Before we get into the Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand in particular, I'd like to dial it back a few years and (re)introduce you to a little weirdo: Blade Splicer -

If you had been playing around the time of New Phyrexia, Blade Splicer might still be a card you'd have to look up. It's not like it was in the first draft of every beatdown deck.

Well what was wrong with Blade Splicer?

Nothing! It's the first domino in today's narrative! Four power and toughness across two bodies is actually pretty good. Remember I am the guy who made Gnarled Mass happen! So, I might not turn my nose up to a 3/3 Golem for , depending on whatever else might be going on in the format. But Blade Splicer wasn't just a 3/3 for ; the Golem had first strike by default... And the Human Artificer itself had some value (and some extra value, that we'll get into in a minute).

Ultimately, it was two "things" in one card; one of which was an artifact creature.

As we've said, Blade Splicer was not a first string card inclusion. That spot at the three, at the time, belonged to Geist of Saint Traft.

Anyone who has ever been hit by a Geist of Saint Traft knows that while it looks like a 2/2 for three; you're really taking seven.

Aside:

I am not good at trading.

I once traded a mint Tundra to my friend Josh Ravitz for four copies of Geist of Saint Traft and a Noble Hierarch.

I was borrowing Josh's Geists like every weekend and he was like "You have an extra Tundra that I want and you keep borrowing my stupid in-print cards. It's just fair."

This was indeed a fair trade on the books at the time; in fact, I think I nominally got the better end of the trade.

Why don't you go look up the CURRENT prices on those cards here on CoolStuffInc. for a second:

End aside.

But MichaelJ, you might say; Geist of Saint Traft is a 2/2 and the Angel is a 4/4. How does that add up to seven?

Well geniuses like Gerry Thompson figured out that as deadly as a Geist of Saint Traft sometimes was, if you put a 3/3 first striker plop in the middle of the battlefield, the Legendary Spirit Cleric wasn't going to get in with its 4/4 very often any more. So Blade Splicer entered the metagame as an anti-Geist measure, specifically for Mid-Range mirrors!

For their part, the Geist people had to figure out how to get their Legendary Grey Ogres in, so they started doing things like giving them wings. Because otherwise they were going to stay home.

Now Geist of Saint Traft was also a permanent that made another "thing" (a creature, if not an artifact creature) and was format-defining to the point that Our Hero was trading Tundra for them. To his nominal very good "friend" mind you.

Blade Splicer was the Next Level version; and benefited from additional synergies.

For example, you could "Blink" a Blade Splicer and get another 3/3 Golem. Sometimes you could do some cool combat tricks; sometimes you could sneakily squeeze in six additional points of power at the end of the opponent's turn; and sometimes this was just a route to card advantage while you figured out what you actually wanted to do.

Blade Splicer was actually pretty good on rate! A lot of token producing cards that have performed at competitive levels have given us between 2/2 and 3/3 power and toughness over two or three bodies for three mana. Blade Splicer, again, was 4/4 over two bodies... And as a result of being a creature rather than a sorcery or instant, had additional upside synergies. That said, it still required a particular context to find a foothold and relevance.

What does any of this have to do with Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand?

Synergy and Context.

This new artifact from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan is also kind of a weirdo. We don't play a lot of cards in this vein.

"Artifact that spits out creatures" ...

My initial thoughts went to Urabrask's Forge; which is a played in a very specific niche only. It's fine but answerable. It has some cool synergies with Goddric... But even when it's the centerpiece, few are writing home in excitement over Urabrask's Forge.

That's why I thought more about Blade Splicer to start. Thousand Moons Smithy is sort of its opposite.

The Floor on Thousand Moons Smithy

The worst version of Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand is, of course, a 2/2 Gnome Soldier. The Gnome Soldier is an artifact and the Legendary Artifact is an artifact, so if you glue them together: 2/2. If you have no other artifacts you get a four-mana brick and a 2/2 Artifact Creature. That is kind of awful on rate; but again, this is the floor.

Remember Restoration Angel buffing Blade Splicer? We can boost the value on this card considerably with synergies. The cheapest way is to do it for free!

There are, to my knowledge, no legal Artifact Lands in Standard; but imagine for a second that for all the compelling reasons this article gives us, that Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand becomes playable in Pioneer. Do we have some Artifact Lands there?

Of course we do! Karn has been rifling through our sideboard for them forever.

Treasure Vault is particularly compelling from my point of view; because it makes our Gnome Soldier bigger to start... And then when you have a ton of mana later in the game, you can give it a burst of additional power and toughness by cashing it in for Treasure tokens.

Now if we go to Modern, there are a bunch of Artifact Lands; many of which actually make White!

But all that might be too ambitious. Let's stick to Standard for a minute. Outside of Hostile Hostel // Creeping Inn, we're probably not going to get a lot of freebie power and toughness from our mana base. What about artifacts that we might just play?

Treasure Map // Treasure Cove was one of my favorite cards the last time we visited Ixalan. Adrian Sullivan used it to win a Grand Prix with a slow-ass Control deck, and I loved siding it in Mono-Red Beatdown decks. I hadn't yet formalized the concept of "Gear Two" but I knew that making my Red Deck capable of out-grinding other Red Decks was going to help me win FNM every week.

Treasure Map // Treasure Cove is a card a lot of decks are just going to be happy to play, and it will provide 1-3 artifacts for Gnome power!

White, in particular, can potentially add a ton of cards that are going to make your Golem bigger, that often come down before you cast Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand:

Even though some of these cards are not themselves artifacts, you might consider them because they make multiple artifacts.

I am actually super enamored with the concept of incremental size to the Gnome Soldier via some Mirrex help in the mid-game; or resetting the board with a giant White Sun's Twilight and then casting Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand. I mean at that point you might not need a big Gnome; but your next Gnome would probably block the opponent's follow up but good. It's not like any of your Phyrexian Mites could block.

If we were going to apply some reasonable creature-curves to Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand, we'd be much higher than the literal 2/2 floor on turn four.

The Gnome Soldier can easily be 5/5 or maybe even 6/6 the turn it comes down!

One of the things I really like about this card is that if we are going to open on a conventional creature curve, Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand gives us a backup plan even if we end up on the wrong side of a Wrath of God effect.

Flipping Barracks of the Thousand

It is kind of interesting to brainstorm about how to make the Gnome Soldier bigger, really just thinking about this card's front-of-cardboard. And I think that we did an okay job of brainstorming some Restoration Angel stand-ins from the synergy side.

But at the end of the day if that was all that was going on with Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand we'd be talking about a very slight upgrade to Keldon Warlord. And no one battled with Keldon Warlord even back in 1994 when I started.

But believe me, I tried.

Barracks of the Thousand - it's back-of-cardboard - is just wow.

Once you have flipped the Smithy into its Legendary Land version, you have an incredible source of power, toughness, width, and height. And height!

All that Blade Splicer talk was really to establish that there was something going on from the front; even if you didn't get the flip. But make no mistake: You're in it for the flip.

The Legendary Artifact side nominally gives you two artifacts; but you can't use either to flip a Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand, except in very unusual situations. You'll have to wait a turn because the flip trigger happens at the beginning of your precombat main phase (or before you'd actually be able to play it). In fact, you will have a high incentive to getting at least four other creatures and / or artifacts on the battlefield before you cast Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand because you won't be able to make more the next turn and also flip it. I have a feeling that this card went through some Hollywood-style "development hell" for fear of it being too good.

To wit: There is a slight time delay on getting Barracks of the Thousand.

I think that in the early game you will value tokens - whether artifact tokens or creature tokens - to accelerate the flip to Barracks of the Thousand. Mite tokens don't block, but they can help give you a Legendary Artifact Land. Treasures, Bloods, and Maps... MAPS! Are all going to serve you well. By the way, Treasures, Bloods, and Maps all grow the Gnome.

Did I say "Gnome"?

When we say that Barracks of the Thousand gives you both width and height, that's because you will plan to have multiple Gnome Soldiers. These Soldiers are going to go sideways with all the artifacts you cast, and all get bigger at the same time.

The bottom Gnome Soldier is a 2/2. But we're not in it for the bottom. We can't build for the bottom.

This is the same reason that Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand is probably not going to top the curve of a conventional White Weenie deck. I mean it might. Again, Gnome Soldier #1 can be pretty big the turn it comes down, and grows with the help of Adeline. However in order to get long-term value out of Barracks of the Thousand we need a Geist of Saint Traft to block. We need specific context.

Rather than being in a creature-rich curve deck, I'm imagining we just play a ton of artifacts.

I'm not sure what that context will be specifically because I haven't seen the full new set yet, but Standard to this point has given us some hints.

• Skrelv, Defector Mite is both a creature and an artifact (and a proven way to start our curve).
• Annex Sentry is a good blocker for its cost, and creature defense at the same time.
• Citizen's Crowbar and Courier's Briefcase both give us two "bodies" to buff the Gnome Soldier while accomplishing multiple roles.
• Lion's Sash has been waiting for its coming out party for over a year, and rewards us for playing heavy White.

In some ways all we care about is drawing any artifact at all in the mid-game; as Barracks of the Thousand will do all the rest of the work. But it will probably be nice to mix some more conventional card advantage in to that sequence (you can be sure Treasure Map // Treasure Cove will be in my early drafts) in order to make sure we keep drawing artifacts.

Pro Tip:

You can cast your next Thousand Moons Smithy with a Barracks of the Thousand, net two Gnome Soldiers and keep both permanents.

LOVE

MIKE

P.S.

Oh look! We have a "Blink" effect that comes down before Thousand Moons Smithy // Barracks of the Thousand at the color and cost of Geist of Saint Traft. Clearly these articles are just meant to write themselves.

LOVE

MIKE