All 16 Fabricate Cards in Magic Ranked

Marionette Master | Illustration by James Ryman

Cards that give you choices are always excellent in MTG. They just give you a depth of strategic flexibility that is unmatched, assuming the options are impactful.

Fabricate is a mechanic that gives you the choice of two options, both of which can be excellent in the artifact spaces where these cards tend to be played, but neither of which are super powerful on their own, the way a modal card like Sublime Epiphany is. So, figuring out what’s good and what’s not in this space is essential. And I’m here to help with that.

What Is a Fabricate Card in MTG?

Propeller Pioneer | Illustration by Winona Nelson

A fabricate card is a creature card with the fabricate mechanic in its text box, which allows you to add +1/+1 counters to the creature or create 1/1 Servo tokens when it enters the battlefield. First created for Kaladesh, the mechanic has most recently been dusted off with a few bangers in Modern Horizons 3.

Half of these cards are for Limited, but there’s a nice top end here. Let’s rank all 16 fabricate cards in Magic (plus one bonus card)!

Honorable Mention: Inspired Inventor

Inspired Inventor has like super-fabricate. It has the two options a fabricate card gives you, but it also gives you a third choice of 3 energy counters. On rate and with even more flexibility, this card belongs in the top five of this list, but it doesn’t have the proper keyword, so it’s hanging out down here.

#16. Ambitious Aetherborn

Ambitious Aetherborn is Draft chaff at its un-finest.

#15. Elegant Edgecrafters

Fabricate 2 is great, but even that isn’t enough to make Elegant Edgecrafters sleevable, even in Limited.

#14. Peema Outrider

Seeing a few of these wheel around at the end of a pack is like every Draft in my memory. It felt like every pack had Peema Outrider in it, and they were always passed, so that the end of every pack was just looking at this card over and over again, wondering if the cool mechanical antelope thing in Craig J Spearing’s art has a wooden spine or not.

#13. Propeller Pioneer

Propeller Pioneer has flavor text that makes you want to play it, but in today’s EDH, I don’t think it’s even playable if you lop a mana off its casting cost.

#12. Maulfist Squad

Why are there three people on Maulfist Squad when it only has fabricate 1? Menace isn't doing too much to sway me here.

#11. Accomplished Automaton

I mean, this isn’t really playable, but colorless 7-drops just got better with Ugin's Labyrinth. This seems the lowest tier of that space, though.

#10. Iron League Steed

The best of this small section of 4-drops with fabricate 1, Iron League Steed, as a colorless card, is squintingly playable in Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut decks.

#9. Highspire Artisan

Both Highspire Artisan and our next card are grudgingly playable as 3-drops in some kind of Panharmonicon kind of space, but even then, not so much.

#8. Glint-Sleeve Artisan

Glint-Sleeve Artisan is pretty much the same as our previous card in terms of game impact, but it’s in a color that is a bit better at using artifact creature tokens.

#7. Visionary Augmenter

Visionary Augmenter is almost playable with fabricate 2, but 4 mana and double-white pips for three bodies doesn’t quite get there outside of Limited.

#6. Weaponcraft Enthusiast

Fabricate 2 in black is three small sacrificial bodies for 3 mana in the color that wants to sac small bodies. So Weaponcraft Enthusiast finds a home in general sacrifice decks like Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, the low-powered creature synergies of Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker, and decks that like sacking artifacts, like Fain, the Broker.

This is probably the bottom end of playable cards in Commander.

#5. Angel of Invention

Angel of Invention is a Cube top end card that has shown as a 1- or 2-of in all sorts of builds in Modern that take advantage of it as a giant lifelinking flier. In its Standard and since, it’s a tempting piece of God-Pharaoh's Gift strategies.

But that’s all a bit too slow for 60-card formats.

In Commander it goes in angels decks, especially those led by Akroma, Vision of Ixidor and a partner in the key color(s), the particular kind of control decks helmed by Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and as a nice piece of the Alesha, Who Smiles at Death puzzle.

#4. Cultivator of Blades

This card is budget Craterhoof Behemoth. Cultivator of Blades isn’t as good, as you likely need some source of trample, but more cards to make more things big is the green way, yes? This card is nice in Ezuri, Claw of Progress decks, and I love it in my guilty pleasure nonsense deck: Syr Faren, the Hengehammer.

#3. Cayth, Famed Mechanist

The secondary commander for the Creative Energy precon, Cayth, Famed Mechanist is kind of busted. First off, this card just goes infinite with any persist creature and a repeatable free sacrifice outlet, like Goblin Bombardment. That’s because Cayth is like a fabricate lord that gives other creatures fabricate. So when the persist creatures comes back, the counters cancel each other out and you can rinse and repeat.

But even without that, giving fabricate to everything is amazing, as is tapping to proliferate or populate.

#2. Marionette Apprentice

Watch the throne! In most decks, Marionette Apprentice is just a better card than our #1. It comes down for only 2 mana and combines a Zulaport Cutthroat creature death effect with the Marionette Master artifact death trigger, which makes it like a duplicate Mayhem Devil or an alternative for decks that don’t run red.

Plus it hits “each” opponent, Commander players!

#1. Marionette Master

Various decks have used this Cube staple as a wincon since Kaladesh. In early days, Marionette Master found its way into builds with God-Pharaoh's Gift and a Metalwork Colossus in the graveyard. Never a top tier strategy in Modern, folks have used Treasures and Blood tokens as fodder, and things like Oni-Cult Anvil just want to come to the party. The trouble is the high casting cost of the Master with those decks.

In EDH, this wants to go into any artifact deck in black, from Prosper, Tome-Bound on the high power side to Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter for the fun side. Treasures just put this thing over the top, and if you’re living that Dockside Extortionist or Smothering Tithe life, you can use the Master to win on the spot. It’s not as clean a win as Revel in Riches, but it also doesn’t feel as cheap.

Best Fabricate Payoffs

There aren’t enough good fabricate cards to go deep with, but there are some nice options for the best of them.

Module Combo Decks

Cards with fabricate fit really nicely into the kinds of spaces that want both tokens and +1/+1 counters, like the Animation Module + Decoction Module + Fabrication Module infinite combo spaces that energy decks often like to play in. Choosing the fabricate option is helpful if you don’t have the right pieces of the combo enabled in order to get a bit of value from it.

Artifact Go-Wide Decks

This used to be the Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer space, but it’s seemingly going to become the Cayth, Famed Mechanist space now. Anything that makes artifact creature tokens is needed, and Servos can fit the bill, especially since Cayth grants fabricate to other cards.

Black Sac Decks

Decks that are sending their own stuff to the graveyard tend to need the two Marionette-themed top end cards on this list.

Wrap Up

Marionette Apprentice | Illustration by Steve Ellis

I’m liking the two Modern Horizons 3 cards on this list, and I’m intrigued by the idea of fabricate moving beyond its roots as a Limited mechanic that smoothes across archetypes.

So let’s see more fabricate, WotC! I’d like to see this mechanic return with cards costed for Constructed play, and I think I’m not alone there. What do you think? Do we have to wait for Kaladesh to get this going again, or can we find Servos on other planes? What about a version of what they did with amass for Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, so we could “Fabricate Thingamabob x” to fit the lore?

Is anyone else ready for that? Let me know in the comments below or on Discord, and have an absolutely fab(ricate) day!