New Year Update
So I've cut back on a couple things here to make it more competitive: brought down my mana count, dropped a creature and 1x Metallic Rebuke to bring the total number of cards to 60. I might bring it back up to 64 just to play around at a couple local events since the balance seemed to work very well before.
My sideboard went through some major adjustments: to compete with Aggro Red or Vehicle decks I added the Chandra's Defeat instead of Essence Scatter and decided I would fight fire with fire (pun intended) instead of trying to stop their creatures from coming out with counter spells. I added a third Crook of Condemnation simply due to the high number of The Scarab God's and Bant Token decks I've seen with the current meta I play against.
The biggest change I've made was moving the Bastion Inventor's to the Sideboard in favor of 3x Captain Lannery Storm. I've tried a couple things since I feel like this is the most crucial change this deck needs to face at the moment. The Inventor is costly (even with Improvise), but hexproof is necessary with the control match-ups. I tried Pia since she brings a Thopter with her, but that just wasn't enough to keep this deck above ground. I feel like Lannery is more synergistic with this deck, so we'll see how it goes, plus with Rivals on the horizon, I think more Treasure Tokens will be making their way into this deck very soon.
I've appreciate the up-votes and comments are always welcome!
Update 10 November
"While working on a Pirates deck using Treasure Token's, I decided I wanted to revisit the Improvise mechanism. Same premise as before, but I've included Marionette Master as a WinCon as you populate your board with easy to sacrifice tokens and have her deal out that damage. Bonus: she's also an Artificer, so she could be even more pumped up using Inventor's Goggles." - posted on 8 October
So after a month of playing this deck and seeing some pretty great success at my local FNM venue, I've become impressed with how this deck has been working out. I think my biggest problem at the moment is that I've got 64 cards and would like it to be down to 60 if I were to try this in a more competitive environment. I'll leave the deck-list on here as it is for now, but I think I'll be pulling 2x land, one Tezzeret and either one Metallic Rebuke, Bastion Inventor, or Vraska's Contempt (and move it to the sideboard instead) and try taking it to a tougher venue.
Some additional thoughts with what I've seen so far is that I usually only get to finish one game per match with the Marionette Master WinCon and will have to rely on other means in game 2/3: if I'm playing against a deck using , I often see Lost Legacy remove her. The good news is that there are enough tough creatures to make winning still possible. My favorite game so far was one such match where in game two my opponent got rid of her with Lost in turn three, but turn one I played Inventor's Goggles, turn two played Prophetic Prism, (revealed my hand to lose MM on his turn 3), played Maverick Thopterist on my turn three: after turn three I didn't see any more land for the game ... so I finished the game with only three mana on the board ... turn four saw a Herald of Anguish ... and so did turn five: I had 2x 7-drop cards on the board with only three mana, beautiful. He was able to get rid of one with Cast Out, but in turn seven (after playing another Thopterist) I equipped my Goggles to the Herald and swung in the air for a total of ten damage: 6 with an equipped Herald and 4x Thopters to finish the game. It's also not uncommon to ultimate Tezzeret when I get him out and that also makes for a very decent WinCon. I find the versatility of this deck to be very nice, but I expect it'll suffer more against Aggro decks such as Mardu Vehicles or Mono Red (I've beaten both, but I don't know if this deck would consistently keep up with those decks over a sustained period of time).
Original Post (Edited with card updates)
This deck has already gone through a few revisions: I played my first version of this at Game Day for Aether Revolt and lost horribly. I was originally running 4x Ornithopter's, Cathar's Shield, and Bone Saw as well as 4x Tezzeret's Touch. Huge mistake.
The problem with running 12x 0-cost mana cards is that they're pretty much useless. Touch was too expensive to be worth-wile early on in any game and with so many 0-drop cards, my hand size dropped to almost nothing by turn 2/3 and the whole deck simply run's out of steam. Each game I played, I was left with such a weak board that every opponent smashed right through.
This more successful version came to fruition after a few playtests with some friends and family and then I finally took it to my local FNM. Placed third overall and I'm pleased with the way things are going. I'll likely take this to FNM this week and try again.
Although I didn't originally intend for this to become a control deck, it was kind of a natural progression.Using Metallic Rebuke and Fatal Push have proven essential early on to buy me time to get out Bastion Inventor or Herald of Anguish. I've recently been more drawn towards Battle at the Bridge instead of Push since it has that wonderful "Gain X life" addition to creature removal. I like this card better since it also takes care of all the Gods we've seen recently and it seems like the best replacement for Grasp of Darkness being rotated out. Ideally, I think this deck should play like this:
Turn 1: Land and then Inventor's Goggles or Opt.
Turn 2: Land and then Prophetic Prism for the extra draw or Treasure Map
or Goggles and hold on to use Metallic Rebuke or Opt again.
Turn 3: Land and then either Maverick Thopterist or hold off since turn 3 is usally a good time to use Metallic Rebuke depending on how your opponent is playing.
Turn 4: Land and then by this point you've got enough to play Bastion Inventor with an equipped +1/+2 Goggles or even Herald of Anguish. A Planeswalker isn't a bad option at this point if you've also got creatures to protect it. Either way, you've got yourself set up pretty nice at this point.
By turn 5/6 you're ready to play Marionette Master and since she's an Artificer, you can equip those Goggles to her as she enters the board, "Fabricate" 3 to make her a 5/8 creature. But the real kicker is that you should also have a slew of Treasure and Etherium tokens which cost nothing to sacrifice and all you need to do is to sac 4 of them to deal lethal damage to your opponent.
I'll update as I play and get a better feel for it. Comments are welcome! ... So are +1's: gotta feed that ego.
