I wish there were a few more people like you DJ that had the game and could give us real evidence. It's fun knowledge in this bit of dry period.

I'm excited to visit the thopter archetype, but I have a hard time grasping its power level untested and haven't really looked at the deck concept too much. Lot of support at slots 3 and 4 on the curve at a glance. Can go wide, but does the deck take advantage of that? That's sort of why I like elves. Support is along the curve, I think the gold card might be a tad stronger. Might of the Masses type cards can sneak wins going wide. Green gives you Evolutionary Leap.

I haven't seen much of reclusive artificer in current lists. Very similar to shaman of the pack - except Shaman can ONLY do face burn, artificer can also target creatures. 3/2 vs. 2/3 haste is kinda a wash. The real issue is whether elves can amass elves much more easily than a thopter deck can amass thopters.

I posted my list previously, one thing I think is worth mentioning is that if you ONLY use the blue / red artificer cards your curve is going to be pretty screwy. But you can easily construct a curve the includes artifact creatures in the 1-3 CMC range. I don't know whether thopters is ultimately going to be viable in playtesting, but I would encourage people looking at this archetype to consider colorless cards rather than just the U/R cards that give you thopters.

The synergy is "artifacts matter," not a single card in the pool is "thopters matter."

Unfortunately, artificer can only target creatures. It's good, but not that good. IMO the elf is more dangerous, but artificer might be more useful as a card - e.g. Dual use, creature and removal at the same time. Here's the issue with all of these UR cards: they don't have internal synergy. They are artificers, not artifacts, and it really lowers the power of the deck.

That factor probably tips the balance towards elves.

We'll take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm trying real hard to find unusual angles of attack. It's not that I'm not a spike player (or at least that I don't prefer spike decks), but I do tend to enjoy spike/Johnny over pure spike. That means that I am not building the optimal decks right now.

Keep that in mind, because if you have a different mentality, you can expect a different experience. I firmly believe that I won't really be able to craft awesome decks until the first expansion.

That said, I'm happy to report, and I'm happy to give as much insight as I manage to gather.

awesome DJ, it's certainly fun to talk about in the very least. I've been liking elves since the beginning but I think it'll be hard to play out-of-the-box for players like me that plan to grind

I’m going to have to disagree with some of you about elves. I think thopters are objectively better simply because of evasion. Flying 1/1s are so much better than regular 1/1 tokens because they don't get blocked on the ground. Thopters can turn sideways in the air most of the time whereas elves are just sitting there waiting for you to generate enough to one-turn kill using Might of the Masses or something similar. Elves have access to a engine card that can provide more 1/1s in the 4 mana 3/3 play an elf get a token but thopters have card draw from Thopter Spy Network and Artificer's Epiphany, the individual token producers are better on their own i.e. Whirler Rogue and Thopter Engineer stand out to me here, and they have access to more Lord affects in Thunderclap Wyvern + Chief of the Foundry than Elves' Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen. Finally, it's easier to generate thopter tokens than elf tokens in the current pool because elves are very reliant on the engine card + elf spells where thopters can stick a Whirler rogue or something similar and not feel as bad about it being removed because it already gave them value.

That said, I think Zendikar will bring more elf tribal synergy and thopters (probably) will not get any further support making elves better in the long-run. I also suspect Goblins will get some synergy cards in the expansion. But that's just speculation at this point.

I'm not even sure thopter spy network is playable. All of these decks have too many options at 4 mana. It's really hard to parse out the best builds, or figure out the best mana curve. Too many good, but not enough great cards, IMO.

Um, I have a pretty solid curve in my Thopter deck list on page 1. You should go check it out. The only thing that I am not really sure about is the stupid 5 mana 3/3 sac an artifact to shock something. Also, I can't say that Thopter Spy Network is a reliable card but I think it'll stick more often than the elf engine because enchantment removal is far less easy to come by judging by the lists in this forum. Also Thopter Spy Network is just a big bomb in general. If it's going to be playable (and really good) in limited and sealed then I don't see why it won't excel in this format as well. It's definitely a threat that needs to be dealth with or it just takes over the game. And, if you an artifact already out, it draws you a card the same turn which negates the drawback of most enchantments that don't immediately impact the board.

I'm running something a bit different. I'll post shortly. scratch that, I'm not posting untested builds anymore. It will be a while still.

See that UW Control deck from SCG Chicago that ran Thopter Spy Network? Ridiculous. Kind of wish we had Darksteel Citadel and Hangarback Walker available to us.

We have exactly two of those cards to play with, lol. (Not counting lands of course)

Btw, what are the best answers to Elves in RB artifacts? That's the question we all need to answer in order to make the deck viable. Because, for the deck to viable, it needs to curb stomp elves. Taking them out one at a time might be okay, but really, you need to do better than that. You aren't going to win the race, at least not normally.

Mass Production Factory ()

4 x Perilous Myr
4 x Alchemist's Vial
4 x Ghirapur Gearcrafter
3 x Esperzoa
3 x Chief of the Foundry
3 x Thopter Engineer
2 x Ghirapur Æther Grid
3 x Whirler Rogue
3 x Reclusive Artificer
2 x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 x Thopter Spy Network
3 x Into the Maw of Hell


2x Foundry of the Consuls
2x Sulfur Falls
4x Izzet Guildgate
8x Island
8x Mountain

My version of the Thopter deck. I throw away almost all instants and sorceries to emphasize the artifact theme, but it is not like the deck is without removal. Many cards have a double role of removal and other advantage.

And Perilous Myr, due to Chief of the Foundry, can trade with a 4 toughness creature.

The only sorceries are Into the Maw of Hell. Just to deal with cards out of your burning range, but you will have a lot of blockers until there. So i don't think this will be exactly a problem.

Perilous Myr and Twin Bolt. Otherwise you can just race them since Twin Bolt doubles as reach and more likely to make Thopter tokens (with evasion!) on curve than Elves anyway.

Jagged-scar archers answer your thopters just fine, as I found out the very hard way earlier today. In fact, so does Dwynen. It's a bad matchup, and you will run into it, lots. And elves could justifiably main deck enchant/artifact hate, I mean, why wouldn't they given the decent number of dangerous enchantments in the pool right now, and the fact that the hate is on an elf body.

I mention all of this, because BG elves is everywhere.

Edit: the question is worth discussing, even if the deck in question isn't artifacts. What's the answer in UR in general?

Realistically how many copies of Jagged-scar Archers are people going to be running, though? Max 2? It comes down with summon sickness and after that it has to tap to kill a 1/1 flying token each turn. There's no way to untap it and kill multiple fliers at once. I think recovering from Languish would be a more difficult than dealing with Jagged-scar Archers.

Anyway, every deck has bad matchups. You don’t need an answer for everything in every deck. That’s why thopters (and elves) are linear. You’re not supposed to care about what your opponent is doing because what you are doing something synergy-wise that is supposed to beat whatever they can do without that level of synergy. But if you really want to dilute that strategy than you add Claustrophobia and Jagged-scar Archers can no longer tap to kill your stuff. You can add Fiery Conclusion or Exquisite Firecraft to kill Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen if you really want to…

Point being: there are plenty of answers. It's just, usually, not worth limiting your own startegy to make one bad match up slightly better. It'll cost you more games in the long run than it's worth.

edit: That's just my two cents. I don't want to fill up this thread with back-and-forth arguments so I'll leave the discussion where it's at until I actually get my hands on the game.

Definitely not arguing with you, just trying to get the juices flowing, for me too btw. I play against elves between 1 and 2 times out of every three games. Auto or likely loss to elves is a big problem (at least for now).

Maybe it will be different on other platforms.

So here's a thought sigil of valor might be an option. Board flood, unblockable from the land or the creature that taps two artifacts, and then fake exhalted. Flameshadow to help flood tokens, because the ETB tokens stay.

Possibly.

Oh baby, when you brought the question to the table, I had just remembered all the other things Dwynen actually had written on her. That 4 toughness and reach. Even the lifegain to help race. Pack your Exquisite Firecraft I guess. A copy or two of Fiery Conclusion doesn't sound terrible given the token fodder hanging around this pairing.

It's a shame Chandra's Ignition seems slightly more difficult to work with in these colors too, since red and blue creatures can be pretty small.

How playable is Juggernaut? Thopter Engineer into Juggernaut can be unexpected. Juggernaut + Chandra's Ignition could melt the battlefield. And then finally Whirler Rogues can help minimize it falling prey to a bad forced attack.

All good ideas and points. This is why I was talking about these issues.

On the subject... Juggernaut is very good. Unblockable juggernaut is nasty, and easily accomplished. Chandra's Ignition on juggernaut will kill all creatures except a wall (which can't block it anyway), and the 6/6 black demon and 6/6 green renowned. I believe everything else would die in the entire pool, but there might be a couple more that I'm forgetting. Afterwards it's a 2 turn clock, assuming you start from 20. Bottomline, it's not just anti-elves tech, IMO.

Problem though. It will kill all of the tokens, yours included, so that deck better contain the thopter factory as well. Additional problem, lots of cards at 4cmc for this concept.