Introduction
When Commander 2014 came out, I decided I was going to build Nahiri, the Lithomancer until I happened upon Daretti, Scrap Savant. I thought to myself, "No way can this deck be any good. But, it looks fun, so I'll try this instead."
Fast forward to today. Daretti has easily become my best and all-time favorite deck. It doesn't seem to matter how much hate he receives; he seems to be able to persist through much of it, and can come back and win games out of nowhere. I haven't had more fun games than I have had with him.
Why play Daretti?
- Daretti is not a Creature: This is important to note because now you have a Commander that is immune to creature removal of all kinds. Yes, he will be the target of attacks, as with all Planeswalkers, but it will also act as a Fog for you.
- Relatively low CMC: He has a CMC of 4. Although it is not as low as some other Commanders, it is also not that high. With the kinds of ramp we run, it is possible to get him out on turn 1, or more consistently by turn 2. Getting him out as early as possible means you have a good chance at advancing your gameplan faster than anyone else.
- Mono-Red: Daretti is a mono-colored Commadner. What does that mean? It means a more consistent mana base. You don't have to run any non-basics to fix your colors. The only non-basics you need are your utility lands. This also makes your entire deck consistent as you only have red and colorless spells to play.
You might like Daretti if:
1) You enjoy the simplicity of playing mono-colored decks.
2) You enjoy artifact and/or graveyard based decks.
3) You enjoy cheating in big, dumb artifacts.
4) You enjoy playing aggro decks, but also like elements of control.
5) You like having a Planeswalker as your General, instead of a boring creature.
6) You like playing some Stax effects to help control the board so you can Ultimate Daretti.
You might dislike Daretti if:
1) You want more colors for more options.
2) You hate artifacts and want to destroy all graveyards.
3) You want the option of using Commander Damage as an alternate win condition (which you can still win that way here; you just have to try. )
4) You dislike playing Planeswalkers as a Commander. Since it's inception, the only commander option was Legendary Creatures. Some people like to stick to the original ways of only running Legendary Creature Commanders; there is nothing wrong with that.
5) You dislike any Stax effects.
Other Possible Commanders:
Bosh, Iron Golem: Another Mono-Red general. This guy is better off in a 1v1 setting as you're going to want to throw your artifacts at only one person, not spread it throughout 3+ other players, especially with the amount of artifact removal in the format.
Karn, Silver Golem: If going colorless is your thing, Karn is the Golem for you. He can run most of the same stuff we can, minus the red spells.
Memnarch: Another Mono-Blue deck. Memnarch focuses on building up a good board state and attempts to make infinite mana to steal all other permanents. If you want to play other people's cards, he's the perfect general for this.
Muzzio, Visionary Architect: Another Mono-Blue deck? Yup. This time it's Daretti's student. Can dump artifacts like no one else's business. Can go from a tiny little rock to a Darksteel Forge with one activation.
Sharuum the Hegemon/ Sydri, Galvanic Genius: Esper artifact commanders. Runs multiple infinite combos to secure a win. Both can be used in each other's deck for other combos. Both are viable options and losing red doesn't hurt the deck very much. Being Esper allows you more tutors and also counter packages to protect combos.
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer: Probably the best choice as alternate commander for a mono-red artifact deck. Built in protection makes all of your important pieces hard to deal with. The deck will more or less play the same, except you won't have Daretti in the command zone for repeat casts. Daretti is by far the better choice to run as commander as his abilities far outweigh Slobad's.
Breya, Etherium Shaper: The newest artifact commander to hit the scene. She is the best of all artifact worlds. She's red so you can slot in a lot of stuff from Daretti. She's white/black so you can have some of the best tutors in the game, and she is also blue to allow for counter packages. If you're looking for a straight up combo deck, she is who you want to run as you get the best of everything not green.
Deck History
Next, mono-red doesn't have many forms of disruption. In order to combat full boards of creatures that want to attack Daretti, or decks with lots of counters that want to counter all of your relevant things, you need ways to to deal that.. That's why I added a bit of Stax effects with the combo of Winter Orb/Static Orb and Clock of Omens to slow everyone down. Mass creature removal is also necessary, as a clogged board is difficult to deal with.
The deck has continued to evolve over the years. I took out all of the stax effects and went full-on artifact combo. I went back to stax with MLD for a full cEDH style of gameplay, but found out that wasn't really my thing. So I went with a happy medium of artifact combo with some stax elements to it.
The Deck
Card Analysis
Creatures
Goblin Welder: The original welder that inspired Daretti's -2 ability. We can activate his ability at instant speed so we can surprise someone with a blocker or some sort of removal, or just swap something out that we can get good use out of on our turn.
Dockside Extortionist: Red doesn't do well with ramp outside of mana rocks. This guy here can help with that, and can dump out an insane amount of Treasure tokens in a multiplayer game. We can use those for mana like they are intended to, or we can use them to weld back more permanent artifacts.
Goblin Engineer: Red also doesn't do tutoring very well, but for a card to tutor an artifact directly into the graveyard is awesome for this deck! He is an all-star for that ability alone, but he also has another ability tacked onto it. He has a mini-Goblin Welder ability that is restricted to your graveyard, and can only return something with CMC 3 or less, but it can still be useful to return stax pieces.
Imperial Recruiter: Best creature tutor for this deck. Searches out Goblin Welder, Dockside Extortionist, Goblin Engineer, Magus of the Moon, Merchant of the Vale, Metalworker, Squee, Goblin Nabob, and Silent Arbiter.
Magus of the Moon: Blood Moon on legs. We want to be able to turn off opposing lands as much as possible so having another option that is tutorable is great to have.
Merchant of the Vale: A new card with the Adventure mechanic. We can use the Haggle part early on in the game, and then cast the creature portion later on when we need more card filtering. We can use this guy to filter through our entire deck once we achieve infinite in order to find a game-winning combo.
Metalworker: Crazy ramp in an artifact deck. Nets two mana for every artifact you reveal. Can be really explosive in the first few turns, but can be less effective in the later game if you only have a few cards in hand.
Squee, Goblin Nabob: One of the all-stars of the deck. Discarding him to Daretti's ability essentially draws you another card during your next turn. He helps you choose more carefully what artifacts to discard and sort of helps play around graveyard removal. He can also be used as a recurring chump blocker to help protect you and Daretti.
Lodestone Golem: A stax piece on a body. This one doesn't necessarily hurt as much as it only increases for nonartifacts.
Silent Arbiter: Slows down token/swarm strategies. Allows us to essentially "control" how combat works. Protects Daretti by only letting one creature attacks, and there's a good chance Arbiter can withstand that attack.
Wurmcoil Engine: One of the best artifact creatures ever printed. 6/6 with Deathtouch and Lifelink is really good. What could be better than that? Two bodies when he dies.
Artifacts
Codex Shredder: Can be used to fill our graveyard, or mess with top-of-the-deck tutors our opponents use. It's main purpose is to be able to reuse cards that are in our graveyard, the most notable one being Scrap Mastery.
Sensei's Divining Top: Allows us to look at the top three of our library and rearrange them in order to draw what we want with Daretti. We use the fetch lands to reset the top if none of the three are very good. We can create inifinite mana with Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith and use it to draw a card with Top and copy it, allowing us to redraw the Top and the rest of our library if need be.
Voltaic Key: Untaps our mana rocks to get more mana out of them, or a creature to use as a surprise blocker. Can be used as a part of the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith combo to infinitely untap things.
Cursed Totem: Shuts down activated abilities of all creatures, including mana abilities.
Sphere of Resistance/Thorn of Amethyst: These will help to slow people from casting spells, as they tax them an additional for spells they cast.
Winter Orb/Static Orb: We use these to help control other's board states. Winter Orb slows the casting of spells by choking off mana produced by lands, and Static Orb slows people down from attacking as well as producing mana. Clock of Omens is used in conjunction with these to "turn off" their effects, allowing us to untap our permanents.
Crucible of Worlds: Allows us to have guaranteed land drops if we have one of our fetchlands available to us. Also will enable us to freely discard lands without fear of losing a land drop.
Ensnaring Bridge: Slows decks down from attacking. Helps protect Daretti as he climbs toward his ultimate.
Oblivion Stone/Nevinyrral's Disk: Essentially a reset button. Used when the board is getting too cluttered with things you don't like. When used with Darksteel Forge, your artifacts will remain unharmed. Add in Mycosynth Lattice, and you wipe everyone's board but your own. Do note that Stone will destroy your Planeswalkers, so be mindful and put a fate counter on them if you need them to stick around.
Rings of Brighthearth: Copies all activated abilities, including our Planeswalkers. It copies Basalt Monolith's untap ability to create infinite mana.
Staff of Domination: The Swiss army knife of the deck. It gains you life, draws you cards, taps/untaps creatures, and can untap itself. Used in conjunction with the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith combo or Metalworker with at least three artifacts in hand in order to go infinite.
Tangle Wire: Another stax piece used to slow the game down. You can proliferate to keep the counters from running out to keep things tapped for longer. Remember that this card as two abilities that trigger during your upkeep, so make sure you stack them correctly: put the tap ability on the stack first, so the Fading ability resolves and removes a counter so you tap down less things.
Trinisphere: Yet another stax piece. This one is a bit different as it causes spells to cost a minimum of three, after all increases and reductions. Slows down quite a few cEDH decks as many tend to run cards with less than 3 CMC.
Clock of Omens: This card is mainly used to "turn off" our Orbs, but it has plenty of other uses as well. It can give us a surprise blocker on someone else's turn. It can also let us reuse an artifact with a tap ability, such as Planar Bridge or the Monoliths.
Krark-Clan Ironworks: A sac outlet that helps protect from exile effects. Can also be used to ramp into a bigger spell, or set up for a Scrap Mastery.
Mystic Forge: A new utility piece. Allows us to see information in our deck that others cannot. Can remove an unneeded land from the top to dig for gas. We get to cast artifacts and colorless nonland cards. Combine with Sensei's Divining Top and Ugin, the Ineffable's static ability, and you can draw your entire deck.
Null Brooch: Repeatable counter that can be used to counter spells that are problematic to us or could possibly end the game. Has great synergy with
, as it will maximize the effect of Bridge and allow no attackers. Keep in mind that you can still activate Brooch with no cards in hand because you still discard your hand, and not a single card.
Trading Post: A very useful utility artifact. Puts cards into the graveyard to gain life, pay life to get a blocker, sacrifices creatures to return artifacts, and sacrifices artifacts to draw a new card. What is not to love about this?!
Unwinding Clock: The third untapper of the deck. This one happens automatically during other turns, so there is no activation required.
Alhammarret's Archive: Doubles your extra draws and life gain. Turns Daretti into positive sources of card advantage. This is usually a good target for a Gamble after Daretti is in play as it will gain you a ton of card advantage. Even if you have to discard down to hand size, it's more artifacts in your graveyard for later use.
Memory Jar: This lets us dig deeper into our deck. It's a sort of repeatable Wheel effect, except what we don't use gets discarded and we get our old hand back. Can also double as a mill effect for our opponents.
Mycosynth Lattice: This card is always used in conduction with other cards. Use with Darksteel Forge to make all of your permanents indestructible. Use with Nevinyrral's Disk to blow up the entire board. Use with Vandalblast to blow up everyone else's permanents. Use with Scrap Mastery to reset the board and get some artifacts back in return. If you have Daretti's emblem, everything that you had to sacrifice will be returned, as the emblem will see them as artifacts when they went to the graveyard.
Planar Bridge: A much better tutor artifact for the deck. While it does have a hefty cost to activate, being able to put any permanent onto the battlefield is game breaking. We can utilize infinite mana plus Rings of Brighthearth/Voltaic Key to bring all of our permanents into play.
Possessed Portal: A pretty huge finisher for the deck. This will cause a bunch of groans as it takes something from everyone during EACH turn. If we can get Daretti's Emblem before bringing this out, it will not hurt us at all, and will most likely cause the table to scoop unless they have a way of permanently dealing with it.
Darksteel Forge: Makes all of our artifacts indestructible and harder to deal with.
Sorceries
Gamble: It definitely is a Gamble to run this, but it is the best early game tutor we run. If it's in my opening hand with no way to get out an early Daretti, I always go for Mana Crypt. Otherwise, Alhammarret's Archive is my second choice. Later in the game, assess what would benefit you, and go for that.
Vandalblast: Early spot removal for artifacts, usually used to take out a mana rock or annoying artifacts. Overload it to take them all out. When used with Mycosynth Lattice, it will destroy all of your opponents' permanents. That usually ends the game.
Tormenting Voice: Card draw. Discarding a card is part of the cost, so you will lose out on a card if it gets countered, but having an extra artifact in the graveyard for later use is not a bad thing for us.
Saheeli's Directive: A new addition from Commander 2018: a Genesis Wave for artifacts! While this card is a bit more restrictive than Wave, as it only grabs you artifacts and not any permanent, it has the Improvise ability, so we can tap our artifacts to help pay the cost, essentially netting us more mana and allowing us to dig deeper to put more artifacts onto the battlefield.
Trash for Treasure: A one-shot Goblin Welder spell.
Wheel of Fortune: The original Wheel effect. Can either get rid of a junk hand for a new one, or just completely refills your hand.
Scrap Mastery: The Living Death for our artifacts. One of my favorite cards printed in the Commander 2014 set (behind Daretti of course). Allows you to "exchange" artifacts from the field with artifacts in each other player's graveyard. This card is the reason why we want to dump all of our artifacts into the graveyard. Combine this with Mycosynth Lattice and you reset the board. With Daretti's emblem, you get everything back, so it essentially becomes a one-sided wipe.
All Is Dust: Our catch-all removal for anything colored. We don't have very many colored permanents, so this card slots into the deck nicely. It does have a high CMC, but thanks to all of the mana rocks we run, it should be no problem to cast. It does not work very well with Mycosynth Lattice, however, as Lattice turns everything colorless, rendering this spell useless while it is on the field, so be careful when you play either.
Blasphemous Act: Mass creature removal. Not many things can survive 13 damage. Can be cheap removal if playing against token/creature strategies.
Instants
Thrill of Possibility: This is Tormenting Voice's twin, but better! It's instant speed, so we can cast at the end of an opponent's turn and have access to all of ours when it comes back to our turn.
Chaos Warp: One of the few pieces of spot removal we have. Use it to get around things with indestructible.
Enchantments
Stranglehold: Not much to be said about this card. Searching libraries is a big part of EDH, so being able to shut down our opponents from doing that is great. Also stops extra turns if that is prevalent in your meta.
Planeswalkers
Ugin, the Ineffible: Creates bodies that can help protect our planeswalkers. They also have the added bonus of gaining us cards when they die. Has a good spot removal option as well. His static ability helps us to cast our colorless spells much easier, and can help us draw our deck with Sensei's Divining Top and Mystic Forge.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Another amazing Planeswalker. His +3 is a Ghostfire (which is pretty flavorful). His -X is a catch-all removal. We run mostly coloress stuff, so this won't hurt us as much as it will others. His -10 is really awesome. Gaining seven life, drawing seven cards, and putting seven permanents into play is game-changing, especially when you can copy it with Rings of Brighthearth.
Lands
Arid Mesa, Bloodstained Mire, Scalding Tarn, Wooded Foothills: The fetch lands of the deck. Helps with deck thinning, as well as guaranteeing we hit Mountains with Crucible of Worlds out.
Barbarian Ring: We have problems with cards like Collector Ouphe and Kataki, War's Wage, and this land provides a means of getting rid of them that doesn't take up a spell slot, and can be reused with Crucible of Worlds.
Blast Zone: Removal on a land so it doesn't take up a valuable spell slot. It will not take out tokens, unfortunately, but we can tick it up in order to destroy whatever problems we are facing.
Buried Ruin: Artifact recursion on a land for the small cost of two mana. Can use the recurred artifact as more fodder to Daretti.
Command Beacon: We want to keep Daretti out as long as we can, but he tends to get killed a lot. This helps alleviate the big Commander Tax he is capable of getting. Casting him for 4 is better than casting him for 12+.
Darksteel Citadel/Great Furnace: The artifact lands of the deck. Can be later used as fodder to "weld" back artifacts.
Inventors' Fair: The life gain on this land isn't much, but over the course of a long game, it can be the difference between winning and losing. What's really great about this land is that it is also an artifact tutor that doesn't take the slot of a valuable spell, making this the perfect inclusion to any artifact-based deck.
Karn's Bastion: Helps proliferate all of our planeswalker's loyalty counters, as well as any other counters on permanents or players.
Kher Keep: Utility land that provides a repeatable blocker to help protect Daretti.
Maze of Ith: This is quite possibly the worst land in the deck as it doesn't make any mana, but it can save you from a lethal attack, or keep Daretti protected long enough to reach his Ultimate. With the right combination of cards, you can prevent attacks from all opponents.
Mishra's Workshop: Another "Sol" land of sorts. Makes three mana, but the downside is that mana can only be used for artifact spells. Works amazing in here, as most of our spells are artifacts. An easy staple for any artifact deck.
Mountain: This is a red deck. This is a land that produces . Seems good.
Strip Mine/Wasteland: Land removal. Gets rid of problematic lands such as Cabal Coffers/Gaea's Cradle]/Maze of Ith, etc.
Daretti's Scrapheap
Strategy
1) Mulligans: Your opening hand is very important. It'll basically tell you how the game is going to go. You want at the very least one Mountain in your starting hand in order to pay for Daretti's color requirement. After that, you want mana rocks. More specifically, early, cheap mana rocks like Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, or Mana Vault. Even Grim Monolith is good, albeit slower than the others. You want these to pump out a fast Daretti. Finally, you need pitch fodder. Whether that's the big artifacts, extra mana rocks or lands, or utility artifacts. Something to make it worth casting Daretti.
Examples of opening hands:
2) Early Game: Get Daretti out as fast as you can. Turn 1 is definitely the best, and there are a few ways of doing this, such as:
- Mountain + Mana Crypt + Sol Ring/Mana Vault/Grim Monolith
- Great Furnace + Mox Opal + Mana Vault/Mana Crypt
- Mox Diamond + Mana Vault + Any Land
Don't hesitate to use his -2 ability either. Sometimes we will need to bring back a protection piece like Darksteel Forge to prevent our artifacts from being destroyed, or a good blocker like Wurmcoil Engine to take out incoming creatures and pad our life total.
Rushing for the emblem isn't a bad strategy at all, but you need to use your discretion and look over the board state to see what the best course of action will be.
3) Mid Game: By the time you've hit mid game, you either have a pretty stocked graveyard, or someone played Rest In Peace/Bojuka Bog to completely nuke it. Either way, your strategy remains the same: lock the board and protect Daretti. At this point, you should either have a potential combo piece in your hand or on the battlefield. Keep filtering through your deck in order to find the final pieces, wipe the board of creatures if necessary, even use Nevinyrral's Disk/Oblivion Stone to reset the board if you need to. We will have a better chance at rebuilding our assets than others will.
4) Late Game: This is it: you've reached the Endgame (pun intended). You've done all you can to get to this point: you've destroyed permanents, locked out resources, made everyone miserable. Now, it is time to finish it. The one definitive way we can end the game is to pump infinite mana into a deadly Walking Ballista and ping everyone out of the game. We can continuously destroy permanents with Nevinyrral's Disk/Darksteel Forge (and even lands if we add in Mycosynth Lattice. We can prevent everyone else from playing spells with Karn, the Great Creator and Mycosynth Lattice, forcing them to either attempt to kill us with what they have on board, or just concede as they cannot do anything else. If all else fails, beat them down with a Wurmcoil Engine.
Weaknesses of Daretti
1) Artifact Hate: Daretti is an artifact-based deck, and in the EDH format, there are TONS of various artifact removal. There is the old-fasioned artifact destruction, such as Aura Shards, Vandalblast, Bane of Progress, among others, but these are the most potent. Kataki, War's Wage is also a big pain for us to deal with. There are also exiling effects, such as Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction, as well as many others. These are harder to come back from, as we cannot recur them. Stony Silence, as well as the new Collector Ouphe, are also very bad cards for us. If we have Mycosynth Lattice, this card will cause the game to draw out, as no one can cast anything since they can't tap lands for mana.
2) Graveyard Hate: Not only is Daretti an artifact-based deck, it is also graveyard-based. Cards such as Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, etc. put a real damper on our gameplan. Trying to get these out of our way as early as possible will only help us in the long run.
3) Counter Decks: Personally, this is the one I dislike the most. It's one thing to play your stuff and then get it removed. It's another to not even get to play them because they get countered. Over. And over. And over again. It can be frustrating, so if you're playing in a counter-heavy meta, Defense Grid might not be a bad inclusion, or even a Price of Glory will make everyone think twice.
4) Flying Creatures: Flying creatures are definitely a big hindrance. We have no creatures with Flying in our current build, so unless we use our mass removal spells to get rid of them, Daretti will almost always end up back in the Command Zone.
5) Direct Damage: Much like creatures with Flying, anything that deals direct damage to Planeswalkers will knock loyalty counters off Daretti. We used to have protection from burn with cards such as Witchbane Orb and Orbs of Warding, but when they changed redirection to actually targeting Planeswakers, these cards fell off the radar.
Combos
Infinite Mana Combos
It's simple: Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + from any source: Tap Monolith for . Use the to untap, Rings triggers, use from any other source to copy the untap effect. First untap on stack resolves, tap again for . Let second untap resolve and tap again for mana. You now have floating. Use to untap, and to copy untap with Rings. This leaves you with available. Repeat steps for infinite colorless mana.
Pair this infinite mana combo with a few more cards, and you can get some crazy interactions, such as:
- Sensei's Divining Top: Use SDT's draw effect and copy with Rings. The copied ability will resolve first, drawing you a card and putting SDT back on top of your deck. The second trigger will resolve, drawing you SDT, and since SDT is no longer on the field when the ability resolves, it doesn't go back on top. Cast SDT again, and repeat this process to draw your deck and look for an avenue to victory.
- Staff of Domination: With infinite mana, you are able have infinite activations of Staff, which you can use to tap/untap creatures, gain infinite life, or draw your deck, similar to the interaction that SDT has above.
- Voltaic Key + Codex Shredder: With the infinite mana and untaps, you can mill out all of your opponents.
- Voltaic Key + Mox Diamond/Mox Opal/Gilded Lotus: This isn't a game-winning combo by any means, but it will let you get infinite that you can use with Merchant of the Vale in order to filter through your deck to find a combo.
- Voltaic Key + Planar Bridge: Tap the Bridge to bring out any permanent of your choosing. Activate Key, targeting Bridge, and then copy the Key's ability with Rings, this time targeting the Key itself. Once both abilities resolve, Bridge and Key are both untapped and you can continue bringing out all of your permanents, if you so choose.
- Walking Ballista: With the infinite mana that was generated, put it into Ballista's cost with enough mana to wipe out the entire table (except yourself, of course).
Miscellaneous Combos/Synergies
- Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk/Oblivion Stone: With Forge on the battlefield, all of our artifacts are now indestructible. Activate Disk/Stone to destroy all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments. Due note that Stone will also take out Planeswalkers in this combo.
- Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk/Oblivion Stone + Mycosynth Lattice: Same as the combo above, but with Lattice added. Lattice turns all permanents into artifacts so Disk/Stone will destroy everything on board, except for our stuff, as Forge grants everything indestructible. Be cautious when using this, as someone could have instant-speed removal such as bounce or exile, and if they target Forge, you will lose permanents as well.
- Mycosynth Lattice + Vandalblast: This synergy is just like the one above, but much more safe. Lattice will turn every permanent into an artifact, and then Vandalblast will blow all artifacts to smithereens. Forge isn't needed in this combo, as Vandalblast is only for artifacts we don't control.
- Mycosynth Lattice + Karn, the Great Creator: This particular combination of cards has replaced Karn, Silver Golem in the deck. While OG Karn allowed us to blow up lands this way, the new Karn completely locks opponents from casting any more spells. It essentially functions the same, but we won't need a ton of mana to wipe everyone's lands out, and it also shuts off mana rocks as well.
- Mycosynth Lattice + Scrap Mastery + Daretti's Emblem: Lattice will turn all permanents into artifacts. Scrap Mastery will exile all artifacts in all graveyards, put all the artifacts that are on the battlefield, which would be all permanents due to Lattice, into the graveyard, and then return all artifacts that were exile by Mastery onto the battlefield. Daretti's emblem sees them enter the graveyard as artifacts so it will trigger for each, and then return them at beginning of the next end step.
- Mystic Forge + Ugin, the Ineffible + Sensei's Divining Top: Mystic Forge allows us to look at and play the top card of our library as long as it is colorless or an artifact. Activate Top to draw a card and then place Top on your deck. With Ugin out, our Top can be cast for free. Doing this will draw us our entire deck, and allows us to assemble a game-winning combo.
Changelog
Shattering Spree was too mana intensive to be able to remove mass artifacts; Vandalblast does this much better and at a cheaper cost. So I dropped it in favor of a mass boardwipe for creatures, since we have trouble with our opponents having lots of them. Add in the fact that it sometimes will cost only 1 red mana makes this wipe a very good inclusion.
Pithing Needle wasn't doing too much in the deck, and only being able to stop one thing at a time was kind of a pain. Howling Mine helped out everyone else too, which is something we don't want to be doing. I prefer Static Orb over Winter Orb, as we can effectively "turn off" Static with Clock of Omens and be able to untap our stuff, while keeping everyone else's tapped down. Mana Web is out too as it also goes along with Winter Orb. I took our Ruination as I am not a fan of MLD. Added in Mox Diamond as more early ramp, Static Orb/Clock of Omens to lock our opponent's down, Coffin as a colorless way to get rid of things like Iona on red, and Mind's Eye for the extra card draw.
Never really got to use the Coffin too much; it just doesn't seem like the right fit for here. Wasn't a big fan of Inkmoth in here either; it didn't put in enough work. Added in Codex Shredder to help recur our non-artifact spells, and Caverns to help us get to Daretti faster (if it's in our opening hand).
The big addition here is the Archive. This thing was made for Daretti. The card advantage this generates is insane with all of the card draw in here. Once I get a Bazaar, it'll make that even better as well. Price of Glory is in for people who like to play during other people's turns and is better than Grid because it sets them back by losing land, and Trading Post is another utility artifact that does good things, even tho I'm not it's biggest fan. Engine and Nexus just weren't doing enough for me.
Daretti tends to head to the Command Zone quite frequently, so having Beacon take the place of a Mountain is well worth us only having to pay 4 for him late game. Fellwar Stone is probably the weakest rock here simply because if we happen to play against a colorless deck, we don't get to add any mana. Thought Vessel is a rock that produces mana every time, and has the added bonus of giving us no maximum hand size.
Dropping a couple Mountains to add in Reliquary Tower to help us better control what we discard since we no longer have a max hand size, and Sanctum to be able to tutor up creatures. If we can draw at least two cards each time Oracle comes into play, it is strictly better than Voice since it is recurrable.
Finally got my hands on a Bazaar. This will allow me to draw additional cards and put more artifacts into the graveyard. It doesn't produce mana, so I do lose out on a mana source, but it should allow me to draw into more.
Soul wasn't really doing much other than being a beater, so I replaced him with Chandra Flamecaller as a sort of catch-all. Gives us tiny guys to help get in more damage, a one-sided wheel effect that draws us an additional card, and a board wipe for small critters. Tower isn't necessary anymore thanks to Thought Vessel, so I added in Haven in its place. Ugin is a very good card in EDH, and having an additional way of reusing him is always good. Caged Sun is ok, but Gauntlet is cheaper and I haven't need the extra mana Caged produces, so I put back Fellwar Stone as another early mana rock.
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Ok, the biggest update I've had on here. Staff of Nin over Mind's eye is because I don't have to pay anything to get an extra card, and can combo with other things in the deck. Greaves over Hammer because I only usually need one creature to have haste, and has the bonus effect of giving Shroud. Contagion Engine/Chain Veil to help add more counters to all of our planeswalkers. Hellkite as another way to win. Ulamog is in for more colorless removal, and it exiles so even better. Key for more untap shenanigans. Blinkmoth Urn can help generate a ton of mana. Lotus Bloom as a free mana rock; can be a Black Lotus every turn after an emblem; this is still being tested of Thran, but Thran still might replace it as it is guaranteed three mana every turn. Everything else was removed to make room for newer cards.
I haven't used the tutor effect of Sanctum as much as I had hoped for. With my utility lands, I like to get as much use out of them as I can. Having Dust Bowl in here will allow me to continually remove lands from my opponents when I have enough mana rocks out that I don't need as many lands.
Lotus Bloom has been my flex spot for quite awhile, floating between that, Thran Dynamo, and Slobad. But because Winter Orb has been errata'd again so we can now "turn it off," I'm going to put it in as another lock piece to hinder opponent's while not hurting us, so long as we have Clock of Omens out.
Phyrexia's Core has been lackluster in this deck. The only function it ever takes on is being another colorless land. Haven't used its sac effect in quite a while, if ever. Geier Reach Sanitarium fills the role of colorless land just as good, but has the added functionality of being able to draw cards and discard things for later recursion, which is a valuable ability to have, especially at instant speed.
I took out High Market and Mirrorpool as I felt they were both underperforming, and with some lands from Kaladesh, were in need of replacing. Decided to drop 2 more Mountains, as the deck can run just fine with only a couple red sources, and Utility lands are at a premium (not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds cool). The rest of the cut cards were essentially removed to make room for the new stuff, and I felt these were safe cuts.
Homeward Path is in here as Bribery insurance. Inventors' Fair is a tutor that doesn't take up a valuable spell slot. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods is another Sol Land that still lets us tap for one in the early game. Sequestered Stash fills our graveyard, and brings back an artifact to the top of our deck. Quicksmith Genius is Daretti 2.0, albeit on a smaller scale, but just as good. Combustible Gearhulk is my new favorite toy! Big beater and either gets us cards in hand or cards in graveyard for future use. Thopter Assembly was added back in to help against flyers. Cathartic Reunion/Tormenting Voice were added for more guaranteed card draw (and also the discard portion).
I decided to try something a little different with these updates. Instead of hiding behind Stax effects to protect Daretti, I wanted to try and make it a little more explosive. So I took out the Orbs/Omens synergy as well as Arbiter in order to make room for some new stuff. Gauntlet was removed as we really don't need the extra mana when we run a bunch of rocks, and can also weld back our bigger stuff. I haven't needed Recoup in a long time, so that was a safe cut. Fire Diamond was a safe cut since we don't really want our rocks to come in tapped and unable to be used until next turn.
Fellwar is back in as it is a rock that comes into play untapped, and can possibly make red if we need (if someone can produce red). Chain Veil is also back in and will hopefully synergize well with Paradox. As far as Paradox goes, I'm not too sure it's a good fit in here yet, as our deck isn't built to abuse it like some other decks, but being able to reuse Veil, Bridge, and other effects may prove to be useful. Planar Bridge is another one I'm not too sure on yet. We can grab any permanent and put it directly into play, which could prove vital for when we are in a pinch, or when we need a combo piece. We can abuse its effect with Paradox and enough rocks/spells to put a bunch of things into play, or infinite mana plus Rings/Key to do the same, but get all of our permanents. Heart of Kiran can make for a decent blocker and can be crewed with Daretti in a pinch. Pia's Revolution is like a mini Combustible so synergizes very well with the deck. Trawler is a better Junk Diver/Myr Retriever as it works with all of our artifacts.
Well, I tried some new cards and had high hopes for them, but unfortunately they didn't work out. Revolution just didn't do what I had hoped it would be good for. Turns out I do care if I want something to stay in the graveyard, so it got the cut. Kiran, for the most part, just sat there on defense, so I wasn't getting very much use out of it, and there are far better defense cards to run. Fellwar is the least impactful rock I run, and I needed to cut something to make room for the third card.
I'm putting pack both Orbs and Omens to help control the board more and slow others down in order to get to Daretti's Ultimate and take over the game. In fact, I really missed running these and am sort of glad the other cards didn't work out.
After playing a few games with Vault, I have decided it has earned it's place in the deck. Not only does it allow us to dig deeper into the deck, but when you get three brick counters on it, we get to play the card for free. When used in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top, we can guarantee we will hit a spell to cast, or even a land that we need. Combine with Paradox Engine and you can cast a bunch of your deck for free. This can definitely be game changing.
In order to make room for Vault, I have decided to cut Reunion. While red doesn't have very much as far as card draw goes, I feel like this was a safe cut to make. Tormenting Voice is a lot safer to play, as you only have to discard one card instead of two.
Haven't updated in awhile, since Amonkhet to be exact. There really hasn't been much that can make this deck more over the top than it already is, but I did find some cards that can fit well in here. Pirate's Pillage is more card draw that can also create sac fodder for Daretti, or ramp us into another spell. Karn, Scion of Urza is more card draw, but can also create artifact bodies for attacking/blocking/sac fodder. Arch of Orazca just gives us another outlet for card draw, but only when we have the city's blessing.
To make room, I took out Blood Moon mostly because I don't want to shut off our lands, even though it also shuts opponent's off. We can't recur it, so once it's in the graveyard, it's done for anyways. Dust Bowl is expensive for land destruction, so it got cut. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods didn't really do much for the deck, so it was an easy choice to make.
I also removed the Visual Deck List and Pimpage sections. I know longer have a physical copy of the deck and its accessories, so I feel like these are no longer necessary.
Scrap Trawler has been fairly lackluster in recent games. He really doesn't do much of anything until an artifact goes to the graveyard. When one does, he is also limited in what he can bring back.
I decided to bring back Silent Arbiter as a way to slow down token/swarm strategies, and have a better way of controlling combat in order to protect Daretti. Oh, and I like big butts and I cannot lie, and Arbiter has a pretty big one as well!
//Out
I've been testing quite a few changes recently, and these are the ones I've come up with. I am going to continue to test these out and see which ones will ultimately stick.
We don't get any mana from Blinkmoth Urn until our following turn, but our opponents do, so this gets the cut. I never used Haven of the Spirit Dragon or Sequestered Stash for their abilities, nor have a ran into the situation where Homeward Path was necessary. Karn, Scion of Urza, while he does find a spot in the deck, and worked really well, often times I found myself getting a land, and the opponent exiling a good card, and then kill him. It's a bit of a risky card, and I don't want to take too many risks. Lightning Greaves was cut as was only really used with Blightsteel Colossus. We usually only tutor Blightsteel at end of an opponent's turn, so we can swing with him on ours, so the Greaves isn't needed. Mirrorworks I have found that I haven't been using it for anything other than pitch fodder, so when a card gets to that point, it needs to go. Lastly, The Chain Veil is better off in a deck that has a bunch of Planeswalkers to fully utilize it, or somewhere it can go infinite such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.
I have added in the Tron lands in place of the three I took out. While they do absolutely nothing on their own, the ability to make 7 mana with three lands is a hard thing to ignore. I've added in Krark-Clan Ironworks and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer as mainly sac outlets to avoid exile effects, and to set up a nice Scrap Mastery. KCI also allows us to ramp a little bit, and Slobad provides some protection for our artifacts. Chaos Wand is pretty bonkers. With enough rocks and Paradox Engine, we can churn through our opponent's decks until they run out of instants and sorceries. Scrap Trawler is back as he is too good to pass up, especially since he doesn't have to go to the graveyard to return an artifact, like Myr Retriever and Junk Diver. Sculpting Steel is a nice little utility artifact that can become whatever artifact we need at the time, whether it's a mana rock, or a Spine of Ish Sah.
I've opted to cut all of the fetch lands and Crucible of Worlds, at least for the time being. Being a mono-colored deck means we don't need to worry about color fixing, the fetches aren't necessarily important. Losing Crucible may prove to be a mistake, as we will no longer be able to play lands from our graveyard to ensure hitting our land drops, or reuse our many utility lands.
In their place, I have opted to run four more basic Mountains as well as Forge of Heroes to replace the lands I took out. Forge will hopefully prove to be a worthwhile land, as it should enable us to ultimate Daretti a turn earlier. In place of Crucible, I have chosen to put in Saheeli's Directive. With Directive, we should be able to spam the board with a ton of artifacts, and hopefully get closer to winning the game.
I'm not going to go into too much detail at the moment, as it's sort of late and I'm a bit tired. I've decided to cut some of the "cuter" items to go a little bit more into the Stax aspect for the deck. I still won't be adding in MLD as I am not a fan of that particular strategy. Some of the changes you may question, so if you want specifics, feel free to ask and I will answer.
//Out
Updating list and primer to reflect what I am currently playing.
Goblin Engineer is a new staple to the deck simply because it tutors any artifact into the graveyard. Walking Ballista is another outlet for infinite mana we can use to win games with. Tectonic Reformation is used to pitch more lands we don't need in hopes of digging for answers or combo pieces. Mystic Forge is a new Future Sight for our deck, and when used in conjunction with Jhoira's Familiar and Sensei's Divining Top, we can draw our whole deck and win from there.
After testing these cards out, I've decided to make the official change.
Codex Shredder is an absolute beast in the deck. Being able to recur nonartifacts with it, i.e., Scrap Mastery is too good to pass up. Dockside Extortionist and Treasure Nabber are great little critters to help accelerate our mana, and to give us sac fodder. Goblin Matron is added to help grab more Goblins from the deck.
Prismatic Vista wasn't really necessary, as we have the other fetches in here, so I just opted to drop a land. Tectonic Reformation didn't perform as well as I had hoped it would. Jhoira's Familiar was only in here for the Mystic Forge/Sensei's Divining Top combo, but Ugin, the Ineffable fills this slot and has more utility. Sculpting Steel was cut to make room for the fourth addition; I may slot it back in at some point.
//Out
//In
Testing went very well with these changes, so I am making this permanent.
Making some changes due to establishing a consistent playgroup and developing our meta. No graveyard-based decks so far, and no one is really storming off, so Crypt and Sphere can be safe cuts. Inkmoth just doesn't do enough; rarely do I every swing with it and win by infect.
Adding in Arch as another source of card draw, as well as Thrill, and Merchant can be an avenue to victory by filtering through our entire deck and finding our combo pieces.
//Out
Stax Mode Activated!
I've decided, partially in part to my new playgroup, to delve further into the world of stax. With the types of decks that are currently floating around (Narset Turns, Animar Combo, Atraxa Superfriends, etc.), I felt the need to become more degenerate and find more ways to slow down and/or lock people down in order pull out wins.
This is what I have decided on as far as changes; I won't go into much details as far as why certain cards were added/removed.
Removing Mindslaver (which is definitely a tough choice) in order to add a bit more protection with Null Brooch. Also has great synergy with Ensnaring Bridge to fully maximize its effect.