Rygars's EDH.Arcum Dagsson

Rygars Morgoth's

EDH.Arcum Dagsson

Type:

Deck Idea
Format (legal 👍) vinVintage

Approx. Value:

$5,499.26

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Avg. CMC 2.47

Card Color Breakdown

Card Type Breakdown

Main Deck - 99 cards, 89 distinct

Columns

	Name	Edition	$	Type	Cost
	Name	Rarity	$	Type	Color
Creature (16)
1	Dross Scorpion		$0.28	Artifact Creature - Scorpion
1	Etherium Sculptor		$0.94	Artifact Creature - Vedalken Artificer
1	Hangarback Walker		$1.20	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Hedron Crawler		$0.16	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Junk Diver		$4.99	Artifact Creature - Bird
1	Kuldotha Forgemaster		$4.46	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Manakin		$0.24	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Metalworker		$110.21	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Millikin		$0.20	Artifact Creature - Construct
1	Myr Retriever		$2.05	Artifact Creature - Myr
1	Myr Sire		$0.25	Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Myr
1	Phyrexian Metamorph		$4.68	Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Shapeshifter
1	Plague Myr		$0.99	Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Myr
1	Silver Myr		$0.35	Artifact Creature - Myr
1	Spellskite		$5.15	Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Horror
1	Trinket Mage		$0.65	Creature - Human Wizard
Instant (10)
1	Brainstorm		$1.16	Instant
1	Counterspell		$1.46	Instant
1	Fact or Fiction		$0.17	Instant
1	Impulse		$0.13	Instant
1	Mana Drain		$32.68	Instant
1	Muddle the Mixture		$1.17	Instant
1	Negate		$0.12	Instant
1	Pact of Negation		$10.72	Instant
1	Swan Song		$11.88	Instant
1	Thirst for Knowledge		$0.05	Instant
Sorcery (4)
1	Fabricate		$4.63	Sorcery
1	Ponder		$2.31	Sorcery
1	Reshape		$3.65	Sorcery
1	Transmute Artifact		$426.39	Sorcery
Artifact (32)
1	Basalt Monolith		$4.62	Artifact
1	Chalice of the Void		$30.27	Artifact
1	Clock of Omens		$1.21	Artifact
1	Darksteel Forge		$34.09	Artifact
1	Ensnaring Bridge		$10.79	Artifact
1	Gilded Lotus		$1.64	Artifact
1	Grim Monolith		$291.61	Artifact
1	Lightning Greaves		$5.14	Artifact - Equipment
1	Lotus Petal		$19.20	Artifact
1	Mana Crypt		$116.89	Artifact
1	Mana Vault		$73.60	Artifact
1	Mox Diamond		$630.74	Artifact
1	Mox Opal		$81.89	Legendary Artifact
1	Mycosynth Lattice		$11.59	Artifact
1	Myr Turbine		$6.11	Artifact
1	Nevinyrral's Disk		$0.28	Artifact
1	Null Brooch		$5.02	Artifact
1	Pithing Needle		$0.50	Artifact
1	Possessed Portal		$2.21	Artifact
1	Rings of Brighthearth		$2.81	Artifact
1	Sensei's Divining Top		$26.85	Artifact
1	Skullclamp		$6.30	Artifact - Equipment
1	Sol Ring		$1.41	Artifact
1	Staff of Domination		$2.45	Artifact
1	Swiftfoot Boots		$2.88	Artifact - Equipment
1	Tangle Wire		$12.85	Artifact
1	Thousand-Year Elixir		$10.87	Artifact
1	Torpor Orb		$2.35	Artifact
1	Trinisphere		$40.91	Artifact
1	Unwinding Clock		$9.42	Artifact
1	Voltaic Key		$1.92	Artifact
1	Winter Orb		$8.86	Artifact
Enchantment (3)
1	Copy Artifact		$43.43	Enchantment
1	Mystic Remora		$6.68	Enchantment
1	Power Artifact		$162.77	Enchantment - Aura
Planeswalker (1)
1	Tezzeret the Seeker		$15.26	Legendary Planeswalker - Tezzeret
Land (33)
1	Academy Ruins		$15.86	Legendary Land
1	Ancient Tomb		$89.81	Land
1	Blinkmoth Nexus		$2.15	Land
1	Buried Ruin		$0.50	Land
1	Cavern of Souls		$37.67	Land
1	City of Traitors		$351.03	Land
1	Crystal Vein		$5.00	Land
1	Darksteel Citadel		$0.91	Artifact Land
1	Flooded Strand		$10.41	Land
1	Gemstone Caverns		$49.18	Legendary Land
1	Hall of the Bandit Lord		$10.72	Legendary Land
1	Inkmoth Nexus		$12.14	Land
1	Minamo, School at Water's Edge		$70.98	Legendary Land
1	Mishra's Factory		$0.13	Land
1	Mishra's Workshop		$2,400.00	Land
1	Misty Rainforest		$21.64	Land
1	Polluted Delta		$13.87	Land
1	Saprazzan Skerry		$1.40	Land
1	Seat of the Synod		$1.37	Artifact Land
11	Snow-Covered Island		$1.32	Basic Snow Land - Island
1	Strip Mine		$16.93	Land
1	Svyelunite Temple		$0.50	Land
1	Tolaria West		$2.40	Land

Sideboard - 12 cards, 12 distinct

	Name	Edition	$	Type	Cost
	Name	Rarity	$	Type	Color
Creature (1)
1	Master Transmuter		$1.53	Artifact Creature - Human Artificer
Artifact (11)
1	Champion's Helm		$2.85	Artifact - Equipment
1	Crucible of Worlds		N/A	Artifact
1	Defense Grid		$4.68	Artifact
1	Grafdigger's Cage		$2.58	Artifact
1	Jester's Cap		$1.41	Artifact
1	Memory Jar		$32.50	Artifact
1	Mindslaver		$3.13	Legendary Artifact
1	Neurok Stealthsuit		$1.06	Artifact - Equipment
1	Sculpting Steel		$0.90	Artifact
1	Spine of Ish Sah		$0.40	Artifact
1	Witchbane Orb		$0.36	Artifact

Notes

==Nota Bene==
I openly welcome feedback of any kind on the primer you're about to read, and I am also more than happy to offer my help and guidance on the community's Arcum decklists.

If you're looking to solicit my help, ask me questions, or just comment on the primer overall, I encourage you to do it via replying to this thread instead of via sending me a Private Message. That way, any help or suggestions I offer you can be viewed by the entire community instead of by only you and me, and the whole community can benefit from our discussion.

Thanks very much, and I hope you find the primer informative.

Arcum Dagsson

"Artifice sundered the world. It shall not again wreak such sorrow...
unless you use me as your EDH commander, then maybe it will."

.
==Arcum's Story==
Arcum is a card from Magic's history. His story begins on the plane of Dominaria, in a continent called Terisiare, right after the Brothers' War, the great battle between two powerful artificers Urza and his brother Mishra (under the sway of Yawgmoth, lord of Phyrexia--the ORIGINAL Phyrexia, not the Scars of Mirrodin New Phyrexia). To end the war, Urza retrieved and activated the Golgothian Sylex, an immensely powerful artifact of unknown origins that long predated either of the Brothers. The ensuing explosion of power destroyed both Urza's and Mishra's entire armies and, moreover, altered the very landscape of the plane itself, beginning an Ice Age.

When most of the major civilizations of Terisiare were obliterated by the Sylex blast, there began a new struggle to rebuild the broken continent. The most powerful of new nations that arose was Kjeldor, and in Kjeldor was a city full of artificers called Soldev, and the most marvelous artificer in that city was none other than Arcum Dagsson. With memories of the War still fresh in their minds, however, a splinter faction of Soldevi (called Soldevi Adnates), led by aptly-named Sorine Relicbane, remained mistrustful of artifice. Despite Arcum's argument that artifacts could in fact be used for peace and goodness, the meddling of the Adnates caused Arcum's steam giants to go out of control. Arcum used his abilities to stop his creations' rampage, but not before they destroyed all of Soldev.

Following this disaster, Arcum spent the rest of his life in penance, trying to make amends for the damage his own artifice had caused. He died of a heart attack two years after the fall of Soldev at the approximate age of 66.

Arcum's ability, "T:Target artifact creature's controller sacrifices it..." is, lore-wise, representative of Arcum's ability as an artificer to dismantle powerful artifact creatures. The idea is that if your opponent is packing a Darksteel Colossus, Arcum can make your opponent sacrifice it and turn it into something harmless, like Darksteel Relic. Ironically, in EDH, we employ Arcum to the exact opposite of his lore effect: we turn harmless artifact creatures, like Manakin, into extremely powerful non-creature artifacts, like Darksteel Forge.

.
==Why Arcum?==
As with other tutor-on-a-stick commanders like Zur, Sisay, and so forth, the main reason Arcum excels in EDH is that he almost completely eliminates the randomness intrinsic to this 100-card singleton format. Your overall goals will generally be the same each match, and your set of wincons will generally be the same each match. If you're looking for a commander who will give you a unique experience each time, Arcum might not be your man. That said, Arcum is far from an "uninteractive" deck. As I will explain later, Arcum's ability allows you to devote a section of your deck to "silver bullet" (aka "toolbox") cards. Knowing how to customize your toolbox for each matchup and how to employ these silver bullets most effectively during the match itself demands a masterful understanding of your opponents' strategies and the overall metagame. I always like to say that in order to play Arcum most effectively you should be able to pilot your opponents' decks as if they were your very own!

Anyway, here's a short and sweet list to help you out...

You may enjoy Arcum if:
you like playing a top-tier commander (read: you like winning).
you like powerful artifact combos.
you like extremely consistent decks.
you know your metagame well. (This is very important.)
you like taking control of a match.

You may not enjoy Arcum if:
you like alpha striking for massive damage to win.
you don't understand why Tinker is banned.
you or your playgroup forbids countermagic, combos, or other "degenerate" tactics.
you like longer games (10+ turns). This deck is built to win fast (t3 thru t6), even against 3+ opponents.
you don't like being public enemy #1. This deck will not make you friends; the only politics it understands is domination.
.
==My Personal Arcum Philosophy==

==AKA: What's the mindset behind this deck?==
Spoiler (click to show)

.
==My Decklist and its History==
From the time I started playing this deck until the present day, I think I've probably tried most every ridiculous thing you can do with an Arcum deck, except maybe artifact aggro. It didn't even begin as a combo list--it was more of a Mono-U Control list with Arcum as a wincon. That just goes to show you how offbeat I was when I started out.

Of course as I moved into more competitive circles, Arcum just didn't cut it as a MUC commander anymore. I still wanted to play MUC, so I ended up splitting that idea off into what is today my Azami, Lady of Scrolls list, and then I made Arcum my dedicated combo list. I yanked all the draw and countermagic except for the very best of the bunch. I concluded that monolith/top/rings (explained below) was the fastest route to victory, and I reworked the deck such that the only goal became resolving those three artifacts as soon as possible.

More recently with my discovery of the largely-neglected card Possessed Portal and (even more recently) Magic's printing of toolbox artifacts like Torpor Orb and Grafdigger's Cage, I've expanded my Arcum list from being strictly-linear in its performance to being much more metagame dependent. It's safe to say the addition of these and similar cards has increased the power of this deck dramatically.

Here is my list as it currently stands:

TheTrueNub's Deck
Land (33)
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Blinkmoth Nexus
1x Buried Ruin
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Traitors
1x Crystal Vein
1x Darksteel Citadel
1x Flooded Strand
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Mishra's Workshop
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Polluted Delta
1x Saprazzan Skerry
1x Seat of the Synod
11x Snow-Covered Island
1x Strip Mine
1x Svyelunite Temple
1x Tolaria West

Creature (16)
1x Dross Scorpion
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Hangarback Walker
1x Hedron Crawler
1x Junk Diver
1x Kuldotha Forgemaster
1x Manakin
1x Metalworker
1x Millikin
1x Myr Retriever
1x Myr Sire
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Plague Myr
1x Silver Myr
1x Spellskite
1x Trinket Mage

Planeswalkers (1)
1x Tezzeret the Seeker

Instants/Sorceries (14)
1x Brainstorm
1x Counterspell
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Fabricate
1x Impulse
1x Mana Drain
1x Muddle the Mixture
1x Negate
1x Pact of Negation
1x Ponder
1x Reshape
1x Swan Song
1x Thirst for Knowledge
1x Transmute Artifact

Enchantments (3)
1x Copy Artifact
1x Mystic Remora
1x Power Artifact

Artifact (32)
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Chalice of the Void
1x Clock of Omens
1x Darksteel Forge
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Grim Monolith
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Mycosynth Lattice
1x Myr Turbine
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Null Brooch
1x Pithing Needle
1x Possessed Portal
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Staff of Domination
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Tangle Wire
1x Thousand-Year Elixir
1x Torpor Orb
1x Trinisphere
1x Unwinding Clock
1x Voltaic Key
1x Winter Orb

Sideboard/"Binder Board"
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Sculpting Steel
1x Spine of Ish Sah
1x Memory Jar
1x Jester's Cap
1x Witchbane Orb
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Mindslaver
1x Champion's Helm
1x Neurok Stealthsuit
1x Defense Grid
1x Master Transmuter

.
==TL;DR: 3 steps to victory (with visual aid)==
Spoiler (click to show)
Step 1: Drop Arcum asap with haste (e.g. Hall of the Bandit Lord) or protection (e.g. Neurok Stealthsuit) or both (e.g. Lightning Greaves).
Step 2: Create an engine--details below.
(Optional Step 2.5: Obtain Olivia Wilde)
Step 3: Turn everything into an artifact (Mycosynth Lattice), make all your artifacts indestructible (Darksteel Forge), destroy everything else on the board (Nevinyrral's Disk)--all in the same turn.
.
==How to play Arcum, exhaustively==
Arcum Dagsson is often likened to "Tinker on a stick." His power comes from the fact that he places fetched artifacts directly onto the battlefield instead of into the hand (which is why Tinker is so much better than Fabricate). Granted, he has the restriction that he can only target artifact creatures and can only fetch noncreature artifacts--but with all the cheap, mana-dork artifact creatures and powerful noncreature artifacts in the game, it's a restriction we can easily play around.

Step 1: Play and secure Arcum Dagsson
Quote from acidfreeze
Arcum is considered by many to be kind of a dbag commander, so expect to catch a lot of hate right from the beginning of the game.
Dbag commander indeed! Anyone who's played against Arcum Dagsson before will recognize his power and his threat to the table as soon as you identify him as your commander and place him in the command zone. Unless the table is something like Arcum, Sharuum, Zur, and Hermit Druid, you're going to be the one that people hate the most. Never play Arcum without something to back him up unless you got a crazy starting hand and are casting him on like T1 when your opponents are tapped out. Barring that, you have 3 options to keep the old geezer safe:

Cast Arcum and immediately equip a shroud-granting artifact.
Cast Arcum with haste and an artifact creature already on the field and immediately tutor for Lightning Greaves.
Cast Arcum with neither haste nor shroud and defend him until your next turn with countermagic (avoid if possible, especially in games with 3+ opponents).

Ideally, you want to drop a mana dork turn 2 to ramp into Arcum turn 3 and either give him shroud immediately or give him haste and use his ability (saccing the mana dork) to fetch him shroud. If, while you do all this, you still have some mana open and cards in hand to Counterspell your opponents' stuff, that's even better.

Step 2: Create an engine
By this time you will probably have exhausted most of your opening hand just to play Arcum and secure him on the battlefield. But the game's just begun--you still need to assemble your game-winning combo (see step 3) to win. In order to kick out your game-winning combo, you need an engine, a repeatable method of gaining resources. With any luck I will still have some cheap artifact dorks in my hand, but often I won't, and in those scenarios I will often use Arcum's first tap to fetch Myr Turbine.

The turbine and Arcum together form the simplest engine in the deck; as you go into goldfish mode, the Turbine ensures you can tutor for any noncreature artifact at least once on each of your turns, no matter what you topdeck. Additionally, as you'll soon read, the Turbine is a cornerstone of many of our strongest combos and interactions; as long as it's on the field, we can seamlessly transition between our main and secondary strategies as necessary.

With turbine + Arcum alone, you can successfully win the game in at most 3 more turns, which for many casual-oriented players might already might seem like a pretty short clock...but in competitive play, it's not quite short enough. Your opponents will still have plenty of time to come up with a solution--Dust to Dust, perhaps, or a cycled Decree of Pain...heavens forbid they play Null Rod!

Generally, you will want to use Arcum + Myr Turbine in addition to whatever tutors you draw in your hand (Transmute Artifact, Fabricate, and so forth) to assemble the following engine, which is MUCH faster:

Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + Staff of Domination

This combo only requires 2 Arcum activations to assemble, half as many turns needed as turbine + Arcum alone. Tutor for Rings first, then sacrificing two dorks at once you can tutor for the monolith and staff at the same time by copying Arcum's activation ability with the rings.

This combo effectually provides you with infinite (OK, "arbitrary") colorless mana and infinite card draw, allowing you to draw and play your entire deck--including your game-winning combo and the countermagic to protect it! An explanation is provided below of how Rings and Monolith work together to produce infinite colorless:

Infinite Mana (click to hide)

Given: Rings of Brighthearth, Basalt Monolith, and 2 free mana of any color...
Tap Monolith to add 3.
Activate untap ability of Monolith, paying 3.
Copy untap ability of Monolith using Rings, paying 2.
In response to the first untap ability, tap Monolith, let second untap ability resolve, tap monolith again.
Thus, together these cards become "Pay 5: Add 6 to your mana pool," and this can be repeated infinitely.
Almost always, Rings + Monolith + Staff will be solely responsible for your many victories. They are the exemplar of a great combo: not only are the three pieces efficiently priced, each piece is powerful by itself such that you gain tempo and card advantage even as you assemble them; they are never dead draws. Also note that this entire combo can be deployed and executed at instant speed--not only can you combo off on your opponents' turn, but you can keep comboing off in response to a removal spell. For example, if, in response to one of your activated abilities during your combo, your opponent casts Naturalize targeting Rings of Brighthearth, you can simply keep on producing infinite mana and drawing your deck in response. By the time that Naturalize reaches the top of the stack, you'll have already won the game or else drawn into something to counter it. In summary, only effects which freeze the stack, such as Split Second cards like Krosan Grip and Wipe Away, can stop this combo once it gets started.

Worthy of note is that for several years prior to April 2013, Sheldon and the EDH rules committee had Staff of Domination on the EDH banlist. Any veteran EDH player will tell you, though, that Arcum had been a top-tier commander long before Staff's unbanning. Prior to April 2013 we used Sensei's Divining Top as the draw component in the engine, such that the combo looked like this:

Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + Sensei's Divining Top

An explanation of Rings' interaction with Top is provided below:

Infinite Draw (click to hide)

Given: Rings of Brighthearth, Sensei's Divining Top, and infinite colorless mana...
Hardcast Top.
Activate Top's draw ability and copy with Rings.
The first Top activation will draw you a new card; the second activation will draw you the Top again.
Thus, together these cards become "Pay 3: Draw a card," and with infinite colorless mana this can be repeated infinitely.

Note that the Top engine suffers from one critical flaw: one of the steps in the combo to draw infinite cards is hardcasting and resolving Top for each card drawn, which can only be done at sorcery speed. So, building on the example I gave earlier, if in response to one of your Top hardcasts, one of your opponents casts Disenchant targeting Rings of Brighthearth, you cannot simply keep drawing cards in response: Disenchant resolves first, your Rings are destroyed, your engine is thwarted, all while Top is stuck on the stack. This is why Staff, which evades this pitfall, has supplanted Top as our go-to draw component for our primary engine.

Of course we still run Sensei's Divining Top in our Arcum decklists nowadays, because it's such a great card on its own for manipulating topdecks and we'd never cut it for anything, so this older combo is still wholly valid and usable today. Indeed, in some ways it's even easier to deploy than Rings/Monolith/Staff because Top is just 1 cmc and can therefore be tutored for and played more easily through non-Arcum methods. If you don't suspect instant-speed removal will be a problem, or you don't plan on comboing off on an opponent's turn, or perhaps your Staff of Domination simply gets removed, always remember that you can fall back to the classic Rings/Monolith/Top engine that Arcum decks have relied on for many years prior to April 2013.

Almost always it will be best to prioritize the Rings/Monolith/Staff(or Top) engine. Its speed, efficiency, and consistency places it head-and-shoulders above other engines, as when playing in a competitive meta, speed trumps all. However, we do have another option that, while usually somewhat slower to assemble and more challenging to activate, also works entirely at instant speed and can lead to some unique wincons that would normally be unreachable to us, like aggro. Here it is:

Myr Turbine + Clock of Omens + Mycosynth Lattice

The good news, as with the previous engine, is that each card, on its own, is already exceedingly useful to us in a myriad of other ways (particularly Myr Turbine as I mentioned earlier), so you're never "wasting" a tutor or running into a dead draw as you assemble these artifacts. Unlike the Rings/Monolith/Staff combo, though, this engine requires some manipulation and foresight to work properly.

Firstly, Arcum Dagsson must have Hexproof, not Shroud. This is vitally important. If you're planning on using this engine, choose Swiftfoot Boots as your protective equip of choice, or be ready to leave Arcum vulnerable for the duration of the combo.

Then, you'll probably want to tutor out Myr Turbine first, which often happens to be one of your first tutors anyway no matter what strategy you're going for (how convenient). Then you'll want to tutor out Clock of Omens and attempt to use it, Myr Turbine, and your mana to create as many permanents on your side of the field as possible. Lastly, on your combo turn, you'll search out Mycosynth Lattice. With sufficient untapped permanents (all of which are now artifacts), you can use Clock of Omens's ability to repeatedly untap Arcum and tutor out a few cards at instant speed: Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth. Now you're ready to combo.

Rings + Basalt gives you infinite mana as described above. Go ahead and generate a bunch.
Tap Basalt and any other untapped permanent--we'll call it Permanent X; it could even be Clock itself--to activate Clock of Omens' ability. Copy Clock's ability with Rings by paying 2.
Use one copy of Clock's ability to untap a permanent of your choice (for example, Arcum) and the other copy to untap Permanent X.
Untap Basalt by paying 3. Now the engine is fully reloaded, and the cycle can begin anew.
You can now untap your entire board at will, repeatedly activating at instant speed any permanent of your choice, including Arcum himself for infinite tutors, Staff of Domination for infinite draw/infinite life, Myr Turbine for infinite tokens, Null Brooch for infinite countermagic, and so forth.

In the event that Rings of Brighthearth is exiled, you can still use a Clock-based engine to combo off, although it becomes slightly more difficult to do so as you'll require some more preparation. There are two possibilities to do so, each with different setups.

Possibility #1: The setup for this one is that you will need to create a source of infinite mana beforehand. As explained later in this primer, this will most likely end up being Power Artifact enchanted on a monolith. Instead of tutoring up Rings and Basalt to start the combo, instead tutor up both monoliths (or whichever one you don't have out already): Basalt Monolith and Grim Monolith.

Generate a bunch of mana from your pre-assembled infinite mana combo.
Basalt Monolith and Grim Monolith can be repeatedly untapped by spending that mana to fuel Clock of Omens infinitely.
With Mycosynth Lattice, you can once again untap your entire board at will, most importantly Arcum for infinite tutors.

Possibility #2: This is by far the most fragile of the Clock combos as it requires the most pieces, but we already run all the cards for it anyway as part of our other combos so I feel it's worth a mention. The setup for this one is that you need two copies of Staff of Domination on your side of the field, and an artifact that taps for 3 or more. This means you'll first need to stick Staff of Domination and then copy it, preferably in the same exact turn so as to minimize your opponents' opportunity to react. There are three efficient copy effects available to Arcum; my list runs two mainboard and one sideboard: Copy Artifact, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Sculpting Steel. Remember that only Sculpting Steel, as a noncreature artifact, is tutorable by Arcum. You'll also need an artifact that taps for 3 or more, which include Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, and Gilded Lotus (all of which, again, are already in our deck for their overall utility). If you can manage to get all of that set up without your opponents interfering, then the combo is simple:

Tap your mana-producing artifact (Grim Monolith, Basalt Monolith, or Gilded Lotus) for three mana.
Tap both copies of Staff of Domination to untap that mana-producing artifact via Clock of Omens' ability.
Use each staff's ability, "1: Untap Staff of Domination" to untap both staves by spending a total of 2.
Thus, together these cards become "Pay 2: Add 3 to your mana pool." This can be repeated infinitely for infinite mana, which can then be turned into infinite card draw, life, untaps, etc. through further use of Staff of Domination and Clock of Omens.

Now that your engine of choice is set up, all that's left to do is win.

Step 3: Win the game
To win, you will employ your engine of choice (usually Rings/Top/Monolith) to assemble the following combo, using the countermagic you drew along with the rest of your deck to ensure nothing goes wrong at this critical phase:

Darksteel Forge + Mycosynth Lattice + Nevinyrral's Disk

In contrast to the previous combos described, this one is much more straightforward and obvious, but it's still extremely effective.

Mycosynth Lattice turns all permanents into artifacts.
Darksteel Forge subsequently makes all your permanents indestructible.
Nevinyrral's Disk, when activated, destroys all permanents. But since yours are indestructible, only your opponents' permanents are destroyed.
If your opponents don't concede (which will never happen, they'll always concede, as you're effectively just playing with yourself at this point), you can continue activating Nevinyrral's Disk on command at instant speed and clearing your opponents' boards every single turn thereafter while you win with infinite Myr tokens, a 1000/1000 Hangarback Walker, drawing out their deck, or even just poking them with Arcum until they die of commander damage.

Observe that Nevinyrral's Disk comes into play tapped; this is hardly a problem, as upon drawing your entire deck and creating infinite mana using your engine from step 2, simply play Voltaic Key or one of the numerous other untap effects in this deck to untap and activate it that same turn.

Many other competitive game-winning combos in EDH, like infinite gravestorm into Bitter Ordeal (Sharuum's personal favorite) or Mike + Trike, each rely primarily upon wincons which target players--for example, Bitter Ordeal and Spikeshot Elder, respectively. Therefore, if an opponent is protected by a shroud effect, such as with Solitary Confinement or Leyline of Sanctity, these combo decks must remove the offending card before they can successfully combo off, or else fall back on some alternate win that is usually slower and more vulnerable. Our game-winning combo truly shines among competitors' insofar as ours does not target anyone or anything, and so it hits everyone and everything. The list of permanents that can survive this combo is very short: it includes only those which are indestructible, phased out, or otherwise flickered. We have other ways to deal with these if we absolutely must, but for all intents and purposes, you can safely assume that people will always concede upon your assembling Lattice/Forge/Disk in everything from the jankiest casual metas to the most cutthroat competitive metas.

Generally it's best to just play all three of these combo pieces on the same turn after drawing your deck and gaining infinite mana with one of the engines described above, but if, as a last resort, you have to tutor them out one-by-one with Arcum, always fetch Darksteel Forge first since it's ability is the most immediately useful and because it makes your other combo pieces, which would of course usually be thwarted by a simple Naturalize, much more resilient. Beware, however, that many EDH players have wised up to indestructible artifacts and have begun including exile-based artifact removal like Return to Dust, Into the Core, and so forth as staples; it is never OK to assume that plopping down Darksteel Forge and passing turn is a safe maneuver, especially if you don't have any countermagic ready.

Speaking of exile-based artifact removal...

Contingency Plans
Quote from Baron Praxis »
Any leader worth his salt always has his backup plan. Remember: the first rule in making a bomb is to always make two.

Some scenarios may call for a change of plan. What if your Darksteel Forge gets hit by Return to Dust? What if your Lattice/Forge/Disk combo gets Jester's Capped away? Luckily, we have control options that can be deployed at one of two times:

Before assembling our game-winning combo, in order to soft-lock our opponents while we work on building a hard lock or combo. This is made even easier with our plethora of fast mana sources, including most notably Metalworker, unbanned as of September 2014.
Instead of our game-winning combo, in the event that our combo gets disrupted by any means and recovering it in time to win is infeasible, or if the game-state is such that formation of a hard lock is simply faster.

Possessed Portal + Myr Turbine + Unwinding Clock/Dross Scorpion
OR
Early (T3) Possessed Portal using Metalworker

Easily the most powerful contingency plan available, and it's one of our signature weapons--no other EDH deck can deploy it and survive with it as quickly and smoothly as we can. Smokestack effects have always been powerful, and when you combine a stax effect with an Uba Mask-esque hand lock, the result is game-ending (thus the vintage deck, Uba Stax, was born).

Against nearly all decks, Possessed Portal puts a full halt to the game for as long as it remains in play: no cards can be drawn, and each player's board position slowly declines. It cripples shotgun decks like fast aggro (eg Azusa, Skittles) who hit goldfish early; it cripples control and voltron, forcing them to discard their hands and punishing them for playing so few permanents; it even cripples many combo decks, including Azami, Lady of Scrolls and the mirror match against other Arcum Dagsson players, whose game-winning combos involve drawing infinite cards.

The good news for us is that we come prepared! We have a tutoring general at our disposal and fodder-enablers like Crucible of Worlds, Myr Turbine, Dross Scorpion, and Unwinding Clock already in our deck or sideboard as part of our main strategy. With proper setup, therefore, we can hold out indefinitely and even advance our position under Possessed Portal while your opponents wither away.

Just remember: the portal works on each end step, not just yours. Thus when the portal's out you need to produce one fodder for each turn to fully mitigate the reciprocal effect, and one more fodder than that to advance your game state by fueling Arcum. Unwinding Clock/Dross Scorpion + Myr Turbine by themselves net you one token per turn, so any additional untap effects (such as Voltaic Key) or fodder producers (such as Crucible of Worlds) will allow you to advance.

Because it works on each end step, Possessed Portal becomes more brutal as more players are at the table. Use it with caution and make sure you have a plan to generate enough fodder to not only feed the portal but also to feed Arcum. When you drop the portal, people will hate you, and they will do everything in their power to defeat you; you may need to tutor out additional protection, such as Ensnaring Bridge or Darksteel Forge, to convince your opponents to throw in the towel.

With the inclusion of Metalworker (more on him below) it's now possible to consistently power out Possessed Portal as early as T3 even if you don't have the tools to support it indefinitely, treating it like a sort of Tangle Wire on steroids--you play around it for 1-2 turns then sac it to itself, while your unprepared opponents degrade to nothing. Even if it means giving up your entire hand and wiping nearly your entire board position back to Turn 0, your opponents will have suffered the same fate by the end of it, and if you can use that coverage to safely secure a shrouded Arcum and a single artifact creature (which can then be sacrificed for Myr Turbine to power subsequent sacs), then for all practical purposes you've won the game.

As with any early stax play, this sort of blitzkrieg backbreaker requires premeditation and a skilled execution, even moreso than tutoring out the Portal with Arcum because you don't have the luxury of fetching whatever you need to help you stay afloat next turn. If you've played Mono-W Stax or similar decks in Legacy, or any form of vintage stax, you'll be well-acquainted with this process already. At the moment you drop Possessed Portal, you need to be fully aware of your gamestate, how many turns you plan on keeping the portal out (ideally 1-2), and how many sacrifices/discards you'll make along the way. Always remember you can sacrifice Portal to itself! That alone tips the card's reciprocity heavily in your favor in the same way Tangle Wire can tap itself.

Metalworker + Staff of Domination + 3 artifacts in hand
The September 2014 banlist changes, including the unbanning of Metalworker, have already sparked all sorts of controversy. Whether 'worker gets re-banned in the future, only time will tell, but for as long as it stays unbanned, it will stay in Arcum's arsenal.

Any creature that can generate 5 or more mana in a single tap combos infinitely with Staff of Domination, and Metalworker is no exception (ironically, it was this very mechanic that led to Staff's banning years ago). You pay 3 to untap the creature, 1 to untap the Staff, and have 1 or more left over, and this can be repeated infinitely. All you need is 3 artifacts in the hand so Metalworker can generate 6 per tap.

Put 'worker and Staff together and you've got infinite mana and card draw (and infinite life and creature taps, if those happen to be relevant somehow). Proceed to win the game as described above.

There are a few reasons I am not listing Metalworker+Staff as the main engine of this deck, even though it is an exceedingly powerful combo and well within our capability to assemble, and you should keep these in mind as you play. Strong though he may be, Metalworker does have his shortcomings compared to the main Rings/Basalt/Staff combo:

He is a creature; therefore, he cannot be tutored for with Arcum, though granted he is still easily within our reach thanks to our plethora of non-Arcum artifact tutors (and, on the flip side, Metalworker can be used as a sacrificial dork to power Arcum).
Again, he is a creature; therefore, he is vulnerable to a multitude of spells that would have no effect on our main combo, including typical creature removal and Mind Control effects.
He stipulates that artifacts must be in your hand for him to generate mana, so he synergizes negatively with Null Brooch or a Possessed Portal lock.
His combo potential is limited to Staff, whereas other combo pieces in this deck all have multiple different assembly options.
These drawbacks do not in any way make Metalworker a bad card--he's still godlike--but they must be kept in mind during your play.

All in all, the unbanning of Metalworker has made Arcum much, much stronger, functioning as mana battery, combo piece, and Arcum fodder all at the same time, enabling nasty T2 Arcum drops or T3 portal softlocks. With Metalworker at his side, Arcum's place is secured even more solidly at the pinnacle of EDH power.

Power Artifact + Basalt Monolith/Grim Monolith + Staff of Domination

Power Artifact + one of the Monoliths = arguably the most straightforward 2-card infinite mana combo in the entire game, and unlike other combos that involve Rings of Brighthearth, this one isn't "telegraphed" is much--that is to say, your opponents can't see it coming quite as easily as they can see something's broken about to happen when you tutor out Rings or Metalworker. Grim Monolith looks like a simple one-shot mana rock like Mana Vault before BAM, tutor for Staff with Arcum, cast Power Artifact on Grim Monolith, draw your deck and good game. Similar to Metalworker, this one is a "contingency plan" because, as an enchantment, Power Artifact is harder to find; the only card we have to tutor for it is Muddle the Mixture via transmute. As a result, you won't be seeing this combo all that frequently, but when you do happen to topdeck Power Artifact or Muddle the Mixture, you should immediately realize that your combo victory is just a blink away.

Alpha strike to win (Tezzeret the Seeker/Myr Turbine)
Really? Aggro? We're playing blue, after all. Swinging in for combat damage is so below us, not to mention almost always infeasible in a multiplayer competitive setting. But we can win with aggro as a last resort if necessary--the option is certainly available, and it's important as a combo player to keep in mind all of your options. Tezzeret turns all artifacts into 5/5 beatsticks, and also as mentioned previously in the "Create an engine" section, Myr Turbine in combination with infinite mana and Clock of Omens can produce infinite 1/1 Myr tokens. Back when I ran Karn, he could turn big artifacts like Darksteel Forge into beatsticks also.
.
==Card-By-Card Analysis==

. Core Cards
Spoiler (click to hide)

Core cards make the deck work and are mandatory in every list, budget permitting. While they are mostly self-explanatory, understanding how each one works is vital to your success, and I'll elaborate on some of the heaviest hitters that I run in my list above. With the sole exceptions of countermagic and planeswalkers, all of these cards are artifacts, so instead of grouping them by type, they are grouped here by function.

Primary Utility Artifacts

These artifacts facilitate our Plan A: drop and secure Arcum, fetch combo, win. Look for these in an opening hand!

Lightning Greaves
Most every commander-centered deck runs these anyway, but in Arcum they're especially important because they can be tutored for, and indeed, if Arcum isn't already protected by shroud, these will often be the very first thing you tutor for.

Swiftfoot Boots
Tutor for these instead if you already have effects like Thousand-Year Elixir and Minamo, School at Water's Edge at your disposal, or if you're going for Clock of Omen shenanigans. The one-time 1 you pay to equip is well worth being able to activate Arcum 2+ times a turn.

Thousand-Year Elixir
Gives Arcum and dorks pseudo-haste and lets you activate Arcum twice a turn--what's not to love?

Dross Scorpion/Unwinding Clock
While earlier I discussed these two cards' utility when working under Possessed Portal, they're still extremely powerful even when you're working on Plan A, as they grant a tremendous tempo advantage with the right tools. For example, you can untap Myr Turbine and Thousand-Year Elixir to pull off an Arcum activation on each player's turn, not just your turn.

Clock of Omens
Even when not functioning as part of the engine described above, Clock of Omens still packs tremendous utility. It turns artifacts that don't normally tap for anything useful, like those Lightning Greaves that Arcum is wearing or that Torpor Orb sitting off to the side, into half-Voltaic Keys, which can be used to untap mana rocks, Myr Turbine, anything you need. It's tremendous tempo advantage by itself.

Staff of Domination
Unbanned as of April 2013 and found its place immediately as an instant-speed replacement for Sensei's Divining Top in the Rings/Monolith/Top (now Rings/Monolith/Staff) engine and as a replacement for Planar Portal in the Clock/Lattice engine. Its uses, however, extend beyond simply functioning as part of an engine, because it single-handedly and instantly turns infinite mana from your other combos like Power Artifact + Grim Monolith into infinite cards and infinite life--and even on its own, the "3: Untap target creature" ability is dandy for achieving multiple Arcum activations per turn in a similar manner to Thousand-Year Elixir.

Contingency Utility Artifacts

When Plan A doesn't cut it and you're shifting to a contingency plan, or to support plan A en route to its finale, these artifacts are here to help.

Kuldotha Forgemaster
Arcum #2. Costs 5 instead of 3U and requires three artifacts to sac, but those artifacts don't have to be creatures, and the thing you fetch doesn't have to be a non-creature. In other words, Kuldotha can fetch Metalworker, and is one of the only tutors we have to do so. Prior to Metalworker's unbanning I didn't run Kuldotha, but for the time being I think it's worth it, even with his steep cost.

Master Transmuter/Metalworker
Arcum Dagsson's biggest limitation is that he can only hit stuff in the library. To that end, we need a device that can serve as an Arcum for other game zones, most particularly our hand, as we already have numerous cards at our disposal to recur our artifacts from the graveyard to our hand.

Before September 2014, this role was filled by Master Transmuter. She could cheat out a fat Possessed Portal or Darksteel Forge onto the field even if they were stuck in our hand where Arcum couldn't touch them. Her ability can even cheat out artifact creatures, which was nice, if not quite as useful in this deck as elsewhere. And, lastly, she was herself an artifact creature, so she could fuel Arcum's ability (or even her own ability) when her usefulness had expired.

With the unbanning of Metalworker in September 2014, though, poor M.T. is now relegated to the sideboard in my list. As the song goes, "anything you can do, I can do better," and this is certainly true with this swap. M.T. wins out in the sexy department, but Metalworker is faster, cheaper, more flexible, and more combo-riffic than M.T., and he's still Arcum fodder when he needs to be.

M.T.'s ability is still useful in the same matchups as I described before (for example, needle-heavy metas) and so she will remain in the sideboard to be switched in as necessary vs those matchups. And she's still a great option to fill this role for those of you who don't have a Metalworker in your collection or don't want to spend the money to get one.

Do not mourn the loss of Master Transmuter. It is the nature of artifice to constantly upgrade toward perfection. She understands this. It's what she would have wanted. Smile

Trinisphere
Another page from the stax book. Legacy and Vintage stax ramp into Trinisphere to a) deny opponents their own mana rocks in the opening turns, b) control the early-game window T1-2 when the powerhouse 4cmc card (Arcum for us, Smokestack) is usually yet to see play, and c) to hamstring all tempo into the mid- and late-game by imposing a hard floor of 3cmc on every spell. We use it in exactly the same way: T1 dump rocks, play Trinisphere. Your rocks are on the field producing mana as normal, but your opponents' rocks become much weaker. Cards like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt aren't nearly as pretty when they cost 3, and cards like Lotus Petal and Mox Diamond are practically unplayable at that price. Control decks ache too: Counterspell becomes Cancel, for example, and "free spells" like Force of Will and Snuff Out are made trash as they cost an additional 3 even if the alternate cost is paid. Meanwhile our most important cards--Arcum, Rings, Staff, Metalworker, etc.--are happily unaffected, as they already cost 3-4 cmc to begin with. And finally, as an artifact, it synergizes with literally everything in this deck.

Tangle Wire
AKA miniature Possessed Portal. It functions the same way, denying everyone resources while giving you a slight advantage (you can tap Tangle Wire to its own ability to keep yourself one permanent ahead), but its effectiveness is limited to the first few turns (unlike Portal which freezes the game anytime) and it can't be sealed into a hard-lock. Still, it buys us a lot of time to get our hefty 4cmc commander on the field, and we'll usually have plenty of things that don't actually matter if they're tapped down (utility pieces like Torpor Orb and Pithing Needle, utility dorks like Dross Scorpion and Spellskite, tokens, Arcum's shoes, and so forth), while our opponents are tapping down more valuable items like lands or things with T abilities.

Chalice of the Void
As the competitive EDH meta becomes only faster with increased power creep, cards like Chalice which thwart low-CMC spells become only stronger (which is why nowadays a lot of competitive decks even run Mental Misstep). Set to 0 to hose all the best mana rocks and pacts; set to 1 to hose other mana rocks as well as powerful spells like Reanimate, Dark Ritual, and many of the best draw/tutors; set to 2 to hose many of the strongest spells in the entire format (think Survival of the Fittest, Demonic Tutor, etc.) as well as the best countermagic and removal. Can also be used like a mini-Trinisphere (dump rocks, play Chalice at 0 or 1). Remember Arcum's ability puts cards onto the battlefield and therefore circumvents Chalice (so a chalice at cmc=2 won't stop Arcum from fetching Lightning Greaves).

Winter Orb
Slowing down others makes hefty 4cmc Arcum much "quicker" by comparison. This one is pretty self-explanatory I think. The fact that it's an artifact is only better for us.

Spine of Ish Sah
Tap Arcum to Vindicate at instant speed. Very slow, and a dead draw when in the hand, but it's one of the only "destroy" effects available to us and is therefore practically our only tool to thwart Null Rod or other problematic permanents if they stick. Recently I moved Spine to the sideboard to cut down on dead draws and because it's only really useful in some niche scenarios.

Dorks

As a general rule, artifact dorks in this deck have to do something; they can't just be cheap fodder. Ideally they'll provide mana or some other utility. You might be tempted into running things like Ornithopter that you can drop really fast, but don't be fooled--this isn't an affinity deck. We're not trying to drop artifact creatures quickly, we're trying to drop our commander quickly, and we only care for enough artifact creatures to fuel him.

Manakin (+Silver Myr, Millikin, Plague Myr, Hedron Crawler)
The 2cmc "T: add 1" mana dorks in the deck are GREAT things to look for in an opening hand. More than one is the opening hand is even better. They can be dropped on turn 2 and allow you to ramp directly into Arcum on turn 3 while also providing a body to be sacrificed that turn or the very next, either to begin building a lock (read: Possessed Portal) or to fetch Myr Turbine if you've no more dorks to sac.

Etherium Sculptor
In this deck she's basically Helm of Awakening on legs, but unfortunately she's still a second-tier dork because she can't cheapen Arcum, and ultimately we're looking to tinker our artifacts, not hardcast them. Don't be fooled when you see her in your opening hand; she's good, but she's no Manakin.

Myr Sire
Formerly Epochrasite. The fact of the matter is that both Epochrasite and Myr Sire are good at what they do, which is effectively giving you two dorks, twice as much Arcum fuel, twice as much Portal fodder, in the space of one card for 2. They're pure card advantage. I originally ran Epochrasite, but after much playtesting of my own and convincing from posters in this thread I finally came to the conclusion that Myr Sire was just a little bit better in that he always works early, unlike Epochrasite who has some extra late-game utility but sometimes doesn't work early when it matters most.

Hangarback Walker
Formerly Myr Moonvessel (again, old blurb spoilered below). More than anything else, we needed a dork tutorable by Trinket Mage in order to maximize the mage's toolbox, since all our other dorks are 2cmc+. Out of the possible options, Moonvessel was by far the best choice, if only because he did something besides chump blocking, which was more than the others like Ornithopter could say. OK, he deserves a little more credit--that 1 mana really helped sometimes, and as I explained in the old description, I actually thought he was pretty nice. But Myr Sire's ability is even better than Moonvessel's, and with Origins' printing Hangarback Walker, which plays as basically a buffed Myr Sire for 0cmc, Moonvessel has become obsolete. Hangarback Walker is now the best 0-1cmc artifact dork in the game, hands down.
Spoiler (click to hide)
Myr Moonvessel
People give mixed reviews on this guy. The catch, of course, is that the mana you receive from sacrificing him must be spent on the same turn or it's wasted. Personally I like him; given that the usual winning turn of this deck generally demands 4 (2 to copy Arcum's ability and another 2 to activate the rings/top/monolith combo) and that we often try to attempt it on turn 3-5, having a "cushion" of 1 can be a big help sometimes. In addition, using him to tutor for Swiftfoot Boots pays the equip cost for you. Finally and perhaps most importantly, at 1 CMC he's a dork you can fetch with Trinket Mage if needed.

Junk Diver (+Myr Retriever)
Recursion dorks are another no-brainer. At worst, you sacrifice a dork to return another dork from your graveyard to your hand, which would potentially save you the turn you'd otherwise spend tutoring for Myr Turbine. At best, you sacrifice a dork to return a combo piece from the graveyard, from which you can't play them, to your hand, from which you can.

Spellskite
Possibly one of the greatest additions to this deck from Scars block besides Torpor Orb. He's a dork that doubles as countermagic! Just remember: according to the rulings, you can't change the target of a spell/ability to Spellskite and then sac it with Arcum and get the best of both worlds: "If Spellskite leaves the battlefield before its ability resolves, the targets remain unchanged." He can be either a lightning rod or sac fodder--but not both at once.

Countermagic and Draw

Null Brooch
In other Arcum lists you won't always find this card mainboard--and indeed, for a long time I didn't run it mainboard myself--but it's mandatory for any sideboard at very least. Best of all, it's budget, and it's one of our signature cards (you won't find this in other decks).

Discarding your hand is a steep cost--even if we have only 1 or 2 cards in hand, usually those few cards are still really helpful to our plan. Even just 2 dorks in the hand, for example, is enough to fuel a victory with Arcum without having to spend an activation fetching Myr Turbine, meaning we can win a whole turn sooner. Its tremendous power, however, stems from the fact remains that it is a reusable Negate that can be fetched at instant speed with Arcum if need be. It also "turns on" certain cards that require our hand size to be small, like Ensnaring Bridge. And, perhaps most importantly, under Possessed Portal its drawback becomes negligible, since our hand size will be 0 anyway.

For my meta personally, since I typically try to rush into an early Possessed Portal on T3 or T4, I make the most value out of Brooch. So I run it mainboard. All in all it's not something to be underestimated, particularly in certain metas as I will discuss later.

Pact of Negation (+Force of Will)
Free countermagic is always good, especially in combo decks. However, we run into a similar problem as with Null Brooch: since our opening hand is generally extremely precious to us, I've found that the card disadvantage from FoW and Commandeer generally isn't worth it. For this reason I run Pact only mainboard and keep FoW sideboard for those matchups when I really need extra countermagic.

Muddle the Mixture
On it's own, it's a solid counterspell; most of the ways in which your opponents will attempt to remove Arcum involve instant or sorcery spells, so this card can effectively be used to protect Arcum when he comes out. More importantly, it doubles as a transmute tutor for any 2cmc card in our deck, which, thanks to our low curve, happens to include some of our best cards: Power Artifact, Transmute Artifact, Grim Monolith, Lightning Greaves, certain silver bullets, and more.

Memory Jar
Vintage-level card made even better because it's a valid tutor target for Arcum. Granted, powerful as it is, you'll have better things to tutor out more often than not--but if the need ever arises, you should know that you can tap Arcum to draw 7 cards on demand. Recently moved to sideboard as often enough it wasn't a worthwhile tutor.

Fact or Fiction/Thirst for Knowledge/Mystic Remora/etc.
Finding the right number of draw spells to include is a tricky and subjective process. I just spent the last two paragraphs pointing out that this deck's fast speed makes our hand size really important, especially in the opening three or four turns. Draw spells refill our hand with useful goodies, but too much draw dips into our pool of useful artifacts. Even so, I think it's worthwhile to include the best of the blue draw, with particular props to spells like Ponder and Mystic Remora that can single-handedly sculpt a winning hand out of an otherwise mediocre one.

Lands

Snow-Covered Island
With all the colorless stuff we run in this deck, you might think it would be optimal to run only a minimum of islands. There's only a handful of blue mana symbols that we'd ever need to pay for, after all. This is in fact the exact opposite of what you should be thinking: you still want the majority of your landbase to be islands. Arcum costs 3U, and since we're going to be rushing to play him very early, you pretty much absolutely need an island either in your opening hand or within the first two draws. Not to mention we need U for counterspells, tutors like Fabricate, and other extremely helpful support along the way. The lands that don't produce U in my decklist are all exceedingly useful in some other way; I do not run lands like Scrying Sheets that offer only a marginal benefit for the tremendous loss of not being able to produce U.

Scalding Tarn (+other fetchlands)

In a 100-card deck, the land-thinning these cards provide on their own is negligible. Their main benefit is repeatable land-thinning with Crucible of Worlds and deck-shuffling for better Sensei's Divining Top manipulation--they're minor benefits, but still worth it for the low cost of one life. If you're on a budget and can't afford them, you can easily get away with keeping them as Islands.

Also keep in mind that they're nonbasic lands before you pop them, so if your meta's full of Blood Moon or other nonbasic hate, you'll want to sideboard them out for basic lands anyway.

Mishra's Factory (+Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth Nexus)
During turns 1 thru 3, our main concern is ramping up mana for Arcum and dropping dorks to sac once he comes out. Just like mana dorks, these artifact manlands fulfill both these roles at the same time, well worth giving up a U-producing land to fit them.

Seat of the Synod/Darksteel Citadel
I didn't previously run Darksteel Citadel as I considered the singular value of being an artifact not to justify being unable to produce blue mana; but more recently I've added Mox Opal, so the artifact lands can now help by being able to hit metalcraft.

Ancient Tomb (+Crystal Vein, Svelunite Temple)
Fast mana = fast Arcum = fast wins. Crystal Vein and Svelunite Temple need to be sacrificed to do their job, but that's OK--once we stick Arcum, we don't need our lands nearly as much anymore (and besides, there's always Crucible of Worlds).

Mishra's Workshop
More fast mana, but definitely not budget as it's a Vintage-level card. Proxy it or replace it with an island. Also note that the Workshop's mana can only be used to cast artifact spells, so while it's valid for almost everything in this deck you can't depend on it entirely--it can't be used to cast Arcum, for example, nor to pay for Rings' copy ability. But it does enable absolutely crazy and game-winning plays like T1 Metalworker, T1 Trinisphere, etc. that will really make you feel like a Vintage player with your ridiculous tempo.

City of Traitors
Again, more fast mana, and again, not budget. If you play Legacy at all chances are you'll have a copy or two, but if not, proxy it or replace it with an island. It seems like it has a steep drawback, but once you learn to time it right (tap it to float mana before you play another land) you'll see why it's priced around $30 a copy. Crucible lets you keep playing it.

Hall of the Bandit Lord
One of the two most frequent choices for tutoring with Tolaria West. It's one of the only ways we have to cast Arcum with haste but without Lightning Greaves or similar. Even with haste, though, usually your first tutor will be for the greaves anyway for the shroud.

Academy Ruins
The other most frequent tutor choice with Tolaria West. While in the early game you'd fetch Hall, mid-to-lategame you'd fetch Academy Ruins to recur combo pieces in the GY back to the library for Arcum to cheat out onto the field.

Minamo, School at Waters Edge
Along with Thousand-Year Elixir, it's one of the only ways the deck can untap Arcum directly; note that this targets Arcum, so if you know you'll have an opportunity to use Minamo's ability make sure you equip Arcum with hexproof and not shroud.

Planeswalker

Tezzeret the Seeker
Good ol' Tezzy 1.0. He's budget and he's mandatory. His CMC of 5 is fairly high, especially for a deck like Arcum that works to win in 5 turns or fewer, but he's totally, totally worth it. His first ability can untap mana rocks or critical artifacts like Myr Turbine, Thousand-Year Elixir, Nevinyrral's Disk, and more. His second ability complements Arcum's ability perfectly in the early-game (need mana? Tezzy can help. Need dorks? Tezzy can help), and in the mid/lategame his second ability with 6 loyalty counters even allows him to double as Arcum himself: -3 to search out Rings of Brighthearth, on the next turn -3 again and copy with rings to search out Basalt Monolith and Staff of Domination simultaneously. And as previously mentioned, while it's rarely ever needed in practice, his third ability is one of the only ways the deck can win via combat damage, Overrun alpha-strike style.

..
Silver Bullets
Spoiler (click to hide)

Like Zur the Enchanter, our commander is a tutor on legs, and therefore we can devote a portion of our deck to "silver bullet" artifacts--that is, those cards that only shine in specific scenarios or against specific decks, but when they work, they work GREAT, usually shutting down those decks on the whole or dealing massive damage (giant enemy crab style). For this reason it is exceedingly important, when playing Arcum Dagsson, that you know your metagame like the back of your hand. Ideally, you should possess sufficient mastery of your opponents' decks such that you could even pilot as if they were your own. I encourage you, if you can afford it, to own the cards discussed in this section in singleton and carry them around with your deck (or in your binder) to be sideboarded in depending on the decks you're up against. Take advantage of Arcum as a toolbox commander to engineer your deck specifically to beat your metagame.

Jester's Cap
EXTREMELY powerful card against just about every deck but especially toolbox/combo decks, including the mirror match against other Arcum Dagsson players. The flavor text (from Arcum himself!) is accurate: you will get the most mileage out of this card if you know your opponents' decks from the inside out. From reading this thread, for example, you'll realize quickly enough that if an enemy Arcum Jester's Caps us and exiles Rings of Brighthearth, Mycosynth Lattice, and Possessed Portal, we just lost a lot of options and a lot of power. Jester's Cap can be recurred from the graveyard and cast a second time; two cap effects is usually enough to completely dismantle any combo deck (if played against us, the second cap would probably be Power Artifact, Metalworker, and Tezzeret the Seeker--at that point I would fold).

Zur really doesn't like his Doomsday and Necropotence taken away from him. Hermit Druid isn't even a deck without Hermit Druid in it. Sharuum the Hegemon is just a 5/5 flyer without her Sculpting Steel and Phyrexian Metamorph. Almost all of the top-tier decks in EDH are combo decks and this is one of your strongest answers to them.

Also great for getting rid of your opponents' answers to you. If you know an opponent has sideboarded in Stranglehold or Null Rod, and you know that the first thing they're going to try to do is tutor for and play one of those cards ASAP, you can cap 'em off before they have a chance.

In sum, if you know your opponents' decks from the inside out, you can make brutal use out of Jester's Cap every time.

Pithing Needle
Classic colorless silver bullet made even more powerful in Arcum by the fact that we can tutor it so easily. Usually the declared name will be one of your opponents' commanders. Against many commanders, including several other top-tier commanders and the mirror match against other Arcum players, Pithing Needle demands removal for the deck to function at all. Other times it'll be better to name a powerful singleton instead (such as Survival of the Fittest), and other times still Pithing Needle won't offer any benefit at all. See "Metagame Tuning for Dummies" for when and how to use the Needle to its greatest effect.

Torpor Orb
Hoser against any decks and bombs that rely on ETB effects. Animar, Soul of Elements and his friends, Norin the Wary, Hazezon Tamar, Riku of Two Reflections, all the titans, Aura Shards, the list goes on and on--all are rendered moot so long as Torpor Orb remains in play.
Ensnaring Bridge
Any deck that likes swinging in for the victory, especially with fatties, absolutely hates Ensnaring Bridge--this includes almost all voltron or shotgun commanders (Uril, the Miststalker, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Skittles, etc). Generally we will be emptying our hand fairly quickly in our initial push to secure Arcum and even more quickly if we take all sorts of discard hate along the way. Tutoring for a Bridge early can buy you lots of time as your opponent scrambles to get rid of it. Tutoring for a bridge when Possessed Portal is already out can often shut down the board entirely. Arcum never swings with anything, so the reciprocal effect does not faze us at all.

Witchbane Orb
Could be handy if you regularly go up against decks that target you with stuff to win or disrupt (be it discard, burn, Diabolic Edict effects, Disciple of the Vault + Sharuum combo, whatever). Definitely a metagame-dependent piece, and not all that hard for your opponent to get rid of, but the fact remains that it's a colorless artifact version of Leyline of Sanctity that you can tutor for with Arcum if the situation demands it.

Grafdigger's Cage
Absolute monster against the right decks; locks out both the grave (Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Chainer, Dementia Master; Loyal Retainers; Reanimate; and so much more) AND the library (Green Sun's Zenith, Bribery, whatever). Note that it only stops creature cards, so we can still get the full mileage out of Arcum, Crucible of Worlds, etc. with it out; as with Ensnaring Bridge, the cage's reciprocal effects do not faze us at all. Be mindful, however, that the cage cannot stop Tooth and Nail and similar cards, since TaN goes to the hand and then the battlefield; if you're playing in a TaN-heavy meta, use something else.

Mindslaver
Sort of like Jester's Cap, in the hands of a skilled player it is a VERY powerful card, although its usefulness is slightly more limited than the cap--sideboard in with discretion. Where the Slaver really excels is in those scenarios where you've failed to cap your opponent's important cards fast enough and their important pieces are already in their hand or on the battlefield. If a lot of people at your table are running Necropotence, Necrologia, Hatred, and so forth, taking control of their turn allows you to force them to commit suicide. Similarly, taking control of an opponent right after they've casted a Pact spell (Slaughter, Negation, etc.) allows you to force them to choose NOT to pay the cost and lose the game immediately. If you're up against an enemy combo player and they're all ready to combo off on the next turn, you can sometimes slave them and force them to combo off on themselves and your other opponents. Similarly, stax decks usually rely on generating token fodder to eat up the reciprocal damage of their own stax effects (like Smokestack); slaving them allows you to direct the reciprocal damage onto their more important permanents, like their lands or the stax effects themselves.

Sometimes, though, if your opponents already have the cards they need on the battlefield or in their hand, it's already too late to stop them, and as such it's very dangerous to actually bank on the 'slaver from the start. Oftentimes the best opportunities for slaver occur spontaneously, when no-one expects it (e.g. opponent drops Necropotence, not expecting that you'll slaver him right afterward). After they fall for this trick a few times, however, they'll wise up and adapt and less scenarios for 'slaver intervention will present themselves, so this technique is a little less effective against opponents with whom you play often. For the most part, therefore, it's better to deal with their threats proactively with cards like Jester's Cap--but don't forget that Mindslaver exists and is readily deployable in Arcum should you deem the situation fit for it.

Champion's Helm
Sometimes you really, really need Arcum to have slightly more than 2 toughness, for example if your opponents are packing damage-based sweepers like Volcanic Fallout (see the "Weaknesses" section below). 'Board in Champion's Helm for when you need your Swiftfoot Boots to also make Arcum a 4/4 instead of a 2/2.

Neurok Stealthsuit
At worst, it's a watered-down Lightning Greaves. In heavy removal metas, though, like vs. burn, MBC, etc. where your opponent will do everything in their power to destroy Arcum in response to your activation of Greaves' equip ability, the Stealthsuit emerges as even better than Greaves because it can be equipped at instant speed (in response to your opponents' removal spells) for UU, and so with enough mana you can evade spot removal/burn entirely.

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But Why Not X?
Spoiler (click to hide)

Listed here are the pertinent cards that are NOT included in my decklist, neither mainboard nor sideboard. I've organized them in two categories: those cards that look viable but are actually pretty bad, and those cards that are actually good but simply don't work in my particular metagame (including budget options).

Cards You Shouldn't Run
Ornithopter, Memnite, etc. - As I explained earlier, free dorks might seem enticing, but they're actually the worst kind because they don't do anything helpful, as opposed to ot

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