When I started getting into Magic, Gatherer comments were incredibly useful and informative and helped me find links and synergies between cards I'd have no way of knowing about being a new player. Since comments and the rating systems have been defunct, I've barely visited Gatherer since. I hope they come back, for my and all new player's sake.
For the longest time I've had a deck that looked at using the shared synergies between creatures with Flash and Haste (Equilibrium, Primal Forcemage) that tried to out-tempo opponents through big, swingy turns and plays. The deck was helmed by Intet, the Dreamer because none of the other generals at the time really had much synergy with either flash or haste (Intet could could allow me to hold up surprise blockers or attackers without much mana), but she was also slow and clunky and when she died, the deck, which was often aggressive, would run out of steam because of her high cost.
Kraum and Thrasios were made for this deck. They both generate advantage in a non-intrusive way - often Intet would be targeted because she's huge and needs to connect with people's faces to get value - and having two of them means that the deck can continue to get value from its commanders where non-Partner commanders become too expensive, which is great for an aggro-tempo deck. They also play up to the "choose your playstyle" aspect of the deck - I've generally avoided card selection, meaning that depending on which half of the deck I draw - the hasty creatures that pressure opponents or the flash creatures and instants that are good reactively - I have a commander that plays well with the two playstyles and allows me to go back and forth between aggression and reaction according to the table. Having two commanders also allowed me to run one of the thematically relevant Lieutenant cards and know that I can reliably have its ability work thanks to my opponents now needing two removal spells to shut my Lieutenant down if they don't want to kill the card itself.
Here's my list. It's not tuned for a competitive meta, but you can certainly make it to be if that's what you wanted - cut all the expensive counters for cheaper, more efficient ones and run more acceleration and less silly, tricky cards like Mizzium Meddler to get to your hasted fatties. The deck can also support a bevy of infinite combos as alt win conditions - Dualcaster Mage and Rite of Replication is already in (use Cackling Counterpart to make it instant!), as are Hellkite Charger and Nature's Will (Aggravated Assault along with Sword of Feast and Famine or Bear Umbra also works and are all mechanically relevant), the aforementioned Possibility Storm softlocks your opponents with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker makes Zealous Conscripts and Great Oak Guardian busted, and you can use Chord of Calling (another decent flash card) to find half these pieces. I've chosen not to include most of these as I don't find them fun, but I recognized while building the deck the potential for power in its diversity of strategies. If anything, I'm sure there are some cards in there that aren't played conventionally that might have a home in your deck, whatever it's theme ends up being.
I'd like to keep it Silas only. I know it would be better with red and possibly white, but the main reason why I thought of using him solo is because I don't have a Dimir artifact deck. I've got Breya, Hanna, Sydri, and Daretti now and would rather explore a new color combo than repeat one that I have. Thanks for the suggestions!
Unless you don't like having an extra, non-integrated Partner commander from a flavour perspective, your other partners are in other decks, or you simply don't own them, there's no reason not to have a strong supporting Partner general to pair up with Silas like Kraum, Thrasios, or Tymna, even if they just sit in the command zone 9 times out of 10. You don't even need to change your manabase to accomodate it. While you won't always be able to cast it, as long as you've got cards like Command Tower, Commander's Sphere, or Gilded Lotus in there, you'll get some extra value and advantage for free.
Even if you only own the Breya deck and its commanders, you may as well chuck Bruse or Akiri in there as a partner on the off-chance you get the mana for them (plus you decrease your deck size, making your deck VERY marginally more consistent). It also means you're allowed to run hybrid cards like Augury Adept (which works with some of the same cards your Saboteur general already works with), Thopter Foundry (decent sac outlet for artifacts you want to reuse the ETB abilities on like Solemn Simulacrum) or Debtors' Knell (just a strong card), cards you normally couldn't run in a purely UB deck due to the colour identity rule.
Make sure you've got Thassa, God of the Sea or some of the other unblockable-granting cards so your Silas won't get stonewalled in the late game.
From the release notes on Ancient Excavation:
"The number of cards drawn this way might not be equal to the number of cards in your hand (for example, if you apply Necroplasm’s dredge ability instead of drawing one of those cards). The number of cards that you actually drew is what determines how many cards you discard."
I highly, HIGHLY recommend Gonti, Lord of Luxury. I built a deck with him inspired by ISBPathfinder's Gonti deck and have had an absolute blast. One of my favourite plays in recent memory was casting a stolen Hangarback Walker for 7, EOT saccing it to get 7 thopters, Animate Deading an enemy Steel Overseer with a stolen Minion Reflector to copy the Overseer so it had haste so I could pump the thopters with the help of a stolen Tempered Steel to deliver 32 damage to their owner's face.
All you need to do is run cards that can flicker him or recur him out of the yard through reanimation or repeatable Raise Dead-type effects (combined with sac outlets) and you get to churn through your opponents decks, finding synergies between cards in the same deck or even between multiple decks. Unlike most of the other generals mentioned, Gonti is both non-reliant on staying in play to cast the spells he steals and isn't reliant on what types of cards your opponent has on top of their library to function (i.e. creatures or instants and sorceries); as long as they aren't 4 lands, you're getting something. The fact that he offers you selection without actually tutoring through your opponent's deck (which you mentioned you wanted to avoid) is also really handy, as well as being a deathtouch blocker most people won't want to run their big ground dudes into. If you want to use the off-colour activated abilities of the cards you steal, you can run cards like Chromatic Lantern or Exotic Orchard as pretty free ways of getting extra colours (as they recently changed the rules for generating off-colour mana).
Just fill your deck with card draw/ramp to develop your mana base into the late game to recast Gonti a bunch, bring answers to your opponent's threats (Mono-B can run All is Dust/Oblivion Stone as answers to permanent types it normally can't deal with) and engines to retrigger Gonti and you're good to steal and win with your opponent's threats. :>
What are effective ways of getting equipments in R/G?.
Godo, Bandit Warlord is your man. If you do end up giving Ulrich vigilance with your equipment (like Sword of Vengeance), his second ability also becomes relevant, giving your commander an extra combat step to beat face.
I didn't see anyone mention this in response to the Lure talk, so I guess I have to be the party-pooper.
This card is worse than a 1/1 with deathtouch when combined with Lure and power-pumping. When a creature gets multi-blocked, it needs to deal lethal damage to the first creature the attacking player assigned as first before it can deal any damage to the second, third (and so on) creatures.
This means if the Mass has 6 power and gets blocked by 3 4/4s, it can deal 4 damage to the first 4/4, 2 to the second, and 0 to the third. After damage is dealt, the first 4/4 will die from lethal damage (though the Mass' ability would trigger for it and fail to do anything), the second will take 2 and become a Mass (with 2 damage marked on it, so if the Mass had 1 more power this 4/4 would have died after becoming a Mass), and the other 4/4 will continue to be a 4/4.
If the Mass was instead a 3 power deathtouch creature, all of the 4/4s would be dead because 1 point of damage from a deathtouch creature is lethal.
At most, the Mass can transform one creature per combat, no matter how big you make it (unless damage prevention or indestructible is involved).
EDIT: also, doesn't work super well with lure unless you buff it's power, otherwise you're only changing one creature into a mass.
... And since you need to deal lethal damage to the first creature that's multi-blocking it in order to move on to the second and beyond, this card is never going to be able to transform more than one creature per combat. It is super cool, but lure is as much of a combo on this guy as it is with a 1/1 deathtouch (for which pump works a lot better, as for every +1 it gets it kills an extra creature thanks to deathtouch combat rules).
It's extremely good against indestructible creatures and combat-centric generals if you can block them with it or force them to block (its sort of another version of Song of the Dryads), though if they start strapping equipment to their new Mass, you might start running into a similar problem that this card poses to the opponent ...
If you can somehow build mono-U to be extremely artifact light, you can use Shape Anew as a powerful tutor for cards like Blightsteel Colossus or Memnarch.
If you can build up to the ultimate on Tezzeret the Seeker, you can also create an army of giant feathers and lockets to beat down your opponents.
There are a bunch of cards I could name as my favourite, but for nostalgia reasons I have to go with Kiln Fiend for being in my favourite colour and combining two of my favourite things - casting lots of spells and doing a bunch of direct damage - into one card, as well as being from the set I started with.
Kraum and Thrasios were made for this deck. They both generate advantage in a non-intrusive way - often Intet would be targeted because she's huge and needs to connect with people's faces to get value - and having two of them means that the deck can continue to get value from its commanders where non-Partner commanders become too expensive, which is great for an aggro-tempo deck. They also play up to the "choose your playstyle" aspect of the deck - I've generally avoided card selection, meaning that depending on which half of the deck I draw - the hasty creatures that pressure opponents or the flash creatures and instants that are good reactively - I have a commander that plays well with the two playstyles and allows me to go back and forth between aggression and reaction according to the table. Having two commanders also allowed me to run one of the thematically relevant Lieutenant cards and know that I can reliably have its ability work thanks to my opponents now needing two removal spells to shut my Lieutenant down if they don't want to kill the card itself.
Here's my list. It's not tuned for a competitive meta, but you can certainly make it to be if that's what you wanted - cut all the expensive counters for cheaper, more efficient ones and run more acceleration and less silly, tricky cards like Mizzium Meddler to get to your hasted fatties. The deck can also support a bevy of infinite combos as alt win conditions - Dualcaster Mage and Rite of Replication is already in (use Cackling Counterpart to make it instant!), as are Hellkite Charger and Nature's Will (Aggravated Assault along with Sword of Feast and Famine or Bear Umbra also works and are all mechanically relevant), the aforementioned Possibility Storm softlocks your opponents with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker makes Zealous Conscripts and Great Oak Guardian busted, and you can use Chord of Calling (another decent flash card) to find half these pieces. I've chosen not to include most of these as I don't find them fun, but I recognized while building the deck the potential for power in its diversity of strategies. If anything, I'm sure there are some cards in there that aren't played conventionally that might have a home in your deck, whatever it's theme ends up being.
Unless you don't like having an extra, non-integrated Partner commander from a flavour perspective, your other partners are in other decks, or you simply don't own them, there's no reason not to have a strong supporting Partner general to pair up with Silas like Kraum, Thrasios, or Tymna, even if they just sit in the command zone 9 times out of 10. You don't even need to change your manabase to accomodate it. While you won't always be able to cast it, as long as you've got cards like Command Tower, Commander's Sphere, or Gilded Lotus in there, you'll get some extra value and advantage for free.
Even if you only own the Breya deck and its commanders, you may as well chuck Bruse or Akiri in there as a partner on the off-chance you get the mana for them (plus you decrease your deck size, making your deck VERY marginally more consistent). It also means you're allowed to run hybrid cards like Augury Adept (which works with some of the same cards your Saboteur general already works with), Thopter Foundry (decent sac outlet for artifacts you want to reuse the ETB abilities on like Solemn Simulacrum) or Debtors' Knell (just a strong card), cards you normally couldn't run in a purely UB deck due to the colour identity rule.
Make sure you've got Thassa, God of the Sea or some of the other unblockable-granting cards so your Silas won't get stonewalled in the late game.
So I Stoneforge Mystic for Umezawa's Jitte and equip it to my Sidisi ...
Yes, bouncing my Sidisi was the combo, that was it. >_> <_<
"The number of cards drawn this way might not be equal to the number of cards in your hand (for example, if you apply Necroplasm’s dredge ability instead of drawing one of those cards). The number of cards that you actually drew is what determines how many cards you discard."
So Ancient Excavation + Abundance and other draw-replacing effects are totally a thing.
All you need to do is run cards that can flicker him or recur him out of the yard through reanimation or repeatable Raise Dead-type effects (combined with sac outlets) and you get to churn through your opponents decks, finding synergies between cards in the same deck or even between multiple decks. Unlike most of the other generals mentioned, Gonti is both non-reliant on staying in play to cast the spells he steals and isn't reliant on what types of cards your opponent has on top of their library to function (i.e. creatures or instants and sorceries); as long as they aren't 4 lands, you're getting something. The fact that he offers you selection without actually tutoring through your opponent's deck (which you mentioned you wanted to avoid) is also really handy, as well as being a deathtouch blocker most people won't want to run their big ground dudes into. If you want to use the off-colour activated abilities of the cards you steal, you can run cards like Chromatic Lantern or Exotic Orchard as pretty free ways of getting extra colours (as they recently changed the rules for generating off-colour mana).
Just fill your deck with card draw/ramp to develop your mana base into the late game to recast Gonti a bunch, bring answers to your opponent's threats (Mono-B can run All is Dust/Oblivion Stone as answers to permanent types it normally can't deal with) and engines to retrigger Gonti and you're good to steal and win with your opponent's threats. :>
Treasonous Ogre + Aetherflux Reservoir + Flame Jab + Dakmor Salvage + Null Profusion/Secrets of the Dead
Alright boys, we solved the format, let's go home.
Grozoth has been waiting its whole life for this card.
Godo, Bandit Warlord is your man. If you do end up giving Ulrich vigilance with your equipment (like Sword of Vengeance), his second ability also becomes relevant, giving your commander an extra combat step to beat face.
This card is worse than a 1/1 with deathtouch when combined with Lure and power-pumping. When a creature gets multi-blocked, it needs to deal lethal damage to the first creature the attacking player assigned as first before it can deal any damage to the second, third (and so on) creatures.
This means if the Mass has 6 power and gets blocked by 3 4/4s, it can deal 4 damage to the first 4/4, 2 to the second, and 0 to the third. After damage is dealt, the first 4/4 will die from lethal damage (though the Mass' ability would trigger for it and fail to do anything), the second will take 2 and become a Mass (with 2 damage marked on it, so if the Mass had 1 more power this 4/4 would have died after becoming a Mass), and the other 4/4 will continue to be a 4/4.
If the Mass was instead a 3 power deathtouch creature, all of the 4/4s would be dead because 1 point of damage from a deathtouch creature is lethal.
At most, the Mass can transform one creature per combat, no matter how big you make it (unless damage prevention or indestructible is involved).
Learn how I learned.
It's extremely good against indestructible creatures and combat-centric generals if you can block them with it or force them to block (its sort of another version of Song of the Dryads), though if they start strapping equipment to their new Mass, you might start running into a similar problem that this card poses to the opponent ...
If you can build up to the ultimate on Tezzeret the Seeker, you can also create an army of giant feathers and lockets to beat down your opponents.
And for some extreme jank, if you can get March of the Machines, Coat of Arms, and Xenograft into play all at once, there will never be a bigger horde of Brushwaggs with Avacyn's face in existence.