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Spoiler Highlight: Chrome Mox on Timeless

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Chrome Mox, a Modern banned card and Legacy staple, is coming to Timeless with Aetherdrift's Special Guests. Aside from its inclusion in combo decks, where else can one of Magic's most powerful artifacts find a home in the format?

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Traduit par Romeu

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revu par Tabata Marques

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  1. > What else can we build with Chrome Mox in Timeless?
  2. > Does Chrome Mox need to be restricted?

Timeless, a format already well-known for its speed and power level, is about to get faster with the release of Aetherdriftlink outside website and the reprint of Chrome Mox in the Special Guest series.

Chrome Mox
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A Lotus Petal reprint was expected before any Mox would make it into Magic Arena's eternal format, but we didn't just get a Mox - we got the second-best non-Power 9 of the cycle. The effects will be immediate: fast mana is already a hot topic in Timeless due to the ease with which cards like Dark Ritual enable powerful combos without compromise, and now those same archetypes will have access to another easy way to generate more than one mana per turn.

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The impact in Timeless' combos is so obvious that it doesn't make sense to write about how they'll get stronger and the problems they could bring to the Metagame. I've already covered in another articlelink outside website how the format has a dilemma with fast mana and a Metagame where the best choice to deal with combos is to be faster - now, faster than them with Chrome Mox.

We tend to always look at the most catastrophic result of a change, and occasionally forget about the rest. In addition to combos, perhaps other archetypes will be interested in the artifact to speed up their game plan. Perhaps the extra universal mana that Mox offers can be used to help fair decks hold off combos if they are accompanied by cheap interaction and a source of card advantage, or if a play is so impactful that it prevents a combo from executing its game plan.

What else can we build with Chrome Mox in Timeless?

Banned from Modern since its inception, the records of the last fifteen years of Chrome Mox in competitive Magic are limited to Legacy, where it is the centerpiece of strategies known as Stompy, which, unlike the common sense of Standard or Pioneer, where this name is given to a list with cheap creatures of high power and pumps, the term arises from the mix of impactful creatures with efficient mana acceleration - the result is technically the same (having a big creature on the board early), but the means are different.

A Legacy Stompy list looks like this.

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Anything that hits the board in the first turns in this list is so big and has such a high added value that it makes it impossible for the opponent to play fairly. But there is a fundamental problem with this deck in Timeless: we don't have Ancient Tomb and our only “Sol Land” is Ugin's Labyrinth - a card that requires a high number of Eldrazi in the list, and they interact poorly with Chrome Mox because they are colorless.

Another important factor is that Blood Moon isn't as much as a hoser as it is on othe formats: it can delay some of Belcher's turns, but it doesn't do enough on its own to lock down games unless the opponent is too greedy with their mana, requiring cards like Chalice of the Void to complement this package - another permanent that also doesn't impact Timeless as much as it does in Legacy.

What we can do to create a “Stompy” in Timeless is to combine Chrome Mox with Dark Ritual to create a largely disruptive archetype with Grief, Thoughtseize, Necropotence and The One Ring / Sheoldred, the Apocalypse - but this one already exists today and doesn't compete with the rest of the format.

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One of the advantages of a Mox is that it goes in any color and almost any deck. Maybe a Hatebears is a little closer now that we can start disrupting from turn one.

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On the other hand, free mana is always good, and to think of other ways to exploit Chrome Mox, we need to go back to the depths of Magic: The Gathering, more than 17 years into the time tunnel to reach the late Extended, where the artifact was the most played non-land card in its history.

From Stompy with Demigod of Revenge to combo-control like the famous Dark Depths / Vampire Hexmage deck, Extended made extensive use of Mox to accelerate its game plan in some Midrange and Tempo archetypes.

A classic play involved casting Dark Confidant on turn one for the value it generates throughout the game by first resolving the card disadvantage the artifact causes, then burying the opponent with the extra draws Confidant provides while protected with disruption, or playing other threats like Tarmogoyf to pressure the board.

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The same effect can be replicated with Psychic Frog in Timeless, since connecting with it protected by cheap disruption from the second turn onwards guarantees huge amounts of card advantage for its controller.

Add an Abhorrent Oculus on the second turn with Unearth and Mana Drain to protect yourself from a combo or removal, and these two creatures will take over the game while establishing a clock too fast for even the most powerful combos in the format to ignore.

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Obviously, there is a problem with this reasoning: answers in Timeless are cheaper and more efficient than they were in Extended - Swords to Plowshares and Fatal Push exist and deal with Psychic Frog at any time, and the same goes for any creature-based archetype that tries to take advantage of the artifact. This does not make it unviable to use, it just increases the challenges of building a more efficient list.

Does Chrome Mox need to be restricted?

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Wizards has already confirmed via Discord that they don't intend to restrict Chrome Mox in Timeless when releasing Aetherdrift, only banning the card in Historic, where they prefer the Metagame not to have access to fast mana.

Given the circumstances, we will have to wait and see how Timeless behaves with its second source of unrestricted fast mana, which this time works in any color. Furthermore, we do not yet know what the other Special Guests cards for Aetherdrift are, and perhaps other pieces will join Mox that will help to put it in check.

We also cannot discount the excess hype scenario. Every expansion brings that one card that everyone believes has the potential to see a lot of play and break formats only for it to prove, in practice, that it did not make that much of a difference. I'm sure Chrome Mox will have an impact on the Timeless Metagame, but it may not be so big that it distorts the format so much that Combo vs. Anti-Combo are the only decks available.

All that's left for players to do is wait and see, and while they wait, make the most of what free mana can do in a competitive format!

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Thanks for reading!