For the uninitiated, Stoneforge Mystic is an incredibly powerful card; it was even banned in Standard in its era. The unintuitive thing about Stoneforge Mystic is that you don't need to play with a whole lot of equipment to make it good, once you've tutored for a Sword of Fire and Ice it's alright to play some 2 mana 1/2s just to equip it to. Enter Batterskull, and it also allows you to take advantage of an incredibly cheap oversized lifelinker that's incredibly hard to kill.
I've wanted to figure out cool homes for Stoneforge Mystic since the unbanning, and this is the first place I've ended up. I started off with a Soulherder shell, but the mana was awful. Too many three drops and not enough to do early on in addition forced me to move on. While this is an incredibly rough early list, I think that there's a lot of power here.
Well Positioned Modern Horizons Cards
I really wanted to include Ephemerate and Ranger-Captain of Eos, as they give this deck resilience and a way to generate value over a long game. I've included a tutor package for Ranger-Captain in the form of Weathered Wayfayer, Walking Ballista, and Giver of Runes, which all have their own powerful but narrow circumstances. Walking Ballista also combines with Archangel Avacyn out of the sideboard for creature mirrors just like Hangarback Walker did in Standard of years past. Thraben Inspector really ties the room together, as in any value oriented match-up it can be tutored for and blinked repeatedly, and it's a lot easier to spend mana cracking clues with an active Aether Vial.
Mana Base
I believe that Prismatic Vista makes this deck possible, as it allows for much more consistent access to Wingding (colorless) mana and won't deal you much damage in the long run. The deck thinning element is realistically a negative as this deck is already land light, but shouldn't matter often. Shefet Dunes and Field of Ruin provide utility and can be tutored for with Weatherd Wayfayer, but are primarily here to make it easy to cast all of your spells. Silent Clearing can occasionally cast our sideboard Surgical Extraction for a 1 life discount, so it beats out running a split of random White Canopy lands to beat out Pithing Needle. The numbers are pretty up in the air, but at 12 Wingding 16 White with Vials, we should be able to consistently cast things.
Gameplan
This deck has a relatively fast goldfish against combo decks, and leans on Thought-Knot Seer and Thalia for disruption. Against burn our plan is to buy time with Ranger Captain of Eos until we can get Batterskull into play. Against other creature decks, we aim to play a grindy game, leaning on Thraben Inspector and Vial to generate a lot advantage over time, and to also do lots of blocking. Control decks like U/W aren't great against our Thalia and Thought-Knot Seer plan, although we're not effective against cards like Jace the Mindsculptor and Teferi unless we have an active Vial. Lastly against various Ensnaring Bridge decks like Urza, we hope to get them low enough early so that we can burn them out with Walking Ballista, but we realistically lean on Gideon/Fragmentize out of the sideboard.
Notable Omissions
Reality Smasher: We're simply not running enough lands to cast this card, and it's not great with Aether Vial to compensate. It feels criminal not to play this, but I'm not sure how to fit them in.
Hex Parasite: We're a bit soft to Planeswalkers, but I don't feel like this card is good enough in comparison to other tutor targets, and we already have too many of those.
Cavern of Souls: I don't think we have enough creature type overlap for this to be effective, and it doesn't cast our White spells like Path to Exile. There almost certainly should be one of these in the deck at least for the utility, I'm just not sure what to change.
Eiganjo Castle, Flagstones of Trokair, etc: This deck is already relatively weak to cards like Blood Moon considering we're a 1.5 color deck, and I don't want to exacerbate that any further. Maybe one of these cards could be included, but I'm more concerned with fitting in Cavern of Souls.
Sideboarding
BurnIn: 3 Gideon 1 Burrenton Forge Tender
Out: 3 Eldrazi Displacer 1 Weathered Wayfayer
If you see Ensnaring Bridge, fit in Fragmentize as a way to beat it. Walking Ballista and Thraben Inspector are your worst cards, look to shave those.
U/W Control
In: 3 Gideon 1 Selfless Spirit 1 Archangel Avacyn
Out: 3 Eldrazi Displacer 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Walking Ballista
Our primary concern is sweepers like Supreme Verdict, so beating those is paramount. We hope to grind them out with Thraben Inspector and can give them fits with Ephemerate, Ranger-Captain, and Thalia.
Urza Whir
In: 3 Gideon 2 Fragmentize 1 Stony Silence 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
2 Rest in Peace 1 Surgical Extraction
Out: 2 Thraben Inspector 1 Giver of Runes 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Eldrazi Displacer 2 Ephemerate
Not as confident on this one. Stony Silence really hurts us as well so boarding out our Clue making machines is intended to compensate. Rest in Peace is intended to beat the Thopter/Sword combo, although there's a possibility we end up too reactive and slow as a result.
Tron
In: 2 Fragmentize 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel 1 Stony Silence 1 Selfless Spirit
Out: 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Eldrazi Displacer 2 Ephemerate 1 Giver of Runes
This doesn't look like a great match-up for us, although timely Ranger-Captains and Thought-Knot Seers should slow down various pay-offs.
Humans:
In: 1 Archangel Avacyn 1 Winds of Abandon 1 Selfless Spirit
Out: 1 Weathered Wayfayer 2 Thalia
Thalia is almost a liability in this match-up. there's a possibility we should board them all out but Gideon seems too fragile and he's the only reasonable swap. Might be OK to bring in Burrenton Forge Tender as largely a tutorable 1 mana 1/1 instead, but I'm not sure.
Jund:
In: 1 Burrenton Forge Tender 1 Archangel Avacyn 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel 1 Selfless Spirit, 1 Gideon (play)
Out: 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Walking Ballista 2 Aether Vial, 1 Eldrazi Displacer (play)
Kolaghan's Command is a real concern here, it's incredibly good against us. We're almost certainly going to play very grindy games vs. Jund as we're not fast or resilient enough to aggro them out, so Vial really suffers when there's going to be so many cards traded back and forth. Gideon is OK in this match-up I'd imagine, but he's incredibly weak in multiples and on the draw.
This is a pretty large deviation from what I'd normally write about, but as we're still in a bit of a dead zone for Limited until Throne of Eldraine spoilers, I'm going to explore writing about non-Limited subjects until then.
Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
Podcast has been recorded for this week, although I need to learn how to use my editing software before I can put this one out.
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