How They Brew It - Mazzy, Truesword Paladin and The Keyword That Wasn't
Mazzy, Truesword Paladin by Justyna Dura
The harsh wail of the siren rang throughout the dilapidated apartment. It's already April 32st, and the 4:37 alarm, the daily clarion which summoned Margaret Wilson to work from the coffin which the Department of Supply charitably called a "bed," was as loud as ever. The alarm didn't matter, thought Margaret. She had already been awake for an hour, enraptured by the screens. The screens sent her private information straight to third parties, hackers, and governments, but it was okay, for last week the Chancellor had banned NordVPN... to much fanfare.
Today was special, thought Margaret. Today was the day that the Government would eradicate the clown menace forever. Margaret's lips curled up into a toothy grimace. Oh, how she hated the clowns. She hated them the way that ants hate cinnamon, or the way that the elderly hate that new apartment complex just off of the I-90 ramp near the train station because it'll quote-unquote "lower their property values" and "make a terrible ruckus." But today, finally, was a taste of true victory. Margaret buttoned her "I-❤️-THE-CHANCELLOR" overcoat. The rally was about to begin.
Doublethink
Good thirteen o'clock, citizen. I'm Michael Celani. You're here because you've been chosen to provide the Government with one of its most vital services: setting the record straight. There's a lot of misinformation out there that needs to be corrected, and only some of it is ours. If we don't control the narrative, people might think things we don't like, and that would be no fun. As such, your work is paramount to our nation's continued survival, so on behalf of the entire government of Turbo-Idaho, welcome to the New York Post.
Yes, nothing keeps an Orweillian paradise going like a little bit of propaganda, and to that end, Mazzy, Truesword Paladin spreads enchantments far and wide, enchantments that make our soldiers best-in-class. With her power, as well as some Constellation, heroic, and exile shenanigans, it'll be no problem recruiting an army a million men wide. Once we've brainwashed the proletariat into fighting our frivolous four-way, we will crush our opponents under our heel by revealing the world's most powerful weapon, the forbidden keyword. Thanks to our work rewriting the past, you won't find the forbidden keyword in any rulebook today, but it's real, and it's been there, lurking within your consciousness this whole time. Let's get to work.
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
First, we must teach you the truth about falsifying the past. Thanks to the fact we bought out NVIDIA for two grand in the early 80s, the government of Turbo-Montana now has the power to hack every computer in the world simultaneously. One way we use this power is to update people's Discord chat messages from five years ago to say terrible things about grain so that if they were to reach out to the massively powerful grain lobby for literal grassroots support, we can cancel them. This control over information is crucial to success; for you to succeed in your role, you'll need to have as much of it as possible. In other words, we're gonna be drawing a bunch of cards:
Enchantment Under the Sea
You know the drill. There's an entire class of permanents out there that tie drawing cards to playing enchantments; Mazzy, Truesword Paladin cares about casting Auras, and Auras are, in fact, enchantments. This marriage was so obviously going-to-happen that even the Hapsburgs are like "dude, chill." We're running eight true enchantresses in the deck, including Satyr Enchanter, Sythis, Harvest's Hand, and Eidolon of Blossoms, as well as some sort-of enchantresses, like Season of Growth, which will trigger quite often thanks to the abundance of Auras in the list. Instead of going into detail about why the enchantment deck is playing these value cards, I instead asked a friend to rank real cards in the list based on how close they are to true enchantresses. I will offer no explanations.
A Bit Unorthodox
We might as well investigate the two "enchantresses" out there that get value out of the card type in a manner other than just straight-up drawing you cards. Nessian Wanderer doesn't expand your hand in the way that, say, Satyr Enchanter does, but he will almost always feed you a land, meaning you're unlikely to be in danger of missing a drop if you find him. He combos really well with Composer of Spring, who turns each enchantment you cast into an additional land drop. You can stack the triggers so that you search for the land first if you've got both of them in play.
Animal Farm
Of course, drawing is just a means to an end. The real goal of all of this revisionism is to erase that really embarassing picture I put in one of my YouTube videos of me in full goth makeup convince the masses to fight for us. There's tons of ways to get tokens off of casting enchantments: targeting our own creatures with Auras, or just casting spells in general from exile. Lucky for us, Mazzy helps us with all three of them. Let's see how:
Making the Stars Align
Constellation is no stranger to creating board states so ridiculously complicated you'd need star charts to decipher them. Creatures like Ajani's Chosen, Chishiro, the Shattered Blade, and Archon of Sun's Grace each provide decently strong tokens for every enchantment you cast, and Monastery Mentor extends that proposition to any noncreature spell. They all have their own little benefits, but the one to look out for in particular is Hallowed Haunting. Once you hit the seven-enchantment threshold on it, combat becomes trivial for you and downright apocalyptic for your enemies. In fact, it might even force them to waste precious removal on your enchanted creatures as they desperately try to shut your Auras down, despite the fact that Mazzy will just recur them afterwards.
Wartime Heroics
Like a soccer mom telling you about her daily horoscope, this deck just won't shut up about Auras, and since every Aura has to target something when you cast it, they're a natural pair with heroic effects. Heroic is just shorthand for a triggered ability on a creature that goes off whenever something targets it, and there are quite a few of them out there worth looking at for building up a wide army. Akroan Crusader, Rosnakht, Heir of Rohgahh, and Druid of Horns each add another conscript to the pile when you target them with an Aura, and then Phalanx Leader will buff them all up when you're ready to swing for lethal.
Banished
Of course, Mazzy exiles deleted Auras instead of just recurring them to our hand, so we can even eke out a little bit of value from cards that would normally never see play in a dedicated enchantment deck. Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival creates hasty Thopters when we cast an Aura off Mazzy, whereas Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald summons Wolves and cycles away your bad cards. Finally, Rocco, Street Chef is best used to buff up Mazzy over time for a cheeky Voltron kill while also keeping your life total high enough for you to survive getting to that point.
The Ministry of Peace
The theory is in place. We've got the engine to raise an army and keep our hand flush all figured out. Now, the only thing that's left to tackle before we can achieve total victory over the clowns is "what enchantments are we actually playing?" And we better figure that out fast, because clowns scare the hell out of me. Let's take a look:
Increasing Rations
Instead of simple search-ramp, like Cultivate, Aura decks will often run cards that enchant their own lands, as it both triggers all their Constellation effects and keeps them plump when it comes to mana. Wild Growth, Fertile Ground, and Trace of Abundance are the best ones in Naya, but we shouldn't neglect some more niche options. Both Exploration and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove bless us with additional land drops each turn, which will be crucial as our critical mass of enchantresses will often leave us with more lands in hand than we can play. We're also running a substantial number of cost-reducers for enchantments specifically, as enchantments make up a substantial portion of the deck; our list includes Herald of the Pantheon, Jukai Naturalist, and Starfield Mystic, to be precise. Wilderness Reclamation will let us keep our mana open after a long turn of casting engine pieces, and finally, Sanctum Weaver is a Serra's Sanctum on a stick that'll often generate five or more mana on its own for a practically free upfront investment.
Staying Safe From Enemies
Mazzy will become extremely important when it comes time to leverage the forbidden keyword, so protecting her is of utmost importance. Cards like Alpha Authority and Timely Ward all make it difficult to impossible for anything other than a mass-exile to remove her, so consider casting these onto your commander a top priority.
Weeding Out Traitors
Auras can be removal, too, and since Mazzy can just bring them back if they ever get blown up, they're substantially stronger here than in the average deck. Ossification and Chains of Custody will exile problem permanents, while Darksteel Mutation, Kenrith's Transformation, and Song of the Dryads can take commanders out of commission for a long time. Minimus Containment synergizes especially well with Mazzy, as with the way its implemented, it will often find itself into the graveyard without anyone having to spend any removal at all.
Power Trip
Since we've focused so much of our energy into going wide, it only makes sense to include a couple of anthems to beef up our army as much as possible. Warleader's Call is a great new anthem for this purpose, as it not only improves the combat capabilities of whatever proletariat we've successfully brainwashed into fighting for us, it also sees fit to fling pain our enemy's way when they sign up to fight. Cathars' Crusade is here, of course, since we'll be generating a ton of tokens each turn. And finally, Boon of the Spirit Realm only makes your army more dangerous with each enchantment you cast. It actually has a huge advantage over Cathars' Crusade in that it is actually possible to track in paper applies just as evenly to new tokens as to old ones.
Substance Abuse
Have you guessed the forgotten keyword, yet? Perhaps you thought it was heroic. Perhaps you thought it was battle cry. Wrong. The truth is, you could have never guessed what it was. Like all good citizens, you've been trained to forget. Trained to stop that thought in your mind when it comes to the forefront of your consciousness. You know that uttering its name is a crime in Turbo-Guam, and that awareness of it condemns you. But you must learn, as you'll need it for your work. It's time to ask the question: what is Substance?
502.49a. Substance
502.49a. Substance is a static ability with no effect.
Or that's what we want you to think. The truth is that substance is a keyword that was invented to help certain permanents go away at the beginning of the cleanup step instead of the end step. They were mostly used on Auras in the Mirage block. It existed despite the fact that it was never printed on a Magic card, and though its name has been forgotten, its function has not.
There are five substance Auras in the deck: Spider Climb, Armor of Thorns, Lightning Reflexes, Relic Ward, and Ward of Lights. The Oracle text of each of these cards reads that if you cast them at any time you couldn't have cast a sorcery, they're sacrificed at the beginning of the next cleanup step. This means these cards trigger Mazzy, Truesword Paladin in the cleanup step. Mazzy puts the Aura into exile, and once that triggered ability resolves, you'll have priority to cast it again. After that priority is passed and everything's all done, a second cleanup begins, and if you happened to cast any of your substance Auras during that, the whole process starts over again! This effectively means you've got as many Constellation triggers as you have mana to cast these spells. In particular, Gargos, Vicious Watcher will regain all of its health with each cleanup step, turning it into a boot that stamps on your enemy's face. Forever.
But why use mana? With Defiler of Faith and Defiler of Vigor in the deck, you not only have one more way to create and pump your board, you also have ways to potentially make your substance Auras completely free to cast. You'll just be paying life instead of mana, but with Rocco, Street Chef or Sythis, Harvest's Hand nearby, that won't be as big a problem as you might think. And since all of this is instant speed, you can create a huge board out of nowhere and swing for lethal the very next turn, all beginning on an opponent's end step!
Rewriting the Past
It's said that he that controls the present controls the past, and he that controls the past, controls the future. Unfortunately, I've gotten confused and decided to skip forward to controlling the future directly. That means the past is in control of me, which means I'm not in control of myself. I think I should just end the article before I have to take a philosophy course on the nature of consciousness to understand what I'm even saying.
If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. You can vote on what article you want to see next, as well as check out other projects I'm involved in, like Am I the Bolcast. Thanks for reading!
The Keyword That Wasn't (Mazzy, Truesword Paladin EDH)
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