Metalwork Colossus is one of the cards that’s gained the most from the banning of Aetherworks Marvel. In recent weeks we’ve seen all manner of exciting variants on Metalwork Colossus. However, Hour of Devastation has brought a number of interesting new toys to this style of deck that introduce plenty of new space to explore. Here’s Frank Karsten’s take on the archetype in the new format:

https://twitter.com/karsten_frank/status/886006664696135680

Grixis Colossus ? Hour of Devastation Standard | Frank Karsten

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Striped Riverwinder
• 3 Champion of Wits
• 3 Marionette Master
• 3 Metalwork Colossus
• 4 Insolent Neonate
• 4 Curator of Mysteries
• 4 Glint-Nest Crane
• 4 Hollow One

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Hour of Eternity

• Artifacts (13)
• 1 God-Pharaoh's Gift
• 1 Perpetual Timepiece
• 2 Corrupted Grafstone
• 2 Hedron Archive
• 3 Cultivator's Caravan
• 4 Gate to the Afterlife

• Lands (20)
• 3 Island
• 1 Aether Hub
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 2 Choked Estuary
• 2 Ipnu Rivulet
• 2 Sanctum of Ugin
• 2 Wandering Fumarole
• 3 Spire of Industry
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

Buy This Deck

The difference is that this deck has a secondary engine of Gate to the Afterlife. You’re playing a bunch of cycling creatures and Insolent Neonates to stock your graveyard full of creatures early in the game, and you can cheat God-Pharaoh's Gift into play early in the game to make your Metalwork Colossus especially cheap. You even have Hollow One along the way, which you can cast for almost nothing given the density of cycling creatures and Champion of Wits.

However, while all of that is reasonable, it’s not the most exciting aspect of this deck. The most exciting piece about this deck is that you now have a way to end the game without letting your opponent take a turn. Marionette Master may seem out of place at first, but the combination of Marionette Master and God-Pharaoh's Gift is fairly absurd. You can re-buy Master as up to a 7/7 and then sacrifice artifacts to re-buy Metalwork Colossus and trigger Marionette Master enough times to kill your opponent.

If you’re looking for a combo deck with multiple angles of attack, this deck is absolutely brutal for opponents that can’t apply substantial early pressure. With Champion of Wits and Hollow One to hold the ground early, you’ve got plenty of ways to buy time so that you can just cast Colossus. Assuming that isn’t enough, you’ve got the God-Pharaoh's Gift engine to grind your opponent into the dust or just combo them to death. This deck is both interesting and exciting, but there’s lots of exploration remaining to be done in order to optimize it for the current Standard format.