There is a good "robot" deck archetype in pauper, mostly centred around BUW. There are some good red cards that interact with artifacts now, though.
You will want to check out:
- Antiquities
- Urza's Block
- Mirrodin 1
- Alara
- Scars of Mirrodin
- Master's Edition 4, Modern Masters 1 + 2 and various box sets (there were some rarity downgrades)
There actually are some good artifact finishers. Hexplate Golem is a 5/7 and clobbers virtually the entire format except eldrazi. Rusty Hulk (or whatever it was from Scars) is a common in MM2 and can go rawr crush you on turn 4. And there's fliers.
Keep in mind that if you put too many shatter or naturalize effects in your cube the artifact deck will be a liability. It's already more vulnerable than other decks to naturalize so don't put too many in. That being said, stuff like the white shatter that gives you life becomes playable because there will be a lot of people taking artifacts to fill out their decks (hexplate golem is a prime example).
Look at Modern Masters 4 for an example of an "artifact set" that has too many shatters.
1. People who hover when you're trying to do a trade of some sort. Especially when they are poorly informed. As in I'm taking a hit just because I want to get the card already and they still say I'm 'ripping him off'. Or an investment banker asking me how I sleep at night when I trade pile of crap rares for a $10 card owned by a 30-something teacher at a time when I was a student.
2. People who slowplay. You don't need a minute to drop a mountain and pass your first turn. Doubly so when they get angry when I tell them to hurry up (even though it's 1-0 in my favor so they would lose if they kept waffling).
3. People who intentionally miss their opponent's mandatory triggers (like, say, ingest triggers) and have to be reminded every single turn even when the board state has not changed and then try to take advantage of the triggers having been missed.
I hate seeing people pile shuffle. First, it takes forever. Second, it means I have to riffle their deck a few times when they present it. I riffle six or so times and by the time I'm done they are still sloooowly putting together their piles.
The people who make these repacks buy heavily picked-over bulk commons / uncommons from collectors and other stores, probably at $5 - $10 per thousand.
They might slip some bad rares in there or not even bother. Then they make packs of ten and it's pure profit.
Bad idea to buy these. Bigger shops might do somewhat legit repacks but 99% of the time repacks are a waste of time and money.
You might have book value of 14 cents a piece but nobody will pay you 14 cents for those cards. Things are skewed because sometimes in a blue moon people will buy something for a buck from a store because it's not worth it to do otherwise. The "real" value of crap commons from Origins or Ice Age is probably about a tenth of a cent or less.
The rules on this keep changing.
If I hit a guy with a ingest creature a few times and he does not remove the card, a few turns later we realize this, what happens now?
If after we realize this, the other player has to be prompted every single time, is offside or just annoying?
Thing is with Black is that it can kind of do anything even now, except deal with enchantments and artifacts. Quite often it's cards cost more or are weaker or require a life payment though. So Planar Chaos black isn't that much different than normal black, except that it gave black some nice weenies. But black only rebels is unplayable in singleton because there are so few of them.
There's also Warp Artifact and Relic Bane but those are on-color.
Ridgeback is good ONLY on turn 1 on the play. Pauper is a reasonably fast format so there's really no guarantee you're going to swing for 4 with it. You might end up bouncing off a 1/3 or something.
So Daru Stinger is one of very very few creatures with no race now? That's stupid.
I'm just going to pretend this update never happened. Yay for being able to do this!
So not pauper.
You will want to check out:
- Antiquities
- Urza's Block
- Mirrodin 1
- Alara
- Scars of Mirrodin
- Master's Edition 4, Modern Masters 1 + 2 and various box sets (there were some rarity downgrades)
There actually are some good artifact finishers. Hexplate Golem is a 5/7 and clobbers virtually the entire format except eldrazi. Rusty Hulk (or whatever it was from Scars) is a common in MM2 and can go rawr crush you on turn 4. And there's fliers.
Keep in mind that if you put too many shatter or naturalize effects in your cube the artifact deck will be a liability. It's already more vulnerable than other decks to naturalize so don't put too many in. That being said, stuff like the white shatter that gives you life becomes playable because there will be a lot of people taking artifacts to fill out their decks (hexplate golem is a prime example).
Look at Modern Masters 4 for an example of an "artifact set" that has too many shatters.
There's a white "equipment matters" deck too.
2. People who slowplay. You don't need a minute to drop a mountain and pass your first turn. Doubly so when they get angry when I tell them to hurry up (even though it's 1-0 in my favor so they would lose if they kept waffling).
3. People who intentionally miss their opponent's mandatory triggers (like, say, ingest triggers) and have to be reminded every single turn even when the board state has not changed and then try to take advantage of the triggers having been missed.
They might slip some bad rares in there or not even bother. Then they make packs of ten and it's pure profit.
Bad idea to buy these. Bigger shops might do somewhat legit repacks but 99% of the time repacks are a waste of time and money.
You might have book value of 14 cents a piece but nobody will pay you 14 cents for those cards. Things are skewed because sometimes in a blue moon people will buy something for a buck from a store because it's not worth it to do otherwise. The "real" value of crap commons from Origins or Ice Age is probably about a tenth of a cent or less.
If I hit a guy with a ingest creature a few times and he does not remove the card, a few turns later we realize this, what happens now?
If after we realize this, the other player has to be prompted every single time, is offside or just annoying?
Skred doesn't hit players.
There's also Warp Artifact and Relic Bane but those are on-color.
And then it goes into the bin.
I'm just going to pretend this update never happened. Yay for being able to do this!