Zirda, The Dawnwaker Is Gonna Get Banned In Legacy

It’s just a creature you can always have access to…. What’s the worst that could happen?

Zirda, the Dawkwaker is definitely in the running for first companion to get banned in competitive play. On the surface, the card may imply creatures with activated abilities; but it’s not the creatures you should be afraid of…

What’s the best thing to do with a card that reduces activation costs by two? Well, using it with cards that let you spend mana to make mana sounds pretty good. If you can reduce a repeatable card’s activation cost to less than the amount it makes, you might have yourselves a loop.

But it explicitly says no mana abilities.

Ok, then maybe we’ll just stick with untap abilities.

…oh.

If you’ve got Zirda on the battlefield, it costs just two to untap Grim Monolith and one to untap Basalt Monolith. Given that they both tap for three, together, you’ve got as much colorless mana as you desire.

So, how do we assemble our two-card combo of Zirda + either Monolith?

Well, if we can find either Monolith, we can use it to help play Zirda out of the sideboard and still have enough mana left over to get the loop going… so, I mean, we don’t really need to find it. We kind of just get to start with it.

Yeah, if you don’t play permanents without activated abilities (which is pretty easy to do in Legacy), you just get to start with one-half of your combo, and instead of a ridiculously narrow card being needed to combine with it, the other combo card is actually just an extremely powerful mana accelerator. Oh yeah, and there’s two of them.

So, how does this really play out? Just to make it easy, here’s a real simple example.

Pre-game action: Declare Zirda as your companion. This is an important step! This is the early-game!

Turn 1: Play Ancient Tomb, Mox Opal, and Lotus Petal. Use Tomb to play Grim Monolith. Use Mox Opal, Lotus Petal, and one mana from Monolith to play Zirda out of your sideboard. Use the remaining two mana to untap Grim Monolith. Tap Grim Monolith for three mana and repeat a million times. Now, it’s time to move into the late-game and play Walking Ballista, Magma Mine, Staff of Domination; whatever you want.

Once you have an arbitrarily large amount of colorless mana, a lot of things can win it for you; so the big question ends up being how much to value “utility when not comboing” versus “speed for goldfishing”?

For instance, even though Rocket Launcher wins just as easily as Magma Mine, costing four means it’s not coming down early to help turn on Mox Opal the way the Mine can. This isn’t to say that cost is the only thing that matters, though. After all, the best victory condition is probably Karn, the Great Creator.

Loyalty abilities are activated abilities, so you’re in the clear there. Now, let’s imagine you open the game as illustrated above, your kill card can be Karn, who immediately -2s and finds a Walking Ballista or Staff of Domination in your sideboard. However, that’s only the beginning. You see, when you don’t have a Monolith yet, you can also get the one you put in your sideboard.

You can still take advantage of the utility Karn brings to the table, the powerful dimensions each sideboarded artifact gives you. Liquimetal Coating (the faster, softer mana lock) and Mycosynth Lattice (the more ambitious, harder mana lock) give us incredible power to lock opponents out that were trying to interact with our primary combo. Ensnaring Bridge… well, sometimes you just don’t want creatures to be able to attack, you know?

But Ensnaring Bridge and Mycosynth Lattice don’t have activated abilities, right?

Yeah. Don’t sideboard them in.

You can do that?

Yeah, and with four Karns in your deck, I hope you weren’t wanting to, anyway.

This is sounding kind of degenerate.

Yeah, definitely. It’s not close to being close.

What’s good in the mirror?

Having Karn on the battlefield, so they can’t use artifacts.

Ummmmmm…

One of the incredible benefits of such a compact “combo” is just how much room it gives you for whatever support you want. For instance, want to play blue to protect the combo?

We’ve got plenty of room, let’s play ’em all.

You gotta be careful about playing too many busted one-cost cantrips with a deck this fast. As configured here, you’re not really aiming for the Turn 1 kills, even though they’re part of the range. You’re looking to find whatever you’re missing out of the Monolith + two sources of colored mana + kill card combo, and maybe permission, if it’s that kind of vibe.

Since our “combo” costs two or three generic mana, lands like Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors seem great. I’d love to play even more, but there is a real tension if we want to be able to play these Brainstorms and Ponders. Besides, it’s not like they’re the only colorless lands we want.

Inventors’ Fair is a really interesting card that could easily be so slot-efficient here that we end up playing more. While it’s not as good at producing colorless mana as Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors, it does help contribute to your mana base. What really sets it apart, however, is its role as a victory condition. As long as you’ve got metalcraft when you go off (and we’re talking about a deck with nineteen artifacts and a bunch of cantrips), you can sacrifice it to go find Magma Mine or Walking Ballista.

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing, by the way. Karn can go get Rings of Brighthearth, which also combines with Basalt Monolith to make infinite mana (Grim Monolith with Rings merely breaks even). Why do we need this if we’ve got Zirda automatically?

Stuff happens sometimes, you know? It’s nice to have options. That said, be careful not to accidentally maindeck one. It may say activated ability and it may look like an activated ability if you squint, but Rings of Brighthearth has only a triggered ability, so if it’s in your starting deck, Zirda isn’t showing up. Besides, the sideboard is good enough. By having both Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth in the sideboard, Karn can set up an infinite mana combo all by himself.

Besides, sometimes you just take ’em to Value Town and copy your fetchland activations…

Likewise, I do love a Power Artifact and it’s a blue card for pitching to Forces; but Power Artifact is also technically a permanent without an activated ability.

Why so many? Because we do actually want to sideboard them in.

It’s absolutely crucial to remember, Leyline of the Void does not have an activated ability.

Yeah, you can just play Tundra instead, as Zirda also works with white mana. How much does Steam Vents being able to play Pyroblast matter?

If you cut the red sideboard cards, Tundra is kind of a slam dunk. With ’em, I’d err on the side of being more likely to be able to play them and see if the damage ends up mattering. It definitely could, you know, with these four Ancient Tombs we’re tapping, and all that.

Speaking of red, we could, you know, just go all the way.

So this version is pretty all-in. We’re so all-in, we might even consider Serum Powder.

Yeah, who’s laughing about a three-cost artifact that taps for one, now?

But seriously, this deck is so homogeneous, I’m kind of not that into the Powder. It can work with Bazaar of Baghdad decks because of how much every hand without one is worthless and every hand with one is the nuts. Here, our cards are a lot flatter in power level relative to each other (and least compared to Dredge).

Another important one to remember has no activated abilities. That said, if you’re just hellbent on this kind of thing, you do have options…

Not one, but two activated abilities!

Returning to the list above, one of the cards I think is just going to take testing to understand better is Lion’s Eye Diamond. It looks like it could be excellent here, but I could also imagine it turning out to be a real liability against opponents that fight back. In general, however, I like erring on the side of more broken cards, rather than fewer.

Lion’s Eye Diamond making three is very convenient, considering Zirda isn’t actually in our hand. 

Turn 1: Ancient Tomb, Tap the Tomb to play Grim Monolith. Tap the Monolith to play Magma Mine. Play Lion’s Eye Diamond and sacrifice it for RRR. Use three of our five mana to play Zirda out of the sideboard. Use the remaining two to untap Grim Monolith and we’re off to the races.

The key here is being able to play the victory condition prior to activating Lion’s Eye Diamond. Inventors’ Fair can work here, too; it just takes our land drop, plus we’ve got to be careful to end up with metalcraft, despite however many artifacts we are sacrificing. For instance, if we started:

Turn 1: Inventors’ Fair, Lotus Petal, Mox Opal, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Use Opal and Petal to cast Grim Monolith. Sacrifice Lion’s Eye Diamond for Zirda….

Now we have access to unlimited colorless mana, but with just Mox Opal and Grim Monolith, we can’t actually activate the Inventors’ Fair. Now, we could just get a Rite of Flame in there, so we don’t have to sacrifice the Petal, or whatever; but we’re not also going to have such a perfect hand, so let’s take a look at just how easy this all is Turn 2.

Turn 1: Great Furnace, Mox Opal, Lion’s Eye Diamond. Use Furnace and Opal to play Grim Monolith

Turn 2: Inventors’ Fair, Use LED to play Zirda, and you’re off to the races.

The opening of a two-mana land with Grim Monolith and LED is so explosive, maybe we’re supposed to consider kill cards that can be discarded by LED and still kill. This is definitely a tall order, just to be clear. For instance, take Devil’s Play:

A red X-spell we can play out of the graveyard? We’re good, right?

Well, how are we planning to play that RRR in the flashback? Sacrificing Lion’s Eye Diamond gives us RRR, but we need two of it for Zirda. If we’ve got two extra land laying around, we could have just played a Hangarback Walker before the LED and saved ourselves the trouble.

Flaming Gambit is a little easier, but we’re still gonna need an extra red from somewhere, plus it’s not exactly the most reliable kill card ever.

Only one colored mana symbol this time, but unfortunately, neither red, nor white, so we’re still gonna need an extra land. That said, this one is a blue card, so if we somehow are playing the classic Force of Will/Lion’s Eye Diamond combo, there is that.

Sadly, doesn’t work for our purposes. When we discard Avacyn’s Judgment to Lion’s Eye Diamond, we won’t yet have Zirda or infinite mana. On the other hand, we might not need to be in quite this big a hurry. What if we cut a whole bunch of rituals for Pyroblasts and Red Elemental Blasts?

While Grindstone has an activated ability, sadly, Painter’s Servant does not.

Or else I’d be all about mashing these two together. Still, here’s a look with lots of red blasts:

Alternatively, we could go after their hand. One really nice thing about a Thoughtseize/Duress plan is how well it sets up Lion’s Eye Diamond.

We can lead with our discard spells, make sure the coast is clear, and then get ’em late, like Turn 2, or whatever.

Another interesting twist is that we don’t actually need to be red. We could be white instead, if we wanted. It doesn’t give us much, but it does have a little to offer.

We could use any amount of this with a second color, of course, though blue has a tendency to demand a lot of space, in an effort to support Force of Will. Even if we don’t run a splash color, though, there could be something there:

While there isn’t all that much difference in playing two colors versus one (as long as one of them is white or red), it’s not completely out of the question to play three. It starts making us answer some questions about our manabase, but as long as Arcum’s Astrolabe is legal, mana is fake anyway.

How is this a real Magic card?

Intuition is a little slow, but once we’re not going turbo, it’s pretty strong. Another option we could consider is Fae of Wishes.

With the ability to find Basalt Monolith, Rings of Brighthearth, or Staff of Domination/Magma Mine, it’s definitely got good stuff to hit. The only question is why we’re really slowing down so much that we can use a four-cost tutor, like this. Yeah, Karn costs four, but four colorless is a lot different than needing actual colored mana, and that’s to say nothing of how high impact Karn is immediately and on the following turn.

One last list to leave you with; here’s a cleaner example of what you can do if you slow down. It’s just ridiculous how many slots we have to work with, here.

Somehow, we’ve got room for thirteen counters in the maindeck, despite ten kill cards and eleven tutors. I guess, when your deck doesn’t need anything in it besides counters, kill cards, and tutors, you really have a lot of room for all of them.

That’s a lot of possibilities. What’s Zirda’s final form going to look like?

The Legacy banned list. It’s gonna look like the Legacy banned list.