In Magic, Artifacts has been an incredibly popular archetype for a long time. Whether you enjoy staying mono-blue or venturing into other color combinations, there are plenty of ways to build around one of Magic’s most versatile card types.
Yet, one powerful legend recently printed in The Brother’s War promotes an artifact theme that still manages to fall under the radar. This Commander makes it easy to generate lots of value and even opens the door for tons of gnarly combo kills.
MTG Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam
With a mana value of two, Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam can start impacting the game quickly, taking advantage of his synergistic abilities. Eventually, you can make token copies of your strongest artifact every turn by repeatedly returning and recasting it over and over. The only downside is that this process can be a bit mana-intensive, but fortunately, there are strong support options to mitigate this concern. Cost reduction effects like Jhoira’s Familiar and Etherium Sculptor ensures that you’ll have more mana to spend on Drafna’s abilities. Even better, Training Grounds successfully reduces both of Drafna’s abilities to one mana each.
Once you have your discounts in order, you’ll need some value-generating artifacts to start copying and replaying. Thought Monitor and Coveted Jewel refill your hand, while Duplicant provides meaningful interaction to keep each opponent in check. The One Ring goes above and beyond here, drawing cards and granting you Protection from Everything turn after turn. All the while, any cast triggers from Sai, Master Thopterist or Forensic Gadgeteer will pull you ahead on resources.
To further maximize Drafna’s token-producing ability, Twinning Staff lets you double on copies of artifacts you make. From there, Worldwaker Helm can make additional copies of your artifact tokens, all while spewing out Maps in the process.
Tons of Combos
As fun as Drafna is as a value engine, he’s even stronger as a combo piece. The simplest combo you can pull off is to take infinite turns by pairing Drafna with Ugin’s Nexus. The goal is to cast Nexus with Drafna in play and copy it. Then, when both copies enter, you’ll choose to get rid of the token copy via the Legend Rule, triggering an extra turn. Finally, you’ll return Nexus to your hand, ready to repeat this process again on your next turn. Once you open the door to three-card combos, you can end up with a similar result by landing Magistrate’s Scepter and Coretapper alongside Drafna.
Going a different route, with Drafna, Training Grounds, and a zero-mana rock that adds blue such as Mox Amber, you’ll be able to bounce and replay the Mox infinite times. This nets you infinite Storm count for Brain Freeze or can reward you with infinite Thopters via Sai, Master Thopterist.
This sort of idea can easily generate infinite mana with Nyx Lotus and Manifold Key. It takes four mana to bounce Key, replay it, and untap Lotus, so you’ll net infinite blue mana with your Devotion to blue being five or greater. Replacing Nyx Lotus with Chromatic Orrery will also allow you to draw your deck.
While you will need more mana at your disposal to pull this off, there are even infinite Mill combos to be had with Altar of Dementia, Thornbite Staff, and Su-Chi Cave Guard. After equipping Drafna with Staff, you can then cast Cave Guard and copy it. Once the token copy hits the board, you’ll want to hold priority and sacrifice Guard to Mill an opponent for eight cards. In doing so, you’ll also net eight colorless mana while Thornbite Staff untaps Drafna. Since Su-Chi Cave Guard will still be on the stack, you can net infinite colorless mana and infinite mill.
An Underplayed Commander
Despite going infinite in a ton of different ways and being an otherwise powerful source of value, Drafna is still extremely underplayed. As a standalone Commander, Drafna accounts for barely over 1,000 decks according to EDHREC. Even though Drafna can be a worthy inclusion in the 99 of Artifacts shells with Urza, Lord High Artificer, it only shows up in 19,100 Commander decks.
Of course, Drafna’s stock does suffer, given that there are other cheap Commanders like Mendicant Core, Guidelight that can copy artifacts at a lower cost. Nonetheless, being able to combine this effect with Drafna’s ability to return your artifacts on a whim makes him extremely underrated. Plus, with a market value of only $0.37 according to TCGplayer, Drafna is quite budget-friendly. So, for anyone looking to add an Artifacts deck to their EDH collection without breaking the bank, Drafna is a great Mono-Blue pick.
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