When Kaladesh was released, Metalwork Colossus seemed like it could be the most powerful things you could be doing in Standard. As it turns out, turn 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is a better trump and the shell around it is a bit more consistent.
Whenever a deck’s core strategy gets trumped like that, you need to retool the deck to do something a little different. Today’s list attempts to do that for Metalwork Colossus in a couple of ways.
In the maindeck, there is a full suite of removal to help against aggressive strategies. Fatal Push makes it there on sheer rate, but the two Expertises are the real prize. As sweepers, they buy plenty of time against everything but Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and the cast-a-spell clauses let you continue to develop your battlefield to set up Metalwork Colossus. The deck has historically been a little slow, so gaining the ability to interact without losing time from your own gameplan is exactly what it’s looking for.
The Expertises are also major tempo swings for your fair gameplan of crewing Vehicles and mashing face. Cultivator’s Caravan and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship both provide a great clock, so you can now turn games around quickly even without your namesake card.
But the biggest innovations are in the sideboard to fight Aetherworks Marvel. They trump your strategy with theirs, so you have to adjust, and turning into a disruptive aggressive deck is a solid juke. Thought-Knot Seer is another fine clock, and Metallic Rebuke is the perfect backup once you’ve established a clock.
If you want to get even more aggressive, there’s Tezzeret’s Touch to slam the door shut in a hurry, since it’s essentially a three-mana 5/5 haste creature.
This aggro transformation is also a great response to Dispossess, which conveniently makes its way into a lot of sideboards as an answer to Aetherworks Marvel. Now you can bring out your Colossuses entirely and become a deck that heavily punishes anyone who wastes their third or fourth turn on a blank card. And if they catch onto the plan you get to play the “fifteen in, fifteen out” game, forcing them to guess which configuration you’re in for Game 3.
Your friends may not like another deck that cheats out big creatures, but this one is a lot more interactive than Aetherworks Marvel, so it looks to be a nice change of pace.
Creatures (11)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
- 4 Prophetic Prism
- 4 Hedron Archive
- 2 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
- 4 Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
- 4 Cultivator's Caravan
- 2 Yahenni's Expertise
- 3 Baral's Expertise
- 3 Fatal Push
Sideboard
