One of our favorite EDH build-arounds printed in the last year is undoubtedly Plagon, Lord of the Beach. Plagon is an elite payoff for playing high-toughness Creatures.
Despite being printed in Foundations Jumpstart, a collection of cards largely designed for newer players, Plagon is even powerful enough to see play in Eternal formats. In fact, just recently, a Legacy deck utilizing a full playset of Plagon has started to put up some decent results.
There’s a lot going on in this shell. If you’re looking to break out your Starfish Wizards in a highly competitive environment, we have the deck for you.
Plagon in an Artifacts Shell
Right away, one thing you’ll notice about this shell is its heavy Artifacts theme. Cheap Artifacts like Chalice of the Void and the all-powerful Mox Opal make an appearance here as four-ofs. Mox Opal is an excellent accelerant that works overtime in this archetype.
Beyond simply tapping for mana once you have Metalcraft, Mox Opal also helps reduce the cost of Emry, Lurker of the Loch as well as Memory Guardian. Emry isn’t quite as scary here as it is some more dedicated Artifact strategies, but looping cards like Aether Spellbomb or casting Chalice from your graveyard can be quite strong.
To further fuel your Artifact gameplan, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student floods the board with Clue tokens over time. These Clues make it trivial to turn on Metalcraft, cast Memory Guardian ahead of schedule, and make your Construct tokens from Urza’s Saga as threatening as possible.
Tamiyo, Emry, and Memory Guardian all conveniently have one thing in common, too: they all have toughness greater than their power. This is where Plagon works its way into the equation.
Even though Plagon isn’t the most synergistic piece of the puzzle, the card advantage this legend can provide is unmatched. Plagon has the ability to make your high-toughness Creatures like Tamiyo deal extra damage as well. It’s cool seeing a mostly Commander-focused Creature make such a big splash in Legacy.
Combo Addition
Where things get really interesting is with the inclusion of a package centered around Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Nadu is yet another Creature with toughness greater than its power, and it’s not hard to generate lots of value with this Bird Wizard.
Thanks to Urza’s Saga, you’ll be able to find your one-of Shuko or Lavaspur Boots pretty frequently to pair with Nadu. This deck has a high density of Creatures to begin with, making Nadu quite threatening despite the deck being less all-in on Nadu than Cephalid Breakfast.
This is especially true if you have access to Aphetto Alchemist. Aphetto Alchemist works well with Plagon, untaps Emry at will, and provides a free way to target your Creatures with Nadu in play. Things then get really out of hand if you control multiple copies of Aphetto Alchemist alongside Nadu.
See, you can use your copies of Aphetto Alchemist to untap each other. By repeating this process, Nadu will trigger a boatload of times.
Obviously, Nadu is limited to triggering two times per Creature each turn, but by using your Aphetto Alchemists to untap each other during your turn and your opponent’s turn, your hand will be stocked up with cards in no time.
A Wizard Theme
At the end of the day, this archetype is really cool and has a number of things going for it in the current Legacy metagame. One major advantage you have is that every Creature you play besides Memory Guardian is a Wizard. As such, you have the luxury of playing a full playset of Cavern of Souls to reliably resolve your best cards.
This makes the tempo matchups with Daze and Force of Will more manageable. Sure, Wasteland can take out Cavern of Souls, but this may just free up Urza’s Saga to take over the game.
Chalice of the Void is extremely strong versus these tempo decks as well. Mox Opal and Ancient Tomb give you a shot to play Chalice for X=1 on turn one, which completely shuts off all opposing cantrips, copies of Fatal Push, and beyond.
Given the popularity of these tempo strategies, the Simic Artifacts deck is at least decently positioned in the metagame. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some problematic matchups to be concerned with, though.
Mono-red Prison, for example, has Blood Moon effects that shut down Urza’s Saga. Simic Artifacts doesn’t feature much in the way of removal, either, so Broadside Bombardiers may run away with the game if it sticks.
Meanwhile, you are a bit vulnerable to being outclassed by full on Nadu combo shells. Even if you draw a bunch of cards, unless you can put the opponent under a lot of pressure, you risk losing to a combo win with Thassa’s Oracle.
All in all, Simic Artifacts is a cool deck with competitive applications that gets to abuse a fan favorite legend. What more could you ask for?
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