The best cards in Standard are making it difficult to brew these days, but where there's a will, there's a way. The current meta is dominated by "This Town Ain't Big Enough" and "Up the Beanstalk" piles, but other cards like Simulacrum Synthesizer and The Mightstone and Weakstone are powerhouse value engines in their own right if we can find a shell for them that works. We also have an absolute haymaker in Radiant Lotus that I'm finally willing to brew with and, I've got to say, I'm impressed.
The Wincon
Radiant Lotus represents an absurd amount of mana generated late in the game when we have multiple artifacts lying around. Fortunately for us, there are plenty of artifacts we can toss around to power up the lotus to net us twenty or more mana even after we have spent six to play it.
Boommobile is our main mana sink, allowing us to convert mana into damage very easily. Decks with this kind of setup in the past have used cards like Blaze, Fireball, Banefire, or Crackle With Power, but right now we have Boommobile and I like it. I also considered Exsanguinate for this spot, but Boommobile won out because of its cross-synergies with our other engines.
Surviving to the Combo
In the first few turns, we want to deposit lots of artifacts onto the board. We're assuming our opponent will have creatures coming our way in the early game, so let's use removal artifacts as our early drops. Tithing Blade and Grim Bauble fit the bill magnificently given their ability to pop early, small threats, and we have larger removal to deal with later threats too.
When larger threats like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, or Overlord of the Mistmoors arrive, we have targeted removal like Demonic Junker and the consistently overperforming Braided Net. Net's ability to tie up one attacker or even remove a blocker is powerful tempo and it can even draw us a ton of cards later in the game if we're set up at all. The Braided Quipu has allowed me to dig for my combo numerous times when the board has stalled in grindier games against control or Up the Beanstalk value piles.
Secondary Threat
I've been a long-winded fan of Simulacrum Synthesizer since it came out in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Big Score bonus sheet, and I will take this opportunity to reiterate my fanboy status. Simulacrum Synthesizer (or SimSyn as we sometimes call it) pulls focus and demands an answer within even a single turn. If we're allowed to untap and trigger it even once, the resulting construct is a threat that can apply significant pressure to our opponent, and if they use whole removal spells on it, we're getting card advantage since our token producer is still around. The constructs also give us the ability to crew vehicles that we'll have lying around in Boommobile and Demonic Junker, so that pseudo-haste can pressure more controlling players as well. Never underestimate the power of a forgotten vehicle getting crewed deep into the game.
Thran Spider is a uniquely powerful card when it's supporting Radiant Lotus and SimSyn. The powerstone it generates gives us additional fodder for the lotus later in the game while also ramping us into it a turn earlier. The spider is also very well positioned against the Esper decks or other brews out there that rely on bouncing creatures for tempo as it resets the powerstone trigger and potentially triggers SimSyn an additional time. A 2/4 with reach is also nothing to sneeze at.
The Mightstone and Weakstone has one of the most awkward names of any Magic: the Gathering card in Standard today, but the card fits this deck like a glove. The enter trigger is pure value by either eliminating a large threat or drawing us additional cards, but it also being an untapped double powerstone is incredibly powerful. A five-drop that gives you two mana back immediately can function like a three-drop on a lot of turns, especially if we have additional colored mana in our land base to follow this up with a Braided Net or Brass's Tunnel Grinder.
Notable Omissions
You'll notice that I don't have any sweepers in this deck, nor any of the white artifact support. Cards like Unstable Glyphbridge or Voyage Home are good in shells like this, but the deck was already juggling three colors and the mana base was a significant concern, so I kept it Grixis.
A card that I will probably add to the sideboard in the future is Deadly Cover-Up, but its lack of artifact synergy gave me pause. I believe our early interaction needs to be faster than five mana, and once we have this kind of mana available, I'd prefer to be proactively winning rather than stalling the game longer.
Enigma Jewel and Collector's Vault do fantastic work when combined and Enigma Jewel could also be used to craft with the Boommobile later in the game to get an additional trigger of its fireball ability. I've seen this interaction in practice and it's nothing short of sick, but I thought running more interaction in the early slots would result in a deck that could scrap a bit better on the ladder, even if its top-end potential wasn't as quickly realized.
Conclusion
So far, I’ve only dabbled in Best-of-One with this deck, but even so, it feels promising. The top-end explosion often outpaces Domain and other late-game grind decks, and the early interaction can slow down red-based aggro enough to help us get there. While this version isn’t perfect yet, I’m very happy with the first day of testing and look forward to tuning it up in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading, and happy brewing!
