Beyond being incredibly talented, Sydney is a staple of the Final Fantasy art community and designed these products with the fandom in mind
Casting big creatures also grows this, combating the general weakness of mana dorks becoming irrelevant later in the game
As far as costly steel options go, shes the one to grab
Aerial Extortionist Aerial Extortionist has always been high on my personal list ever since it was released in Streets of New Capenna
Your options are mostly to draw The Eternal Wanderer (where you'll keep phasing the Forge out, and hope they don't draw a second copy) or hope you can overwhelm them with Virtue of Loyalty
If youre leaning into her graveyard strategies with some self-mill, also chuck in things like Izoni, Thousand-Eyed to make lots more Insect tokens and Old Rutstein to reward all that milling youll be doing