If there’s one thing most Commander players are guilty of, it’s not running enough removal. With so many attractive synergy options for every deck, these are the cards that get cut first more often than not. This is true for creature removal, but doubly so for other types, meaning powerful artifacts often run away with games for lack of proper answers.
While adding more removal to your deck can be seen as boring, it doesn’t have to be. Beyond the well-known staples, there’s a whole world of underplayed MTG artifact hate out there, which you can tap into to give your deck a unique and useful edge.
White | Dust To Dust
White is one of the better-known colors for artifact removal, but Dust to Dust certainly isn’t one of its better-known examples. For three mana, this offers an immediate two-for-one, taking two artifacts out of the game at once. Even by today’s standards, that’s a pretty great deal.
What’s particularly notable here is that you get to exile the chosen artifacts, not just destroy them. This gets around Indestructible problems like The One Ring, and messes with graveyard strategies, too. It’s especially strong against sticky value threats like Wurmcoil Engine and Solemn Simulacrum, since your opponent takes a pretty big tempo loss if those don’t hit the graveyard.
Additionally, there are some nice political applications for Dust to Dust as well. Since you get to pick two targets, you can leave one opponent untouched to forge an alliance. Alternatively, you can go all-in on a single problem player, leaving them vulnerable to attack by others later. There are a ton of options here, certainly far more than the card’s paltry play rate of 0.03% suggests.
Blue | Steal Artifact
As a color, blue doesn’t tend to get many cards that address artifacts directly. Steal Artifact is a rare exception, however, providing not just solid artifact removal, but also a huge tempo swing as well.
One of the biggest issues with single-target removal in Commander is that it typically leaves you at a tempo loss vs. three different opponents. Steal Artifact solves this problem by ensuring you get to keep the artifact it “removes.” Immediately, this makes the card hugely flexible. You can steal a mana rock when you need ramp, a draw piece when you’re low on cards, or even an artifact creature when you’re behind on board.
Much like exile-based removal, Steal Artifact also gets around Indestructible and dies triggers. No matter what you’re staring down, whether it’s a Blightsteel Colossus or Scrap Trawler, you can get the best of it by snatching it. Four mana is fairly steep by modern MTG standards, but you’ll struggle to find an artifact hate card that has more potential upside, and is more underplayed, than this one.
Black | Ratchet Bomb
Black has always been known for its lack of options when it comes to dealing with artifacts and enchantments. While newer spells like Feed the Swarm and Withering Torment have addressed the latter somewhat, the former remains a glaring weakness. Unless you’re willing to play the terrible Phyrexian Tribute, or the mediocre-and-expensive Gate to Phyrexia, you’re out of luck if you want to deal with artifacts in Mono-Black.
If you’re stuck in the color and need to take out some artifacts, then you’ll want to try out some colorless options instead. For our money, the best card in this category is Ratchet Bomb. It comes down early for just two mana, and it can immediately clear out every token on the board. This is fantastic against the wide boards of Treasure and Food we often see in Commander these days.
The real beauty of Ratchet Bomb, however, is the fact that it can eventually clear every nonland permanent off the board. With enough time, and maybe some untap or Proliferate shenanigans, you can build up a serious stack of counters here, at which point your two mana investment will pay off handsomely. While it’s not as iconic as Nevinyrral’s Disk, I believe Ratchet Bomb is a much better fit for the speedy state of current Commander.
Red | Hammer Mage
Of all the colors in Magic, red probably has the most options available for dealing with artifacts. This likely explains why Hammer Mage, a very solid entry in the genre, sees play in barely over 1,000 decks right now. This is a crying shame, however, as the card operates on an axis few of its peers do, and offers some surprising synergy at the same time.
For starters, getting to potentially affect all artifacts in play is a big deal. You need a fair bit of mana to hit the bigger stuff, but for general use, it’s very affordable. You can also use it repeatedly turn after turn, meaning you can keep future artifacts in check where single-target spells couldn’t.
On top of that, the card serves as a fairly effective discard outlet. Plenty of decks, be they straightforward Reanimator piles like Terra, Herald of Hope, or dedicated discard decks like Norman Osborn//Green Goblin, can turn this into a positive. It’s rare for a removal piece to synergize with any other aspect of your deck, but Hammer Mage bucks that trend with aplomb.
Green | Green Slime
Green Slime offers something totally unique in the world of artifact removal: the ability to suppress their abilities. When Flashed in, Green Slime lets you counter any non-mana activated or triggered ability, before destroying the offending artifact as usual. This gives it far more utility than its peers, especially considering it comes with a reasonable 2/2 body as well.
With Green Slime, you can take out Lightning Greaves before it equips, smash Sensei’s Divining Top before it rearranges the deck, or even crush The Great Henge before it draws a card. The card can even save you from opposing hate pieces as well. If you find yourself staring down a Tormod’s Crypt as a graveyard deck, or Aura Shards in Enchantress, you can stop their activations/triggers and get them out of the way to boot.
The fact that you can Foretell Green Slime is the icing on the cake. It’s a great deal at three mana, but when you can split that over two turns, it gets even better. Despite all of this clear power and utility, only 25,000 decks are running Green Slime at present, which feels criminally low to me. Next time you’re building out your green interaction suite, consider giving this sold-short Slime a spin.
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