Seems like the perfect sideboard card vs midrange, pro bolt, pro decay, protects our teams and draws us some cards. Only issue is hard to cast with golem, but i think siding 2 instead of 2 golems is a good strategy. They may even be worthy of the main, but i'll play 2 at least in the sideboard for sure!
Padeem, Consul of Innovation at first glance is good, but the more I think about it, 4cmc is alot for a non-artifact; especially since we run so few lands. I could Aether Vial him in but idk...if he was an artifact I could cast via Grand Architect or Chief Engineer, he'd be an auto include.
Hello all. I made a grand architect deck a while ago for a 10 dollar deck challenge and really enjoyed playing it. Recently I picked it back up with the intention of making it into a competitive modern deck and was lucky enough to stumble upon this lovely thread during my research.
I have a few questions about the deck and I was hoping to get some input on the deck I put together.
The side board is a WIP but I am really enjoying the trinket mage package. Otherwise the deck has been pretty solid for me. I find that most of my wins come from an early myr superion or wurmcoil as a lot of decks have trouble dealing with it.
A few questions I would love to have answered:
How does my deck look?
Do you guys still use mortarpod?
What are some of the decks good and bad matchups?
Any help or advice would be awesome. This deck is a blast to play and it's very much my style, I would love to be able to compete with it
Hello all. I made a grand architect deck a while ago for a 10 dollar deck challenge and really enjoyed playing it. Recently I picked it back up with the intention of making it into a competitive modern deck and was lucky enough to stumble upon this lovely thread during my research.
I have a few questions about the deck and I was hoping to get some input on the deck I put together.
The side board is a WIP but I am really enjoying the trinket mage package. Otherwise the deck has been pretty solid for me. I find that most of my wins come from an early myr superion or wurmcoil as a lot of decks have trouble dealing with it.
A few questions I would love to have answered:
How does my deck look?
Do you guys still use mortarpod?
What are some of the decks good and bad matchups?
Any help or advice would be awesome. This deck is a blast to play and it's very much my style, I would love to be able to compete with it
Deck looks good, all of it are tried and true stuff.
My last version of the deck was using mortarpod, is always good with walker, wurmcoil and shackles, but it truly shine in small stuff meta. If you face a lot of infect, elves and affinity they are great.
Good matchups are combo (wanderer and golem shine here) and aggro (our stuff is usually bigger and we take next to no damage from our lands). Bad matchup are mono removal/sweepers decks, like midrange and control, because they can kill all our stuff. We have almost zero card advantage to rebuild and we need both our enablers to stay on board and to draw our higher impact cards along them.
@samuraijaques:
I've thought about it but Sage of Epityr is the closest I got to having card selection and a blue one drop.
Usually, I play Aether Vial turn 1, then turn 2, during my upkeep before I draw I vial in the Sage to "Ponder".
A blue one drop artifact creature that had some type of card advantage/selection ETB effect would be ideal...
But what if you had both? I haven't walked through the lines of play yet but I feel like it could be good
I think the card is ok but in the end won't make the cut. The effect is good but another 3 mana enabler isn't what we are looking for. Grand architect gives 2 mana right away instead of one AND acts as a lord. For 3 mana i would expect a lot more utility. The thing is if we play that guy we have to cut something. It isn't better than any of our current enabler, meaning we'd have to cut some threats. Doing this would dilute our threat density and we don't want to be doing that.
But what if you had both? I haven't walked through the lines of play yet but I feel like it could be good
I think the card is ok but in the end won't make the cut. The effect is good but another 3 mana enabler isn't what we are looking for. Grand architect gives 2 mana right away instead of one AND acts as a lord. For 3 mana i would expect a lot more utility. The thing is if we play that guy we have to cut something. It isn't better than any of our current enabler, meaning we'd have to cut some threats. Doing this would dilute our threat density and we don't want to be doing that.
I think the difference is Various Boots and I play a heartless version of the deck so he comes down for 1 mana rather than 3 most often which I feel adjusts his worth for us compared to your guy's monoblue
But yeah maybe ok in heartless, but my point remains you will have to cut something for a card not intrinsically better than anything we already can play.
Well whole set is up and nothing good for this deck
EDIT: so at least i got some inspiration for revamping my old deck, so next i'm going to try this 3 color monstrosity:
So green and white are for noble hierarch and blade splicer, which are both great, but also for gavony township. I expect the card to be awesome in this deck (especially with hangarback walker and blade splicer). It is a mana sink for when we flood and a way to make our enablers decent in combat, and a way to make our 3 thoughness stuff bolt proof after an activation.
The 3 colors also make engineered explosives very good, and we get dromoka's command in the sideboard to get rid of enchantments, something we couldn't do before.
Windswept heath is here until i can get a set of polluted delta. With them and the new fastlands the mana should not be that painful. 14 pseudo-islands should be enough to power vedalken shackles.
I will begin testing when the new fastlands are legal. Maybe this is a bit greedy? Thoughts?
@Ace1, yea the set didn't give us anything on the level of Hangarback Walker or Wurmcoil Engine.
I'm not sure the white slash is worth it for Blade Splicer or Dromoka's Command, they still get taxed by Lodestone Golem and can't be cast using Architect or Engineer.
I think you had it right with the green splash for Verdurous Gearhulk...could even add Natural State to the board to deal with enchantments instead of the Command. Not sure Noble is worth more than a blue 1-drop.
After some goldfishing i think that white is useless as well, but i like green. Noble hierarch adds lots of consistency for more explosive starts, which is something i'm interested in maximizing. The option of getting explosives on 3 is a good bonus. Naturalize effects from the board will be nice, and verdurous gearhulk looks strong.
I understand why you'd want hierach as my experience with the deck is that it is exactly 1 turn too slow for modern, which is super frustrating.
If you are playing green you can do some silly things involving Beck//call,you'd have to lose the lodestones unfortunately, In modern I always want to be doing something fundermentally unfair. Dramatic reversal seems promising when all your creatures are mana dorks.
I'd almost want to try a sultai version just so I could also use the contraband kingpin.. but the whole deck requires a critical mass of artifacts to function and I seem to be cutting too many of them for my liking to make something like that.
I understand why you'd want hierach as my experience with the deck is that it is exactly 1 turn too slow for modern, which is super frustrating.
If you are playing green you can do some silly things involving Beck//call,you'd have to lose the lodestones unfortunately, In modern I always want to be doing something fundermentally unfair. Dramatic reversal seems promising when all your creatures are mana dorks.
I'd almost want to try a sultai version just so I could also use the contraband kingpin.. but the whole deck requires a critical mass of artifacts to function and I seem to be cutting too many of them for my liking to make something like that.
You hit some pretty important points. The fact that this deck is a turn too slow for modern is precisely why I feel it needs Lodestone Golem to be even viable. There are so many games where I've "soft countered" wraths, living end or just caused the opponent to be "one mana behind " by having Lodestone in play. I've contemplated adding Simian Spirit Guide, but not sure that's efficient enough. Also contemplated Darksteel Citadel and Mox Opal, but I hate when my mana sources get hosed by Stony Silence. Between Aether Vial, blue 1-drops and Chief Engineer I can consistently land Myr Superion "on time", much like Jund can land Tarmogoyf.
I think the main thing to realize is that this deck is a mix between Merfolk and to some respects Jund.
The way I chose my creatures is that the have some sort of 2-for-1 value (I was hoping Kaladesh would give us an exile resistant threat like and artifact Thragtusk): Lodestone Golem: taxes the opponent even when they use a removal spell on him thats not artifact based. Hangarback Walker: if destroyed, you still get value. Wurmcoil Engine and Triskelion: Same as Hangarback Walker. Myr Superion: Our Tarmogoyf. Mausoleum Wanderer: our form of denial that works well with Lodestone Golem and Grand Architect.
The blue cast along with Grand Architect is what lends to the aggro Merfolk aspect.
In other words, this is not a deck that just wants to vomit out a bunch of artifacts ala Affinity...its actually, alteast my version very far from Affinity, heck we don't even play any "real" zero drop artifacts.
It starts becoming more of it own deck when people realize the control aspect of it... Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and Smuggler's Copter may provide another way of not having to attack with Lodestone aswell, since we usually want him around.
I've been away from the scene for a while but after seeing the spoilers I'm quite excited for the future of this deck. Mainly Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, which I think could be a huge upgrade for this deck.
1) It has flying. At one point I played around with Wingcrafter to break stand offs which seemed to happen a lot with this deck with the lack of removal. It having evasion also makes Swords playable.
2) It costs 5. 5 is often what 7 is to Tron and there aren't any good 5-drops outside of Batterskull.
3) It affects the board. Not being able to affect the board dirrectly was what turned me off about this deck in the beginning since you gave problematic creatures like Bob, Young Pyro and Lord of Atlantis a free pass to spin out of control.
The gearhulks also seem kinda sweet. Mainly the black, green and white one. I'm mostly leaning towards the white one as a sideboard tech against elves and such, since I've always been a big fan of the UW version with Thalia. Toolcraft Exemplar also seems decent in that vein. It isn't blue but it still fuels Chief Engineer, it doesn't block well but it's a good pilot for the Flagship.
So yeah, I'm really looking forward for this expansion. It might be my casual MtG comeback
What do you guys think of Bant? Gavony Township seems really good. It's a long time ago I've played the deck but I remember losing with a bunch of mana dorks out and no action. Township just seems like a natural fit for a midrange all-dorks kinda deck. Now we also have access to Botanical Sanctum to make the mana base a bit softer.
I think I'm gonna try something like this (as long as Gearhulk/Flagship doesn't end up costing the engine of a jet)
EDIT: Again I might be too optimistic but I really feel that some of the questions this deck asked in the past is being answered with this expansion. The gab between having all mana dorks and no action in hand or having all action but no mana dorks can be bridged by Smuggler's Copter which incidentally also has flying so your opponent can't gum up the ground as easily. Flagship contributes with some much needed removal and Verdurous Gearhulk answers the question: "what powerful/unfair things can we do when we reach 5-6 mana that doesn't die to Path or Kolaghan's Command?".
@Badabing, your list looks pretty solid. Keep in mind the Vehicles are not creatures, so they will be taxed by Thalia.
Also if the tax on noncreature effect is what you are looking for, you might aswell just play Thorn of Amethyst instead of Thalia.
Oh right, good point about Thalia. Didn't read the vehicles properly. It's not optimal then, but it still probably could works out ok-ish. I've run Thalia in 4x Batterskull lists before. I've tried running Thorn main before with mixed results. It's a meta call I think. Thalia has legs and trades well so she's never really a dead card. I don't know much about the meta right now so Thorn might be better now.
I'm not a big fan of the more aggressive vehicles. They might actually work in Vintage (though I know nothing about that format) but I have a feeling that they'd run into too many things in Modern and they both die to Bolt.
Did some goldfishing with Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, seems good so far.
Should be able to test in a few days against other decks.
Trying to find room for atleast one Filigree Familiar in the main...
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Yea I pre-ordered all of those for my paper deck when they were about a third of those prices. I'm surprised Familiar and Smuggler's Copter are so expensive on mtgo and paper...makes me wonder if we aren't looking at Smuggler's Copter close enough..
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Yea I pre-ordered all of those for my paper deck when they were about a third of those prices. I'm surprised Familiar and Smuggler's Copter are so expensive on mtgo and paper...makes me wonder if we aren't looking at Smuggler's Copter close enough..
I wish you could pre-order on MTGO as well. Apparently Copter is the new Hangarback of Standard and a Boros Vehicle deck is the break out deck.
Initially I really liked Copter for this deck as well. Evasion is huge plus the deck is pretty polarized between mana dorks and beef, being able to cycle one or the other seems like it could help the deck a lot. We also have a lot of 1/x's to crew, that doesn't do a whole lot on their own.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Seems like the perfect sideboard card vs midrange, pro bolt, pro decay, protects our teams and draws us some cards. Only issue is hard to cast with golem, but i think siding 2 instead of 2 golems is a good strategy. They may even be worthy of the main, but i'll play 2 at least in the sideboard for sure!
Glint-Nest Crane seem decent, he could have to replace Treasure Mage and or Trinket Mage in my build. He flies, cost one less and digs pretty deep.
So far, imho Filigree Familiar is the best artifact to come out this set.
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and Smuggler's Copter have potential. Most of the time, I'm not attacking with guys like Grand Architect or Chief Engineer anyway...
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
I have a few questions about the deck and I was hoping to get some input on the deck I put together.
Here's the deck
4x Chief Engineer
2x Etherium Sculptor
4x Grand Architect
2x Hangarback Walker
3x Lodestone Golem
4x Mausoleum Wanderer
4x Myr Superion
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
4x Sage of Epityr
2x Spellskite
2x Wurmcoil Engine
2x Dismember
Artifacts 6
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
2x Vedalken Shackles
2x Mortarpod
Lands 20
11x Island
4x Polluted Delta
1x Watery Grave
2x Blinkmoth Nexus
1x Buried Ruin
1x Academy Ruins
2x Chalice of the Void
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2x Pithing Needle
2x Relic of Progenitus
2x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Torpor Orb
2x Trinket Mage
The side board is a WIP but I am really enjoying the trinket mage package. Otherwise the deck has been pretty solid for me. I find that most of my wins come from an early myr superion or wurmcoil as a lot of decks have trouble dealing with it.
A few questions I would love to have answered:
How does my deck look?
Do you guys still use mortarpod?
What are some of the decks good and bad matchups?
Any help or advice would be awesome. This deck is a blast to play and it's very much my style, I would love to be able to compete with it
Deck looks good, all of it are tried and true stuff.
My last version of the deck was using mortarpod, is always good with walker, wurmcoil and shackles, but it truly shine in small stuff meta. If you face a lot of infect, elves and affinity they are great.
Good matchups are combo (wanderer and golem shine here) and aggro (our stuff is usually bigger and we take next to no damage from our lands). Bad matchup are mono removal/sweepers decks, like midrange and control, because they can kill all our stuff. We have almost zero card advantage to rebuild and we need both our enablers to stay on board and to draw our higher impact cards along them.
I've thought about it but Sage of Epityr is the closest I got to having card selection and a blue one drop.
Usually, I play Aether Vial turn 1, then turn 2, during my upkeep before I draw I vial in the Sage to "Ponder".
A blue one drop artifact creature that had some type of card advantage/selection ETB effect would be ideal...
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
Foundry Inspector
Edit: Apparently it hasn't been added to mtgSalvation yet. Spoiler can be found here.
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
I think the card is ok but in the end won't make the cut. The effect is good but another 3 mana enabler isn't what we are looking for. Grand architect gives 2 mana right away instead of one AND acts as a lord. For 3 mana i would expect a lot more utility. The thing is if we play that guy we have to cut something. It isn't better than any of our current enabler, meaning we'd have to cut some threats. Doing this would dilute our threat density and we don't want to be doing that.
I think the difference is Various Boots and I play a heartless version of the deck so he comes down for 1 mana rather than 3 most often which I feel adjusts his worth for us compared to your guy's monoblue
EDIT: so at least i got some inspiration for revamping my old deck, so next i'm going to try this 3 color monstrosity:
4 noble hierarch
4 signal pest
4 hangarback walker
4 myr superion
4 etherium sculptor
4 chief engineer
4 grand architect
4 blade splicer
4 lodestone golem
2 engineered explosives
2 vedalken shackles
lands: 20
4 windswept heath
4 flooded strand
2 breeding pool
2 hallowed fountain
2 island
2 botanical sanctum
2 razorverge thicket
2 gavony township
2 dromoka's command
2 thorn of amethyst
2 torpor orb
2 spellskite
2 trinket mage
2 pithing needle
2 relic of progenitus
1 grafdigger's cage
So green and white are for noble hierarch and blade splicer, which are both great, but also for gavony township. I expect the card to be awesome in this deck (especially with hangarback walker and blade splicer). It is a mana sink for when we flood and a way to make our enablers decent in combat, and a way to make our 3 thoughness stuff bolt proof after an activation.
The 3 colors also make engineered explosives very good, and we get dromoka's command in the sideboard to get rid of enchantments, something we couldn't do before.
Windswept heath is here until i can get a set of polluted delta. With them and the new fastlands the mana should not be that painful. 14 pseudo-islands should be enough to power vedalken shackles.
I will begin testing when the new fastlands are legal. Maybe this is a bit greedy? Thoughts?
I'm not sure the white slash is worth it for Blade Splicer or Dromoka's Command, they still get taxed by Lodestone Golem and can't be cast using Architect or Engineer.
I think you had it right with the green splash for Verdurous Gearhulk...could even add Natural State to the board to deal with enchantments instead of the Command. Not sure Noble is worth more than a blue 1-drop.
Kaladesh cards:
Like I mentioned before, I think Filigree Familiar is a definite two-of in the 75.
I may test Skysovereign, Consul Flagship in the Batterskull slot.
I could also see splashing heavier into black for Noxious Gearhulk.
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
If you are playing green you can do some silly things involving Beck//call,you'd have to lose the lodestones unfortunately, In modern I always want to be doing something fundermentally unfair.
Dramatic reversal seems promising when all your creatures are mana dorks.
I'd almost want to try a sultai version just so I could also use the contraband kingpin.. but the whole deck requires a critical mass of artifacts to function and I seem to be cutting too many of them for my liking to make something like that.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I think the main thing to realize is that this deck is a mix between Merfolk and to some respects Jund.
The way I chose my creatures is that the have some sort of 2-for-1 value (I was hoping Kaladesh would give us an exile resistant threat like and artifact Thragtusk):
Lodestone Golem: taxes the opponent even when they use a removal spell on him thats not artifact based.
Hangarback Walker: if destroyed, you still get value.
Wurmcoil Engine and Triskelion: Same as Hangarback Walker.
Myr Superion: Our Tarmogoyf.
Mausoleum Wanderer: our form of denial that works well with Lodestone Golem and Grand Architect.
The blue cast along with Grand Architect is what lends to the aggro Merfolk aspect.
In other words, this is not a deck that just wants to vomit out a bunch of artifacts ala Affinity...its actually, alteast my version very far from Affinity, heck we don't even play any "real" zero drop artifacts.
It starts becoming more of it own deck when people realize the control aspect of it...
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and Smuggler's Copter may provide another way of not having to attack with Lodestone aswell, since we usually want him around.
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
I've been away from the scene for a while but after seeing the spoilers I'm quite excited for the future of this deck. Mainly Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, which I think could be a huge upgrade for this deck.
1) It has flying. At one point I played around with Wingcrafter to break stand offs which seemed to happen a lot with this deck with the lack of removal. It having evasion also makes Swords playable.
2) It costs 5. 5 is often what 7 is to Tron and there aren't any good 5-drops outside of Batterskull.
3) It affects the board. Not being able to affect the board dirrectly was what turned me off about this deck in the beginning since you gave problematic creatures like Bob, Young Pyro and Lord of Atlantis a free pass to spin out of control.
The gearhulks also seem kinda sweet. Mainly the black, green and white one. I'm mostly leaning towards the white one as a sideboard tech against elves and such, since I've always been a big fan of the UW version with Thalia. Toolcraft Exemplar also seems decent in that vein. It isn't blue but it still fuels Chief Engineer, it doesn't block well but it's a good pilot for the Flagship.
So yeah, I'm really looking forward for this expansion. It might be my casual MtG comeback
I think I'm gonna try something like this (as long as Gearhulk/Flagship doesn't end up costing the engine of a jet)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Chief Engineer
4 Myr Superion
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Smuggler's Copter
4 Grand Architect
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
4 Verdurous Gearhulk
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
EDIT: Again I might be too optimistic but I really feel that some of the questions this deck asked in the past is being answered with this expansion. The gab between having all mana dorks and no action in hand or having all action but no mana dorks can be bridged by Smuggler's Copter which incidentally also has flying so your opponent can't gum up the ground as easily. Flagship contributes with some much needed removal and Verdurous Gearhulk answers the question: "what powerful/unfair things can we do when we reach 5-6 mana that doesn't die to Path or Kolaghan's Command?".
Also if the tax on noncreature effect is what you are looking for, you might aswell just play Thorn of Amethyst instead of Thalia.
I wonder if theres an aggro build of this deck that can run:
4x Fleetwheel Cruiser and 4x Ovalchase Dragster..
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
I'm not a big fan of the more aggressive vehicles. They might actually work in Vintage (though I know nothing about that format) but I have a feeling that they'd run into too many things in Modern and they both die to Bolt.
Should be able to test in a few days against other decks.
Trying to find room for atleast one Filigree Familiar in the main...
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
Smuggler's Copter 17 tix
Flagship 10 tix
Green Gearhulk 15 tix
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Twitch: gamerchamp
Modern: UGrand Architect, UBTezzeret Control, UBWRG Bridge From Below (Dredge)
Legacy: UWGTrue-Name Bant
I wish you could pre-order on MTGO as well. Apparently Copter is the new Hangarback of Standard and a Boros Vehicle deck is the break out deck.
Initially I really liked Copter for this deck as well. Evasion is huge plus the deck is pretty polarized between mana dorks and beef, being able to cycle one or the other seems like it could help the deck a lot. We also have a lot of 1/x's to crew, that doesn't do a whole lot on their own.