The Art of the Combo Warrior
Gerald Linn
“So it is
that good warriors take their stand on ground where they cannot lose, and do
not overlook conditions that make an opponent prone to defeat.” – Sun Tzu
An environment in magic is defined by its cards, the
creativity of the players, and the willingness to use the tactics given. As such, all magic environments are broken
down into three categories of decks that overlap their strategies with one
another. We have Control, which is a
counterspell or resource removal based deck, there is Beatdown, which is a
creature\damage based deck, and finally we have Combo, our focus for today.
Together we will be covering what combo is, what the types
of combos are with quick summaries of how they function, and most importantly how
you can develop and build a combo deck in any set.
PART 1: What is Combo???
“There are not more than five
primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in
combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.” –
Sun Tzu
Because combo decks can be divided into two parts, the combo
and the combo engine, I found it necessary to give two definitions that
encompass the two parts of a combo deck.
Combo: ~
1. A magic deck
whose primary win condition is based on the interaction of at least two cards
which by themselves may not constitute a victory, but combined yield a clear
and decisive victory in a single turn or series of repeating turns.
2. Any group of magic
cards that combined break the basic resource rules of magic allowing you achieve
victory in a single turn or series of repeating turns.
First definition – the combining of cards
This means that you combine two or more cards that by
themselves may or may not be of much power into a game winning play. Examples of this are donate and Illusions of
Grandeur, Cadaverous Bloom, Drain life, and cards in hand, and Replenish and
enchantments in the graveyard, etc, etc, etc.
Second definition – the combo engine
This means that a group of cards that you play breaks the
resource rules of magic allowing you to achieve victory with resources (cards,
mana, life) that would not normally be available. Examples of this are Salmon Snack with early harvest, far
wanderings, and other land acceleration, for large amounts of mana and
Illusions\donate with Necropotence for large amounts of cards.
For Reference -
The Resource rules of Magic:
1)
You draw one card per turn
2)
You play one land
3)
Each land produces one mana
4)
You have one of each phase
5)
You win when the opponent is at zero, has no card to draw, or
cannot continue play.
6)
Cards are played for their casting cost
You can see that many combo decks easily fit both
definitions. The point is that any
combo deck will first seek or enable a group of resources and then execute a
game defining turn or series of turns through the interaction of multiple cards.
There however are decks that we will not be discussing here
that do employ combos. These other decks
Combo-control and Aggro-Combo cover far too broad of a deck construction range
for us to properly cover and clearly define.
Instead we will be focusing on decks that use a singular defining turn
or series of turns that yield victory.
Therefore, before moving to the next section, we will not be
discussing decks where…
1)
The deck engine does not break one of the fundamental rules of
magic.
2)
The kill condition does not require the interaction of several
cards in order to achieve victory.
3)
The kill condition takes multiple turns and you are not the
only person taking turns.
Examples these non-combo decks with combos include
1)
Finkula,
a control deck, which utilizes the Ophidian, forbid combo.
2)
Braids,
another control deck, which uses the Braids and any creature it can sacrifice
combo.
3)
Mon’s
Goblin Sligh, a beatdown deck, which uses the combo of Goblin Lackey,
Goblin ringleader, and Goblin Recruiter.
4)
The Rock and his
Millions, another beatdown deck, which uses about every
card in combination to achieve
mana exceleration, creature removal, and to reduce
casting cost of its creature
spells.
PART 2: Types of Combo
or Identifying the Engine
“All warfare is based on
deception.” – Sun Tzu
So far we have defined combo decks as decks that combine
cards and break one or all of the Resource Rules of magic in a single play or series
of turns to achieve victory. In this
section we will look at the different types of combo’s, give examples of cards
that define these combo categories, and note representative decks of each combo
type.
Now, there are as many types of combo decks as there are
paths to victory and in order to get a better understanding of what makes a
combo deck function and more importantly how to spot future cards with combo
deck potential, I have categorized several noted combo decks into 4 basic combo
types which are based on the engines that generate their win condition. The reasoning behind this is that the engine
of a combo deck can be brought from environment to environment. The cards may change but the idea stays the
same. “Unfairly increase thy
resources.” We may not see another
donate\illusions in the newest card set, but we can identify each of the
following types of combo engines and determine if they are viable or not for
delivering a combo win.
* Note – As you look at each of these combo decks you will
notice that some of the engines overlap.
TYPE 1: Redundant Combo – You play the same card again
and again
These are combo decks that cast the same cards over and over
until victory is achieved. These decks
abuse the abilities of cards like Gaea’s blessing, Enduring Renewal, and Nostalgic
Dreams to recycle cards that have been previously discarded or cast. Deck examples of this combo group include:
Turbo
Land – This deck Cycles Time warp with Gaea’s blessing for infinite turns and
then achieving victory either with treetop village or morphling beatdown
Fruity
Pebbles – This deck Cycles a single zero casting cost creature over and
over in a single turn by utilizing Enduring renewal and Goblin bombardment to
deal infinite damage.
Sushi Snack
– This deck cycles Timestretch with nostalgic dreams for the free turns necessary
to mill your opponent to death with Ambassador Laquattas.
Note: To date I am
unable to think of any combo deck that has successfully abused repeating just
one of the phases in a turn. However,
relentless assault is still out there and hasn’t been broken. Perhaps WOTC will entertain us in the future
with other cards that grant additional phases to add to this group of combo
decks. HINT!
TYPE 2: Miser Combo – Playing cards at a reduced casting
cost
These are the power combos that allow players to pay less
then or none of the casting cost for their spells. Typically they revolve around getting a key artifact or
enchantment into play that reduces the casting cost of other spells, or
secondly spells that retrieve cards from out of play zones and put them into
play. Replenish, Alluren, Dream Halls,
Living Death, and Fluctuator are all cards representative of this combo
group. Deck examples of this combo
group include:
Alluren
Combo - This deck drops 3 casting
cost creatures into play for free, drawing cards from the Raven Familiar,
gaining infinite mana from the Wall of Roots, gaining infinite life from the
spike feeder, man o war, raven familiar combo, and decking your opponent with
the stroke of genius.
Replenish
- This deck used Attunement and Frantic
Search to search out for Replenish while putting the kill cards, IE the
enchantments into the graveyard. Then it casts Replenish to put the
enchantments back into play and stomp its opponents into the ground on the
following turn.
Call
of the Champions - Rarely would you consider a six, or eight mana casting
cost spell a useful card for reducing casting cost. However, with 18-24 casting cost of Champion coming out with
Twilight’s Call, it’s a bargain, considering it removes 18-24 life from your
opponent which usually finishes the game.
TYPE 3: Mana
Combo – Generating incredible amounts of mana and using it to cast your victory
condition
This combo type goes the opposite direction of Miser Combos
by generating incredible amounts of mana and then typically casting a single
spell to generate a win condition. Mana
Flare, Gauntlet of Might, Gaea’s Cradle, and Ashnod’s Alter are cards
representative of this combo group. Representative
decks of this combo classification are:
Academy
– Broken is the only word that accurately describes this combo deck. The combination focuses on putting out
artifacts and untapping land, specifically untapping the Tolarian Academy and
then using Stroke of Genius to deck your opponent.
Chimera
- This combo deck combined the cards
Fecundity, Saproling Cluster, and Ashnod's Alter to generate unlimited mana and
then use blaze or whetstone to get the win.
Salmon
Snack – Almost pulling a page from turboland’s playbook by putting land
into play as quickly as possible Salmon snack uses rampant growths, far
wanderings, fertile grounds, and Early Harvest to generate obscenely large
amounts of mana to deliver burn spells to the dome.
TYPE 4: Pony Combo – Victory is achieved by searching
through the deck and getting into play the combination of two or more cards or
a card that says I win.
This combo group is where you will find the alternate win
condition combo decks and the broken cards or broken card combos which generate
the one trick horse decks of magic. All of these decks have two things in
common, a draw engine or search cards to go find the immediate win condition,
and the cards that say You Win, lose 20 life, take 20 damage. Representative cards for this group include Vampiric
Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Intuition, and Necropotence, as well
as Coalition Victory, Illusions of Grandeur, and Battle of Wits. Representative decks in this group are:
Donate-Illusions
– Likely the most famous combo deck of all time, this deck revolves around
donating a twenty point life swing from illusions of grandeur and then wait for
you to try and maintain its upkeep or bounce back the illusions with capsize
ending your game. Donate may not say
you win, but its close enough. Key card
is necropotence for draw
Absolute
Tyranny – This deck revolves around the two card combination of puzzle box,
phyrexian tyranny. This deck uses its
engine to kill its opponent with the combo lock.
Battle
of Wits – The deck is so pronounced that the second you sit down across
from your opponent you know what’s coming.
250 cards are really hard to hide so surprise may not be a factor, but
you know the goal is to resolve Battle of Wits and if it sticks, it’s over. This deck uses more tutors then a NCAA
Collegiate Football Team.
Turbo
Land – Remember this deck? Not only
did it utilize the redundant aspect, but it also adds a play from the Portal
combo group by combing the redundancy of Gaea’s blessing with the card drawing
power of the Horns of greed, Gush, Scroll Rack, and Impulse to insure
redundancy would occur.
Now, reviewing the decks shown above you can
see that each of these decks contain cards that violate resource magic rules.
Whether this is by gaining extra turns, giving more mana, giving you an
automatic win, drawing additional cards, or letting you play cards for free. This should give you an idea of what cards
to look for in a set to create combos.
Let’s move on now to our next section. “Building a combo deck in Any Environment”
PART 3: Building
Combo in any Environment
“Therefore those who
skillfully move opponents make formations that opponents are sure to follow,
give what opponents are sure to take. They move opponents with the prospect of
gain, waiting for them in ambush” - Sun Tzu
We have defined
combo, identified combos and seen what types of cards make them function. This leads us up to the question that we
have been awaiting an answer to. “How
do I build a combo deck in any Environment?”
In this part of the discussion we will answer that question by example
through building a combo deck from the Odyssey block by
A.
Defining the Environment
B.
Identifying the potential combo engine pieces
C.
Defining a good combo
D.
Building the combo
A) Defining the
Environment
“According as circumstances
are favorable, one should modify one's plans.” - Sun Tzu
What makes a deck work in a format is what every Magic
writer attempts to convey. In order for
us to create a combo deck, we must first grasp onto what will probably define
the environment. Fortunately for us
most of the tier 1 decks have been discovered and played in Pro Tour Osaka or
through various grand prix qualifiers.
Those decks that haven’t will probably be defined by specific
cards. Given this knowledge we can
extract the metagame for a control deck.
It would appear there are five decks that we need concern ourselves with
Black control, Black\Blue Psychotog, and Green\blue madness, Quiet Roar, and
White Weenie.
Now we will take a look at the three steps of analyzing an
environment for a combo deck. When,
What, and How many? Combo decks first
concern is when will my opponent win or set up a win condition. We will assume that we are going to play no
creatures and have nothing to impede them from stomping us into the
ground. That way we can see how much of
the combo deck needs to be solutions and what percentage of the deck needs to
be set aside before they can eliminate us from the game.
In the mono black control deck our greatest concern is the
turn 5 mindsludge for 5 or the turn 2 Natuko Shade coming across on Turn 5 for
victory.
In the Black Blue Control deck we need to concern ourselves
with the Turn 6-9 upheaval. As this
will set us back to turn 1 and probably kill us from the head start.
The Green\Blue deck is capable of taking us down on turn 5
with a turn 2 mongrel, turn 3 arrogant, rootwalla, turn 4 attack and beat, and
turn 5 endgame.
And now there is quiet speculation, the much hyped change of
scenery. This deck promises to beat us
down on turn 6 with a turn 2 speculation, turn three catalyst stone deep
analysis, turn 4 roar, roar, and the provide beatings for 2 turns.
Finally, we have white weenie, which is capable of dropping
five 1/1’s by turn 3 and casting divine sacrament, thus ending the game on turn
4 with the uber draw.
We can see from these 5 decks that the environment is trying
to take us down on turn 5-6 with creature kill, and there is the possibility of
the White Weenie deck getting an incredible draw to kill us on turn 4. From a quick check on the cards in these
decks we can now analyze “what” is going to stop combo, and then of course, how
many of these cards we will need to plan for.
As all of the tier one decks are looking to win through creature
beatdown most of the decks are heavy on creature control, dedicating up to 12
slots for creature removal. Additionally,
we can see that 3 of the top eight decks at Osaka ran no countermagic and of
the remaining 5, four of them used 3 circular logics, with the fifth using 4
circular logics and 3 syncopates. We
can also count on several decks running a full contingent of envelopes as noted
from several Quiet spec deck listings. This information will be useful later on
when we are refining our combo decks.
Now that we have run an analysis of the environment we need
to take a look at what cards are present in an environment for us to create a
combo deck. This next section is by far the most important to the combo
warrior. Most combos are missed because
careful checks in an environment are never made and the interactions that make
combo broken are never found.
B) Identifying
your potential combo engine pieces
“Concentrate your energy and
hoard your strength. Keep your army continually on the move,
and devise unfathomable plans.” – Sun Tzu
To identify potential combo decks we should categorize block
cards into their best fit in the four categories of combo engines. I have separated the Pony combo cards into
the Search and I Win sections since it is very likely we will be using some of
the search cards for other combo engines.
Below I have sited cards from the Oddessey block and placed
them into their respective combo categories.
DISCLAIMERS:
1) Not all of these cards are of any quality for any
particular combo deck. When doing an
analysis of any block you should include all of the possible cards.
2) Flashback Cards - These cards are redundant, but they immediately
eliminate any potential for a third or continuing redundancy by virtue of
casting it with its flashback. Cards
like Recoup or call of the herd may prove to work themselves into a combo deck,
but by themselves cannot generate the degeneracy that would make them fit in
the redundancy combo group. Of course
WOTC had to print Krosan Restoration in Judgement to give me an exception here.
3) Note on Madness - Torment has the odd quirk of madness,
which essentially makes several cards reduction in casting cost through their
own discard qualify them the Miser Combo Card group. Much like the Odyssey expansion has cards that are self-redundant
through flashback. What differs with madness however is that all of the madness
cards can be brought back through recursion.
4) Inversion Combo Cards – These are cards that do the exact
opposite of any one of the four combo engine types. Several of these types of cards can be found in Judgment through
graveyard recursion for you opponent “The reverse gear in the combo engine of
redundancy” for example: Forcemage
Advocate. Now, sometimes looking to
cards that give the inverted effect in one of the four combo engines can often
provide an engine in of themselves. However
they will not be mentioned in this article because almost without exception
they are controling and not comboish.
Redundant Cards
A quick review – these
are cards that allow you to play spells again and again. A key identifier to cards in this group is
the text “return card to play\hand\library from …”
Odyssey
Anarchist, Scrivener,
Cartographer, Auramancer, Holistic Wisdom, Mirrari, Malevolent Awakening, Petrified
Field, Zombify
Torment
Anurid Scavenger, Gurzigoist, Ichorid, Nostalgic Dreams,
Restless Dreams, Reborn Hero
Judgment
Krosan Reclamation, Nomad Mythmaker
Miser Cards
These are cards that reduce the casting cost of spells.
Odyssey
Catalyst Stone, Mirrari, Verdant Succession, Zoologist
Torment
Arrogant Worm, Basking Rootwalla, Circular Logic, Fiery
Temper, Cleansing Meditation, Violent Eruption, Chainer Demetia Master, Dawn of
the Dead, Radiate
Judgment
Balthor the Defiled, Hunting Grounds
Mana Cards
These are the cards that allow you to play more land then
the standard 1 per turn or provide you with extra mana.
Odyssey
Charmed Pendant, Deserted
Temple, Diligent Farmhand, Deep Reconnaissance, Milliken, Nantuko Elder, New
Frontiers
Torment
Cabal Coffers, Cabal Ritual, Far Wanderings
Judgment
Mirrari’s Wake, Krosan Verge
Search Cards
These cards say search, get, put into play, or draw X cards
*Note – I won’t be mentioning all the cantrips.
Odyssey
Buried Alive, Cephalid Broker, Cephalid Coliseum, Cephalid
Looter, Concentrate, Cephalid Scout,
Diabolic Tutor, Gravestorm, Laquatus’s Creativity, Pendantic Learning, Peek,
Predict, Shadowmage Infiltrator, Skeletal Scrying, Standstill, Tainted Pact,
Think Tank, Unifying Theory, Words of Wisdom
Torment
Breakthrough, Obsessive Search, Compulsion, Deep Analysis,
False Memories, Insidious Dreams, Plagiarize
Judgment
Browbeat, Burning Wish, Cunning wish, Living Wish, Golden
Wish, Death Wish
Quiet Speculation, Hapless Researcher, Flash of Insight
I WIN
These cards like Illusion of Grandeur and Coalition Victory,
say I win or automatically create a win condition. Look for “you lose or win if” to identify these cards.
Odyssey
Battle of Wits, Chance Encounter
Torment
Mortal Combat
Judgment
Epic Struggle, Test of Endurance
C) Good Combo\Bad
Combo – Is this a good combo?
“The clever combatant looks
to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much
from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men
and utilize combined energy.” – Sun Tzu
It might seem odd
that I would show you how to criticize good or bad card interaction before even
building a combo deck, but I am a believer in putting you on the right path
before I tell you to run. What we will
be covering in this section is mathematical probabilities for combo decks,
using tutor cards to increase probability, and card drawing to increase
probability.
Before we go any further with design, we need to look at the
environment that we are playing combo in and ask the question “Will I still be
alive to play turn X?, and how many pieces of a combo can I draw before I run
out of turns.” This is a question you
need to ask for any combo. You might
have a combo that wins on turn 7 100% of the time, but if every other deck in
the environment can kill you on turn 6, 80% of the time, then the combo is
either in need of help from other cards to get you to turn 7, or the combo is
worthless.
Here is where we will take a unique path in deck design. We
know that with any combo deck we need to win by turn x, where turn x is the
turn we get overrun by our opponent. So what is the mathematical probability of
a combo succeeding on a given turn?
The easiest way that we can determine when our combo can go
off is through the use of a hyper geometric distribution. (Half of the audience suddenly flees to a
new article)
For those of you sticking it out, Microsoft Excel happens to
have this equation readily available for all you number crunchers out
there. The function in Excel is
HYPGEOMDIST
= (x, n, M, N)
Where the
equation is
H = 
With the
variables being
x
= sample_s (the number of the
particular card you want to see)
n = number_sample (the number of cards that you have drawn)
M = population_s (the total number of the card you are looking
for in the deck)
N = number_population (The deck size)
Now if we were looking to draw a single card in the first 5
turns the notation, where four of it were present in a sixty card deck. The function would look like this in Excel
=HYPGEOMDIST(1,12,4,60)
This results in 0.42563 or a 42.6
percent chance that we would draw that card in the first five turns.
*Note: Cards like Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, and
Academy Rector completely change the percentage chance of cards entering play
because they change the likelihood of drawing that card.
Now the Hyper geometric distribution function in Excel is
great for determining the percentage chance that we will be able to draw any
one type of card in a deck, however we need to determine the percentage chance
that two, three, or more cards will be drawn by a specific turn.
Fortunately Michael Moore has already created a program that
uses hyper geometric distributions and provides the percentages of drawing a
particular card or card combo and has been kind enough to allow us to reference
his Deck-u-lator program located at http://www.implair.com/deckulator/deckulator.html.
Given open access to deckulator we now have a means of
determining the percentage chance of drawing into a given card by turn X. This means we can get an approximate likelihood
for when we will draw into a card combo.
A quick example – Using the Deck-u-lator
Quiet roar – going first
Turn 1 Careful Study probability
- 40% chance of
playing careful study on turn 1
Turn 2 Catalyst Stone or Quiet speculation probability
- 63% chance of playing it with no cards to help draw
- 77% chance if careful study was played turn 1
Turn 3 Catalyst Stone probability
- 49% chance of playing it with no cards to help draw
- 57% chance if careful study was played turn 1
- 67% chance if careful study was played turn 1 and quiet
speculation was played turn 2
You can see clearly from these percentages as to why Quiet
roars has Wurms flying everywhere in the OBC block. Consistency is the signature of a successful deck.
Therefore getting back to the point of good combo bad combo,
we know we need to beat quiet roar before they get to turn 6.
What kind of percentage are we going to need to have for
drawing the cards to necessary to make the combo happen? This is where things get subjective, and I
apologize. My theory has been that if a
combo deck cannot yield a 66% consistency then it needs to be improved upon
until either the consistency can be met or exceeded.
We will use the Deck-ul-ator to determine the percentage
chance that we will have the cards in hand for a combo going off Going to Deck-u-lator lets say that we have
a 3 card combo in a sixty card deck. So
we put in four of each card with no specific mana requirements and have us draw
12 cards. In other words we went 1st
and have drawn 5 cards so this is our sixth turn.
Deck-u-lator results = 20%
That’s definitely not good.
Once in 5 times we are golden.
How about a 2 card combo going off on card 12?
Deck-u-lator results = 35%
Better, but nowhere near the suggested 66% likelihood of
combo success.
Tutors – MAKIN’ COPIES to get to your combo
Tutors are those cards which effectively increase the number
of a card that you are looking for in any given deck. This has been by far the most effective way for increasing the
consistency of any given combo, excluding necropotence cards. Let’s look back at our two and three card
combos. Now Deck-u-lator doesn’t have a
tutor option but we can approximate it by simply dividing the number of tutors
among the cards that we are looking for.
For example in the two card combo if we add 4 tutors for
practical purposes we get 6 of each card in Deck-u-lator and find that we only
need to get to *15 cards, or turn 8, to make the combo work. If we add another 2 tutors to the deck we
can get a 65% chance of the cards to go off on turn 5 or by the time we draw
*12 cards. This is acceptable.
* Some tutors require you to put the card on top of the
library requiring an extra draw.
What about the 3 card combo???
Let’s take a look at the 3 card combo by running it through
the Deck-u-lator. With no tutors we are
at a 20% chance of the combo going off on card 12. With one set of 4 tutors (Card count 5,5,6), we go to a 33%
chance of the combo going off on card 12.
With two sets of tutors (Card count 6,7,7) we go to a 47% chance of
going off on card 12. In this last case
we need to go to a third set of tutors (Card Count 8,8,8) just to get to a 60%
chance that we will go off on card twelve.
At a cost of 24 cards in the deck to provide a reliable
combo we see that a three card combo has to be incredible, where a two card
combo requires a mere 12 cards and can allow us to supplement it with some
defense to make sure the combo goes off.
This shows us what kind of commitment we will need to provide in a combo
deck in order to make it function in any environment.
Drawing Cards – Taking extra turns to get to your combo
Ignoring tutors, the other solution for getting to the combo
is to draw more cards each turn in order to get the combo to go off. In the 3 card combo we need to get to 24
cards (Turn 17) to get at least a 66% chance and in the 2 card case we need to
get to 20 cards (Turn 13).
We start off at 12 cards, 7 plus the 5 draws, and we need to
get to respectively 20 and 24. To find
a solution for this we divide the number of turns before the turn that the
combo goes off by the number of cards that we need to draw up to. In the 3 card
combo case we need to draw 12 cards over 5 turns or 2.4 cards per turn and in
the case of the 2 card combo we need to draw 1.6 cards per turn over 5
turns. (See why impulse was so broke?)
To make this solution work we will need to then check the
environment that we are playing in for cards that will let us draw the needed
number of cards in order to succeed by the turn we require.
An example of a solution for these two combos would be
-
Turn 1 careful study, (2 cards)
-
Turn 2 Deep Analysis or Words of Wisdom (2 cards)
-
Turn 3 Hapless researcher, Flash of insight from the graveyard
(1 card for hapless, 3 - 5 for the
flash “careful study drops 1-2 blue cards into the graveyard”) total extra
cards drawn = 8-10 The two card combo
can go off
-
Turn 4 Concentrate (3 cards) total cards = 23-25 so close, but
possibly 1 card off.
As you can see we have 2 turns to set up our 2 card combo
but we are very harried to get our 3 card combo to go off, especially with at
best 5 mana available.
The extra time we have available, and the much higher
consistency in the two card combo totally dwarf the 3 card combo’s
capabilities. This all gets back to the purpose of this section. Is this a Good or Bad combo? We can see in both the tutor and the card
drawing solutions that 2 card combinations are about as risky as we want to get
without dedicating ½ of the deck to drawing or tutor cards in order to get the
combo.
Knowing this last critical bit of information on tutors and
draw cards in combo deck construction along with the prior information on combo
engine types and identification of combo cards is almost everything you will
need in order to build a combo deck in any environment and could be the end of
this article for just about anyone looking at the new Onslaught block, but what
is good theory without proof? (Expletive about bad deck theory articles with no
empirical evidence deleted)
D) BUILDING THY
COMBO!!!
“He wins his battles by
making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the
certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is
already defeated.” – Sun Tzu
Welcome to our final section where we apply all of this
knowledge and build a combo deck. We
will break the deck building down into five sections. The engine selection, The win condition, The engine cards, Tutor
or draw, and Delaying the game for the Win.
Engine Selection
“In order to carry out an
attack, we must have means available.” – Sun Tzu
Our first decision needs to be which Combo Engine we will
use Pony, Mana, Miser, or Redundant. OBC has cards available for all of these
combo engines, so to simplify the process I am going to select the Mana combo
engine due to the abundance of reasonable mana accelerators in OBC and the
author’s desire to give you a quality deck.
The card selection principles and deck building analysis
would be the same if we had chosen any of the other combo engines.
The Win Condition –
Selecting your path to Victory
“Knowing the place and the
time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest
distances in order to fight.” – Sun Tzu
To fit with the Mana Combo engine we will be generating
silly amounts of mana and cast an X casting cost kill condition or a recursive spell
repeatedly for the win. Unfortunately, Odyssey
block has offered us as many good X spells as there are good Homelands
cards. Our first question then is what
do I want to cast for the win?
First we have the cunning, Ambassador Laquatus. This card is one of the very few in OD block
that will allow you to win in a single turn with X amount of mana. However, for
those of you thinking ahead we will need up to 48 mana after casting the
Ambassador in order pull the win. That
is way too much mana in order to go off on Turn 5-6.
Secondly we have Flaming Gambit, another X spell, but it
only deals conditional damage, so this may be lacking in effectiveness as most
players are playing a huge number of creatures and very little control.
Finally, we have my choice speedy, flaming kitties. This card is one of the very few in OD block
that will allow you to win in a single turn with X amount of mana. We will need 22 mana in order to generate
our 20 points of damage. Therefore our
secret win ingredient for today will be kitten. On to our next section…
The Engine Cards
With a win condition and card selected we can now go about
building the mana acceleration engine around it. Doing a quick review of the Odyssey cards we can narrow down the
most effective mana accelerators to the following.
|
Card Name
|
Advantage
|
Disadvantage
|
|
Diligent Farmhand
|
One casting cost
|
Can be removed by innocent blood and chainers edict which
are very common in OBC
|
|
Milliken
|
Two Casting Cost
|
Can be removed by innocent blood and chainer’s edict which
are very common in OBC and thereby never generate the mana we so desperately
want. Say goodbye to Mr. Milliken.
|
|
Krosan Verge
|
Can’t be countered
|
Two Words - Rancid Earth
|
|
Far Wanderings
|
3 land a turn is game breaking
|
It’s a sorcery and easily countered by envelop
|
|
Mirrari’s Wake
|
There isn’t much enchantment removal in OBC and it doubles
the power of our win condition.
|
Its 5 mana to play
|
We should look at these cards and see what an Ideal win
would be using the four Mana acceleration cards and then casting the kittens.
Turn 1: Diligent farmhand, or Krosan Verge
Turn 2: Play a Land or Sac the Farmhand after blocking,
(Provided it lived this long)
Turn 3: Sac the Krosan Verge, play a farmhand and sac it, or
play a far wanderings.
Turn 4: Play the Mirrari’s Wake
Turn 5: Play a land and Kill with Kittens.
Yes, there it is the ferocious little beasties go off and
tear your opponent into yarn on turn 5, and as a bonus we can create a dumb
list of the deck to date
4 Mirrari’s Wake
4 Diligent Farmhands
4 Far Wanderings
4 Krosan Verge
4 Firecat Blitz
23 other land to guarantee a 72% chance that I will put 5
into play by turn six (Using Deckulator) other then from the mana acceleration
from the Farmhands, Wanderings, or the Verge.
That’s all but 17 of the cards for the deck. What we will need from here is to have some
ways to protect that combo and to insure that we draw the kitties and play the
Wake to get through for 20. First let’s
try to assert that we will find the combo.
Tutor or draw?
“What the ancients called a
clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning
with ease.”
Our third section on building the Kitty combo deck looks at
whether we should use tutors, card drawing or a combination of the two to get
to our combo.
Let’s look at our tutor options in the colors. We have Burning Wish, Living Wish, and
Golden Wish. Unfortunately in the
colors we are currently playing, none of these wishes gives us the option of
getting either an enchantment or sorcery for us.
While the Burning wish will allow us to go get one of the
Firecat blitzes in the sideboard this would reduce us to three in the deck and
four wishes. The same could be said for
Golden wish. This would leave us with
effectively 7 of each card in the deck and give us a 67% chance (Deckulator) of
getting the combo off, however it is probably not going to be until turn 6-7
due to the delay from casting the wishes.
Let’s take a look at the draw option and see if things
improve.
In the colors we are playing (G, R, W) there is exactly one
reasonable draw spell, Browbeat. This
pretty much kills the Draw option to speed up our deck if we stick to the
primary colors. So what we may have to do is go to another color to draw cards
and there is no better color for drawing cards, than blue.
If we added blue we know that we will need to draw 7-8 cards
(We need 20 and start with the opening hand of seven + drawing a card per turn)
in order to get a 66% chance of pulling off our combo. Looking at our combo we also know that we
need to spend at least one turn before playing Mirrari’s Wake to play a farmer,
a Krosan Verge, or a Far Wanderings. That
gives us 3 turns to draw the 7-8 additional cards. This easily narrows down the qualifying blue draw cards to the
multiple card drawers. Doing the same
Ben Franklin Table that we did for the Mana Engine cards
|
Card Name
|
Advantage
|
Disadvantage
|
|
Standstill
|
draw 3 cards
|
It’s a conditional draw
|
|
Concentrate
|
Draw 3 Cards
|
Two blue in its casting cost
|
|
Deep Analysis
|
Draw 2 Cards and draw 2 more later
|
3 life on the flashback
|
|
Breakthrough
|
Draw 4 cards
|
Discard the cards you couldn’t pay the mana for
|
|
Compulsion
|
Repetitive use
|
It costs us a turn to play and it doesn’t gain any cards
for us.
|
|
Careful Study
|
Low casting cost to draw two cards
|
We have to discard two cards with it.
|
|
Words of Wisdom
|
Low casting cost to draw two cards and an instant
|
My Opponent gets to draw a card
|
|
Quiet Speculation
|
Two casting cost spell gets us flashback cards into the
graveyard
|
Virtual card drawing, while not actually giving us 3 cards
it is preventing us from drawing those cards.
|
We can eliminate standstill as a conditional draw and we can
further take out Concentrate because of its double casting cost which could
leave us with a dead card in hand because with a four color deck it is easy to
be mana hosed. This leaves Deep
Analysis, Breakthrough, Careful Study, Compulsion, and Words of Wisdom.
Looking back at our perfect hand we see can effectively cast
spells on turns 1, 2, or 3 depending on whether we drew a farmer or a Krosan
Verge. Turn 4 is of course the turn we
cast Mirrari’s wake, and turn 5 is the Victory lap.
Looking at the availability of mana we can eliminate
Breakthrough at this point because at best we can hold onto 2 cards and thereby
we won’t be able to put land into play and hold onto the Mirrari’s wake due to breakthrough’s
discard requirement.
Next there is Compulsion.
Now this card would be awesome with the Wake in play. It will help us find our combo pieces and
thereby help to guarantee the win. However,
that’s with the Wake already in play so we should sidestep this card as far
card drawing is concerned for the first five turns. Knowing that we want this
card after wake is in play though we should include 3 of it so that we have it
ready to go once the wake is in play.
With the wishes this brings our deck to the following listing.
4 Mirrari’s Wake
4 Diligent Farmhands
4 Far Wanderings
3 Firecat Blitz
4 Burning Wish
3 Compulsion
4 Krosan Verge
23 other land to guarantee a 72% chance that I will put 5
into play by turn six (Using Deckulator) other then from the mana acceleration
from the Farmhands, Wanderings, or the Verge.
Sideboard
1 Firecat Blitz
That leaves us with Deep analysis, Careful Study, Quiet
Speculation, and Words of Wisdom. Careful
study interacts very well with deep analysis, and Words of Wisdom acts is an
instant draw spell. But, even if I had
an opening hand of Careful study, Words of Wisdom and Deep analysis, I would
still not get to the needed 7-8 cards and be able to cast the Mirrari’s Wake on
turn 4 to have a 66% chance of the combo going off on turn 5.
It looks like the draw option is not going to fill the bill
for getting my combo off on turn 5 with any guarantee so I am better off going
with the ERRK!!!!! Golden Wish and taking some delay of game spells like
Moment’s peace, Kitar’s Wrath, Aether Burst, Timestretch, Circular logic,
Envelop, and Syncopate in order to survive the necessary 2 turns to get off the
combo.
This leaves us with the following build
3 Mirrari’s Wake
4 Diligent Farmhands
4 Far Wanderings
3 Firecat Blitz
4 Burning Wish
4 Golden Wish
3 Compulsion
4 Krosan Verge
23 other land to guarantee a 72% chance that I will put 5
into play by turn six (Using Deckulator) other then from the mana acceleration
from the Farmhands, Wanderings, or the Verge.
Sideboard
1 Firecat Blitz
1 Mirrari’s Wake
And now we move to our last section
Delaying the game
for the Win
“To secure ourselves against
defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating
the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
When delaying the game in a combo deck you want to draw cast
spells that will eliminate or nullify your opponent’s threats. In the OBC environment those threats in the
early turns are creatures.
The two best cards for eliminating threats in our colors are
Kitar’s Wrath and Moment’s Peace. Wrath will eliminate a lot of the offense
from our opponents and give us the necessary time to survive, where Moment’s
peace will buy us potentially two turns to find the combo.
This would leave us with the following undiluted combo deck.
3 Mirrari’s Wake
4 Diligent Farmhands
4 Far Wanderings
3 Firecat Blitz
4 Burning Wish
4 Golden Wish
3 Compulsion
4 Krosan Verge
4 Kitar’s Wrath
4 Moment’s Peace
23 other land to guarantee a 72% chance that I will put 5
into play by turn six (Using Deckulator) other then from the mana acceleration
from the Farmhands, Wanderings, or the Verge.
Sideboard
1 Firecat Blitz
1 Mirrari’s Wake
We should keep some alternative delay of game cards in mind
for the sideboard, like syncopate, circular logic, Aether Burst, and Envelop.
But before we go on to editing the sideboard we should do a bit of deck
refining.
While I won’t go into the details of making the mana base, I
feel enough deck strategists have covered this thoroughly, we need to isolate
the combo cards and then make the mana curve in the deck efficient while adding
the delay of game cards.
Currently our Mana curve stands as such
1cc – 8 Cards effectively (Diligent Farmhand, Krosan Verge)
2cc – 15 Cards Effectively (Sac the Diligent Farmhand,
Burning Wish, Compulsion, and Moments Peace)
3cc – 8 Cards Effectively (Sac the Krosan Verge, Far Wanderings)
4cc – Nothing
5cc – 7 Cards (Golden Wish, Mirrari’s Wake)
6cc – 4 Cards (Kitar’s Wrath)
7cc and Above – 3 Firecat Blitz
Now looking at this deck from a long history of mulligan
experience I can tell you that we have too many high casting cost spells and
too many 2cc casting cost spells. To
even out the deck we should try to smooth it out a little in the 3cc or 4cc
casting cost area. We don’t want to
touch any of the combo pieces as it would affect the consistency of the deck so
the recommendation comes down to changing out the kitar’s wrath to the
sideboard where we can fetch it with a burning wish as necessary and replacing
it with another single defense card, Syncopate. A second one of these would be highly desirable as well so in the
final version I am going to pull out one of the far wanderings and send it to
the sideboard as well in favor of another Syncopate.
This would give us our final build minus the sideboard (I
have liberally added in the current mana base I am using)
3 Mirrari’s Wake
4 Diligent Farmhands
3 Far Wanderings
3 Firecat Blitz
4 Burning Wish
4 Golden Wish
3 Compulsion
3 Kitar’s Wrath
4 Moment’s Peace
2 Syncopate
4 Krosan Verge
2 Skycloud Expanse
3 Sungrass Prairie
1 Mossfire Valley
3 Mountains
5 Forest
4 Plains
3 Islands
Sideboard
1 Firecat Blitz
1 Mirrari’s Wake
1 Kitar’s Wrath
1 Far Wandering
AND there you have it, a combo deck for the OBC environment. I have left 11 cards open in the sideboard
as the environment in your particular location will greatly influence your card
choices. I will suggest a few options
for you though. Timestretch, Holistic
Wisdom, Bearscape, Price of Glory, Still Life, Crush of Wurms, and finally the
Sphere’s of grace and duty.
Go forth then and use this knowledge to defeat your opponents,
crushing them round upon round and remember “To fight and conquer in all your
battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the
enemy's resistance without fighting.”- (Sun Tzu)
Until, my next article may you draw Aggravated Assault and
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa for your infinite mana combo.
*A special thanks to Coyote Games, the Seven Samurai, and
Sun Tzu for providing all the knowledge necessary to win.
