Commander Collection: Steel Vengeance

Commander / EDH Artificer WUB (Esper)

Jurrane

Land (35)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient Den
• 1x Ancient Tomb P
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Glimmervoid
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 3x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 2x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Silent Clearing
• 1x Spire of Industry
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Vault of Whispers
• 1x Watery Grave

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Beseech the Mirror P
• 1x Damn
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Rise and Shine
• 1x Vindicate

Artifact (19)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox P
• 1x Grindstone
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Vault P
• 1x Mox Opal P
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Sword of the Meek
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Talisman of Progress
• 1x Tamiyo's Journal
• 1x Thopter Foundry
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Time Sieve

Instant (13)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dawn's Truce
• 1x Desynchronization
• 1x Dispatch
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Officious Interrogation
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Stroke of Midnight
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Vampiric Tutor P
• 1x Void Rend

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge

Commander (1)

Creature (17)

• 1x Academy Manufactor
• 1x Contraband Kingpin
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Etherium Sculptor
• 1x Foundry Inspector
• 1x Losheel, Clockwork Scholar
• 1x Marionette Apprentice
• 1x Marionette Master
• 1x Mirkwood Bats
• 1x Nadier's Nightblade
• 1x Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1x Painter's Servant
• 1x Rebbec, Architect of Ascension
• 1x Sai, Master Thopterist
• 1x Sydri, Galvanic Genius
• 1x Tribute Mage
• 1x Vedalken Archmage

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Anointed Procession
• 1x Biotransference
• 1x Efficient Construction
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Thopter Spy Network

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{W}{U}{B} Introduction: Rise of the Machines {W}{U}{B}

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"Steel Vengeance" is the first of two Esper decks in my collection. It started as an artifact goodstuff build with Sydri, Galvanic Genius as the Commander but has evolved a lot over the years, with Sydri moving into the 99. It's now fronted by Tivit, Seller of Secrets and while it retains some of its core as an artifacts-centric list, it's evolved into a more midrange form that's dedicated to getting the best out of Tivit's raw power. As a result, it's become one of my stronger decks and is becoming increasingly efficient, resilient and fast.

This is my primer for a higher powered casual Tivit EDH artifacts list. It contains information about the card choices I've made, strategies for playing and winning the game, plus some thoughts about overall power level and budget. As with all my decks, I'm always keen to hear suggestions or improvements about how I can make it better.

Why Tivit, Seller of Secrets?

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The Esper colour combination has no shortage of good Commanders but Tivit, Seller of Secrets is up there with the best of them. He's started to appear in cEDH lists, which is quite something for a 6MV creature. It's worth taking a look at what makes him so strong.

Evasion & Resilience: For Tivit, six mana buys you a hefty 6/6 flying body, which means he's often going to land for Commander damage. While his stats are decent, he also has ward {3} which really makes him shine, as it incurs a significant tax on removal spells. Popular 1-mana removal like Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Pongify, Rapid Hybridization etc become far less viable and much less efficient for our opponents. Once Tivit lands on the board, he's going to be tricky to remove.

Instant Reward: Tivit also offers an instant reward on resolution with his Council's Dilemma ability. We get to vote twice so that's usually two Treasures and then whatever our opponents choose. In a standard 4-player game, that's going to be any combination of five Treasures or Clues, offering us a host of different options. At the very least, we're often getting part of Tivit's mana cost back immediately. Plus we can use the tokens he creates for other purposes, which includes some of the combos listed below.

Combo Opportunity: Combine Tivit, Seller of Secrets with Time Sieve and you have a way to go infinite providing you have three opponents and/or token doublers like Anointed Procession or Academy Manufactor. Assuming Tivit creates five or more tokens when he ETBs, we can sacrifice those five tokens to Time Sieve, granting us an extra turn in which Tivit can attack. When he attacks, Council's Dilemma triggers again and we get another bunch of tokens. Rinse and repeat. The only way to stop this is by removing Tivit or rendering him unable to attack. When we get infinite combats and infinite turns in this way, we usually win on this spot. That's an absurdly powerful thing to do, especially when one half of this two-card combo is available from the command zone.

Other Combos

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Over time, this has become quite a combo-centric list. We often have access to the Tivit, Seller of Secrets // Time Sieve infinite combats/infinite turns combo (with tutor effects like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Beseech the Mirror, Tamiyo's Journal, Tribute Mage, Fabricate and Inventors' Fair to find Time Sieve), but we run a couple of other useful combo lines that enable us to win on the spot. These are:

Infinite Mill: Painter's Servant and Grindstone combine to insta-mill a player's entire library, thereby eliminating that player in their next draw step. Although we have to do this player-by-player, it's a good way of removing our most problematic opponent before focusing our attention (or repeating the combo) on other players in the following turns.

Thopter-Sword Combo: Combining Thopter Foundry with Sword of the Meek also has combo potential, which is capable of resulting in infinite turns if Time Sieve is in play and we have {5} available. In this instance, we activate Thopter Foundry by paying {1} and sacrifing Sword of the Meek, which creates a 1/1 Thopter token. When the Thopter enters, it triggers Sword of the Meek in the graveyard, returning it to the battlefield and attaching it to the Thopter token. If we have enough mana, we can repeat it until we have five Thopter tokens, which we can sacrifice to Time Sieve to get an extra turns and start the process again ad infinitum. Unless disrupted, infinite turns will almost certainly win us the game.

50 Damage Bursts: The reason Sydri, Galvanic Genius is still in this list is because of how well she combines with Aetherflux Reservoir. While we need the pre-condition of having 50+ life to activate Aetherflux Reservoir's ability (usually through its lifegain triggers, or with Tomb of the Spirit Dragon or Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge), if we turn it into a creature and give it lifelink by combining Sydri's two activated abilities, we gain 50 life every time we do 50 damage to a player. There's something wholly satisfying about gunning down the rest of the table in 50 damage bursts.

The nice thing about this deck is that while it has access to three different combos to quickly win the game, they're not our only routes to victory. The following section outlines the other ways we can win.

Other Win Conditions

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Despite always having access to one half of a powerful combo in the command zone, plus tutors to find our various other combo pieces, we won't always win the game through those combos. Fortunately we have other routes to victory, which makes us quite a resilient deck. These are:

Aristocrats Damage: We create a lot of artifact tokens with this deck. We have a wealth of token generators including Tivit, Seller of Secrets, Academy Manufactor, Biotransference, Efficient Construction, Smothering Tithe, Thopter Spy Network, Officious Interrogation, Tamiyo's Journal and Sai, Master Thopterist. If Anointed Procession is on the board, each of these is kicked into overdrive. We then have access to Marionette Master, Marionette Apprentice, Nadier's Nightblade and Mirkwood Bats, which inflict damage to our opponents whenever tokens and generated and/or they hit the graveyard. Life loss from these cards can quickly add up, with Marionette Master being the pick of the bunch (we want the +1/+1 counters option when she ETBs).

Tezzeret Damage: We run Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge because of his +2 ability. Thanks to the token generators listed above, plus our other artifacts, we're often capable of dealing significant amounts of damage in short order. Wise opponents will realise he's a kill-on-sight planeswalker in a deck like this.

Creatures & Combat: Sometimes we'll just get the job done with good old fashioned combat. Tivit, Seller of Secrets only needs to connect four times to take a player out with flying commander damage. The rest of our creatures don't always pack the biggest punch (they're generally chosen for their artifact synergies rather than their combat power) but sometimes we'll go wide with Thopter tokens. Rise and Shine is another nice finisher as its overloaded casting cost turns all our Treasure and Clue tokens into 4/4 attackers, which opponents won't usually see coming.

Artifact Value

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This is a highly synergistic list that seeks to gain value from interactions with artifact cards. In this section I'll run through some of the main ways we can gain value and card advantage from artifact synergies.

Defence: As I'll go on to explain in the Weaknesses section below, our reliance on artifact strategies can sometimes be a weakness as we're susceptible artifact removal (which is quite common in EDH). We therefore run several ways of protecting our artifacts from targeted effects. Padeem, Consul of Innovation gives all our artifacts hexproof and Rebbec, Architect of Ascension provides a handy protection effect from most lower mana values. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are included mainly for Tivit, Seller of Secrets or Painter's Servant to dodge removal.

Card Draw: A general rule of Commander is the more cards we draw, the more successful we'll be. Fortunately we have access to a suite of card draw options in Esper colours. Esper Sentinel, Skullclamp and Vedalken Archmage are staples for us. Sai, Master Thopterist and Losheel, Clockwork Scholar are quite handy too. Then we run the holy trinity of draw tools for Dimir decks: Necropotence, Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora. Finally Contraband Kingpin is a great way of scrying into the right cards we need for the right time.

Removal: Neither are we short of removal options. Dispatch and Desynchronization are perfectly suited to artifact based strategies. We supplement them with powerful, versatile spot removal like Anguished Unmaking, Void Rend, Vindicate, Stroke of Midnight, Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile. Cyclonic Rift is a staple in any blue deck and Damn gives us the choice between targeted creature removal or a boardwipe, depending on the situation.

Ramp: Last but not least, we run a powerful artifact ramp package. I've powered up the deck with (proxied versions of) mana positive rocks including Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal and Mana Vault, plus good old Dark Ritual. The main purposes of these is to come out of the blocks quickly, either getting ahead - or staying ahead - of our opponents' resource development. We then run other cheap mana rocks like Sol Ring, Thought Vessel, Arcane Signet and the three relevant coloured Talismans. Etherium Sculptor and Foundry Inspector are our artifact casting cost reducers.

Strengths

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If you're looking for a powerful, versatile and resilient deck, this is an excellent choice. We run a strong commander that we can quickly ramp into with a range of powerful mana rocks. We're versatile enough to run half a dozen different win conditions, supported by an excellent tutor package, that enable us to adapt to the needs of specific games, attacking on different axis dependent on the situation. We're quite resilient too: while we will get blown out from time to time with mass artifact or creature removal, our token generators and card draw options help us rebuild quickly if needed and several strong defensive cards can stop enemy removal in its tracks.

All in all, we're a very strong midrange deck with a diverse number of ways to keep opponents on their toes. Our interaction package has all the answers and we can very quickly generate enough value to stay ahead of other players in most circumstances.

Weaknesses

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We are VERY vulnerable to artifact removal, especially mass removal and boardwipes. We don't run counterspells so we have no answers if our opponents try clear the board, other than hoping for a Teferi's Protection or Dawn's Truce. We also fold to artifact hate very easily and never want to see cards like Kataki, War's Wage, Collector Ouphe, Stony Silence etc etc. Fortunately we have plenty of ways of removing problematic permanents and have a couple of lands to recur artifacts from our graveyard: Buried Ruin and Academy Ruins. There's not much we can do against a resolved Farewell though.

In addition, while we're not completely reliant on Tivit, Seller of Secrets, he's pretty central to our strategy. 6MV is pretty clunky if we don't have mana rocks or if he's removed any more than once or twice. Without rocks, we can be quite slow to get going so we run the risk of being outraced by faster decks. We really want to see at least one rock or cost reducer in our opening hand and it's often worth mulliganing if you don't have these.

Power Level

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I categorise decks in my collection according to four tiers of power, from 1 (most powerful) to 4 (least powerful):

Tier 1: Higher powered decks with fast mana, free spells, and infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors.
Tier 2: Well tuned decks which may have infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors, but not many fast mana sources and/or free spells.
Tier 3: Reasonably well tuned casual decks that are capable of powerful plays. May occasionally have infinite combos or instant wins but don't generally use tutors to find them.
Tier 4: Lower powered or linear decks, weak enough to play against other casual decks.

Using that power scale, this deck probably sits somewhere between Tier 1 and Tier 2. It's very well tuned, features optimised card selections in most categories and benefits from the addition of (proxied) fast mana. While it's not strong enough for cEDH pods, it's able to be played at higher powered casual tables and will should a good account of itself in most metas.

Budget

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The average price for this deck is over $600 on Card Kingdom which means it's an expensive casual deck. Using non-proxied versions of the mana rocks and a couple of the tutors would push it much higher, probably into the $0000s. Much of the high value comes from the expensive staples like Rhystic Study, Cyclonic Rift, Smothering Tithe, Necropotence, Painter's Servant and Grindstone, plus the fetch and shock lands that form an efficient three colour mana base. If you're willing to forego these, a budget Tivit artifacts list is absolutely viable and remains a lot of fun to play.

It's also worth a word or two about proxies as currently this deck has more proxy cards than any of my other builds (just under 10% of the full deck). I generally only use proxies on three conditions:

1. I already own the cards I'm proxying (so no OG duals, Mox Diamonds etc) and moving cards between my 41 decks is a hassle.
2. I will only use high quality proxies with great art that are instantly recognisable as the cards they depict (so no Sharpie-scrawled basic lands).
3. Any proxies I use should be a small percentage of the total deck and appropriate for the power level of the pod I'm playing.

For more about my choice to proxy certain cards, see my commentary about this deck. I highly recommend House of Lore as a place to get truly beautiful proxied cards: https://www.houseoflore.ca/pages/about-us.

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All My EDH Decks

{W} Giada, Font of Hope {W}
S(i)erra Sidewinder: Mono-White Angel Tribal

{U} Talrand, Sky Summoner {U}
Blue Streak: Mono-Blue Spellslinger

{U} Orvar, the All-Form {U}
Clone Zone: Mono-Blue Shapeshifters Combo

{B} Sidisi, Undead Vizier {B}
Swamp Thing: Mono-Black Goodstuff

{B} Syr Konrad, the Grim {B}
Black Hole: Mono-Black Sacrifice/Aristocrats

{R} Torbran, Thane of Red Fell {R}
Red Force: Mono-Red Group Slug

{R} Rionya, Fire Dancer {R}
Firebird: Mono-Red Storm/Tokens

{G} Titania, Protector of Argoth {G}
Timber Terror: Mono-Green Stax

{W}{U} Grand Arbiter Augustin IV {W}{U}
Control Freak: Azorius Control

{W}{U} Elminster {W}{U}
Crystal Wing: Azorius Skies & Scry

{U}{B} Oona, Queen of the Fae {U}{B}
Dreamcatcher: Dimir Faeries Tribal

{U}{B} Narfi, Betrayer King {U}{B}
Ice Breaker: Dimir Snow/Zombies

{B}{R} Rakdos, Lord of Riots {B}{R}
Steamin’ Demon: Rakdos Life Loss

{B}{R} Juri, Master of the Revue {B}{R}
Pandemonium: Rakdos Sacrifice

{R}{G} Hallar, the Firefletcher {R}{G}
Trailblazer: Gruul Kicker

{R}{G} Wort, the Raidmother {R}{G}
Barnstormer: Gruul Conspire

{W}{G} Sigarda, Heron's Grace {W}{G}
Stampida: Selesnya Humans Tribal

{W}{G} Captain Sisay {W}{G}
Legendia: Selesnya Legendary

{W}{G} Sythis, Harvest's Hand {W}{G}
Diamondback: Selesnya Enchantress

{W}{B} Daxos the Returned {W}{B}
Curse of Novgorod: Orzhov Constellation

{W}{B} Kambal, Consul of Allocation {W}{B}
Oblivion: Orzhov Lifegain & Lifedrain

{U}{R} Firkraag, Cunning Instigator {U}{R}
Dragon’s Fury: Izzet Dragons/Goad

{B}{G} Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons {B}{G}
Scorpion Express: Golgari Deathtouch

{B}{G} Nath of the Gilt-Leaf {B}{G}
Outlaw Run: Golgari Elves/Discard

{W}{R} Bruenor Battlehammer {W}{R}
Steel Force: Boros Equipment

{W}{R} General Ferrous Rokiric {W}{R}
Gatekeeper: Boros Multicoloured

{U}{G} Prime Speaker Zegana {U}{G}
Wicked Twister: Simic +1/+1 Counters

{U}{G} Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres {U}{G}
Toxic Garden: Simic Infect

{W}{U}{B} Tivit, Seller of Secrets {W}{U}{B}
Steel Vengeance: Esper Artifacts

{W}{U}{B} Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign {W}{U}{B}
Riddler’s Revenge: Esper Topdeck

{U}{B}{R} Kess, Dissident Mage {U}{B}{R}
Mindbender: Grixis Discard

{B}{R}{G} Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire {B}{R}{G}
Dragon Wagon: Jund Dragons Tribal

{W}{R}{G} Pantlaza, Sun-Favored {W}{R}{G}
Raptor Attack: Naya Dinosaurs Tribal

{W}{U}{G} Galadriel, Light of Valinor {W}{U}{G}
Vapour Trail: Bant Flicker

{W}{B}{G} Karador, Ghost Chieftain {W}{B}{G}
Hair Raiser: Abzan Reanimator

{W}{U}{R} Kykar, Wind's Fury {W}{U}{R}
Storm Runner: Jeskai Tokens

{W}{U}{R} Hinata, Dawn-Crowned {W}{U}{R}
Phantom’s Revenge: Jeskai Spirits Tribal

{U}{B}{G} Yarok, the Desecrated {U}{B}{G}
Boomerang: Sultai ETB Triggers

{W}{B}{R} Kaalia of the Vast {W}{B}{R}
Abyssus: Mardu Angels & Demons

{U}{R}{G} Omnath, Locus of the Roil {U}{R}{G}
Boulder Dash: Temur Landfall

Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 days
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 51 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.57
Tokens	Clue, Food, Human 1/1 W, Necron Warrior 2/2 B, Servo 1/1 C, Thopter 1/1 C, Thopter 1/1 U, Treasure