MTG Salvation

As someone who already runs a pure Control deck (Dragonlord Ojutai] and a curve out, beat-you-face list (Selvala, Explorer Returned), I wanted to build something in the middle. Something that plays the long game, gets me incremental advantage throughout, controls the board with Grace Pact effects, and eventually slogs out a win somehow. Or at the very least, go down having fun. I built Meren of Clan Nel Toth to be just that, but when I saw Breya, Etherium Shaper I knew that I wanted to build the deck around her.

Now, this obviously isn't the most conventional build of Breya. While many decklists have been posted about her--both on this site and others--they have largely focused on her combo potential. In my list I tried to avoid any sort of infinite combo, which is why you'll notice the exclusion of things like Sculpting Steel, Phyrexian Metamorph, Nim Deathmantle, and the Alters. They are great cards, for this and any EDH deck, but it's not the vision I have in mind for this build. That being said, I probably missed some, just because of how well artifacts work together, and I know that I have Thopter-Sword in there, but for one, it's not an "infinite" combo, and second I've actually been really underwhelmed with Sword of the Meek so far an might actually cut it.

The deck has a couple different ways it can slowly kill people. Abusing ETB and death triggers results in cards like Disciple of the Vault pinging my opponents to death. Magister Sphinx helps a lot with this, as 10 is a lot less daunting than 40. You also have enough token generators slash recursion slash copy effects to go wide and beat people down. Breya herself can be a kill condition once life totals are low enough.

One thing the deck seems to struggle with is consistency. Once of the pieces are assembled, the machine works beautifully. It's getting to that point that is difficult. I could probably use more card draw or something, but I'm not sure what to cut. I also think that Myr Battlesphere should be in the list somewhere, I'm just not sure where. Lastly, I'm not sure if cards like Marionette Master are good enough; I could probably switch over to something like Purphoros, God of the Forge instead, which is a lot harder to remove. But really, any comments/suggestions would be really helpful.

After a couple days of testing, I've made the following changes to the list:

Marionette Master --> Purphoros, God of the Forge: Master is a great card for this strategy, but there were some issues with it. For starters, 6 mana is a lot, and I already was running enough 6 drops. It did contribute to both going wide as well as the "death by a thousand stings" game plans, the inability to hit all opponents at once was at times a let down. Purphoros still contributes to both the strategies in my list, deals more damage than Marionette Master, and even provides an "Overrun effect" for my tokens, not to mention it's a fairly difficult permanent to remove. With this reasoning, Disciple of the Vault is also on the chopping block, however the fact it's only a single mana makes it much more appealing than Master.

Sword of the Meek --> Hidden Stockpile: I haven't once assembled the Thopter-Sword combo, and most of the time when I draw Sword it's been disappointing outside of the corner cases where I was able to use Sword as a sort of Bloodghast effect to use as Breya fodder. Hidden Stockpile is a sac outlet on its own, and provides a constant stream of fodder as well. It's possible Sword will work it's way back into the list at some point, but Stockpile definitely seems better right now

Oversold Cemetery --> Myr Battlesphere: I have enough recursion in my list that Cemetery just felt like overkill. Battleball gives me a solid threat at the top end, and helps me go wide while also offering tons of Breya fodder. It's nuts with Panharmonicon and Minion Reflector.

Toxic Deluge --> Dig Through Time: With my three Grave Pact effects, Toxic Deluge felt like overkill more often than not, and the life loss was at times tough to manage. I've been wanting to add in additional draw power into the list, and Dig allows me to see more cards so I can get to my necessary pieces.

In addition to the Disciple I mentioned above, Sword of the Animist and Scrap Trawler are also on the chopping block for right now. Between Sad Robot, Hart, and my recursion engine Sword feels like overkill in the mana ramp department. Trawler is a great recursion piece, but sometimes it's difficult to get things back off of it, or at least the pieces I want to get back.