The Reality Chip is a distinctive commander featured in Magic: The Gathering. As a mono-blue commander, it allows you to utilize only blue and colorless spells in your deck. First introduced in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, The Reality Chip breaks conventions by enabling you to play cards from the top of your library as long as it’s attached to a creature.
Emphasizing the significance of artifacts, The Reality Chip benefits from numerous blue cards that reduce the costs of artifacts, making it easier to play from your library’s top. As an artifact itself, it takes full advantage of the robust artifact support available in the deck.
Decklist
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Commander: The Reality Chip |
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Artificer’s Assistant |
Chief of the Foundry |
Cyberdrive Awakener |
Etherium Sculptor |
Forensic Gadgeteer |
Foundry Inspector |
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Hangarback Walker |
Jhoira’s Familiar |
Kappa Cannoneer |
Karn, Legacy Reforged |
Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter |
Loyal Inventor |
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Master of Etherium |
Memnite |
Millikin |
Ornithopter |
Ornithopter of Paradise |
Padeem, Consul of Innovation |
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Phyrexian Metamorph |
Phyrexian Walker |
Riddlesmith |
Sai, Master Thopterist |
Sharding Sphinx |
Shimmer Myr |
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Solemn Simulacrum |
Spellskite |
Steel Overseer |
Thought Monitor |
Twenty-Toed Toad |
Unctus, Grand Metatect |
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Urza, Lord High Artificer |
Vedalken Archmage |
Vedalken Engineer |
Whirler Rogue |
Fabricate |
Thoughtcast |
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An Offer You Can’t Refuse |
Arcane Denial |
Brainstorm |
Counterspell |
Desynchronization |
Disruption Protocol |
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Negate |
Whir of Invention |
Arcane Signet |
Cloud Key |
Encroaching Mycosynth |
Everflowing Chalice |
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Fellwar Stone |
Mind Stone |
Sensei’s Divining Top |
Simulacrum Synthesizer |
Sol Ring |
Tamiyo’s Logbook |
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The Millennium Calendar |
Thought Vessel |
Unwinding Clock |
Artificer Class |
Efficient Construction |
Fortune Teller’s Talent |
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Mechanized Production |
Mirrodin Besieged |
Propaganda |
Thopter Spy Network |
Academy Ruins |
Archway of Innovation |
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Buried Ruin |
Castle Vantress |
Darksteel Citadel |
x21 Island |
Myriad Landscape |
Mystic Sanctuary |
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Reliquary Tower |
Rivendell |
Scene of the Crime |
Seat of the Synod |
The Mycosynth Gardens |
War Room |
The deck is made up of 35 creatures, two sorceries, eight instants, 13 artifacts, seven enchantments, and 34 lands. Most creatures in the deck are either artifact creatures or those that have effects related to them.
Key Cards
The Reality Chip
The Reality Chip is crucial for maximizing your spell casting. You always want to keep it attached to a creature since it doesn’t function on its own, allowing you to view the top of your library instead.
If The Reality Chip is attached to a creature and that creature is removed or a board wipe occurs, it reverts back to being a creature.
Due to its low mana cost, you can bring The Reality Chip into play early in the game. Although reconfiguring it costs a bit more, it’s still manageable in the initial stages. It’s best to wait to play it until you have several creature options available for reconfiguration.
Unwinding Clock
Unwinding Clock is one of the top artifacts in this deck. It untaps all your artifacts during each player’s untap step, allowing you to consistently reuse your most effective tapped abilities.
As the majority of your creatures are artifacts, you can attack with them freely and still have blockers since they’ll untap. Additionally, Unwinding Clock will let you refresh your mana sources, ensuring you have mana available for counterspells during opponent turns.
Steel Overseer
Steel Overseer is the card that enhances your weaker artifacts into formidable threats. By tapping this card, you can place a +1/+1 counter on each artifact creature you control. Many of your artifact creatures start as 1/1s, so stacking counters will provide you with powerful attackers and blockers.
Steel Overseer works exceptionally well with Unwinding Clock since you can use its ability multiple times during a single turn cycle, applying several +1/+1 counters to your creatures before your next turn begins.
Urza, Lord High Artificer
Urza, Lord High Artificer is recognized as one of the most remarkable blue creatures printed and is particularly strong when included in a Reality Chip deck. It allows all your artifacts to tap for blue mana, effectively addressing the struggles of ramp in blue.
If you reveal a land you can’t play from the top of your library, utilize Urza’s ability. This action will shuffle your library and exile the top card, possibly bringing a playable card to the top.
Using Urza’s ability lets you pay five mana to cast the top card of your library for free after shuffling it. Although the card is exiled, you can cast it at any point during the turn. You’ll also generate many artifact tokens, making the Construct Urza creates quite substantial.
How To Play The Deck
A deck built around The Reality Chip focuses on utilizing a plethora of artifacts and leveraging the various artifact support cards available. Despite the limitations of being a mono-color deck, blue is a dominant color for artifacts, enabling the inclusion of some of the best artifact-focused options in the game.
There are numerous ways to reduce the costs of artifact spells; cards like Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, Jhoira’s Familiar, and Cloud Key can help decrease artifact mana costs by one. Most cards in the deck either cost colorless mana or just require a single colored mana, maximizing these discounts.
If you have various permanents that discount artifacts, those effects will accumulate. For instance, having three discounts will subtract three mana from your artifact spells instead of just one.
Ramping can be challenging for blue decks, but there are strategies in place to overcome this issue. Karn, Legacy Reforged provides colorless mana for each artifact you control, usable only on artifacts. Silver Myr and Ornithopter of Paradise serve as traditional mana sources, tapping themselves to generate mana, while Urza, Lord High Artificer allows tapping artifacts for blue mana.
The primary strategy for winning with this deck centers on combat. You should strive to build an army of artifact creatures either by casting them or creating tokens. Alternatively, you can achieve victory via the Twenty-Toed Toad, which automatically wins the game if you either have twenty or more cards in your hand or it possesses twenty or more counters.
Another possible win condition is Mechanized Production, which leads to victory when you control eight or more artifacts with the same name during your upkeep, including tokens, making it a reachable win condition.
The deck’s main drawback lies in its slower pace. Once you accumulate sufficient mana, you can accelerate gameplay by casting spells from the top of your library after reconfiguring The Reality Chip. However, early game options can be limited.
You might be able to deploy some smaller creatures (including your commander) early on, but it will take time before you start seeing real benefits. There is plenty of card draw available in the deck to help expedite your journey toward your victory conditions.
