This is a very fast aggressive deck with access to good counterspells to beat sweepers and stuff like Marvel post-board. It plays cheap equipment to enable powerful cards like
Toolcraft Exemplar
,
Weapons Trainer
, and
Metallic Rebuke
. Additionally, most of the creatures are humans, which turns on
Thalia's Lieutenant
as another powerful component.
I'll go through the individual card choices:
Main Deck
Toolcraft Exemplar
: This is a one mana creature with 3 power. There's not much else to say about it. The first strike ability is not that difficult to turn on, and combined with buffs from equipment/
Weapons Trainer
lets it attack into a lot of boards safely later in the game. Just remember that this guy is not a human.
Inventor's Apprentice
: It's not quite as strong on its own as Toolcraft Exemplar, but it has a number of advantages. The additional toughness makes it a much better blocker, especially if it picks up
Inventor's Goggles
. With a little help, it can often survive red sweepers like
Sweltering Suns
. Plus, this card is actually a human, so it interacts with
Thalia's Lieutenant
.
Thraben Inspector
: This is an important component to keep the deck working properly. It gives you another cheap artifact to turn on your other one drops, and later in the game you can sacrifice the clue to dig for more gas. Plus, between
Weapons Trainer
,
Thalia's Lieutenant
, and the equipment, it can often attack for real damage.
Weapons Trainer
: This card is really powerful. It has a respectable 3 power on its own, and the bonus to all of your other creatures adds up to a ton of damage. This is the card that you most frequently hope to topdeck.
Thalia's Lieutenant
: This card plays similarly to Weapons Trainer, in that you want to play it on turn 3 or 4 to buff your team. However, since it's just a 1/1 by itself, it can sometimes be lackluster if you don't draw many creatures or if your opponent has a lot of removal. This often gets boarded out to make room for other cards.
Pia Nalaar
: Pia is a flexible card that helps give you some reach, either by pushing through flying damage or preventing blocks. Coming with a thopter helps turn on your one drops, makes her good against spot removal, and makes Weapon Trainer's buff twice as good. Her stats aren't great, but the ability to pick up
Inventor's Goggles
for free mitigates that issue a lot.
Aethersphere Harvester
: This gives you some more reach and an additional artifact while helping you race with lifelink and dodging most removal spells, including sweepers. It's very easy to crew with Thraben Inspector or Thalia's Lieutenant. It's excellent against zombies, because it dodges all of their removal while going above their blockers and keeping you alive. Its stats line up pretty well against
Heart of Kiran
,
Archangel Avacyn
, and
Glorybringer
, and it's not difficult to give it an extra power so that it just beats those cards. You only want two copies because it's kind of slow.
Bone Saw
: It turns on your other cards, and when you have a spare mana you can equip it to push through an extra damage. Since it costs zero, it can set up some neat tricks, like playing it with
Spire of Industry
to make colored mana on turn 1, or playing it on turn 2 with Weapons Trainer to attack for 3 or 4 damage that turn. It's obviously a low-impact card, so it's not uncommon to trim a copy when sideboarding. However, if you cut too many you run the risk of your draws not lining up well due to lacking an artifact/an equipment.
Inventor's Goggles
: This card can attach to
Inventor's Apprentice
,
Toolcraft Exemplar
, and
Pia Nalaar
for free, which makes it pretty efficient. The extra toughness is really nice, as it lets your creatures avoid trades and sometimes dodge removal. This card can be good when racing, as a common play pattern is to attack with the creature equipped with goggles, then play Inventor's Apprentice or Pia Nalaar to pick up the goggles and block. It's better than Bone Saw, so you generally won't sideboard it out.
Metallic Rebuke
: This card is extremely strong, and one of the main reasons to play the deck. All you your equipment and clues make it very easy to cast this for one mana most of the time. Additionally, since most of your cards are so cheap, it's pretty easy to continue developing your board while holding this up. Then, if your opponent doesn't cast anything you want to counter, you can often crack a clue or cycle an
Irrigated Farmland
. This card is really good at stopping sweepers that are traditionally good against aggressive decks like this, and it's also good at countering haymakers like
Aetherworks Marvel
. I originally had these in the sideboard, but I found that I wanted them against most decks.
Cast Out
: A catch-all answer to anything. It's kind of slow and clunky, but since it cycles it can't ever be truly bad.
Lands:
Inspiring Vantage
,
Spirebluff Canal
, and
Spire of Industry
are all obvious inclusions.
Irrigated Farmland
is nice because you can use it as a land when you need to, or you can cycle it for more gas.
Port Town
gives you a couple more blue sources, and comes in untapped a good amount of the times with 5 plains and the 2 farmlands. 5 plains and 2 mountains round out the mana base. 23 lands is a nice number, because it keeps you from getting mana screwed most of the time and you have clues, equipment, and cycling lands to help mitigate flood.
Sideboard
I constructed the main deck and sideboard with four matchups in mind: Marvel, Zombies, Mardu, and Torrential Gearhulk decks. I'll briefly touch on each card, then give advice for each matchup.
Negate
: Negate is worse than Metallic Rebuke, but in the matchups where you want counterspells, you often want more than four, so these can come in as well. You mostly want counterspells to stop sweepers, removal, Marvel, and planeswalkers, so the fact that this can't hit creatures isn't a big deal.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
: When you expect games to go longer, you can bring in Gideon as an additional threat that can win the game by himself.
Needle Spires
: This helps you develop your mana in longer games, while also being able to attack sometimes. I choose this over
Wandering Fumarole
because double strike synergizes well with buffs from
Weapons Trainer
and
Bone Saw
.
Release the Gremlins
: This card is good against Mardu. You can also bring it in against
Torrential Gearhulk
decks, because you can use it to kill Gearhulk and/or cash in useless equipment for more bodies.
Declaration in Stone
: This card is great against creature decks like Zombies, GB Energy, and RG Gods. Blockers large enough to beat your creatures in combat can be a big problem, so it's important to have a reliable option to get rid of any creature. The fact that it exiles and can wipe out tokens makes it particularly good against Zombies. You're fast enough that giving them a clue isn't that big of a drawback.
Cast Out
: It's a flexible answer to Marvel, planeswalkers, and creatures.
Dusk / Dawn
: The deck's normal plan of going under everyone doesn't work very well against Zombies, so instead you bring in a bunch of sweepers. This card is particular is very good against them, as Dusk will often kill all of their creatures (because of their lords) and none of yours, while Dawn gets all of your creatures back. This card also has utility against decks like G/B Energy.
Radiant Flames
: You want additional sweepers for the Zombies matchup. The Zombies deck can sometimes go under
Dusk / Dawn
when they don't play a lord and end up with a board full of 2 power zombies. This card helps prevent that kind of scenario. Radiant Flames is better than
Sweltering Suns
here because you can often engineer situations where you cast it for 2 damage so your creatures live and theirs die.
Matchups
Aetherworks Marvel decks: I think this matchup is pretty good. They're pretty good at stalling with cards like
Woodweaver's Puzzleknot
and
Whirler Virtuoso
, but it's hard for them to actually stabilize unless they resolve a Marvel or Chandra. Even then,
Cast Out
can answer these cards in a pinch. The
Metallic Rebuke
s are really good here to stop them from resolving their key cards.. Post board, they probably bring in sweepers and other interactive cards, but you have some additional countermagic, as well as Gideon which can win the game by itself.
IN: 2x
Negate
, 2x
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
, 1x
Cast Out
, 1x
Needle Spires
OUT: 4x
Thalia's Lieutenant
, 2x
Aethersphere Harvester
Aethersphere Harvester is slow and not particularly good at killing them. At 3 mana, it can be difficult to cast while keeping up countermagic, which is generally what you want to be doing. Thalia's Lieutenant is not great against removal, and is the best remaining creature to cut to make room. Notably, you want all of the
Bone Saw
s, because it's important for your Metallic Rebukes to be as good as possible in this matchup, and Bone Saw also gives you a cheap outlet to spend mana on when you need to keep your other mana open for countermagic.
Zombies: I think this matchup is somewhat unfavorable, but I need to test the postboard matchup more. It's really hard for you to win game one. They have enough cheap removal and blockers to stabilize most of the time, and once you're out of gas they can take over the game and kill you very quickly. To win, you have to get a good hand, and hope that they don't have too much removal and aren't able to set up good blocks.
Post board, the matchup is completely different:
IN: 3x
Dusk / Dawn
, 3x
Declaration in Stone
, 2x
Radiant Flames
, 2x
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
, 1x
Cast Out
, 1x
Needle Spires
OUT: 4x
Weapons Trainer
, 4x
Metallic Rebuke
, 3x
Bone Saw
, 1x
Thalia's Lieutenant
Dusk to Dawn is the key card in this matchup. It's hard to overstate just how good this card is. It's like
Creeping Renaissance
stapled to
Plague Wind
. As a whole, the way the matchup plays out can be pretty weird. Generally, you'll try to get in for some damage early before they set up their defenses, then you'll be on the back foot for a bit until you resolve a sweeper. Then, you'll try to get in for some more damage while they rebuild. This sort of cycle can happen multiple times in a game before you either finish them off or they run you over. Gideon, Harvester, and Pia all shine here as ways to actually end the game. You cut the Weapons Trainers here because it's a nonbo with Dusk to Dawn, as not only does it get killed and not come back, but it also buffs your other creatures so that they die to it too. Without Weapons Trainer, the Bone Saws don't do enough, and since you expect the game to go long you want your cards to do more. You still have to play carefully, because depending on draws they can either overrun you or outgrind you. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that all you need to do is resolve a sweeper. I think that you're probably slightly advantaged postboard, but you'll usually need to win both games 2 and 3 because the game 1 matchup is very bad.
Mardu: I think the Mardu matchup is fine. You're faster than them, and their creatures are bad at blocking while you often have good blockers thanks to goggles.
Aethersphere Harvester
is really good in this matchup, and between
Metallic Rebuke
and
Cast Out
you have flexible answers to anything they play. They can definitely grind you out or win a race depending on how you each draw, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Post board, things aren't much different. If you expect them to have multiple sweepers, you can bring in the second
Negate
. Notably, you shouldn't bring in
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
, because you can't reliably protect it from
Heart of Kiran
.
IN: 1x
Cast Out
, 1x
Negate
, 1x
Release the Gremlins
OUT: 2x
Thalia's Lieutenant
, 1x
Bone Saw
Torrential Gearhulk decks: This is a very good matchup. The fundamental problem they face is that you develop too quickly for them to stabilize with 1-for-1 removal spells, and by the time their sweepers are available you can counter them. As long as you are disciplined with your counterspells and save them for sweepers or gearhulks, it is hard for you to lose.
IN: 2x
Negate
, 2x
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
, 1x
Needle Spires
OUT: 4x
Thalia's Lieutenant
, 1x
Bone Saw
Final Thoughts
This deck is a blast to play. With so many cheap cards and ways to spend your mana, you get to make a lot of nontrivial sequencing decisions every game. You're fast and consistent enough to crush anyone who stumbles, and the combination of a fast clock and cheap counterspells leaves you well positioned in the current metagame. I'm going to take this deck to Game Day to see how it performs. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions, especially thoughts on the Mardu matchup.
