Magic: The Gathering – Double Masters’ Artifact Cards Are Powerful in Any Deck

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The latest set is fantastic news for players who enjoy artifacts. Almost every color deck – excluding green – heavily focuses on them.

This set features several card types and color schemes centered around artifacts. While some artifacts are colored, most are colorless, which is typical. This makes them easy to include in any Double Masters Limited deck. Even better, many of these artifacts are popular and valuable cards used in competitive Constructed decks.

Archetype Anchors

I’ve been playing with this set, and honestly, there are so many artifacts that you could actually build a whole deck just around them in Limited. But I don’t think that’s the best way to use them. Every color, except maybe Green which is all about making tokens and getting extra mana, really benefits from artifacts, and in a bunch of different ways. You’ve got mana rocks to speed things up, equipment to boost your creatures, artifact creatures themselves, and even some seriously powerful artifacts that can win you the game. What’s cool is that even cards that aren’t artifacts can create them – like Lifesmith (a white card) and Dire Fleet Hoarder (black). These artifacts can do everything from making your attackers bigger to being sacrificed for cool effects.

Red and white is a good color combination to begin with. This type of deck aims to control the board with many creatures and uses Equipment to increase their damage output, and Double Masters includes some excellent Equipment options. Hammer of Nazahn makes a creature stronger (+2/+0) and indestructible, and it can even be attached to creatures for free when they enter the battlefield. Batterskull is a powerful, rare Equipment that can quickly turn the tide of a game, giving the equipped creature +4/+4, lifelink, and vigilance. It can also return to your hand and create a small token. Cranial Plating significantly boosts a creature’s power if you control a lot of artifacts, and the five Swords are all incredibly effective on their own.

Characters like Kemba, Kha Regent, Goblin Gaveleer, and Godo, Bandit Warlord really benefit from Equipment cards, and Weapons Trainer is no exception. This strategy focuses on creatures that either search for or are very effective with Equipment, and Stoneforge Mystic is a great way to find the specific Equipment you need.

Red and black strategies often involve sacrificing things you own. When combined with green, black usually sacrifices creatures, but with red, it focuses on sacrificing artifacts. This can be used to deal damage or bring artifacts back from the graveyard. For example, Salvage Titan is a powerful artifact creature that returns to play if you sacrifice three artifacts. Similarly, Defiant Salvager gets stronger by sacrificing artifacts, though this can only happen during your main phase.

Okay, so in my Red deck, I’m running Galvanic Blast – it really hurts if I’ve got Metalcraft active, doing double damage! I also have Orcish Vandal, which is great for sacrificing artifacts to deal a quick 2 damage. Then there’s Tuktuk the Explorer, a little 1/1 Goblin, but when he dies, he leaves behind a huge 5/5 Golem! As for artifacts that aren’t red or green, I’ve got Ichor Wellspring, Throne of Geth, Kuldotha Forgemaster, Culling Dais, and the powerful Bosh, Iron Golem. They all add a lot to my strategy.

Blue-white decks enjoy having artifacts in play and prefer to avoid destroying them. Cards like Glassdust Hulk grow larger and harder to block each time a friendly artifact enters the battlefield, while Grand Architect makes artifact creatures stronger and provides extra mana without requiring any sacrifices.

Several useful artifact creatures can boost your deck. Master of Etherium (blue) gives a +1/+1 bonus to your other blue and artifact creatures. White offers Blade Splicer and Master Splicer, which both create 3/3 Golem creature tokens and can make them stronger. For blue and white decks in Limited play, colorless artifacts like Welding Jar, Sculpting Steel, Myr Battlesphere, and Golem Artisan are also strong choices.

A lesser-known strategy revolves around blue and black cards that focus on ‘Proliferate’ and sacrificing artifacts. This deck utilizes artifacts like Throne of Geth and Lux Cannon – Proliferate can increase charge counters as well as standard +1/+1 counters. Key cards include Walking Ballista, Culling Dais, Defiant Salvager, and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, which helps spread poison counters. Time Sieve is also powerful, particularly when combined with cards that create lots of tokens, like Myr Battlesphere.

Artifacts And Financial Value

Several of the rare and highly sought-after cards in Double Masters are essential for popular formats like Commander, Legacy, and Modern. The five Swords of X and Y, for example, are particularly valuable because they boost a creature’s power and toughness, offer protection against two colors of opponents, and have powerful abilities that trigger when certain conditions are met.

Popular artifacts like Sword of Fire and Ice currently sell for about $40, while Sword of Light and Shadow is around $22. Other strong choices include Walking Ballista ($13), Mox Opal ($35), Wurmcoil Engine ($15.50), Chrome Mox ($38), Blightsteel Colossus (roughly $36), Mana Crypt ($89.50), and Ensnaring Bridge ($16). While many other artifacts aren’t as expensive, they can still be very useful in Limited formats.

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2026-04-20 19:59