Ever since Dominaria introduced Powerstone Shard, I fell in love. It’s a simple effect that can allow for such creative and interesting decks. Last time I messed around with Powerstone Shard was in Standard, inspired by vintage decks, I ended up with a hilarious and surprisingly powerful deck. Powerstone Shard may no longer be in Standard, but Pioneer offers new horizons for the card to explore, and the expanded card pool has greatly improved the Shards potential. Allow me to introduce you to a mono-brown combo deck that you can get for only $118/75 Tix.
The Fuel
With all of the new options that Pioneer presents it is easy to get lost. But the core of the deck is very simple, play rocks and get tons of mana. Powerstone Shard is of course our primary option, and as good as it is in the deck, it is not necessary for this deck to go infinite. Besides the Shard we are also playing Hedron Crawler and Hedron Archive. Hedron Crawler is very fragile, but is the only source we have for turn 2 ramp and Hedron Archive doubles as ramp and card draw. These cards are the gasoline that fuels the fire of our combo engines. Without one or more of these cards on the battlefield, the rest of the deck is practically useless.
The Spark
After assembling as many of your rocks on the battlefield as reasonably possible, it’s time to start the fire. With Mystic Forge and Paradox Engine we can play our entire deck and generate infinite mana in a single turn. If there is a dead patch filled with lands, the combination of Mystic Forge exiling the top card and Paradox Engine untapping it means it is very hard to fizzle once it gets going. Having just one on the battlefield is almost enough to end the game but with both you can tear through your deck in seconds.
The Explosion
Finally, once you have torn through your deck and have 70+ mana in your pool it’s time to end the game. Cast a Metalwork Colossus for 0 and trigger your Sanctum of Ugin to grab a Cogwork Assembler. Create five 10/10 copies with haste and finish the game with style. This can all happen as soon as turn 5. Now you’re probably thinking that’s great, but it sounds pretty fragile. That is several different pieces that all need to go together to end the game. While that is correct, what has surprised me most about this deck is how the different pieces work together so well that trading one for one often isn’t enough to stop the engine. Even in the event that your opponent can stop you from comboing off immediately, they’ll still have to deal with two 10/10’s on turn 4.
The Engine
With this cluster of cards, we have assembled a powerful engine that is extremely threatening and also very hard to disrupt. With the entire deck being colorless, not only is our mana perfect, but we also get access to dozens of utility lands. Blast Zone is a board wipe on a land, Radiant Fountain helps us against aggro and lets us dig two cards deeper with Mystic Forge. Sanctum of Ugin is one of the most broken cards in this deck, allowing us to chain two Metalwork Colossus in a row and even tutor for the Cogwork Assembler. Zhalfirin Void, Treasure Map, Mystic Forge, and Inquisitive Puppet let us control the top of our deck so efficiently that it is hard to draw the wrong card.
This deck is also really good at creating combos that I at first didn’t realize were possible. Witch’s Oven and a Metalwork Colossus that costs 0 is infinite cast triggers which gets infinite mana with Paradox Engine. Cogwork Assembler and Powerstone Shard was a combo that was available back in Standard, but is still just as powerful today creating infinite mana once you get 7 Powerstone Shards and then infinite Cogwork Assemblers.
Playing a combo deck, it’s important that you have a plan for games 2 and 3. By adding in Karn, Scion of Urza we now have a strong Planeswalker package combined with Ugin that still allows the deck to combo off at any time. Add in a few anti-aggro cards with the deceptively strong Filigree Familiar and Orbs of Warding, and then fill up the rest of the board with the artifact sideboard staples of the format.
Link to Decklist
New Roads for the Deck
With all that being said, this is far from the final version of the deck. SaffronOlive included Karn, the Great Creator to tutor for combo pieces from the sideboard. I chose to not include Karn, the Great Creator because he is 40 tix a piece and the version I created can be rented with the cheapest option on ManaTraders. (#NotSponsored). SaffronOlive also mentions in his article how different colors can be explored such as blue for Whir of Invention and Metallic Rebuke.
I actually tried this and ended up liking the list a lot less. There is so much utility in my mana base that losing it for a counterspell didn’t seem worth it, and hitting UUU for Whir was really hard even when I added Terrarion to the list, and cut a ton of my lands for Islands. One avenue I would like to explore is Green to get Elves to ramp out things quicker and have more bodies for Paradox Engine, but I’m not ready to give up my manabase just yet.
I’m happy to annouce that Powerstone Shard is as fun as I remember, and has a much brighter future ahead of it. Paradox Engine may be banned in EDH, but if you miss spinning your artifacts come on over to Pioneer. If you want a resilient, fast, unique, cheap, and exciting combo deck that can be modified as you see fit, look no further than Powerstone Engine.
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