Tezzeret has always been one of my favorite walkers outside of his unhealthy obsession with Bolas. Scars of Mirrodin block Tezzeret was a fantastic card. While this new one feels lackluster, I wanted to make a deck with him and all his favorite artifacts.
3x
Fatal Push - There's a few ways to trigger this. Tezzeret himself can create an artifact that can be sac'd to pay the cost and conveniently trigger the revolt. Beyond that, we have 9 lands that you can sacrifice at will and a rather clunky way of enabling it with
Underhanded Designs if you find yourself needing to remove two things.
2x
Scrapheap Scrounger - Cheap artifact to enable aggressive starts, comes back after
Filigree Familiar and
Treasure Keeper have fulfilled their role, and can pilot any vehicle in the deck if attacking on the ground gets too clogged up.
2x
Smuggler's Copter - Servo tokens and thopter tokens ensure this can always be piloted, provides deck filtering, and benefits from
Tezzeret's Touch more than most cards in this deck early on.
3x
Servo Schematic - While it lags behind most two drops, it provides a pilot for the
Smuggler's Copter and
Aethersphere Harvester and can get some value from an early
Tezzeret's Touch.
3x
Underhanded Designs - Prior to Aether Revolt, there weren't enough good artifacts to make this worthwhile. This works in two ways for this deck. It creates the sort of grindy games Tezzeret is known for by lifetapping and serves as unconditional removal when needed.
3x
Chief of the Foundry - With all the servos, vehicles, and thopters this is good at closing out games (and attracting removal).
3x
Filigree Familiar - Small life boost, replaces itself on death, and can benefit from
Tezzeret's Touch very well albeit not on curve.
2x
Aethersphere Harvester - Cheap crew cost, enables servos getting in the air, and has lifelink to boost up the life total against more aggressive decks.
3x
Tezzeret's Touch - Enables some very aggressive starts or gives you value from cards like
Servo Schematic,
Filigree Familiar, or
Treasure Keeper. The latter doesn't benefit from it as much, but it's still a good target.
2x
Thought-Knot Seer - Since colorless lands are not an issue for this deck, this card has a powerful enough effect to warrant inclusion even without being an artifact especially since we added
Distended Mindbender, further dismantling your opponent's hand. Can still keep
Padeem, Consul of Innovation in this slot if you're having problems with spot removal on your artifacts.
3x
Treasure Keeper - The only time its death doesn't do anything good for you is when it pulls a
Fatal Push without your opponent having any CMC 4 or less in play, but at that point you're probably winning anyway.
2x
Thopter Spy Network - Makes you more resilient to board wipes by providing pilots for your vehicles immediately. The card draw is nice since we don't have any other card draw in the deck.
1x
Tezzeret the Schemer - Admittedly pretty weak as far as walkers go, but it is sorcery speed removal and able to trigger
Fatal Push and create free
Underhanded Designs triggers with the mana artifact he creates.
1x
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship - Still a good card. Not much to see here.
1x
Herald of Anguish - Further pushing the discard theme while being a very solid turn 4 play. The ability to sac an artifact and reduce the overall power and toughness of a critter is situational at best, but it can be useful.
2x
(
)
Distended Mindbender - Sacrifice a
Filigree Familiar on turn 4 and watch your opponent concede or sacrifice
Treasure Keeper and get that value straight away. Excellent card I previously overlooked for this deck, but fits like a glove.
Lands
4x
Island4x
Swamp2x
Sunken Hollow2x
Drowned Catacomb2x
Inventors' Fair3x
Foundry of the Consul3x
Aether Hub4x
Evolving WildsNotable exclusions
Grasp of Darkness - Too heavily focused on
to use as reliable removal for a deck with a lot of colorless sources.
Metallic Rebuke - It can certainly find its place here, but often times I'd rather just progress my own board and wouldn't be able to hold this up until at least turn 5. I'd rather just use
Padeem, Consul of Innovation if I'm worried about protecting my stuff.
Baral's Expertise - It's certainly worth considering, but you'd also need to include more draw in the deck to maximize the benefits which pushes the deck further into a control role.
Reverse Engineer - This was the last card to be cut when I found out I didn't have space. It's quite good, maybe even better than
Chief of the Foundry which would likely be the first card cut from the list, but it's not as good at closing out games and piloting vehicles.
Lupine Prototype - I played with this briefly. The discard theme meant it was able to attack some time between turn 5 and 8, but playing it on turn two really slows you down unless you follow it up with an
Aethersphere Harvester, but since they're both rares, it's not reliable.
Ob Nixilis Reignited and
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets - Planeswalkers are always good, but they're too top heavy and you typically don't have turns where you'd have anything to defend them anyway.
Heart of Kiran - While it is a cheap vehicle that we can target with
Tezzeret's Touch immediately, the crew cost is unfortunately high and can only be paid with multiple creatures or the rare
Scrapheap Scrounger. The best way to crew it is by paying Planeswalker loyalty and this deck only plays one.