Deck Testing: The New Age of Artifacts

Hi guys! It's Friday morning and no work yet, so I was able to playtest my deck at the workstation. This deck I'm talking about is the deck I'm planning on building in real life. I have almost all the pieces. Here's the list. Please take note that the list is rough. Following Conley's advice in his deckbuilding article, almost all cards are 4-offs.

UW AGGRO ARTIFACTS (v1)

Lands (24)
1 Dread Statuary
6 Island
9 Plains
4 Sejiri Refuge
4 Terramorphic Expanse

Creatures (20)
4 Esper Stormblade (3-Pointer)
4 Juggernaut
4 Master of Etherium (Team Captain)
4 Steel Overseer (MVP!)
4 Vedalken Outlander

Spells (16)
4 Everflowing Chalice
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Open the Vaults
3 Path to Exile
3 Voltaic Key

Sideboard (15)
3 Dragon's Claw
4 Ethersworn Shieldmage
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Reinforced Bulwark

Before I get into the two matches I played thus far, let me talk about the card choices.

Creatures

Master of Etherium

When building an artifact deck, creature choice are often very narrow and very obvious. Right now, when looking for the best artifacts, there's no place to turn to but the shard of Esper. Home of the Vedalkens and such, Esper hosts a lot of nifty artifacts that you would wanna see. Esper Stormblade is often at worst a 3/2 chumper, and a 4/3 flier at minimum best. Vedalken Outlander just shrugs off any bolts. But the true star is the artifact lord Master of Etherium which becomes insanely huge so easily, so fast.

Steel Overseer

The new core set brings us a new lord, the insane Steel Overseer. Boosting your team (including itself) once each turn is INSANE! You'll have Baneslayers in no time! Plus, being untapped with another artifact, things can get pretty ugly pretty fast. Juggernaut is insane when you get him out of bolt range. Completely ignoring Wall of Omens and Wall of Denials in control decks is huge!

Spells

The key....

The star here is Voltaic Key! Untapping and re-tapping an Overseer is ugly! Of course, what artifact deck won't want to Open the Vaults? You can just attack with your team (usually trading a guy or two) and play this as an ultimatum post-combat making all those trades not trades at all! The chalices are acceleration plus upping the artifact count for your masters. Paths and Rings are obvious top removal picks for a base white decks which completely dominates some matchups.

...to the vault.

Sideboard
The sideboard is pretty straightforward also. Lodestone Golem is there against Jund and against control decks. You would wanna make them pay more for their spells and cascade. Against control you'll be siding these in for your paths and a ring. Against jund, well, I don't know. :)

Shieldmage and Reinforced Bulwark are for aggro decks. Having an insanely large Bulwark is simply amazing. And Dragon's Claw for red-based deck.

Now, on to the matches.

Match 1: Versus Mythic Conscription

Because I don't take down notes as I play, I'm just recalling this from memory. Game 1, we developed our boards quickly with him having a pair of birds, a cobra, a heirarch, a wildwood and a couple of other lands. I have been attacking with a pair of stormblades being pumped turn after turn thrice by an overseer with two keys in play. I just played a juggernaut and passed the turn when he played a Baneslayer Angel his turn, then enchanted it with Conscription (hardcast) the following turn. After that, we were at a stand-off. His 15/15, Annihilator 2, Exalted +5 more abilities Angel is looking at a pair of 11/10 Stormblades, a 10/10 Overseer and and a 9/7 Juggernaut. Everything was a stalemate until I drew a path for the win.

Game 2 was pretty much uneventful as I had a fast start and I beat him down so fast he didn't know what hit him. His birds and heirarchs were in awe.

Match 2: Versus Red-Green Burn Ramp

I'm telling you, this is one weird deck. He was playing with Llanowar Elves, Zektar Shrines, Lava Axe, Fireball, Exploding Borders, Ondu Giants, Harrow, etc. Game 1 I mulled to 4 keeping an expanse a path and a pair of chalice. I managed to beat him that game with him doing nothing much but play land, put counter on shrine, go. He managed to crack two shrines that game, but i have 2 paths as answers. He burned me a couple of times, but his lack of defender cost him his dear life.

Game 2 I had a nice draw, but he had an awfully insane amount of burn in hand, fireballs, lava axe and stuff, that the game ended in short fashion, like Turn 5.

Game 3, I don't exactly remember how I beat him, but I did by attacking cleanly. I didn't won though. He disconnected before I got him to 0! Hehe...


Well, that's that. I'll have to play more games against more archetypes before going back to the drawing board again, but things are looking steely nice.