Much Abrew: Forge Anew Reanimator (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. One of the Lord of the Rings cards I'm most hyped for in Modern is Forge Anew. Sure, the enchantment probably has a home in traditional builds of Hammer Time, but that's not what excites me about the card. What has me excited is the possibility of using Forge Anew to cheat massive equipment like Argentum Armor, Kaldra Compleat, and even Worldslayer into play on the cheap and then equip them for free, maybe as early as Turn 3! Can the plan work? Did we break it with Forge Anew? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Forge Anew Reanimator
Discussion
- Record-wise, Forge Anew Reanimator was great! I played three two-player matches with the deck as a warm-up (one of which you saw in the video—the match against Tron) and went 3-0; then, I jumped into a Modern league, where we went 4-1, narrowly missing the 5-0 in our last match against Urza Thopter Sword Combo! The deck might actually be legit!
- The deck's plan is interesting. It does share some similarities with Hammer Time. In fact, we are playing a couple of Colossus Hammers in our deck since they work really well with Forge Anew and Sigarda's Aid, our backup free-equip enchantment. But in reality, smashing opponents with Colossus Hammer is a backup plan. Our primary plan is to get massive equipment like Argentum Armor, Kaldra Compleat, and Worldslayer into the graveyard with Voldaren Epicure, Goblin Engineer, and Seasoned Pyromancer so we can reanimate them (hopefully on Turn 3) with Forge Anew. Our best line is actually playing a Goblin Engineer on Turn 2 to tutor Argentum Armor into the graveyard and then using Forge Anew to reanimate it and equip it for free to the Goblin Engineer so we can hit our opponent for seven and blow up one of their lands on Turn 3!
- The rest of the deck is typical equipment stuff, like Giver of Runes to protect our equipped creatures and Esper Sentinel to draw us cards if it's equipped. We don't actually have any removal in our main deck outside of whatever removal we can generate from our equipment, like Argentum Armor and Worldslayer.
- Speaking of Worldslayer, it's mostly a meme and definitely not optimal, but it is hilarious. We didn't get many chances to actually use it during our matches, and the one time we did fire it off against Tron to blow everything up, our opponent proceeded to topdeck Tron over the next three turns and beat us anyway, which is unfortunate. While we aren't heavily built around destroying all permanents, we do have a couple of ways to use Worldslayer. First, we can save up lands in hand, blow everything up, and trust that we can rebuild faster than our opponent can. Second, we can stick an indestructible Kaldra Compleat first and then Worldslayer, which will leave us with a 5/5 indestructible to win the game. There probably could be a sweet Against the Odds deck that focuses exclusively on Worldslayer and indestructible creatures. It likely wouldn't be as good as today's deck, but it would be hilarious!
- A couple of quick notes on the deck: You might have noticed a couple of punts in our matches. One of the big ones was my misunderstanding of Forge Anew itself. I was thinking that it let you equip once for free during your turn, but it actually only makes your first equip of the turn free. We had a game where we equipped a Shadowspear for mana and then tried to equip a Colossus Hammer for free and learned that this doesn't actually work. We could have easily done things in the opposite order (free-equipping Hammer first and then equipping Shadowspear). So keep this in mind if you try the deck or any Forge Anew deck: it only works on the first equip.
- One of the things I love about the deck is it's super consistent. Sure, you might not get the super-fast Hammer Time kills as often as a traditional Hammer Time deck, but with Stoneforge Mystic, Goblin Engineer, and, in some cases, Urza's Saga to find equipment, we're really good at finding whatever equipment we need for a given situation, even though we're only playing a single copy of cards like Argentum Armor and Worldslayer.
- As for Forge Anew itself, the card is absurd. Three mana is steep, but it makes up for it with raw power. Not only is reanimating an equipment powerful, but the ability to equip for free at instant speed also turns on some absurd tricks, like attacking with everything and moving a Colossus Hammer onto an unblocked creature or swinging with Kaldra Compleat, connecting with first strike, and then moving Kaldra Compleat to another creature for normal damage. The card is really good, and after playing with it, I expect it to see a lot of play in Modern.
- So, should you play Forge Anew Reanimator in Modern? I think the answer is yes! While Worldslayer is an Against the Odds card, the deck felt super strong in general. Being able to do Hammer Time things but also Argentum Armor fools is pretty absurd! If you like equipment decks or pulling off hilarious reanimator wins, give the deck a shot! I think it might actually be competitive in Modern!
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.
