Vedalken Golem-Works

[Ephraim]

The "Big Effin' Gun" thread reminded me of an artifact based deck that I constructed. The deck tends to revolve around Vedalken Engineer, since the only lands are Islands, despite there being artifacts with red and black activation costs. They're aided by Iron and Leaden Myr, which serve both as colour-fixers and mana-accelerators for the large golems that make up the deck's win condition.

Workers (12)
4 Vedalken Engineer
4 Iron Myr
4 Leaden Myr

Golems (13)
4 Hematite Golem
4 Spire Golem
4 Lunar Avenger
1 Bosh, Iron Golem

Utilities (17)
3 Darksteel Ingot
2 Gemstone Array
3 Machinate
2 Serum Tank
1 Crystal Shard
1 Granite Shard
1 Skeleton Shard
1 Door to Nothingness
3 Loxodon Warhammer

Land (18)
18 Island

I chose the 18 Island scheme to help get Spire Golem out faster. It's one of the deck's best early plays and having all of the Islands makes it pretty easy to execute. Further, the only strictly coloured cards in the deck are Machinate and Vedalken Engineer, both of which are blue. Although they may coloured activation costs, all of the rest of the cards in the deck are artifacts. This means that it is critically important that I protect my workers. Although the Vedalken Engineers are perpetually vulnerable, Skeleton Shard makes it possible for me to resurrect my mana-myr if they die.

Although none of the cards are overtly very powerful, there's a lot of strong synergy between the cards. All of the workers help to accelerate out the golems one or more turns earlier than they should be playable, which allows for an early beat-down. The mana curve is fairly stable, with the workers being playable on the second turn and as a result, the golems being playble on the third and subsequent turns. The deck quickly reaches a state of mana glut, but that's not typically a problem, because...

Hematite Golem absolutely thrives on an abundance of mana. A single Vedalken Engineer, with no other resources available, makes him a 3/4 threat. Additional mana allows me to threaten a very large golem. With the state of mana glut, I can force unfavourable blocks by threatening five or more points of damage a turn.

Lunar Avenger more or less tops out my mana curve. Since my mana is accelerated and I often find myself able to produce three or more colours of mana, he's a powerful addition to the deck.

Bosh, Iron Golem is one of the deck's two (well, three-ish) alternate win conditions. With creatures such as Spire Golem (converted mana cost of six) and Lunar Avenger (converted mana cost of seven), he can lay down the direct damage very quickly. Furthermore, with six or more Islands in play, a Spire Golem, and an active Skeleton Shard, I get "3RB: Deal 6 damage to target creature or player" every turn.

Door to Nothingness is the deck's other alternate win condition. If I find myself in a stalemate, it isn't that difficult to hunker down on a Gemstone Array and generate charge counters until I draw into Door. Although it's only a one-of, finding it is sped up immensely by...

Machinate is simply awesome in this deck. Okay, under some circumstances, it's strictly worse than Impulse. However, I've often been able to Machinate for eight or more cards. With the number of utility singletons I run in this deck, it almost operates as a tutor. Even if it doesn't draw into a singleton, it will then almost certainly draw into another Machinate.

Granite Shard is the deck's "thirdish" win condition. It's so slow that I never expect to be able to use it. Typically the shard acts more as board control or to speed along another win condition, but theoretically, twenty activations will win me the game!

Loxodon Warhammer is a recent addition to the deck. I realized that while all of my golems are huge, only one of them has trample. Anybody who's played a big creature deck knows that the chump block is your enemy, so I threw in the Warhammers more for the trample ability than for the power boost or the life gain. Of course, those things are considerable and I have mana to spare, which is why I chose Loxodon Warhammer over the alternative: Vulshok Battlehorns.

 

[Ephraim]

I'm also trying to determine how I could possibly port this deck to Peasant Magic. I'm not sure that it will work well, since the current build has two rares and fourteen rares in it.

Obviously, Bosh, Iron Golem, and Door to Notningness are just gone. I can also remove all four Lunar Avenger and replace them with four Myr Enforcer. I can also remove Granite Shard, Crystal Shard, and Skeleton Shard, replacing them with nothing for the time being.

With those cuts made, there's now nothing but red and blue costs in the deck, so I can safely remove both Gemstone Arrays. This leaves me with five uncommons: 2x Serum Tank and 3x Loxodon Warhammer. Unfortunately, this also leaves me with seven unfilled slots. I also may remove all three Darksteel Ingots, for ten slots, since I'm less reliant on having many colours of mana.

Since I intend to keep Leaden Myr in the deck, Pewter Golem makes up nicely for some of the fat I'm losing.

I am keenly feeling the loss of the Shards, since even as singletons, they provided some very handy backup for my creatures. To duplicate some of the functionality of Granite Shard, I am including 2x Viridian Longbow. To duplicate the power of Skeleton Shard, I am including 2x Undertaker, which has the added benefit of protecting Engineers. I'm not inclined to include Waterfront Bouncer in place of Crystal Shard. Instead, I'll include 2x Rush of Knowledge, since it will seldom draw me any fewer than four cards.

In the end, I think that these changes definitely make the deck worse than it is in its current state. Obviously, this is probably the case for any Peasant deck, although I think it's more apparent here than for some other families of decks. While I have some Peasant decks that stay the way they are when played against non-Peasant decks, I think I'd perform the swaps for this deck. Of course, I also think that this deck is strictly worse than Peasant Affinity, so in the end, this is really just a gedanks-experiment.

Summary:
-1 Bosh, Iron Golem
-1 Door to Nothingness
-4 Lunar Avenger
-1 Skeleton Shard
-1 Crystal Shard
-1 Granite Shard
-2 Gemstone Array
-3 Darksteel Ingot

+4 Myr Enforcer
+4 Pewter Golem
+2 Undertaker
+2 Viridian Longbow
+2 Rush of Knowledge

 

[NorrYtt]

I don't see how Hematite Golem is better than Myr Enforcer. Only if you are playing a dedicated Golem deck, and even then...

I'd play 4 Thirst for Knowledge over Machinate. But instead of that, I'd play Skullclamp. Engineers and ManaMyr love Skullclamp.

 

[Ephraim]

You may be right about Myr Enforcer. For the time being it is a Golem theme deck, so I am not going to make the switch. However, it is not infrequent for me to have four spare or more lying around, which makes the Hematite Golem a more powerful, if a more costly threat than Myr Enforcer. This deck packs a TON of mana acceleration which sits idle after I get my handful of Golems on the table, so having resources to pump the Hematite Golem by +4/+0 or more is seldom a problem.

As far as Thirst for Knowledge goes, I'd certainly use Thoughtcast before I use that, since it would net me the same card advantage without having to discard an artifact, even if it wouldn't dig me as deeply. However, note that because of the Serum Tanks, I seldom lack for cards. I do, on the other hand, often find myself in want of a particular card. Machinate works better in that situation.

I definitely don't want to put Skullclamp in the deck. Clamping the "workers" means that when I draw a Lunar Avenger, I'll have greater difficulty getting it into play with 4+ +1/+1 counters. The same problem applies to an active Hematite Golem, Skeleton or Granite Shard, Bosh, Iron Golem, or Door to Nothingness. Without a table full of mana generators, they're all pretty useless.

 

[Homestar]

im sorta confused about the overrall perpective of the deck........

whats the combo/theme and why?

 

[Exaulted_Leader]

There isn't a 'combo'. This is just a straight aggro deck.

He uses bigger low-cost sticks in the early game (Spire Golem, Hematite Golem) to level some damage against his opponent and/or trade-out defenders/attackers, then drops George Dubbya Bosh as a Coupe De Grace.


Engineers are really awesome. It's too bad they're neglected so often - it's essentially a poor-man's Mishra's Workshop.

 

[Exaulted_Leader]

NorrYtt: Unless you're playing Affinity, Myr Enforcer is a bad card. Seven mana for a 4/4? There's no chance you're dropping that as quickly as a Hematite Golem if your deck isn't designed specifically to take advantage of Affinity.

I'd imagine the early turn structure to go something like this: Island, go. Island, Engineer, go. Hematite Golem, go.

Now you have the equivalent of a Myr Enforcer of the table 4th turn - whereas you be waiting quite a few more turns if you'd just had an actualy enforcer. It's not likely that this deck will see an Enforcer played for less than 4, either, given that the objective is to see the opponent beaten to death before too many permanents are on the table.

 

[Homestar]

oooo, i c, seems pretty good.