A little while ago, I created a pauper Kenku Artificer blink deck that used Dire Mimic and Ephemerate to create an army of buffable artifact creatures. This deck is an upgrade of sorts, or more accurately, a pioneer version of it. Is this deck janky? Most definitely. Will it be fun when loads of random artifacts suddenly come to life and smack your opponent to death on turn 4/5? Absolutely!

This deck revolves around turning noncreature artifacts into creatures that beat-down for a lot of damage. That's it. It's a plain and simple deck, but sometimes that's all you need. There are two important sides to this deck. First are the animation spells. Animating Faerie has an adventure side that turns a noncreature artifact into a 0/0 with 4 +1/+1 counters, as do Case of the Filched Falcon and Lifecraft Awakening. Then you have your artifacts. The choice of artifacts might seem strange at first, but they have their place. Levitating Statue comes with flying and gets buffed even when it isn't a creature; Simic Keyrune is both a mana rock and can be turned into a creature for 2 mana, which gives it hexproof and a 2/3 body to go with the +1/+1 counters (as does Stuffed Bear minus the hexproof); and the incubate tokens produced by Glistening Dawn and Chrome Host Seedshark are noncreature artifacts that already have +1/+1 counters on them when they enter that make for great animation targets. Lastly, Restless Vinestalk is a sneaky late game threat as it also allows you to buff another creature when it attacks, giving one of your animated artifacts base stats of 3/3, which could be enough to swing the game if your opponent doesn't spot it.

The rest of your creatures and spells are there for either support, token generation, or for late game animation that triggers every turn to grind out against removal heavy decks. Some of the numbers for these spells could be tweaked. Currently, this deck is untested, so it will no doubt need a few trial runs to see how well it performs and to see if the ratio of animation spells to artifacts is optimal. The sideboard should help with this to a degree without needing to cut too much from the original list, but also provides graveyard hate and some counters for good measure.

Below is a simplified price breakdown for this deck as of mid January 2025. It's not a hugely expensive deck, but not the cheapest either. If you're going to spend decent money on a deck like this, you're in it for the fun of it rather than a mind-boggling win rate. That said, this deck's cost could certainly be slimmed down by replacing some of the more expensive lands (which would likely be a good thing to do anyway as I am no expert on land choice), swapping out some spells for less optimal alternatives, and going for the not-so-flashy versions of some cards over secret rares. For transparency, these prices are taken straight from Aetherhub's price guide. Take that how you will. No doubt there are cheaper versions to be found at your LGS, on eBay, or by trading:

Creatures = $4.08
Other Spells = $121.28
Lands = $178.61
Sideboard = $102.71
Total Cost = $406.68 or £331.76 or €394.32

There's a number of ways this deck could be upgraded or shifted to another format. Listed in the maybeboard are a list of cards legal in the legacy format that could be used to upgrade this deck, or to turn it into a commander deck. Another option would be to splash white for extra removal such as Sunfall or Get Lost and buffs from cards like Urza, Prince of Kroog, or splash red for cards like the indestructible Diamond Pick-Axe, utility cards like Detective's Satchel, or haste up your artifacts with Thopter Engineer. More vehicles can also be used, but some of the more impressive ones will lose their base power and toughness due to the animation spells, and they nonbo with Lifecraft Awakening. Vehicles such as Colossal Plow and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship are good choices.

Thanks for taking a look at this deck, and for those of you who download this deck to give it a try - good luck! I'm unsure if there's a way to give proper feedback on Aetherhub, but a thumbs up would be appreciated if you actually get some wins with this. Happy playing!