It's been a few weeks since Aetherdrift came out, and we are starting to see the cards that are standing out in the meta. We didn't expect the set to change things too much with regard to what we have been seeing. What we did get from it is a nice supplement to many other decks. Although we did not get a ton of format-shaping cards, we have seen a couple that have lit up fringe archetypes. What I've brewed for today plays off of a familiar archetype, and it was one that we kind of already had, but it allows us to pivot in a certain way and get additional value from it that we may not have gotten in the past. One of the biggest things that our deck can do is have plenty of action on the end step/cleanup step. It's an interesting scenario because usually when we think of the cleanup step at the end of each turn, we remove damage, and we discard to hand size. Usually discarding to hand size is pretty much the final step, and there aren't any triggers... until now.
We will be using Monument to Endurance to have triggers when we discard to hand size, and get additional value from it. Now we don't care if we end the turn with nine or ten cards in hand, because we are going to benefit from it. This will help us possibly get in some finishing damage against our opponent, or get extra value. It is worth noting that this will cause triggered abilities on the cleanup step, and this is something that our opponents can respond to. This has historically been a point in the turn where no player can respond to actions. We'll take a look at the relevant cards in the deck, and then I'll detail a few fun combos that we may see during gameplay.
Relevant Cards
This card single-handedly inspired the idea for the deck. I genuinely was curious to see what kind of interactions we could get from having triggers during the cleanup step, as it is a new concept for me in MTG. I also love drawing cards, and this allows us to do so while discarding to hand size. If you've read more than one of my articles written for MTG Circle, or ever popped into my stream for five minutes, you probably also know that I love the ability to make the opponent lose life. Add the ability to ramp into all of this while playing a control deck that has multiple five-mana spells, and Monument immediately steals the show for the best card in the deck.
This is one of the tricks up our sleeve to do our shenanigans on the cleanup step. We will be drawing a bunch of extra cards and using the max speed ability to get the most out of this phase. We don't use the speed mechanic really until the Speed Demon is out, so we don't include any other "start your engines" cards. It is possible that we want to add a couple of other ones later on, but for now, he is carrying the weight just fine. We also want to be careful about how we order our triggers in the end/cleanup steps. I'll get to why that is relevant with the next card.
We will use the annex in conjunction with our Speed Demon to help ensure we have enough demons in the list not only to gain some life, but to make sure that we don't lose too much while we draw all of these cards. This card will allow us to draw an extra card each end step with our demons. When The Speed Demon is out, we want to be mindful of how we order our triggers. Generally, on the end step we want to resolve the Unholy Annex trigger first, because that will then trigger a loss of life which will increase our max speed. This allows us to draw an extra card with Speed Demon. Ideally, we want to be drawing five cards on our end step, and then hopefully this means we will be discarding to hand size - because when we do this with the Monument out, that is when the fun begins.
Combo Time!
Now that we know the three cards that really make all of this pop, we can check out some instances of how the combo can look. As stated above, we are looking to draw five cards or more right before the cleanup step. This will allow us to hopefully have more than seven cards in hand, and we will move to cleanup. Once we move to cleanup, we can discard one card to start when the monument is out, provided we have eight cards in hand. We will discard that card, then have a Monument trigger. What we should choose to do first is to draw a card. The reason is that because we are still in the cleanup step, we still have to end the turn with seven cards in hand. This will effectively give us another discard outlet, which will then trigger Monument an additional time. This time, we can either choose to make a treasure token, or make the opponent lose three life.
If we have multiple Monuments on the board, it really gets crazy. You could draw that one card initially, then discard and draw another card from the second monument, and you would have extra triggers. You can run it in a way where you draw two additional cards, and make the opponent lose six life. It sounds good, but it doesn't sound like the craziest thing you could be doing. The reason that I believe it is so good is because we are making all of this happen in a part of the turn where normally we would just be waiting for our opponent to untap. One of the best things that we can do in Magic is to get additional value in phases of the game where we normally wouldn't. My best phrasing for it is "getting rewarded for simply playing the game" and when we do that, we often gain additional advantages in our match that the opponent will probably never attain themselves. We have to take what we can get wherever we can get it in this game, and if we can get additional value simply from ending our turn, we will do it every time.
