Yeah, you definitely could be right, my only issue is that it eliminates what is green's biggest strength by giving it to a lot of other colors. I'm looking forward to seeing your results, as I feel our cubes are fairly similar in application/content. You mitigate the green issue a decent amount more than I do with a midrange/aggro package that I don't support as heavily, but I see a lot of similarities in our lists. You also may find that you might not need to add all ten, something worth considering as you already run a number of them.
FWIW, I run both Skullclamp and Jitte and while they are at the absolute top of power level in my cube, there has to be a best and I'm OK with those being that 'best'. My line of thought is that, with ample artifact removal, these cards are much less of an issue. While they can still run rampant, it feels less like it's their fault when they do and more so that there isn't enough artifact removal in the decks they are beating. This is not always a clear case in practice--Jitte is Jitte, Skullclamp is Skullclamp, they are powerful cards that do powerful things--but if you don't take that Reclamation Sage/Acidic Slime/etc and you lose to those cards, you can only blame the cards so much.
Green still encourages ramp / super ramp more and definitely has more of a "lands matter" theme now which I like a lot. That reminds me, I should probably re-add Viridian Shaman, lol.
I have a proposed list of changes that I manically outlined last night until 1AM (was a huge mistake, took a while for me to fall asleep after all that conscious thinking). Will try to get some reps on cubetutor at least, I don't cube in person as much as I'd like to anymore, but I'll post any testing results when I can. It shouldn't be too hard to see how drafting a deck will turn out, but execution and seeing how it fares vs established deck may take me some time.
So I've been experimenting on drafting and am not exactly sure what I should pick highly. I'll P1P1 Tinker and dive straight in or take a Wurmcoil Engine / Batterskull and eventually parlay it into the artifact deck. Is something like Goblin Welder / any of the artifacts matter PWers worth early picking / P1P1?
I prefer to scoop up Welder later on (though I have 1st picked him), but I'll P1P1 the artifact.dec support 'walkers for sure. Especially if I'm in the mood for such a deck. But again, my cube is powered and the deck seems to form more naturally there, so YMMV.
Been doing a bunch of drafts on Cubetutor with Artifact Deck support for 540 unpowered and so far my results haven't been the greatest. I'm still not exactly sure how to prioritize everything though such as how much do I value mana rocks over a Dig Through Time or some other fairly powerful blue card, etc.
As much as I love going in on Tinker, artifact support on top of signets feel unnatural in my cube setting. I can't really expect my cubegroup to try out the artifact.dec if I'm not able to build it / beat them with it somewhat consistently.
I think I'll give it another couple of weeks. Also, hook me up with you got any draft tips for the deck. I will say that Tezz 1.0 is pretty useful outside of artifacts matters, he might be worth keeping around even if I do abandon the archetype.
Edit / Update: Decided to double down and cut a card from each color and re-add the five 2-cmc mana rocks I cut during the AER / Artifact.dec update.
Signets + all the other 2-cmc mana rocks have made Tinker + Artifact.dec a lot more consistent in unpowered. I also have a tendency to combine the artifact.dec with Upheaval / Wildfire. Anybody else do the same thing?
It depends on what's building the base of the shell. With 'Walkers and rocks, Upheaval/Wildfire is right at home. If it's more Welder/Feldon/Metalworker kinds of shenanigans, I generally don't use the big mana sorceries at the top of the curve.
If it's more Welder/Feldon/Metalworker kinds of shenanigans, I generally don't use the big mana sorceries at the top of the curve.
This makes sense. I normally go the walker / rocks / big spells route and find myself not wanting to run Goblin Welder / Feldon / Metalworker because they conflict with my Earthquakes or something. Will try and experiment with more shenanigan based artifact builds rather than big spells, thanks for the tip.
Look for Tangle Wire and Winter Orb and the like when you're playing the creature-based support route. And Spellskite is an all-star in that deck. Pias of any kind and things like Whirler Rogue help both add artifact synergies and give Feldon some great targets. And as always, Recruiter is good in the shell too.
Signets + all the other 2-cmc mana rocks have made Tinker + Artifact.dec a lot more consistent in unpowered. I also have a tendency to combine the artifact.dec with Upheaval / Wildfire. Anybody else do the same thing?
*raises hand*
In my unpowered cube, the artifact deck usually turns into a manarock-heavy ramp variant. Since it is also base-blue, Upheaval is a perfect fit. Wildfire kills most of your utility creatures, but with so many manarocks, it is still devastating enough to be a good choice.
I am generally a fan of Spellskite, but in this deck, it is just the perfect fit. Protects your important utility creaures, blocks to give you time for building up synergies or ramp, is an artifact itself... Perfect fit.
Drafted a more utility /shenanigans deck this morning on Cubetutor. Turned out nicely, but at the end of the draft I realized I didn't have any black fixing for the black splash that I was aiming for : /
Deck
My sad sideboard Probably could've played Memory Jar Goblin Welder / Daretti shenanigans.
Hey so we've recently cut our wildfire ramp archetypes since the archetype defining cards (Wildfire and Burning of Xinye) have been struggling heavily with our group for the past year, and we don't think it's getting any better. This also allowed us to open up a whole bunch of red slots for cool cards we always wanted to try like Goldspan Dragon, but notably gave us some room to slot Goblin Welder and Metalworker back in for the first time in a few years. Last time we played welder and worker they were pretty bad for us, but with the new freed up space and a few new cards like Cityscape Leveler, Chaos Defiler, Clown Car (which has been awesome btw), etc we thought we'd give them another spin to see if they can finally be good enough in our format.
We played Daretti, Scrap Savant in our cube a few years back when we added Through the Breach/Eldrazi titans/Nahiri, the Harbinger since it can bin cards for reanimator, get back some fatties in our wildfire ramp decks, and draw cards for Through The Breach combo decks, but it ended up being way to slow. This time around we're trying Goblin Engineer since it can tutor some combo pieces and bin fatties for reanimator like a bodied Unmarked Grave, but in testing it's seemed weak and we'll likely end up going back to try Daretti again for more Goblin Welder redundancy.
Firstly, I wanted to ask if people have any advice on what these red artifact decks typically look like? Since up until just a few months ago, almost our entire near-decade long experience with artifact based decks in cube has been with R/U and G/R ramp archetypes, so trying to move into Red or Blue based midrange archetypes with our artifact decks is certainly going to require a transition period and ample direction. The blue artifact decks have been pretty intuitive, but if anybody has time they could outline for me what these red Goblin Welder decks typically look like? And what do you prioritize when drafting for them, especially how those specific picks differ when drafted with other specific colors? Because I honestly have no idea beyond the artifacts with ETBs and the discard outlets. Some example decklists (even if they're old) would also be a huge blessing if people know places where I could find more of those (also preemptive thank you to steve_man for the list 2 posts above this one).
Secondly, we've been mulling over some bigger artifacts that we've cut or dismissed over the years that might be playable again due to Welder/Daretti being back in the format. These are all cards I've seen get played in other people's lists too, and I wanted to run them by you guys to see if people who've been playing them for a while have any pointers or advice on what works and what doesn't, or more generally what to look for in cards for this archetype?
• Memory Jar was in our cube when we played Storm, but got cut when Storm was removed. Since then we've added Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, and some artifact recursion. Tourach, Dread Cantor also exists, we just don't play it. This is probably the card I'm most curious about since it naturally slots into ramp decks and certain combo decks too
• We cut Inkwell Leviathan years ago because it was only good in reanimator decks and was surprisingly low impact and easy to race
• Haven't tried Night Scythe, and it seems pretty strong for regular aggro/midrange decks and with the blue artifact synergy cards
• We played Precursor Golem when we tried Mishra's Workshop and cut it when the Shops got cut
• Golos, Tireless Pilgrim never got tested by us, but it's been banned in commander and has seen tons of play from standard all the way to vintage. We play some lands that this can combo with, but in the context of just being a Welder target is this too slow?
• Triplicate Titan was playable for us with Through the Breach and reanimator, but was awful against most of our removal and got cut down the line
• Torrential Gearhulk was decent but really narrow and only playable for us in control decks
• Edit- forgot to mention Spellskite. It got cut for space a year or two ago since it was basically just a combo card in an already tight color, but is it a premier creature in the artifact midrange decks?
Sorry for the long post, but I honestly have almost no experience with this Welder archetype even in other formats and want to implement it well. I'll gladly take any input yall got, and thanks for everyone's time
The rough rule of thumb I used for artifact.dec is this:
- 5-6 sources of fast mana, with minimum of 2 being +2. (Academy, Vault, Sol Ring, Workshop, Urza, Sol Talisman etc.)
- 2-3 sweepers.
- 2-3 counter spells
- 2-4 removal spells / pithing needle effects as planeswalkers are annoying
- 2-3 looting/ filter effects (this is good regardless of welder as Artifact.dec can often draw the wrong half of their deck).
- 4-5 midrange value engine - This is Urza/ Tezzert/ Pia/ Karen etc.
- 4-5 Fatty payoffs, with minimum of 2 of them being either Eldrazi (ETB/ uncounterable), welder to rebuy, protection (spell skite), Maelstorm Wander or uncounterable etc.
You'll frequently find these numbers exceed 24. The best artifact.dec cards are cards that can combine these roles, such as Urza which is ramp + threat, Oko with is removal + threat, Academy Ruins which doesn't take a up a land.
Returning to the question about Goblin Welder:
I found the best explanation for Welder is this is a Spellskite than turns into a Recurring nightmare in the late game.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
- Personally I don't like Goblin Welder type cards in cubes with a good amount of removal or things to it haste / shroud / hexproof / etc. Welder is an ABC effect (Welder / artifact in play / artifact in graveyard) that relies on a fragile 1/1 surviving a whole turn cycle never felt great to me.
- A lot of the artifact deck for me just has to do with critical mass (Tinker / Tolarian Academy / Urza's Saga / Urza, Lord High Artificer / anything that makes Karnstructs / etc). Red in general for me doesn't play too heavy a role in artifacts matters. P&K Nalaar generates thopters for Retrofitter Foundry, then there's gold cards like Dack / Daretti / Third Path Iconoclast / Chaos Defiler / etc.
- Personally I don't like Goblin Welder type cards in cubes with a good amount of removal or things to it haste / shroud / hexproof / etc. Welder is an ABC effect (Welder / artifact in play / artifact in graveyard) that relies on a fragile 1/1 surviving a whole turn cycle never felt great to me.
- A lot of the artifact deck for me just has to do with critical mass (Tinker / Tolarian Academy / Urza's Saga / Urza, Lord High Artificer / anything that makes Karnstructs / etc). Red in general for me doesn't play too heavy a role in artifacts matters. P&K Nalaar generates thopters for Retrofitter Foundry, then there's gold cards like Dack / Daretti / Third Path Iconoclast / Chaos Defiler / etc.
I've found this is the mistake people make when evaluating cards like Welder in cube. Welder is a 1-drop.
- If my opponent spent a removal spell on a 1 drop, I'm always very happy because that's a removal spell not pointed at one of my expensive artifacts
- The artifact deck traditionally curves as No 1-drop, Talisman -> 4 drop etc. This is often way too slow for vintage cube standards. My experience is you need to do something turn 1.
I also found red to be an incredibly important color for the artifact.dec, in particular its Red-X sweepers/ WildFire. Sweepers are most important in these type of decks as the artifact deck should be more of a control deck with artifact synergies.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Green still encourages ramp / super ramp more and definitely has more of a "lands matter" theme now which I like a lot. That reminds me, I should probably re-add Viridian Shaman, lol.
I have a proposed list of changes that I manically outlined last night until 1AM (was a huge mistake, took a while for me to fall asleep after all that conscious thinking). Will try to get some reps on cubetutor at least, I don't cube in person as much as I'd like to anymore, but I'll post any testing results when I can. It shouldn't be too hard to see how drafting a deck will turn out, but execution and seeing how it fares vs established deck may take me some time.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
As much as I love going in on Tinker, artifact support on top of signets feel unnatural in my cube setting. I can't really expect my cubegroup to try out the artifact.dec if I'm not able to build it / beat them with it somewhat consistently.
I think I'll give it another couple of weeks. Also, hook me up with you got any draft tips for the deck. I will say that Tezz 1.0 is pretty useful outside of artifacts matters, he might be worth keeping around even if I do abandon the archetype.
Edit / Update: Decided to double down and cut a card from each color and re-add the five 2-cmc mana rocks I cut during the AER / Artifact.dec update.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
This makes sense. I normally go the walker / rocks / big spells route and find myself not wanting to run Goblin Welder / Feldon / Metalworker because they conflict with my Earthquakes or something. Will try and experiment with more shenanigan based artifact builds rather than big spells, thanks for the tip.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
In my unpowered cube, the artifact deck usually turns into a manarock-heavy ramp variant. Since it is also base-blue, Upheaval is a perfect fit. Wildfire kills most of your utility creatures, but with so many manarocks, it is still devastating enough to be a good choice.
*nods*
I am generally a fan of Spellskite, but in this deck, it is just the perfect fit. Protects your important utility creaures, blocks to give you time for building up synergies or ramp, is an artifact itself... Perfect fit.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
Deck
My sad sideboard Probably could've played Memory Jar Goblin Welder / Daretti shenanigans.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
We played Daretti, Scrap Savant in our cube a few years back when we added Through the Breach/Eldrazi titans/Nahiri, the Harbinger since it can bin cards for reanimator, get back some fatties in our wildfire ramp decks, and draw cards for Through The Breach combo decks, but it ended up being way to slow. This time around we're trying Goblin Engineer since it can tutor some combo pieces and bin fatties for reanimator like a bodied Unmarked Grave, but in testing it's seemed weak and we'll likely end up going back to try Daretti again for more Goblin Welder redundancy.
Firstly, I wanted to ask if people have any advice on what these red artifact decks typically look like? Since up until just a few months ago, almost our entire near-decade long experience with artifact based decks in cube has been with R/U and G/R ramp archetypes, so trying to move into Red or Blue based midrange archetypes with our artifact decks is certainly going to require a transition period and ample direction. The blue artifact decks have been pretty intuitive, but if anybody has time they could outline for me what these red Goblin Welder decks typically look like? And what do you prioritize when drafting for them, especially how those specific picks differ when drafted with other specific colors? Because I honestly have no idea beyond the artifacts with ETBs and the discard outlets. Some example decklists (even if they're old) would also be a huge blessing if people know places where I could find more of those (also preemptive thank you to steve_man for the list 2 posts above this one).
Secondly, we've been mulling over some bigger artifacts that we've cut or dismissed over the years that might be playable again due to Welder/Daretti being back in the format. These are all cards I've seen get played in other people's lists too, and I wanted to run them by you guys to see if people who've been playing them for a while have any pointers or advice on what works and what doesn't, or more generally what to look for in cards for this archetype?
• Memory Jar was in our cube when we played Storm, but got cut when Storm was removed. Since then we've added Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, and some artifact recursion. Tourach, Dread Cantor also exists, we just don't play it. This is probably the card I'm most curious about since it naturally slots into ramp decks and certain combo decks too
• We cut Inkwell Leviathan years ago because it was only good in reanimator decks and was surprisingly low impact and easy to race
• Haven't tried Night Scythe, and it seems pretty strong for regular aggro/midrange decks and with the blue artifact synergy cards
• We played Precursor Golem when we tried Mishra's Workshop and cut it when the Shops got cut
• Golos, Tireless Pilgrim never got tested by us, but it's been banned in commander and has seen tons of play from standard all the way to vintage. We play some lands that this can combo with, but in the context of just being a Welder target is this too slow?
• Triplicate Titan was playable for us with Through the Breach and reanimator, but was awful against most of our removal and got cut down the line
• Torrential Gearhulk was decent but really narrow and only playable for us in control decks
• Edit- forgot to mention Spellskite. It got cut for space a year or two ago since it was basically just a combo card in an already tight color, but is it a premier creature in the artifact midrange decks?
Sorry for the long post, but I honestly have almost no experience with this Welder archetype even in other formats and want to implement it well. I'll gladly take any input yall got, and thanks for everyone's time
- 5-6 sources of fast mana, with minimum of 2 being +2. (Academy, Vault, Sol Ring, Workshop, Urza, Sol Talisman etc.)
- 2-3 sweepers.
- 2-3 counter spells
- 2-4 removal spells / pithing needle effects as planeswalkers are annoying
- 2-3 looting/ filter effects (this is good regardless of welder as Artifact.dec can often draw the wrong half of their deck).
- 4-5 midrange value engine - This is Urza/ Tezzert/ Pia/ Karen etc.
- 4-5 Fatty payoffs, with minimum of 2 of them being either Eldrazi (ETB/ uncounterable), welder to rebuy, protection (spell skite), Maelstorm Wander or uncounterable etc.
You'll frequently find these numbers exceed 24. The best artifact.dec cards are cards that can combine these roles, such as Urza which is ramp + threat, Oko with is removal + threat, Academy Ruins which doesn't take a up a land.
Returning to the question about Goblin Welder:
I found the best explanation for Welder is this is a Spellskite than turns into a Recurring nightmare in the late game.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
- A lot of the artifact deck for me just has to do with critical mass (Tinker / Tolarian Academy / Urza's Saga / Urza, Lord High Artificer / anything that makes Karnstructs / etc). Red in general for me doesn't play too heavy a role in artifacts matters. P&K Nalaar generates thopters for Retrofitter Foundry, then there's gold cards like Dack / Daretti / Third Path Iconoclast / Chaos Defiler / etc.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
I've found this is the mistake people make when evaluating cards like Welder in cube. Welder is a 1-drop.
- If my opponent spent a removal spell on a 1 drop, I'm always very happy because that's a removal spell not pointed at one of my expensive artifacts
- The artifact deck traditionally curves as No 1-drop, Talisman -> 4 drop etc. This is often way too slow for vintage cube standards. My experience is you need to do something turn 1.
I also found red to be an incredibly important color for the artifact.dec, in particular its Red-X sweepers/ WildFire. Sweepers are most important in these type of decks as the artifact deck should be more of a control deck with artifact synergies.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i