Today's subject was in one of the first Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) booster packs I opened, and it really caught my eye. It wasn't a foil, nor was it a special art variant. It was just a good old fashioned Izzet Legendary Creature, perfectly suited to lead an Artifact-themed deck. The fact that the card included the words "draw a card" in its text box was icing on the cake.

My problem was simple. I already had a Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain deck built around playing as many Artifacts as possible. Converting that deck over to a new Commander wouldn't be that hard, but the two Legends have slightly different needs. To properly explain my dilemma, let's take a look at the card in question.

Iron Man In An EDH Deck

Iron Man, Master of Machines is a Legendary Artifact Creature with a subtype of Human Hero. He's got Flying, Vigilance, and the same casting cost as Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. This Iron Man is better suited for combat, getting +1/+0 for each other Artifact I control, but he's worse at drawing cards. Jhoira draws me a card every time I cast a historic spell. Artifacts, Legendaries, and Sagas are historic. Iron Man, Master of Machines, or "Iron Mom", as I'm going to refer to him, only draws me a card when he attacks and only if an Artifact entered the battlefield under my control this turn.

They can go in each others' decks quite nicely, but as a Commander they have slightly different builds. Jhoira is happy to play a ton of zero and one mana Artifacts, including ones like Lotus Petal and Mishra's Bauble that need to be sacrificed to be used. She cares about casting Historic spells. Iron Man gets a +1/+0 for each Artifact I control, so he wants my Artifacts to stick around.

After a few weeks I realized I couldn't get "Iron Mom" off my mind. My Jhoira deck had been tricked out with a bunch of alters painted with an Iron Giant theme, but I've also had the deck together for quite a while. It's fun to play, but if I take it apart, I can donate the cards to a good cause: the Commander Sealed auction in September. I've donated cards to them before and this build might be a great excuse to send another set of alters off to help with their fundraiser.

Multiverse Matters

In Commander we've long been able to pull cards into our decks from sets that span the entire history of Magic: The Gathering. The game has long been a multiverse, with Planeswalkers travelling from plane to plane as they go on their adventures. To my mind these planes are the equivalent of parallel universes.

With the introduction of Universes Beyond (UB) sets now have the ability to include cards from universes that are completely outside of Magic lore. When I do pick cards from UB sets, I do my best to pick cards that fit both thematically and mechanically with the deck I'm building. That means my Iron Man, Master of Machines list is far more likely to include cards from a UB set like Fallout than from Lord of the Rings, Avatar, the Last Airbender, or the Secret Lair My Little Pony release.

Some deckbuilders don't care one bit about theme, and look only at the mechanics of Magic cards. I can't do that, but I was able to find a few cards that felt like good fits for Iron Mom. As an example, I could have included Hydraulic Helper as my stand-in for the robotic assistant that Tony Stark uses to help build his Iron Man suits, but when I looked at the floating spherical Robots from Fallout, I couldn't resist throwing them into the mix instead.

Curie, Emergent Intelligence is a 2 mana Blue Robot that will draw me cards when it deals combat damage to a player. It only has one power, but its activated ability will have me exile another nontoken Artifact Creature I control and Curie will become a copy of the exiled Creature. It will retain the ability to draw cards equal to its base power. Using Curie to exile Iron Man, Master of Machines, could end up drawing me a ton of cards if I've got a board full of artifacts.

Rose, Cutthroat Raider is a Red Robot with First Strike, and a Raid ability. At the end of combat on my turn, if I attacked this turn. I'll create a Junk token for each opponent I attacked. Junk can be sacrificed for what's commonly called impulse draw. I'll exile the top card of my library and I may play that card this turn. More importantly, those Junk tokens will help boost Iron Man, Master of Machines' power.

Brotherhood Vertibird is a thee mana Flying Vehicle with power equal to the number of Artifacts I control. I don't often play Vehicles in my Commander decks, but this one is too good a fit to pass up. It's not an exact match to Iron Man, Master of Machines, but they both have four toughness, and they both have Flying.

Reaching back to Warhammer 40k, I decided to throw in Canoptek Spyder as a way to get card draw from playing Artifact Creatures. This deck has a lot of Creatures and a lot of them are Artifacts, so this just made sense. It triggers on nontoken Artifact Creatures entering play under my control, so it's not insanely broken, but I consider it a staple in any Commander deck that has a heavy focus on playing Artifact Creatures that aren't tokens.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brought us a few cards that should play well in this list. Fugitive Druid is a Blue 1/1 Robot Scientist that can't be blocked if an Artifact entered the battlefield under my control this turn. For one Blue mana I can sacrifice it and counter target spell that targets an Artifact or Creature I control. It's no Glen Elendra Archmage, but for this deck it will provide a little extra protection from my Commander, who is likely to eat his fair share of Instant speed removal spells.

Ravenous Robots is a Red 2/1 Robot that will create a 1/1 colorless Robot Artifact Creature token whenever I cast an Artifact spell. It's perfect for Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, but should fit in nicely here too. It also has a tap ability for one Red mana that will give Creature tokens I control Haste until end of turn.

Paths Not Taken

When I suggested that I was going to skip past cards that didn't make sense to me thematically, that included not running a handful of very capable Dragons that could have helped to put Artifact tokens into play. A lone Academy Manufactor could pair up with either Goldspan Dragon, Ancient Copper Dragon, or Cavern-Hoard Dragon to really fill up my board with shiny trinkets.

I also made the decision to try to avoid running Villains in this brew. I did give in to temptation and included Machinesmith Automaton, a nonlegendary Robot Villain with Trample that gets a +1/+1 counter whenever another Artifact I control enters play. Ravenous Robots represents something that might not be working on the side of our heroes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I don't really know TMT lore that well so I could be wrong.

I did avoid Villain Creature types when picking cards from Marvel Super Heroes. Ultron, Artificial Malevolence, HYDRA Assault Robot, Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor, and Living Brain, Mechanical Marvel could have all fit in nicely, but I care about more than just building a deck with mechanical synergy.

Before some Marvel fan brings up a random old comic from years ago where Iron Man battles against, a good old-fashioned, fire breathing Red Dragon; I'll readily admit that I'm not an expert in Marvel lore. Aside from a single Iron Man comic I bought back in the 1980's, my Marvel knowledge comes from watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Master of Machines

I ended up throwing in a handful of Marvel Super Heroes legends alongside Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, The Reality Chip, and Sai, Master Thopterist, to fill out this list. Echo, Perceptive Prodigy is a Human Hero who will gladly tap for one mana to copy target activated or triggered ability. In this list she'll give me an extra card draw from Iron Man's attack trigger. Shuri, Wakandan Inventor will make my Artifact spells cost one less, and can tap for one mana to make target Artifact I control become a nonlegendary copy of a second target Artifact I control until end of turn. Turning a junk token into a second, nonlegendary Iron Man, Master of Machines, will probably always feel good even if it can't deal Commander damage.

I'm also running a pretty decent assortment of nonlegendary support cards for an Izzet Artifacts build. Cost reducers like Cloud Key, Enthusiastic Mechanaut, and Foundry Inspector will always make sense. Having additional Creatures that scale to the number of Artifacts I control like Master of Etherium and Broodstar give me the ability to present a combat threat even if Iron Man has been sidelined somehow. I'm also running Armor Wars and Braided Net, which flips into Braided Quipu, to give me some more potent card draw options.

Iron Man, Master of Machines | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Iron Man, Master of Machines

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Broodstar
• 1 Canoptek Spyder
• 1 Curie, Emergent Intelligence
• 1 Echo, Perceptive Prodigy
• 1 Enthusiastic Mechanaut
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 Foundry Inspector
• 1 Fugitive Droid
• 1 Guidelight Optimizer
• 1 Iron Myrf
• 1 Iron Spider, Stark Upgrade
• 1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
• 1 Machinesmith Automaton
• 1 Master of Etherium
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Ravenous Robots
• 1 Rose, Cutthroat Raider
• 1 Sai, Master Thopterist
• 1 Shuri, Wakandan Inventor
• 1 Silver Myr
• 1 Skittering Surveyor
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 The Reality Chip
• 1 Thought Monitor
• 1 Vedalken Archmage

• Instants (11)
• 1 Aetherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 I Am Iron Man
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Wild Magic Surge

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 One with the Machine
• 1 Rise and Shine

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Armor Wars
• 1 Robotics Mastery

• Artifacts (20)
• 1 Adaptive Omnitool
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Braided Net
• 1 Brass Knuckles
• 1 Brotherhood Vertibird
• 1 Cloud Key
• 1 Conqueror's Flail
• 1 Coveted Jewel
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Futurist Forge
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mox Amber
• 1 Mystic Forge
• 1 Nettlecyst
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Talisman of Creativity
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (37)
• 13 Island
• 13 Mountain
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Training Center

Buy This Deck Export text

This list weighs in comfortably as a high Bracket 2 or even a Bracket 3 list without any Game Changers. It can be challenging to place a deck's power level without having played it a few times. If you wanted to drop it in power, you might lose a few counterspells and drop out a few of the pricier cards. Just losing Mox Amber and Scalding Tarn won't magically drop the deck down by a bracket, but it's a step you can take in addition to dropping out other powerful cards if you're looking at playing in a really low-powered playgroup.

To push this list up in power I think you'd lean into the Commander damage game plan and run a few extra pieces of equipment like Excalibur, Sword of Eden, Blackblade Reforged, Genji Gloves and some extra combat step spells. If you wanted to play combo, you could load up on mana rocks, throw in Dramatic Reversal and Isochron Scepter and then include some outlets for making tons of mana. The problem is that doesn't really jive with Iron Man's abilities. I don't mind combo but I like it to make sense for the Commander in some way. Running a combo just to have a wincon makes me think you should consider looking at a different higher powered Commander that actually synergizes with your combo.

Final Thoughts

I wasn't able to get this list into a game, but I expect it would play a fairly straightforward game. You play early mana rocks if possible, you get your Iron Man out on turn three or four, and you send him at your opponents until they're dead. Things rarely go as planned, but I think this list runs enough protection and interaction to give you a fighting chance.

It's arguable that this isn't a very interesting Commander or deck. Playing a bunch of Artifacts and going to combat is pretty straightforward. You're not doing anything truly wacky like making a ton of Clue tokens and then using Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer to turn them into something funky that you can attack with. Izzet Commanders are capable of doing lots of really neat things and Iron Man, Master of Machines isn't exactly subtle.

Don't get me wrong. Some of my favorite decks are very straightforward. It can be really nice to just shuffle up a deck and know that you're going to be playing a relatively simple deck and doing relatively simple things. No funky combos. No weird interactions. Just Artifacts and lots and lots of combat.

We are starting to edge closer and closer to seeing previews for The Hobbit, but until those cards start getting officially previewed I'm probably going to keep brewing up Marvel decks. Despite my misgivings about Universes Beyond, I do love Marvel and I've enjoyed brewing up these lists.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!