The legendary artifact MTG card Ugin’s Nexus is spiking hard, going from just $1.40 on March 2, to $4 today, according to MTG Goldfish figures. That’s still fairly affordable, but foil copies of this card have seen a more impactful shift, jumping from $6.40 all the way to $15.
Ugin’s Nexus is a five mana artifact that shuts down extra turns, and lets you have an extra turn yourself whenever it’s destroyed. Right now it mostly sees play in EDH, alongside artifact or sacrifice themed MTG commanders like Daretti, Scrap Savant or Braids, Arisen Nightmare.
But a new infinite combo has turned up in MTG Outlaws of Thunder Junction – one that makes this card feel frankly unfair. This three-card MTG combo seems to be the reason for the current buzz around the card.
What you need to pull it off is Krark-Clan Ironworks, from the MTG set Fifth Dawn, and a brand new Thunder Junction card, Esoteric Duplicator.
The Duplicator states that whenever you sacrifice an artifact, you can pay two mana to make a copy of it at the beginning of the next end step. This is the meat of the combo, as with Ugin’s Nexus you can now have potentially infinite turns, provided you have some way to sacrifice the Nexus.
Krark-Clan Ironworks is the perfect sac outlet for this combo, as it makes all mana considerations a breeze. It lets you sacrifice an artifact to create two mana, the exact amount needed to pay for Esoteric Duplicator’s cost. The card seems absolutely busted with Esoteric Duplicator, and not just for this trick.
It’s worth noting you’ve got to be clever about timings to make this combo work. Sacrifice Ugin’s Nexus in your main phase and the copy that gets made, if left in play, will make you skip your own extra turn.
You’d need to make sure you sacrifice the copy in your end step, so that it’s off the board when your bonus turn starts and it comes back in the end step of your first extra turn. Keep sacrificing copies in end steps and you can keep the combo going for as long as you like.
It’s a cute combo, but seems destined for EDH rather than more competitive formats (for one thing Krark-Clan Ironworks is on Modern’s MTG banlist). Esoteric Duplicator seems like an absolutely bananas card, however, to the point where we’d be surprised if there wasn’t some way to abuse it for cEDH.
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Source: Wargamer
