A new Magic set means a new suite of devilish combos to figure out. Despite being marketed at MTG beginners, Foundations is not an exception to this rule. You’ll find several scary combo enablers here, with potential in multiple formats.
While some of these are obvious, few MTG players suspected Leyline Axe would enable a turn-one-kill combo in Modern. Yet just yesterday, a few days into brewing season, an enterprising player has figured out how it can do just that. If Standard’s Leyline combo just isn’t fast enough for you, this one may be more your speed.
The MTG Leyline Axe Combo
The Leyline Axe combo was discovered by the MTG Creative Combos account on Twitter. Because of the cards required, this combo is confined to Modern or older formats. It’s a fairly simple one overall, but it needs a lot of specific cards in order to work. In fact, assuming a full starting hand of seven cards, there’s only one ‘spare’ slot here. You need six cards to pull it off, which really pushes the limits of statistics.
Two of these cards are Leylines. You need the titular Leyline Axe, as well as Duskmourn’s already-infamous Leyline of Resonance. With both of these cards in your opening hand, you can start with both in play. From there, you need an untapped red source to cast Fervent Champion. This is a mostly-forgotten one drop from back in original Eldraine, which packs a couple of keywords and a Knight Typal support ability. For our purposes, the two important things here are its Haste and its last ability.
Said ability reduces the cost of equip abilities that target Champion by three generic mana. Handily, that allows us to attach Leyline Axe for free on turn one. This alone gives us a 2/2 Double Strike Haste creature on the first turn, which is pretty excellent. Just excellent doesn’t end games right away, however.
The next step is to cast two copies of Mutagenic Growth on our Champion. This can be done for free due to their Phyrexian mana costs. Each of these will grant +4/+4 rather than +2/+2, thanks to Leyline of Resonance’s doubling effect. This brings Champion up to a 10/10 Double Strike. From there, one swing can end the game on turn one.
Building It Out
This is a very impressive combo, even if it is hyper-specific. On the play, it can end the game before your opponent can possibly react, outside of free counterspells like Force of Negation. This is comparable to some of the turn zero win combos we’ve seen in the past, which puts it in esteemed and limited company. It may even be worth pursuing as a genuine deck once Foundations releases.
How would such a deck be built? There are a few ways to go about it. The core combo pieces only take up 16 slots, which leaves about 20 remaining once you add in lands. As this is a combo that really cares about its opening hand, I think a playset of Serum Powder is an easy inclusion here. Getting multiple shots at that perfect six is a huge edge, and greatly increases your chances of just rolling an instant win at the start of the game.
Of course, you won’t hit your combo every game, so you’ll want to build a decent Aggro shell around it to give you an alternative approach. To this end, you can dip into some powerful Haste creatures and pump spells. Clockwork Percussionist is a solid card in the former category, while Monstrous Rage is a modern classic in the latter. These cards certainly don’t offer the same speed as Champion and Mutagenic Growth, but they can achieve similar results in the end. Particularly if you include Magnetic Theft to attach Leyline Axe to non-Champion creatures.
You can also include extra Equipment such as Bone Saw. Champion’s discount can equip a lot of Equipment for free, so exploring your options here makes sense. Other Equipment and Knight support like Auriok Steelshaper are also welcome, letting you pursue an Aggro gameplan beyond the combo.
Potential In Pioneer
While the Leyline Axe combo is available fully in the MTG Modern format, you can play a slightly neutered version in Pioneer as well. Most of the pieces are legal in both formats. The key difference is no Mutagenic Growth, which means no turn one kill. You also don’t get access to Serum Powder for free mulligans. In exchange, you do get a metagame that’s more welcoming to a strategy like this, however.
Modern has access to free spells that can disrupt the combo and a lot of lifegain effects, particularly in Boros Energy. Pioneer, on the other hand, has neither of those things. This means that, even with a slight delay, this combo could still have potential in the format. As I mentioned above, opening the game with a Hasty 2/2 Double Striker is a heck of a play. This leaves your opponent with 16 life right off the bat. Possibly 14, when you factor in a turn one Shockland. It’s not hard at all to get that down to zero on turn two.
You can do this with a single Monstrous Rage if you have a Leyline of Resonance out, or two if you don’t. Lines like these are very similar to those used by Rakdos Prowess, too, which is currently one of the best decks in the format. You can easily switch in the combo pieces to a standard Rakdos Prowess shell and likely have decent results. Perhaps you can even bring them in out of the sideboard for when you’re on the play in games two and three.
Overall, while this combo is very inconsistent, it’s worth paying attention to. It’s not often that something comes along with the potential for such an early finish, after all.
