INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Daretti, Scrap Savant show, where the artifacts are cheated out and the mana curve doesn't matter. Overall, it's a rather straight forward artifact good stuff deck. The general game plan is to land Daretti, pitch away expensive cards and then cheat them into play using his ability while ramping using rocks and establishing a decent defense for the wheelchair goblin. From there, your threats and removal should fall into place. This is not meant to be a hyper competitive deck by any means and closely follows a 75% approach. While expensive and sometimes found intimidating (cough Mox Diamond cough), the heart of the deck is still an artifact good stuff deck. For this reason, stax cards are avoided to keep a friendly feel and as an excuse to play more fun artifacts. Combo is another interesting point: I do not hope to combo out extremely early. While it would be easy to slim down the curve and add more efficient combos, I want to give my opponents the chance to interact and once again, play what I believe to be more fun bigstuff timmy junk artifacts (sorry to any Timmy bois out there).
At the moment, this isn't supposed to be a primer of any sort. I will choose to omit any discussion on basic categories and inclusions for card draw, removal, tutors, mana rocks, etc. All of that is easy to understand just by viewing the decklist. This description hopes to bring to light and showcase what I believe to be the more fun parts of the deck.
One more note, the maybeboard consists of cards that have either been in the deck throughout the past, or ones that are worth including if taking the deck in a slightly different direction. Automatic inclusions if it wasn't for budget right now are Wheel of Fortune, Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad. Otherwise, this deck is extremely close to where I want it to be indefinitely. However, feel free to make suggestions.
WINNING THE GAME
Wins tend to be explosive and fairly resistant with the help of Daretti, Scrap Savant's -2 ability. With a lot of methods of winning the game, the pathways to victory are plentiful, making scrapping together something busted a joy.
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Landing Mycosynth Lattice usually leads to a win condition setup very soon after because of how many synergies it enables in the deck:
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Nothing like a Mindslaver to truly shut down your opponents. When paired with any recursion engine such as Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant himself, you can easily end up taking over half of the turns at the table. If only one opponent remains, it's typically a one card win condition. Also, in magical Christmas land (or holiday land to be politically correct), the Daretti, Scrap Savant emblem puts Mindslaver into maximum overdrive.
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While we can't abuse it as much as a storm deck, Paradox Engine can win the game other key artifacts in the deck given we have some rocks out:
- Paradox Engine + Chaos Wand + rocks worth = Cast every single instant and sorcery in all of your opponents' decks. Assuming there are legal targets for each spell cast. Special note for counterspells: never resolve an instant or sorcery on stack until you have to so you continuously have legal targets to counter if you Chaos Wand into a counterspell later.
- Paradox Engine + Oracle's Vault with three brick counters = Cast cards from the top of your deck for free until you hit a land. The fun can continue if you have any other untap effects to use on Oracle's Vault.
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Surprisingly, winning through combat damage can occur somewhat regularly with all the oversized beatsticks we choose to pack in the deck. The big daddy Blightsteel Colossus can quickly infect unlucky customers with use of a Lightning Greaves, Hanweir Battlements or Flamekin Village. Feel free to finish the job with Contagion Engine. Other beaters can swing in for more traditional damage, perhaps the best of which are Myr Battlesphere and Wurmcoil Engine.
INFINITE MANA
Infinite mana doesn't automatically win us the game similar to hardcore combo decks (unless we happen to have a Staff of Domination on the field), but it bypasses the need for big artifact recursion via Daretti, Scrap Savant letting us play artifacts straight from the hand at a faster rate. It also smooths out the old curve. Heh.
UNTAPPING ENABLERS
Time and time again, I'm surprised by the power of the ability to untap artifacts in this deck. I truly think Unwinding Clock and Clock of Omens are the two best cards in the deck. Pardox Engine also falls into this category because as we dump our hand, it lets us untap and reuse other artifacts.
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With all this extra mana available from the high number of rocks we run in the deck, it's important to have enough outlets or sinks. These help our mono red have some more interaction at instant speed and be pickier with what we spend our mana on. Mana Sinks include:
- Staff of Domination is perhaps the best in this category. Converting mana into cards, life or locking down hurtful creatures.
- Planar Bridge brings anything we need straight to the battlefield. With Unwinding Clock and enough rocks, this is absurdly beautiful. You should win with two to three activations in a row.
- Mind's Eye acts as a sink for pure card draw.
- Oracle's Vault provides a lot of value. Most of our deck is permanents so it's hard to be afraid of finding something not playable at that time.
- Chaos Wand gives mono red some reach. This usually grabs some sort of removal spell that can't put in our own deck. The ceiling is also very high though with greedy spells running around.
- Contagion Engine lets us proliferate to tick up planeswalkers or slowly decay an enemy army. Or, better yet, kill some poor soul off of infect.
- Mirage Mirror although a wildcard as a mana sink can give you a fantastic blocker each turn or access to triggered abilites we otherwise would not have.
- Nevinyrral's Disk while not a mana sink in the normal use of term has its effectiveness majorly increases when it is able to be untapped quickly or consistently.
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Voltaic Key while not one of the greats mentioned at the beginning of this section, still supplies many of the normally clunky mana rocks a way to consistently untap. These include Mana Vault, Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith.
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The underrated hero of this category is easily Voltaic Servant. While not nearly as versatile as Unwinding Clock and Clock of Omens, I was super impressed every time he appeared when testing. If he comes out early, he puts the more clunky mana rocks such as Mana Vault and friends into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. Later in the game, he essentially gives us double activations on a lot of the good sinks. You can complete Oracle's Vault in two turns with no extra mana needed for untaps. Chaos Wand can be used twice per turn. Also, Voltaic Servant can give vigilance to one of our beaters when we need to go on defense. This common form Dominaria really pulls his weight, and if the applications aren't useful at the given time, he's a cheap artifact to sacrifice to Daretti, Scrap Savant.
POTENTIALLY OBSCURE SYNERGIES
More or less the miscellaneous section, but one that helps round out some card explanations as well show some lines of thought.
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Having a rummage built into your general causes some less than clear inclusions.
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Mirage Mirror plays a ton of roles in this deck some of which already mentioned. But it also has the potential to be used as a mana rock when on the field with any mana rock that taps for or more mana.
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Imperial Recruiter has a ton of options.
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While there are only four in the 99, planeswalkers are a somewhat of a subtheme in the deck. These include Karn Liberated, Karn, Scion of Urza, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Chandra, Flamecaller. The following cards have very synergy here:
PARTING THOUGHTS
Know that I usually have a few test cards in the deck running around. These are inclusions that I feel might work out, but need more play experience with to deem them worthy or not.
- Voltaic Servant was in the deck for a while because of how well he pairs with mana rocks that don't untap normally, however he was removed for something greedier. I personally believe he pulled his on weight for the record.
- Oracle's Vault unfortunately is no longer in the deck. While the flavor is amazing the card advantage it provided was slow and awkward. The combo with Paradox Engine rarely occurred and is much slower to assemble compared to slapping in a Chaos Wand into play.
- Also, I plan to add either Contagion Engine or The Chain Veil to the deck in anticipation for two new walkers that come out in War of the Spark. I'm looking at you Karn #4 and Ugin #2. I am unsure if The Chain Veil will pull as much weight as Contagion Engine with the added benefit of a mini board wipe.
Thanks for the read. I greatly appreciate any suggestions or feedback. The fact that you got this far (or skipped to the bottom), means a lot.
