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By: AJ_Impy, AJ Richardson
Jan 20 2014 1:00pm
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Hello and welcome to Robot Week! This week, we'll be looking at all things Golem and Construct, delving into the mysteries of metal men in Magic. As PureMTGO's resident mad scientist (I've been doing all sorts of things here for the past seven years!), who better than I to bring these artificial creations to life? So, sit back, grab yourself the refreshing beverage of your choice and read on as we kick this theme week into life. Igor, hit the switch!

 

This week will be focusing on three of the main types of artificial being, namely the mid-sized or greater humanoid Golems, the generally small and hive like Myr, and the catch-all constructs. My own interests tend towards the Tribal Wars format, and so to get the week going I’ll be demonstrating each of those tribes accordingly. Let’s start with the constructs. Whilst the Myr have a distinct tribal identity and are tied to a single world ( Sarcomite Myr notwithstanding), and whilst golems have been around since Alpha with an identity as large humanoids with a degree of autonomy, Constructs are best described as 'everything else'. Some are humanoid, but some are just jangling, spiky masses on insectile legs, and others are dirigibles, stagecoaches, catapults or adorable little poppets. Quite a few do interesting things with +1/+1 counters, such as the old Survival Ooze combo pair of Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer, but this is not a defining or unifying trait for the tribe as a whole. We'll kick things into gear with a nearly unique property of the tribe, creatures that cost 0. Let's abuse that with an old favourite deck of mine with a combo based on Russian nesting dolls:

 

Matriyoshka Constructs
Inside the egg is a beast. Inside the beast is GG.
Creatures
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Summoner's Egg
1 Thermal Navigator
4 Phyrexian Walker
3 Phyrexian Marauder
4 Steel Overseer
4 Protean Hulk
4 Memnite
28 cards

Other Spells
4 Tempered Steel
4 Spawning Pit
4 Springleaf Drum
12 cards
Lands
4 Savannah
4 Krosan Verge
4 Scrubland
4 High Market
1 Phyrexian Tower
2 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
20 cards
 
Disciple of the vault

 

The heart of the deck is a variant of the old flash hulk combo, using (Summoner’s Egg) in place of the banned instant to cheat the hulk into play. The deck runs a variety of sacrifice outlets to help go off at instant speed, including the singleton thermal navigator as a fetch target. Get the disciples and 0- and X-cost constructs into play, sacrifice as needed, and your opponent is dead. As an alternate plan, Steel Overseer and Tempered Steel turn the free artifact creatures into credible threats, and work well with the {Spawning Pit} tokens as well. The Spawning Pits and Disciples are useful safeguards against mass removal, and the Springleaf Drums allow for a lower land count.  

 

Blightsteel Colossus Colossus of Akros

  

Golems generally have a higher billing than Constructs, in every sense of the word. Wizards have never printed a legendary or mythic Construct, whereas Golems have two of the former and enough of the latter to build an entire Tribal deck with, which is a very uncommon distinction. You're generally looking at a power/toughness total in the Hill Giant range at a minimum with just a couple of exceptions, capping out at some of the biggest monsters in the game. Where Constructs had multiples of the cheapest creatures possible, Golems are bettered only by Eldrazi and a couple of the biggest Wurms in terms of extravagant mana costs. I'm in an extravagant mood, so let's go that way.

This past weekend saw the annual Tribal Apocalypse invitational. This event pitches the top sixteen players from that player run event against each other in a single elimination test of skill, with each round requiring a different deck with new restrictions. I was fortunate enough to take part and in one round I submitted this little number. Whereas the Construct deck was a mix of aggro and combo, Golems lend themselves more to control, and nothing quite beats being able to run 8 creatures capable of killing an opponent in one swing:

 

 

 Working from a Sixteenpost base, the deck is built to ramp early into killing the opponent with a minimum of fuss. With Solemn Simulacrum and Brass Herald for card advantage and Lodestone Golem to buy time and make Juggernaut cry, the twin colossi share the virtue of hitting for the entirety of an opponent’s starting life or poison capacity. Bonfire of the Damned serves double duty as a one-sided wrath and finishing burn, and can get truly ridiculous with a sufficient number of Cloudposts, with or without a miracle. All is Dust is similarly one-sided, but also serves to get rid of enchantments, planeswalkers, indestructible creatures, destructible creatures and coloured artifacts. The brace of Spine of Ish Sah act as recurring spot removal thanks to the (Phyrexia’s Core)s with (Predator Flagship) acting as a classy way to give your one hit killers evasion and as an option for shotgunning any opposing creatures. The singleton Karn Liberated is there to exile things, empty hands and generally add to the feeling of grim, helpless inevitability which you’d want your opponent to feel in an event like this. Plus, as the Golem planeswalker, he fits in stylistically as well.
 
Myr Galvanizer Lodestone Myr Palladium Myr

Moving on to our final batch of helpful little robots, we have the tribe whose name is synonymous with 'arbitrarily large combo'. These guys have so many ways of infinitely looping that it seems '20 goto 10' is enshrined in their source code. Two Myr Retriever and a Krark-Clan Ironworks, Myr Welder exiling Staff of Domination and Palladium Myr, the possibilities are literally endless. It would be remiss, nay, churlish if we didn't indulge this proclivity for infinity. So, how about an arbitrarily large amount of mana, creatures, cards and power/toughness on a trampler?

Myr Infinity
The name is originally from the Greek for 'Ant'.
Creatures
4 Myr Galvanizer
4 Lodestone Myr
4 Myr Retriever
4 Palladium Myr
4 Myr Propagator
20 cards

Other Spells
4 Well of Knowledge
4 Myr Turbine
4 Myr Matrix
4 Myr Reservoir
16 cards
Lands
5 Island
3 Academy Ruins
4 Glimmerpost
4 Halimar Depths
4 Tolaria West
4 Cloudpost
24 cards
 
Well of Knowledge

 

A brace of Myr Galvanizers and a Palladium Myr are all we need for infinite mana. That in turn gives us infinite myr with Myr Propagator or Myr Matrix, infinite cards from the Well of Knowledge, and infinite size on the Lodestone Myr. This is a bit of a carpal tunnel deck, but it has the capability to fetch up the combo pieces from graveyard or library as necessary to give it some much-needed resilience, and has no shortage of ways to overwhelm the opposition. Cloudposts are less essential here than in the deck trying to hardcast 12-mana game-enders, but our utility blue lands can both help in that regard.

I'll leave it at that for the time being, as my esteemed colleagues will be along in the days ahead to entertain and fascinate you with more in-depth looks into what the many and varied robots of Magic have to offer, and I have no desire to trample upon their toes. You have a lot to look forward to, so until next time, raise a toast in salute to Karel Čapek!

1 Comments

Each of these decks is a by Paul Leicht at Tue, 01/21/2014 - 01:01
Paul Leicht's picture
5

Each of these decks is a classic AJ deck and I remember playing and tuning these decks with you. I can't say I am a huge fan of robots in tribal but if you are bringing them, might as well do so in style. I am a little surprised you didn't show off some of the fun stuff with Spine of ish sha and Krark Clan Ironworks that you came up with when spine first came out. That inspired some of my own later builds.