Rock Soldiers

Sideboard tech in TMT Limited usually means a single maindeck flex slot you can shave for game two, and this is the cleanest one red gets. The artifact density at common is real but not oppressive: Bespoke Bō and Novel Nunchaku are the obvious targets, and the utility lands the format leans on (Foot Headquarters, TCRI Building, Dimension X) are nonartifact lands the clause can't touch anyway. What you're paying four mana for in game two is the answer to a resolved Equipment that has already turned a 2/2 common into a real clock, plus the off-chance you draw against one of the format's artifact-mattering uncommons.

In the maindeck the pick band is P1P7 to P1P9 in any red deck: a 4/3 for four is on-rate against the format's 2/3 and 3/2 common floor, and the destroy clause is a freeroll you mostly won't fire. UR Sneak wants it a notch higher than BR or RW, because the tempo plan cares about a four-drop that doesn't get blanked by a topdecked piece of Equipment. The card it punishes most directly is Novel Nunchaku, which otherwise turns a midrange ground stall into a loss; the card that punishes it back is Stomped by the Foot, which every black deck runs and which lines up cleanly on three toughness.

Treat the second copy as the sideboard slot proper. One maindeck, one in the 16th-through-23rd range for matchups where Equipment or a stray rock has actually mattered. Against mono-creature draws it's just the 4/3, and that floor is the whole argument for the maindeck copy.

Budget red Commander's artifact removal on a body, and it sits behind nearly every other option in the slot. Vandalblast is the red answer of record because it scales to the whole table, and most green removal reaches enchantments too, where this only ever touches one noncreature artifact. The 4/3 floor means it does something against a table running zero artifacts, unlike older versions, but a 4/3 that did nothing on entry is not where Commander deckbuilding stops. Lives in precon-stage red lists until a Vandalblast shows up to replace it.

The closest thing to a Modern home is the maindeck or sideboard artifact-removal slot, and there the incumbents are not creatures at all. Modern's answer to a problem artifact is Abrade in red decks like Boros Energy and Izzet midrange, or a cheaper sweeper like Kataki, War's Wage in dedicated hate builds. The axis is speed and cost. A four-mana 4/3 that destroys one noncreature artifact on entry is asking the format to spend a full turn and four mana to do what Abrade does for two at instant speed, with the burn-or-removal flexibility Boros Energy actually wants. The body is the supposed compensation, but a 4/3 with no evasion and no relevant keyword is not a finisher in a format where Ragavan and Ledger Shredder set the curve, and the artifact creature type cuts against you here: it dies to the same Galvanic Blast and Pyroclasm the affinity-style decks already run.

There is no Modern artifact-aggro shell that wants a slow, removal-stapled body the way old Affinity wanted cheap synergy pieces, and the cards that clear Urza's Saga constructs or a resolved combo artifact need to do it before turn four, not on it. Sorcery-speed, four-mana, single-target removal is a step behind every incumbent on every axis the format cares about.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play, and the structural read explains why. The effect is real and the floor is fine for a kitchen table, but Modern already solved this slot with two-mana instants a decade ago. A downgrade against every incumbent it would have to displace.

Mainboard artifact removal on a body for a red midrange deck that wants its Shatter to also attack, rather than spending a card on a pure answer. The trouble is that Standard rarely punishes you for keeping artifact hate in the sideboard, and a 4/3 for four with conditional upside is below the rate the format's playable bodies demand. It has yet to register in tracked tournament play this season, which tracks. If artifact decks ever dominate enough to want maindeck answers, you would still rather run the cheaper dedicated removal and a better four-drop.

Legal in Pioneer since its printing this season, but it has yet to register in tracked tournament play, and the structural reasons are easy to read off the card. A four-mana 4/3 that destroys a noncreature artifact on entry is a maindeck rate that Pioneer's red decks do not pay. Mono-Red Aggro and the Boros builds want their four-drops to end games (Goldspan Dragon, the burn package, Embercleave attackers), not to trade a turn for a single artifact. The effect itself, a Shatter on a body, is the kind of thing Pioneer red houses in the sideboard, and there the competition is already settled: cheaper, harder-hitting answers like Abrade and Wear // Tear do the artifact-destruction job at two mana and stay relevant against creatures or enchantments, which a noncreature-only clause cannot.

The artifact creature type is the one angle that could matter, since it reads as a possible body for affinity or improvise payoffs, but Pioneer has no developed artifact-aggro shell that wants a 4/3 with this trigger over its existing curve fillers. There is no archetype here asking for a recurrable Naturalize on a four-mana frame.

For the card to find a slot, Pioneer would need a metagame where a single problematic artifact, a mana rock or an equipment, is worth a maindeck creature rather than a two-mana instant. That is not the format's current shape, and the existing answers cover the ground more efficiently. This is a draft-and-Commander card whose statline never clears Pioneer's bar.

Pauper's red mainboards do not run dedicated artifact destruction; the format puts that work in sideboards, where Gorilla Shaman, Smash to Smithereens, and the cheaper instant-speed answers cover Affinity and the various artifact piles. A four-mana 4/3 is too slow to be a maindeck answer to anything, and at sorcery speed the destruction is locked to the turn the body lands, which is the wrong shape for reactive play in a format that goldfishes around turn five.

The body is also out of position. Red's four-drops in Pauper compete against threats that close games on their own, and a 4/3 with a conditional Shatter does neither job well enough to earn the slot in Burn or Boros Synthesis, where the curve tops out lower and every card wants to deal damage. The up-to-one clause at least means the body is never a dead draw against artifact-free decks (you simply destroy nothing), but a 4/3 that does nothing else is not what those decks want at four mana. The artifact creature type is live for Affinity, though that deck wants artifact lands and payoffs, not a four-mana red beater stapled to removal it would rather keep in the sideboard.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. Under a tix on MTGO. The card needs a maindeck artifact-removal slot the format simply does not have; Pauper handles artifacts from the sideboard, faster and cheaper, and no current archetype values this body at this cost.

A four-mana 4/3 with a one-shot Naturalize attached, in a format where Black Lotus and the Moxen build entire turns for free and Ingot Chewer pitches to blow up an artifact for nothing. Vintage's artifact hate that matters is free or restricted-list pressure; a sorcery-speed body that costs four and pays Mental Misstep's larger cousins on the way in answers exactly one rock too slowly. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play.

A four-mana 4/3 in a format where artifact answers cost zero to two mana and come stapled to nothing you have to spend a turn casting. Abrade handles a mana rock at two and burns a creature in the same slot; Force of Vigor pitches for free and kills two artifacts at once; Wasteland already covers the manlands and creature-lands this would otherwise chip at. Paying four mana and the Force of Will tax to Shatter a single Sol Ring, while adding a body Lightning Bolt eats, is not a trade Legacy makes. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.