Thanks for your feedback. Indeed your approach is quite similar to mine, but you have more clear ideas than me.
You play 4 magus, 1 blood moon. I'll play 3 and 3, probably. The enchantment is easier to stick (not so much with decay, but unless they have floating mana, later is difficult to play decay or even nature's claim/disenchant, being usually secondary colors). Magus has been killed by bolts hundreds of times.
4 gorillas are too much in playtesting. There are lots of decks that do not rely on moxen. Besides, moxen can be played and used. Gorilla can kill them, but if I have to face tinker (or even jace, tarmogoyf, confidant...), I have a problem
Manic vandal seems fine, but with heretic I don't have to wait to play it. However manic can be played with caverns naming human. I think I prefer viashino, specially with lots of batterskulls in the sideboards.
Masticore: my last version featured one but I have been greatly unimpressed, even playtesting with 2 fiery temper. most creature's decks (when you want this) play null rod or stony silence, and masticore sucks under a null rod. I played it some months ago vs MUD and got it dismembered... quite sad.
Arc slogger: it's kind of a finisher, but the direct damage is quite dangerous. it can only do 8 direct damage reliablily and then has to win in the combat phase, where 4/5 is nice but not that special nowadays. However is in my radar too
Sculpting steel / metamorph: I like metamorph, it also works without coating and faces some hard problems like tarmo and confidant. But it's difficult to make it work with coating (besides, you usually prefer viashino here).
Coating: dead on its own, and not instawin even after pairing it with the rest of the package. I have to stick a moon effect to win tempo, and then coating helps controlling the game.
Crucible: kind of win more without spheres. The best utility I have found is not to reuse wastes, but usually recovering my lands because of opponent wastes. It's a card that goes in and out every time I play this deck.
Wastelands: playing moons, wastes and moxen is hard. Moons + wastes mean good control of opponent's manabase. Moons + moxen means early moons, great. wastes + moxen means lots of colorless mana hands, and that is really annoying. I'm towards dropping wastes (or ancient tombs...)
Great furnace, as i said lately, was quite underperforming. I expected them to be great with welders and kuldotha phoenix, but again it was only great after a moon. All the deck performs great after a moon or a lodestone golem, otherwise is crap. It has problems being reactive, so I'm testing with tangle wire, but it's not special here. Tangle is great with mws , not so great without it .
I also have tried uba mask. Uba mask and magus get along well, because magus demands searching for solutions and in the way they keep losing spells, while you can play nearly anything. Besides, playing faithless looting with uba mask is kind of the bazaar engine of old times. But if nobody plays uba mask + bazaar now, probably means in moons deck would be even worse...
Thanks for feedback. Regarding Liquimetal coating, I agree it is dead on its own. In order to maximize it, you have to put in alot of cards that interact with artifacts. For my deck, i have at least 16 cards that interact with artifacts.
Regarding Moon effects, yes 5 to 6 effects are good. My reason for having 4 magus because they are part of the beat down force. My deck doesnt really pack a punch like Tinker Blighsteel decks. However with a typical force of gorilla shaman, a magus, and a simian spirit guide/manic vandal, i have a 5 damage clock which is decent for a mana denial / board control deck.
Viashino heretic is good too, however I'm not too keen on its 1 damage. But yeah I do like it that you want to put it down right away vs. waiting for something to destroy with a manic. In my build, sometimes you just have to check the board and just go beatdown mode without waiting for a manic vandal target. Advantage of manic vandal also is its a triggered ability so less mana intensive and faster. So it realy depends on the scenario and its got its pros and cons.
I like Masticore because its only 4 mana for a 4/4. 5 mana can take sometime. The discard requirement during upkeep can be handy for cheating in artifacts with welder. Imagine discarding a sculting steel/ phyrexian metamorph and copying an emrakul for free. Mana can be tight sometimes and yet the deck can still operate due to welder tricks.
Crucible is just there for redundancy for the mana denial gameplan. One is enough IMO. Sometimes CoW-Strip/waste lock wins games. And true its good for recovery of lost lands as well. This really works well with goblin welder and artifact land. you can keep welding in from your graveyard your metamorph and use reuse artifact land as your weld target. Never dead and good to have. CoW is very synergistic with the deck and never dead.
Regarding 4 gorilla shaman, I need to max amount since that is the core tech combo of the deck with liquimetal coating. You want a turn 1 gorilla shaman (good one its own vs. powered decks) and turn 1 liquimetal coating. Thats the reason for having 4 shamans and 4 liquimetal coatings.
Imagine this: Use SSG for 1 red, play shaman. play ancient tomb, tap for 2 mana, play liquimetal coating. The combo is online, you can start eating their moxen and mishra's workshops and or any land on turn 2. Blood moon alone is not a total lock, but mana destruction is.
It's okay to have multiple shamans since they contribute to the beatdown. you can use them to chump block, and you can use them to replace countered shamans.
Multiple coatings are ok also since you can destroy multiple lands per turn. 2 coatings, a shaman, and an ancient tomb can destroy 2 lands per turn. Thats not counting strip mine and wasteland. Liquimetal coating also adds to your artifact count for weldable targets.
I thought of using loadstone golems however it hurts me and helps the worshop player more. For my deck its not a great fit. But I agree it is very strong in workshop decks.
Regarding Sculting Steel/ Phyrexian Metamorph, So many tricks with these cards. You can copy your own creatures to repeat comes into play effects like manic vandal. copy manic vandal with metamorph and destroy any permanent again via liquimetal coating. Use welder to repeat the process. VERY STRONG.
Regarding Oath decks, its a bad matchup since oath is superior over decks with creatures. Gameplan is to get a fast moon effect to stall or delay oath and beatdown as fast a possible. Deny mana and as much as possible. When oath comes down, hope fully liquimetal coating is online and kill it. If he gets to oath out a creature, copy it with metamorph or sculpting steel. You will have more creatures than the oath player so you should win.
Another key to beat oath is to get an early welder and liquimetal coating. Then make sure you get a metamorph out. That way if Iona comes out naming red , you can either weld out Iona, or destroy it by making it into an artifact, welding in a metamorph copying a manic vandal targeting Iona.
Ubasmask sounds good, but does it really help in your gameplan?
I guess it would be best if you can describe to us what's the core gameplan of your current build and how your cards contribute to the gameplan.
thanks!
