I noted in a Digest twoweeksago how good the mana in this Standard format is, especially for decks that play Renegade Map and Prophetic Prism. Unsurprisingly, starting your deck with cheap artifacts leads to an Improvise theme, and I’m not complaining here.
The U/B base gives rise to easy splashes of red for Saheeli Rai and white for its best friend, Felidar Guardian. As a result, this deck is starting with the best win condition in the format, so we can’t be too wrong.
Doubling down on combos, we see the rest of the cheap artifact suite is Metallic Mimic and Animation Module to create a huge battlefield of Servos, each with a +1/+1 counter. Of course, Metallic Mimic might just as easily name Thopter if you’re powering out a turn 3 Maverick Thopterist, a great card to blink with Felidar Guardian or copy with Saheeli Rai, by the way. Two distinct combos with cross-wise synergy! It brings music to my ears.
This list isn’t focused on Tezzeret the Schemer like the last one I featured, but the planeswalker still does good work here as a mana accelerator and fixer as well as a removal spell for pesky blockers. I particularly like removing Walking Ballista before making a million Cats, but that’s just me.
Despite the proactive nature of this deck, Metallic Rebuke is still featured as a four-of simply because reducing its cost creates such a good rate. It’s fairly easy to use it to protect your combos or simply trade for your opponent’s early play to keep the battlefield clear before you start tapping out for planeswalkers, Maverick Thopterists, and Reverse Engineers.
The one thing that disappoints me about this list is that it doesn’t go all the way and add green somewhere in the 75. Five really isn’t that much more than four when you have Prophetic Prism, Aether Hub, and Spire of Industry, and there is probably some awesome green card that creates lots of artifacts for nearly nothing.
Of course there is.
Beyond being loads of fun, this deck has to be great to play because your opponent will never know exactly what you’re capable of. You can literally play any card in Standard and you’ll get more than a few wins from your opponent assuming you have a card that’s either not in your hand or not in your deck.
Jeskai was the natural shell for Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian, but that’s only because most people are afraid to push the envelope. WarPrince is a dreamer and you have to respect that.
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (23)
Spells (22)
