At a glance, Standard may look like nothing but Winding Constrictors, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and Saheeli Rai. However, when you spend some time digging underneath the surface, there’s still an incredible amount of innovation and interesting themes players are exploring. Metalwork Colossus has been a card players have been trying to make happen since it was first printed in Kaladesh. The problem has largely been these decks have a difficult time turning the corner quickly enough even once they start casting Metalwork Colossus. Dzyl’s latest Standard creation may have found a two-pronged solution to this problem:

U/R Colossus ? Aether Revolt Standard | Dzyl

• Creatures (7)
• 3 Glint-Nest Crane
• 4 Metalwork Colossus

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 3 Saheeli Rai

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Baral's Expertise
• 4 Reverse Engineer

• Artifacts (25)
• 1 Key to the City
• 2 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 3 Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
• 3 Paradox Engine
• 4 Cultivator's Caravan
• 4 Hedron Archive
• 4 Prophetic Prism
• 4 Renegade Map

• Lands (20)
• 1 Mountain
• 6 Island
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 4 Sanctum of Ugin
• 4 Spire of Industry
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

Buy This Deck

Once you start casting Colossus, there’s a handful of routes the game can take. You can use Sanctum of Ugin to start chaining together Metalwork Colossuses and bury your opponent in giant monsters. You can use Saheeli Rai to get in huge hits while their shields are down. Or you can try to combo off with Paradox Engine and Reverse Engineer.

The way this deck combos off is by utilizing Aetherflux Reservoir and Paradox Engine in conjunction with Cultivator's Caravan and Hedron Archive. Caravan and Archive let you net mana to cast more spells each time you cast a spell. This lets you string together multiple cantripping artifacts and Reverse Engineers to storm your opponent out with Aetherflux Reservoir or just find enough Saheeli Rais to kill your opponent with hasty Metalwork Colossuses.

There’s a lot of flexibility in how this deck approaches games, which gives you play against midrange and control decks that give you time to set up. The thing this deck is going to struggle with is it does an awful lot of nothing in the first few turns and has very little interaction with an opposing Saheeli Rai. Your best draws might be able to keep up with Winding Constrictor and Heart of Kiran, but sometimes you’ll just cast your Colossus and die on the following turn. If your metagame is a little on the slower side, this could be an incredibly fun deck to try at your next Standard event.