This week I begin a new challenge: playing Goblin Welder within a Legacy Tezzerator shell. I wanted to explore a deck archetype that is generally miserable for everyone to play against (that isn’t Pox). I recently was going to dive into Commander and try my hand at brewing in a truly broken format, but I figured I would let a friend take care of that for me. Spoiler alert for some great new content coming soon at a Hipsters of the Coast near you.
To get back on topic, Tezzerator tends to lack fast win conditions, generally sticking to Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo. I am going to try to employ a fun little combo using Goblin Welder, Intruder Alarm, and Wurmcoil Engine as a way to go infinite making wurm tokens to eventually just swing out and kill our opponent. Here is where the deck is currently, after several revisions.
Alarmed Welder
| Lands (20) 4 Ancient Tomb 1 Badlands 3 Island 4 Polluted Delta 2 Seat of the Synod 2 Swamp 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island Creatures (8) 4 Goblin Welder 1 Noxious Gearhulk 3 Wurmcoil Engine Spells (32) 4 Blood Moon 4 Chrome Mox 4 Force of Will 3 Intruder Alarm 3 Intuition 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 3 Mox Diamond 3 Painful Truths 3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas 3 Thirst for Knowledge | Sideboard (15) 4 Chalice of the Void 2 Ensnaring Bridge 2 Kozilek’s Return 3 Helm of Obedience 4 Leyline of the Void |
I have been playing around with a lot of different cards and the deck has gone through many changes with a wide variety of card choices ranging from Daretti, Scrap Savant, Dack Fayden, Dimir Signet, Izzet Signet, Chalice of the Void (maindeck) and also Cavern of Souls to avoid the obvious Chalice for one into Goblin Welder nombo.
Creatures
Goblin Welder is basically the value engine that we need while also being part of an infinite combo with Intruder Alarm and other artifact creatures moving between the graveyard and battlefield. It also gives us something to do with unnecessary Chrome Mox later in the game.
Noxious Gearhulk and Wurmcoil Engine are our payoffs from Goblin Welder. While Wurmcoil Engine is also a very resilient win condition, Noxious Gearhulk is a decent way to help stabilize a board and get some life back after an aggressive start from an opponent.
Combo
Having an Intruder Alarm in play means that when we use Welder to return Wurmcoil Engine, our Welder then untaps due to Alarm’s ability which allows us to untap Welder and then switch Wurmcoil for another artifact. Once Wurmcoil leaves behind two tokens we have two triggers from Alarm to resolve and can use that as an opportunity to sacrifice a token to return Wurmcoil to play again allowing us to untap Welder again to repeat the process as many times as we would like. I have included Intuition as a means to easily find the pieces that we need to get the combo set up.
Prison
Rather than the traditional route of Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere in the main, I have opted for the more misery-inducing mana denial card Blood Moon. I found that although Chalice of the Void was great at reducing the amount of Swords to Plowshares that could break up the combo, I have realized that many of the decks that I want to shut off of removal fold to Blood Moon anyway. Having access to Chalice of the Void post board gives us plenty of option play against combo decks which often struggle against Blood Moon as well strategies anyway.
To supplement and offset Blood Moon I have included Mox Diamond as well as Chrome Mox to not only improve our chance at a first turn Blood Moon, but also help to fix our mana through a Moon.
Planeswalkers
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a very regular inclusion in Tezzerator style decks being fairly easy to cast on turn two with the aid of mana rocks like Dimir Signet and Sol Lands like Ancient Tomb to help us get ahead on mana quickly.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is a very obvious conclusion in a deck known as Tezzerator. Essentially drawing an extra card every turn, turning our mana rocks into 5/5 beaters and being able to drain out our opponent later into the game with his ultimate. Like Jace we can get a Tezzeret out as early as turn two with the help of mana rocks and Sol Lands. With the inherent card disadvantage of running cards like Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond, being able to gain back some card advantage early helps to keep us ahead on the board.
Daretti, Scrap Savant although not included in the most recent deck list had some decent advantages in being a discard outlet as well as a repeatable Trash for Treasure which allows us to still return our pay offs without needing a Goblin Welder. I did find overall that Daretti just didn’t feel good enough for the deck, it is possible that I should have been testing Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast.
Dack Fayden is a card that I have wanted to play for a very long time and I just wasn’t impressed. While you are enabled to cycle through your deck, the looting just wasn’t good enough when we’re looking for raw card advantage. I never got to use the artifact stealing mode and I wasn’t sure if Chains of Mephistopheles should have been in here or not. Although if I was to add Chains to the deck, you better believe that Dack would be coming right back in.
Sideboard
Chalice of the Void and Leyline of the Void are here to help in the fight against combo decks. I had included Helm of Obedience so I figured why not use Leyline as a way to hopefully “just get ’em” as I almost did recently against Sneak and Show. Unfortunately Griselbrand is a much better card coming in off Show and Tell and helps you draw into cards like Echoing Truth for the Leyline.
I have included a pair of Kozilek’s Return as an answer to creature strategies like Death and Taxes. Ensnaring Bridge is also here to answer creature strategies but is usually going to be more relevant against decks like Sneak and Show, BUG Leovold and while it would usually shut down our creatures we have our trusty Goblin Welders to dump a Bridge when we are ready to start attacking.
Padeem, Consul of Innovation was in the maindeck and could likely come back at some point. Giving my artifacts hexproof and being out of range for an Abrupt Decay was relevant in some of my testing, the upkeep trigger never failed to draw me cards so long as I even had an artifact but the really rough part was being a Legendary Creature made Padeem very awkward against opposing Karakas. It is possible now that Blood Moon has hit the main board that I should try bringing Padeem back. Testing and time will tell.
Helm of Obedience was originally included as our “anti-hate” card for when our opponent thinks that their Rest in Peace is so cute. It also happens to be a decent clock against fast decks when we need to just kill them with minimal time and effort.
Initial Thoughts
The mana has been miserable overall and I have restricted some of the color requirements while moving away from Signets and towards Moxen to hopefully give us a much easier time having the correct mana. This is my most recent list that I have yet to test and will be testing in the coming weeks. I suspect that with the inclusion of Blood Moon I will regret not keeping the Signet over Moxen.
Another concern of mine is that originally I did not feel as though I had enough relevant artifacts to flip with Tezzeret which is why I moved towards Daretti and Dack to cycle through the deck. By slightly increasing the number of artifacts in the form of Moxen I am hoping that Blood Moon is more easily supported and wil not be more of an inconvenience for me than my opponent.
Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges on Twitter. 🙂
Aaron Gazzaniga works part time at a game store and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas. If you want to contact Aaron tweet @aarongazzaniga