The MTG Gearhulks are an infamous group of artifact creatures that offer enters effects attached to a gigantic artifact creature. First appearing in Kaladesh, since renamed Avishkar, the mono-colored Gearhulks had a massive impact on competitive play. Torrential Gearhulk is the most famous card from this initial gearhulk cycle.
An allied-color cycle of Gearhulks is now appearing in Aetherdrift. While some of these Gearhulks offer interesting payoffs, the Rakdos Gearhulk may be the most interesting of all. Many players are comparing this card to Gyruda, Doom of Depths, and for good reason. It has the potential to create an instant-board.
Coalheart Gearhulk
Coalheart Gearhulk is a very strange MTG card. It’s clearly trying to do something incredibly specific that, when set up properly, can be incredibly explosive. Using this card as a generic value engine doesn’t really seem too worthwhile for most decks. Aggro decks could, in theory, make sure of the Haste that Coalheart provides, but it’ll rarely grab a juicy four mana threat.
In our opinion, Coalheart Gearhulk is too inflexible to see play outside of Standard and Commander. Even in those formats, however, it doesn’t have a guaranteed shot or spot within existing decks. The card has to have absurd amounts of synergy with the rest of the deck to work since the value it creates is somewhat dubious in a vacuum.
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean that Coalheart Gearhulk is a terrible card that’ll never see play. Thanks to some interesting combo shenanigans, this card could be remarkably deadly. If everything goes according to plan, on the turn you drop Coalheart Gearhulk, you can win the game. Excitingly, this combo is even an option in Standard, which is always a scary thought.
How do we do this? Well, players identified similarities between Gyruda and Coalheart Gearhulk for a reason. Gyruda uses copy effects to create copies of Gyruda and set up a devastating chain chain. Coalheart Gearhulk can do the same thing.
Wax Shapethief
Wax Shapethief looks like an all-around solid creature-copying option, albeit a rather expensive one. Thankfully, while this cost may stop it from seeing extensive Standard play, it’s not too much to stop Coalheart Gearhulk. Should Wax Shapethief be in your graveyard you can reanimate it with Coalheart, giving you a second one with a fresh Enters ability.
From here, the ideal scenario is to reanimate yet another copy of Wax Shapethief. Should you start with four copies in your graveyard, this will leave you with 20 power on the board. Each of these Coalheart Gearhulk copies will also have Menace, Deathtouch, and Haste, so they’ll be rather difficult to deal with. There’s a non-zero chance, in fact, you can just one-hit-kill an opponent immediately.
Ultimately, while this combo could certainly be effective, it’s rather risky on its own. Not only do you need four specific cards in your graveyard, but your opponent needs to sit still and die. Any removal, or even just two blockers, will stop you from getting the job done. Obviously, this seriously dampens the effectiveness of this five-card combo, especially since the reanimated Wax Shapetthief won’t stick around.
Copy Effects
Thankfully, to make this combo a little bit more consistent, Wax Shapethief isn’t the only option in Standard once Aetherdrift releases. Currently, Visage Bandit is another appropriately costed option that you can fill your graveyard with. This gives you up to eight targets for the Coalheart Gearhulk loop which isn’t too too bad.
Technically, Duskmourn’s Jolly Balloon Man is also a potential reanimation target that can get you more Coalheart Gearhulks. Sadly, however, Jolly Balloon Man only makes 1/1 copies, and you’ll need to pay mana to make this happen, so the type of value he creates won’t allow you to swing for 20 damage.
The only upside of running Jolly Balloon Man is that you can play them normally to simply create tokens of Coalheart Gearhulk. Considering the Gearhulk’s ability only triggers upon Enters, this could be surprisingly important. That being said, splashing white on top of what’s really a Grixis deck might be a step too far.
Speaking of Grixis, playing blue alongside Coalheart Gearhulk gives you access to Three Steps Ahead. This spell can get copy effects into the graveyard, protect your pieces, and create copies of the Gearhulk. There are also a ton of instant and sorcery copy effects like Molten Duplication that can create value with a resolved Gearhulk. That said, this isn’t the best option to pursue.
Granting Creatures Deathtouch
Admittedly, this hypothetical combo deck is very all-or-nothing on the surface. It’s clearly aiming to fill the graveyard with four relevant bodies by turn five, and then instantly win. Unless there are some surprisingly strong setup options in the format, building a deck around this combo seems like a losing strategy. Thankfully, this deck might have some legs as a genuine midrange list.
Thanks to Coalheart Gearhulk giving Deathtouch, a lot of unassuming creatures can become removal options upon being resurrected. In Standard, one of the best targets with this in mind is Voldaren Thrillseeker. The card can grant another creature in play a Backup buff, swing in for damage, and sacrifice itself to kill a creature.
Other targets that do the same thing, but are much worse than the Thrillseeker, are Fanatical Firebrand and Arbalest Engineers. While Fanatical Firebrand sucks outside of being resurrected by Coalheart, Arbalest Engineers can create some interesting synergies such as granting Coalheart Gearhulk Haste if you don’t need to ping a creature to kill it.
Ultimately, while these synergies do help to extend the reach of Coalheart Gearhulk, these aren’t the targets you want to be hitting. Getting removal on top of a 5/4 for five isn’t bad, but you’ll want to be aiming higher, ideally. Should you really want to go down this route, however, just remember that creatures that deal damage upon their death don’t work with Coalheart Gearhulk thanks to the Finality Counter.
A Bizarre Box of Tricks
Ultimately, outside of Standard and Commander, the chances of Coalheart Gearhulk seeing play are doubtful. There are simply more effective strategies in other formats that will out scale what you’re trying to accomplish. The Selesnya Gearhulk, in our opinion, remains the most interesting one for constructed purposes, but Coalheart may very well be the most explosive, if not unrealistic, one.
