The play-testing has been off and on in results. It's been about 70% positive, mostly weak against control style decks and runs great against mid-range. Aggro decks can be pretty 50-50 depending on the match-up.

No but really, control match-ups are an utter nightmare, I'll probably change the sideboard to be able to fight those.

Sword of the Animist usually nets at least 2 land when I get it on the field, which ends up being incredibly useful when I have Shrine of the Forsaken Gods in play. Not only that, but it's gotten me out of some rough situations with a lack of lands in my early draws.

Aligned Hedron Network is my only answer to colorless targets, but Ugin, the Spirit Dragon ends up being a pretty great answer for any of my opponents colored permanents with his -X.

I only mainboard 2 Hangarback Walker because of terrible reasons. It's mostly a mana dump, or when I'm having a slower game and need to build up to a scary board state. Honestly it may be better to mainboard 4 of them with the 2 Ugin sideboard, but it's a tough call. It actually isn't too difficult for me to build up the 8 mana cost for Ugin, one of my best examples was from a game where I ended up going:

• Turn 1: Bonded Construct + Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
• Turn 2: Island + Renowned Weaponsmith
• Turn 3: Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, tap the weaponsmith for 2 mana to play Sword of the Animist and attach it to the construct.
• Turn 4: Island, tap weaponsmith for mana, and 2 other mana for Hedron Archive, and used the remaining mana to put down Ghostfire Blade.
• Turn 5: Tapped Archive and one land to play Chief of the Foundry, then attached Ghostfire to Weaponsmith with the remaining 3. Swung in (opponent was tapped out from swinging at me the turn before), got a basic land in play from Animist as well as 7 damage).
• Turn 6: Played Mage-Ring Responder, swung in with the Construct and Weaponsmith again, ended up taking out two of his creatures and trading my weaponsmith to do so.
• Turn 7: Played Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and used the -X ability to wipe his board. Swung in for lethal with Mage-Ring and the Construct.

Now of course that all worked out pretty well that game, I was against an Abzan mid-range deck that had a pretty good start, but it got a bit mana flooded turns 3-5. The Animist Sword got me the land I needed from my deck, while also allowing me to swing in with my Weaponsmith instead of being forced to utilize it for mana.

Also, I love the Whirler Rogue, I have GOT to find a place for that in here.

Honestly Alhammarret's Archive hasn't done much work, I think I'll take that, one of the Thopter Spy Network and one of the Mage-Ring Responder's out and put in three Whirler Rogue.

Actually a good question would be, "Should i run just one copy of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon mainboard, and replace the second copy I have now with a 4th Whirler Rogue, which in general would be more useful and is a lower cost mana creature in the deck..

Oh the brewing is real. I'll test out how one Ugin run's with that.

You can try 1 Ugin MB, thats what I was doing in my Esper deck for a while, but just recently moved it to sideboard. He pretty much won me games whenever he would stick, but I realized at least for me that it only worked during grindy matches so I just ended moving it to sideboard.

The guy is a beast, so it's really up to preference.

Glad you like the only suggestion I could think of on the spot, makes me feel like I actually helped instead of just dogging your deck haha!

"Criticism is the path to enlightenment."

I feel the deck is in a way more solid place now with the counterspells in the sideboard and the Whirler Rogue's added in. I'll have to playtest it heavily after buying the Rogue's, but I'm guessing I'll see a lot more consistency.

Mirror Mockery + Whirler Rogue ??

I miss Haunted Plate Mail. That card was a blast with Ghostfire Blade. I know that's not exactly helpful... was just reminiscing.

xzar987, already have 4 Whirler Rogue mainboard, and honestly I don't really see a place for Mirror Mockery in the deck.. I suppose a possibility would be playing 3 in place of the War Horn's.. but honestly the horns do work with a bunch of thopter tokens on the field.

TMBRLZ, we all miss the fun cards that have left us. xD

xzar987, I see what you're saying now, the combo between Whirler Rogue and Mirror Mockery.

Honestly that's a pretty beast combo, especially since Mirror Mockery can be used defensively against cards like Siege Rhino, or even other enter the battlefield effect cards my opponent may have that I want to take advantage of if they'll let me.

I ended up taking out the remaining Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and one of the War Horn's to put in two copies of Mirror Mockery. Looking closely at the decklist to see if there is anything else I could take out to put in a 3rd copy, or if two is a decent limit.

I would test out with 2 Mirror Mockery to see how well it works for you. I went up against an odd Simic Deck and he thought he had me locked down by casting a Mockery on my Dragonlord Ojutai it really didn't delay me by a whole lot. It's hit or miss in my opinion. I even tried it in my U/B aristocrats on MTGO exactly for the combo that xzar987 and it felt very underwhelming in my opinion.

Maybe I just want instant value and don't like risking a 2-for-1, but I don't think it's that great of a card to include more than 2.

Yeah, I've got two mainboard and I put one more in the sideboard. I think the best value from the card when attached to Whirler Rogue is, say:

• Turn X: Whirler Rogue
• Turn X-2: Mirror Mockery attached to the Rogue, tap your two thopter tokens to make the rogue unblockable, swing for 2 damage and get another two thopter tokens out of the deal.

Repeat that for a couple of turns while generating extra chump blockers from attacking and you have a decent potential setup, but two mainboard is probably the limit.

Whoa. Our lists are crazy similar! I'd like to think that means we're both on the right track. If you can fit a copy of Retreat to Coralhelm somewhere in here, it's amazing with Weaponsmith and Hangarback and makes Responder much easier to untap. + uno

I can definitely see it's advantages in combination with Mage-Ring Responder and Renowned Weaponsmith.

I'll have to play-test it on the side, did you see the new Artifact that was revealed in Oath of the Gatewatch? I've already planned on how to fit four of them in my deck.

It'll be great with all the Thopter token generation I get.

That equipment is definately so.ething worth planning for. Probably a good replacement for War Horn i would think.

Have you thought about running a one or two of Ruins of Oran Rief as well?

The fact that it comes into play tapped might make it not worth it, but seema neat.

I thought about it, the only two problems I have with it are:

• It comes into play tapped.
• I'd be torn between a free +1/+1 counter and using the land for something else.

So in other words, I'm probably going to fit a copy or two in, but not more than that.

I think in mid-late game the free +1/+1 counters are going to be too good to pass up when equipped to thopters coming into play. So definitely two copies.

I loved your idea, sadly i think ahead of our time and mostly of this deck won't be able to play in Standard (next block after OGW).

Do you have any idea how to transform this beauty in a modern deck?

I have some ideas, but I'm also curious to see how the next sets look for the evolution of this deck in standard.

Affinity is a pretty big modern deck, and I think I could make something similar/possibly improved with the way I play artifact decks.

I'll give it a shot.

I've been trying to build an artifact deck and I love this concept. I may try it. Have you tested it since OGW dropped? And if so how has it done.

Also I see people talking about Mage-Ring Responder but I don't see it in your deck. Did you pull it?

A little while back, I must have forgotten to pull it out of the description (haven't reset the comments, only do that when new sets come out). I've used it at a few FNM's, and tried it out at game day. It didn't play too badly, though it's strength is definitely in fighting slower decks that give it some time to ramp up. It has some trouble against more aggressive decks (depending on how agressive they are of course), but even then it can usually hold it's own until it hits that "mid-game" point where things start exploding.

I'm actually going to be adjusting the deck again soon (if it actually needs to be adjusted the way I think it does) to speed it up a little and make it just THAT much more viable against other decks. Should have an update out by tomorrow afternoon if you keep an eye out.

Nevermind, I did the update tonight since I wasn't busy lol.

Anyway, I'm going to be playtesting this fairly heavily over the next few days.

wow, that was a hug update. I hardly recognize the deck now

Mostly because blue as a color was just too slow on it's own. I'd been thinking of what color(s) would make the deck more viable, still taking advantage of Artifacts and their ability to work with eachother, and came to the conclusion that green was one of the best sources for it (especially with Collected Company and the rather good 3 drop artifact creatures).

The nice thing about the deck update is the large creature count and the ability to ramp up quickly and start throwing things up onto the board. It takes advantage of a few creatures from green (and you may notice Surrak Dragonclaw), as well as the land creatures to really make the deck more aggressive both early and late game.

I really like the change as Collected Company is a great card. I am saddened, however, as I like the previous version because of how budget it was. This deck doesn't feel very artifact-y either.

Your previous version was my MTGO deck. I do agree with the change, though, as it was needed. I'll have to wait until Shadows over Innistrad hits to see how I want to go from there as I'm not really down with getting 4 collected companies on MTGO.

I'll be watching to see how your playtests go.