Now This is Pod Racing
Aetherdrift has a number of fun build-arounds and one that saw relatively heavy play during the early access Streamer Event this past Wednesday was Repurposing Bay. Repurposing Bay reads like if you take the two classic powerhouses Birthing Pod and Tinker and smashed them together into a single card, so of course we had to find ways to break it.
Below is a breakdown of the 60-card main deck I landed on after playing in the event. As the meta shifts on the ladder, this will likely be tuned, but I think it gives us a great starting position.
The Pod Itself
Like Birthing Pod before it, Repurposing Bay is a powerhouse engine that can give your deck incredible consistency. With Birthing Pod and other Pod-like cards (i.e.: Prime Speaker Vannifar), my first instinct is to find a combo that can result in moving up the chain from a two-mana permanent to a six- or seven-mana one. While the dream of cheating in a Portal to Phyrexia off of this is intriguing, I don't believe it's necessary and will actually distract from the deck.
Given how strong the artifacts are in the three-to-five range, we can easily put together a winning board state without going much higher.
The Key Threat
You probably didn't need to scroll down to know I'd bring up Simulacrum Synthesizer. This card at three mana can produce more stats than just about anything we have in Standard and is absolutely devastating in multiples. Since we're fetching them out of our deck, we can easily accrue three or four of these on the field and force our opponent to have an artifact sweeper or we simply win the game. This is the primary win condition and our opponents' worst nightmare.
Once we have Simulacrum Synthesizer on the field, our goal is to play out other artifacts and feed them to the Repurposing Bay to keep the stream of golems flowing and growing.
The Setup
Enigma Jewel has been compared to Sol Ring since it's a one-mana artifact that can produce two mana, but the restriction on that mana to be used for abilities is very limiting in its application. It pairs nicely with Collector's Vault already for a great curve out in turns one and two, but now the Repurposing Bay is a three-drop that can take advantage too. Being able to activate the Bay the turn it drops gives this deck incredible speed and the fact that the Jewel is legendary means you can feed it to the Bay for a two-drop late in the game and not feel guilty about it at all.
While Enigma Jewel has a lot of text on it about crafting it into a huge wad of abilities, please disregard that text. It’s here specifically for its mana output and we won’t be using the back side at all.
Since our main pod target is a three-drop, we need good two-drop artifacts to hit the field early. For this deck, since we're in white and blue, I opted for Spring-Loaded Sawblades. It denies early aggression while playing into our ultimate setup. If you were to build Repurposing Bay in other colors, Tithing Blade, Chainsaw, or Legion Extruder could all meet this need as well.
Assimilation Aegis is, in my opinion, better than people realize. My current build has two and I might add more in the coming weeks as I continue to test this deck out. It triggers Simulacrum Synthesizer, is removal we can fetch up with the Repurposing Bay, and it gives us a creative back door to win the game by stealing our opponent's largest creature and transforming something of ours into it. In a format with Atraxa and Overlord of the Mistmoors running around, that option is very relevant.
The Four Drops
It's important that any deck featuring Repurposing Bay have solid artifact options at a number of different spots on the mana curve, and we absolutely have those. Solemn Simulacrum isn't much to look at in 2025, but it fits the curve and gives good value coming in and going out. As a way to fill a gap in the Bay's curve, it's pretty great. The Aetherspark is also a four-drop artifact we can take advantage of here that will often be able to draw us cards on the second turn it's out. If we're lucky, we can even strap it to a huge golem to get enough loyalty for the ultimate.
The Five Drops
Riptide Gearhulk is an absolute stud here. Its ability to disrupt the enemy while triggering Simulacrum Synthesizer and being an all-around threat is downright excellent. Like Assimilation Aegis, I'll likely increase the number of these as I continue testing because it consistently overperforms. I've heard of other creators rocking full playsets of this thing and I'm not going to say that's wrong. Given that we're comfortably two-colored, casting this for its full cost isn't out of the question either.
Like the trailblazers Frogmite and Myr Enforcer before it, Memory Guardian is here to show you how nuts Affinity for Artifacts is as a keyword ability. We'll rarely use Repurposing Bay to fetch Memory Guardian unless we've run out of Gearhulks, but this can easily come down as a 3/4 flyer for a single blue mana. The stats and cost alone make it worthwhile, but it triggers Simulacrum Synthesizer as well (in a way resembling Leyline Binding and Up the Beanstalk), and it even sacrifices to the Repurposing Bay to fetch us up a six drop, which we have ready to go.
The Six Drops
Given the value we've accumulated thus far, our curve could probably stop at five and still be consistent and competitive, but it wouldn't be a birthing pod deck without a few silly big targets to go grab. These are both simply one-ofs since they could be described as "win more." Both Chimil, the Inner Sun and Nexus of Becoming give us card advantage, trigger Synthesizer, and help us cheat on mana and mobilizing threats. These are fun to execute and can really slam the door shut if an opponent hopes to stabilize.
Conclusion
I look forward to tinkering with this deck in the coming months because I feel the core of something strong is in play here. This sixty-card list was created for the streamer event and, therefore, doesn't have any rigorous testing behind it yet, but I'll surely be tuning it in the future, so check back for updates down the road including a full sideboard.
Thanks for reading, and happy brewing!