A Beginner’s Guide to Krark-Clan Ironworks

Matt Nass has Top 8’d the last three Grand Prix and won two of them with one of Modern’s most talked-about decks: Krark-Clan Ironworks combo. While many had initially dismissed the deck, it’s proven more resilient and powerful than initially estimated, even showing up in the Top 4 of Pro Tour 25 in the hands of Ben Stark. With that finish, KCI cemented itself as a pillar of the Modern format, and I figured it was about time to bite the bullet and learn the deck myself. And with a PPTQ Top 8 of my own to show for it, I’m sad I didn’t pick up this pile of Scrap Trawlers and Myr Retrievers sooner.

Krark-Clan Ironworks – Matt Nass – 1st Place, Grand Prix Vegas 2018

2 Aether Hub
4 Ancient Stirrings
3 Buried Ruin
3 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Forest
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Ichor Wellspring
3 Inventors’ Fair
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Mind Stone
4 Mox Opal
2 Myr Retriever
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Scrap Trawler
4 Terrarion

Sideboard
1 Defense Grid
2 Ghirapur Aether Grid
3 Guttural Response
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Nature’s Claim
1 Wurmcoil Engine

When it broke out on the scene, KCI had a Red- and Green-oriented sideboard, including Guttural Response to fight through counterspells. Ghirapur Aether Grid was also useful for shoring up both the matches where opponents brought in cards like Stony Silence, and creature-based aggressive strategies such as Affinity and Humans. The full playsets of Lightning Bolts and Nature’s Claims are must-includes to deal with hate cards such as Leyline of the Void, Meddling Mage, Rest in Peace, and Kataki. While most people thought that this list was fully optimized, Ben Stark showed off some sweet new tech in his 2nd place finish.

Krark-Clan Ironworks – Ben Stark – 2nd Place, Pro Tour 25th Anniversary

4 Ancient Stirrings
3 Buried Ruin
3 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Forest
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Ichor Wellspring
2 Inventors’ Fair
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Mind Stone
4 Mox Opal
2 Myr Retriever
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Scrap Trawler
4 Terrarion
3 Yavimaya Coast

Sideboard
1 Island
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Nature’s Claim
3 Negate
3 Sai, Master Thopterist

The updated list switches out your Aether Hubs for Yavimaya Coasts, and the sideboard Aether Grids have been replaced with a certain Master Thopterist. Guttural Response gives way to Negate, which gives you additional outs to hate cards like Stony Silence and Rest in Peace, as well as helping you fight counter wars to help your Krark-Clan Ironworks resolve.

While the variety of loops and interactions can be daunting to anyone sleeving up their Buried Ruins for the first time, the gameplay truly comes down to remembering your triggers. In my opinion, the most important card in the deck is Scrap Trawler – it lets you dig through the deck by returning one-mana cards like Chromatic Star from your two-mana digging spells like Mind Stone. A Scrap Trawler and a KCI can usually be enough to find all the right combo pieces, as you recur draw spells like Terrarion and sacrifice Ichor Wellsprings. The number of artifacts that you can play and “cycle” through to draw through your deck is the real source of the deck’s resilient power. Like Tron, your cards are either mana-producers, must-answer threats (or in KCI, combo pieces) or cards that dig you to those things.

The Basic Loop

       

What you’ll need: Krark-Clan Ironworks and two Scrap Trawlers on board; Myr Retriever and Mox Opal in the graveyard. (A Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler on board, and a Scrap Trawler in the graveyard will work, too – you’re just starting on step four of the loop.)

How it works:

• Sacrifice one Scrap Trawler to Ironworks and return a Myr Retriever to the battlefield when that Scrap Trawler triggers.
• The second Scrap Trawler’s ability will then trigger. Return the Mox Opal from your graveyard to your hand.
• Play the Mox Opal. Tap it for one mana of any color, then sacrifice it to Ironworks to generate an additional two colorless mana.
• Sacrifice the Myr Retriever and use its triggered ability to return the Scrap Trawler from your graveyard to your hand.
• When you sacrifice the Myr Retriever, the Scrap Trawler that’s still on the battlefield will trigger again. Use its ability to return the Mox Opal from your graveyard to your hand.
• Play the Scrap Trawler and the Mox Opal. Sacrifice the Mox Opal again to generate three more mana.

Result: The mana you generate by executing this loop can be used to draw as many cards as you like with spells like Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere, and Terrarion. You can also generate red mana with Mox Opal to cast Pyrite Spellbomb and return it from your graveyard to your hand to keep dealing damage.

Other Important Interactions

One of the most important, unintuitive plays you can make is to overpay for mana costs. This means that when you are announcing your intent to cast a card, you have the option to sacrifice artifacts to KCI to pay for that card. If you sacrifice, say, a Myr Retriever and a Scrap Trawler to pay, they will go to the graveyard at the same time and be able to return each other.

This comes into play in one of the most complicated loops.

      

What you’ll need: Chromatic Star or Sphere, Krark-Clan Ironworks, Scrap Trawler, Myr Retriever, Mox Opal

How it works:

• Sacrifice Chromatic Star/Sphere to create one mana of the color of your choice. Pay the sacrifice cost by tapping Mox Opal.
• With the ability on the stack, sacrifice Myr Retriever and Mox Opal to Krark-Clan Ironworks, then sacrifice Ironworks to itself.
• Scrap Trawler will trigger, returning Myr Retriever. Myr Retriever will return Chromatic Star, and Chromatic Star will return Mox Opal. Myr Retriever’s trigger will then return Ironworks, and you’ll have seven mana in your mana pool.
• The Star trigger will resolve, and you’ll finally get to draw your card.

Result: With the seven mana you created executing this loop, you can recast all the cards you just sacrificed. Repeat the process until you’ve drawn all the cards you need!

A couple of additional miscellaneous notes:

• Wait until you’re comboing off to play your land, in case you draw an Inventors’ Fair that you need to crack to find your Myr Retriever.
• Play Engineered Explosives for zero to sacrifice it to the Ironworks to net two mana.
• You’ll often board out Terrarion, your worst early-game draw spell.
• With a Scrap Trawler out, you can return sacrificed Darksteel Citadels as your zero-cost artifact. (On that note, you can sacrifice Citadel to Krark-Clan Ironworks to generate mana.)

If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em

       

KCI’s power comes from its ability to fight through the variety of hate cards in the format. Decks such as Humans, Grixis Death’s Shadow, Infect, and other combo decks with early interaction and a fast clock are able to slow you down so that you don’t have time to fight through. An early piece of interaction such as a Leyline of the Void or a Damping Sphere doesn’t matter if you give the KCI player enough time to potentially draw Nature’s Claim, which is brought in in nearly every post-board game. It’s important to follow up that piece of interaction with a fast clock, such as 7/7 Death’s Shadow or a Collected Company infinite damage combo.

Specific hate cards that you can run include Rest In Peace, Leyline of the Void, Damping Sphere, Stony Silence, Kataki, War’s Wage, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and Surgical Extraction. As well, a Chalice of the Void on one usually makes the game unwinnable for KCI, unless they’ve boarded in Aether Grid or Sai, Master Thopterist.

While KCI is extremely powerful and resilient, it’s not infallable. In fact, I believe that the metagame is already shifting to fight against the Ironworks menace. That being said, if you become proficient at navigating the many intricate decisions that the deck requires you to make, you can fight through a lot of the hate that they’re going to throw at you. I, for one, have no plans to put down my Myr Retrievers any time soon.