Contraptions deck (ft. Unstable set)

>Introduction

I think it's crucial to briefly clarify the goals of my deck building to better understand what are the choices that led me to choose a certain type of cards, instead of others. My MTG experience started back in 2003 when I bought my very first deck and since then I slowly improved my knowledge in the game mechanics and decks building. I always played for fun against friends and so my ultimate goal is having good time together. This viewpoint drasticaly limits my Magic deck building experience to non-tournament only, but it definitely has its own benefits in money saved and a much wider card choice I can pick from.

Said so, these non-written rules apply to all my decks and lead to good games more often than not.
The cards must:

• contain an unique game mechanics
• have a good sinergy,
• avoid infinite combos.

Devour and Landfall are two examples of good game mechanics, +1/+1 Counters and Tribal are too: sinergy improves the overall deck gameplan and focus more on the play and less on the single cards. Perfect sinergy means that no matter what card I draw this turn, I'm sure it will fit my strategy. A deck based on a crazy-powerful card naturally shrinks the strategy to focus on that card only, worsening the overall deck mechanics and enjoyment. Infinite combos are the nemesi of good games: play them to win, or lose otherwise. I don't like them, there's no point in having one into my for-fun decks.

Deck Mechanics

Besides the lack of cards choice from the Unstable Set, the Contraption keyword can be found in each color type and the Deckstats database offers a good number of decks featuring this mechanics. Thinking about how the Contraptions work, I realized they're far superior to regular artifacts for these three aspects:

• they can be assembled as an interrups as long as the card assembling them can,
• they can be played from a separate pile of cards so we don't need to wait to draw them,
• they still trigger each Metalcraft and Affinity ability.

Deck Overview

Moreover the Riggers assemble a Contraption as soon as they come into play, so they can be later used as fresh-meat to block our opponents' attacking creatures. The only two exceptions are the Kindly Cognician and the Steamflogger Boss that speed up the assembling process, but the deck proved to work even without both, it just takes a bit longer. Each Contraption can be assembled in one of the three slot available. A sproket activates one slot at the time at the beginning of each own upkeep so that all Contraptions assembled in that slot are triggered. The Contraption choice for this deck is aggro, as the control side is a bit lacking. Some of them creates tokes, for example Faerie Aerie and Rapid Prototyper, while others support them during combat, for example Top-Secret Tunnel and Turbo-Thwacking Auto-Hammer, while others have effects to improve deck consistency and card draw, for example Record Store and Widget Contraption.

The mechanics proved to be absolutely devastating even against nasty aggro decks, having some hard times only against the super fast Goblin deck and the mighty powerful Life Control deck. The overall enjoyment has been good, mainly because the Contraptions assemble an unique machinery each game and offer great flexibility over different match types.