Day 22 - Share Your Noncreature 3-4 Mana Artifacts

We’re back for Day 22! If you want more info on this series, please refer to the original post. Yesterday we discussed Selesnya cards. Today we’re talking Noncreature 3-4 Mana Artifacts. Here’s what I run in my Legacy+ cube, 438 cards (on my way to 450), 7 or 8 on the Strix scale, basically no planeswalkers, and purposely powered-down lands:

[[Basalt Monolith]] has been around since the beginning of time. I used to cast a 4^(th) Ed [[Shivan Dragon]] off this card during playground games in fourth grade and thought I was hot shit. 31 years later, I got my eyes on better targets, perhaps infinite mana with [[Forensic Gadgeteer]].

[[Grafted Wargear]] remains a pet card. I love tempo builds in the Esper colors, and this helps those decks get across the finish line, to say nothing of this in red aggro. Dropping Wargear on a two-mana flyer, or [[Jacked Rabbit]], or [[Kari Zev, Skyship Raider]] feels soooooo good. Solid [[Stoneforge Mystic]] target, too.

[[Nettlecyst]] pops in and out of my cube, depending on the support package I’m running for artifacts. I recently added a small artifacts aggro package in red, so I resleeved my Nettlecyst as well.

[[Palantír of Orthanc]]: I think it was u/mikez4nder who criticized Palantír for feeling like it’s not a Magic card. I cannot get that critique out of my head now when I play Palantír. This card is powerful but weird, and definitely outside the usual play patterns. That said, it’s an impactful 3-mana artifact that does fit into a number of decks, especially of the slower/grindier variety, which could use a leg up these days. It’s also an unfortunate reminder of a rather evil company in our country that I made a killing on in the stock market after my tech friends recommended it, and now feel I rather ashamed, as that company appears more and more like a dystopian state operator out of 1984. Fuck those guys.

[[Relic of Sauron]] continuing our theme of LOTR artifacts, Relic makes me laugh about how recently I was still running [[Thran Dynamo]] and [[Hedron Archive]]. This combines the best of both those cards: meaningful mana production plus card draw that can swing games that go late. Awesome art, too.

[[The One Ring]] is a slamdunk p1p1, a top 5 card in my cube. Honestly, it’s probably top 1, depending on how you feel about Bomba, Flash, Frog, and Academy (which is the order, in my head, in my cube). Thing about the ring, of course, is that it goes into literally any deck, and is always impactful. Blinking this is often game ending, [[Formidable Speaker]] and others untap it, and there’s more ways than ever to sac it before it kills you.

Notable omission: I miss [[Tangle Wire]] and [[Thran Dynamo]], victims of power creep, if only because it means two fewer old-bordered artifacts in my cube. I cut [[Crucible of Worlds]] because I like all the Green versions, helping to better establish the Lands theme in that color. And I continue to think that [[Coalition Relic]] is just a touch too slow nowadays, but I may sleeve mine up again at a moment’s notice.

What are you all running?

Tomorrow we will discuss 0-2 Noncreature Mana Artifacts