Well away from the eyes of other men, from his Mystic Sanctuary on an Remote Isle, the reclusive artificer Sai tinkers with his beloved flying machines, and other technological miracles.
Twenty-two cards in this fifty-card deck are cast-able artifacts meaning that Sai, Master Thopterist will be making plenty of thopters, and those thopters will be big thanks to anthem cards like Adaptive Automaton, Chief of the Foundry, Master of Etherium, and Favorable Winds.
The twenty-third artifact is a land, the Seat of the Synod, which while it doesn't help you with thopter production (other than being ), it does help other spells like Master of Etherium and Override.
Mess with your foes' cards with flying, metallic-flavored counterspells like Metallic Rebuke, Override, Siren Stormtamer, and Syncopate. You can bounce cards too with Select for Inspection, or Cyclonic Rift, or just flat-out destroy them with Ratchet Bomb. Then just fly over their defenses with your swarm.
You can bolster those swarms with Foundry of the Consuls, Hangarback Walker, and Strionic Resonator to build up epic numbers of thopter tokens.
The deck is pretty straight-forward, just play artifacts while Sai, Master Thopterist is on the battlefield, and build up your air-force through card synergy. Gain a bit of card advantage with your plucky one drop Artificer's Assistant, and the indestructible Thassa, God of the Sea both of which will allow you to scry nearly every round they are in play. Then swing in for a ton of steadily increasing damage.
And if none of that works, just punch face with your thopter-fuelled Decoction Module- and Fabrication Module-empowered Electrostatic Pummeler, or super huge Master of Etherium.
Currently, the deck is "relatively" inexpensive with Cyclonic Rift, Hangarback Walker and Thassa, God of the Sea accounting for more than half of the price tag.
If you are looking for a more economic version of the deck consider replacing Thassa with any one of the following for similar access to scrying, evasion, and other good stuff: Aqueous Form, Crystal Ball, Eyes Everywhere, Retreat to Coralhelm, or Sigiled Starfish. Cyclonic Rift is a bit trickier to do without. Now you'll have to rely solely on your Ratchet Bomb to handle your mass removal needs. I would suggest one of two options. One, popping in a counter spell like well, Counterspell, Disappearing Act, or whatever fits your local meta. Maybe with a few more specific options in your sideboard. Two, you could go for more artifact recursion with a spell like: Drafna's Restoration, Junk Diver, Reconstruction, Scrap Trawler or Workshop Assistant. Otherwise, Equilibrium sorta functions as a very very slow version of the same effect if you can get the spell to stick to the battlefield long enough. Removing these two cards (the most expensive in the deck) saves you (at present) about $33. Two replacement cards from those mentioned above currently run a total of $.50 up to $5 depending on what options you choose, saving you about $30!
'But Mr. Understudy, what about Hangerback Walker?' You can't really live without Hangerback Walker. Get one while they are still relatively cheap. ;)
