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By: longtimegone, That Guy
Jul 21 2014 12:00pm
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It could be argued that Magic is, at its core, a game of interaction. A majority of decks seek to win via combat damage, and the attack step is an intrinsically interactive part of the game. You attack, and I get to block, maybe play a combat trick or some removal. There is a natural back and forth interactive flow that allows the game to unfold at a certain pace.

Combo decks want nothing to do with all that nonsense.

As a whole, combo decks are very non-interactive. They seek to win the game in a way that the opponent will have difficulty stopping using commonly available tools, and usually either all at once, or very quickly. If you don’t know what to look for and how to foil their plans, combo decks can run you over before you even get your game started.

To better illustrate some of the ways combo decks go about this, let’s start looking at some deck lists.

It stands to reason that if something is good, more of that thing is better. In fact, with enough of something, it doesn’t even matter if it’s good. But what is really “enough”?

How about an unlimited number?

The first two combo decks we will look at revolve around infinite combos, once they begin; they can be repeated as many times as needed to get the desired results. 

 

First up, Midnight Gond. 

This deck wants to assemble a 2 card combo. By enchanting a Midnight Guard with Presence of Gond, you create a card that taps to create a 1/1 and then untaps itself. The first obvious application is an army of 1/1s as big as you need to swing for lethal next turn, and that’s not a bad start. This deck also runs not one, not two, but three soul sister effects, with Essence Warden, Soul Warden, and Soul's Attendant all at 4x. This means that when you get your unlimited creatures, they come with the side effect of unlimited life. In addition to the combo, the deck also runs numerous token producing cards, which work with the various sisters to keep your life total climbing up while you try to assemble your combo.

 

Next, the deck formerly known as Familiar Storm. 

This is a deck that simply refuses to die. It lost not only its mana engine in Cloudpost, but also its ability to reset a game gone bad with Temporal Fissure. With two limbs down, it’s still more than capable of hopping over to bite your legs off.

The current path to extra mana is a combination of Sunscape Familiar and Nightscape Familiar, along with the bounce lands Azorius Chancery and Dimir Aqueduct. These, along with Snap and Cloud of Faeries allow for a significant amount of mana to be generated. The combo is somewhat elaborate, requiring Sage's Row Denizen in play, then casting Ghostly Flicker on Cloud of Faeries and either Mnemonic Wall or Archaeomancer. Once assembled, you can mill the other player out on the spot.


The other common form of Pauper combo deck is the deck that seeks to do something quickly that the opponent cannot handle. We have already looked at some of these decks in previous articles, in Burn and Kiln Fiend Combo. This next deck does this in a more all in fashion.

 

This deck has one real goal. Put Ulamog’s Crusher in to play on turn 2 and hope the opponent can’t kill it before it swings. On a really lucky draw, it’s doing this along with free haste thanks to Dragon Breath. As a backup plan, it can put crusher out on turn 3 after using Duress to clear out removal.

So, what is an ideal game for this deck? Turn one, Island, Careful Study. Discard Ulamog’s Crusher and Dragon Breath. Turn 2, Exhume, swing with crusher, watch opponent concede. If you aren’t lucky enough to draw this, the deck features lots of draw and filter to assemble the combo quickly, and Duress is in the main deck, so you can check to make sure the coast is clear before instigating shenanigans.

The charts look largely the same, with rogue decks making up the majority of the metagame in PCT, and a plurality in the 8 man meta. Right now, you are all but sure to run in to Delver, MBC, and Burn, with a reasonable chance to run in to Tron, but as about as often as not, you’ll be playing against a rogue.  

  

 


Finally, the winning deck from this week’s PCT: 

 

Here we see a personal favorite of mine again, UB Teachings control. Interesting about this week, it managed to beat out Burn to win. Historically, this has been a very difficult match for UB teachings. All your removal is a blank, and you can counter any spells you like, but eventually 7 get through. This deck has incorporated 3x Brindle Boar and a single Forest in the sideboard. Combined the 8x pauper fetches and Grim Harvest, this allows the deck to finally have an answer vs Burn. If you can slow them down a bit, you can eventually make the game unwinnable.

That’s it for this time. Join us next week, by which time I hope to have come up with a topic.

3 Comments

It looks like Obzen only runs by ScionOfJustice at Mon, 07/21/2014 - 19:05
ScionOfJustice's picture

It looks like Obzen only runs 6 fetches. It sucks that Careful study is $2.25 which is too much for me to drop on a common because getting a crusher in play turn two seems really fun.

Ah, good catch. It looks like by longtimegone at Mon, 07/21/2014 - 19:21
longtimegone's picture

Ah, good catch. It looks like he has cut 2 fetches since last week and I didn't notice.

If you like the exhume/crusher concept, there is a cheaper version that uses red instead of blue and Faithless Looting instead of Careful Study.

Here is a link:

http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/112989

I love how Faithless looting by ScionOfJustice at Tue, 07/22/2014 - 21:52
ScionOfJustice's picture

I love how Faithless looting is Careful Study plus. As time goes on, card power increases.