Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying 'Get cloudpost out of Pure' (Quite the opposite, I'm more than a little fond of the card and enjoy using it to full effect), just speculating. Construct being one win away from a pure ban opens up all sorts of questions as to what the best card in the deck is. BoB's suggestion of All is Dust has some merit in one-sided board wipes are powerful, and the cost is easily mitigated in the decks which benefit. Candelabra, does anyone else beside me play it? It's a tad pricy which may well be impacting its appeal. Cloudpost is the strength of quite a few ramp decks, but as you say, it's a lynchpin of that archetype.

I suspect we might well be able to go for a tribe specific option when Construct gets its fifth win. Walking Ballista really is that good.

1. It is honestly hard to say because you can lose easily or win just as easily. RDW is fast and strong, but you get cheap answers like Disfigure, Dead Weight and Hydroblast to take care of their guys for cheap and if they do not have a removal spell or a Goblin Heelcutter, Sea Gate Oracle can block all of their guys. It isn't an easy matchup, but I believe it is 50/50 or slightly in your favor, depending on how you construct your 75.

2. Actually I have never faced bogles with the deck. I can't imagine bogles is a good matchup and that is why you will see most lists run some number of Aura Flux in the sideboard. I mean sure, you have Chainer's Edict, but as any seasoned bogles player will know how to play around edict type effects.

You will enjoy it. It can be a lot of fun and you can easily adapt to the metagame.

The Woof: Agreed. That's how I see it too.

You can substitute shamans for smash to smithereens and you should be fine. Thank you for helping with the prices :)

The rule is ambiguous and therefore hard to decipher any reasonable conclusion. That said, going by the rule one could interpret saying "combat" be invoking a shortcut. The only reasonable assumption to me on the rule would be this shortcut would bring you to the beginning of combat. So someone would be within their right to say "combat" and then crew and then go to declare attackers going by the rule as written.

The shortcut is the way it is because it's pretty rare that the active player wants to do anything in their own beginning of combat step (instead of their own main phase), and it's similarly rare that the non-active player wants to do anything in their opponent's main phase (instead of their beginning of combat step); to be fair, a "beginning of combat" trigger is one of the potential exceptions to both of these. So to avoid making people explicitly pass priority in the step they almost never use, the active player is assumed to pass in beginning of combat, and the non-active player is assumed to pass in their opponent's main, unless the appropriate player explicitly says otherwise. I definitely don't agree with expecting people to say, "Go to combat," "OK," "pass beginning of combat," "OK," " attack," when practically every time they could just say, "go to combat," "OK," " attack." That said, it is somewhat confusing - the alternate form of the shortcut, "declare [my] attack[ers]", is much clearer. (Hopefully if you say this, it means you think the next thing that should be happening is you declare attackers.)

OK, let's apply that rule.

Cesar says "combat"; let's assume that counts as invoking this rule (if you don't agree with this, say so).
Thien doesn't object; according to the shortcut, it is now Cesar's beginning of combat step, and Thien has priority. (Implicitly, since Cesar gets priority in each step before Thien, Cesar has passed priority in the same step. As the trigger should have already triggered but was Cesar's responsibility, it is missed. If you don't agree with any of this, say so - I admit I'm not sure on the missed trigger rules.)
Thien passes priority. Since both players passed priority, the game proceeds to the next step, which Cesar's declare attackers step. Cesar must declare attackers immediately (nobody has priority); since the vehicle is not a creature, it cannot attack.
Does all of this sound right?

For what it's worth, in Cesar's place if I have a beginning of combat trigger what I would've said is, "pass priority in main phase" to go to the point where it triggers. I do think that it's easy to confuse "go to combat" (the shortcut) with "go to my beginning of combat step" (literal description, go to the trigger), especially for a non-native English speaker. So maybe the rules should have some provision to deal with partial language barriers, and maybe this particular shortcut shouldn't allow phrasings ("combat") that can be so easily confused with other intended actions, but with the rules as they are I think the ruling at the time was correct.

That said, this is only excusable on Cesar's part if his intent was to first stack the +2/+0 trigger targeting a Scrapheap Scrounger, and second either crew the Heart of Kiran and attack or attack without crewing it. If his intent was to crew the Heart of Kiran and give it +2/+0, the last chance to crew it is during his main phase, since if he goes to "combat" (beginning or declare attackers, shortcut or no) with Heart not a creature, it's not a legal target for Weldfast Engineer. In that case, passing priority in any way and giving Thien a chance to respond gives up that chance if Thien doesn't respond; at best this is a (game, not tournament) rules misunderstanding on Cesar's part; at worst, it's "Do you have any fast effects?" repeated, trying to bait out instant-speed effects from Thien and if he says no, playing something you should've passed your chance to play.

So this is the exact text "• A statement such as "I'm ready for combat" or "Declare attackers?" offers to keep passing priority until an opponent has priority in the beginning of combat step. Opponents are assumed to be acting
then unless they specify otherwise. "

This does not equate to saying "combat" moves you directly to declare attackers from my perspective.

If we saw the actual rule we could all play judge to its accuracy in enforcement. Without the rule text we are all just speculating.

Yes it is in the rules, not exact phrasing, but that cant be reasonably discussed/opposed.

What CAN be discussed is this;
The problem with the whole "combat(-phase) ?" / "attack(-phase) ?" judgewotcery is that it never was a shortcut in the first place. They took the simplest advancement of gameplay(one that NEVER skipped any step) and CONJURED it into a shortcut.

The only way to hold priority in beginning of combat is to reveal what you want to do before the game is at that step(in first main phase), and that is stupidnonsensery.

This has no paralell in the rules/game, never ever have you had to tell in advance what to do.

I think if Magic is going to be played/judged to this level of precision then the rules need to be at that same level of precision. I look at this in a purely binary sense. I DO deny that it is very clear that "combat" is a shortcut to pass to Declare Attackers. Why? Because I see no rules that state this. Show me a rule that states if a player states "combat" during a game then it is to be considered a shortcut to declare attackers phase. Do not show me a rule that says if the player says "I'm ready for combat" and say that is the same as "combat" unless the rules identify it as such.

Overall whether the person is English speaking or not is irrelevant, if the rules stated these shortcuts and the game is being played/judged to this level of precision then everything is clear. That said, I think Magic should not be played to this level of precision so that a game can't be won on such small technicalities. Takes the fun out of the game and goes against the spirit of a "game" in my opinion.