(This does not need to be read to understand the deck)
Believe it or not, but this deck actually started out as a 60 card Eldrazi scion swarm surge deck which also happened to be my first deck. It was, as the name entails, a deck that got a bunch of Eldrazi Scions out and won with Card: Swarm Surge or budget big Eldrazi like
Bane of Bala Ged
or
Breaker of Armies
. Which then became a budget tron deck with the one of each of the titans, which became tron artifacts with Eldrazi, and finally, after I found out about EDH, I wanted to build a deck that brought out big Eldrazi that had an artifact sub-theme. At first, I was looking at one of the Eldrazi titans but someone in my playgroup already had an Eldrazi titan as their commander so I went with a different approach and build
Karn, Silver Golem
instead. Over the past two years of playing Karn and constantly trying new strategies to improve my deck I've come to build a Karn deck involving a lot of cards that benefit from going to the graveyard and cards to sacrifice them. I originally started out the deck as a budget Karn deck that was about $125. I didn't have many cards so I just made to with some artifacts I could find and some Karn staples such as
Voltaic Construct
. The deck eventually grew as I traded for and bought some cards. It first turned into a creature based deck with the
Voltaic Construct
combo and some tutors. I ran a lot of Eldrazi, Akroma's Memorial, and many artifacts that would be nice to have as creatures or straight up artifact creatures. While it did win me games and was what I first intended the deck to be (ramp and play big Eldrazi), I felt the deck could be improved upon a lot especially with my mana rocks getting destroyed and Eldrazi exiled constantly. So, I searched around the internet to see what other Karn decks were doing and tryed to gain inspiration and idea from them. I saw that quite a few ran stax effects to slow down their opponents so that they could get their combo(s) off without being easily interrupted. So, I tried this out, running cards like
Winter Orb
and
Static Orb
among others along with some more combos in the deck for consistency. This idea died quickly as after the first game of playing with people, I usually got targeted first because no one likes seeing stax effects and those stax effects (when they hit the board), drew all eyes on me. Maybe it's just my playgroup that overreacts to stax but I knew I had to change up the deck. I then made the deck into a full on combo deck w/o stax effects and more ramp to get to the requirements to combo off as quickly as possible. My combos were often too easily interrupted by people, though I did see a definite win increase from my previous versions and so I added and removed some cards from that strategy and that when on for quite a while. After some time and experimenting further, I decided to revamp my deck entirely and rebuild it from the ground up. This deck was the result of that rebuild. It's done very well for me despite my brother, whom I play with very often, runs a lot of artifact removal. The deck is fairly new and may not be perfected yet in terms of competitiveness but I thought I'd share my deck and get some feedback on it.
The early game is pretty self explanatory. You typically want to keep a hand with 3 to 4 lands sometimes less depending on the other cards and some mana rock and then a powerful early game play such as getting an Eldrazi Titan out early, getting some cards that draw cards, removal or other such things. Note that no matter what stage you are in the game, if you can combo off safely, do so. You should always be looking for that opportunity.
By this point, you should have some mana rocks established on the board and be able to cast an explosive spell that can halt your opponents plans forcing them to have to deal with said explosive play allowing you to progress into the late game.
In this part of game, if you haven't been able to combo off due to opponent blowing up the board or you having to deal with their board then you should keep applying pressure with titans or explosive plays until they can't deal with you anymore. A well timed
Mycosynth Lattice
or
Arcbound Ravager + Inkmoth Nexus
can easily end the game. Since there's no counterspells other than
Kozilek, the Great Distorion and
Warping Wail
, you can't stop you're opponent from going off, so your best bet to beating them is by forcing them to deal with you.
(Some cards I feel are self-explanatory and will be excluded. You many inquire about excluded cards and I will answer your questions on the purpose behind them.)
-
Blinkmoth Nexus
: Can be a blocker or used to pump
Inkmoth Nexus
for infect damage
-
Inkmoth Nexus
: Used for an infect kill with
Arcbound Ravager
-
Cloudpost
: It's an ETBT colorless land and sometimes it's only ever that but with vesuva and thespian's stage along with Glimmerpost. It can often be able to get me absurd amounts of many. It's like a risk vs. reward situation with this card.
-
Dark Depths
: I will admit that this card is just about every time slow, useless, and absolutely terrible in this deck. The only reason i'm running it is because I really like the card
-
Eye of Ugin
: Really nice tutor effect for colorless and allows for some early Eldrazi.
-
High Market
: Additional sacrifice effect to get rid of
Mycosynth Lattice
in a pinch such as when an opponent uses
-
Phyrexia's Core
: See:
High Market
-
Scavenger Grounds
: Used as emergency graveyard hate. My playgroup often times plays graveyard synergistic decks, so this card is necessary to beat it, even though I often don't want to exile my own graveyard.
-
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
: Allows me to tap Card: Maze of Ith,
Eye of Ugin
, and
Dark Depths
for mana. Also allows me to tap
Ancient Tomb
for mana without having to take damage.
-
Aetherworks Marvel
: Currently testing to see whether this card is good or not. Used in conjunction with all of my artifacts being sent to the graveyard to cast free stuff off the library.
-
Akroma's Memorial
: Mainly used to give creatures haste after gaining infinite mana. EX. After gaining infinite mana with voltaic construct, I cast Staff of Nin. I would then need to give it haste to deal infinite damage.
Grafdigger's Cage
: Really nice since I return cards from my graveyard to my hand instead of the battlefield and it stops my opponents graveyard shenanigans.
-
Crystal Ball
: This card can be slow sometimes but filtering out dead draws is really nice.
-
Ichor Wellspring
: Really powerful card in this deck. 2 Mana draw 2 that can be recurred? Yes, please!
-
Mycosynth Lattice
: This + Karn = goodbye opponents lands. Also works wonders with Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk
.
-
Myr Turbine
: Great card that works well with sacrifice effects and
Skullclamp
. Also works well with
Clock of Omens
and
Paradox Engine
and can tutor for
Myr Battlesphere
or
Myr Retriever
when needed.
-
Nim Deathmantle
: Allows for pseudo regenerate on artifacts for 5 mana when paired with Karn. This is also a combo piece (covered in combo section)
-
Skullclamp
: Crazy card draw with all the sac effects in here and with Karn's ability to make artifacts into creatures.
-
Spine of Ish Sah
: Repeatably removal in a colorless deck is amazing even if it is 7 mana a piece. This + [Krark-clan Ironworks makes it essentially a 5 mana destroy target permanent with buyback.
-
Staff of Domination
: Very versatile with it's effects and an amazing mana dump.
-
Staff of Nin
: Card draw and a combo piece.
-
Sunset Pyramid
: Card draw and the additional scry effect is always nice. Can be sacrificed later after it loses it's usefulness.
-
Trading Post
: Sacrifice effect, recursion, and chump blockers in one!
-
Shimmer Myr
/Vedalken Orrery: More often than not, I find the flash doesn't help me to much. They do have their moments but I don't think they're worth a slot.
-
Blightsteel Colossus
: A big infect scary boi that doesn't do much on cast or when he enters like the Eldrazi do. He can definitely win games and can be tutored with
Kuldotha Forgemaster
for that surprise play but I don't think it's worth a slot as a cheap exile, bounce, or sacrifice effect typically means I spent a whole turn doing a whole lot of nothing.
-
Rings of Brighthearth
: An amazing card to be sure but I don't have one nor do I particularly like this card. It's so boring to win with IMO. It would improve the deck greatly and if I ever join a more competitive playgroup, I will run this card.
-
Mana Crypt
: I don't own one so it's not in the deck and I'm only willing to trade for one.
- Grim Monoltih: See:
Mana Crypt
-
Mishra's Workshop
: See:
Mana Crypt
-
Blinkmoth Urn
: My opponents get to have their mana first and once it gets back to my turn it gets removed in some fashion and becomes a huge tempo loss.
-
Mirrorworks
: Too slow the majority of the time.
-
Scour from Existence
: While removal in colorless is hard to come by, this isn't one that I would want to run because it's 7 mana that doesn't develop any board presence or advance my game plan at all.
-
Winter Orb
,
Static Orb
, and other stax effects: Gets me targeted a lot so I opt not to run it.
-
Platinum Angel
: Too slow.
-
Platinum Emperion
: See:
Platinum Angel
-
Urza's Mine
, Urza's Powerplant, and
Urza's Tower
: I've tried to assemble these but have barely ever assembled them in a game and when I do, one of the lands gets hit by a
Ghost Quarter
,
Strip Mine
,
Acidic Slime
, or other land destruction. I would rather run different non-basics over these or more Wastes.
-
Mycosynth Golem
: I want to try this card out some but I'm not overly convinced by it.
-
Dross Scorpion
: I'm on the fence on this card. It works wonders when I can get a sacrifice outlet in play but when I don't, it becomes a very dead card that just sits there.
-
Soul of New Phyrexia
: I find this card too slow a lot of the time and sometimes I don't even care if my artifacts get wiped since I have so many things that benefit off them going to the grave.
-
Mimic Vat
: Another card I'm on the fence about as I can make copies of artifacts that go to the grave or my opponents creatures but it can also be a dead card throughout the majority of the game.
-
Junk Diver
: I don't think I need another
Myr Retriever
in this deck but this is probably going to be a card I keep putting in and taking out since I feel like it can do so much and can potentially combo with
Myr Retriever
,
Krark-Clan Ironworks
, and
Cloud Key
.
