All eyes in the Magic: The Gathering community are on Final Fantasy previews right now, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has stopped turning. Over in the competitive scene, players continue to innovate and try new brews. In Standard, we just saw a Four-Color Grim Captain creation tear up an RC. In Modern, an enterprising MTG player may have just stumbled upon an ultra-powerful Mono-Blue Mystic Forge list.
Players have been tinkering with the substantial colorless support in Modern since the Mox Opal unban back in December. With more fast mana available alongside Mox Amber, some truly disgusting artifact-themed decks are now possible. Today’s list is one such deck, combining explosive colorless combo potential with the grindy value of Mono-Blue. Whether it’s a new meta player or an evolutionary stepping stone remains to be seen, but it’s great to see new lists doing well in Modern.
Mono-Blue Mystic Forge In MTG Modern
The Mono-Blue Mystic Forge deck we’ll be looking at today is the brainchild of MLGSKELETONS. They piloted the list to a 5-0 finish in Saturday’s MTGO Modern League, which is a great start for any new concept.
At its heart, this is a colorless Combo deck that uses blue cards to up its consistency. The deck can win in one of two ways: using Glaring Fleshraker for a ton of damage all at once, or by sinking a bunch of mana into Walking Ballista. Neither of these methods is a combo in the traditional sense, since neither goes infinite, but they’ll certainly feel that way when you pull them off.
Fleshraker gives you an Eldrazi Spawn and a point of damage for every colorless spell you cast. In this deck, that means the majority of your spells will push your opponent closer to death with Fleshraker out. Where it gets really good is when paired with Mystic Forge and the many Moxen in the deck. Forge lets you play colorless cards from the top of your deck, and Mox Amber and Mox Opal cost zero. This makes them free rolls on your Fleshraker combo turn, which can greatly extend your plays.
Walking Ballista is the other piece of the puzzle here, serving as a way to convert your Eldrazi Spawn tokens into direct damage. You can use it to punctuate a Fleshraker turn, or to convert Spawn from a chunky Kozilek’s Command. Command can also provide a nice burst of damage alongside Fleshraker, so it’s great with either piece of your combo.
Keeping The Engine Running
In order to kill your opponent with either of these methods, Mono-Blue Mystic Forge needs a good bit of setup and draw. In a bold move, MLGSKELETONS dedicates the entirety of the rest of the list to exactly that. There’s not much of a plan B here: it’s all about the combo, and if you can’t pull it off, you’re probably not winning the game.
Mystic Forge is, naturally, the most important card in the list, and we’ve touched on its uses above. Basically, it lets you churn through most of your deck, particularly when paired with fast mana from the Moxen in the list. Cards like Chromatic Star and Mishra’s Bauble add even more momentum. These cards pull double duty as ways to dig for your Fleshraker, and ways to enable it once it’s down.
Although this is a Mono-Blue list, there’s actually only a handful of blue cards in it. They all serve vital functions, however, when it comes to generating the resources the deck needs to succeed. Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is a solid early blocker that can draw you cards via Clues, so it more than earns its spot. Flipping it is tricky but doable, and if you manage it, you can get a second use out of Kozilek’s Command.
Emry, Lurker of the Loch is almost the opposite. It can’t get you new cards from your deck, but it can recycle old ones from your graveyard. This deck is so artifact-heavy that Emry will cost just a single blue most of the time, and the ability to recast your Stars and Baubles makes her a source of virtual card advantage and a combo extender.
A Colorless Revolution?
Small Urza’s Saga package aside, that’s all she wrote on Mono-Blue Mystic Forge in MTG Modern. The deck is low-to-the-ground and fairly consistent, given how many ways it has to dig for what it needs. That said, like most Combo decks, it’s a bit feast or famine. Either you’ll pop off and win spectacularly, or you’ll durdle and get run over.
Right now, the top decks at the moment are Boros Energy and Izzet Prowess, both of which get on the board early and deliver crushing wins. Outside of Tamiyo, Mono-Blue Mystic Forge really has no way of holding off early aggression like that. A well-timed Kozilek’s Command can exile one of their creatures and give you a couple of blockers, but ideally, you’ll want to hang onto that for your combo turn.
Dimir Murktide poses a different kind of challenge. While it probably won’t kill you early, it has a lot more tools to ensure your plan doesn’t come together. Main deck countermagic like Force of Negation can take care of many of your key cards, and Consign to Memory can come in from the sideboard to really dress you down. Mono-Blue Mystic Forge can sub in some countermagic of its own to fight this, but slowing down will likely get you stomped out by Psychic Frog or Murktide Regent.
All in all, while the concept here is interesting, Mono-Blue Mystic Forge probably won’t be claiming a big Modern meta share anytime soon. The core Forge/Fleshraker package is proving good in multiple shells, however, so maybe someone will crack the code at some point.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!