Today's article is based on a post by Ghostlander that can be found here: http://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=1193985

 

Help with Red Artifact Deck

 

Hey there so, I'm trying to build a better deck for my brother, as he's having some issues against my black vampire deck and my blue discard deck. He enjoys red and also artifacts but is having a hard time piecing together a coherent strategy with the cards we have. So I was looking at a few we could get. Here's just a rough draft of what I'm thinking, 

 

( Very casual play, not a great budget at all right now)

 

4 Geosurge

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Shrapnel Blast

3 Molten Psyche

3 Molten Influence

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Myr Turbine

 

3 Fire Servant

4 Ornithopter

1 Platinum Emperion

3 Alloy Myr

3 Etherium Sculptor

4 Slag Fiend

 

20 Mountain

 

General blasting without using goblins (we hate goblins) and sticking to some kind of cool artifact creatures, while trying to allow for some defense and sacrifice fodder. 

 

Any general thoughts welcome. 

 

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Good day, Ghostlander. I read your request for help in building a deck for your brother. I don't know for sure you that your brother is new to the game, but it sounds like it might be the case. Helping a newer player build a deck that can compete is instrumental in getting them over the learning curve of playing this complicated game we call Magic, so I wanted to give some of my thoughts.

 

The thoughts you gave about what decks he plays against and the strategies you want to use (and don't want to use), along with the fact that you don't have a big budget to work with give me a good start as to how to help you.

 

The first thing I noticed when going through your decklist is that you have a blue card - Etherium Sculptor - and the only way you can get blue mana is from Alloy Myr. Having a card in your deck that can only be played if you have one particular other card out is not a good strategy. You want cards that work well, whether or not you get another particular card. Since you talked about liking red cards, and didn't say anything about blue, I'm going to suggest dropping the Sculptor and the Alloy Myr.  In their place, let's put a couple different Myr that add mana - Palladium Myr and Iron Myr. The Palladium Myr costs the same as the Alloy Myr but adds 2 instead of 1 mana. The Iron Myr costs the same as the Sculptor, but can be played for colorless mana and it produces mana that can be used for any spell instead of just making artifacts cheaper.

 

-3 Etherium Sculptor

-3 Alloy Myr

+3 Palladium Myr

+4 Iron Myr

 

There's another card that only has one use - Geosurge. The only purpose I see for it is to help cast Platinum Emperion. If you don't have the single Emperion in hand, you have no use for so much mana. Let's drop the Geosurge for something useful in more situations. Since we are starting to build up a number of Myr (you did say you wanted cool artifact creatures), let's add their leader: Myr Galvanizer. He makes all your other Myr bigger, including ones you make with the Turbine. On top of that, if you have other Myr in play, he can untap them all! This also allows a crazy combo potential. If you get 2 Myr Galvanizers in play and enough other Myr to produce 3 mana, you have an infinite mana combo. Tap your mana myr for 3 mana, use 2 of that for the Galvanizer's ability to untap all other Myr. Now, tap your mana Myr again, making for a total of 4 mana available. Use 2 of those to activate the other Galvanizer's ability, untapping all other myr. Each time you do this cycle, you gain 1 more mana to use for whatever you want, and you can do it until you get however much you need! It is of course going to be a rare occurrence that this all works out, so don't go expecting it to happen very often, but when it does come together, it sure is fun!

 

-4 Geosurge

+4 Myr Galvanizer

 

Next on the block are two cards that are situational: Molten Psyche and Molten Influence. Molten Psyche is most useful when you have several cards in hand and want to exchange them for something different AND your opponent has a bunch of cards, so it will deal damage to them. I feel that a lot of the time, this card isn't going to do much for you. If you're out of cards in hand and you draw this, it doesn't help you at all - unless it's just enough to kill your opponent. Molten Influence is only useful at all when your opponent is trying to cast an instant or sorcery. Usually, they'll just take the 4 damage and proceed as planned. While 4 damage for 2 mana is good, you can only use it at certain times, and it cannot hit a creature if there's an annoying one on the board. I'd like to select 2 cards to replace these. First, let's find a card to use that potential infinite mana - one that's still useful if you don't have a lot of mana. I'll suggest Red Sun Zenith because I like how it shuffles back in, but any of the X spells that hit players or creatures would work, i.e. Fireball, Blaze, or the like. It might cost more mana per damage, but it's flexible and can use be really powerful when you have a lot of mana. Also, since you mentioned this deck will often play against discard, how about Guerrilla Tactics? 2 mana for 2 damage is not terribly exciting, but getting to deal 4 damage for free sometimes is worth it! Even if you don't have it in hand, when your opponent sees you holding onto one card, they might think twice about making you discard! Both of these new additions can also hit creatures, which will really help against all those vampires.

 

-3 Molten Psyche

-3 Molten Influence

+3 Guerrilla Tactics

+3 Red Sun Zenith

 

I almost glossed over Ornithopter in this deck. As an 0/2 creature, it really doesn't do much for you. You don't have any way to pump it up, so it's never going to do any damage unless you use it for Shrapnel Blast, and 2 toughness means he is a one-turn chump blocker. We've got other artifacts we can blast things with, so there's no need for the little thopter. Let's put another artifact in it's place and help with one a classic red deck problem: running out of cards in hand. Howling Mine is my suggestion for this. While I don't particularly like letting the opponent draw extra cards too, the extra card you get every turn makes it hard for the discard deck to keep you low on cards. Then, when you're tired of the mine, just Shrapnel Blast it at something!

 

-4 Ornithopter

+3 Howling Mine

 

Finally, allow me to make a suggestion on the land. 20 land is on the low side, but with 8 mana producing creatures, and not many expensive cards, I think we might get away with it in this case. However, I would like to switch out 4 of the Mountains for Darksteel Citadels. These will help you get to Metalcraft earlier for Galvanic Blast as well as give you another artifact to sacrifice for Shrapnel Blast.

 

-4 Mountain

+4 Darksteel Citadel

 

 

I know you have a limited budget, so I made sure none of these cards were expensive. The highest dollar card is Howling Mine, as it runs from $2-$4 depending on which edition you get. Even if you're not able (or just don't want) to make ALL the changes I suggested, taking some of these things into consideration should help you make a more consistent deck.

 

Here's the deck with my proposed changes:

 

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Shrapnel Blast

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Myr Turbine

3 Guerrilla Tactics

4 Red Sun Zenith

3 Howling Mine

 

3 Palladium Myr

4 Iron Myr

4 Myr Galvanizer

3 Fire Servant

1 Platinum Emperion

4 Slag Fiend

 

16 Mountain

4 Darksteel Citadel

 

Have fun and I hope your brother enjoys the deck!

 

mattedesa