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Today I'd like to share with you my oldest deck, which I just finished revising.
With the upcoming set, Kamigawa Neon Dynsasty, a new tool is coming in the form of Scrap Welder. This card inspired me to fully focus my Feldon of the Third Path deck on a Artifact Graveyard Manipulation-deck, as far as it wasn't already.
It's notthe most competitive deck ever. I'd say it is just around a 7, depending how experienced you are playing it. It is great fun though. The design of the deck gives you many different possible play-lines, that are different each game. The graveyard functions as a giant toolbox, thus give you plenty of options each turn. You can choose to either develop your board during your own turn, or play more patiently and use Feldon's ability on instant speed during one of your opponents turns.
Allow me to go over the list.
Feldon's Scrappy Possibilities
Approximate Total Cost:
Let me go over some key components.
Fill the 'yard
We'd like to put as much in our graveyard as quickly as we can, so we can stretch our toolbox as far as possible. More fodder, means more possibilities, means more fun. Classic looting effects like Faithless Looting and Thrill of Possibility help a bunch. Cathartic Pyre can function as removal as well. Cycling a Ruin Grinder on turn two, getting a third land for Feldon and also providing a (repeatable) reanimate-able wheel as awesome. Lightning Axe and Key to the City can target specific pieces in our hand and throws them in the 'yard. Finally, Altar of Dementia fits in this category as well, and is really multifunctional in this list - more on that later.
Graveyard Manipulation
This part is mostly dedicated to our nifty little green friends, the goblins. They like to toy around with metals, and frankly, are quite good at it. They mostly like to sacrifice pieces of artifact and trading those with pieces in our graveyard. They give us the possibility to exchange a low-costed artifact for a high-costed artifact. Many of our reanimated creatures leave behind artifact tokens, for instance Triplicate Titan, Myr Battlesphere and Wurmcoil Engine which can then be traded off with something like a Chromatic Orrery, Mindslaver or another target that provides sacrifice fodder like Ancient Stone Idol.
Scrap Welder - A big one to keep in mind is that any reanimated creature with Feldon of the Third Path's ability becomes an artifact in addition to his other types! This allows us to convert any reanimated target into any other artifact with a lower mana-cost in our graveyard by using Scrap Welder's ability. Pay attention to how our artifact-(creature)'s mana-curve is built: it gradually descends from 10 to 1, allowing us to get highly-costed artifacts into play thus applying maximum value.
Goblin Welder - Everyone knows this is an extremely powerful card for just one mana. It can convert any (low-costed) artifact in any other (high-costed) artifact by just tapping it. One great move that I've found is to re-animate this goblin with Feldon, thus granting it haste, then sacrificing itself for an Ancient Stone Idol, which I am then allowed to keep on board. Another one is to trade an opponent's Sol Ring gained through Treasure Nabber for a Spine of Ish Sah in our graveyard.
Goblin Engineer - Functions as a tutor, plus is able to switch any artifact (including artifact tokens) for any of our low costed Value Pieces (more on that later).
Daretti, Scrap Savant - Does looting. Does the whole switcheroo'ing. Rarely ults though.
Trash for Treasure - Redundancy.
Scrap Mastery - Last but not least, one of our main win-cons. The sheer amount of value that this 5-mana card creates swings around games in our favour..
Main Reanimator Targets
Almost any creature in this deck is a proper reanimation target. Let me zoom in on some special ones. Note that any of these are useful on both our own turn (aggressively) or during our opponent's turn (defensively - politics).
Solemn Simulacrum - This cards gets less play nowadays, but imho this deck is the perfect home for it. Repeatable three-mana (considered it's reanimated) card draw and ramp. Combines perfectly with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and due to his LTB+ETB is great sacrifice fodder for our goblins. Ashnod's Altar or Krark-Clan Ironworks.
Cavalier of Flame - One of our main finishers. The deck runs a lot of Mountains. Through all the looting and wheeling the amount of Mountains in our graveyard can expand rather quickly, making this card an efficient finisher. The fact that this card itself also loots is just another awesome bonus.
Molten Primordial - Good to get in for damage. Combined with sacrifice outlets it also functions as a (pseudo) mass-removal spell. Altar of Dementia and Ashnod's Altar told me that opponent's creatures taste extra good.
Dragon Tyrant - Another possible finisher. A Chromatic Orrery on board can get this out of hand quickly.
Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere, Triplicate Titan, Ancient Stone Idol - As said, these reanimated targets leave other valuable artifacts behind that can bring us additional value.
Duplicant, Meteor Golem, Spitebellows, Balefire Dragon]] - Removal on a stick.
Platinum Emperion - Love this card for it's defensive use. Sometimes I just let my opponent which a large board know that I have this in my graveyard, and can get it on the field any time I want with Feldon of the Third Path or Goblin Welder, so there is absolutely no incentive (besides commander damage) to attack me. Sweet politics.
Subtheme: steal-effects
Stealing our opponent's artifacts and/or creatures allows us to ramp, deny our opponent's value or in some cases allow us to get in for damage.
Molten Primordial - Good reanimation target as stated before.
Zealous Conscripts - Ofcourse combo's with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, but some times it is just more fun to grab some random artifact, use our goblins to trade it off for another artifact in our graveyard, or use one of our other sac-outlets to get rid of it permanently.
Treasure Nabber - Goblins do not like it when other people use their precious metal. Get some use out of it and sacrifice them with Krark-Clan Ironworks.
Hellkite Tyrant - The dragon agrees.
Mindslaver - Very mean card, since you are stealing an entire opponent turn. I usually only use this near the end of the game, preventing someone to take me out. Since this card is so easily reccurable through the graveyard and easily activated it is just too hard to pass on.
Value Pieces
These cards allow us to win games by sheer value. They are easily recurred from our graveyard and abused, making the deck a force to be reckoned with.
Altar of Dementia - Two mana but so much value. For instance when I Evoke-cast a Spitebellows, and then sacrifice it to the Altar in response to the Evoke-trigger. Or when I sacrifice a reanimated Ancient Stone Idol which would die at the end of my turn due to Feldon of the Third Path's ability any way. Or when I reanimated a Ruin Grinder, sacrificing it immediately giving me a fresh hand to work with immediately.
Ashnod's Altar - Awesome ramp & sac-outlet. A single Myr Battlesphere can convert into 10 colorless mana.
Krark-Clan Ironworks - Awesome ramp & sac-outlet with all of the same reasons to run it.
Rings of Brighthearth - All this additional mana can be converted into additional commander/goblin activations. Note how the 2 colorless mana matches the amount we gain through the Altar and Ironworks perfectly.
Thousand-Year Elixir & Magewright's Stone - Brings additional activation possibilities to our commander or our goblins.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker - Kiki's double down on any ETB/LTB effects on our creatures.The sheer amount of value that it can bring makes it a creature that needs to be dealt with, period.
That would be all! Hopefully this deck inspired you to build and try it yourself. It definitely is a blast to play. Due to the high skill-gap it definitely gets better the more you work with it.
