Focus on Legacy: the Robotic Overlords

Today's focus is on Metalworker (and its bastardized cousin, Affinity).

Red Metalworker (Chris Van Meter, on 4/7/2013)

    4 Darksteel Citadel
    4 Great Furnace
    4 Ancient Tomb
    3 Cavern of Souls
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Wasteland

    1 Blightsteel Colossus
    4 Kuldotha Forgemaster
    3 Lodestone Golem
    4 Metalworker
    1 Myr Battlesphere
    1 Steel Hellkite
    1 Sundering Titan
    1 Wurmcoil Engine
    4 Goblin Welder

    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Grim Monolith
    2 Lightning Greaves
    1 Mox Diamond
    1 Staff Of Domination
    2 Trinisphere
    3 Voltaic Key

    Sideboard
    1 Bottled Cloister
    1 Crucible Of Worlds
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    2 Ratchet Bomb
    2 Relic of Progenitus
    1 Spine of Ish Sah
    1 Trinisphere
    1 Witchbane Orb
    1 Duplicant
    1 Lodestone Golem
    1 Platinum Emperion
    1 Wurmcoil Engine
    1 Karn Liberated

This deck harkens back to the era of Kai Budde's Wildfire (http://www.mtgdeckbuilder.net/Decks/ViewDeck/100895) and Jon Finkel's Tinker (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jon-finkels-tinker/). I include this mostly as a historical note, because I find the roots of decks interesting, and if you study Magic in great detail, you can save a lot of time not having to relearn old lessons.

So the first note is that: Metalworker decks aren't for people who hate to mulligan. I personally hate to mulligan, it seems to me that you cannot keep hands that do not have Metalworker / Grim Monolith and/or a threat.

That being said, this deck has a lot of powerful draws if you are running well.

Something as simple as: turn 1 Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith, Metalworker (which only leaves you with four cards in hand admittedly) means that the impetus is on your opponent to kill the Monolith or Metalworker or risk being buried by a large angry Robot.

Another (less unlikely sequence): turn 1 Ancient Tomb, Chalice on 1 into turn 2 City of Traitors + Lodestone Golem.

Kuldotha Forgemaster is the other key/angle of attack to this deck.

Sample draw: turn 1 Ancient Tomb, Lightning Greaves -> turn 2 Metalworker, Equip Greaves, reveal 3 artifacts (including Forgemaster), get them dead with Blightsteel Colossus that you have tinkered for with your Forgemaster.

Obviously that's one of your best possible draws, but it's not out of the realm of possibility to have it happen by t3 or 4.

On the flipside, this deck can have some extremely atrocious draws due to the fact that you basically need to draw 1-of each: Sol land, fatty, and artifact mana source.

Faithless Looting would help a great deal here, and perhaps that's something to explore.


Legacy Affinity:

//16
2 Underground Sea
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Ancient Tomb

//28
4 Etched Champion
4 Frogmite
4 Master of Etherium
4 Ornithopter
4 Signal Pest
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple of the Vault

//16
4 Cranial Plating
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Mox Opal
4 Thoughtcast

Sideboard
2 Dismember
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Perish

Here's a sample U/B Legacy Affinity list that I think has a lot of promise.

I think having Disciple / Ravager gets you a lot more bang for your buck than playing something like Memnite (or Myr Enforcer). It also makes it harder for people to just trade 1 for 1 with removal spells when you have a Ravager in play. However, I do like the idea of having Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas in the board to protect against decks that do board into a lot of removal (or even Pernicious Deed). Revoker is a card that I think is underplayed in Legacy, and it does a fair amount of work here.


I've also seen riffs on Affinity that have Stoneforge Mystic and Glimpse of Nature, but I don't like stretching our mana to three colors when you can get most of what you want in blue/black.