This is a UW Aetherflux Reservoir deck I've put together for the upcoming standard. The deck is made to "storm" combo by casting a lot of 0 mana artifacts, using Paradoxical Outcome to bounce them all and draw more 0 mana spells, and casting them all again with an Aetherflux Reservoir (or 2 or 3) on the field.
Ornithopter gives this deck 4 more 0 mana artifacts. This gives the deck more artifacts to play that trigger Aetherflux Reservoir. This gives the deck the ability to cut Crush of Tentacles because we aren't struggling to combo with the 4 or 5 artifacts we've found. And, Paradoxical Outcome is much stronger with more 0 cost targets.
Sram, Senior Edificer is the Puresteel Paladin mimic that helps keep this deck from coming up short. Eight of the twelve 0 CMC artifacts are equipment, so theres little problem drawing into another free spell or two.
The mass of artifacts in this deck allow for some abuse of the new Improvise mechanic. Whir of Invention lets us find our Reservoir as early as turn 3, meaning that we essentially have 7 copies of Reservoir in the deck. Reverse Engineer gives us a way to fill up on cards for cheap.
The weakness of the previous iteration of Reservoir was how fragile it was. Sometimes you don't draw Reservoir, you draw too few artifacts so killing is hard, etc. I also never liked Crush of Tentacles in the deck. It just felt bad needing to have 5 mana to surge Crush and an additional 4 to recast Reservoir just to make the extra bounce effect worth it. I wanted to try to make it more resilient and a little faster.
These are my thoughts for this deck, but it is a new-ish configuration. I am questioning the number of lands I need, and whether or not the Thraben Inspector Clue is as useful for Improvise as I think it is. All comments and suggestions are welcome!
