Every now and again a strategy so interesting and unique has a breakout performance that leaves us in awe. For instance, recently, a Cat typal deck managed to make top eight of a large Legacy tournament in unexpected fashion. This deck absolutely deserved a shout-out, especially considering how powerful the Legacy format is as a whole.
Well, today, it turns out we have another extreme outlier in Legacy to share. This time, a four-color artifacts deck abusing the power of Winota, Joiner of Forces made top eight of a Magic Online Legacy Challenge. If you’ve been looking for a format to jam your Winotas since the Pioneer banning, you may just be in luck. There’s a lot going on here, so let’s start by checking out the artifact package that plays a crucial role in the deck’s success.
Artifact Theme
- Rarity: Rare
- Text: (As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III). I: Urza’s Saga gains: tap: add colorless.” II: Urza’s Saga gains “2, tap: Create a 0/0 colorless Construct artifact creature token with ‘This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control.'” III: Search your library for an artifact card with mana cost 0 or 1, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.
On the surface, this deck has a very heavy artifact theme. There are tons of extremely efficient artifacts present, which help enable a handful of amazing cards. At the top of that list, we have Urza’s Saga. In this deck, Urza’s Saga can reliably generate massive tokens. In many games, it’s worth playing Urza’s Saga turn one, since both Mox Opal and Ancient Tomb can help you activate Urza’s Saga’s ability on turn two.
Mox Opal is also an incredible card, pulling you ahead on mana very early in the game. As we will see, getting ahead on mana early is pivotal to this deck’s main gameplan. This becomes even more indicative by the presence of a full playset of Springleaf Drum. Both Ornithopter and Esper Sentinel make it trivial to utilize Springleaf Drum to your advantage.
This mana acceleration allows you to maximize the strength of Retrofitter Foundry as a potent grindy element. This card lets you flood the board with artifact creature tokens, which is great alongside both Urza’s Saga and Winota. It lines up very well against removal and can singlehandedly take over the game if left unchecked. The only downside is that it can be a bit mana intensive, but this deck is quite good at alleviating that issue.
In conjunction with all of these artifacts, this deck also has access to four copies of Ethersworn Canonist. Ethersworn Canonist is particularly helpful in keeping Dark Ritual decks in check, which can otherwise be tough to beat game one.
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Enabling Winota
- Mana Value: 2RW
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 4/4
- Text: Whenever a non-Human creature you control attacks, look at the top six cards of your library. You may put a Human creature card from among them onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. It gains indestructible until end of turn. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library in a random order.
As we mentioned, Ornithopter and Retrofitter Foundry are important in ensuring that Mox Opal, Springleaf Drum and Urza’s Saga are as powerful as they can be. However, that isn’t where the story ends. In this deck, Mox Opal and Springleaf Drum help you slam Winota early in the game. From there, your Servos, Thopters, and Constructs can all attack and trigger Winota right away.
As such, most of the rest of the cards in the deck are powerful Humans to put into play when you get your Winota engine rolling. Both Esper Sentinel and Ethersworn Canonist, while not the flashiest cards, double as Humans and artifacts to support this deck’s mixed objectives.
On top of those two creatures, this deck also plays Urza, Chief Artificer as an elite card to hit off Winota. It makes your attacking artifact creatures harder to block, attacks for a bunch of damage itself, and adds additional pressure to the board on your end step. Given the high density of artifact creatures present in this shell, casting Urza on a discount is very realistic. The mana requirements can be a little awkward since Urza’s Saga and Ancient Tomb only produce colorless mana, but Mox Opal, Springleaf Drum, and Cavern of Souls naming Human go a long way.
The last remaining Humans in the maindeck are Brutal Cathar and Seasoned Dungeoneer. Both of these cards hit the sweet spot as cards that are impactful and easily castable when you draw them and not Winota. Similarly, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade is a solid hate piece out of the sideboard that Winota can dig for when applicable.
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Strengths and Weaknesses
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Text: As Cavern of Souls enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Tap: Add colorless. Tap: Add one mana of any color. Spend this mana only to cast a creature spell of the chosen type, and that spell can’t be countered.
At the end of the day, it is a little strange to see Winota and Mox Opal join forces, but this deck does a solid job at meshing different ideas. The Artifact package makes the deck much more explosive than it otherwise would be. At the same time, Winota is an excellent finisher. Ornithopter and Retrofitter aren’t particularly good at killing the opponent, but with Winota at the ready, even a single attack can add a ton of damage out of nowhere.
As far as matchups are concerned, this deck lines up well against Grixis Delver and control. Cavern of Souls and Esper Sentinel punish your opponent for trying to play reactively. Retrofitter Foundry isn’t the easiest card to answer and is great at clogging up the board. Wasteland is clearly an annoying card to face down as an Urza’s Saga deck, but at least Mox Opal and Springleaf Drum help you get ahead without getting mana screwed.
Where this deck has its biggest problems is against highly impactful sideboard cards. Meltdown, for instance, cleanly answers artifact tokens, Mox Opal, Ornithopter, Esper Sentinel, and the list goes on. Even Chalice of the Void for X=0 can slow this deck down a lot. Your entire engine revolves around cheap artifacts. Unlike mono-blue Patchwork Stompy decks, you don’t have Force of Will to help compensate. As such, you’re a bit more vulnerable to hate cards and combo.
The good news is that because this strategy attacks from multiple angles, it isn’t as reliant on finding and sticking Urza’s Saga. Cavern of Souls and Winota go a long way in giving you a different path to victory. Winota hasn’t seen much play since its banning in Pioneer, so observing the card surging in an Eternal format is extremely impressive. It’s cool that such an innovative take on an artifacts shell is putting up elite results.
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