On April 9th, Karn, the Great Creator was spoiled. When I first saw this card, I was sure it would see Vintage play. All of its abilities are incredibly powerful. Null Rod is already a pillar of Vintage, to the point where decks entirely consisting of artifacts with activated abilities will have a playset in the sideboard. Karn, Silver Golem has seen Vintage play in past eras because of its ability to destroy moxen, so the +1 ability is relevant, although less so because the static ability already turns off moxen. The -2 is obviously the reason to play this card though.
My first shell was in a traditional Smokestack deck, using Karn to find situational lock pieces out of the sideboard, and it did not prove to be very successful. Karn was difficult to cast for a few reasons. The first being that Mishra’s Workshop, the most powerful unrestricted card in Vintage, could not cast him. The second being that I was often locking myself out of getting close to casting him because of my Sphere of Resistance effects. I put down the idea at first, and let people much smarter than me build some lists.
In this article I’ll be covering how to evaluate Vintage decklists before evaluating said lists, and then talking about changes I made to the deck and the future of both Karn Shops and Vintage.
Evaluating Vintage Decklists
Vintage is a complicated and intimidating format to evaluate. Because of the nature of the restricted list, lists are made up of a lot of 1 ofs and can feel impossible to parse.
How I like to look at and build Vintage decklists, is in terms of ratios. So rather than being 1 Black Lotus, 1 Mox Pearl, 1 Mox Sapphire, 1 Mox Jet, 1 Mox Ruby, 1 Mox Emerald, 1 Mana Crypt, 1 Sol Ring, 1 Mana Vault etc. it is 9 pieces of fast mana. Rather than being 4 Wasteland, 1 Strip Mine. it is 5 land destruction lands. The same can be done with removal, counter spells, threats, tutors, engine cards, etc.
Another important thing to consider with Vintage decklists, is the nature of the format. There are certain “pillars” of the Vintage format, and is important to keep these in mind. The current pillars of the format are greatly contested, but traditionally they were considered to be Dark Ritual, Null Rod, Mana Drain, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Mishra’s Workshop. The format has changed and sped up a lot since then, and I consider the current pillars of the format to be Mox Opal, Mental Misstep, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Mishra’s Workshop. In order to compete in this format, you almost certainly need to casting one of these cards. Keeping that in mind can explain odd choices of cards. For example, some lists play Sorcerous Spyglass over Pithing Needle because it can not be countered by Mental Misstep.
The premier Vintage decks within these pillars over the last few years in Vintage have been Paradoxical Outcome combo, “Xerox” which is usually URx Control or BUG Control, Dredge, Survival of the Fittest, and Workshops, either Arcbound Ravager Shops or Karn Shops.
The Evolution of Karn Shops
In the first tournament in which Karn was legal on Magic: the Gathering Online (MTGO), three interesting shells appeared.
This list from Andy “Brassman” Probasco Top 8d this Challenge. He used Karn TGC to fuel the Painter’s Servant/Grindstone Combo as well as finding Mycosynth Lattice out of the sideboard. Metalworker tied this all together, and allowed you to cast Karn and make other big mana combo plays.
Pilot TheYostWithTheMost took a Stacks focused prison build of the deck to a 22nd place finish. Grim Monolith is an interesting addition to the deck, that can enable Karn off of Mishra’s Workshop. In this build, Karn was used as a prison piece that could also find other lock pieces out of the sideboard.
The final list, from innovative deckbuilder Saturn played four total Mycosynth Lattices in the 75 and focused on casting powerful planeswalkers with Jhoria’s Familiar to reduce their costs.
All three of these lists were interesting and provided several options to make Karn actually castable in a Workshops shell.
In the following Vintage Challenge, only one Karn TGC deck appeared, and it was in the shell of a previously fringe deck in Eldrazi. The Eldrazi threat package is very powerful, but the deck had always struggled with a few things compared to Workshops. The first being that without Mishra’s Workshop, you can struggle to break the symmetry of the Sphere of Resistance effects. Your lands just do not tap for as much mana, and the deck is slower out of the gates and can struggle with mana problems. The other major flaw of these decks is they struggle heavily against Workshops because their threats do not line up well against the traditional Affinity suite of Ravager Shops. Null Rod was often seen as a solution to this problem, but it made the mana in Eldrazi even worse because it turned off their own mana rocks.
Karn, the Great Creator is able to act as a one sided Null Rod, improving the Shops matchup, and all of the lands in the deck are able to cast Karn, so the downside of not playing Mishra’s Workshop is mitigated. You can see this list takes advantage of Grim Monolith to cast powerful spells early, which will be a key factor in future lists.
Here we have the winning list from that Challenge in the hands of Vintage legend Ryan Eberhart (Diophan) which I understand was created by his teammate Matt Murray.
The next iteration on Karn Shops was the addition of Grim Monolith and Voltaic Key as a mana engine to the deck. This allowed the deck to have more consistently broken hands, as the Grim Monoliths often acted like Lotus Petals, and when you draw the two cards in conjunction, you can powerful things turn after turn. The other addition to the deck was Time Vault in the sideboard. This allowed Karn, the Great Creator to wish for either half of the Time Vault – Voltaic Key combo. This deck was able to consistently cast a powerful 4 drop threat in the first few turns of the game, while also still abusing the most powerful cards in the Workshops deck.
Then the exact same 75 won the Challenge the next week in the hands of Wordy333, with the following challenge being taken down again by Karn, the Great Creator in the hands of Logarythme with KarnDrazi, and then again in the hands of Ecobaronen with a further iteration of Karn Shops.
Changes To The Deck
After Karn, the Great Creator won 5 consecutive Vintage Challenges, I took notice. I was dead set on playing a Tendrils of Agony deck for SCGCon, but the power level of Karn TGC was clearly higher than any other strategy in Vintage.
In my initial runs with the deck, a few things stood out to me. I felt the land count was a little low. Despite all the artifact mana acceleration, the deck is trying to cast a lot of expensive spells. I decided two Mox Opal was not necessary, and cut one for a City of Traitors. There is a chance the deck might want to be playing four City of Traitors to enable more broken starts, but it is still a big mana deck that wants to hit all of its land drops.
I also was not in love with the Inventor’s Fair package. Playing with the deck quickly showed me this deck is not trying to do slow and durdely things. This is a combo deck. I also felt the risk of drawing multiple Legendary lands in a deck trying to cast very expensive spells was too high. I cut two of the Inventor’s Fairs for 1 Buried Ruin and 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
I had been impressed with Buried Ruin when I played Krark-Clan Ironworks in Modern, and I felt it could be a good mana sink for the deck. The idea of Urborg was so the Mishra’s Workshops could tap to cast non-artifact spells or activate the abilities of Walking Ballista, Grim Monolith, or Voltaic Key. Urborg also allows you to tap Ancient Tomb for mana at a low life total.
I was struggling against the control decks in the format, as well as Paradoxical Outcome. Mirrors also felt like Karn TGC was the only card that mattered. With the realization that Karn Shops was a combo deck, I also wanted a way to further protect my combo. Karn Scion of Urza was underperforming. The first copy is nice to have, but it is situational and I rarely want to draw two. I removed one, and the Inventor’s Fair tutor targets of Crucible of Worlds and Ensnaring Bridge were replaced with three Thought-Knot Seer. This card is a powerful threat against control, while allowing you to strip Storm of their Hurkyl’s Recall or the mirror of their Karns. It also ignores artifact based hate, can pressure opposing planeswalkers, and protect your own planeswalkers. The card is also fairly easy to cast in a deck designed around casting an early Karn TGC.
Here is the list I settled on and took to a third place finish in the Vintage Challenge, and a top four place in the Team Trios Eternal tournament at SCGCon.
Core Set 2020 Updates
Core Set 2020 brought two new additions to Karn Shops, Mystic Forge and Manifold Key. Mystic Forge is basically an artifact based Future Sight. This gave Karn Shops the critical mass of cards to essentially be a pure combo deck. Karn, Scion of Urza wasn’t quite fast enough to be a stand alone engine, and Thought-Knot Seer made the mana awkward. Manifold Key is powerful as essentially a strict upgrade to Voltaic Key, that also allows you to play more than four Voltaic Key in the 75.There are currently two builds of Karn Shops. Players are split on Sphere of Resistance, which can be awkward with Mystic Forge.
This first list from aooaaooa on MTGO is essentially a pure combo build, using Defense Grid to protect the combo.
Here JdPhoenix further iterated upon the deck, and added the Spheres back in. Notably, this deck also includes Sensei’s Divining Top which is very powerful with Voltaic Key and Mystic Forge.
The Future of Karn Shops and Vintage
Since its inception, Karn, the Great Creator has been a powerhouse in Vintage. It is a one card combo that also acts as an asymmetrical lock piece shutting down the powerful restricted artifacts in Vintage and acting as a toolbox to get you out of an situation. With the addition of Mystic Forge, the deck has slanted more towards combo and less towards prison. Builds featuring playsets of both Foundry Inspector and Sensei’s Divining Top to create a combo with Mystic Forge have been popping up, and look like they may be the future of Karn decks.
Vintage has long had a stigma of being a turn 1 format. This has not been true for many years, as the average turn of Vintage tended to be longer than both Modern and Legacy in my experience. Karn has changed this. The format has essentially been reduced to a three deck format with Karn, Dredge, and BUG decks rising to the top and vying for dominance. A lot of matches last only a few minutes, and come down to comparing opening hands. I generally dislike restrictions, but it may be needed in the future. That is a discussion for a different article though!
Thanks for joining me to talk about Magic’s oldest and greatest format, and the impact of Karn, the Great Creator has had on it!