(Iron Man, Titan of Innovation | Art by Justyna Dura)

Artifacts, Assemble!

Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where if there isn’t a category to rank our pet card at the top of, we’ll just make one up! (Did you know that The Enigma Jewel is the only one-mana colored artifact that has multiple two-card combos?)

Well, Marvel is in Magic: The Gathering now, and I have opinions about it. Instead of going into those, however, how about we take a look at the most broken of the new superhero commanders?

That's right, I'm talking about Iron Man, Titan of Innovation. Sure, the greater consensus is that Storm, Force of Nature is the better card, but that consensus is wrong. Why? Because she doesn't have haste, and I say so.

So, why Iron Man? Put simply, because he's easy to cast, especially with a ton or artifact ramp, and immediately goes and looks for combo pieces. The only question is, which combo pieces?

Top 10 Artifact Combos Searchable By Iron Man

There is a rather well-known artifact combo that comes to mind.

Here's the issue, though: While Rings of Monolith (or any of the other 30 Basalt Monolith combos) gets you infinite mana, that... doesn't win you the game.

Now, don't get me wrong, infinite colorless mana is a good place to be. It will probably work you toward winning a game, rather aggressively. But if we're playing a commander like Iron Man, Titan of Innovation that's going to make us a target before the game even starts, I don't think that's good enough.

Iron Man, Titan of Innovation doesn't have a mana sink attached to him, so you need something to do with that mana, which means another turn of trying to keep him alive to look for Staff of Domination, which is yet another two-mana artifact you'll have to have to sacrifice, and suddenly it's a whole thing. So instead, why don't we just try and find us two or three cards that actually can win us the game?

Sounds good. Only, what does "win the game" mean, exactly?

Well, there's the most common way to win: By reducing everyone else's life totals to zero. In the realm of combos, this often means infinite damage or infinite life loss, and there are definitely some of those to choose from in Izzet.

Most common doesn't necessarily mean best, however, as those familiar with Competitive EDH will know. Most of the combos there don't actually do infinite damage, they instead do something that's arguably better: Infinite card draw or infinite mill.

Assembling a situation where you can win the game with your entire deck in your hand, or even your entire deck in your graveyard, is usually fairly trivial. There are enough mana-positive rocks that you can use to play a game-winning card like Thassa's Oracle or Grapeshot that winning is easy.

As for folks trying to stop you, how are they going to when you have an entire deck's worth of interaction at hand? In other words, it's possible that drawing or milling your entire deck is actually better than outright winning via damage, combat or otherwise.

Still, we shouldn't be picky. Any kind of winning the game will do.

Criteria: Two or three card combos within the Izzet color identity that entirely involve artifacts, all components cost more than zero mana, and either win the game, make infinite tokens, or put an entire library into either a hand or a graveyard. As is tradition, all results are ordered by EDHREC score.

10. Cybermen Squadron & Blightsteel Colossus

(2,961 Inclusions)

We start off with a pricey one in Cybermen Squadron and Blightsteel Colossus. In fact, it's too expensive. Not every Iron Man deck is going to be built to go to the max, but this one probably shouldn't have even made it past our censors, as there is not an 11 mana noncreature artifact that exists in the game.

This means that while you can search up Cybermen Squadron with any number of cards, you're going to have to go find Blightsteel Colossus the hard way. Which is a fact that, I have to admit, brings me joy. Iron Man is going to see some play in the 99 of decks, too, and I for one am glad that doesn't mean that I'm going to be seeing more Blightsteels.

9. Academy Manufactor, Krark-Clan Ironworks, & Nuka-Cola Vending Machine

(3,285 Inclusions)

Put Food in your Smelter, making your Vending Machine make a Treasure, which makes your Robot make a Clue and a Food, which you can put in your Smelter... Voila, suddenly you have infinite Clue tokens and infinite colorless mana with which to draw your entire deck!

As much as I love this delight of a combo, and while I don't think it's impossible that we'll leave this list having figured out that our best option is a three-card combo, I don't think it will be this three-card combo. While it would be right at home in a deck entirely devoted to Clues, Food, and/or Treasure, none of these cards except Krark-Clan Ironworks really do much for Iron Man.

I can hear folks saying that Academy Manufactor makes Clues and Foods when Iron Man swings in and creates a Treasure, but that isn't really enough. We want to be slamming down Iron Man and immediately searching up half a combo, not grinding out a long game where we win through superior life total and card advantage.

8. Myr Welder, Staff of Domination, and a Two-Mana or More Mana Rock (Basalt Monolith, Chromatic Orrery, Coveted Jewel, Dreamstone Hedron, Firemind Vessel, Gilded Lotus, Grim Monolith, Hedron Archive, Ichor Elixir, Khalni Gem, Mana Vault, Metalworker, Palladium Myr, Sisay's Ring, Sol Ring, Sol Talisman, The Mightstone and Weakstone, Thran Dynamo, Ur-Golem's Eye, or Worn Powerstone)

(3,374 Inclusions)

I love me some three-card combos that include a card we can and probably already do play multiples of, and Myr Welder, Staff of Domination, and Sol Ring is precisely that! Even better, we can sacrifice non-Myr Welder portions of the combo early on to grab other things, and they're right there in the graveyard where Myr Welder needs them!

That might not sound like much, as the only two-mana rock that you can both use in the combo and grab Myr Welder with is Grim Monolith, but that's where the more expensive rocks come in. Of the massive list of rocks that can tap for two or more mana above, seven of them cost four mana, and are therefore fetchable via Staff of Domination.

That huge feather in the cap considered, however, I think this might still be too slow. Playing down a Grim Monolith early to play down Iron Man to swing in and sacrifice the Monolith for Myr Welder would be all well and good, but even if we'd managed to already snag Staff of Domination, we'd still have to wait a turn and hope to untap with Myr Welder to be able to start the nonsense.

To put it mildly, the chances that we're untapping with either a Myr Welder that's about to win or with Iron Man after a turn where we searched for half a combo are not good. I think we can find something a bit faster, and maybe even a bit more dependable.

7. Nim Deathmantle, Wurmcoil Engine, & Either Ashnod's Altar or Krark-Clan Ironworks

(4,157 Inclusions)

There's actually 58 different versions of this combo with Ashnod's Altar, 18 of which can still utilize Krark-Clan Ironworks as well. While that's pretty dang diverse, none of the other options exactly blow me away:

Top 10 Artifacts That Combo with Nim Deathmantle

1. Wurmcoil Engine
2. Myr Battlesphere
3. Cathodion
4. Phyrexian Triniform
5. Triplicate Titan
6. Genesis Chamber
7. Breya's Apprentice
8. Workhorse
9. Threefold Thunderhulk
10. Su-Chi

Of these most-played options, there are several that I would consider over Wurmcoil Engine, simply because they were cheaper. Genesis Chamber being the cheapest might give it a nose up in some people's opinions, but I actually think my leading candidate here would be Breya's Apprentice, because it's the card that the artifact deck would like to be playing anyhow.

So, having reworked our combo away from a six-mana card that the deck doesn't actually want to play, is this combo worth it? Well, no. Breya's Apprentice being cheaper and a card I'd want to play anyhow goes a long way, as would substituting Krark-Clan Ironworks over Ashnod's Altar for the same reason.

The thing I don't like about this combo, however, remains the card that makes it all work: Nim Deathmantle. Getting it into play for free off of a Sol Ring or a Voltaic Key is all well and good, but then I have to pay four on top of that to make it all work? Sure, it's got the upside of possibly protecting Iron Man, but when was the last time you had four mana just sitting around on a whim? Cause for me, it's been awhile.

6. Painter's Servant & Grindstone

(5,395 Inclusions)

At first glance at the entirety of this list, I was surprised to find that this was my favorite combo for Iron Man. The formerly banned Painter's Servant was on the list because of this combo and another involving it and the now-banned Iona, Shield of Emeria, and the main critique with that was that neither combo was actually very good.

Sure, you can mill a player out of the game every turn, but once you've started that process, what are the other two players going to do? Sit there quietly and let you win the game?

Well, maybe that critique wasn't taking everything into account. You see, these effects are universal. Painter's Servant makes all your stuff the same color, too, and Grindstone can target you. Combine that with a long history of cards that easily win you the game straight from your graveyard with an entire deck's worth of resources available in said graveyard...

Wait, hang on a second. None of those cards are red or blue, are they?

No, sadly, after hours of research, I cannot stand behind my initial statement of this being the best combo for Iron Man. Maybe someday it will be, but scour though I did, I could not find an easy means in Izzet for you to mill your entire deck and then easily win with one of those cards you'd just milled. At least, not without it costing an arm and a leg and getting really complicated:

There is still a line if you have effects in hand that could get you pieces back from the graveyard, but now we're talking about a three-card combo that probably involves a not-artifact. I suppose you could search for Crystal Chimes to get an Underworld Breach in your hand?

No, never mind, you're probably better off just trying to mill your opponents out one-by-one. In the end, this is close, but no cigar. At least until Wizards does print something that can do the job.

5. Metalworker & Staff of Domination

(5,748 Inclusions)

 

While Metalworker does have the Myr Welder problem of having to wait a turn until you can do anything with it, this combo is still substantially better, for two reasons: One, it's a two-card combo, instead of a three-card combo. Two, searching up a Metalworker doesn't scream "I have a combo!", it more mutters "I need some mana". That may well be enough to keep your hope alive long enough for you to be able to activate it.

The only problem? You also need three artifacts in your hand for this to work. That's not the biggest hoop to jump through, but between that and the wait, I do wonder if we can't still do better.

4. Basalt Monolith & Mesmeric Orb

(7,108 Inclusions)

 

Well, this is embarrassing. We already found the cheaper self-mill combo, with option to mill out an opponent instead, and yet this one is further up the list. What are you guys doing in these decks, exactly?

In all seriousness, the reason this is higher isn't necessarily because folks don't know there's a better option out there, it's because this option includes Basalt Monolith, known broken card in its own right even before you consider that it goes infinite with a ham sandwich.

As for this ham sandwich? Mesmeric Orb also has its own extensive combo list totaling out at 31. In other words, this combo is higher up because both halves of it give you access to several other combos.

Which should mean we're considering it heavily, right? Well, no, because just like Grindstone and Painter's Servant, we don't really have a guaranteed win once we mill our whole deck.

Does that mean that a certain author of this article probably shouldn't have added "Infinite Self-Mill" to the criteria? Why yes, yes it does. But how was I supposed to know that Izzet didn't have a way to win from the state that literally every other color in the game can?

3. The Reality Chip, Sensei's Divining Top, & an Artifact Cost Reducer (Cloud Key, Enthusiastic Mechanaut, Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, Helm of Awakening, Jhoira's Familiar, Semblance Anvil, Stone Calendar, or The Immortal Sun)

(15,544 Inclusions)

 

And with that, we get into a portion of our list that I can only label as "Sensei's Divining Top nonsense". A card that has taken over pretty much every format it's ever been legal in, Top is both efficient and unkillable. Even worse, that same "draw a card, put Top on top of your library" ability that makes it near-impossible to remove can also be used to draw your entire deck if you manage to find a cost reducer and a card like The Reality Chip that will let you then play it off the top for free.

There isn't really a consensus on which of these "play off the top for free" cards is worst, but The Reality Chip is in the running, or at least it would be, outside of an Iron Man deck. Inside of an Iron Man deck, any random one-mana artifact searches this up for you, and you by definition already then have a creature to attach it to. That takes the five mana cost you usually have to pay for this and makes it into a three mana cost, which is pretty doable.

With that said, there are some other options to consider in the "Sensei's Divining Top nonsense" category that didn't make this list, so let's briefly look at them and see if they're searchable.

The next three best options are somewhat interesting, with the exception of Future Sight, which is five mana and not an artifact you can search up with Iron Man. Birgi is in the same boat, what with its artifact half being on the backside of the card, but makes up for it with Top by being extremely flexible.

There are no less than 15 different combos that utilize Birgi and Top, and every one seems to ping back and forth between using the front half and back half of the card. If you have a cost reducer, you can play down Birgi on her back side, and Harnfel, Horn of Bounty will let you discard a card to exile Top and another card off the top, at which point you can play it down for free and return it to the top to draw another card to discard.

If you have a means to play cards off the top of your library, then you can put down Birgi's front half, and it acts as a cost reducer by giving you a mana every time you cast Sensei's Divining Top.

Neither half of Birgi is quite as good in Iron Man as Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass, however, which not only checks the box on comboing with Top but also adds an extra mana when you search it up and don't have the combo together yet. In fact, in Iron Man specifically, Crystal Skull is actually in the running for best card to combo with Top. Something to consider, if you're going that route.

2. Basalt Monolith, Rings of Brighthearth, & Sensei's Divining Top

(17,005 Inclusions)

 

There is more than one way to skin a cat (Why, pop culture? Why would you make this saying a thing?), and of course that means that despite specifically leaving out Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth out of the running as an infinite mana combo that doesn't win the game, the most well-known combo in the game still manages to sneak into our list.

For the uninitiated that haven't ever struggled through explaining the Rings-Monolith combo, here's the step-by-step I use when explaining it:

1. Tap Basalt Monolith, adding .
2. Activate Basalt Monolith's untap ability.
3. Rings of Brighthearth triggers. Using two mana from other sources, pay the to copy Basalt Monolith's untap ability.
4. Let the copied untap ability resolve, untapping Basalt Monolith.
5. Before the original untap ability resolves, tap Basalt Monolith, adding .
6. Let the original untap ability resolve.

You now have three mana, and can tap Monolith again to get another three, totaling one more mana than you need to activate Monolith's untap ability and pay the two to Rings to copy it. Repeat this Ad Nauseam, and you have infinite colorless mana.

Better than that, however, you have infinite colorless mana to spend on Rings of Brighthearth triggers, meaning that you can copy Sensei's Divining Top's draw ability, resulting in you drawing a card and putting Top on top with the copy, then drawing Top with the original activation (Putting Top on top isn't part of the cost of the activation, like it probably should be, meaning that you still get to draw even if there is no Top to put on top).

So what does that all mean, when it comes to Iron Man? Well, put simply, it means that you get to play perhaps the best infinite mana combo in the game, alongside a generically good one-mana artifact that you can search up with the random Treasure Iron Man makes as part of his ability. Pretty darn good, if you ask me.

1. Mystic Forge, Sensei's Divining Top & an Artifact Cost Reducer (Cloud Key, Enthusiastic Mechanaut, Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, Helm of Awakening, Jhoira's Familiar, Semblance Anvil, Stone Calendar, or The Immortal Sun)

(27,587 Inclusions)

 

Honestly, this is a bit disappointing. While I did know that Mystic Forge and Sensei's Divining Top would be on this list somewhere, I assumed that there would be something better available at the top. Which is not to say that Top nonsense isn't good, as evidenced by the sheer amount of ways you can do Top nonsense.

Which is really what has me begrudgingly agreeing with the play numbers that this probably is the best option out there, at least until we get a means to win via Grindstone and Painter's Servant.

Which, as I said, is a bit disappointing. With that said, though, it's also incredibly on theme and synergistic. Of all the Top combos we've covered, there are really no cards among them that aren't generically good, and many of them (like Mystic Forge and the various artifact cost reducers) are just cards that an artifact deck would be playing anyhow.

Now we're just an artifact deck that also has a splash of top-of-library theming, which also coincidentally allows us to be a bit more controlling as we assemble our combo. Indeed, putting a list together, I found myself fairly consistently getting down Iron Man on turn three to immediately search for Sensei's Divining Top, which in turn allowed me to use the top of my deck to protect Iron Man or keep others from winning the game.

That's not the strongest play pattern I've ever met, but there's also no doubt that it will win games.

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Honorable Mentions

Speaking of Chekov's decklist, here it is!

I set out with this deck to see if it could handle a cEDH table, and while it wouldn't get blown out at one, I don't think it's quite there, either. What's ironic is, without the recent bans to Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Dockside Extortionist, I really think it might have been.

Alas, the bans slow this deck down more than they do the more multi-color, cheaper commander decks that are currently thriving in cEDH. Still, it's possible we will soon get a significant change to that meta, or a better combo for Iron Man to take advantage of. If that happens, I wouldn't count the rich guy out.

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Nuts and Bolts

There always seems to be a bit of interest in how these lists are made (this seems like a good time to stress once again that they are based on EDHREC score, NOT my personal opinion…), and people are often surprised that I’m not using any special data or .json from EDHREC, but rather just muddling my way through with some Scryfall knowledge! For your enjoyment/research, here is this week’s Scryfall Commander Spellbook search.

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What Do You Think?

Combos are not for everyone, and they're not the most popular thing in Commander generally. With that said, I don't think I'm saying anything crazy when I predict that the majority of Iron Man decks will feature a combo. The question is, how will folks who decide not to do so be treated when they plop him down?

And finally, what is your favorite artifact combo? Do you think that Iron Man is good enough for the big time? Is Top nonsense really the best way to go, or is there a better combo out there?

Let us know in the comments, and we'll see you at the table that's constructing itself as we speak.

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