Budget Magic: I Built an Artifact Machine to Explode Munitions (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! This week, we're heading to Edge of Eternities Standard to build around one of the coolest cards from the entire set: Weapons Manufacturing! The idea of our deck is simple: play Weapons Manufacturing so that we get a Munitions token whenever we play an artifact, play a bunch of cheap artifacts, and then explode all of the Munitions to kill our opponent! Can the plan work on just a $100 budget? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Weapons Manufacturing
The Deck
As I mentioned in the intro, our deck today is built around Weapons Manufacturing, a two-mana enchantment that makes a Munitions token that deals two damage when it leaves the battlefield whenever an artifact enters under our control. The awkward part of Weapons Manufacturing is that the Munitions tokens don't really do anything by themselves because they need to leave the battlefield to deal damage and don't have a way to sacrifice themselves. So, figuring out ways to not only make but also sacrifice Munitions tokens is our deck's primary goal. The good news is that Munitions are sort of busted—they essentially give each of our artifacts a kicker of "deal two damage to any target." This damage is just suspended until we find a way to make the Munitions leave the battlefield. This also means that if we can get 10 Munitions on the battlefield and then sacrifice them all, we can 20 our opponent and win the game on the spot!
Once we get a Weapons Manufacturing on the battlefield, the next step is playing some artifacts to make some Munitions tokens. One of the things I love about this deck is that we have a bunch of artifacts that are also removal spells, which means we get to kill our opponent's creatures while also stacking up Munitions to eventually kill our opponent. Demonic Junker might look a bit expensive, but it and Warmaker Gunship play really well with the Munitions tokens from Weapons Manufacturing, which gives us an easy to way flood the board with artifacts to lower the cost of Demonic Junker, thanks to affinity for artifacts, and power up the damage of Warmaker Gunship.
Another thing I like about this deck is that we're only playing two creatures, which makes our opponent's creature removal not especially impressive. We'll talk about our other creature in a minute, but we have Rust Harvester in the one-drop slot, which is a cheap artifact for Weapons Manufacturing and turns into an upgraded Grim Lavamancer if it sticks on the battlefield, letting us exile artifacts from our graveyard to throw an increasing amount of damage at any target.
Once we start playing artifacts and making Munitions, the next step is setting up an artifact machine for sacrificing the Munitions so we can access their damage. We've got two plans here, with the first being a slow, grindy artifact-sacrificing plan. Here, Legion Extruder is our best way to sac Munitions. The two-mana artifact deals two damage when it enters and then, for two mana, can sac an artifact to make a 3/3 Golem token. What this means with Weapons Manufacturing is that for two mana, we can sacrifice a Munitions, deal two damage to something, and get a 3/3, which is a great deal for its cost! Meanwhile, Tarrian's Journal and Memorial Vault let us sacrifice artifacts to draw cards. Memorial Vault isn't the most exciting with Munitions since it will only impulse draw a single card, but it is super strong with Demonic Junker, where it will impulse draw eight cards with a single activation! The other upside of all of these cards is that they are also artifacts, so, along with letting us sacrifice Munitions, they'll also make a Munitions with Weapons Manufacturing when we play them!
We've also got a few non-artifact ways to sacrifice our Munitions. Torch the Tower offers some exile removal, while Demand Answers draw us cards. Meanwhile, Chandra is great in the deck, not just letting us sacrifice Munitions to draw cards but also making and crewing Vehicles for free to force through extra damage. Chandra's ultimate is also super scary in our deck since we're really good at making artifacts, which makes it a good way to pressure our opponent. They really can't afford to let Chandra ultimate, or else they are likely to be dead in just a couple of turns!
The final piece of our Munitions puzzle is our other creature: Umbral Collar Zealot. The two-drop does something that no other card in our deck can do: sacrifice any number of artifacts for free! While we can run out Zealot for value and use it to sacrifice Munitions here and there, its true power is that we can hold it in hand until we build up a massive pile of Munitions, play Umbral Collar Zealot, and sacrifice them all to win the game right away!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we finished 8-4 with the deck for a 67% win rate, which is better than I expected. I wasn't expecting the deck to be bad, but I also wasn't expecting it to be this good. While we are a bit dependent on drawing Weapons Manufacturing and things can get clunky if we don't find a copy of the enchantment, the deck generally felt surprisingly powerful. All of our janky endless removal keeps us in the game early, and then we eventually either burn our opponent out of the game slowly with something like Legion Extruder or set up the Umbral Collar Zealot combo kill to win all at once!
Most importantly, I find the deck super fun to play. It's like a weird mix of Aristocrats, artifacts, and grindy value! If you like assembling machines and solving puzzles, the deck is an absolute blast to play and might actually be pretty strong too!
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 or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
