When I first came across PreFIRE Modern and saw the changes compared to historic Modern, I knew I'd try a StoneBlade variant first. When I was most active playing Magic from 2010 to 2016, I played a ton of Stoneforge Mystic in Legacy, but obviously was never able to play it in Modern during the 2010s.
I joined the PreFIRE Discord, and with very few games under my belt, I jumped into my first league with a deck I built primarily from a Legacy mindset.
ThopterForge
Creatures (10)
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Spell Queller
1 Vendilion Clique
Instants (9)
4 Path to Exile
3 Mana Leak
2 Remand
Sorceries (9)
4 Preordain
3 Thoughtseize
2 Lingering Souls
Artifacts (10)
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Thopter Foundry
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of the Meek
Planeswalker (1)
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lands (21)
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
2 Watery Grave
1 Academy Ruins
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Field of Ruin
1 Plains
1 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Terminus
3 Extirpate
3 Timely Reinforcements
2 Spell Pierce
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
1 Disenchant
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It did not go well: my first league finished with a 1-5 record. I had a ton of fun but wasn’t sure what changes would improve my list. I tried to simplify the deck for the next league, cutting the Thopter Sword-Sword of the Meek package and running a more classic EsperBlade style.
StoneBlade
Creatures (8)
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
Instants
4 Fatal Push
3 Path to Exile
3 Mana Leak
2 Negate
Sorceries
4 Preordain
4 Thoughtseize
3 Timely Reinforcements
Artifacts (4)
1 Batterskull
1 Detention Sphere
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Island
2 Watery Grave
1 Academy Ruins
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Plains
1 Swamp
Sideboard
3 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Shadow of Doubt
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
2 Zealous Persecution
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
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Still no improvement, going 1-2 in this league. I really started to look at how I was building decks for the format, especially at the cards that were banned in historic Modern or cards that never really saw play with Stoneforge Mystic because she was banned.
Spell Queller by Adam Paquette
The big one was figuring out that Spell Queller is probably the best card in the deck. It does everything you want: it flies with equipment, plays well mana open similar to Snapcaster Mage but generates much more value when cast in response to an opponent’s spell, and allows for a strong tempo game.
Next, I tried to jam Preordain and Sensei’s Divining Top into the deck without any real reason besides thinking how in Legacy extra cantrips created a very dense threat package. The main problem was that Preordain, while a strong card, was not Brainstorm.
A three-color deck in Legacy could reliably cast each color freely, whereas in Modern, if you are damaging yourself repeatedly over the first 3-4 turns from fetches, shocklands, or Thoughtseize, you are sometimes doing literally half the work of aggressive strategies for them.
After considering what was going wrong and whether I should just abandon Stoneforge Mystic altogether, I decided I needed to take the deck in a more concrete direction. Next came two different variations.
StoneBlade
Creatures (21)
4 Noble Hierarch ]g\
4 Spell Queller
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Birds of Paradise
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eternal Witness
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Renegade Rallier
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
Instants (9)
4 Path to Exile
3 Spell Snare
2 Mana Leak
Sorceries (4)
4 Green Sun's Zenith
Artifacts (3)
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
Lands ( 21+1)
4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Breeding Pool
2 Botanical Sanctum
2 Forest
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
1 Plains
Sideboard
4 Loxodon Smiter
3 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Rest in Peace
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
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The main issue I ran into in almost every match with the two Esper variants was getting choked on mana. I switched out for . Instead of running no mana acceleration, the Bant variant has 10 ways to jump mana on turn one.
Noble Hierarch by Mark Zug
The 4/2 Noble Hierarch/Birds of Paradise and four Green Sun’s Zenith = for Dryad Arbor. Since I had access to Green Sun's Zenith, I could play a full suite of utility creatures to complement what I consider the StoneBlade core of 4 Stoneforge Mystic/3 equipment/4 Spell Queller.
4 Path to Exile, 3 Spell Snare, and 2 Mana Leak are light instant-speed interaction, but these were meant to act as a complement to Spell Queller and the utility creatures.
Let’s talk about Garruk Wildspeaker. I went through every legal planeswalker probably three times, and each time I kept coming back to two of the most obvious ones, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. The problem with both is that, even though they are monster card advantage engines, they are weak against established boards. StoneBlade lacks the control tools to get them into play safely so they can leverage their power.
Garruk Wildspeaker by Aleksi Briclot
I knew the deck needed something that could come down and affect the board immediately. Elspeth, Knight-Errant was the classic choice for StoneBlade shells in Legacy but always felt underwhelming to me. I still wanted a planeswalker that could act as a token generator, and Garruk, Wildspeaker was exactly what I was looking for.
The 3/3 was much more likely to have an impact than the 1/1 of Elspeth. If Garruk Wildspeaker ended up being a buffed Call of the Herd by going -1 three times in a row, that was still great value. The +1 ability was surprisingly fantastic, as I could play Garruk Wildspeaker, untap two lands, play a creature, and then immediately threaten a lethal -4 the next turn.
Bant StoneBlade was still unrefined; I forgot to put in a Temple Garden, and a few of the creatures were extremely underwhelming. In most games, I went 6-0, winning the following league!
Thopter Foundry by Ralph Horsley
While I was playing the league with Bant, I still wanted to work on Esper; specifically, I wanted to give Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek another crack. While Bant colors and creatures naturally lend themselves to a midrange deck, Esper leans more controlling, so that’s what I went with.
StoneBlade
Creatures (8)
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Spell Queller
Sorceries (11)
4 Preordain
4 Terminus
3 Thoughtseize
Instants (6)
3 Path to Exile
3 Fatal Push
Artifacts (10)
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of the Meek
1 Batterskull
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lands
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Marsh Flats
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Island
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Field of Ruin
1 Academy Ruins
1 Celestial Colonnade
Sideboard
3 Timely Reinforcements
2 Spell Snare
1 Disenchant
2 Spell Pierce
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Ceremonious Rejection
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The original version had Terminus in the board. The non-Thopter Foundry version had no Sensei's Divining Top/Terminus in the 75. For this one, I decided to lean into Miracles. That was exactly what the deck needed to bridge the turns to get the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo going or start locking the game down with a Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Batterskull.
Batterskull by Mark Zug
I haven’t taken this one to a league yet, as I'm taking a short break from Stoneforge Mystic decks, but it has been performing extremely well in casual and testing games, so I don’t anticipate changing too much going into my first league with it.
Onward
A quick note for anyone not familiar with the format: Counterbalance is banned, and that is why it is not in any of the decks that have Sensei's Divining Top in them.
That is my journey so far with my favorite white creature of all time in PreFIRE. There is still a ton of room to brew with her, and these decks are by no means definitive. But it has been exciting to take one of the most iconic creatures in Magic into an older format that is brand new to her.
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Featured image: Stoneforge Mystic by Mike Bierek
