Meria, Scholar of Antiquity is a baby version of Urza, Lord High Artificier. She has the potential to pop off by allowing each artifact you own to become a Mox Emerald. Her second ability allows you to tap two non-token artifacts to exile and play a card. That's like having a budget friendly version of Light Up the Stage at your disposal. Meria is all about tempo. She allows you to tap those lazy utility artifacts for mana but she also provides a way to get some extra cards out of those artifacts. What's more is her access to Gruul colors allows for fast ramp and then you can cast some really big creatures such as Craterhoof Behemoth, Blightsteel Colossus, Darksteel Colossus, and Wurmcoil Engine to get stomping.
This deck is not combo focused but there's some fun ways to just win the game fast. Bosh, Iron Golem can be used to convert one of your big artifacts into a hurling molten mass. You might have that Meteor Golem that's already done it's job and your opponent is getting low on HP. Throw that golem at your opponents face with Bosh.
How does this deck win?
This deck is not combo focused but there's some combos for sure; before we get to those combos we'll cover the basic win cons and stax pieces:
1.) Lots of defensive measures such as Platinum Angel and Platinum Emperion. While these don't ensure a win they do provide some extra defensive measures. I find that opponents usually don't even swing at me if I have on or both of these stax based artifact creatures out. They'd rather use their firepower against a vulnerable target.
2.) Hellkite Tyrant can win games fast with this deck. You'll be playing on average 3-4 artifacts a turn and when you swing with the tyrant you can easily acquire 3+ artifacts. It's not going to take long to accumulate 20+ artifacts to win the game.
3.) Really want to freeze out your opponents. Well Meria, Scholar of Antiquity has the same capability as Urza in that she can tap down artifacts to punish opponents. With your commander on the field the following stax pieces can really slow down your opponents while increasing your tempo:
Winter Orb
Static Orb
Howling Mine
Trinisphere
Pithing Needle
Grafdigger's Cage
God-Pharaoh's Statue
These tap-happy artifacts can really punish your opponents when left untapped so make sure to tap them on your opponents end step right before your upkeep phase.
There's more to stax. Vandalblast paired with Mycosynth Lattice is a game ender for opponents. Once the lattice is online overload Vandalblast to watch all their permanents (lands, enchantments, creatures, etc.). All get blown up. Karn, the Great Creator works well with the lattice. He can prevent any of your opponents lands for tapping for mana etc. If that doesn't work then Hellkite Tyrant can steal your opponents permanents.
Sealing the Deal
No Gruul tron deck is complete without some tutors. Worldly Tutor and Gamble are solid in this deck but since we don't have access to blue mana and don't have the fancy Enlightened Tutor or Idyllic Tutor this deck has to get crafty with artifact based tutors. This deck does this by packing cards such as Planar Bridge Now the bridge costs a lot of mana to cost and even more to fetch and play any card from your library but remember this deck is all about ramp. Getting an extra 10-20 mana a turn shouldn't be out of reach for this build.
Since we're playing with fire and some big artifact creatures we want to convert those artifacts that can't seem to get damage past our opponents defense into unblockable damage outputs. Bosh, Iron Golem can help out here but we need some more damage vectors to finish off our opponents. Blightsteel Colossus with Chandra's Ignition is a fun way to just win the game. Cast the ignition targeting the blightsteel to dish out 11 infect to each opponent.
Again the focus of this deck is not combo'ing but there are some fun combo and win-con plays that also include:
Mycosynth Lattice + Collector Ouphe = Prevent opponents from using any of their permanents.
Mycosynth Lattice + Karn, the Great Creator = Prevent opponents from using any of their permanents.
Mycosynth Lattice + Vandalblast = Destroy all opponents permanents
Basalt Monolith + Mana Reflection = Infinite colorless mana
Grim Monolith + Nyxbloom Ancient = Infinite colorless mana
Grim Monolith + Mana Reflection = Infinite colorless mana
Use your tutors and get Walking Ballista online to win with that infinite mana. You can also win with infinite mana by abusing Cogwork Assembler. What's worse than an army of thousands of artifact creatures with haste am I right?
The infinite colorless mana is helpful but what's even more helpful is after you net infinite colorless you can then untap those permanents and retap them treating them as Mox Emerald with your commander so what you end up having is infinite colorless and green mana to play with.
That's the overall strategy. This deck is a big stompy, fast paced Gruul deck. I hope you enjoy it!
