Building the New Extended: Part 4
Artifact decks have been around for a long time. Ever since Antiquities, there have been distinct advantages to playing decks based around large quantities of colorless mana. In the past, many cards have been very generous suppliers of colorless mana. Many of those cards continue to survive into modern Extended. While the dual lands are gone, Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors and Grim Monolith all survived. The greatest success the deck has had in Extended came at Pro Tour-Chicago, where Alan Comer made the Top 8 with a deck called Suicide Brown:
Suicide Brown
At the same tournament there was also a second very different Tinker deck with solid results, called The Iron Giant:
The Iron Giant
23 land
1 Karn, Silver Golem 3 Masticore
33 other spells
With both Mana Vault and Grim Monolith, these decks often had starts like first turn Phyrexian Processor for Suicide Brown or second turn lock under Mishra's Helix for The Iron Giant. Artifacts like Processor and Helix are extremely mana intensive but have game-winning effects. The massive fast mana available made them degenerate. The deck was kept in check by several problems. The first was consistency. While sometimes the game would be effectively over on turn one, at other times the deck would fail to produce a good mana base or fail to produce an effective threat to use the mana for. The second problem was that with so few threats the deck was vulnerable to countermagic or artifact removal targeting its win conditions. The third problem was the card Null Rod, which single-handedly devastated these decks.
After the Pro Tour was over, these decks were kept in check by a far bigger problem, which was the rise of Trix. When Trix was dealt with, Mana Vault got a well deserved trip to the banned list. That left artifact decks significantly slower. Mana Vault was the fastest and best card in the deck. The idea still worked, but it was no longer a tier one deck. It failed to receive any important new additions from the new sets and seemed destined to fade into history.
Since then, there have been periodic attempts to revive the artifact deck in Extended. The only one that came within striking distance was played by Christian Luhrs, who had been tinkering with the idea for a long time. Instead of focusing on blue for Tinker, his deck used red for Goblin Welder:
Christian Luhrs
This is a very different deck. The deck is all permanents, so Smokestack will wipe all of the opponents' permanents off the board given time. The deck also has many good ways to abuse Goblin Welder, untapping Monoliths, resetting Smokestacks and Tangle Wires and drawing cards off Tsabo's Webs among other things. With so much mana, Sphere of Resistance can often be ignored while most opponents are seriously slowed down by it, especially in combination with Smokestack (the hard lock) and Tangle Wire. The deck wasn't quite tier one, but it was solid tier two and a lot of fun.
The rotation seems ready to change all that. None of the rotations even touch the Tinker deck while Artifact Red isn't losing anything important. Phyrexian Furnace, Mindstone and Urza's Bauble helped the deck but there are plenty of good replacements. Most decks lost their best mana sources, but these decks keep all of their lands and mana artifacts. The biggest threats to these decks were Force of Will and Null Rod, and both are gone. All signs seem to point to these decks having a major impact on the new Extended, quite possibly taking the mantle of "best deck."
How will these decks adjust? Suicide Brown will have to replace Mana Vault, and there isn't anything worthy to replace it with, but history has shown that the deck works just fine without it. Finkel's World Championship winning deck was Suicide Brown adjusted to replace the cards that were not Standard legal at the time. The deck will need additional land now, so it can afford additional colorless land. I would favor Rishadan Port now that Force of Will is gone and taking time to lock down an opponents' mana will be much less likely to backfire. The question is whether Metalworker makes it into the new deck. Against Sligh, the card will just die to a Shock of some kind, but anywhere else it is a very reasonable mana source. Since the deck should beat Sligh in Game 1 anyway on the strength of Tinker for Crumbling Sanctuary, this shouldn't that big an issue. It's also enough to trigger an Oath of Druids, but that seems like a chance the deck will have to take. Knowing when not to play the Metalworker will help a lot, since often the deck will have more than enough mana to operate smoothly.
I would envision the deck looking something like this:
New Extended: Tinker
Artifact Red has already made most of its adjustments. All it has to do is replace Phyrexian Furnace, Urza's Bauble and Mind Stone. That leaves the deck with less good cheap artifacts and less card drawing, which means it too is going to need more land. A more subtle problem is the deck no longer has a good way to get the first artifact into the graveyard to start abusing Goblin Welder. Cursed Scroll seems like a good way to add in a cheap artifact that will hold its value, but it doesn't solve the problem. Chromatic Sphere helps a little, even though you're not taking anywhere near full advantage of it. The decks will definitely end up converging as they have a smaller core of quality artifacts to draw upon. Playing mountains or islands may seem like a big decision, but it only matters for one or two key spells. I would expect Artifact Red to start with something like this:
New Extended: Artifact Red
What are the answers to these decks? The most basic answer is removal. Even the Tinker versions rarely have the space to run even a minimal number of counterspells anymore. A Seal of Cleansing can be a serious thorn in Tinker 's side. The problems with using removal are the inability to maindeck much of it and that both decks have a way around it. The Tinker deck has Phyrexian Processor and to a lesser extent Masticore. Masticore can regenerate, and Phyrexian Processor can make a large token before it is removed. A single 7/7 or 10/10 is still very good at winning the game if it isn't removed. Swords to Plowshares isn't around to stop it anymore, although there are plenty of good solutions left like Chainer's Edict. Removal is good, but like any decent deck this one can fight it. Artifact red can put up an even better fight if it can force in a Goblin Welder. At that point, artifact removal no longer does much of anything unless you can kill them all, and that means only mass removal is going to work.
Pernicious Deed is the only good maindeckable mass removal spell left that will kill artifacts without taking the lands with them. Together with Duress, the Deed should give black-green decks an advantage against the artifacts. Chad Ellis speculated that this is the core of the new Extended as hyperpowerful decks like Tinker and Artifact Red battle the disruption and removal of black-green. I don't think it will come to that, but it is possible. This is one of the reasons I devoted an entire article to black-green.
There was also a third artifact deck to come out of Pro Tour-Chicago, and it did not play any non-artifact spells at all. This allowed it to play Wastelands, Crystal Veins, Rishadan Ports and Dust Bowls in addition to Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors. In exchange, they gave up the ability to use Tinker or Goblin Welder. Since without Tinker the deck cannot search, such a strategy is going to look a lot more like the Artifact Red deck than either Tinker deck. They instead built their deck around Well of Knowledge, but that card is rotating out. It's always frustrating when a card is ready to come into its own but is lost as part of a rotation, but it cannot be helped.
The problem with trying to adopt this strategy now is that its advantage has been critically weakened. The ability to use Dust Bowl and Rishadan Port with a vast array of mana sources used to take out a large chunk of the field by itself, but without the dual lands, many more basic lands should see play. It no longer seems worthwhile to give up Goblin Welder or Tinker to get these lands.
This is the flip side of this deck being able once again to get away with playing no basic lands itself. Price of Progress and Back to Basics were becoming more and more important to Extended over time, and this deck had no good answer to either one beyond overpowering the effects. It could try to use artifact mana to get around Back to Basics and sacrifice lands to limit Price of Progress. Now those cards will be much less common, which would open the door again for the colorless plan, but it also loses its non-basic lands to use as targets. At this point I would probably incorporate Stalking Stones into the deck instead of otherwise better lands. Another problem is the sideboard, which has much fewer options. Even if the deck is good Game 1, it will have serious problems Game 2. Mass removal is seriously problematic for the other artifact decks but deadly to this one. I doubt this model will work out, but it's still worth keeping in mind that going purely colorless is possible.
If it weren't for the evidence provided by the Standard environment after Worlds 2000,I would say that it was highly unlikely a deck so artifact and draw dependant could achieve a dominant status for more than a short time. If it proved successful, reaction would pull it back down. Players did indeed start spending sideboard slots just to deal with Tinker back in 2000. The result was just enough to make it one deck among many instead of the best deck in the field, and that should be the result again here. At first, the artifact decks will be some of the strongest decks in the format. A few weeks later, a reaction will have taken place that will make them only two decks among many. With the constantly accelerating pace of metagame evolution, I would expect that time to be even shorter than it has been in the past.
At first, the artifact decks will be some of the strongest decks in the format. A few weeks later, a reaction will have taken place that will make them only two decks among many.
The other possibility is that other decks will emerge that create a hostile environment for these decks due to the proliferation of Deeds, Disenchants and other similar cards. If there are other targets to hit then the incidental hate could cripple the artifact strategies. It's hard to tell things like that in advance, but I'd expect these decks to have a major impact.
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