Cranial Plating/Ram, Nettlecyst + Fling/Thud/Rite of Consimption.
(This could be optimized by ignoring a budget, mostly by putting fetch and shock lands in, those legendary lands from the recent Kamigawa set, and Phyrexian tower to name a few.)
That’s the main idea! The rest is stuff I’m experimenting with. I got the idea a while back and MH3 gave me Cranial Ram so I thought I would put it together. The idea came from watching an Affinity Deck use Cranial Plating and Ornithopter. If you know my other decks, you will know I love Fling/Thud (which I will now dub “Chucker Decks”), and I had the idea of using Fling on Ornithopter that was equip with Cranial Plating, and then re-equip Cranial Plating. Or Fling on Arcbound Ravager and moving the counters. Either way, seemed busted, but nobody took the idea seriously haha.
Nettlecyst/ Cranial Ram: Living Weapons keep my creature count high considering it’s got a high equipment count. I can sacrifice the germs with my Chuck spells, and re-equip in the same turn before combat and keep that attack power out.
Ornithopter/ Vault Skirge: Fliers, low mana. One has Lifelink! It takes about 3 turns to get an attack going. Cranial Plating takes the 3 mana to get going, but if one of these two get by, it’s significant damage, Vault Skirge is double value via Lifelink. Definitely worth the 2 life everytime imo.
Thud/Fling/Rite of Consumption + Shrapnel Blast: “Chuck Spells”. Low mana, high damage. One even has Lifelink! (Kinda haha). Thud: 1 mana, easy to play after equipping. For 3 mana, that’s two Cranial Plating equips and Thud. That’s at least 8 damage in most cases.
Fling: An instant. It’s nice to get the attack off with Vault Skirge, but a kill spell is inevitable. No Lifelink, but it can still do the damage. Thud and Fling also serve as kill spells if need be.
Rite of Consumption: it’s not hard to gain 10 life and make the opponent lose 10 life for 2 mana in this deck, sometimes after hitting them for 10. Sorcery speed, gotta commit to using them pre combat main phase. Can’t count on the equipped creature making it through combat, but the life gain is clutch so it’s fine.
Shrapnel Blast: Last ditch effort to finish off the opponent if a high powered Chuck couldn’t do the job. 2 mana for 5 damage is pretty good, and I have artifact lands if it comes to it.
Imskir Iron-Eater, Deadly Dispute, Cycle Lands: Draw cards! It’s important to keep the engine running!
Imskir Iron-Eater: Affinity for artifacts, 5/5 for 2 mana (potentially haha). Unless I’m in dire straights, I’m cool with losing the life to draw the cards. I have life gaining options, and I am likely going to draw something useful.
Deadly Dispute: Draw 2 at the cost of a spent Pentad Prism, Germ Token, Treasure Token, and then it produces a Treasure token. An extra value from this is that I can keep my artifact count the same or increase it by 1 by producing the treasure token. Every but counts for Chucking and redundant Equipment. The treasure token essentially guarantees that I will have 1 Red Mana available if I draw Thud. I would even spend it to play a Goldhound.
Forgotten Cave/ Barren Moor: Drawing ina card if I top deck a land. I hate top decking lands, and I have always appreciated that these Cycle Lands exist just to have singles of. I included Rakdos Carnarium to put these back in my hand later in the game if I had to play them earlier. Use them for mana, return them, Cycle them with their own mana.
Pentad Prism, Goldhound, Talisman of Indulgence: Support stuff! These increase the artifact count while also contributing in other ways.
Pentad Prism: 2 mana, to increase the artifact count, store two mana, and be recycled via Deadly Dispute and Shrapnel Blast. It’s a descent start to a game if on turn two, you play 2 Pentad Prism and use the second one to play Cranial Plating/Ram. If on turn 1, a Drossforge Bridge was played, turn 2, the artifact count could be up too 5, Ram being a 5/1 on turn 2, to hopefully buy time for more equipment and back up.
Goldhound: 1 mana ramp, menace option in the early game, increase mana count. That’s about all there is to say. I like it haha.
Talisman of Indulgence: Mana rock for ramp, artifact count, last option for a Shrapnel Blast/Deadly Dispute. I only have one for now, but I might bring it up by one, on account of all the mana it takes for Equip Costs.
Drossforge Bridge, Dragonskull Summit, Rakdos Carnarium: Non-basics, also Budget!
Drossforge Bridge: Artifact Count, Indestructible. This deck isn’t worth building without these in my opinion. Unfortunately they enter tapped, but with Ornithopter and the potential of the situation I described in Pentad Prism, that’s fine in most cases. Total worth!
Dragonskull Summit: Comes into play untapped most of the time, Budget. I would use Blackcleave Cliffs if I wanted this to go well over 40$. Which I might do in real life with the deck, but I will keep it Budget on this build.
Rakdos Carnarium: Budget, synergy with the Cycle Lands. This deck runs a high enough Basic Land count to allow these to work out fine even without the Cycle Land option.
That’s the Deck! I think it has high potential, and greater minds might be able to push the concept to greater heights by taking it out of the 40$ budget range! I hope you find it interesting, and I encourage the use of the term “Chuck” in reference to effects similar to Fling/Thud! Maybe it will catch on and become a coined term in a future set haha. Thanks for reading!
