Composer, banjo player, Magic The Gathering addict, red panda enthusiast (formerly edhPanda)
Haven’t used it and likely never will, but I have to wonder what goes into its process. Does it just pull top hits from EDHRec that match keywords? Does it assign point values and roles to cards to figure out utility or “competitiveness?” Does it give you any explanation for a card being included? Half the joy of the format for me is the puzzle and discovery of deckbuilding. I understand why tools like this and EDHRec exist, but I’m certainly not the target user.
I don’t feel like Bats does much more than we already see with cards like Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat. Just triggers off of more things and makes the rampant Treasure generation we’ve seen actively kill people. Which honestly, may be a good thing.
Bowmasters is cheap, efficient and deadly, but I don’t think it poses much more of a threat than wheel-based builds already do. Certainly lets you clean up the board if people start drawing a ton, though.
I’ve almost always had some sort of durdly artifact deck built. Started with Kurkesh “Tinker Toys” where it was just a bunch of things that could fit together into whacky Rube-Goldberg machine combos. Eventually moved it to Breya when she released and the deck became much more powerful and streamlined. Later on, I put together Osgir + Zirda and also Urza, Lord High Artificer, featuring mostly old-bordered artifacts and pre-BRO cards that reference him as a character. I joke that the deck is about a 4 and 3.5 of that is Urza himself. Nowadays, I’ve achieved my final form and I’m playing 5C Legendary Artificer tribal with Ramos, trying to recapture some of that weirdness of Kurkesh. Has been a fun time!
Current jams:
[[Sidisi, Brood Tyrant]] - Old zombie tribal build circa 2018, with a few small updates. Has retained much of its power despite me no longer owning a Cradle and being more of a throwback deck.
[[Haldan, Avid Arcanist]] + [[Pako, Arcane Retriever]] - The pair that got the wheels turning again after the pandemic hiatus. Focuses mostly on synergies from playing stuff from exile and having multiple commanders.
[[Kwain, Itinerant Meddler]] - UW Taxes. We’re all gonna draw a ton of cards, but we’re gonna be reasonable about what you can do with them.
[[Ramos, Dragon Engine]] - Legendary Artificer Tribal. Named characters, a bunch of artifacts and sometimes the gears start turning and weird stuff happens.
[[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]] - Abzan +1/+1 counters and value. Ignoring ability counters because there’s already too much to keep track of. Other than Rosie/Oak, all the combos are 5+ piece engines.