Source transparency: This Digest item is based primarily on reporting from EDHREC. TMF summarizes and interprets the news; original reporting remains credited and linked.
Quark, Humble Proprietor usually looks like a Treasure commander with the essential part missing: he creates a Treasure at the beginning of every upkeep, but prevents you from sacrificing Treasure tokens. John Sherwood’s November 2 EDHREC construction makes that restriction part of a combat plan, most notably with Depthshaker Titan.
Quark costs 2R and is a 1/2. In a four-player game, surviving a full round of upkeeps can produce four Treasures without further investment. They cannot pay their own sacrifice-based mana abilities while Quark remains under your control, so the deck needs ordinary lands and other mana sources to develop. Sherwood’s complete list contains 40 lands.
Depthshaker Titan is the payoff at 5RR. When it enters, any number of target noncreature artifacts you control become 3/3 artifact creatures, with a delayed instruction to sacrifice them at the beginning of the next end step. Its animation has no end-of-turn duration. If the targeted artifacts are Treasure tokens and Quark is still present when that delayed trigger resolves, his prohibition stops their sacrifice.
That leaves the surviving tokens as creatures for later turns. Titan also gives your artifact creatures melee, trample and haste while it remains on the battlefield, making the initial attack more threatening and helping the 3/3 bodies push through blockers. Those keywords come from Titan’s separate static ability; keeping the animated tokens does not permanently preserve that ability if Titan leaves.
There are two practical limits. Quark must survive until the sacrifice instruction resolves, and the animation only covers the artifacts targeted by that particular enters trigger. Treasures created on later upkeeps do not automatically become creatures. Removing Quark before the delayed trigger resolves can therefore turn the supposed lasting army back into a one-turn investment.
The rest of the construction gives the hoard work before the seven-mana finisher arrives. Ghirapur Aether Grid and Sunshot Militia can tap artifacts for damage without sacrificing them. Artifact-count threats and Hellkite Tyrant offer other ways to convert the same accumulated resources into pressure.
This is a new-card-enabled construction, not evidence of tournament success or an infinite combo. Its appeal is that a command-zone drawback becomes protection against a specific delayed cost. Its weaknesses remain substantial: slow setup, a vulnerable commander, creature removal after animation and the need to fund an expensive finisher without spending the Treasures themselves.
Quark costs 2R and is a 1/2. In a four-player game, surviving a full round of upkeeps can produce four Treasures without further investment. They cannot pay their own sacrifice-based mana abilities while Quark remains under your control, so the deck needs ordinary lands and other mana sources to develop. Sherwood’s complete list contains 40 lands.
Depthshaker Titan is the payoff at 5RR. When it enters, any number of target noncreature artifacts you control become 3/3 artifact creatures, with a delayed instruction to sacrifice them at the beginning of the next end step. Its animation has no end-of-turn duration. If the targeted artifacts are Treasure tokens and Quark is still present when that delayed trigger resolves, his prohibition stops their sacrifice.
That leaves the surviving tokens as creatures for later turns. Titan also gives your artifact creatures melee, trample and haste while it remains on the battlefield, making the initial attack more threatening and helping the 3/3 bodies push through blockers. Those keywords come from Titan’s separate static ability; keeping the animated tokens does not permanently preserve that ability if Titan leaves.
There are two practical limits. Quark must survive until the sacrifice instruction resolves, and the animation only covers the artifacts targeted by that particular enters trigger. Treasures created on later upkeeps do not automatically become creatures. Removing Quark before the delayed trigger resolves can therefore turn the supposed lasting army back into a one-turn investment.
The rest of the construction gives the hoard work before the seven-mana finisher arrives. Ghirapur Aether Grid and Sunshot Militia can tap artifacts for damage without sacrificing them. Artifact-count threats and Hellkite Tyrant offer other ways to convert the same accumulated resources into pressure.
This is a new-card-enabled construction, not evidence of tournament success or an infinite combo. Its appeal is that a command-zone drawback becomes protection against a specific delayed cost. Its weaknesses remain substantial: slow setup, a vulnerable commander, creature removal after animation and the need to fund an expensive finisher without spending the Treasures themselves.
Original source: Quark, Humble Proprietor | Mono Red Artifact Deck ↗EDHREC