Hello!
As I recover from a long absence from playing MTG, I have decided to take a look at some existing standard decks. To my surprise, i found very little decks that actually make use of artifacts. Being a bit of a hipster (lol), I decided to slap together some cards and make an aritifact-based deck. As I searched through all standard artifacts, I realized that it actually might work and that it's not just my imagination, but some of these cards even have close to competitve level of potential. Blue and black seemed like the best colors to splash on this, giving it the potential of quickly becoming even a pretty decent mill deck. Gotta love the versatility of MTG.
Okay, so let's start with some key cards:Ensoul Artifact. In my opinion, it is a great, but often overlooked card. Ideally, it should be used on Darksteel Citadel (5/5 indestructible) or Ornithopter (5/5 flyer), but depending on your situation, it is also okay to use it on Ghostfire Blade sometimes. Turn 2 5/5 creature? Hell yeah!
Renowned Weaponsmith - putting this guy in an artifact deck is always a good idea. You can tap him to get additional 2 mana for your artifacts, helps a lot to put out Scuttling Doom Engine. In the most ideal situation, using him you can acutally put it onto the battlefield in your fourth turn!
Milling:
Altar of the Brood in my opinion is a very underrated card. Not many people use it, but i think it's great. Boosts your milling power for just one mana and would be a great addition to a token-based deck. Don't know why it's not often used.
Grindclock is a decent milling artifact. It has a ramping mill ability that costs no mana, so all you have to ever pay is just 2 mana to cast it, and the longer it stays on the battlefield, the more milling power it gets.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Phenax, God of Deception are your biggest milling cards. Use their abilities every turn and lay waste on your opponent's deck.
With major things out of the way, let's look a the minor ones: I think
Silumgar Monument
is a decent card in this setup. It provides additional mana and later on can become a 4/4 flying dragon to hit your enemies even harder. Stubborn Denial, Dissipate - COUNTER EVERYTHING! Running out of cards in your hand too fast? Divination helps a great deal. Sidisi's Faithful - great against those pesky fast decks that run Monastery Swiftspear's or similar cards, also can be used late game to do some neat things - cast it, use it's exploit ability on Scuttling Doom Engine dealing 6 damage to your oponnent and sending his strongest creature back into his hand. Silumgar's Command - very versatile, and pretty much the only card in this deck, that actually allows you to take down a planeswalker quickly.
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
- A decent card that can lower the power of an opponent's token deck.
Sideboard is still a work in progress :).
