies to everything but until it does it can help you fill up your hand with a back up crew by dedicating your first two manna to making a token every turn. The obvious exceptions would be if playing some other card would win you the game that turn or that you would have to discard things that might be more useful than a 2/2 with menace.
Three drop pirates(?):
Judith, the Scourge Diva: Sure, Judy isn’t a pirate but she might as well be. In most cases, unless there’s no risk to her at all, or if doing so would win you the game you won’t be attacking with her. She doesn’t get to be revealed to make Daring Buccaneer cheaper, she doesn’t get a bonus from Dire Fleet Neck Breaker or help Dire Fleet Captain by attacking… But she does give all the attacking pirates +1/0 (and there will likely be a few of them) and when / if the (likely) inevitable happens and the glass cannon that is this deck blows up it’ll do a bit more damage to your opponent in doing so. Does this make Judy and honorary pirate? I think so.
Four drop pirates:
Dire Fleet Neckbreaker: +2/0 for all attacking pirates is a thing that can make for a lot of damage.
The not pirates:
March of the Drowned: One black to bring two dead pirates back to your hand beats one for one removal for value in my book and helps deal with the problem of an empty hand.
Light up the stage: This will most often be cast for 1 and helps this deck have things to play, which is what this deck wants to do.
Skewer the Critics: Most of the time this will be cast for 1, most of the time the best target will be the opponent’s face but it can also, at times, if needed aid as removal…
About a year ago I was running pirates (rakdos and then grixis). The other day a friend suggested revisiting the tribe, I had put a little thought into it already so I decided to throw something together and give it a go this Friday (tonight! and I haven’t even played it yet… this fits in with the deck’s theme, however).
The plan is pretty simple. Blast out a bunch of super cost efficient pirates. Use Light up the Stage, March of the Drowned, and (maybe) Risk Factor to keep the fire burning. I plan on smashing face until I leave my opponents wondering if they should brew up some pirates or possibly just repeatedly loose in a blaze of glory.
Runaway Steamkin isn't a goblin but works well in this deck, maindeck there are only 5 spells that won't trigger it and it's generally useful. I originally thought this would run Experimental Frenzy but gave the slots to Vanquisher's Banner which gives a good bit of draw to you while buffing up your goblins. While 21 lands seems pretty low to me, between the Runaway Steamkin and Skirk Prospector it still manages to pop off, I unintentionally ran 20 land playtesting this deck out and it worked well and I was pretty shocked my land count was off when I figured it out. This deck is still in its infancy and I imagine it'll change a bit after I take it out Friday.
Well, obviously this is all speculation and opinion but here’s my two cents…
First of all I kinda dug Ixalan but I’m also in the rare camp of folks whose favorite block was Lorwyn so I don’t assume most other players share the same opinions as me. Moving on, I think it’s exceptionally likely that we’ll see more cards of the various tribes highlighted in Ixalan (vampires and merfolk are both pretty popular tribes for Magic in general while dinosaurs and pirates both seem to have some popularity) but I wouldn’t really venture to guess that we’re going to see a block dedicated just to Ixalan any time very soon. That said, I get the feeling that going forward that core sets will be a place where we see bits from a small number of planes. So, basically I think that we’ll definitely see more vampires and merfolk in the future, we’ll probably see more pirates and dinos to some extent (maybe some mecha-godzilla dinos from Kaladesh at some point... imagine if such things got the Phyrexian bug) and we might get more glimpses of Ixalan in a future core set but it’d be unlikely that we’ll see a block dedicated to the place any time soon.
As for the quality of the set I think this is really hard to evaluate and just reading through comments here I think I had a very different takeaway from the Ixalan block. In short, I feel like there was a pretty high number of cards that are meaningful in several different formats, this translates to a pretty good set in my book. I feel like part of the problem that Ixalan has had is that it kinda has to live in the shadows of the surrounding blocks and also we’re not really going to have a full picture of how much of a standard impact that we’re going to see before they rotate out. While there’s nothing subtle about it, Gishath, Sun's Avatar is an amazingly terrifying commander. Kitesail Freebooter and Siren Stormtamer are both really solid cards. There are plenty more but my point is while there hasn’t been a lot of tier Ixalan tribal decks the cards aren’t all so bad. That said, I would venture to guess just from where I play that there are some Ixalan-Tribal builds that could work. I played Pirates (Rakdos and Grixis) with pretty reliable results during Ixalan / Rivals and for the past two weeks there’s been a Rakdos pirates deck tearing up my FNM.
Obviously, this is all just speculation but I have a feeling that in until the next rotation we’ll probably be seeing more cards from the sets see play in tier decks with the possibility of some really brutal tribal builds but how and if at all this manifests really depends on what cards we see printed in the next couple sets and it’s tricky to even guess. Two of the four tribes are 3-color and the two that are 2-colored relate to guilds which have not yet been focused on in Ravnica and we’re not really sure what the post Alliance Ravnica set will look like at all.
After the next set, dinos and pirates will have access to checks and shocks which will probably make them the most playable they’ve ever been as 3-color decks (as well as being able to access a lot of different tools). If the post -Alliance set has a wedge theme this’ll probably give Grixis (pirates) and Naya (dinosaurs) an advantages over the other shards / wedges. vampires are a bit of a wildcard. In the history of magic there have been a lot of vampires and a lot of the vampires in Ixalan / Rivals are Knights which are also a pretty popular tribe historically and many vampires already see play as knights in knight decks I really have no idea how the next set will affect black / white or vampires. Given that merfolk are Simic colors and that many (but not all) of the Simic Guild are merfolk it seems likely that we’ll either see a bunch of Ixalan-Rivals merfolk along side Simic guild cards in the next set.
Sorry I haven't commented here for a while. I've suddenly and quite unexpectedly found myself in a house-buying situation and things are a bit hectic. This deck hasn't done great for me so far but I still feel pretty good about it and there seems to be a lot of options post rotation. I've practiced with a friend a good deal with this deck and it's done much better than FNM so I know it can preform better. This deck is full of great problems and solutions and when it clicks it goes off like a beast. The issue I've had at FNM is consistently getting the problems / solutions I need at the right times. I'm thinking that what this deck really needs is a method of consistent (preferably free-ish) card draw but I look forward to tinkering more post-Guilds.
My first crack at counter-burn. I'll be taking this deck with my to FNM this week. Any thoughts / suggestions are appreciated. I'll do a lil' deck write up and include any changes I make to it post FNM early next week.
Fair enough. I recently took it to a lgs modern night and did kinda average (2-2 with each of my wins being 2-0 and each of my losses being 2-1) with it but felt I could have done better if I had more artifact hate in my sideboard (Chalice of the Void on one was my biggest issue for the night) so I added some more. I don't tend to do more than lgs events and I'm just kinda starting up doing modern (planning on making it a one lgs modern event every few weeks kinda deal) so not exceptionally competitive.
While most of the cards that make up this list aren’t uncommon (and none of them are really entirely unheard of) to find in other mono-red goblin builds what probably sets my current list apart from most others are the 3 Blood Moons, 4 Simian Spirit Guides and 2 Goblin Kings maindeck. This is my rationale for why I’m doing this.
Blood moon was the inspiration for these changes. I figure Blood Moon is going to negatively affect most of my potential opponents on some level. Unless they’re playing all basic lands it’s going to do something they don’t want. Clearly, if someone will be unaffected or not affected enough to justify them staying in there, board them out, but a resolved Blood Moon will effectively shut off many other decks. Three seems to be the right number because ideally we want to get this out early and if it goes away we’d like to be able to replace it but there’s also no real benefit for having more than one in play at any given time.
The Simian Spirit Guides seem to be most useful in early game but there’s often times where it’s nice to have one more red manna. The SSGs can help get Blood Moon out on turns one or two which is really often ideal for many, very obvious reasons but it is far from useless even if we don’t get Blood Moon early. In making room for these cards, a lot of fine gobbos had to step aside, many one drops. The SSG helps negate that loss a bit by allowing to play “bigger” goblins faster allowing the deck to do things like:
Turn one:
Play mountain, drop a SSG for a red, cast Goblin Piledriver.
Turn two:
Play a mountain, cast Goblin Guide and Legion Loyalist. swing for 8.
Turn three:
Cast Goblin Bushwhacker for 2, swing for 15.
Since all those cards are four-of’s this sequence of play isn’t an exceptionally uncommon occurrence but there are other really great lines of play in there too.
Before this bit o’ change I was running Goblin Chieftain as my lord, as all my gobbos getting haste is kinda great but my reasoning for running Goblin Kings is as such… Many of my Goblins already have haste or the ability to grant haste, none of them have any kinda evasion and while mountainwalk is conditional evasion... sometimes people choose to play with mountains while other times Blood Moon forces them to.
In all, the deck looses some bodies as opposed to more “traditional” 8-whack builds which could be used for smashing your opponent but tends to make up for it by often times allowing you to play higher cost cards sooner, potentially playing a blood moon in the first two turns and potentially making your lil’ gobbo horde unblockable.
So, to be entirely fair, this is kinda my first shot at building a commander deck from scratch. I’m in no way new to magic but I’m no wizened ol’ master either, just a guy who’s been playing Magic off and on more or less since it started.
This deck started out as something slightly different: Here was my initial list : and I just kinda built it out of cards I had laying around to help some of my students learn how to play commander this summer. Turned out, I kinda liked the deck so I tinkered with it a bit more with cards I had, made a couple trades and put in less than $20 towards the deck so far. The original build was notably budget, the current list is not significantly more expensive but I’m still tinkering with it and while my personal budget is as much of an issue as anyone .
The commander of this deck, Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca has abilities based on tapping other merfolk, as does the Lullmage Mentor. I’ll touch on both of these cards a bit more later but they’re notable because just how handy their abilities can be. As your commander (that only costs 3 cmc) Kumena will most likely show up in your games while Lullmage is just 1 in 99 and he might not always drawn there are a couple cards in here that will help you search for other merfolk to help you get him. He might not always be your first choice but it’s often a good one. As such there’s a minor tap untap theme going on in this list.
Merrow Commerce allows you to untap all merfolk (which is pretty much all your creatures) you control at the end of your turn while Quest for Renewal can allow you to untap at the end of each other players untap step. There’s no reliable way to get these cards out but they just feel right in here. If you can get them out (especially Quest for Renewal). While these cards don’t represent
Merrow Reejerey is in here and a fine way to untap some creatures (it’s not hard to find yourself casting merfolk with this deck) but generally speaking it’s not going to amp up your tapping power too much but it will do so a bit. There are a few fish-folks with flash in here so it can also be used for a bit of trickery when it comes to blockers your opponent might not be expecting.
Wake Thrasher is hurt a little bit by Merrow Commerce but you’ll most likely still have lands untap at the beginning of your turn but is made more viably as a defender if you’ve got Quest for Renewal out and you’re tapping all your creatures to do things during everybody else’s turn.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh seemed like a no-brainer to me, most times you’re going to be having some number of creatures tapped at the beginning of your endstep (since the un-tapping takes place at the end). Damaging your opponents is a good thing.
School o' Fish:
Since the commander’s abilities are based on tapping creatures (merfolk specifically) you’ll find it useful to go as wide as you can. There are only a handful of cards in here that make tokens. This is a contributing reason as to why the creature count is a bit high.
The least of the cards that’ll help you go wide (at least in regard to this deck) is Master of Waves, he doesn’t make merfolk tokens (they’re elementals) so you can’t tap them to do stuff and in most situations they’ll all die if he does ( the Immortal Sun can help you here but the Immortal Sun can help most things). That’s not to say they’re of no use to you. Since most of this deck is blue there’s a good chance you’ll have a pretty high devotion to blue so there’s a good chance you can be making a pretty solid block of elementals and a handful of 2/1 (blue) elementals ain’t bad thing to have.
Lullmage Mentorcan help a bit in this category but only so much, countering spells is a thing this deck does but only so much with 8 counterspells but if you’ve got seven merfolk laying around untapped he can overcome that limitation. This can possibly wind up getting you a pretty large chunk of merfolk but a lot of things need to be in play to make this anything close to a consistent card engine.
Aquatic Incursion is a bit of an iffy addition to the deck but because it makes two tokens and while pricey adds more evasion (probably the real focus of the deck).
Deeproot waters, clearly, can get you a bunch of merfolk especially if you can get it out early but that’s a luck shot.
Bigger fish:
Most of the merfolk in this deck have pretty small bodies but there are a lot of ways to make them bigger. Of the 99 are 5 merfolk lords (Merfolk Sovereign, Merfolk Mistbinder, Master of the Pearl Trident, Lord of Atlantis and Merrow Reejery) giving all your other merfolk +1/+1. Master of waves helps out elementals but the only ones in this deck at this point are the ones he makes. Streambed Aquitects can be used to give a guy +1/+1 as a tap ability.
In short, the merfolk may come out with mostly small bodies but they tend to become fairly big consistently.
Evasion:
There’s a great deal of evasion built in here. Master of the Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis both give all your merfolk island walk and Streambed Aquitects can either pump up a creature and give him island walk or make an island for all your island hoppin’ pals to skip on through and maul your opponents. Aquitect’s Will will permanently give an opponent an island. Herald of Secret Streams will make all your creatures with +1/+1 counters (which can be a lot) unblockable, Waterspount Weavers will pretty regularly give all your creatures flying and the Deepchannel Mentor will make all your blue creatures (including those elemental tokens) unblockable.
Anyway…. I could go on but this is still a work in progress. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
To help introduce some of my students to commander I threw together a couple janky decks for them to play against each other. This one turned out a bit more fun to play and a bit more competitive than I expected it would be. It can certainly operate without the Omniscience and that will make it even more budget, I just happened to have one and throwing down a giant hand without paying anything for it is tempting enough for me to put it in there.
The general plan is simple; play merfolk, use bounce spells on your own guys to maximize the impact of enter the battlefield triggers or on your opponent's to make life harder for them, use counter-spells when they seem like they would have the most effect, flop around on dry land. I'll have a bit of a breakdown of the deck up soon, possibly tomorrow morning.
Gummo
Holy Mountain
(It’s a bit of a cheat here because it’s a TV show, movie and some books are involved too, but)
Twin Peaks (ought to be on this list and it’s good enough for me to put it here)
Seven Samurai
This was a tough round (but to be fair, all of my rounds were kinda tough in some way…. I’ve gone 3-1 with less game losses a couple of times) but it could have been tougher. It was certainly a mono-red aggro deck but it was closer to challenger deck mono-red aggro than meta-list aggro. Still, while this list is far from slow it’s not mono-red aggro fast. Regardless, what I had was enough. Harvester helped me stabilize while my planeswalkers both lent a hand a good bit.
Key play: The opponent swung in with glorybringer but I had
Round two: 2-1 Vs. B/W
This was against an interesting home brew deck that was pretty well piloted. I’d kinda like to look at this decklist a bit. If the player brings it again on Friday I’ll probably ask to look at it. It felt like a sort of midrange (Servo) token deck with a small handful of other useful creatures. While I haven’t seen much like it, it was a solid deck and the round boiled down to a bit of a bluff on my behalf after I picked up a land, put it down (and at around six life while he had a pretty good mass of tokens out… more than six) I rolled my eyes and declared there wasn’t much I could do. He swung in with all he had and I settled the wreckage, paving the way to a victory for me.
Round three: 2-1 W/U Approach
It was Approach… Piloted by a guy who knows what he’s doing with it. That said, while I don’t win every round I face it, I’ve got a pretty solid strategy for winning against approach which gives me more wins than losses against this deck and control in general that’s no secret at all … Smash down their life before they can stabilize. Obviously, it doesn’t work like that every game but this time it did.
Game one looked almost like a kinda mirror match up. While the specifics were mostly different his plan seemed to be crewing vehicles and crashing them into me I won this round because my deck was better at doing this than theirs was. Games two and three his deck looked entirely different each time. He won game two with the help of Nissa Steward of the Elements turning lands into tree creatures while I got mostly land. Game three ended pretty dramatically. After a fairly fast start for me they put the breaks on my show, first by casting out Karn and then with the help of Gideon of the Trials… then Dovin Baan… then Teferi, Hero of Dominaria… this lock down went on for some time as they had to go so control with their sideboard that they really cut down most of his options for actually winning. We ground out several turns where his life was 11 and mine was 20 but my board was held completely in check by his and my hand slowly turned into (with no viable targets) 3 Unlicensed Disintegration. When Lyra Dawnbringer came out I was actually kinda excited to have a target for my Unlicensed Disintegration (making his life 8) but that lead to a few more turns of not much going on. He would have been able to ultimate Teferi and Dovin on his next turn but I topdecked my lone Hazoret, turned my two Unlicensed into four damage and swung in for a fatal 5.
In closing….
I’m pondering getting two more Concealed Courtyards and one more Hazoret, replacing two plains and the Isolated Chapel. Possibly replacing my Dragonskulls with Canyons but I’m still up in the air about that. This’ll take me down to 23 lands but it seems like my land-base would be flexible enough that it shouldn’t matter much.
Went 3-1 at my shop for FNM. My three wins were all against guys who come out pretty consistently on top in a group that tends to be about 25-30 and my one loss (against B/W Knights ... with Lyra) went to a guy who went undefeated for the night. I got myself another Karn and my list is currently looking like:
While I generally enjoy bringing more (personally) creative brews, it's a fun deck that doesn't have terribly much longer of a life span left. I'm working on a playset of Karns and he works pretty good in here so... Until I decide to change things up I'll most likely be bringing this to FNM for the foreseeable future.
Working on a list for a mono-artifact deck. I'm still a little while off from getting all the pieces but I'm still not settled on the list. Here it goes....
Round one: Naya (mostly Gruul with a splash of white) aggro brew, 1-2.
This was a pretty solid aggro brew and the games were pretty much races. For me, this meant trying to put a lot of small, very aggressive creatures down, for my opponent it meant ramping into big trample-y creatures. The games were all really close and could have went either way.
After loosing game one, I sideboarded in my kitesail freebooters to help both as fliers to get over their big guys and to help pull some cards from my opponents hand. This worked for game two. Game three was neck and neck but my opponent came out on top.
Rounds 2&3: Gates 2-0, 2-0
I wound up playing against gates decks in rounds 2 & 3 and cleaned house against them both times. This just seems like a very favorable match up in favor of this flavor of pirates. I’m not suggesting that Gates couldn’t win against this brew, it would just be very hard.
Round 4: Boros Aggro, 0-2
This was a combination of a bad (but not un-winable) match up, bad draws and not having the right sideboard cards. Game one involved me getting 10 out of 20 lands and game two saw me mulligan down to five and then have to face a perfect curve with Lyra out on top and him pulling like 11 points of life from lifelink per round. Still, the games were closer than 0-2 might suggest and I’ve got some sideboard plans.
After I got home I changed a few things immediately. I replaced the two risk factors and carnival // carnage with a rigging runner, dire fleet poisoner and light up the stage, making all three four ofs.
The rundown:
Honestly, I was thinking this would be a one week deck for me, a nostalgic look back on pirate tribal but I’m feeling pretty good about the crew after taking them out. I’m working on a more detailed deck primer after I’ve solidified my build a bit more but if you’re at all interested at all in smashing in your opponent’s face with fast and furious creature based aggro this is a deck that you should think about.
Until then here’s a very basic primer. I’ll most likely edit it and make it more presentable in the future, nothing on the sideboard because I’m reworking it.
Current build
4 Rigging Runner
4 Fanatical Firebrand
4 Fathom Fleet Captain
4 Dire Fleet Captain
3 Daring Buccaneer
4 Dire Fleet Poisoner
3 Judith, the Scourge Diva
3 Dire Fleet Neckbreaker
4 Dragonskull Summit
9 Mountain
3 Swamp
4 Blood Crypt
Sorcery
3 March of the Drowned
4 Light Up the Stage
4 Skewer the Critics
3 Kitesail Freebooter
3 Dire Fleet Daredevil
1 Risk Factor
3 Banefire
2 Carnival // Carnage
3 Drill Bit
The cornerstone of this deck is value. The main idea is fairly simple, to pump out more pirates than your opponent can dream of dealing with and pillage away. Generally speaking this deck wants to be using as much manna as possible each turn (unless holding a poisoner ready to flash) making more threats than the opponent can deal with and using aggressive synergy to do massive amounts of damage on the swing and getting maximum value with the spectacle mechanic. Lean on Fathom Fleet Capitan to help fill the board and March of the Drowned and Light up the Stage to help keep the threats coming.
One drop pirates:
Daring Buccaneer: Is the best turn one play (provided you have another pirate in your hand… and you should) it may not have haste but as a 2/2 it’ll catch up on damage the first time you swing with it, it has a better chance to survive as a 2/2 and it frees up your other one drop creatures that can do more for you later.
Fanatical Firebrand: While Daring Buccaneer is a better turn one play, Fanatical Firebrand is not a bad one at all, swinging for 1 on turn one always feels like a small victory. This card can mean a lot more when you’ve got a Dire Fleet Capitan ready to swing, or have either a Judith, Scourge Diva or Dire Fleet Neckbreaker on board. This card can also serve as a one drop spectacle trigger in a pinch.
Rigging Runner: To the point, a 1/1 first striker for 1 is good value but a 2/2 first striker for 1 is amazing value and most turns this deck wants to attack so getting the raid trigger is no hard task.
Two drop pirates:
Dire Fleet Poisoner: This will often function as this deck’s primary source of removal, either flash it in to block your target or to pump up one of your attackers that’s being blocked by something you want to kill.
Dire Fleet Captain: This creature is a real powerhouse in this deck, at it’s worst it’s just a grizzly bear but in most cases it’ll be much larger on the attack with each other pirate giving it +1.
Fathom Fleet Captain: This card should, in most cases be your first option if it’s reasonable to cast and activate the trigger. It dies to everything but until it does it can help you fill up your hand with a back up crew by dedicating your first two manna to making a token every turn. The obvious exceptions would be if playing some other card would win you the game that turn or that you would have to discard things that might be more useful than a 2/2 with menace.
Three drop pirates(?):
Judith, the Scourge Diva: Sure, Judy isn’t a pirate but she might as well be. In most cases, unless there’s no risk to her at all, or if doing so would win you the game you won’t be attacking with her. She doesn’t get to be revealed to make Daring Buccaneer cheaper, she doesn’t get a bonus from Dire Fleet Neck Breaker or help Dire Fleet Captain by attacking… But she does give all the attacking pirates +1/0 (and there will likely be a few of them) and when / if the (likely) inevitable happens and the glass cannon that is this deck blows up it’ll do a bit more damage to your opponent in doing so. Does this make Judy and honorary pirate? I think so.
Four drop pirates:
Dire Fleet Neckbreaker: +2/0 for all attacking pirates is a thing that can make for a lot of damage.
The not pirates:
March of the Drowned: One black to bring two dead pirates back to your hand beats one for one removal for value in my book and helps deal with the problem of an empty hand.
Light up the stage: This will most often be cast for 1 and helps this deck have things to play, which is what this deck wants to do.
Skewer the Critics: Most of the time this will be cast for 1, most of the time the best target will be the opponent’s face but it can also, at times, if needed aid as removal…
The plan is pretty simple. Blast out a bunch of super cost efficient pirates. Use Light up the Stage, March of the Drowned, and (maybe) Risk Factor to keep the fire burning. I plan on smashing face until I leave my opponents wondering if they should brew up some pirates or possibly just repeatedly loose in a blaze of glory.
3 Rigging Runner
4 Fanatical Firebrand
4 Fathom Fleet Captain
4 Dire Fleet Captain
3 Daring Buccaneer
3 Dire Fleet Poisoner
3 Judith, the Scourge Diva
3 Dire Fleet Neckbreaker
4 Dragonskull Summit
8 Mountain
4 Swamp
4 Blood Crypt
Instant
2 Risk Factor
Sorcery
3 March of the Drowned
3 Light Up the Stage
1 Carnival // Carnage
4 Skewer the Critics
3 Kitesail Freebooter
3 Dire Fleet Daredevil
1 Risk Factor
3 Banefire
2 Carnival // Carnage
3 Drill Bit
I’ll most likely have some kinda write up on how it went next week.
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Runaway Steam-Kin
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Legion Warboss
4 Goblin Chainwhirler
2 Goblin Trashmaster
Enchantment
3 Radiant Destiny
2 Plains
10 Mountain
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Sacred Foundry
1 Boros Guildgate
Artifact
2 Vanquisher's Banner
Instant
4 Justice Strike
Sorcery
3 Response // Resurgence
3 Deafening Clarion
2 Tocatli Honor Guard
3 Ixalan's Binding
3 The Immortal Sun
3 Settle the Wreckage
4 Banefire
Runaway Steamkin isn't a goblin but works well in this deck, maindeck there are only 5 spells that won't trigger it and it's generally useful. I originally thought this would run Experimental Frenzy but gave the slots to Vanquisher's Banner which gives a good bit of draw to you while buffing up your goblins. While 21 lands seems pretty low to me, between the Runaway Steamkin and Skirk Prospector it still manages to pop off, I unintentionally ran 20 land playtesting this deck out and it worked well and I was pretty shocked my land count was off when I figured it out. This deck is still in its infancy and I imagine it'll change a bit after I take it out Friday.
First of all I kinda dug Ixalan but I’m also in the rare camp of folks whose favorite block was Lorwyn so I don’t assume most other players share the same opinions as me. Moving on, I think it’s exceptionally likely that we’ll see more cards of the various tribes highlighted in Ixalan (vampires and merfolk are both pretty popular tribes for Magic in general while dinosaurs and pirates both seem to have some popularity) but I wouldn’t really venture to guess that we’re going to see a block dedicated just to Ixalan any time very soon. That said, I get the feeling that going forward that core sets will be a place where we see bits from a small number of planes. So, basically I think that we’ll definitely see more vampires and merfolk in the future, we’ll probably see more pirates and dinos to some extent (maybe some mecha-godzilla dinos from Kaladesh at some point... imagine if such things got the Phyrexian bug) and we might get more glimpses of Ixalan in a future core set but it’d be unlikely that we’ll see a block dedicated to the place any time soon.
As for the quality of the set I think this is really hard to evaluate and just reading through comments here I think I had a very different takeaway from the Ixalan block. In short, I feel like there was a pretty high number of cards that are meaningful in several different formats, this translates to a pretty good set in my book. I feel like part of the problem that Ixalan has had is that it kinda has to live in the shadows of the surrounding blocks and also we’re not really going to have a full picture of how much of a standard impact that we’re going to see before they rotate out. While there’s nothing subtle about it, Gishath, Sun's Avatar is an amazingly terrifying commander. Kitesail Freebooter and Siren Stormtamer are both really solid cards. There are plenty more but my point is while there hasn’t been a lot of tier Ixalan tribal decks the cards aren’t all so bad. That said, I would venture to guess just from where I play that there are some Ixalan-Tribal builds that could work. I played Pirates (Rakdos and Grixis) with pretty reliable results during Ixalan / Rivals and for the past two weeks there’s been a Rakdos pirates deck tearing up my FNM.
Obviously, this is all just speculation but I have a feeling that in until the next rotation we’ll probably be seeing more cards from the sets see play in tier decks with the possibility of some really brutal tribal builds but how and if at all this manifests really depends on what cards we see printed in the next couple sets and it’s tricky to even guess. Two of the four tribes are 3-color and the two that are 2-colored relate to guilds which have not yet been focused on in Ravnica and we’re not really sure what the post Alliance Ravnica set will look like at all.
After the next set, dinos and pirates will have access to checks and shocks which will probably make them the most playable they’ve ever been as 3-color decks (as well as being able to access a lot of different tools). If the post -Alliance set has a wedge theme this’ll probably give Grixis (pirates) and Naya (dinosaurs) an advantages over the other shards / wedges. vampires are a bit of a wildcard. In the history of magic there have been a lot of vampires and a lot of the vampires in Ixalan / Rivals are Knights which are also a pretty popular tribe historically and many vampires already see play as knights in knight decks I really have no idea how the next set will affect black / white or vampires. Given that merfolk are Simic colors and that many (but not all) of the Simic Guild are merfolk it seems likely that we’ll either see a bunch of Ixalan-Rivals merfolk along side Simic guild cards in the next set.
This concludes my baseless early-morning rant.
4 Enigma Drake
4 Guttersnipe
Land
4 Spirebluff Canal
8 Island
5 Mountain
4 Sulfur Falls
Instant
3 Shock
3 Essence Scatter
1 Winds of Rebuke
3 Lightning Strike
4 Opt
2 Dive Down
3 Negate
2 Blink of an Eye
3 Syncopate
3 Strategic Planning
3 Banefire
Planeswalker
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
3 The Immortal Sun
1 Shock
4 Abrade
1 Lightning Strike
2 Spell Pierce
3 River's Rebuke
1 Banefire
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Legion Loyalist
2 Mogg War Marshal
4 Goblin Piledriver
2 Goblin King
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Reckless Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
3 Blood Moon
Land
19 Mountain
Instant
4 Lightning Bolt
Sorcery
4 Goblin Grenade
1 Goblin Warchief
2 Krenko, Mob Boss
2 Dragon's Claw
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Kari Zev's Expertise
While most of the cards that make up this list aren’t uncommon (and none of them are really entirely unheard of) to find in other mono-red goblin builds what probably sets my current list apart from most others are the 3 Blood Moons, 4 Simian Spirit Guides and 2 Goblin Kings maindeck. This is my rationale for why I’m doing this.
Blood moon was the inspiration for these changes. I figure Blood Moon is going to negatively affect most of my potential opponents on some level. Unless they’re playing all basic lands it’s going to do something they don’t want. Clearly, if someone will be unaffected or not affected enough to justify them staying in there, board them out, but a resolved Blood Moon will effectively shut off many other decks. Three seems to be the right number because ideally we want to get this out early and if it goes away we’d like to be able to replace it but there’s also no real benefit for having more than one in play at any given time.
The Simian Spirit Guides seem to be most useful in early game but there’s often times where it’s nice to have one more red manna. The SSGs can help get Blood Moon out on turns one or two which is really often ideal for many, very obvious reasons but it is far from useless even if we don’t get Blood Moon early. In making room for these cards, a lot of fine gobbos had to step aside, many one drops. The SSG helps negate that loss a bit by allowing to play “bigger” goblins faster allowing the deck to do things like:
Turn one:
Play mountain, drop a SSG for a red, cast Goblin Piledriver.
Turn two:
Play a mountain, cast Goblin Guide and Legion Loyalist. swing for 8.
Turn three:
Cast Goblin Bushwhacker for 2, swing for 15.
Since all those cards are four-of’s this sequence of play isn’t an exceptionally uncommon occurrence but there are other really great lines of play in there too.
Before this bit o’ change I was running Goblin Chieftain as my lord, as all my gobbos getting haste is kinda great but my reasoning for running Goblin Kings is as such… Many of my Goblins already have haste or the ability to grant haste, none of them have any kinda evasion and while mountainwalk is conditional evasion... sometimes people choose to play with mountains while other times Blood Moon forces them to.
In all, the deck looses some bodies as opposed to more “traditional” 8-whack builds which could be used for smashing your opponent but tends to make up for it by often times allowing you to play higher cost cards sooner, potentially playing a blood moon in the first two turns and potentially making your lil’ gobbo horde unblockable.
Any thoughts / comments?
This deck started out as something slightly different: Here was my initial list : and I just kinda built it out of cards I had laying around to help some of my students learn how to play commander this summer. Turned out, I kinda liked the deck so I tinkered with it a bit more with cards I had, made a couple trades and put in less than $20 towards the deck so far. The original build was notably budget, the current list is not significantly more expensive but I’m still tinkering with it and while my personal budget is as much of an issue as anyone .
1 Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca
Creature
1 Tishana, Voice of Thunder
1 Silvergill Douser
1 Stonybrook Banneret
1 Vorel of the Hull Clade
1 Vineshaper Mystic
1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
1 Tidal Courier
1 Wake Thrasher
1 Deeproot Elite
1 Lord of Atlantis
1 Fallowsage
1 Merrow Harbinger
1 Merrow Reejerey
1 Deepchannel Mentor
1 Lullmage Mentor
1 Herald of Secret Streams
1 Kopala, Warden of Waves
1 Tempest Caller
1 Harbinger of the Tides
1 Master of the Pearl Trident
1 Master of Waves
1 Merfolk Sovereign
1 Streambed Aquitects
1 Seafloor Oracle
1 Merfolk Mistbinder
1 Merfolk Trickster
1 Waterspout Weavers
1 Shapers of Nature
1 Swift Warden
1 Forerunner of the Heralds
1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
1 Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
1 Merrow Commerce
1 Quest for Renewal
1 Bounty of the Luxa
1 Kindred Discovery
1 Deeproot Waters
1 Aquatic Incursion
1 Hadana's Climb
Land
1 Novijen, Heart of Progress
14 Island
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Lumbering Falls
1 Simic Guildgate
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 Simic Growth Chamber
5 Forest
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Zhalfirin Void
1 Memorial to Genius
1 Woodland Stream
Artifact
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Spellbook
1 Sol Ring
1 Bident of Thassa
1 Lifecrafter's Bestiary
1 Throne of the God-Pharaoh
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Familiar's Ruse
1 Counterspell
1 Plasm Capture
1 Dissolve
1 Negate
1 Engulf the Shore
1 Disappearing Act
1 Rewind
1 Pull from Tomorrow
1 Misdirection
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Wizard's Retort
1 Rescue
Sorcery
1 Fathom Trawl
1 Wildest Dreams
1 Harvest Season
1 River's Rebuke
1 Aquitect's Will
1 Mind Spring
Flip flopin' fish:
The commander of this deck, Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca has abilities based on tapping other merfolk, as does the Lullmage Mentor. I’ll touch on both of these cards a bit more later but they’re notable because just how handy their abilities can be. As your commander (that only costs 3 cmc) Kumena will most likely show up in your games while Lullmage is just 1 in 99 and he might not always drawn there are a couple cards in here that will help you search for other merfolk to help you get him. He might not always be your first choice but it’s often a good one. As such there’s a minor tap untap theme going on in this list.
Merrow Commerce allows you to untap all merfolk (which is pretty much all your creatures) you control at the end of your turn while Quest for Renewal can allow you to untap at the end of each other players untap step. There’s no reliable way to get these cards out but they just feel right in here. If you can get them out (especially Quest for Renewal). While these cards don’t represent
Merrow Reejerey is in here and a fine way to untap some creatures (it’s not hard to find yourself casting merfolk with this deck) but generally speaking it’s not going to amp up your tapping power too much but it will do so a bit. There are a few fish-folks with flash in here so it can also be used for a bit of trickery when it comes to blockers your opponent might not be expecting.
Wake Thrasher is hurt a little bit by Merrow Commerce but you’ll most likely still have lands untap at the beginning of your turn but is made more viably as a defender if you’ve got Quest for Renewal out and you’re tapping all your creatures to do things during everybody else’s turn.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh seemed like a no-brainer to me, most times you’re going to be having some number of creatures tapped at the beginning of your endstep (since the un-tapping takes place at the end). Damaging your opponents is a good thing.
School o' Fish:
Since the commander’s abilities are based on tapping creatures (merfolk specifically) you’ll find it useful to go as wide as you can. There are only a handful of cards in here that make tokens. This is a contributing reason as to why the creature count is a bit high.
The least of the cards that’ll help you go wide (at least in regard to this deck) is Master of Waves, he doesn’t make merfolk tokens (they’re elementals) so you can’t tap them to do stuff and in most situations they’ll all die if he does ( the Immortal Sun can help you here but the Immortal Sun can help most things). That’s not to say they’re of no use to you. Since most of this deck is blue there’s a good chance you’ll have a pretty high devotion to blue so there’s a good chance you can be making a pretty solid block of elementals and a handful of 2/1 (blue) elementals ain’t bad thing to have.
Lullmage Mentorcan help a bit in this category but only so much, countering spells is a thing this deck does but only so much with 8 counterspells but if you’ve got seven merfolk laying around untapped he can overcome that limitation. This can possibly wind up getting you a pretty large chunk of merfolk but a lot of things need to be in play to make this anything close to a consistent card engine.
Aquatic Incursion is a bit of an iffy addition to the deck but because it makes two tokens and while pricey adds more evasion (probably the real focus of the deck).
Deeproot waters, clearly, can get you a bunch of merfolk especially if you can get it out early but that’s a luck shot.
Bigger fish:
Most of the merfolk in this deck have pretty small bodies but there are a lot of ways to make them bigger. Of the 99 are 5 merfolk lords (Merfolk Sovereign, Merfolk Mistbinder, Master of the Pearl Trident, Lord of Atlantis and Merrow Reejery) giving all your other merfolk +1/+1. Master of waves helps out elementals but the only ones in this deck at this point are the ones he makes. Streambed Aquitects can be used to give a guy +1/+1 as a tap ability.
8 cards either give, increase the number of of counters on your merfolk (one being your commander)( Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca, Hadana’s Climb, Forerunner of the Heralds, Deeproot Elite, Shapers of Nature, Vineshaper Mystic, Vorel of the Hull Clade and Novijen, Heart of progress)
In short, the merfolk may come out with mostly small bodies but they tend to become fairly big consistently.
Evasion:
There’s a great deal of evasion built in here. Master of the Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis both give all your merfolk island walk and Streambed Aquitects can either pump up a creature and give him island walk or make an island for all your island hoppin’ pals to skip on through and maul your opponents. Aquitect’s Will will permanently give an opponent an island. Herald of Secret Streams will make all your creatures with +1/+1 counters (which can be a lot) unblockable, Waterspount Weavers will pretty regularly give all your creatures flying and the Deepchannel Mentor will make all your blue creatures (including those elemental tokens) unblockable.
Anyway…. I could go on but this is still a work in progress. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
1 Tishana, Voice of Thunder
Creature
1 Altered Ego
1 Silvergill Douser
1 Tideshaper Mystic
1 Stonybrook Banneret
1 River Sneak
1 Vineshaper Mystic
1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
1 Rootwater Hunter
1 Scroll Thief
1 Tidal Courier
1 Wake Thrasher
1 Deeproot Elite
1 Jade Bearer
1 Vodalian Arcanist
1 Fallowsage
1 Merrow Reejerey
1 Merrow Levitator
1 Tempest Caller
1 Silvergill Adept
1 Harbinger of the Tides
1 Master of the Pearl Trident
1 Master of Waves
1 Merfolk Sovereign
1 Streambed Aquitects
1 Merfolk Mistbinder
1 Merfolk Trickster
1 Waterspout Weavers
1 Waker of the Wilds
1 Shapers of Nature
1 Swift Warden
1 Forerunner of the Heralds
1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
1 Fleet Swallower
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
1 Merrow Commerce
1 Aid from the Cowl
1 Bounty of the Luxa
1 Deeproot Waters
1 Hadana's Climb
1 Omniscience
Land
15 Island
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Simic Guildgate
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 Simic Growth Chamber
12 Forest
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Zhalfirin Void
1 Memorial to Genius
1 Woodland Stream
Artifact
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Panharmonicon
1 Lifecrafter's Bestiary
Instant
1 Withdraw
1 Unsummon
1 Familiar's Ruse
1 Counterspell
1 Dissolve
1 Negate
1 Disappearing Act
1 Pull from Tomorrow
1 Misdirection
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Wizard's Retort
1 Rescue
1 Fathom Trawl
1 Wildest Dreams
1 Entrancing Melody
1 River's Rebuke
1 Mind Spring
The general plan is simple; play merfolk, use bounce spells on your own guys to maximize the impact of enter the battlefield triggers or on your opponent's to make life harder for them, use counter-spells when they seem like they would have the most effect, flop around on dry land. I'll have a bit of a breakdown of the deck up soon, possibly tomorrow morning.
Holy Mountain
(It’s a bit of a cheat here because it’s a TV show, movie and some books are involved too, but)
Twin Peaks (ought to be on this list and it’s good enough for me to put it here)
Seven Samurai
4 Toolcraft Exemplar
2 Pia Nalaar
2 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
3 Veteran Motorist
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Artifact
4 Bomat Courier
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Heart of Kiran
Instant
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
2 Fatal Push
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
3 Karn, Scion of Urza
Land
2 Concealed Courtyard
4 Inspiring Vantage
2 Aether Hub
4 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Spire of Industry
3 Dragonskull Summit
1 Isolated Chapel
3 Ixalan's Binding
3 Abrade
3 Settle the Wreckage
3 Lost Legacy
3 Duress
Here are some brief rundowns of my match ups.
Round one: 2-1 Vs. Mono-red
This was a tough round (but to be fair, all of my rounds were kinda tough in some way…. I’ve gone 3-1 with less game losses a couple of times) but it could have been tougher. It was certainly a mono-red aggro deck but it was closer to challenger deck mono-red aggro than meta-list aggro. Still, while this list is far from slow it’s not mono-red aggro fast. Regardless, what I had was enough. Harvester helped me stabilize while my planeswalkers both lent a hand a good bit.
Key play: The opponent swung in with glorybringer but I had
Round two: 2-1 Vs. B/W
This was against an interesting home brew deck that was pretty well piloted. I’d kinda like to look at this decklist a bit. If the player brings it again on Friday I’ll probably ask to look at it. It felt like a sort of midrange (Servo) token deck with a small handful of other useful creatures. While I haven’t seen much like it, it was a solid deck and the round boiled down to a bit of a bluff on my behalf after I picked up a land, put it down (and at around six life while he had a pretty good mass of tokens out… more than six) I rolled my eyes and declared there wasn’t much I could do. He swung in with all he had and I settled the wreckage, paving the way to a victory for me.
Round three: 2-1 W/U Approach
It was Approach… Piloted by a guy who knows what he’s doing with it. That said, while I don’t win every round I face it, I’ve got a pretty solid strategy for winning against approach which gives me more wins than losses against this deck and control in general that’s no secret at all … Smash down their life before they can stabilize. Obviously, it doesn’t work like that every game but this time it did.
Round four: 2-1 Shape shifting Bant plainswalker-heavy midrange
Game one looked almost like a kinda mirror match up. While the specifics were mostly different his plan seemed to be crewing vehicles and crashing them into me I won this round because my deck was better at doing this than theirs was. Games two and three his deck looked entirely different each time. He won game two with the help of Nissa Steward of the Elements turning lands into tree creatures while I got mostly land. Game three ended pretty dramatically. After a fairly fast start for me they put the breaks on my show, first by casting out Karn and then with the help of Gideon of the Trials… then Dovin Baan… then Teferi, Hero of Dominaria… this lock down went on for some time as they had to go so control with their sideboard that they really cut down most of his options for actually winning. We ground out several turns where his life was 11 and mine was 20 but my board was held completely in check by his and my hand slowly turned into (with no viable targets) 3 Unlicensed Disintegration. When Lyra Dawnbringer came out I was actually kinda excited to have a target for my Unlicensed Disintegration (making his life 8) but that lead to a few more turns of not much going on. He would have been able to ultimate Teferi and Dovin on his next turn but I topdecked my lone Hazoret, turned my two Unlicensed into four damage and swung in for a fatal 5.
In closing….
I’m pondering getting two more Concealed Courtyards and one more Hazoret, replacing two plains and the Isolated Chapel. Possibly replacing my Dragonskulls with Canyons but I’m still up in the air about that. This’ll take me down to 23 lands but it seems like my land-base would be flexible enough that it shouldn’t matter much.
4 Toolcraft Exemplar
2 Pia Nalaar
2 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
3 Veteran Motorist
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Artifact
4 Bomat Courier
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Heart of Kiran
Instant
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
2 Fatal Push
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
3 Karn, Scion of Urza
Land
1 Concealed Courtyard
4 Inspiring Vantage
2 Aether Hub
5 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Spire of Industry
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Ixalan's Binding
3 Abrade
3 Settle the Wreckage
3 Lost Legacy
3 Duress
While I generally enjoy bringing more (personally) creative brews, it's a fun deck that doesn't have terribly much longer of a life span left. I'm working on a playset of Karns and he works pretty good in here so... Until I decide to change things up I'll most likely be bringing this to FNM for the foreseeable future.
6 Mountain
4 Sunscorched Desert
4 Scavenger Grounds
4 Arch of Orazca
4 Zhalfirin Void
2 Vanquisher's Banner
3 Treasure Map
3 Prying Blade
4 Ornithopter
4 Sparring Construct
4 Chief of the Foundry
4 Jhoira's Familiar
3 Mishra's Self-Replicator
4 Foundry Inspector
3 Traxos, Scourge of Kroog
4 Karn, Scion of Urza
Those are my initial thoughts. I'm not settled on anything yet and I almost certainly need a bit more land to get the ball rolling. Any thoughts?
4 Toolcraft Exemplar
2 Pia Nalaar
2 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
3 Veteran Motorist
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Artifact
4 Bomat Courier
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Heart of Kiran
Instant
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
3 Fatal Push
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
Land
1 Concealed Courtyard
4 Inspiring Vantage
2 Aether Hub
5 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Spire of Industry
4 Dragonskull Summit
2 Glorybringer
3 Ixalan's Binding
3 Settle the Wreckage
3 Lightning Strike
2 Cast Down
2 Duress