#artifact creature

Aetherdrift: Brightglass Gearhulk

Among the vehicles, mounts, racers, and monstrous creatures of Aetherdrift, there are some works of artifice designed for other purposes. The Brightglass Gearhulk is the first of a new five-card cycle, which mimics the Gearhulks from the original Kaladesh set. I never got around to making those, but maybe I'll give them a shot once this cycle is finished.

Today's Date is May 8th, 2024, and today's card is Wurmcoil Engine

[ID Wurmcoil Engine's art depicts a massive winding black metal wurm with green accents. At its mouth there are many sharp metal fangs forming an open roaring maw. Interestingly it looks like it has spit (phyrexian oil maybe?) and on the inside of its maw it holds a foggy green light source. The background is very vague and foggy/dusty/smokey but it doesn have some vaguely pointy architecture around.

It's an artifact creature that costs 6 colorless mana. It's subtypes are Phyrexian Wurm and its rarity is Mythic Rare.

Its rules text reads "Deathtouch, lifelink

When Wurmcoil Engine dies, create a 3/3 colorless Phyrexian Wurm artifact creature token with lifelink."

Wurmcoil Engine's power and toughness are both 6.

New wurm! New... Phyrexian wurm...

I should have seen this coming, but here we are. Trust those lovable scamps the Phyrexians to give us probably the most pushed wurm ever printed! 7 power lifelink is ridiculous to begin with, making this card immediately compete with the best of the best life-gaining wurms. And that ward cost? That’s horrendous, mmmm.

Art by  Lius Lasahido

What is a Construct (flavorfully)?

A Construct is any artificial creature, such as a catapult, a robot, a doll, a blimp, or a dragon,  but not all artificial creatures, because sometimes they count as actual dragons or birds or dogs even though they’re entirely artificial.

What is a Construct (mechanically)?

In the old days of Magic: the Gathering, Artifact Creatures didn’t need creature types. Then, the Grand Creature Type Update came to fix this by giving a creature type to each and every Artifact creature. The type ‘construct’ was given to any without an obvious better option.

Constructs vary wildly in size and ability with no rhyme or reason, save that all but Slag Fiend are artifact creatures. How is Slag Fiend a construct but not an Artifact? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

Can I make a Construct deck?

There’s enough decent constructs that it should be entirely reasonable to make a construct deck for casual purposes, but there’s no real reward for doing so. Artifact creatures tend to be weaker than non-artifact creatures at the same mana costs, and while there are multiple constructs that can act as construct lords, Adaptive Automaton, Chief of the Foundry, and Steel Overseer are all completely apathetic to your creature type of choice, though you could use them together along with Metallic Mimic to make a Lord-Heavy artifact deck. 

It’s certainly possible to make a deck that wins using Constructs. In standard alone, Electrostatic Pummeler, Metallurgic Summonings, and Karn, Scion of Urza are solid game-ending threats, but constructs are a subtheme of artifact creatures, and you’re going to do a lot better in any format making an artifact creatures matter deck than making a constructs matter deck.

In Commander, the only legendary construct is Traxos, who’s probably fine, but does nothing to support the rest of the type and is probably a lot better just loading up on Equipment. Daretti, Scrap Savant or Feldon work great with a lot of constructs, but once again, at this point you’re making an Artifact deck, not a Construct deck, and you have no rewards for creature type that matter. Any Construct deck is relying entirely on “choose a type” cards, or “Artifact matters” cards in its entirety.

Is Construct a good creature type?

Construct, like Beast, is an awful creature type that means nothing. Just as “Beast” means “Creature,” “Construct” means “Artifact.”  And like with Beast, while I truly accept that some things, like Grapeshot Catapult, don’t have anything else they could be but a Construct, you can’t tell me that Dragon Engine and Ugin’s Construct are Constructs but then Ramos, Dragon Engine and Lotus Guardian are real dragons.

Unfortunately, unlike with Beasts, it’s a lot harder to fix construct taxonomy by trying to use actual taxonomy. There’s certainly some things I would change. I’d lean more toward living creature types over “Construct” for things like Dragon Engine and Traxos, which are designed to look like living creatures. I’d push a lot more of the humanoid constructs into Golem. I’d turn a lot of Phyrexian constructs into “Horror,” which seems to be a good go-to creature type for Phyrexians that isn’t too limiting.  I’d definitely expand Assembly-Worker (possibly renaming it to Assembler or Worker) to absorb things like Hangarback Walker and Accomplished Automaton that make more artifact creatures. I might even give some the Artificer creature type.

A lot of things, though, can’t be reclassified without making a new creature type, and I’m trying to cut down on the number of those. Ultimately, Construct is boring and redundant, but has to exist because… Actually I’m not so sure why we can’t just have a bunch of artifact creatures without creature types. A Battering Ram doesn’t need a creature type. A Catapult doesn’t need a creature type. What sort of magical effect are you doing to give your Catapults +1/+1 for each Battering Ram you control?