Historic Brewing with Synthesizer Labship: Fun & Jank Episode 43

Hello and welcome back to the 43rd installment of Fun & Jank!

Edge of Eternities continues to deliver, and for this week’s episode we’ll be taking a look at one of the shiny new spacecrafts from the set: Synthesizer Labship. When we first saw the spacecraft subtype in Edge of Eternities, I was intrigued… and a little skeptical. The station mechanic is a slow burn — it requires you to tap creatures to build up charge counters, and in fast formats like Historic, that can be a real tempo loss.

However, Labship is rather cheap in both mana and the investment it takes to get it’s station ability up and running. With Historic already having numerous blue artifact based shells featuring cards like Tamiyo, Kappa Cannoneer, and Emry, I figured we could easily find a home for this cheap little artifact.

Let’s take a look at the card first before I show you the two brews I tried out last week on stream!

I think the only reason I wanted to play this card is because it costs one mana. It asks you to do almost nothing to get started. This makes it a perfect turn 1 play, to be followed up by something that can station it up to two counters on turn two. It doesn’t interrupt your curve, which is critical for slow-value engines like this.

However, with such a low cost, we also don’t mind taking our time to build up it’s charge counters. Getting two on it is relatively easy, but we’ve had quite a few games where we’ve gotten it to 9+ and reaped the benefits of a flying 4/4 beater in the late game. Being able to tap some unused Thopters or a creature with summoning sickness that aren’t providing immediate value gives us additional ways to generate an advantage. It even pairs quite well with Throne of the God-Pharaoh as a win condition, but more on that later.

What we’re really after here is the consistent and constant pressure that this card can provide. At only two counters it can turn any artifact into a 2/2 flyer ready to attack. Tokens, Ornithopters, artifact lands, Kappa Cannoneer (with counters), or even other Labships. I was surprised how powerful attacking with 2/2 that dodges board wipes and sorcery speed removal is. Every. Single. Turn. Chipping away two damage at a time has won me a lot of games in testing.

With all that in mind. Let me give you a little bit of the inspiration for our first list.

The Inspiration

We had built a brew similar to this one before, but I hadn’t revisited it in quite some time. This shell is based around Zac Elsik’s Modern “Blue Steel” deck from back in the day. A spicy mono-blue artifact list.

This list had it all:

• Etherium Sculptor + Chief Engineer to make your artifacts cheaper or even free!
• Lodestone Golem to tax the opponent and break parity.
• Smuggler’s Copter and Throne of the God-Pharaoh for card filtering and inevitability.
• Walking Ballista, Grand Architect, Wurmcoil Engine as powerful game ending cards and utility.

Rather than flooding the board like traditional artifacts builds (aka affinity), this was a synergy oriented list. Designed to use Grand Architect as a value engine to get an edge over your opponent.

There’s a few cards I want to highlight that we’re also able to abuse in our Historic version.

The original list ran Mausoleum Wanderer as a cheap, evasive threat that randomly countered spells and provided additional tempo. Luckily we have copies 5-8 in the form of Judge's Familiar as well. These two are also great ways to crew another card I want to mention, Smuggler's Copter.

Zac’s original list played this combo, and honestly… it still shreds. Copter lets you filter away bad draws and smooth out your hands while Throne turns every tapped creature, even the ones you used to crew it (or station Labship), into additional damage. I’ve had a number of games where the board is stalled out, yet I’m still able to tap my entire board to crew/station and deal 5+ damage I would’ve otherwise missed.

Smuggler’s Copter and Labship feel very much like two sides of the same coin and their synergy with Throne has been impressive so far.

Our Version

While we pulled a lot of core elements straight from Zac Elsik’s original Blue Steel brew, we’re missing a lot of 1-to-1 versions of it’s staples, meaning we had to get a little creative.

In the original list, Grand Architect and Chief Engineer helped generate mana and pump your artifact threats. But in Historic, we get a similar mana engine in the form of Urza, Lord High Artificer. Combined with Renowned Weaponsmith and Enthusiastic Mechanaut, we can power out things like Kappa Cannonerer or Lodestone Golem quickly and consistently

Speaking of Cannoneer, I think it’s one of the biggest upgrades for this list. Traxos (with Minamo) was a very efficient beater, but the downside of not untapping came into play often enough that it could stumble. Cannoneer is a powerful, unblockable, and adaptive beater that closes games without much hassle. Way better than Traxos by a mile and an easy upgrade for the deck.

Fortunately we still get to keep Throne of the God-Pharaoh! Between, Urza, Copter, and Labship, we have plenty of ways to consistently tap our creatures (without attacking) to increase our clock or apply pressure without ever needing to attack. Throne is a powerful win-con for us if Cannoneer can’t handle the game on its own.

Gameplay

Here’s a quick deck tech and some gameplay (5 matches of Best-of-3 on the ranked ladder).

We ended up 4-1 (after a loss to Lords_Servant’s sweet-ass Lotus Shift brew) in our Historic matches. Overall the deck felt decent but isn’t doing anything special. Mechanaut and Weaponsmith are a fun package for ramping into big artifacts, but it often felt like we weren’t taking full advantage of them. Our biggest items are Lodestone Golem or Cannoneer, neither of which are difficult to land even without the ramp.

I was particularly impressed by the other cards on the low-end of our curve. We jammed the Wanderer/Familar suite in other lists before and they still felt great here. Labship + Copter was quite powerful with Throne of the God-Pharaoh and I’d like to explore going a bit deeper on that idea than this initial build did.

A fun concept that I’m glad I got to explore, but definitely needs some tuning.

Deck #2: Labship Blue

This shell has some familiar faces like Seat of the Synod, Kappa Cannoneer, and Synthesizer Labship, but appraoches the blue-based artifact shell differently than the Blue Steel list above.

I slotted Labship into a list featuring a suite of creatures that we’ve tried to make work in the past. Tamiyo, Landlore Navigator, and Thopterist are cheap engines that synergize and quickly grow out of hand if we can keep them on the board. Although they don’t have immediate value, each one can function as an “army in a can,” creating more and more value the longer they stick around. More importantly, they all generate artifacts in some form or another, which gives us a free 2/2 attacker each turn with Labship.

With the recent addition of Golbez, I felt like we had reached a critical mass of blue artifact-based creatures to warrant jamming them all together. We threw in Emry and Mox Amber to help speed the deck up, and filled in the rest of the list with strong artifact related cards like Baleful Strix Cannoneer, and Metallic Rebuke.

Gameplay

I want to make note of a few synergies that come up a lot in our matches on stream:

1.) Golbez/Emry + Baleful Strix: Gives us consistent card advantage while also providing a free blocker that kills almsot anything it comes into contact with. The life loss from Golbez can help in grindy games and is especially potent with Kappa Cannoneer.

2.) Labship + Thopterist: The Ornithopters created by Thopterist can be used to station Labship the turn you play them. Additionally, you can use Labship’s ability to make one a 4/2 the following turn.

3.) Landlore Navigator: Landlore is quite easy to trigger on turn 2 in this shell between Tamiyo’s clues, Mox Amber, and the artifact lands. Thieving Magpieis a great early game block and helps flip Tamiyo.

4.) Labship + Mistvault Bridge: Simple, but relevant. Having an indestructible flying 2/2 is strong against control decks or in games that go long.

This version was not nearly as potent as I wanted it to be, going 3-2 on stream. Although the synergies I talked about our powerful, the deck felt like it took too long to set them up, and we often got ran over or stalled through simple interaction from the opponent. Labship helps against sorcery speed removal and the constant pressure was strong, but it often didn’t even matter, because we already lost. Even with Mox Amber, this deck is lacking the speed it needs to set up and get it’s engines going. I don’t think this version is strong enough to compete unless we get additional tools in the format.

Closing Thoughts

These two brews were…..impressively unimpressive. They were functional, fun, and in a couple cases, even surprisingly strong.

Labship has potential, and while it may not have taken us to the moon just yet… we’ve definitely achieved lift-off. Spacecrafts, much like other vehicles, seem much too slow for the format in general unless you have something bonkers to go with them. From our testing I believe going all in on a Throne of the God-Pharaoh build has the most potential. One mana is a low ask, and the upside of turning a leftover artifact into an evasive threat every turn seems decent. Especially in longer games or grindy matchups. Back that up with extra damage from Throne and I could see the outline of a shell there. Maybe we’ll explore it more in the future!

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewing!