Deck Idea
This deck started out as a budget deck that I wanted to build off of my commander Glissa, the Traitor. I first saw Glissa and immediately thought of having large fat artifacts that would go to the graveyard and be sent to my hand just to be cast again. I thought I prolly wont always have the mana to cast the huge artifacts that I wanted so I decided to go with eggs . This way I can cast a bunch of the low cmc cards and a bonus to this is that most of these cards are pretty budget. After a few playthroughs of the deck I realized that with the constant reoccurring low mana spell casts for the eggs this deck could easily pull off a storm sub-theme to help close out the game.
So the name sake "Change Exchange" comes from the change (which is another magic slang word for very low cmc artifacts that sac themselves to give a small effect) and exchange being the movement of said change from the three zones being our hand, graveyard and battlefield.
Strengths of Deck
This deck is very good at always having something to play and getting up on its feet. It can survive multiple board wipes, even a few that hit all permanents. This is because the deck is so low to the ground and more than half of it works on getting you cards or getting you mana.
Another strength of the deck is its consistency. Normally when you hear that its because the deck is overflowing with tutors or many cards that do the exact same thing. This deck however has a nice level of consistency because of how much draw is put into it without taking out that nice variety. I personally never have to worry about finding the bomb I need because I usually draw it or have another bomb show up instead.
Since this deck ultimately wants to gain life and blast people to death It great at surviving until there are only a few people left. Once I survived multiple card:Purphoros,God of the Forge|Purphoros triggers and ended up being the only other player alive at the table. That's the thing, this deck is built to not be a big enough threat until other players die. once you're down to just a couple of players you can easily steal out a win right from under their noses.
One last thing is that this deck is very good at winning out of nowhere and from being behind. Normally you will be playing a very passive game until way late in the game when you cast 16 artifact spells and bolt down your two remaining opponents for 150 damage.
Weaknesses of Deck
Artifact hate. Pretty simple, if someone elses deck is all about disrupting an artifact deck then you will be slowed down considerably. However if they are only able to send your artifacts to the graveyard then at least you can rebuild from there. Most of the decks power just comes from moving you're eggs from the graveyard to your hand to the battlefield. The real problem this deck faces is
Graveyard hate. Yep, everything that your about is running your eggs through the dirt to cast them again and again so if your opponent starts exiling those cards away your in for a world of a whole lot of nothing. If this starts happening in a game Id advise to start being very careful of what goes onto the battlefield. Keep them in the safest zone that the game state allows until you're ready to use them. Most of the time this is unavoidable but your deck is suppose and can very easily win from behind so don't be afraid to take advantage of holding things back in your hand or not triggering Glissa's ability. Another problem with that is...
Your opponents just don't play enough kill-able creatures. Glissa thrives off of a heavy creature based environment. f your table is running extremely low Icreatures then Glissa won't be able to trigger as often as you would want her to.
You are focused. Being focused usually spells out demise for most decks out there in a multiplayer setting. The problem here is that your deck can't really handle being focused. The whole point is to look as unassuming as possible so you aren't the biggest target at the table. If people know what you are playing and want to focus you then point out how terrible it would be to waste their first 4 rounds killing you and how much that leaves them wide open.
But who knows, you could be playing across a dirty infinite combo player. At that point they have solely decided to not play magic that day and instead spend the day playing 10 minutes of solitaire with their deck. In this case, you are green/black and thus don't have access to counter spells or restrictive abilities. If the infinite combo player wants to end the game on turn 4 then they are going to end it on turn 4.
Other Aspects of the Deck
Ramp
This deck is almost filled with 25% mana ramp, land fixing or the like. Out of that percentage only 7 of them arent artifacts that you can just get back with Glissa after putting them in your graveyard! So you will be able to have an easy time getting all that mana that you need for your storm turns.Notable Cards: Mana reducers like Foundry Inspector, Cloud Key, and Helm of Awakening allow you to play most of your artifacts for free if just one of them hits the field. Expedition Map really shines in this deck as you can reliably keep getting the exact lands that you need like the tron lands. Metalworker works wonders because you can always just use his mana ability after you get a bunch of your eggs back with a board wipe. Deathrite Shaman is good at reusing any non artifact card that might have made its way into your graveyard or your opponent's.
Card Draw
The deck runs all of its draw engines through the use of artifacts and graveyard recursion. To start, I have the two most backwards card draw engines of the deck,
Codex Shredder and
Nyx Weaver. Both of these mill you for cards and allow for one instance of recursion, but in this deck throwing an artifact in your graveyard is very similar to drawing them with
Glissa out. The most notable artifacts to use over and over for draw is:
Artifact Synergy
For a deck with this many artifacts you actually don't run too much artifact synergy as you might think. Having mainly all artifacts that sac themselves does make you very resistant to any color hate type of effects like
All Is Dust, most
board wipes, and
creature hate. Another thing that I've noticed is that other artifact decks usually help us and give us an advantage. Smile in glee as the dumb ass
Breya player at your table drops a
Blinkmoth Urn only to watch as you use that extra mana to storm out with on your next turn. The artifact synergy that we do run that is not covered in other sections is as follows:
Board Wipes
Sometimes you just want to watch the world burn. Well luckily you're in luck because so does
Glissa. Board wipes are a great way to get a large activation of
Glissas ability as she will be able to see everyone else die as she does as well. I personally only run 6 board wipes in the deck as im not a fan of constantly hitting
Glissa with them and honestly theres enough board wipes in commander that I can rely pretty easily on other people playing theirs. Board wipes that get extra value because of
Glissa are as follows:
Life Gain
One of the major things that I enjoy getting more of when I play commander is life. In this deck life gain keeps you alive and it also makes your opponent's dead. There are really only 6 cards in the deck that gain you life but each pretty much deserve their own mention. Starting off we have
Loxodon Warhammer. This thing is a piece of work and a great equipment to attach to a first strike deathtouch creature like
Glissa. Deathtouch and trample a just so overpowered together. The next is
Tendrils of Agony, it's one of the deck's win cons. It can be used for your storm turns and kill your opponent or it can at least gain you that sweet sweet life along with our next card.
Golem's Heart gives you that juice you need as your spamming those artifacts on your turn to lead up to your finisher.
Aetherflux Reservoir has won me so many games. The amount of power it brings to the table just easily closes out games. People are starting to recognize its power and thus Id advise that you hold it back in your hand until the turn youre ready to win with it. Last but certainly not least is
Fangren Marauder. This card is ridiculous! No one thinks this is any good but when you're popping coins on your storm turn and gaining 100+ life no sweat because of this card they might start to think otherwise. This guys keeps you alive throughout the game and sets you up for
Aetherflux Reservoir turns easy. He only really dies to board wipes because most people don't think hes good enough for spot removal and he's pretty tough so will survive in most fights.
Storm
Most of this has already been covered but its important to point out
Shimmer Myr allows you to storm out whenever you want.
Special Notes
Graveyard Retrieval
Digging from your graveyard is literally the name of the game for this deck. Thinking through which artifact to grab when you only have one or two Glissa triggers is part of the deck's learning curve. One easy thing to remember is that most of the time you are restricted from grabbing only artifacts from your graveyard so whenever you get the opportunity to grab anything use it. The only time you can do this is with Nyx Weaver, Codex Shredder (but codex can continue to do it if it is grabbed with Glissa), and Conjurer's Bauble. I wouldnt count on the bauble unless you have a tutor handy.
Tutoring:
Ok, so I like to have this section because normally whenever I am given a new deck to use I often fumble whenever I have to tutor for something. So here are the tutors for the deck and what you should get with them.
Demonic Tutor is pretty simple most of the time. If you need a board wipe then get one. If you need a combo piece then get one. The safest tutor with
Demonic is to grab the
reservoir as you dont have to reveal it so you can have your main win-con without them knowing.
Green Sun's Zenith has a very limited purpose for this deck as you really only have 6 targets in the deck. Grab
Reclamation Sage if you need to get rid of an artifact or enchantment. Grab
Acidic Slime if you have an annoying land you want to kill. Grab
Deathrite Shaman if you need the ramp/graveyard hate. Grab
Nyx Weaver if you need some card draw. Grab
Molder Beast if you want an alternate win-con and finally grab me boyo
Fangren Marauder if you need any of his sweet life gain. As for land tutoring, just get any basic it doesnt matter.
Expedition Map is there for
Temple of the False God and
Urza lands.
