Before I get started here I want to say that I'm sure most of you have noticed a drop in quality of these articles over the past few months. Just simply I ran out of ideas and forced myself to write those articles rather than have them be something I actually wanted to write. That is almost a sure way to end up with something mediocre. Because of this instead of writing an article every week I will be writing them whenever I feel like it. It could be every other week or one a month but hopefully not less than that (I wont promise anything though). If you pull the "filler" articles (like this week's) I'm writing decent articles about that often anyway. It will likely be that unless I have an idea for a theory article (which are my favorites) most of them will now be about how a specific format looks and/or building a deck for that format. Maybe I'll do a casual deck article every once in a while since I certainly haven't stopped building crappy casual decks on Magic Workstation (phear Defense of the Heart.dec) but not too many since they are generally short and the deck are rarely actually good (though I could likely get most of them to work in our more causal metagame).

Another casual deck for this week. This time I'm going to try my hand at mono-artifact beatdown.

Decklist:

Being mono artifact I didn't want any colored cards in the decklist. Since this also means there is no need for colored mana I went all the way and used a completely non-basic mana base. Since cards like Price of Progress, Global Ruin, and Wasteland aren't in Standard this isn't too dangerous. Sowing Salt is the only real danger and with Tooth dropping from being the best deck those aren't quite as important. They aren't as important to the Blue Tooth player as the Tooth and Nail player. I figured that a deck with all non-basic land would like to employ the use of Sundering Titan. Juggernaut and Triskelion are some of the more threatening artifact beaters out there. Since there is no Mishra's Workshop or even enough cheap artifact mana that allows for early fat I had to add some cards to keep the beats off until then. Sun Droplet is enjoying some popularity right now so I'm giving it a try and Steel Wall is good for blocking Isamaru and Slith Firewalker. With one of those early the deck can hopefully survive until it can cast its bigger spells. If you can reach the late game this deck should destroy aggro decks and is very threat dense so should also me good against control. At least assuming you are lucky enough to have drawn either the Urzatron or multiple Cloudposts. I threw in Sensei's Divining Top to help a bit but having no shuffle effects makes it much less useful than in other decks.

After Testing:

The mana curve of the deck is too high. Without a way to help draw into the Urzatron it doesn't always pop up. Without it many of the cards in the deck are often uncastable. Sundering Titan in particular just sat there in hand most of the time. By the time you could drop it your opponent had enough land that it was just another fatty. Also the deck still needs an extra push against aggro. More Oblivion Stones would be nice but it hurts this deck too much.to run more than 2. More mid-game beaters would also be welcome.

Final Decklist:

I added Leonin Bladetrap for the aggro decks but I'm not sure if it will work out. Since WW decks usually aren't running Glorious Anthem right now it will probably be good against them and also good against Red Aggro. I removed some of the more expensive cards for some slightly cheaper ones. I'm a bit worried about getting two-for-oned with Synod Centurion but it if it doesn't randomly die it is actually quite a good beater. Since people aren't running 12+ artifact removal spells like when affinity was seeing play it shouldn't be too bad. Shatter is generally only in the sideboard and most decks don't run more than 2 maindeck Naturalize / Wear Away if any so really only Viridian Shaman is a problem and only the new B/g Viridian Rat decks run those so it shouldn't be too bad. Razormane Masticore has been MVP so I added another one.

Conclusion:

Thew deck is about as good as I expected, meaning not very. By all means this deck is inferior to Blue Tooth in every way. The blue deck runs all the same threats and can also abuse Memnarch. It also can draw into the Urzatron with draw spells and also has enough shuffle effects and scrying to actually use Sensei's Divining Top properly. It even has countermagic.