Legacy Mystic Forge Combo

This deck is absolutely ridiculous. It’s fast, consistent, powerful beyond relief, able to do not-quite-but-effectively infinite damage, even after being disrupted on the same turn. It makes tons of mana and casts tons of spells, has millions of triggers and overall is just not how I usually play Magic.

In the past few week’s I’ve also found that it’s enormously fun.

How the Deck Works

For those of you who have never seen this glorious monstrosity of an archetype, the game plan for this deck comes in two parts: the early game and the end game. We’ll start with the endgame first.

The main way to win is to have one or several Glaring Fleshraker’s out, and cast tons of colorless spells. This will chip your opponents down very quickly. The colorless spells in the deck are either cheap or effectively cheap by generating more mana. With one Fleshraker out, any 1 mana colorless spells are free, 0 mana generate mana, and any mana-positive rocks (Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith) also help out too. Manifold Key, Voltaic Key, and even Tezzeret also help to get your spells cast more, since they can untap mana rocks for mana-neutral or positive value.

There’s Mystic Forge, the namesake card of the deck, which can keep the wheels spinning by being able to have a train of colorless spells ripped from the top of the library for cheap as well. Kozilek’s Command can even help you set up the top of your library for such a scenario. We also, for good measure, have the backup plan of using Karn, the Great Creator to grab Mycosynth Lattice from the sideboard to lock our opponent out of the game, or the backup-backup plan to beat down with Urza’s Saga tokens in a pinch.

But that’s just the end game. Tons of decks in Legacy have powerful win conditions. The real power of this deck is how quickly it can get there from the early. And that’s where we should talk about the most powerful cards in this deck. Most of all, The One Ring

The One Ring is Busted

I’ve played with The One Ring in some decks before, including some versions of Omni-Tell. But I’ve never played with it like this. This deck can pretty consistently get the ring out on turn two, and even turn one in a lot of normal cases. After that, it’s off to the races. The One Ring is easily our most important card, probably with Grim Monolith as a close second. What the Ring does is give you tons of sustain of threats, where if they weren’t able to counter it, you’ll just out draw their answers. One way for them to get around that is just kill you before that happens, which is where the Ring does the other thing that’s really good, and that’s Timewalk your opponent.

The only things we really care about our opponent doing is setting up hate pieces, or mild disruption like counters and discard. The counters and discard really are more of a “before The One Ring comes down” kind of thing. After its down, they aren’t going to be able to target with discard, or take enough cards to take us out.

If it wasn’t clear, the reason The One Ring is so disgusting in this deck is that with the various Key cards we play, we can tap it multiple times per turn. This can easily get out of hand as you can draw 3 turns on the first turn it comes down, 7 on the next turn, and so on. Given that you get protection from everything for a turn, that’s an easy 10 cards, which feeds towards the endgame, and buys us time doing so. You can even use your combo to pause and drop another ring to buy another turn easily.

Where the deck falters

Having played with the deck about a week now, I will say that its pretty crazy how easily this deck folds to hate. In the mainboard we run a Portable Hole, which is fetchable off of Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. In the sideboard, there’s a Perilous Snare, which is just a cute out that can be grabbed by Karn, the Great Creator. Other than that, there’s really nothing that this deck can do against a Null Rod, or Damping Sphere other than just to brute force through it.

If your artifacts can’t tap for mana, then you’re looking for Fleshraker(s) and a Mystic Forge to clamber mana together and churn through your deck. If you’re getting squashed by Damping Sphere, you’re going to want to get a One Ring down in order to get card density and mana artifacts together to do the same with big Kozilek’s Commands to get you over the finish line. But God help you if you need to deal with both at the same time.

The other way in which this deck falters is by early disruption. Often countering Grim Monolith is the way to make the deck sputter, especially if you brought it out early on a risky fast hand. The One Ring is the best card in the deck, but you’ll prevent it from coming down by hitting the mana early and often.

In my experience, Counter magic is only good in the first few turns, because if the game goes long and the deck can get its wheels spinning, there’s going to be too many threats to counter later. I’ve won games where I’ve gotten two rings countered only to drop a third, thanks to having 12 mana (thanks Urza’s Workshop).

Wrapping Up

I think playing decks you’re not used to is just such a great way to understand ways to combat it. And this deck always used to scare the hell out of me having been sat at the other side of the table. Its so fast and resilient it felt like. What I now know is that is true, but it does fold to hate somewhat easily if lined up appropriately.

But most importantly, I now realize how much fun all the artifacts players having been having with this deck for the past few years. Grim Monoliths might be in my shopping cart in the future. Until next time!