Transmute Artifact

[Onslaught]

Sacrifice an artifact. If you do, search your library for an artifact card. If that card's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, put it onto the battlefield. If it's greater, you may pay X, where X is the difference. If you do, put it onto the battlefield. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.

I can't even remember the last time I saw someone use it in a T8, though it has had smatterings of usage here and there. This card has always seemed massively underplayed, but in a Cage heavy metagame it might become more attractive. If decks shift towards being more Vault/Key oriented as a way to get around Cage, Transmute Artifact essentially becomes extra copies of Tinker.

Tinkering away a Mox to find Time Vault:  -3 Mana
Transmute Artifact a Mox for Time Vault:  -4 Mana
Tinkering away a Mox to find Voltaic Key: -3 Mana
Transmute Artifact a Mox for Voltaic Key: -3 Mana
Tinkering away a Sol Ring/SDT/Needle/etc. to find Time Vault: -3 Mana
Transmute Artifact a Sol Ring/SDT/Needle/etc. for Time Vault: -3 Mana
Tinkering away a Sol Ring/SDT/Needle/etc. to find Voltaic Key: -3 Mana
Transmute Artifact a Sol Ring/SDT/Needle/etc. for Voltaic Key: -2 Mana

So it's very comparable to Tinker in every scenario except sacrificing a Mox for Time Vault, though UU vs. U can't be understated. In the situations where you want to Transmute Artifact for Lotus, Transmute Artifact is also cheaper than Tinker. Also, you don't lose your Mox if Transmute Artifact is countered, which is a minor perk over Tinker.

Cage will obviously never be huge enough to the point where decks start cutting BSC, but Transmute Artifact was probably worth running in a lot of decks even before Cage existed. I recently suggested it to my friend for his Bomberman build, where it has the most obvious synergy.

[bluemage55]

The utility of a second Tinker is greatly diminished if you already have one.  Most of the time, having a second Tinker effect in your hand is awful, and Transmute Artifact's greater cost and inability to bring in giant robots makes it worse.  Given that decks running Tinker have already been trimming down as many dead cards as possible for years now, I find it difficult to believe that Transmute Artifact will see much play except in a deck specifically designed to abuse it.

[vaughnbros]

I think transmute artifact is much more comparable to trinket mage than tinker since your only going to be able to get low drop artifacts with it for the most part.  Transmute artifact is going to cost less colorless mana, at the cost of sacrificing an artifact and not getting a 2/2 body.  Although it does have extra synergy with gifts seeing as you can get trinket mage and transmute.  Also you can flash it back with snapcaster, if you have triple blue available to you.  All in all i think some decks should consider a singleton of it but that's about it.

[boggyb]

Good points, but I think you guys are downplaying the use case Onslaught is highlighting: you can use it very effectively to get out Time Vault.

to bluemage: The utility of having a second tinker effect in hand is surely diminished over having the first, but the real utility is being able to run 5 tinker effects in your deck. Of course it's not as good as tinker, but the point is that you can tinker up a time vault for approximately the same amount of mana with it, and not necessarily lose an artifact along the way.

to vaughbros: It is for sure very comparable to Trinket Mage, except in that Trinket Mage can't get Time Vault. That's the crucial difference.

I think the real question is, how is this better than Tezzeret? He costs 1 more mana but has much broader powers, and is reusable. And he makes it so you don't necessarily need Voltaic Key. I guess you could muscle this into an existing Tezz build but seems like overkill.

[bluemage55]

to bluemage: The utility of having a second tinker effect in hand is surely diminished over having the first, but the real utility is being able to run 5 tinker effects in your deck. Of course it's not as good as tinker, but the point is that you can tinker up a time vault for approximately the same amount of mana with it, and not necessarily lose an artifact along the way.

The point I'm making is that modern blue decks don't need more than 1 copy of Tinker, especially if it costs more and you can't tutor out a bot with it.  If you really need an extra -CA way to complete Key-Vault, you add Imperial Seal, which most decks don't even bother running.  Blue decks simply don't need to fill their decks with more win conditions, which simply sit there dead when it's not time to use them.

That's why you'd need to build a deck around Transmue Artifact to get any mileage out of it.