Marit Lage is one of the scariest things you can find in Legacy. A 20/20 flying and indestructible token that can come out as early as turn 2 is horrifying, and there are only a few cards that are capable of answering it. Dark Depths is such a good card that it got banned when Modern was first created and has only become a better card as more sets have come out. With the printing of Modern Horizons, we get to see the revival of Marit Lage in a new card: Marit Lage’s Slumber.
Now, I want to start off by saying this card is no Dark Depths. But, this is the closest we can get, however, and a 20/20 is still pretty good even if we have to work a lot harder for it. As we have seen from Rivals of Ixalan, Ascend happens a lot sooner than you would expect and happens naturally over the course of any given game. Modern tends to have really fast games of Magic on the other hand, which means that if we want to see our 20/20 we are going to have to work for it.
One thing that used to be impossible to do was build multi-color snow decks. Modern Horizons was aware of this design limitation of a deck that is constrained to basics and gave us a lot of options to work around this. Arcum’s Astrolabe is huge for snow decks as a cheap cantrip that also serves as mana fixing. Prismatic Vista is one of the best fetches possible for a snow deck, and if you go into green you get more options such as Into the North to fix our mana even more. Today we are just sticking with a UG build, but I can see a future with 3 color snow decks.
UG is the best color combination for powering out a fast Marit Lage. With access to ramp, we can now dump our hand extremely quickly. Early options to ramp such as Boreal Druid, Coldsteel Heart, and Into the North let us get more mana on the battlefield, and more snow permanents out of our hand. When we start to run out of cards we can easily refuel with our snow cantrips in Astrolabe and Ice-Fang Coatl. And a late-game Glacial Revelation can easily draw 3 or more cards. With all of this ramp and card draw, what’s the fastest we can power out a Marit Lage?
Turn 1: Land, Boreal Druid – 2 Snow Permanents
Turn 2: Land, Coldsteel Heart, Boreal Druid -5 Snow Permanents
Turn 3: Land, Marit Lage’s Slumber, Arcum’s Astrolabe, Arcum’s Astrolabe, Ice-Fang Coatl – 10 Snow Permanents
By the start of your next turn, you get yourself a handy dandy 20/20 flying and indestructible Marit Lage Token.
As great as getting a 20/20 is, unfortunately, this is the ideal scenario and doesn’t guarantee winning the game. If they bolt your druid you are pushed back significantly. If they have a path all of your hard work goes to waste. If they can kill you before you can swing in on turn 5 you’re out of luck. Despite all of this, Marit Lage is still a formidable threat, and if you can get her out of the ice, she is typically worth the investment. Marit Lage is not the only wincon of the deck either. With how much we ramp, and how many fetches we have Tireless Tracker can become huge in an instant. This deck may not be the most competitive snow deck out there, but if you want to swing with a 20/20 in Modern, this might just be the way to do it. Thank you all for reading I hope you have a great week and an amazing Tuesday!
Link to Decklist: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1960008#paper
