Historic Mythic with Relic-Warder Combo: Fun & Jank Episode 16

But guess what, neither do my opponents!

Guys I’m back this week with another certified Plum banger! This week on stream we made it to Historic Mythic playing a combo that I didn’t even know existed until just a few days ago. Jeskai Relic-Warder!

In my free time I love looking at old MTG forums to try and find inspiration for brews and deck concepts. One of my favorite things to do is browse the old deck creation forums on MTGSalvation. I was browsing through some 10 year old posts when I came across somebody talking about the following combo.

Leonin Relic-Warder + Phyrexian Metamorph

Here’s how it works:
1.) Cast Relic-Warder exiling whatever you want, or nothing even!
2.) Cast Phyrexian Metamorph copying your Relic-Warder
3.) Metamorph enters as an Artifact Creature version of our Leonin, so it can target itself with the exile ability.
4.) Our Leonin copy exiles itself, causing its second line of text to go on the stack. This means it exiles itself, then immediately returns itself because it saw itself leave the battlefield (I know right???)
5.) It returns to the battlefield as a Phyrexian Metamorph which allows us top copy Leonin again and repeat steps 1-4 infinitely for limitless etb and ltb triggers.
6.) ??????
7.) Profit.

A little convoluted at first but very easy to loop through once you see it in game.

I knew we already had Phyrexian Metamorph on Arena, and my big brewer’s brain also remembered seeing Leonin when I was brewing a tribal cats list recently. This really got my juices flowing. So I started digging through deck building websites and whatever tournament results I could find to see if anyone had ever done well with the combo. That way I at least had a jumping off point to start a rough draft for a list.

The Inspiration

Fortunately, I actually found an MTGO player named koskadelli who 5-0’d a Modern League in 2022 with the following:

A White Stoneforge Mystic shell using Urza's Saga to tutor up Altar of the Brood as a win-con. I loved the idea of this list, it seemed very streamlined and had a powerful Plan-B. Saga and Stoneforge gave this player the ability to run a fun tool box of silver bullet artifacts to help defend or pivot strategies if the combo didn’t work out.

With this list in mind, I brewed the following deck on stream.

The Deck

I chose to stick to the Historic format because Timeless is just too fast for this kind of deck. I did my best to port it to Arena as true to the original as I could, but the lack of Saga and Solitude proved to be a major factor in the deck’s performance.

Although we’re still rocking Stoneforge Mystic, our equipment package is nowhere near as good as the Modern version. I ended up playing a small Ranger-Captain of Eos suite with utility creatures like Giant Killer or Giver of Runes for that silver-bullet package instead. Ingenious Smith felt good as an additional way to find Altar, our equipment, and Portable Hole.

I was excited to hop into some games, and with some members of the MTG: Eternal discord in chat to discuss the list, we started testing.

And it was….uhhhh….

How do you say it english…..?

Bad.

It was just really bad.

We couldn’t find the combo consistently and most of the other decks were just faster or stronger than our Plan-B of Stoneforge Mystic beats. We tested for a couple hours but felt pretty disheartened towards the end of stream. This included shoving the combo into a Mono-W Devotion shell, RW Energy, and even playing a CoCo Cats list with the combo thrown in. I felt like it had so much potential, being able to win on turn 3, that I thought we could at least brew something decent, but I wasn’t feeling confident after our performance on the ladder. So while bouncing ideas off chat on stream, and looking through my old brews on Moxfield, we came across an old deck based on Kami of Transmutation and Saheeli that I had brewed.

I built this deck way back when first got Kami on arena. It’s a very cute interaction. Kami turns Saheeli into an artifact, which means she can then use her -2 on herself to make a copy and repeat. If you have Reckless Fireweaver or Altar of the Brood out, you can mill or burn out your opponent.

This was our eureka moment.

Kami also happens to make Leonin Relic-Warder combo with itself too. Annnnnd we were already playing Altar of the Brood, so if we added Saheeli and Fireweaver, we would have a ton of redundancy for a combo deck that wins on turn 3. We immediately switched gears and instead of trying to brew a deck that just happens to combo sometimes, we created an “all-in” version that wanted to win via a combo every single game.

For those playing along at home, with the cards mentioned above, we had 3 infinite combos in our list.

1.) Leonin Relic-Warder + Phyrexian Metamorph + Altar/Fireweaver
2.) Leonin Relic-Warder + Kami of Transmutation + Altar/Fireweaver
3.) Saheeli Rai + Kami of Transmutation + Altar/Fireweaver

All 3 combos could win with either Altar or Fireweaver, so our goal was to make assembling a combo as consistent as possible. This was already 24 slots if we went for the max number of each combo piece (which we did), so the rest of the deck was just lands and a split of interaction and combo assembly.

Reckless Handling felt like the perfect glue for this list. It found both Metamorph or Altar of the Brood for just 2 mana. But boys….oooooh gosh. We gambled and lost with it. Every. Single. Time. It felt soooo bad to have the combo in hand just to discard a key component and lose within the next few turns. So again we had to pivot. Using some more tech from that old Saheeli combo deck I brewed, we ended up replacing Handling with Plunderer's Prize. Now if you’re brewer and you haven’t at least tried to break this card once, I’d call ya a liar. I freakin’ love it. This card guaranteed an Altar of the Brood would be found every time we casted it (we had to remove our Portable Holes). Plus, although it wouldn’t hit every time, it was possible to tutor up a Phyrexian Metamorph with it. Perfect card for this list.

Now that we had the core of the deck pretty much set, we experimented with a few different pieces of removal and card selection/draw.

I personally believe that the Chorus package of Shanty + Hymn would be the best thing for the deck, but alas, Plum is poor. So I threw in Faithless Looting instead and it did a perfectly fine job of finding our combo pieces on our journey up the ladder. Here’s what I ended making Mythic rank with.

This current version felt fast, consistent, but most importantly, it caught people off guard.

Gameplay

This is just a small snippet of our stream where you can see the list in action

Magic: The Gathering is often a game of knowledge. There’s the knowledge you bring to the table—how your deck works, the matchups, the meta—and then there’s the knowledge your opponent has, or in this case, doesn’t have. And that’s where the true power of a deck like this shines. “Playing what you know” means sticking to your comfort zone. It’s the decks you’ve mastered, the ones where you don’t have to second-guess your sequencing or think too hard about your sideboarding. It’s important to have that level of familiarity, especially in a competitive setting. This deck? This is one of those decks. It might look wild, but after hours of brewing and playtesting, you know exactly when to jam a Saheeli Rai, how to bait out removal, and when to start looping infinite triggers. Familiarity is key, especially with a combo this intricate.

But the flip side—playing what your opponents don’t know—is the secret spice that makes this deck absurdly fun to play. Let’s be real: when was the last time anyone read Leonin Relic-Warder outside of Limited? Your opponents will pause, hover over your cards, and probably make some “huh?” sounds IRL as they try to figure out what’s happening. They don’t see it coming, and by the time they’ve pieced it together, you’re already drowning them in infinite triggers from Reckless Fireweaver or Altar of the Brood. I can’t even tell you the amount of times where I had the combo in my hand and got hit with a discard spell, only for my opponent to take the wrong thing. In a world full of decks everyone’s already memorized, knowing your deck inside and out while throwing a total curveball at your opponent can be a genuine strategy. You’re not just playing the game—you’re making your opponent play your game. And the best part? They probably don’t even know what game they’re playing.

Here’s proof of Mythic (there’s VODS too if you’d like to watch ’em!)

We also sported an exactly 66.6% winrate going 40-20 on the ladder!

Closing Thoughts

Building around a combo like this isn’t just about slapping some synergistic cards together and calling it a day—it’s a journey, and sometimes it’s a frustrating one. When we first started brewing this deck, the combo wasn’t even the main focus. It began as a Plan B—a cheeky backup strategy to sneak out a win when the primary game plan didn’t pan out. But as we kept testing, the pieces started to demand more attention. The combo was too consistent, too powerful to stay ion the back burner. Slowly but surely, we pivoted to what you see now: an all-in, turn-3 combo deck that doesn’t hold back

And let me tell you, those two versions couldn’t look more different.

The initial builds were more midrange-y, trying to grind out value while keeping the combo as a surprise finisher. It was fine—functional even—but it never quite clicked. And that’s where the challenge lies: finding the right shell for your idea. It’s tempting to abandon ship when the first iteration doesn’t feel great. Maybe you get blown out in early testing, or the deck doesn’t flow the way you expected. It’s easy to think, “Well, I guess this combo just isn’t viable.”

But here’s the thing: brewing takes patience. Don’t let those early games dishearten you. The deck needs room to grow, evolve, and find its identity. You might end up somewhere you didn’t expect, and that’s okay! Sometimes, you need to trim the fat, take risks, and lean all the way into what your deck wants to do. In our case, we went full combo, and it turned out to be the right call.

That’s the beauty of the brewing process. The journey from “backup plan” to “all-in combo” taught us that testing isn’t just about seeing if a deck works—it’s about learning what the deck wants to be. So if you’re out there brewing your own crazy ideas, remember: be patient. Trust the process. Your first build might not be the one that shines, but with enough tinkering and a little resilience, you might just end up with something that’s Mythic-worthy.

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewing!