As many MTG players know, equipment is one of the more awkward card types in Magic: The Gathering. While they’re popular in Commander, the amount of hoops that equipment ask you to jump through make them difficult to utilize in constructed.
That’s why, when Firion, Wild Rose Warrior was spoiled, many players didn’t take much notice. While Firion’s ability is rather novel, it seems rather difficult to take advantage of.
Turns out, Firion can create a lot more havoc than we thought. While not quite competitive, a Standard Equipment Storm deck from MTG Hall of Famer Simon Nielson showcases just how deadly Firion can be.
Firion Equipment Storm
This convoluted Storm deck, essentially, wins the game by drawing nearly your whole deck while dumping equipment into play in the process. Ultimately, Machinest’s Arsenal, a Job Equipment that grants +2/+2 for each equipment you control, will kill the opponent with both Haste from Firion and Trample from Hexgold Halberd.
To do this, you need Firion, for starters, since his token copy ability is crucial for this to work. Once he’s in play, cast Lotus Ring to get a copy of it. The copy is what you’ll want to use to pull off this combo.
While Firion’s equipment copies are temporary, they notably have a reduction in their equip cost. This means Lotus Ring equips for one mana instead of three. This may not seem relevant, but it turns Lotus Ring into a Ritual effect that turns a creature you control into three mana for the cost of one. Since Firion gives equipped creatures Haste, they can all be sacrificed for mana immediately. As for where the bodies come from, we’ll talk about that shortly.
You can then use this mana to cast Cloud, Midgar Mercenary, or the Adventure spell Birthright Boon from Wilds of Eldraine to find Transmogrant’s Crown. This can be used to draw cards from the creatures you sacrifice to Lotus Ring. Just rinse and repeat until you have the correct board state to kill the opponent with Machinest’s Arsenal.
Cloud, Midgar Mercenary is notably very strong in this deck thanks to doubling equip triggers to things equipped onto him. In addition to finding your missing combo pieces, he can also draw extra cards with Transmogrant’s Crown.
Tons of Equipment Creatures
Looking at the decklist, you may notice that there is an extraordinarily high number of equipment creatures. From Barbed Batterfist to Monk’s Fist, there’s a total of 14 Equipment creatures in here. These synergize incredibly well with Firion, Wild Rose Warrior since, when creating copies of them, you’ll also get copies of the body that the equipment makes.
This not only gives you extra bodies after your Equipment tokens sacrifice themselves, but you also get extra bodies to equip Lotus Ring and Tramogrant’s Crown with. The extra equipment, in the meantime, will help buff up Machinest’s Arsenal to close the game.
On reflection, however, Neilson suggested that this number of equipment bodies is probably unnecessary. There are cheaper alternatives that likely accomplish the same thing, like Nesting Bot, that cost less mana. If you decide to tinker with this deck, that could be something to keep in mind.
Even if you make this decision, however, you’ll need to keep a few equipment creatures in the deck so that Cloud and Birthright Boon can find them mid-combo to keep your cards flowing.
Why Isn’t This Competitive?
This, in theory, seems like a pretty strong combo, but, sadly, the deck is hardly perfect. While finding your necessary equipment should be extremely consistent with plenty of search spells, the problem instead lies with Firion, Wild Rose Warrior.
You absolutely need this card for the combo to do anything, and, without Firion, you have a below-rate equipment deck that pumps out a bunch of bad creature tokens. It doesn’t help that Firion is easy to remove. Killing a 3/3 body isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, and losing Firion makes it so your combo cannot function.
If this deck can find a decent plan B for when you don’t have a strong combo draw, it could potentially become a competitive archetype to experiment with, but until then, this is just a janky combo that could be fun to bring to Friday Night Magic.
Perhaps using Bladehold War-Whip could help? This would reduce equip costs for your equipment tokens, granting an alternative to Firion, and would provide some more durable equipment creatures, but War-Whip is unlikely to help much outside of being in multiples.
Either way, if you’re looking for a janky deck to surprise your friends with that uses new Final Fantasy cards, Simon Neilson’s creation should get some reactions out of them when it works.