It’s no secret that Alpha, Magic: The Gathering’s debut set, was filled with wonky designs of varying power levels. Cards like the Power Nine are still considered to be absurdly broken, while many of the set’s creatures aren’t up to snuff anymore.
Despite this imbalance, Alpha still gave rise to some unique tools that players can utilize to this day. One unassuming artifact, for instance, has recently gained extra utility as a combo piece alongside a new MTG Avatar Commander. Not every MTG deck will want Library of Leng, but those that do can get a big boost of consistency on the cheap.
MTG Library of Leng
On the surface, Library of Leng may not look like a card you’d really want to put in your deck. While it certainly has merit as a piece of anti-discard tech, there’s a chance that the card’s abilities don’t come up much. In decks with lots of their own discard-focused synergies, like Nekusar, the Mindrazer, however, Library of Leng can provide a ton of value.
Decks with Nekusar at the helm commonly utilize “Wheel” effects like Windfall, since opponents get punished a lot more than you do. Having Library of Leng breaks the parity even further, since you can keep all of your best cards, while discarding anything unneeded. This can even allow you to loop Wheels together, massively disrupting and hurting your opponents.
Similarly, Commanders like Queen Kayla bin-Kroog can easily use Library of Leng to keep your best card while finding fuel. As powerful as these synergies are, Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing takes things to another level. By giving you Spirit tokens each time you put cards on top of your library, Wan Shi Tong can easily flood the board. On top of this, there are even some infinite combos using this MTG Avatar legend to push things even further.
Library of Leng Combos
The simplest Library of Leng and Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing combo involves Sage of the Falls. Since each of the Spirit tokens Wan Shi Tong creates will trigger Sage of the Falls, you can create infinite 1/1 Spirits with incredible ease. Even if these Spirits can’t attack right away, there’s no shortage of ways to abuse infinite enters triggers, so winning with this combo is trivial.
Thankfully, this isn’t the only way to go infinite with Library of Leng and Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing. Any basic looter, like Kitsa, Otterball Elite, alongside Intruder Alarm, will similarly allow you to create infinite Spirit tokens.
Should you want a broader color identity, Mary Read and Anne Bonny is also capable of going infinite with Library of Leng. By using Transplant Theorist, and specifically discarding an Island, Vehicle, or Pirate, Mary Read and Anne Bonny can create infinite tapped Treasure Tokens. While this won’t automatically win you the game, cards like Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Hedron Detonator can solve that problem.
An Important Caveat
Notably, as cool as Library of Leng is as a combo engine, its ability may be a bit more restrictive than you think. This artifact only works in tandem with effects that have you discard cards. As such, cool Commanders like Anje Falkenrath and Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald that require you to discard as part of a cost won’t trigger this card.
Nonetheless, Library of Leng still has a lot of upside with the right supporting cast. It remains quite an underplayed artifact, appearing in less than 35k decks according to EDHREC. On top of that, despite not being reprinted in a tournament-legal set since Fifth Edition, players can easily pick up near mint versions for under $1.
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