I also have my reservations about Thought Vessel and Sol Ring, only because I dont often like making colorless mana in a deck with more than two colors
Metalcraft sets up an artifact rich board which can set you up to cast your Improvise or Affinity artifacts much earlier than you'd normally be able to do
Its perhaps not the easiest to use for newbies, but still well worth a look
While it might not seem like much, a 5/3 is actually a pretty reasonable clock, and this doesn't even include some of the sweet tricks we can do with cards like Recurring Nightmare, but more on this in a minute
For example, you can go off to some extend using this Yawgmoth, Thran PhysicianYawgmoth, Thran Physician-centric combo, but you can't do it infinite times