Mouser Mark III

UR Artifacts is the obvious home, and the attack restriction is doing real work there as a self-policing rate clause rather than a meaningful drawback. The deck wants this third or fourth in the colors once it has committed, behind a removal spell and a real payoff but ahead of the format's generic two-drops. The hybrid pip is the reason it stays pickable rather than a trap: a mono-blue or mono-red artifact build runs it without splashing, so a heavy-blue deck with an Equipment subtheme can take it on rate even before the second color is locked.

A 2/3 for two lines up well against the format's common ground stat lines, blocking the 2/2s cleanly and trading with the 3/2s without folding to the one-damage edges that tend to punish small artifact boards. That toughness is what lets it hold the ground while the deck assembles its payoffs.

What the format changes about the baseline is the artifact density question. TMT is not an artifact-matters set in the affinity sense: the subtheme exists, Equipment like Bespoke Bō and Novel Nunchaku turns the attack clause on, and the medium speed gives you the turns to find a second artifact. But in a straight UR Tempo build without that scaffolding, the clause bites more than it reads: turn-two play, no follow-up artifact, and the 2/3 sits behind your Sneak threats doing nothing on offense.

Maindeck in UR Artifacts, flex in a UR shell that has drifted toward spells, and a Stomped by the Foot magnet whenever it does attack. The honest read sits closer to Manual's five than Draftsim's three: a workhorse body, not an exciting one.

A two-power attacker for an Izzet artifact-aggro Commander board that needs a cheap body and not much else. The hybrid pip reads as flexible until you remember color identity: a card is locked to decks that are at least Izzet, so the splash-free pitch that justifies it in 60-card mono-color shells does nothing here. Singleton Commander does not reward a 2/3 with an attack tax, and the artifact-density payoff it scales with lives in constructed decks running playsets. Cut on the first pass for almost any two-drop with an actual effect.

The 2-drop body slot in an artifact-aggro shell, which in Modern means the affinity-adjacent lists that run Frogmite, Thought Monitor, and the cheap artifact lands. The honest problem is that the incumbent in that slot is not one card but a fully solved curve. Affinity already plays Esper Sentinel, Ledger Shredder, and a payoff package built around Cranial Plating and Urza's Saga, and none of those bodies come with an attack restriction. Mouser Mark III asks you to control another artifact before it can swing, which in a dedicated affinity deck is a turn-one formality, but the 2/3 it offers in exchange is below what the deck's existing two-drops do. Esper Sentinel taxes and draws; Ledger Shredder connives and grows. A vanilla-with-a-clause 2/3 does not compete with either on raw impact, and the hybrid pip that the identity blurb correctly flags as the design's cleverness matters less in a deck that is already running every color it needs off artifact lands.

The toughness is the one real selling point: three survives the format's incidental pings and trades up. But survival is not why affinity plays its two-drops. It plays them to draw cards, tax opponents, and carry equipment. A body that only attacks well is the wrong axis for the deck.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. That tracks with the structural read. Modern's artifact-aggro slot is contested by cards that generate advantage, not cards that need the board state set up before they do anything. A downgrade in the only home it could plausibly want.

The two-drop body for a Standard artifact-aggro shell that wants a creature it can play off either color, the hybrid pip letting a mono-blue or mono-red build run it without a splash. The attack restriction means it only does its job in a deck already at artifact critical mass; in anything lighter it is a 2/3 that sometimes cannot swing. Legal, but it has yet to register in tracked tournament play this season, and the dedicated artifact deck it needs has not surfaced as a contender. Filler until that shell exists.

Legal since its printing this March, but it has yet to register in any tracked Pioneer list this season, and the structural read explains why. Pioneer has never had a competitive artifact-aggro deck of the kind this card asks for. The closest the format comes to an artifact theme runs through Mono-Green Devotion's mana rocks and the various Karn shells, none of which want a 2/3 that can only attack alongside another artifact. There is no affinity-style aggressive deck in the format's map for this to glue together.

The hybrid pip is the genuinely useful piece of design here, since it lets a mono-blue or mono-red build run the card without a splash. The problem is that neither of those decks exists in tournament Pioneer in a form that wants cheap artifact bodies. Mono-Red Aggro plays burn and one-drops with no artifact density to enable the attack clause; the blue decks in the format are tempo and control shells that have no interest in a vanilla-adjacent two-drop with a restriction on it.

This is a card that scales with artifact count in a format whose artifact decks are ramp engines rather than aggressive boards. It needs a critical-mass artifact aggro deck to exist before it has a slot to compete for, and that deck is not in Pioneer right now. Until something pushes the format toward cheap-artifact aggression, there is no live slot conversation to place it in.

A 2/3 for two that can't attack without another artifact on board, with a hybrid pip that lets either a mono-blue or mono-red Affinity shell run it without splashing. That last detail is the whole pitch, because Pauper's Affinity decks run on Atog and the cheap artifact lands and have always paid out for committing to the theme early.

The trouble is the slot. Affinity's two-drop and aggressive-body decisions are already crowded, and the deck's clock comes from Atog plus Fling or from Cranial Plating turning a wide artifact board into lethal, not from a 2/3 that needs a second permanent before it can swing. A body that asks for setup to attack is working against the math of a deck that wants every artifact pointed at the Plating count or the Atog sacrifice. The toughness is real, three survives the one-damage effects that prey on small-artifact boards, but survival was never Affinity's problem.

It is legal and has yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. That tracks with the structural read: the card competes for space in a deck that already knows what its two-drops do, and a 2/3 with an attack restriction does not displace Myr Enforcer's body or the Plating-enabling artifacts the deck would rather run. No archetype outside Affinity has a reason to want the artifact clause at all.

A 2/3 for two in a format where the artifacts that matter cost zero: Black Lotus, the Moxen, the pieces a Workshops deck wants to lead on. A vanilla-adjacent body with an attack restriction does nothing against the Power Nine mana math, and nothing the Bazaar or Shops engines ask for. Legal, but yet to register in tracked Vintage play. Noise.

A 2/3 for two with an attack restriction tied to artifact count, and Legacy's one-drop aggressive creatures are Delver of Secrets, Dragon's Rage Channeler, and Ragavan, all of which clock harder for less and need no board condition to swing. Nothing in Legacy's tracked artifact decks wants a 2/3 that does not attack on an empty board; the format's affinity-style shells are not tier players here. Daze on the way in for a creature that may not even be able to attack is the wrong trade. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. Does not clear the bar.