Out of the Box: March of the Machine 3/3
It’s time to look at the final March of the Machine precon and compare the similarities and differences of all the decks in the cycle with one another. I do want to remind you that I’ll be looking at these precons to see which cards stand out and where to make upgrades and changes through the eyes of wanting to keep it into the Battlecruiser (BC) power level on our own Discord server, where we curate an experience where people can play with boxed and upgraded precons and homebrew decks designed to play within the same environment.
Tinker Time
Face Commanders
Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy gives your artifact creatures trample and makes a creature token in your end step. At first glance, he seems a lot like a slower version of Urza, Chief Artificer and I will admit that it was weird seeing two three-color commanders that did relatively similar things so close to one another. ‘Artifact creatures you control have X. At the beginning of your end step, create a creature token with Y’.
Where Urza’s tokens care about your artifact count perpetually, Gimbal’s tokens want you to have several artifact tokens with different names upon creation and the deck has access to 11 uniquely named tokens, though some of those you can realistically only create once or twice per game.
What is weird is that there is no other +1/+1 counter synergy or proliferate present in the deck even though Gimbal puts +1/+1 counters on the tokens he creates. If this is a forced choice by the design team to push you towards including more ways to generate other artifact tokens, sure, but it’s still weird having a card in the command zone that makes tokens with +1/+1 counters and then doesn’t capitalize on them.
Especially in regards to proliferate currently being Standard relevant, one has to wonder if the mechanics for a legendary creature with this ability were designed to fit in Phyrexia: All Will Be One cycle originally and got pushed back and turned into Gimbal later instead.
Rashmi and Ragavan is the latest ‘exile cards from your opponent’s library and cast them’ in Temur colors and if you’ve previously enjoyed playing Pako, Arcane Retriever//Haldan, Avid Arcanist but want something less aggro, then maybe this can be a new commander for you. It will only work during your turn and if you want to cast it for free, your artifact count matters so there are some limitations to this card that won’t make it run away with the game immediately.
You will also create a Treasure token for the first spell you cast on your turn which probably matters a whole lot more once you make your own deck with Rashmi and Ragavan at the helm. Outside of cards like Cutthroat Negotiator and Brass’s Bounty, it’s slim pickings for Treasure synergy in the precon and having to rely on your opponents is always a risky plan. Out of the box I’d stick with Gimbal, since most of the cards in the 99 support the artifact token theme. There’s no support for top deck knowledge or manipulation on your opponents boards so Rashmi and Ragavan are going to make your plays very randomized and up to chance.
I was quite surprised to see Academy Manufactor, Tireless Tracker, and Tireless Provisioner in the 99 as these 3 in the same deck feels like strong synergy to put in a boxed precon. I know you need to find exactly all of these for them to fuel each other, but when and if you do, you’re going to quickly outvalue the table. I’m glad Rashmi and Ragavan only makes one treasure per turn. Academy Manufactor is often on the chopping block in homebrew BC decks that can generate relevant tokens out of the command zone.
Interesting New Cards
A 3/3 flying for 4 mana is such a quintessential draft staple for Magic in my eyes, and I was very happy to see a card like Schema Thief get printed. It’s a little weird that it only copies artifacts your opponents control, but in our format and environment you should have no issue finding an opponent that has something worth copying.
Even if you’re just making an extra Sol Ring or Arcane Signet, ramping off combat damage isn’t terrible. Schema Thief will allow you to copy cards you can’t regularly run in your colors! Getting access to a Norn’s Annex, Bolas’s Citadel, Embercleave, or The Great Henge seems lovely when you’re currently playing mono-blue.
I already highlighted Dance with Calamity in our top 10 cards for March of the Machine so go read all about it there. It’s rather limited in the boxed precon, but I’m convinced you can build your entire deck around this card, just like with Primal Surge.
Cuts
Path of the Animist doesn’t do anything new for 4 mana in green and is just a glorified Explosive Vegetation. We don’t have to care about the Planechase mechanics, so it can probably go, as can the rest of the Planechase cards. This deck also has quite a substantial color-fixing and ramp package in the artifact base and treasure generation on top of that, so a 4-mana sorcery speed find 2 lands didn’t really feel all that necessary.
To me the deck didn’t have enough enough spicy artifact creature targets for Masterful Replication to be good and the rest of your non-creature artifact package is too inconsequential to keep it around. So we then look at the rest of the card: make two new creature tokens which increases Gimbal’s artifact token count by one. That’s a rough sell for 6 mana in my eyes.
Cutthroat Negotiator provides your opponents with resources which is something I try to avoid as much as possible. This might be a surprise to some, but it’s not because I like playing the lowest power level we have on our server the most that I enjoy group hug, card advantage or free resources for my opponents.
I still play to win, just on an evened out playing field where everyone is playing at about the same level. Giving my opponents free resources sounds like the opposite of trying to win a game of Magic. While it’s true I could potentially generate three treasure tokens, more often than not this is just going to have the entire table draw one card. I can see how you can potentially turn that into a political tool, but I’m not going to swing in with a non-keyworded 4/3 to potentially feed my opponents resources.
The deck is rather swingy in nature, so I’d take out Thoughtcast and look to slot in some combat-related card draw instead. I’ve never been a fan of this card in EDH. Occasionally better Divination doesn’t do it for me, and I feel we see this card way too often in the format. Mirrodin was 20 years ago, card draw has progressed a lot since then.
Ghirapur Aether Grid mostly taps down your artifact creatures in the boxed precon and while I’m sure it can be good in a homebrew Gimbal deck, it was mediocre to bad in most situations I happened to draw this card. If you’re going to make changes in regards to which tokens you generate and are adding more Blood, Clue, Gold, Treasure and Powerstone tokens then you can likely keep it.
Replacements
Let’s focus on Gimbal at the helm first. I’d pick between getting more different types of artifact tokens on the field or having some means to proliferate the tokens you create. You should be aware the +1/+1 counters have no support in the deck, so putting more means of generating tokens in the deck is likely the easier upgrade path. When looking to make changes and stay within the boundaries of BC, I’d choose either more tokens or more ways of growing their size, not both. Let’s look at some token makers first.
I get that for flavor/story/lore reasons Gimbal and Rashmi and Ragavan don’t have the incubate mechanic, but if you don’t care about that too much, it is an easy way of getting 2 differently named tokens on the field. Tinker Time has 38 non-creature spells so Chrome Host Seedshark will have no issues giving you that Incubator token while Myr Battleshphere ups your artifact and creature token count all in one go.
Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith and Sarinth Greatwurm are easy ways to get tokens off of lands entering the battlefield and are going to be a nice supplement to the Tireless Tracker and Provisioner I mentioned earlier. Note how the Greatwurm doesn’t care on whose battlefield the land enters, a feat I feel is often overlooked. There are 19 artifacts in the deck, so those Powerstone tokens should have no issue being useful either.
If you’re fine with the amount of tokens you generate and are looking to make your Gremlin artifact creature tokens more impactful instead, let's focus on some +1/+1 counter synergy. I was surprised to not see Karn’s Bastion in the 99. Maybe they didn’t want to put this card in two precons of the same cycle? The Phyrexian precon did get it. Steel Overseer grows all your artifact creatures and there are plenty of other artifact creatures in the deck outside of the Gremlin tokens that won’t mind going up one power and toughness each turn cycle.
Bone Sabres seems like just the type of card your tokens need without being ‘too strong for BC’. If this card also gave a keyword to the equipped creature I’d feel we see it played more often. Bioshift can make a huge difference with how combat flows for you and it’s still wild to me that this isn’t a bigger staple in +1/+1 counter decks. We’ve seen this card printed once in Gatecrash and it’s only $0.14 at the time of writing.
I’m a fan of Flux Channeler and Evolution Sage, though I can’t 100% certainly say that these cards are slow or safe enough for an upgraded precon. I think that’s going to depend a lot on which changes you’re going to make. If you already have several other means of proliferating your board, slowing it down usually means cutting out the cheapest or easiest option. Both these cards felt worth mentioning, and they’re likely fine in a minorly upgraded version of the deck, but don’t go overboard and have several (free) instances of proliferate happening on your turn too consistently.
The deck itself doesn’t really have proliferate options out of the box and you also don’t have anything other than the tokens Gimbal makes to proliferate. You’re forcing a part of the deck to work. Proliferate / counter doubler Gimbal might be easier to build from scratch, rather than trying to make it work while keeping most of the precon intact.
Regardless of which build path you choose to follow, cards like Curiosity Crafter, Research Thief, and Cyberdrive Awakener seem generally good with Gimbal and give the deck some additional card draw and finishing potential. Note how opposed to the Mishra precon, I don’t feel Workshop Elders is terrible in the 99 here.
If you’re putting Rashmi and Ragavan at the helm instead my question would be ‘Why though?’. Don’t get me wrong, this is a card that’s plenty strong, it’s just hard to make ‘a few changes’ to a precon when your goal is to play with your opponents cards most of the time. The cards provided in the 99 here care about your own board, artifact count, creature count and token generation and Rashmi and Ragavan felt quite out of place in its own deck. That said, we can always make it work.
If you want to focus on better treasure generation and payoffs, you’re likely going to outscale BC quite quickly. We can instead look to include some cards that don’t really skew the power of the deck too much but instead make it easier to decide which opponent to target.
Lantern of Insight and Telepathy, which I highlighted in the For One Mana series, will make it so you’re working with known information when targeting an opponent with your commander. This does get rid of the ‘we’ll see what happens I guess’ part the card brings to the table out of the box, which might be something you’d like to keep. I personally don’t want to whiff on a land so I’d rather know exactly what I’m exiling.
Since we’re focusing on topdeck theft, the brand new Etali, Primal Conqueror feels like a good fit. It also gives the deck some more punching power, something the deck currently lacks a little bit. Nalfeshnee seems just about limited enough to not completely run away with the game. Also, see that little red speck next to its name? You can never unsee that now, you’re welcome. Just wait until you notice that’s not a dead pixel on their index finger either ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).
Memory Lapse, a two mana counterspell you aren’t running but could deserves to be in the 99. Counter your spell, I get to play that card instead, thanks. I don’t personally run 3 mana counterspells but if you don’t mind, Hinder does the same job. Expel from Orazca is a nice ‘back to your library’ unsummon, and the slower nature of BC should make it so you shouldn’t have any issue getting the city’s blessing.
Whirlpool Whelm might be weird and suboptimal but definitely fits our theme. I love Clash as a mechanic a lot and hope to see it return soon. It goes well with the Lantern of Insight too, since you know how the Clash will resolve. Let’s close out the upgrades with something ‘mean’ and add Hellkite Tyrant.
This is more of a meta pick for our current environment in BC where the Urza and Mishra precon still see tons of play and I’m under the impression people don’t run enough aritfact wipes currently. You might as well capitalize on that. Seize the means of mana production.
For the purpose of BC, cards like Mycosynth Lattice or Encroaching Mycosynth are likely too efficient at what they do. Battlecruiser games tend to go on for quite a few turns, and your commander shouldn’t see upwards of 25 artifacts on your board for the sake of keeping the free spell casts balanced. If you’re looking to homebrew this commander for BC, I’d likely start by not grabbing these easy autoincludes.
Note how most of the cards I added don’t increase your artifact count, artifact token generation and/or do anything at all with the tokens the deck generates, which is where the main focus of the precon lies and which is also why I mentioned slotting Rashmi and Ragavan at the helm in a mostly unedited precon is going to be weird. I truly believe for this commander to shine you want to build it from scratch.
In conclusion, Tinker Time is a nice toolbox to highlight Temur’s artifact possibilities, and out of all the precons from this cycle this one felt like the most ‘it’s alright’ out of the bunch. Not too strong, not too fast or slow, lots of build options and changes for you to make and in the end you’re likely going to use parts of this precon for several homebrew decks instead. It plays quite nicely out of the box, but the lack of a big flavorful overarching theme like Growing Threat and Cavalry Charge have makes this precon feel a little generic sometimes. So when are we returning to Kaladesh so we can get more Gremlin support for Gimbal?
Favorite boxed line of play
I did not get enough playtest games in with this precon to run into an amazing memorable play myself. I can imagine any hypothetical situation where you have several clue, food, treasure and thopter tokens where Gimbal, Feldon of the Third Path and Junk Winder are on the field together will likely feel amazing. I enjoy reading the interactions people run into with boxed precons a lot though, so please do share your experiences in the battlecruiser lounge when you do!
Precon Cycle Stats and Comparisons
We don’t often get 5 precons in one cycle, and when we do, it’s always interesting to look at what they have in common and how each of them is different. Let’s take a closer look at the data from this cycle!
The average total mana value of the entire cycle is 224.6, with the lowest being the Cavalry Charge (Knights) precon at 200 and the highest being Growing Threat (Phyrexians) at 250. From playtesting, this mana value is also reflected well in how your turns will play out.
Cavalry Charge will want to drop a body, move to combat, swing in often and hope to do this relatively early, where the Phyrexian precon grows the board more steadily and looks to thrive more in the mid-to-late game where it gets to rebuild and reanimate better than the other precons, or it needs to get to 7 mana and up to cast some of its more potent spells.
The highest mana value cards in this cycle are Ancient Stone Idol and Phyrexian Triniform, both of which are also in the Phyrexian deck. No deck runs more than 20 2-drops but every deck runs more than 10 4-drops.
Most turn 1 plays in homebrew decks and precons tend to be land pass, into turn 2 land and ramp spell, making your turn 3 into land and a 4-drop, something that’s been happening more often with cards like Arcane Signet getting printed to make this strategy even more consistent. The precons all have access to a Fractured Powerstone, a mana rock you could run in a regular EDH deck without caring about the planar die, which means these turn 3 four mana plays come out a little more consistent in this cycle than usual.
Tinker Time (Gremlin artifacts) has the most varied turn 1 play outside of Sol Ring, where you can get an early Curse of Opulence, Bloodforged Battle-Axe, or Gilded Goose to the field. Most other decks have a rather limited turn one play.
Phyrexians are the only ones to get a Wayfarer’s Bauble. Knights get a Foulmire Knight, which feels very mediocre in EDH overall. Divine Convocation (Convoke) gets access to a turn 1 Skullclamp, though I’m not sure that’s a play you want to make on an empty board.
Where most recent precons usually have at least 3 cards shared in every deck (Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Command Tower), that total is higher here due to Fractured Powerstone and Ichor Elixir. Each deck also has Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse which is not something that happens all the time either. This means each precon shares a minimum of 7 cards with one another, which is quite high compared to other precon cycles.
The Knights deck is the only one out with a Fellwar Stone, though every precon does run an Exotic Orchard, including the only two-color deck in the cycle. Two out of five precons have Temple of the False God, Knights and Call for Backup (Backup). While I dislike the card, it is weird that the deck with the highest colorless count (Phyrexians, 27 out of 62 non-land cards) did not get this card. Every deck from the cycle runs each Scry land they can run in their respective colors.
Only two of the decks create Treasure tokens, Call for Backup and Tinker Time. These are also the only decks with access to green, which in EDH has plenty of land-ramp options available to colorfix instead. While Call for Backup has a Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach, neither of the decks have the usual go-to land fetchers like Rampant Growth, Farseek, Nature’s Lore, or Three Visits.
The lowest creature count belongs to Tinker Time with only 22 creatures and the highest belongs to Call for Backup with 39, which is among some of the highest creature counts we’ve seen in any precon so far.
Four decks have access to white and all of them run Swords to Plowshares. This is the only mono-colored card shared across all precons that have access to it. Only Cavalry Charge also gets Path to Exile. Call for Backup is the only deck with Generous Gift. The convoke precon has access to the most ‘weird/situational’ instant speed responses which in part might contribute to why it felt like the clunkiest of the cycle.
Decks with access to blue share zero of the same blue pipped non-land cards. We rarely get counterspells in precons and the ones we do see tend to be high mana value. That trend continues here where the Convoke precon gets Artistic Refusal and the Gremlin deck gets Spell Swindle.
Tinker time runs Reality Shift while none of the precons with access to Blue have a Pongify or Rapid Hybridization. This might seem like an odd thing to mention, but we saw Swords to Plowshares in 100% of the decks with access to white. It felt a little weird not seeing more commonly played 1-drop removal in blue.
Both decks with access to black have a Bojuka Bog. These are also the only two decks to get a Mind Stone. Neither of them has Feed the Swarm which has been printed in 7 different precon cycles since Commander 2021, mainly because each deck with black also has access to white and both lean into that color more for the removal side of things.
Decks with access to red share zero of the same red pipped non-land cards. The same is true for decks with access to green. Only Tinker Time came with a Chaos Warp. No deck with access to green runs Beast Within. If this were to be included in the Tinker Time deck, it would run all three staple 3-drop removal cards available in its colors. None of the decks with red run Blasphemous Act which is an often reprinted staple that’s notably missing.
In terms of multicolor, both decks with white and black run Despark. They also both get Orzhov Signet. Among all the decks in the cycle, the decks with access to Orzhov colors share the most non-land cards.
Phyrexians is the only deck to get a talisman, Talisman of Hierarchy, and has the only locket, Orzhov Locket. It’s weird that one deck gets what in my eyes is one of the best manarocks for its colors and one of its worst at the same time. Maybe the fact it can rebuild well from the graveyard so you’d be incentivized to sacrifice the locket for card draw has something to do with it.
Tinker Time is the only three-color deck with access to all 3 of its eligible guild signets, Gruul, Izzet, and Simic Signets, but in turn is the only deck in the cycle without a Commander’s Sphere, even though it’s an artifact-matters deck. It then only runs one sorcery spell that cares about putting lands on the field, even though it has several landfall payoff cards. This likely adds to the feeling of wanting to take it apart and divide it up into several new decks.
I hope you enjoyed that deep dive into the deck’s stats as much as I did. While I won’t be doing this for every precon cycle, we don’t always get 5 precons releasing at the same time, and it was definitely interesting to see which deck got access to what cards. It’s clear the design team tries to diversify each precon within its own cycle as much as possible, and I guess it says a lot about a card like Swords to Plowshares if it does end up finding its way in every deck that can run it.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed all of the Out of the Box articles for March of the Machine Commander. If you’re looking for a place to play precons, you can join our automated, curated, webcam EDH pods on our Discord server, where we have 5 seperate queues for people looking for games, one designed specifically for out of the box precons to even out the playing field! Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free by our amazing Patreon supporters.
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