Magnus the red

Overview

This is a UR spellslinger that wins by storming off, and Magnus is the pressure valve that makes the storm cheap. Read his first line before anything else: Unearthly Power drops the cost of every instant and sorcery you cast by for each creature token you control. The whole 100 is built to abuse that feedback loop — you make tokens, tokens make your spells cheaper, cheaper spells storm harder, and the storm makes more tokens (and more mana). Every "why is this card here" answer runs through that loop.

So the deck wears two hats stapled together:

• A token engine — Young Pyromancer, Third Path Iconoclast, Saheeli, Prismari Pianist, Poppet Stitcher, the Krenkos, and the goblin sorceries (Dragon Fodder, Krenko's Command, Empty the Warrens) exist first to feed Magnus's discount, and second as a beatdown plan B behind a flying 4/5.
• A spell engine — rituals (Seething Song, Jeska's Will, Battle Hymn), treasure-makers, copy effects (Reiterate, Storm King's Thunder, storm from Prismari), and magecraft payoffs (Archmage Emeritus, Storm-Kiln Artist). This half is where the game actually ends.

Your win is a combo turn, not a beatdown. The intended finish is one of five infinite/near-infinite loops (see Combos) that generate infinite mana, infinite copies of a spell, or an unbounded pile of magecraft/cast triggers — which you then point at faces through Electrodominance, a copied Lightning Bolt, Vivi Ornitier's pings, or Storm-Kiln Artist's ever-growing power. The token beatdown (a wide board plus Magnus in the air) is a real plan B when the combo is being fought, but it is not what you mulligan for.

Colors are close to even (R 43 pip-demand / U 37), both well sourced. In practice red is the color you can't be short on early — the rituals, the discount enablers, and most of the token makers are red — while blue is your interaction and card flow. Keep a functional two-color hand.

Mulligan Guide

The keep question is: "can you build a storm turn — mana, a token/ritual engine, and either a payoff or protection — without folding to early pressure?" You are not mulliganing to see a complete combo; your card draw and Gamble find the last piece.

Keep hands that give you:

1. A UR mana path — two-plus lands, or a land or two plus rocks (Sol Ring, a signet, Talisman), with real red early. Red carries the rituals and most enablers; a blue-heavy, red-light opener is a trap.
2. An engine seed — at least one token-maker or magecraft payoff (Young Pyromancer, Third Path, Saheeli, Storm-Kiln, Archmage) or a combo piece plus a way to develop toward it. A hand that snowballs Magnus's discount is what you want.

Prioritize openers that also hold a cheap interaction spell or a free counter, so you can defend the turn you go off in a blue pod.

Mulligan all-land hands, all-payoff-no-mana hands, and grips that reach mana but have zero engine and zero interaction. You don't need the kill in your opener — you need to be sure you'll assemble one, with mana and tokens flowing, before the table pulls ahead.

Game Plan

The arc is: develop mana → drop a token/ritual engine → storm off with a payoff and protection. The deck can also just go wide and fly over if the combo is contested, but treat that as the backup.

• Turns 1–3 — build mana and seed tokens. Land your rocks (Sol Ring, the signets, Talisman, Arcane Signet) and get an early token maker or two down. Even a single Dragon Fodder or Krenko's Command is off your next spell via Magnus; a resolved Young Pyromancer / Third Path / Saheeli turns every subsequent spell into another token and another of discount. You are not racing to attack — you're stacking discount and mana rocks toward one explosive turn.
• Sequence tokens before the payoff. Because the discount locks at cast time, dump your cheap token-makers first, then cast the expensive spell into the reduced cost. A board of four-plus tokens makes Reiterate, Seething Song, and your card-draw spells dramatically cheaper.
• Rituals are for the combo turn, not the ramp turn. Seething Song, Jeska's Will, and Battle Hymn (which adds per creature — obscene with a token board) are burst mana to finish, not to develop. Hold them until you can convert the mana into a loop or a lethal Electrodominance.
• Commit with backup. Your combo turn wants protection up — Fierce Guardianship and Deflecting Swat are free with Magnus (a commander) around, Force of Will is free off a pitched blue card and 1 life no matter what's on board, and Mistrise Village can make your key spell uncounterable. Flusterstorm, Mana Drain, and An Offer You Can't Refuse cover the rest. Don't try to force a loop through an open blue table with no answer to their answer.
• Know your outlet before you start looping. Every infinite line below dead-ends without a way to convert triggers/mana into damage. Your outlets are Electrodominance (dump infinite mana into a lethal X, and cast a free spell), a copied burn spell (Lightning Bolt) once you have infinite copies, Vivi Ornitier (each noncreature cast pings every opponent — lethal alongside the cast-heavy loops), Storm-Kiln Artist (infinite Treasures = infinite artifacts = infinite power; swing for the win), and Prismari, the Inspiration — with blanket storm, a single burn or Treasure spell at high spell-count is the finisher (see Key Loops). Get one of these online, then pull the trigger.
• You get a long leash — use it, but don't overstay it. The deck reads as threatening, and the table will notice you, yet the durdle phase almost always goes unpunished: rocks, tokens, and cantrips look like durdling, so opponents point removal and counters elsewhere and let you build. That patience is genuinely rewarded — an extra turn of tokens is another off every spell on the storm turn. The failure mode is the other end: durdling past the point where the table wakes up. Once someone starts holding mana for you, or a rival engine gets going, the leash is gone — take the storm turn you have rather than the one you were waiting for.
• Card flow bridges the gap. Wheel/Windfall, Frantic Search, the treasure-draw spells (Big Score, Unexpected Windfall), Valakut Awakening, and the big blue draw spells refill you toward the pieces. Gamble is your only true tutor — fetch the missing combo card, but do it with a full-ish hand so the random discard doesn't eat the piece you just found.

How Magnus actually works

His body is a 4/5 flyer, but you cast him as the engine, not the beater. Two abilities, both with non-obvious consequences:

• Unearthly Power reduces the generic portion of the cost, and it locks in before you pay. Confirmed against the ruling: with N tokens out, a spell that costs costs {4−N} — the colored pips never go away — and the reduction is fixed at your token count as you announce the spell. Tokens that leave afterward (sacrificed for mana while paying, or killed in response) don't take the discount back from that spell. The number that matters for the combos: it also reduces buyback and escape costs, because those fold into the total generic before reductions. With four tokens, Reiterate with buyback () becomes just . That single fact turns break-even loops into runaway ones and is the reason a wide token board is a combo enabler, not just a beatdown.
• The cast-vs-copy split is the whole deck. Magnus's discount, and payoffs like Young Pyromancer, Third Path, Saheeli, Prismari Pianist, Poppet Stitcher, Vivi, Birgi, and Electro, all trigger on casting a spell — a copy put on the stack (by Reiterate, storm, or Storm King's Thunder) is not cast and does not trigger them. But magecraft (Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist) reads "cast or copy," so it fires on every copy too. When a loop below says it makes "infinite magecraft" but not "infinite storm," that's the split talking: the copies feed Archmage and Storm-Kiln, but only the actual re-casts of Reiterate feed the cast-only crowd.
• Blade of Magnus is the slow token drip. His combat damage to a player makes a 3/3 Spawn — a combat-damage trigger, so it does fire when he connects in the air. It's a fine way to grow the token count that fuels Unearthly Power across a grindy game, but it's incidental; you are not building around swinging.

Key Loops & Interactions

• The token → discount → storm feedback loop is the deck's real engine. Dump cheap token-makers, then cast into the reduced cost. A single Battle Hymn on a token board is a ritual that dwarfs Seething Song; Jeska's Will's mana mode plus a wide board can bankroll a whole storm turn. Song of Totentanz is the X-sized version (X Rats = X more discount in one card), and Curse of Opulence points the table at someone else while banking Gold toward the combo turn.
• Resonating Lute doubles your land mana. Every land you control gains ": add two mana of one color, spells-only" — in a deck that's nearly all instants and sorceries, that's a mana doubler for the storm turn disguised as a trinket (and ": draw a card" once you're at 7+ cards in hand). Tablet of Discovery is the small version: for spells-only, plus an impulse-mill on entry.
• Cast-only payoffs vs. copy payoffs — sequence to your kill. If your outlet is Vivi / Young Pyromancer / Third Path / Saheeli / Electro, you want loops that generate real casts (the Birgi and Stormsplitter lines). If your outlet is Archmage draws or Storm-Kiln Treasures, the copy-heavy lines (Storm-Kiln + Seething, Jeska + Reiterate) feed those directly. Know which payoff is on the board before you commit.
• Prismari, the Inspiration is the deck's secret second commander — and in practice the single card most likely to end the game. If she sticks, you win; treat resolving her as the real inflection point of the game rather than a nice-to-have. Ward—pay 5 life, flying, and the line that changes everything: every instant and sorcery you cast has storm. Two rules make her bigger than she looks. First, storm counts spells cast by all players that turn — in a four-player pod, every counterspell an opponent throws at your turn grows your next spell's copy count. Second, every storm copy feeds the copy-side payoffs (Storm-Kiln Treasures, Archmage draws) even though only real casts feed the cast-only crowd — she and Magnus pull the same direction: he makes your spells cheap, she makes each one plural. With her down, any spell is the payoff:
  • Jeska's Will — every copy re-reads the target's hand for mana: a five-spell turn makes five extra Wills' worth of .
  • Kicked Rite of Replication — storm copies of a kicked spell are also kicked: N copies = 5N clones of Storm-Kiln, Archmage, or the table's best creature.
  • Big Score / Unexpected Windfall — each copy is +2 Treasures +2 cards; the storm turn refuels itself mid-flight.
  • Lightning Bolt / Electrodominance — the kill, N times over. Storm King's Thunder, Flusterstorm, and Empty the Warrens do the same on a smaller, one-shot scale. (Note Magnus doesn't discount her — she's a creature spell — so the is real; ramp into her or land her the turn before you storm.)
• Electrodominance is your universal mana dump and a flash enabler — infinite mana becomes a lethal X to a face, and it lets you cast a spell with mana value X or less from your hand for free (a surprise sorcery at instant speed).
• Free interaction protects the turn. Fierce Guardianship and Deflecting Swat cost nothing with Magnus around; Force of Will costs a pitched blue card and 1 life regardless. Hold one over your combo. Mistrise Village's activated ability makes your key spell uncounterable. An Offer You Can't Refuse and Flusterstorm are cheap, storm-friendly counters; Mana Drain both counters and ramps into your payoff turn.
• The clone package multiplies your payoffs. Fable / Reflection of Kiki-Jiki copies a nonlegendary creature with haste each turn, but the deeper cuts hit harder: Rite of Replication kicked on Storm-Kiln Artist is five more Storm-Kilns — five Treasures per spell — and kicked on Archmage Emeritus it's five draws per cast or copy. Irenicus's Vile Duplication makes its token nonlegendary with flying, so it can copy Magnus himself — two Unearthly Powers means off per token. Season of Weaving copies an artifact or creature, cantrips, or mass-bounces as a stax reset; Theoretical Duplication flashes in to copy every nontoken creature an opponent plays that turn; Ember Island Production and Replication Technique round out the set. Every clone spell is also just a spell — it storms, it triggers magecraft, and it gets the discount.
• The little mana tricks. Snap with even one token out costs and untaps two lands — a bounce spell that makes mana mid-storm while clearing a blocker or rebuying an ETB. Spell Burst's buyback is generic, so the Magnus discount shrinks it — on a token board it's a counterspell you recast every single turn.
• The second reducer and the gear-shift. Ral, Monsoon Mage is another blanket off all your instants and sorceries (and his flipped side's −8 casts your top eight for free — a storm turn from nowhere). Poppet Factory (Stitcher's flip) turns your whole token army into ability-less 3/3s — the plan-B beatdown gear when the combo is being fought; flip it back when you need the token abilities again.
• Underworld Breach is a recursion engine beyond its named combo — escape a spent ritual or a Past in Flames / Mizzix's Mastery to re-run your best spells from the yard. Watch the end-step sacrifice clause: it's a this-turn engine.
• Gamble is your one tutor — and the one card in the deck whose cost depends on your hand size rather than your mana. See Common Pitfalls before you fire it.

Combos

Five loops, all in the deck — but none of them is "the plan." The deck's real primary is the storm turn itself: Magnus's token discount plus Prismari, the Inspiration turning spells that were never meant to storm into storm gas. You chain discounted rituals, copies, and cantrips until one of the loops below falls into your lap, then close with it. The combos are the payoff loops you assemble mid-storm, not pairings you tutor toward from turn one. Jeska's Will + Reiterate and the Storm-Kiln line are the ones that come together most often; the rest are the same engine with different fuel.

Jeska's Will + Reiterate — infinite red mana (the most common closer)

Produces: infinite red mana, infinite storm count, infinite magecraft, and exile-and-play your whole library.

1. Cast Jeska's Will () targeting an opponent holding at least 7 cards (with Magnus out you choose both modes; the mana mode is all you need for the loop). It adds for each card in their hand — 7+ red.
2. Holding priority, cast Reiterate with buyback (, less under Magnus) copying Jeska's Will. Reiterate returns to your hand as it resolves.
3. The copy resolves and adds 7+ again. Their hand size never drops (copies don't make them discard), so each cycle costs 6 and returns 7+.
4. Repeat step 2 for arbitrarily large red mana — and each Reiterate re-cast is a real cast (storm, magecraft, and your cast-only token/ping payoffs all fire).

The loop, at a glance:

Convert: with infinite mana and Reiterate in hand you have infinite copies of any spell on the stack — copy Electrodominance or Lightning Bolt at each opponent, or simply cast Electrodominance for lethal X. Under Magnus's discount the loop is net-positive even before an opponent hits 7 cards. Verified: the Reiterate copy keeps Jeska's Will's chosen modes, and mana is counted as the copy resolves.

Storm-Kiln Artist + Seething Song + Reiterate — infinite mana + Treasures

Produces: infinite mana, infinite Treasures, infinite copies on the stack, infinite magecraft, infinite power on Storm-Kiln Artist.

Cast Seething Song ( → ); Storm-Kiln makes a Treasure (magecraft). Holding priority, cast Reiterate with buyback copying Seething Song; Storm-Kiln makes another Treasure on the cast, and a third when the copy is created (magecraft reads "cast or copy"). Reiterate returns to hand; the copy adds . Each cycle nets a Treasure and surplus red. Convert: infinite mana → Electrodominance to a face, or infinite copies → copied burn; or just swing with a Storm-Kiln Artist that's now arbitrarily large (+1/+0 per artifact).

Birgi, God of Storytelling + Seething Song + Reiterate — infinite casts

Produces: infinite storm count, infinite magecraft — and infinite Reiterate casts.

Same shape: keep the original Seething Song on the stack and repeatedly cast Reiterate with buyback targeting it. Birgi adds on each cast, the Seething copy adds , and Reiterate comes back to hand. At full cost the loop is exactly mana-neutral (6 in, 6 out) — so it sustains forever without generating surplus, giving you unbounded casts. This is where Magnus shines: any token discount makes each Reiterate cost less than 6, flipping the loop net-positive into infinite mana as well. Convert: every Reiterate is a noncreature cast, so this is lethal with Vivi Ornitier (a ping to each opponent per cast), Young Pyromancer / Third Path / Saheeli (an infinite token army), or Electro (infinite red) on the battlefield.

Underworld Breach + Wheel of Fortune + Jeska's Will — near-infinite recursion

Produces: near-infinite draw and looting for all players, near-infinite magecraft, near-infinite storm count.

With Underworld Breach out, cast Jeska's Will from your graveyard for its escape cost ( + exile three other cards), choosing both modes for a fat pile of plus the top-three dig. Then escape Wheel of Fortune ( + exile three): everyone discards and draws seven, which dumps your just-drawn hand back into the graveyard as fresh escape fuel. Repeat. It's near-infinite because it's bounded by graveyard fuel and opponents' hand sizes — but Jeska's mana keeps it running and the forced Wheels refuel your yard. Convert: with Storm-Kiln Artist (a Treasure per cast) or Archmage Emeritus (a draw per cast/copy) online it snowballs into mana or your whole library; push far enough and the repeated forced draws can deck your opponents. Verified: Magnus's discount also shrinks the escape cost, and each escaped spell returns to the yard to be cast again.

Stormsplitter + Invasion of Segovia // Caetus + Reiterate — infinite copies

Produces: infinite copies of your chosen instant/sorcery, infinite Stormsplitter tokens, infinite storm/magecraft, infinite ETB/LTB triggers.

Setup first: you need Caetus, the back face — so you must defeat the Invasion of Segovia battle. It enters as a Siege (with defense counters) and makes two 1/1 Krakens; attack it down with your tokens to flip it into Caetus, whose text gives your noncreature spells convoke.

Then, with Stormsplitter out: cast any instant/sorcery — Stormsplitter makes a token copy of itself. Cast Reiterate with buyback, paying via convoke by tapping Stormsplitter tokens (they are red, so each pays or ). The cast triggers every Stormsplitter to spawn another copy, so your token count explodes faster than the convoke cost — a runaway. Reiterate copies your original spell and returns to hand; recast, tapping the ever-growing horde. Convert: point the copied spell (Lightning Bolt / Electrodominance) at faces for infinite damage, or just build an infinite hasty board — but the token copies are exiled at the next end step, so that board has to swing this turn. Verified: tapping a token for convoke doesn't stop its cast trigger, freshly made tokens can convoke immediately, and convoke doesn't change the spell's mana value (so Magnus's discount still applies to the printed generic).

Common Pitfalls

• Casting Gamble on a thin hand. Gamble's discard is random from your whole hand, after the searched card is already in it — so the size of your hand is the only thing standing between you and discarding the exact piece you just tutored. Hellbent, that's a guaranteed loss of the card; with a full grip it's one-in-eight. Refill first, then Gamble. If you must cast it thin, cast it for a piece you can afford to lose or for one you can rebuy (Underworld Breach, Past in Flames, and Mizzix's Mastery all get spells back out of the yard — a Gamble that discards into a graveyard you can escape from is not a disaster).
• Sequencing the payoff before the tokens. The discount locks as you announce the spell, so a token-maker cast after your expensive spell did nothing for it. Dump the cheap enablers first, every time.
• Starting a loop with no outlet on board. Infinite mana and infinite copies are not a win. Confirm Electrodominance, a burn spell to copy, Vivi, or a big Storm-Kiln is available before you begin the chain.
• Spending rituals to develop. Seething Song, Jeska's Will, and Battle Hymn are combo-turn burst, not ramp. Casting one on turn four to deploy a rock converts your best mana into your worst.
• Expecting cast-only payoffs to see your copies. Young Pyromancer, Third Path, Saheeli, Vivi, Prismari Pianist, and Electro all want casts — a storm or Reiterate copy is invisible to them. Only Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist read "cast or copy."