Last week, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) gave us our first look at next month’s new Magic set, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, with a big focus on the last revisited Phyrexian Praetor: Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. There are multiple versions of that card, and the abilities are certainly pushed for tournament play. For Commander? Well, if the descriptor “Stax” doesn’t bother you when talking about Commander cards, then I imagine you’re going to be pretty excited about it. For the rest of us, you’ll need to ensure you have removal options available for a big creature that don’t involve an enters-the-battlefield trigger, especially if your commander has one of those as well.
We were also previewed two new versions of familiar legendary faces, from both sides of the Mirrodin/Phyrexian conflict. Today, I want to dig into what we might want to put in a deck built around a Goblin Artificer that now has the Phyrexian creature type designation as well: Slobad, Iron Goblin!
It’s wild that I just recently built a Goblin/Artifact deck around Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer and shared the decklist here back in November. I think that Slobad, Iron Goblin likely has a home in the 99 of that deck, but I think a deck built Slobad, Iron Goblin as the commander is going to be quite different. Am I going to have two mono-red Slobad Commander decks? Maybe! This new version is pretty spicy, and let me show you how!
Artifacts to Sacrifice
Looking at good artifacts as sacrificial fodder for Slobad, the most obvious bonkers card is Spine of Ish Sah. It’s a whopping seven mana to cast, but when it enters the battlefield, you get to destroy target permanent. But what’s nuts is that, when Spine is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, such as being sacrificed to Slobad, Iron Goblin, it returns to its owner’s hand, and now you’ve got seven red mana you can use to cast Spine again. This combo is yet another reason why it’s a good thing the absurd Paradox Engine is banned in Commander!
How about Ruin Grinder? With Slobad on the battlefield and ready to tap, you can immediately sacrifice it to get you back the six mana you spent on it and get a fresh new hand. I’ve included a bunch of other artifacts that pay you back when they die that you’ll be happy to sacrifice to Slobad and perhaps accelerate into a more expensive artifact later.
Mana Burst
Speaking of casting more expensive artifacts, you can use these artifacts as “rituals” of sorts. Cast them, tap them for mana, and then get back the mana you spent to cast them by sacrificing them to Slobad. Cast Basalt Monolith, tap for three mana, and sacrifice to Slobad to get three red mana to get you up to six mana. Thran Dynamo lets you spend four mana to get seven mana. With Coveted Jewel, you spend six mana to draw three cards and get back nine mana!
Cathodion, Su-Chi, and Su-Chi Cave Guard do similar things, but they pay you back the mana when they die. If you don’t have need for that burst of mana this turn, you can always just cast them and cash them in with Slobad on another turn.
Big Expensive Artifact Stuff
So these are some of the cards I thought of being worth sacrificing a card to get the mana to cast them. Kaldra Compleat on Turn 4 or 5 is a pretty big threat, and if the Germ token is removed, you can use Slobad to help pay the large equip cost, maybe equipping Slobad himself since he’s already been compleated. Sandstone Oracle is another sweet card to power out early; you should be able to draw a good number of cards, since some opponent is bound to have a large grip. A 4/4 flyer isn’t a bad battlefield presence, but you can always cash it in later to Slobad for seven red mana.
Colossus of Akros is huge but requires ten more mana before it becomes a real threat. This seems exactly the sort of deck that could pull it off, though I’d want to be running some way to give it trample.
Wondrous Crucible seems like another awesome card to power out early; presumably Slobad has sacrificed an artifact for mana along the way, so even if you mill two lands, you should still have something to exile and copy during your end step. And in the meantime, your permanents are protected with ward 2!
Sacrifice Triggers
I want to include some ways to squeeze extra value when Slobad sacrifices artifacts along the way. Scrap Trawler can bring artifacts back from the graveyard, and Slagstone Refinery should be spitting out Powerstone tokens at a pretty good clip. Farid, Enterprising Salvager creates a colorless artifact token called Scrap when a nontoken artifact is put into the graveyard from the battlefield; amusingly, the Scrap token doesn’t actually do anything, but it is an artifact you can sacrifice to Farid’s ability where you can choose one of three effects. All of them are pretty decent, particularly the goad ability.
I love Pia’s Revolution here, which you can really leverage by pressuring an opponent’s life total that’s gotten dangerously low.
Discounted Artifacts
Artifacts that discount their mana value in some ways seem particularly valuable here, letting you cast them early, and you can cash them in with Slobad for more mana than you cast them for. The affinity for artifacts cards are perfect here, and we even get to make use of Oxidda Golem’s affinity for Mountains since we’re a mono-red deck. Metalwork Colossus can just be bonkers; cast it for just a handful of mana or even free, and you can sacrifice it to Slobad for a whopping eleven red mana! Or how about Ancient Stone Idol, cast for cheap during an opponent’s turn; untap, attack with your 12/12 trample monster, and then sacrifice to Slobad for ten red mana, leaving behind a 6/12 Construct with trample for your troubles.
Copy Artifacts
A copy of an artifact copies its mana value too, so if you copy one that has a high mana value, you can cash it in to Slobad for big value. Think of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Feldon of the Third Path copying Metalwork Colossus, and then sacrificing the copy to Slobad for eleven red mana!
Cast Artifacts for Cheaper
I’m definitely going to want these cards to shave cost from the mana value of the artifacts I’m casting, and the fact that most of these are artifacts that synergize with all the artifact stuff going on is just gravy.
Artifacts from Graveyard
Sacrificing artifacts to Slobad means that we’ll be filling up our graveyard with artifacts, so I figure we’ll want some ways to bring them back. I’m always excited when I find a good deck to add Scarecrone to the list, and it’s going to do some work in this deck, assuming there are a good number of artifact creatures. In particular, that four-mana activation should be trivially easy to pay for.
Goblin Welder is obviously a powerful card where you can swap a cheap artifact on the battlefield for an expensive one in the graveyard, and then sacrifice that artifact for a huge rush of red mana from Slobad.
Cauldron of Souls is an awesome card that gets better here, letting you get potentially two sacrifices to Slobad for one artifact creature. It also serves as a safety value for Slobad in case he gets destroyed.
Cast Artifacts at Instant Speed
I really like Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter in artifact-heavy decks, and it should grow quite easily in this deck with lots of high-mana artifact spells. Getting to cast artifacts at instant speed gives the deck a lot more flexibility than other mono-red decks, so I might consider running a couple more artifacts that do the same sort of thing. And if you happen to have two of them on the battlefield, you can cash one in to Slobad to fuel something else.
Untap Slobad
We can be glad that it’s not easy to go off with Paradox Engine but still want ways to untap Slobad to chain a few sacrifices for one big turn. Thornbite Staff equipped to Slobad is actually rather nutty with Spine of Ish Sah, letting you “go off” by killing all the creatures your opponents control. I would avoid putting this combo together unless you’re playing in a pod with plenty of interaction!
I’ve got Dross Scorpion here since there are some ways to make Slobad a true “Iron Goblin,” like Liquimetal Torque and Ashnod’s Transmogrant, though you could extend the combo to Thousand-Year Elixir; sacrifice an artifact creature to Slobad, untap Slobad with Thousand-Year Elixir with Dross Scorpion’s trigger on the stack, and then untap Thousand-Year Elixir and keep going, feeding one of the mana from Slobad into the Elixir.
Activated Abilities
Casting big artifact spells is just one part of the equation. We can also use the mana from Slobad to pay for artifact activated abilities. Some artifacts have massive effects that cost just a little more mana than a typical Commander deck wants to pay, but Slobad can make that magic happen. I’m thinking cards like Chaos Wand and Wand of Wonder, which should net you one card of value to offset the artifact you sacrificed with Slobad. You’ll always be able to protect your Battleskull from removal if Slobad is ready to sacrifice an artifact for three or more mana.
Soul of New Phyrexia looks great, but you’ve got to invest a whopping eleven mana for the payoff. In this deck, that should be pretty easy. How about Planar Bridge? I can certainly see having fourteen mana available for a big turn with Slobad. We can even store a bunch of Slobad mana on Ice Cauldron!
I put Liquimetal Torque and Liquimetal Coating in this list because you can potentially turn a non-artifact into an artifact and then use Slobad to pay for the activation cost in a pinch.
I’m pretty excited about Slobad, Iron Goblin. What do you think? Are there other cards you think would synergize well that I may have overlooked here? What are some incredible artifact activated abilities that cost a lot of mana that we might want to include?
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