Against the Odds: Repurposing Bay (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Aetherdrift Standard to tutor up some artifacts with our new artifact Birthing Pod, Repurposing Bay! The power of Repurposing Bay is twofold. First, it's a great way to find Simulacrum Synthesizer (while also being three mana to trigger it), and Synthesizer is easily the best finisher for an artifact deck in Standard. Second, Repurposing Bay's tutoring power lets us play a bunch of sweet ones-ofs and find them when we need them. Oh yeah, and the return of affinity for artifacts lets us do some wild things, like casting a Demonic Junker for just one mana and then using Repurposing Bay to turn it into an eight-drop! How good is Repurposing Bay in Standard? What cool artifacts can it tutor up? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Repurposing Bay
Discussion
Our deck today is an artifact deck. In fact, every single nonland in the main deck is an artifact. We're built around two cards. The first, and most exciting, is Repurposing Bay, which is literally a Birthing Pod but for artifacts. The three-drop lets us sacrifice an artifact to tutor an artifact costing one more mana to the battlefield. If you look at our deck's curve, we have artifacts that cost from zero mana all the way up to nine mana (with Portal to Phyrexia topping our curve) for Repurposing Bay to find.
Meanwhile, Simulacrum Synthesizer is our primary finisher, making massive Construct tokens whenever an artifact of mana value three or greater enters the battlefield under our control. It works incredibly well with Repurposing Bay in multiple ways. First, we can cast Repurposing Bay to trigger Simulacrum Synthesizer to make a construct. Second and more importantly, we can use Repurposing Bay to find Simulacrum Synthesizer when it's time to close out the game. Third, since Simulacrum Synthesizer cares about expensive artifacts entering the battlefield rather than being cast, we can do things like cast a Demonic Junker to make a Construct and then sacrifice it to Repurposing Bay to tutor up a Cityscape Leveler to make another Construct, which ends up being an absurd amount of power and toughness added to the battlefield for very little mana!
While much of our deck is about chaining artifacts up the curve fairly with Repurposing Bay, we have two cheat cards that let us jump the curve thanks to affinity for artifacts in Memory Guardian and Demonic Junker. If we can get some artifacts on the battlefield (which is what our deck is designed to do), we can cast either for just a single mana even though they technically have mana values of five and seven, respectively.
In practice, this means we can play a Memory Guardian for one mana and then immediately turn it into Nexus of Becoming or Chimil, the Inner Sun for card advantage. If we have Simulacrum Synthesizer on the battlefield, we'll also make two Constructs! Nexus of Becoming is one of my favorite cards in the deck. It's super powerful, but because it's six mana, we can't afford to play a bunch of copies since they'll clog up our hand in the early game. Repurposing Bay solves this problem by allowing us to play Nexus as a one-of but still find it consistently!
Meanwhile, if we're on the Demonic Junker plan, we can play it, kill our opponent's best creature, maybe make a Construct if we have Simulacrum Synthesizer, and then use Repurposing Bay to turn it into Cityscape Leveler. Sadly, this is the only eight-drop in our deck since there aren't many good options in Standard. However, if Cityscape Leveler sticks, we can turn it into Portal to Phyrexia on the following turn to blow up our opponent's board and then eventually reanimate the Cityscape Leveler.
As far as the rest of the deck, part of the reason it works is that no matter what we're trying to do, there's an artifact for it. Cards like Grim Bauble, Tithing Blade, and Braided Net give us removal that also happens to be on an artifact that we can sacrifice to Repurposing Bay or that ups our artifact count for affinity.
Mephitic Draught, Candy Trail, and Esoteric Duplicator offer us card advantage that also fills out our artifact curve. Esoteric Duplicator is hilarious. It's probably win-more, but getting a copy of any artifact we sacrifice to Repurposing Bay for just two mana is super strong once it gets going.
Finally, as far as the rest of our creatures, we have two four-drops in Oildeep Gearhulk and Solemn Simulacrum. I'm especially interested in figuring out just how good Oildeep Gearhulk really is, especially as a roadblock against aggro. Meanwhile, Threefold Thunderhulk is fine on its own, but it's especially powerful if we can cheat it into play with Nexus of Becoming, which will make it a 6/6 that makes six 1/1s when it enters or attacks!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, the deck felt solid! We went 7-3 for a 70% win rate, while also going 3-0 against Dimir, perhaps the best deck in the format pre-Aetherdrift. If anything, I came away from playing the deck feeling like it actually might not be all that Against the Odds and that there might be a real Repurposing Bay deck in Standard! Simulacrum Synthesizer is a busted card, and Repurposing Bay helps us find it consistently. Plus, our silver bullet one-of plan was actually surprisingly effective. If you like artifacts and trying to tutor up the right thing at the right time, or just like smashing opponents with massive Constructs, give the deck a shot! It might actually be pretty legit!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, on Bluesky at @saffronolive.bsky.social, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
