Too-Specific Top 10 - Artifact Tokens
July 21, 2023 by
DougY 
(Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy | Art by Fajareka Setiawan)
Artificial Assortments
Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where if there isn’t a category to rank our pet card at the top of, we’ll just make one up! (Did you know that Wurmcoil Engine is the only card that makes an artifact Wurm token?)
With Commander Masters being mostly a reprint set, I find myself finally off the spoiler season treadmill, at least for this week! As such, there's time for fresh content, loose ideas, and broad themes!
...Or I could just go over a commander I missed in the spoiler press from two sets ago. Three? Who can tell these days.
There are more or less two immediate ideas that Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy puts in your mind's eye: Artifact creature tokens and what I like to call the Tri-Token strategy, also known as Clues, Food, and Treasure. But why focus in on a specific strategy at all when you can instead cast a wide net and just... see what's out there?
Top 10 Artifact Tokens
I stopped looking after 25, but suffice it to say: There are a lot of types of tokens that happen to be artifacts in Magic: The Gathering. Many of them you probably know off the top of your head right now, but others are a lot more obscure. We'll get to the really obscure later on in the Honorable Mentions section. While I'm excited about those, I don't want to ignore what will make Gimbal decks excellent: The best one or two effects for each of the well-represented token types.
Criteria: Artifact tokens which are represented on at least three cards. As is tradition, all results are ordered by EDHREC score, only in this case I have taken the top three cards representing each artifact token and averaged those inclusions.
10. Gold - Curse of Opulence, The First Iroan Games, King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
(Top Three Inclusions: 71,004, Average: 23,668)
When I say the best of the popular token types, Curse of Opulence is exactly what I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, I love The First Iroan Games and it's slowly become a go-to for me, though it seemed underwhelming during its initial spoiling. But it doesn't even come close to competing with a one-mana ramp spell that tends to stick around and pay dividends the entire game, however, which is what Curse of Opulence is. To really force the issue with my Gimbal deck and make sure I'm getting maximum representation, I set a restriction that I could only have one card representing each artifact token, and when it came to Gold, this one was a no brainer.
Granted, there were only four cards total to choose from, and two of them weren't in color, but still.
9. Golem - Triplicate Titan, Hammer of Purphoros, Phyrexian Triniform
(Top Three Inclusions: 74,418, Average: 24,806)
Golems have a bit more card diversity going for them than the Gold tokens that were almost immediately replaced with "nerfed" Treasure. There are just under 30 cards sporting Golems in total, with many of them being the old or new Phyrexian Splicers that are a sort of Slivers-lite.
Now, going all in on Golems with Gimbal would be a bit suboptimal, given you're more or less dooming yourself to 1/1 Gremlins. That said, 3/3 is where trample becomes a bit more relevant, and green and blue are both fairly well represented on the Phyrexian side of things.
In your more typical Gimbal build, however, you're probably going to want to be a bit more choosy from this diverse pool. There's a lot to be said for going big with Triplicate Titan and Phyrexian Triniform, but peeking further down the list, I'm not going to see us having a problem filling out our top end. On the other side of the spectrum, you have Hammer of Purphoros making your tokens a bit scarier as they can immediately swing, but given that the huge Gremlin tokens we're trying for don't come into play until the end of turn... I do like Golem Foundry if your deck is looking to go fairly deep on artifact spells, but I think you'll find from looking down this list that that's less likely than you think.
Looking really far down the list, then, there are still a couple of standouts for our Golem representative:
Masterful Replication is maybe the strongest contender here, as it allows you multiple Golem tokens or a copy of an artifact you control that will also be uniquely named to pump your Gremlins. It is, however, six mana, which while better than the nine for Triplicate Titan and Phyrexian Triniform, is still very much at the top end of things. Precursor Golem and Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer are a bit better at five, and Ich-Tekik specifically is a great backup commander, but I'd still like to go lower. On that end of things, we have Tuktuk the Explorer and Vulshok Factory. It's tempting to go aggro with a 5/5 trampler, but I'm not completely in love with the situational aspect of Tuktuk outside of a deck that's not able to sacrifice him at will. On the other hand, there's a lot to like about a mana rock that can come down early and become a huge Golem later.
8. Food - Tireless Provisioner, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Gilded Goose, Witch's Oven
(Top Three Inclusions: 95,394, Average: 31,798)
To address the Elf Scout in the room, after some deliberation I decided not to count Tireless Provisioner in the Food category, not because it's not great at making Food, but because it's rarely used when Treasure is available. Indeed, if they'd designed it with only Food as an option, I would imagine its almost 125,000 inclusions would be more like 25,000. Provisioner aside, then, we start with another card that could have used a bit of a nerf: Oko, Thief of Crowns. While he's never been as good in Commander as he has been in 60-card formats, Oko is nonetheless quite the powerhouse for his ability to stack counters while removing problems around the board. Indeed, if you think of planeswalkers as lifegain spells, Oko is essentially three mana for "Gain five life, turn target artifact or creature into an Elk", which is a heck of a deal even before you consider that you can be a bit flexible with it and change that into six life and a Food instead!
But why lean into really good cards when you could have mediocre cards instead? Gilded Goose is, without a doubt, the worst of the one mana value mana dorks. It often will only tap for a single mana the entire game, and has the exact same mana value as Birds of Paradise. Where it does shine, however, is in decks that care about Food tokens, which is Gimbal to a "T". Combine that with our ongoing problem of most of these token creators are expensive, and there's a lot to be said for a Goose that comes down and immediately gives us a token or an extra mana. Witch's Oven is tempting for close to the same reasons, and there's no doubt that we'll have some extra tokens floating around. At the end of the day, however, we don't need multiple Food tokens, just the one, and we're not looking to be an aristocrats deck.
As for Food tokens at large? What can I say, they're a flavorfully fun token. I'm glad they exist, but I don't think anyone is breaking down the door calling them overpowered, especially not in a world where Treasures exist and Clues have been priced about the same.
7. Copy - Feldon of the Third Path, Mechanized Production, Mirrorworks
(Top Three Inclusions: 105,951, Average: 35,317)
This one feels a bit like cheating, but there are a few different effects that make copies of things and change them into artifacts or only affect artifacts. Combine that with the fact that these copies will have unique names, and there's no doubt that there's an entire Gimbal deck based entirely around copies. Not only that, but I would rather gleefully say that this might be the most interesting build of Gimbal, to the point that I was tempted to change gears although I'd made most of my initial decklist at that point.
The main problem you're going to have is that there just aren't very many copy effects that make tokens currently, and many of them only affect artifacts or make non-artifact copies. This means that the Gimbal deck chasing this idea down is also going to be an artifact deck, ideally with an emphasis on artifact creatures. This isn't a total game over, it's just going to take up a lot of deck space. There's no doubt that making multiple copies of Solemn Simulacrum could fairly easily make that worth it even if it's going to make it difficult to get your Gremlins up to lethal amounts of counter buffs.
6. Servo - Marionette Master, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, Animation Module
(Top Three Inclusions: 107,745, Average: 35,915)
Servos might be the most basic of basic artifact creatures, but that's exactly the sort of thing pretty much any Gimbal deck is looking for. Cheap tokens you can throw about are going to be the lifeblood of this deck, so if anything we're hoping that there are four or five different versions of Servos out there for us to exploit!
As for the best way to get these little guys down on the battlefield: Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is no doubt going to do some work (as we rely on tokens to fill our creature slots), with many of those token creators being artifacts and enchantments instead of creatures themselves. Her -2 ability will also let us double up on some token creators along the way, which is good because we really only need one of those Servos anyway. If you were looking to go cheaper, there's another third of the one-mana cycle from Kaladesh besides Animation Module that will get you a bunch of different kinds of tokens all on its own: Retrofitter Foundry. Dropping one of those down on turn one is the ultimate dream for a Gimbal deck.
5. Clue - Tireless Tracker, Tamiyo's Journal, Fateful Absence
(Top Three Inclusions: 108,795, Average: 36,265)
Clues hit a bit of a sweet spot if you're looking for cheap tokens. They're not as technically useless as Food, but they're not so useful that they're too expensive to make, either. Two mana to draw a card is kind of the going rate anyhow, so they're nice to have around, but they're not winning you the game outright either.
Or are they? Both Tireless Tracker and Tamiyo's Journal have a bit to say on the subject, as both can easily snowball into a win. Tireless Tracker making you several Clues a turn with fetchlands is something that's very feasible even outside of a Landfall deck, and having the ability to sac them at instant speed as a combat trick or a means to draw an answer is a really good feeling. In more extreme fashion, however, Tamiyo's Journal can just straight up win you a game with its tutor effect, as shown in my "Oops, All Combos!" build of The Peregrine Dynamo from last year. As tempting as going the ultra-cheap route of Hard Evidence is, those top two are so impactful that they're going to be the choice for top Clue-maker in pretty much any brew that can run them (unless you're a spellslinger deck, in which case you're going to want to look into Trail of Evidence).
4. Myr - Myr Battlesphere, Mirrodin Besieged, Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
(Top Three Inclusions: 130,353, Average: 43,451)
I'm not gonna lie, I didn't even expect Myr to make this list, much less be in the top half! Sure, sure, Myr Battlesphere is still very popular, and for good reason. Seven mana for four tokens and a bunch of guaranteed damage is exactly the kind of impactful card that fits the "has to pretty much win you the game" criteria we look for in expensive cards these days. After that though, my memory was that the pickings got very slim, very quickly, but I'm happy to report that that doesn't appear to be the case!
Perhaps my memory of Mirrodin Besieged is a bit tainted by its "you win the game" condition, but there are in fact two modes on the card, one of which makes a 1/1 Myr every time you cast an artifact. That's not workable in every version of Gimbal, as cast triggers won't care about tokens at all, but if you do find yourself heavy on artifacts it's a great resource to go with as both an engine and win condition.
Our other top contender is a bit more of a risk with Gimbal, however. There's no doubt that Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is a powerful Magic card, but it's also a bit of a non-bo with Gimbal's Gremlin trigger. Don't get me wrong, plopping down a horde of tokens and then making them all a copy of a copy of Sharding Sphinx will still win you the game in the same way that it would in a Brudiclad deck, but it's not really something you can rely on assembling without him in the command zone. With that in mind then, what's more likely to happen with a Brudiclad on the table is that you take your horde of variant tokens that's making an 8/8 Gremlin every turn and make them all into 3/3 Golems that then make you a 1/1 Gremlin every turn. The math on that may work out somewhere in the middle, but how's about we just stick to the gameplan, shall we?
3. Thopter - Sai, Master Thopterist, Thopter Spy Network, Loyal Apprentice
(Top Three Inclusions: 148,941, Average: 49,647)
If there was one token type that seemed optimal for Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy, it would be Thopters. Evasive 1/1 fliers that can be cheap, can also make Gremlins, and can trample if you have anything pumping up the team? What's not to like?
Even better, there's not much of a decision to be made for the best token type, if we're only choosing one. Thopter Spy Network makes a Thopter every turn and draws us a bunch of cards with our artifact-creature-specific token horde. Easy peasy, next!
2. Construct - Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Metallurgic Summonings
(Top Three Inclusions: 259,116, Average: 86,372)
In the opposite situation I had with Myr, I remembered Constructs as being a really deep, really impactful token type. Perhaps this is because Urza's Saga and Urza, Lord High Artificer have become so ubiquitous, and their tokens that get larger and larger as you go deeper and deeper into artifacts are so powerful. They are actually only two of a total of six cards that make Karn-structs, however, and they are (rightfully) by far the most expensive cards on that list. Imagining that we're not made of money, don't want to be targeted down by an entire table, and taking into account that most of the other Karn-struct options are not in Gimbal's colors, let's take a look at some other more unique Construct options:
At first glance, Mechtitan Core seems like a slam dunk for Gimbal. We'll have the tokens available more or less immediately, and we'll then have a huge Construct with all the keywords that will make us more Gremlins! I'm not really sold, however. Seven mana for a 10/10 with keyword soup is fine, but it's going to set us back in making a ton of unique tokens to create huge Gremlins with trample; all for a high likelihood that the token getting removed and none of our other tokens will come back when it does. Instead, I think looking at cheaper options is the way to go. With the often free-or-very-cheap Ancient Stone Idol leading the pack as a fun combat trick that can also make a huge token, it's definitely worth considering. Similarly, Nimblewright Schematic might not be wowing anyone, but it does make a token for cheap pretty early, and to sac later on to make another when our 1/1 Construct inevitably gets killed. Both are solid options for the short list.
1. Treasure - Smothering Tithe, Dockside Extortionist, An Offer You Can't Refuse
(Top Three Inclusions: 752,073, Average: 250,691)
There was no token of any other kind that was ever going to end up at the top of this list. Even taking artifacts out of it, Treasures are a bigger deal than Saprolings, Soldiers, Goblins, or anything else that's ever been conjured up out of thin air in the game of Magic. Treasures are a hit, and no wonder. As much as Studio X has started putting them into play tapped in newer versions (having learned their lesson with admitted mistakes like Dockside Extortionist), it's too little too late, and Treasure's domination continues. There's not a single game of Commander that doesn't have a half dozen of them strewn around the table at any given time, and that's going to be the norm for some time to come.
As for what to include in Gimbal, the answer is, of course, Dockside Extortionist. But assuming you're not made of cash, or you're just a little bored with our $50 friend, what else could you do?
Well, you could do with our earlier friend we mentioned, Tireless Provisioner. Sorry, you're gonna have to be a hipster with your Treasures on your own time, bud.
Honorable Mentions
There are still a ton of artifact tokens out there, so I figured why not just continue with the list?
Top 25 Artifact Tokens
11. Wurm - Wurmcoil Engine - 60,566 inclusions (not included in main list as there's only one card)
12. Soldier - Myrel, Shield of Argive, Third Path Iconoclast, Platoon Dispenser - 17,735 average inclusions
13. Mite - White Sun's Twilight, Skrelv's Hive, Mirrex - 21,681 avg
14. Spawn - Spawning Pit - 17,257 inclusions
15. Horror - Phyrexian Rebirth, Profane Transfusion - 15,358 avg
16. Rock - Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith - 14,291 inclusions
17. Blood - Voldaren Estate, Glass-Cast Heart, Anje, Maid of Dishonor - 14,011 avg
18. Powerstone - Karn, Living Legacy, Hall of Tagsin, Visions of Phyrexia - 10,000 avg
19. Assembly-Worker - Urza's Factory - 9,508 avg
20. Necron - Biotransference, Imotekh the Stormlord, Their Number Is Legion - 8,479 avg
21. Incubator - Sunfall, Chrome Host Seedshark, Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos - 6,918 avg
22. Drone - Kaito, Dancing Shadow - 6,758 inclusions
23. Banana - Kibo, Uktabi Prince - 6,316 inclusions
24. Wall - The Birth of Meletis, Basalt Golem - 6,007 avg
25. Insect - Canoptek Scarab Swarm, Wirefly Hive, The Hive - 3,987 avg
There's no question that there's a ton of support for all the different token types you could ever want to exploit, but why not just show you what I came up with?
Tabulating Tokens
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Nuts and Bolts
There always seems to be a bit of interest in how these lists are made (this seems like a good time to stress once again that they are based on EDHREC score, NOT my personal opinion), and people are often surprised that I’m not using any special data or .json from EDHREC, but rather just muddling my way through with some Scryfall knowledge! For your enjoyment/research, here is this week’s Scryfall search.
What Do You Think?
Gimbal is no doubt one of the more unique brewing spaces we've seen, and what's more is that he's probably not the only version of this effect we could see!
And finally, what is your favorite artifact token? What obscure tokens from Magic's past did I miss? How are you building Gimbal?
Let us know in the comments, and we'll see you at the table we scraped together out of a pallet, a baseball bat, a broom handle, an old shovel, and more nails than you can shake a stick at.
DougY
Doug has been an avid Magic player since Fallen Empires, when his older brother traded him some epic blue Homarids for all of his Islands. As for Commander, he's been playing since 2010, when he started off by making a two-player oriented G/R Land Destruction deck. Nailed it. In his spare time when he's not playing Magic, writing about Magic or doing his day job, he runs a YouTube channel or two, keeps up a College Football Computer Poll, and is attempting to gif every scene of the Star Wars prequels.
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