This past weekend, the Legacy Championship at Eternal Weekend boasted a monumental attendance. 1,147 players came to battle, which is an incredible amount for a format that some have dubbed “dying.” In reality, the format garners a ton of support, especially from enfranchised players.
As for the health of the format, even with the banning of Grief a few months ago, there’s no denying that Dimir decks make up a big portion of the metagame. This has led to players calling for bans to cards like Psychic Frog for a while.
Interestingly, though, Dimir was not the talk of this tournament. Instead, it was Mystic Forge combo. Not only did this deck win the event, but two more players managed to make top eight. This archetype is incredibly powerful and heavily rewards player skill. To understand how this deck operates, we first need to look at the role the namesake card plays within the strategy.
Mystic Forge Package
- Mana Value: 4
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Artifact
- MTG Sets: Core Set 2020, Warhammer 40,000 Commander, The Brother’s War Retro Artifacts, Commander Masters, Fallout, Modern Horizons 3 Commander
- Card Text: You may look at the top card of your library and time. You may cast artifact spells and colorless spells from the top of your library. Tap, Pay 1 life: Exile the top card of your library.
The goal behind this deck is to generate a ton of mana. With this mana production (which we’ll lay out in more detail in the next section), you can utilize Mystic Forge to continuously play spells from the top of your deck.
Every single spell in this deck is colorless, so that restriction with Mystic Forge does not matter here. While there are only two copies of Mystic Forge in the maindeck of this decklist, you can always use Karn, the Great Creator to tutor up the potent artifact from your sideboard.
From there, you can start storming off. This deck utilizes a high density of efficient artifacts as well as artifacts that produce extra mana. So, once you start chaining spells, running out of mana is the least of your concerns.
Obviously, the downside of Mystic Forge is that you can’t play lands from the top of your deck. You can tap Mystic Forge to exile a land from the top of your deck, but once you hit another land, the fun is over…
Well, not exactly. See, both Manifold Key and Voltaic Key can untap Mystic Forge and let you clear away the top card of your library. These artifacts are also absolutely incredible with The One Ring, enabling you to draw a huge sum of cards in one turn.
The last piece of the puzzle is finding a way to win. One of the best cards in this department is simply Glaring Fleshraker. Glaring Fleshraker naturally makes it much easier to combo off with Mystic Forge since you get an Eldrazi Spawn that can produce mana every time you cast a colorless spell.
On top of that, though, these creature tokens ping the opponent when they enter. So, as long as Glaring Fleshraker sticks around, winning is trivial. Beyond that, Karn can search for Mycosynth Lattice, which together lock your opponent out of using their mana. You’ll have plenty of time afterwards to dig up a win condition.
Producing Boatloads of Mana
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Land- Urza’s
- MTG Sets: The Brother’s War Commander
- Card Text: Tap: Add colorless. Metalcraft– Tap: Add colorless for each Urza’s land you control. Activate only if you control three or more artifacts.
Of course, as strong as this gameplan sounds, none of these shenanigans would be possible without a way to get ahead on mana. In a format as powerful is Legacy, you can’t afford to simply play your four-drops on curve. Fortunately, this deck has a few tricks up its sleeve.
First of all, Grim Monolith, Mox Opal, and Lotus Petal do a great job letting you cast Mystic Forge, Karn, and The One Ring ahead of schedule. These cards are great in the early game, and once you have Mystic Forge going, become great cards to cast from the top of your deck to keep the mana flowing. Grim Monolith in particular is incredible, since you can freely untap it with Manifold Key or Voltaic Key for huge bursts.
Where this deck starts to get a massive edge on mana, though, is with its unique manabase. As you might expect, a playset of Ancient Tomb makes an appearance. However, so do four copies of Planar Nexus. Planar Nexus is a wild card designed for Commander that has enormous applications here.
By itself, Planar Nexus is just a colorless land that taps for one mana. With Urza’s Workshop or Urza’s Tower in the mix, the card becomes an all-star. For Urza’s Workshop, Planar Nexus increases your “Urza’s” land count. Planar Nexus has the Mine and Power-Plant types as well, meaning your Urza’s Towers immediately get to tap for three mana.
Urza’s Workshop continues to get better throughout the game. Urza’s Workshop isn’t legendary, and any copies of Urza’s Tower, Planar Nexus, and even Urza’s Saga you play make each Urza’s Workshop that much more insane. Karn and Mystic Forge may be a bit clunky, but with this kind of mana production, that’s of little concern.
Surprising Resiliency
- Mana Value: 1
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Type: Artifact
- MTG Sets: Modern Horizons 3
- Card Text: Whenever a player casts a spell, if no mana was spent to cast it, counter that spell. 1, Tap, Sacrifice Vexing Bauble: Draw a card.
This deck is clearly quite strong, but it’s not unbeatable. The key to keeping the deck in check is to make sure the busted four-drops don’t run away with the game.
The problem is, this isn’t always easy to do. Theoretically, applying pressure backed up by Force of Will could help you get the job done. Yet, this plan doesn’t work in the face of Vexing Bauble. Vexing Bauble ensures that Counterspells or artifact destruction spells, such as Force of Vigor, don’t function at zero mana anymore.
Meanwhile, artifact removal can be good, but it doesn’t always help you battle the big advantage this deck can get from its lands. Similarly, Blood Moon is great against this deck’s manabase, but does nothing to stop Grim Monolith shenanigans.
The other way to fight this strategy, which can actually be quite effective, is to play a combo deck that largely ignores this deck’s mana advantage. Archetypes like Oops All Spells, for example, are capable of winning the game turn one. Mystic Forge combo doesn’t have access to Force of Will, so there’s certainly a vulnerability there.
Nonetheless, there’s no denying this colorless Storm-style engine is powerful. Perhaps Dimir’s chokehold on the format is a bit overstated.
