Budget Magic: $91 (31 tix) Modern UR Summonings

by SaffronOlive // Dec 13, 2016

ԲարևՁեզ, Budget Magic lovers! It's that time again. This week, we are heading to Modern to play a deck built around Metallurgic Summonings that I've been having a ton of success with over the past week! Ever since it was spoiled, Metallurgic Summonings has been one of my favorite cards from Kaladesh, and while the card has had a bit of success in Standard, in some ways the enchantment is built for Modern. In Standard, Metallurgic Summonings is powerful but slow because most of the instants and sorceries in the format are a bit expensive. On the other hand, in Modern we have a ton of inexpensive cantrips to go wide as well as some spicy tech that can allow us to make 20/20 Construct tokens with Metallurgic Summonings for only two mana!

We'll talk more about UR Summonings after the videos, but first a quick reminder: if you enjoy the Budget Magic series and the other video content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube Channel to keep up on all of the latest and greatest.

UR Summonings: Deck Tech

UR Summonings vs. Naya Burn

UR Summonings vs. Grixis Control

UR Summonings vs. Skred Red

UR Summonings vs. Elves

UR Summonings vs. Lantern Control

The Deck

Modern UR Summonings is actually pretty straightforward. We stay alive during the early game, stick a Metallurgic Summonings, and then win the game in short order, sometimes by going wide with a bunch of small Construct tokens but more often by going tall with one or two huge Constructs. When it comes right down to it, all of the non-Metallurgic Summonings cards in our deck can be broken down into four main categories, with some overlap between them: cantrips, counters, removal, and finishers. Let's break them down one by one, but first, let's talk about the namesake card, Metallurgic Summonings!

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The best part of Metallurgic Summonings is that it rewards a deck for doing something that it already wants to be doing: playing spells! Unlike some payoff cards that require a ton of work in deck building, to the point where they often have a warping effect on the deck, with Metallurgic Summonings all you have to do is cast spells. As a result, it's pretty easy to play a bunch of card draw and removal as well as some counters and end up with a powerful Metallurgic Summonings deck.

While it might seem like Metallurgic Summonings is a bit slow for Modern, costing five mana and often requiring us to untap to really take advantage of its power, it has a couple of big things going for it. First, very few decks are playing answers to Metallurgic Summonings, which means that once we get it on the battlefield, it typically sticks around. Plus, once we have a Metallurgic Summonings on the battlefield, not only can we win the game in short order, but it's also good at pulling us back from a losing position by making a seemingly endless stream of Construct tokens for chump blocking. Second, even if our opponent does have a way to deal with Metallurgic Summonings, it often doesn't matter because we usually only need one or maybe two turns with a Metallurgic Summonings on the battlefield to generate enough value that we win the game.

Cantrips

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Having a bunch of cantrips is a key part of our deck. In the early game, they allow us to cycle through our deck to find the removal and counters we need to stay alive long enough to resolve a Metallurgic Summonings, and then in the late game, they make sure we keep drawing more spells to trigger Metallurgic Summonings while making us some small Construct tokens for chump blocking.

As weird as it sounds, in many ways Serum Visions is the worst of our cantrips because our deck really values getting cards into our graveyard. That said, it technically lets us see three cards (even though we can't use either of the bottom two until the next turn), which makes it our most powerful cantrip when we are digging for a specific card. Thought Scour gives us a way to trigger our Metallurgic Summonings at instant speed to make a surprise chump blocker, and because our best finishers are delve cards, it almost works like a Dark Ritual by adding three cards that we can delve away, making our delve spells cost three less. Finally, we have Desperate Ravings, which does an amazing job of churning through our deck, and since we can flash it back, it actually makes two 2/2 Constructs. Most of the time we'll cast a Desperate Ravings regardless of what we have in hand because our deck is redundant enough that simply drawing more cards and filling our graveyard is worth the risk of occasionally discarding something we wanted.

Removal

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To make Metallurgic Summonings work in Modern, we need to survive until at least Turn 5, and often a couple turns more (so we can cast a Metallurgic Summonings and a spell or two in the same turn). Our package of efficient instant-speed removal is our best way to make this happen. Lightning Bolt is the most efficient burn spell ever printed, Electrolyze manages to double as a cantrip, and Gut Shot is one of the sneakier cards in our deck, allowing us to tap out on Turn 5 and then make a chump blocker using the Phyrexian mana cost while we are still tapped out (while also killing a surprising number of important creatures in Modern, including basically everything in Infect and Affinity).

Counters

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Our counters are pretty similar to our removal spells, with the main goal being to use them to stay alive long enough to resolve our Metallurgic Summonings and then to protect our Metallurgic Summonings (and make Construct tokens) after we resolve the enchantment. Remand is clearly the best of the bunch, not just because it draws us a card but because it allows for some sweet tricks once we have a Metallurgic Summonings. For example, we can cast a spell, make a Construct, Remand the spell, make another Construct, and then cast the spell again, making yet another Construct!

Mana Leak is just a counter, but Izzet Charm does a bunch of different things for our deck. In the early game, it can kill a creature, helping us stay alive until we can resolve a Metallurgic Summonings while also giving us the option to Faithless Looting to fill our graveyard and find more removal, counters, and finishers, while in a pinch we can also use it to counter a non-creature spell.

The Finishers

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So far, we've mostly been taking about cantrips and other inexpensive spells, and while we sometimes win the game by making a bunch of 1/1s and 2/2s with Thought Scour, Remand, and Desperate Ravings, we also need a plan for finishing off the game quickly. In Standard Metallurgic Summonings decks, we played Part the Waterveil, but in Modern, thanks to the delve mechanic, we have some far more powerful options. These cards are the main reason we are willing to invest a lot of energy into filling our graveyard through cheap spells, Thought Scour, and Desperate Ravings, and they allow us to close out the game in just a turn or two once we resolve a Metallurgic Summonings.

Temporal Trespass is like Part the Waterveil, except it only costs three mana and makes an 11/11 Construct rather than a 6/6 Construct, all while giving us an extra turn. This means that we get to untap, attack with a huge creature, and then make a bunch more smaller Construct tokens by casting all of our cantrips and other spells. Because of this, once we resolve a Temporal Trespass, it's extremely hard to lose the game.

As good as Temporal Trespass is in our deck, Logic Knot might be even better for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we can use it as just another counter in the early game while we are waiting to get a Metallurgic Summonings on the battlefield, while Temporal Trespass is pretty much only good in the late game once a Temporal Trespass is one the battlefield. More importantly, Logic Knot is absurd with Metallurgic Summonings as an "x" delve spell. If we can cast it and exile 18 cards from our graveyard (which is way easier than it sounds), the Construct token that we get with Metallurgic Summonings will be a 20/20, which often allows us to kill our opponent in just a single attack!

Ultra-Budget Mono-Blue Summonings

For our ultra-budget build this week, we drop red altogether and play a Mono-Blue Summonings deck. While the basic game plan is the same, we lose hard removal like Lightning Bolt and instead get bounce spells like Vapor Snag and Unsummon. We also lose some of our cantripping spells like Izzet Charm and Desperate Ravings, but Ideas Unbound is a reasonable substitute for filling our graveyards and cycling through our deck. We also get to go all the way up to four copies of Gut Shot, which allows us to tap out on Turn 5 for Metallurgic Summonings with impunity and still have a chump blocker to stay alive. While I think this build is definitely less powerful than the one in the videos, if you are looking for a cheap starting point, it should work. Even better, all of the expensive cards—Metallurgic Summonings, Serum Visions, and Temporal Trespass—have a home in the upgraded deck as well, so the money you spend for the ultra-budget build won't go to waste.

Non-Budget Modern Summonings

Normally this is the part of the article when I post a non-budget build, but this week we are going to try something a little bit different. After playing the budget build, which not only performed extremely well but was a blast to play, I decided that my new goal would be to 5-0 a Modern league with Metallurgic Summonings. So far, I haven't made it happen, and as a result I'm not 100% comfortable posting a non-budget list. I don't feel like I've got it figured out quite yet. So, instead of a list, I'll leave you today with some of the cards I've been trying with Metallurgic Summonings. So far, I've been playing mostly blue-red builds, but lately I've been moving towards Grixis, and I think that straight blue-black could have potential as well.

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Blood Moon was the first card I tried after dropping the budget restriction, and while it doesn't really work with the Metallurgic Summonings plan, the blue-red build can support it, and it's a great way to pick up free wins. It's pretty easy to play what is essentially a Blue Moon deck but with Metallurgic Summonings as the finisher instead of Stormbreach Dragon or Pia and Kiran Nalaar.

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Modern also offers some interesting free spells that seem to have a lot of potential with Metallurgic Summonings because we can tap out for our enchantment and immediately make a huge creature. Commandeer and Soul Spike gives us a free 7/7 while also killing a creature or giving us one of our opponent's spells. As for the Shoals, Disrupting Shoal is likely the best option because our deck already plays some expensive blue spells like Temporal Trespass to exile. Plus, remember that the way Disrupting Shoal is worded—we can technically target any spell with Disrupting Shoal exiling Temporal Trespass to make an 11/11 (even though it won't counter the spell). Sickening Shoal is a bit harder to support because we'd need some black spells to exile, but in a straight UB build, it could be a great addition.

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While delve was already an important part of our budget list, there are several more good options available, especially if we splash black. Murderous Cut is likely the best of the bunch; if we can hold off until Turn 6 to cast our Metallurgic Summonings, we can resolve the enchantment, immediately kill our opponent's best creature, and make a 5/5 Construct. Empty the Pits would require a major reworking of the mana base to support the BBBB cost and is probably just too slow, but it's worth mentioning as another "x" delve spell. Finally, Dead Drop and Set Adrift are mostly sideboard options but offer some value. Set Adrift can make a 6/6 Construct and put an Ensnaring Bridge (which is a big problem, since we can't attack with our Constructs) on top of our opponent's library, while Dead Drop can deal with indestructible or hexproof threats.

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Finally, we have Gitaxian Probe, Surgical Extraction, and Dismember, which all have potential in our deck thanks to Phyrexian mana. Both Gitaxian Probe and Surgical Extraction are free, so we can cast them as soon as we resolve a Metallurgic Summonings to make a token, while Dismember technically costs us one mana but gives us a 3/3 Construct for our troubles.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. After settling on the build for the videos, we cruised through our five matches with a 4-1 record. The deck felt good against aggro, since we have a ton of early-game removal, and against slower decks, if we can resolve a Metallurgic Summonings, there isn't much they can do to stay in the game. Oh, if you have any ideas for a non-budget build using some of the cards we talked about, let me know in the comments, because I'm still trying to 5-0 that league!

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.