Against the Odds: Mirror Box Carth Friends (Modern)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 325 of Against the Odds. Last week, we had a Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty synergies poll, and in the end, Mirror Box with planeswalkers came in on top. As such, we're heading to Modern today to combine Mirror Box with one of my favorite Modern Horizons 2 cards—Carth the Lion—and a bunch of planeswalkers. The goal—apart from getting Mirror Box and as many planeswalkers on the battlefield at the same time—is a bit janky. We're trying to use Karn, the Great Creator to tutor up Liquimetal Coating so that we can turn our planeswalker into artifacts and then into creatures, to copy them with Clones like Phyrexian Metamorph and Glasspool Mimic. What crazy things can Mirror Box do in Modern with the help of Carth the Lion and a bunch of planeswalkers? Let's get to the video and find out in today's Against the Odds; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Against the Odds: Mirror Box Carth Friends
The Deck
Building Mirror Box superfriends in Modern was actually way harder than I expected, in part because you can go a ton of different directions with the deck and in part because there just isn't a ton of room in the deck for utility cards once you add Mirror Box and the planeswalkers. I was pretty sure that I wanted the deck to be able to use creature clones like Glasspool Mimic to copy planeswalkers because the entire gimmick of Mirror Box is that you can keep multiples of the same legend on the battlefield, and cloning planeswalkers is the easiest way to make it happen. My first attempt was a Gideon deck since many Gideons can turn themselves into creatures naturally, but the deck was really clunky, and if it won, it mostly came by Gideon beatdowns rather than by cool Mirror Box tricks. My second attempt involved Carth the Lion...
While we've played Carth a couple of times in the past, Mirror Box is the perfect reason to revisit the card because it's so perfect for the deck. Not only does Carth the Lion help us find our planeswalkers, but it's also a legend, so we can keep multiple Carths around with Mirror Box on the battlefield, which does some absurd things. With multiple Carths, we can ultimate our planeswalkers super-quickly (sometimes on the turn we play them) thanks to its loyalty-adding ability, and if a planeswalker dies, we can dig through our library to replace it with some friends. While the Carth, Mirror Box, and planeswalker plan worked great, one big question remained: How can we turn our planeswalkers into creatures so we can clone them to take advantage of Mirror Box?
Eventually, I realized we had a really easy way to do this: Karn, the Great Creator plus Liquimetal Coating. This combo sees a bit of play in Modern, mostly because it allows Karn to kill opposing lands. (You can turn the land into an artifact and then +1 Karn on it to turn it into a 0/0 creature that dies immediately). But it has a much more fun use in our deck: We can use Karn to tutor up Liquimetal Coating (or Mirror Box if we don't have one); then, we can use Liquimetal Coating to turn a planeswalker into an artifact and then use Karn, the Great Creator's +1 to turn the artifact planeswalker into a creature. This, in turn, allows us to clone our planeswalkers with Glasspool Mimic or Phyrexian Metamorph, which we can tutor from our sideboard with Karn! In theory, this allows us to make a bunch of copies of the same planeswalker, fully embracing the value that Mirror Box offers.
While the rest of our deck is a huge pile of planeswalkers, there is one I wanted to mention specifically: Tamiyo, Compleated Sage. Tamiyo is pretty absurd in our deck thanks to its –X ability, which can reanimate Mirror Box, Carth the Lion, or our other planeswalkers once they die. This gives us another way to get multiples of the same planeswalker on the battlefield while also just offering a ton of value. If you watch the games, you'll see that Tamiyo was an all-star in the deck and often the planeswalker we wanted to draw the most. Heading into our matches, I expected it to be janky and fun, but after playing with our new Tamiyo a bunch, I think it feels like a legitimately strong Modern-playable planeswalker!
The Matchups
The biggest issue with our deck is that it can be pretty slow against aggro and fast combo. While it's still possible that we can beat these decks if we draw the right planeswalkers early in the game, they are tough. On the other hand, against midrange and control, we've got plenty of time to get things set up, and the planeswalker value quickly becomes insurmountable once our deck gets going.
The Odds
We played a league and a few extra two-player matches with Mirror Box Carth Friends, finishing 3-2 in the league and 1-2 in the two-player matches, giving us a 4-4 record overall. While we did get to do some sweet things with Mirror Box, we ran into one big problem: our opponents would just scoop by the time we got to the point where we could start copying our planeswalkers, so we never really got to see Mirror Box fully go off. On the other hand, we played some absurd matches with the deck, got to see what life is like with multiple copies of Carth the Lion on the battlefield (spoiler: it's pretty good), learned that Tamiyo, Compleated Sage is pretty busted, and even got to open a Treasure Chest for posting a winning record in our league!
Vote for Next Week's Deck
No poll this week! There's a certainly Modern synergy I've been wanting to try for a while, so we're building around it for next week's episode. Don't worry, the poll will be back next episode!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
