Time for Change

As you may already have read a few articles ago I have been playing a really kool goblin build. I built it before the artifact goblins made headlines with a few top 8 finishes. My version uses rebirth but also uses far less artifacts. I have really enjoyed playing the deck, in fact I have been very successful with it. Over the last 6 or so FNM's I believe I have a record along the lines of 25-4. Which is solid in my opinion. But........

Its time to update my deck that I have been playing. Its time for a change. Why, you ask? Because I am in a position to where hate is flowing my way and other people are making versions of my deck and I want to be different. With the FNM (my local shop) metagame changing to where everyone is either running a pyroclasm or marsh casualties or tons of spot removal, I want to flip the script.

Now, at first thought with this picture, your saying to yourself...... everyone plays with trinket mage. It's in UB control, its in UBR, its in URG. Yea but here is where I went different. I went with a UW Artifact build. WHAT????? Yea that's what I was saying at first too but I have been working on the list and its seems to win in some very strange ways, it is not really a control deck by design but it has surprising resiliency. Check out the list.


CREATURES

3 Wall of Omens
3 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Trinket Mage
3 Etched Champion
2 Molten Tail Masticore
2 Wurmcoil Engine

SPELLS

3 Everflowing Chalice
2 Darksteel Axe
1 Chimeric Mass
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Brittle Effigy
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Into the Roil
3 Day of Judgement

LANDS

6 Plains
6 Island
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge

The sideboard is yet to be finalized, I have a lot more play testing to do to get it where i need it. In fact the same can be said for the main deck. But here is a rough draft of where it would be.

SIDEBOARD

3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Spell Pierce
1 Devout Lightcaster
2 Condemn
1 Ratchet Bomb
3 Kor Firewalker
2 Kor Sanctifiers

Ok so you may see already where this is going but just in case let me explain. When i build decks I typically have a few goals in mind.

-Synergy
-Multiple win conditions
-Answers for everything (Main and SB)

The deck meets all these goals to a degree and I will try to give a quick explanation for each.

SYNERGY

There are several things that I think attribute to synergy here but some of them are obvious and others not so much. Trinket mage and all the 1 or 0 drop artifacts is one. Well known due to UB control is all the recursion from elixir of immortality. You get to recur all sorts of fun toys like killed man lands, ratchet bombs, into the roils, day of judgement and all the creatures that help u draw cards etc. Molten Tail Masticore with all of my creatures (and yes I do know that he butts heads with elixir, which is why i cut him from 3 to 2) but when he is good he is great.

WIN CONDITIONS

One obvious win condition is Wurmcoil Engine and Masticore, but there are a few others. I can actually deal damage with my small guys thanks to some equipment. But one of the most fun ones is Etched Champion because of his great interaction with Darksteel Axe. He basically becomes a 4/2 that cant be blocked or killed by most anything. An unblockable guy with 4 power can end games fairly quickly.

ANSWERS

There are lots of answers in here as well. My early drop creatures and Day of judgements are my answers for early agro like Goblins, RDW, Infect and Elves. For Other control decks I have into the roil, tectonic edge, brittle effigy, ratchet bomb etc. For Mid range decks its just kind of a mixed bag, a little bit of everything.

In conclusion I really like this deck but I still have some work to do and testing to see if it is really as good as i hope, let me know what you think and hope you like it. Thanks.


Tony Derbigny