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Main » Articles » 100 Combo Decks, Part 4

100 Combo Decks, Part 4

Abe Sargent
Posted on February 14, 2012
 Reddit

Hello, Nation! Magic is awesome. Building decks is also awesome. Since I adore building decks, I began this crazy project to create one hundred decks in real life in just twenty weeks. Every so often, I check in to show the decks I’ve built and discuss them. Today, we are going to look at ten more combo decks I’ve built.

Are you ready for the deck apocalypse? I guess we’ll find out . . .

Deck 21 – Desiring a Victory

"Desiring a Victory"

This deck would have been so much better if I had more than one copy of High Tide sitting around. Ah, well. This deck wants to build a large storm count and play Mind's Desire. Then, those free spells should pump up the count more and more. Eventually, you’ll have enough to kill with a Brain Freeze by milling someone’s whole deck.

I looked for Tendrils of Agony to use as my kill, but I couldn’t find any, so they didn’t go in. I also only had one High Tide, so I looked in a different direction. Lotus Bloom is great as a first-turn suspend because it comes online on turn four and adds 1 to the storm count. I can play a land and I have 7 mana already—without adding Lotus Petals or anything. I can add a storm count of 1 by paying 2 life for Gitaxian Probe, and it doesn’t even use mana (plus, it replaces itself, so it’s perfect). I have some cheap 1-mana cards to add to my storm count or dig for cards. Brainstorm is a must in this deck because I can load my deck with good cards to reveal with a Mind's Desire. I’d rather have spells than lands, so I might Brainstorm, keep the lands, add two good spells, then Mind's Desire to try to increase my spell drawing. I hope to reveal another Mind's Desire off the first . . . or two Brain Freezes can kill quickly as well.

I played this deck a few days ago. I suspend Lotus Bloom and played Opt and Ponder on the first few turns to acquire the right cards. Then, I played a Lotus Petal, Gitaxian Probe, Brainstorm and put a Concentrate and Snap back into the deck (there were no creatures to target with it at that moment), and we played Mind's Desire with a count of 5. I shuffled for each card and revealed a Sol Ring, an Island, a Mystical Tutor, a Ponder, and a Turnabout. I played the Turnabout and untapped my lands, played the Tutor, putting another Desire on top of my library, then played Ponder to draw it. Then, I played the Sol Ring, sacrificed the Petal, tapped the Ring, and hard cast Desire, now with ten cards, and I won easily from that point. The deck just goes off with regularity, but it can be stymied by the wrong cards, which is also fun.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the deck:

 

Deck 22 - Frozen Mana

"Frozen Mana"

This deck was built around Mind Whip. This is a great card from long ago that few are familiar with. A lots of cards were printed in that era that forced someone to pay an upkeep for a creature or sometimes another permanent. If you could not pay for it, most simply tapped the creature or destroyed the card. Mind Whip was among the few that didn’t just do that. You play Mind Whip on an opposing creature. If its controller can’t pay the 3 mana (or he chooses not to), not only does the creature tap, but the controller takes 2 damage. It both removed the creature as a threat and started to win the game.

Errant Minion was similar because it also required a payment, but failure to do so just forced your foe to take damage. He could swing with the creature if he wanted, so it was not a form of removal. I included it because I wanted so many payments that people would be unable to keep their things in play.

Joining this was Paralyze, an Aura from the original set. It taps the creature and gives a 4-mana tax to untap it each upkeep. It’s another card that forces your foe to pay mana for his creatures. Propaganda then jumps in. Can you pay 2 mana to attack me with each creature? I guess we’ll find out.

The six Rishadan creatures force an opponent to sacrifice a permanent of his choice unless he spends the required mana. Since he is likely to be untapped anyway, I thought this would play nicely in the deck. We also have the blue Wrath of God in the deck. You didn’t know that blue had a common Wrath of God? Say, “Hello,” to Fade Away. You have a small number of creatures, and you know it’s coming, so you can pay the mana for your guys. If your foe cannot do the same, a lot of creatures are about to die. It does not work super-well with the Auras, because the opponent loses the creature, so the Aura that’s killing him goes as well. I only included two, and I expect to use it when my foes are breaking out of their shells and are about to turn the tables on me.

Finally, we have a few more taxing effects. The powerful Rhystic Study forces my opponent to spend 1 mana to prevent me from drawing a card when I play any spell. Can you? Mystic Remora forces him to pay 4 mana for non-creatures to prevent my card-drawing, but the cumulative upkeep means that I can only keep it around for a few turns. Withdraw is a nice bounce spell, but if your foe doesn’t tap mana, you can bounce two creatures for just uu. That’s a powerful amount of tempo against a foe. I also added some Spiketail Hatchlings to add to the creature count while also providing a Force Spike on the table in case something particularly nasty is about to be played. As an adjunct to the deck, in went a pair of Winter Orbs. They are going to shut down your foes.

The combination of these upkeep cards, taxing cards, Force Spike, Rhystic cards, and WOrbs makes this a deck that is very tough on the mana. Only a deck prepared to destroy artifacts and enchantments en masse—or a creatureless deck—has a shot against it. If you have creatures, this combo deck will take you out. Would you like to see a pic of the deck?

 

Deck 23 – The Furnace of Ogres

"The Furnace of Ogres"

This deck ideally wants to sacrifice an artifact to Barrage Ogre, triggering a Furnace Celebration, and you deal 4 damage to someone’s face. You can also send the damage to creatures to keep yourself alive. The sacrifice to the Barrage Ogre is a simple tap, so you still have a lot of mana available to do other things. The deck has twenty-four artifacts in it, including four artifact lands. Sixteen of these are great fodder for your engine because they have triggers when they die. You can squeeze out some extra damage, another 1/1 artifact dork, a basic land from your deck into your hand, or draw a card. That’s a lot of extra value from the sacrificial minions.

I really like Ogre Geargrabber here. You can attack with it and steal an opposing Equipment for a turn. It equips your Ogre, and you’ve got a bigger body. After you hit, you can sacrifice it to your Barrage Ogre before the turn ends, and you had both the value of the opponent’s Equipment for a turn and the value of destroying it to your engine. The rest of the cards have synergy with the deck. With so many artifacts dying, your graveyard should be pretty well stocked. That means Slag Fiend is a 1-drop that’s at least in the 4/4 or 5/5 range—and perhaps bigger. Similarly, Scrapyard Salvo will dole out a lot of damage, and it could easily be the death knell against a foe.

The first deck is a go-off combo deck that tries to win on the turn the combo begins. The second is a tempo/combo deck that tries to prevent a few from doing anything while it wins. This is more like a fun little combo. You are not going to win every game you play with this—it’s just for fun. All of your core cards are fragile, and one creature-removal spell on a Barrage Ogre will call it. It’s fun to play, but it’s not consistent. On the other hand, it has twenty creatures. In this metagame of one hundred combo decks, the deck with most creatures sometimes just wins. Deck is here:

 

Deck 24 – I Cloak for Kids

"I Cloak for Kids"

The title of this deck is a play on the “I Brake for Kids” bumper sticker. I saw four Blinding Angels in my deck stock and thought about how I could build a deck around them. At first, I was being all clunky with tapping down flying blockers and stuff, and then I just realized I could make the deck a lot easier with Whispersilk Cloak. It does everything I need the deck to do. I even tossed in a pair of Trailblazer's Boots for some built-in redundancy.

I added some other creatures that want to attack and hit a foe. I knew I wanted Hypnotic Specters, but I could only find two. I included a few other Specters to round things out. The Paladin was a random one-of I came across and tossed in. I wanted as many Cabal Executioners as I had, but that was a mighty one. I was also missing the good black Ninjas with the hit-a-foe abilities. My favorite creature from this list was Emissary of Despair. In a metagame with a lot of artifacts running around, it can often hit for 5 or 6 damage (or more) total. It’s a death machine of love and daisies.

After I had that core of my deck, I included some defensive creatures. I wanted to be able to set up. Once a Blinding Angel starts swinging at you, you can’t win in the combat phase. A Cloaked Angel was untouchable by targeted removal. Once I had rounded my deck with defensive creatures and a pair of Gravediggers to bring back important creatures, I just included Doom Blades and Solemn Offerings. The result is an aggro/combo deck that wants to hit you with these saboteur creatures again and again, and here it is.

 

Deck 25 – Will the Last Counter Please Turn out the Lights?

"Will the Last Counter Please Turn out the Lights?"

This deck wants to use and abuse Forgotten Ancient to make a bunch of counters and hop them to other creatures. It feels like a scattered decklist because I didn’t have a lot of four-ofs of the main cards, and I had to improvise. My initial idea was to rock creatures like Spike Weaver, Spike Feeder, Simic Basilisk, Fertilid, and Canopy Crawler to add a bunch of counters from Big Daddy (aka Forgotten Ancient).

Then, I came across Joraga Warcaller, and my deck mutated into a different one. Not only was it a card that wanted +1/+1 counters, but it also pumped up a ton of Elves. In went Elves. Llanowar Elves and Priest of Titania got the call because they made my mana. Jagged-Scar Archers was next, but I only had one. It’s perfect here, though. And speaking of Perfect, I found just one Imperious Perfect as well. In went Viridian Shaman for more Elves and artifact removal.

As I looked over my creatures, I saw how many creatures had tap abilities, so I grabbed my only Seedborn Muse and a pair of Quest for Renewal. Now I can untap my guys and use them again and again. I knew that I needed some outlets for my mana creatures, so in went a single Elvish Fury to buyback with extra mana and make counters for my Ancient. Contagion Clasp can tap by spending 4 mana to proliferate, which is crazy good here.

After I had built all of that, my deck was complete, and I shuffled and began to play it. It plays like many combo decks—it takes a bit to build up steam, but then it does, and it takes off and goes, “Blar!” Anyway, the deck is hither—for your perusal:

 

Deck 26 – Wild Research on the Brain

"Wild Research on the Brain"

This U/R boy is built around the powerful combination of Wild Research and Kindle and/or Accumulated Knowledge. Here’s ideally how it works. Search your library for Accumulated Knowledge. Did you discard it accidentally? If so, search for another, and this time, it will draw you one more card. Keep it up until you’ve tutored for all four copies of the card and drawn a chunk of change. You can Call to Mind or Past in Flames that fourth Accumulated Knowledge to draw four more cards. It’s good stuff.

The same combo applies to Kindle. It deals 2 damage plus the number of Kindles in your graveyard, making it deal up to 5 damage as you tutor for more and more. I included a lot of cards that are okay with being discarded to Wild Research’s effect. Think Twice is happy to be flashed back if it goes to the bin. Circular Logic is a great tutor target when you have to counter something and have a small number of cards in hand. If you discard it, just use its madness, and if not, just hard-cast it. Call to Mind and Past in Flames allow you to use and abuse crucial cards.

After that, it was a simple matter to flesh out the deck with more stuff. Delver of Secrets is a good 1-drop before the deck needs mana for all of the flashy things it does. Magma Jet and Lightning Bolt up the amount of burn while also giving you some scry card sifting. I added a pair of Dismiss to the deck to round it out and give it a couple of extra counters, and that’s the deck.

While it certainly plays and feels like a crazy U/R deck, it also is not a traditional counter-burn deck because it’s built around the combo engine of Wild Research. Wild Research does not get along with most counters, so only a few are included for emergencies. It ends up as a card-drawing/burn deck instead! It plays like it, too, but the burn—flashed back—can kill very easily. A late-game Past in Flames with a few Kindles and Bolts in the ’yard is game over—even when you’ve used them all previously as creature removal. Here’s the deck being played on turn five:

 

Deck 27 – Enchant-a-palooza

"Enchant-a-palooza"

Ah, yes, the enchantment deck. This deck relies on enchantments to do everything . . . and then it wins. Our creature removal is in the form of enchantments (Oblivion Ring, Soul Snare). The artifact and enchantment removal is as well (Aura of Silence). We even have Exclusion Ritual as a virtual Desert Twister for your deck. Removal is on deck.

We also have protection. Please don’t hit me with your creature, damage, or spells. Ivory Mask, Story Circle, and Ghostly Prison help to keep you alive while Greater Auramancy will help to protect the team.

I even have enchantments that make creatures. Say, “Hello,” to Sigil of the Empty Throne and Promise of Bunrei. The only creatures I have that aren’t enchantment-related are the late-game Angelic Arbiter to serve for beats. If you want to attack this deck, you must clean out the enchantments regularly. Countermagic, removal, and discard will all work. With that in mind, I included a lot of recursion. You can sacrifice that Soul Snare, Promise of Bunrei, or Aura of Silence, and then you can bring them back (and replay them for another trigger of the Sigil). You can also return the cards that were destroyed. We have four creatures that Gravedigger back an enchantment, plus Replenish and Skull of Orm.

The result is a deck that not only is built around some powerful synergies, but also has the goods to protect them. I hope that you enjoy this deck because it’s a bit inconsistent when I play it. I need more enchantment tutoring, but I don’t have any extra Enlightened Tutors or Idyllic Tutors anywhere. Voici:

 

Deck 28 – The Obligatory Reanimation Deck

"The Obligatory Reanimation Deck"

Is a reanimation deck a combo deck? Well, let me ask you this: Is a deck with Show and Tell that drops a cheap fatty and swings once or twice for game a combo deck? I think so! Is a deck that uses Sneak Attack to drop fast fatties a combo deck? I’d say so! Is reanimation a combo deck? It seems that the same principle applies hare as well.

I bought a copy of Graveborn and broke it apart for cards, and some were left over, so I added a few cards from it to this deck—like Putrid Imp and Last Rites. I wanted fatties that you could hard-cast later in the game but were good for the deck. These include guys with unearth and cheaper costs. You can reanimate Ascendant Evincar early to clear out weenies and pump your team, but if you draw him late when you have the mana sitting around, you can just play him.

The deck rocks all of the cards you would expect. We have eight reanimation spells between Stitch Together, Dread Return, and Rise from the Grave. We also have several discard outlets to add a creature to the graveyard. The time of skipping your first land drop and discarding a fatty during your end of turn step is long-since gone. Putrid Imp, Last Rites, and Zombie Infestation play good roles here. Then, add in Corpse Connoisseur and Buried Alive, and you have a lot of ways of stocking your graveyard with the goods.

This deck is fun to play, and the obvious fatty to recur when you are in a neutral game is Demon of Death's Gate. The others suit various situations, but its 9/9 trample body is enough to win. I love dropping it and swinging—it’s a lot of fun. Go, Demon!

 

Deck 29 – Scepters Anonymous

"Scepters Anonymous"

I knew I had to build a deck around Isochron Scepter since I had a full play set running around. Plus, I wanted at least one deck with sixty-one cards! This is a combo deck that goes off by imprinting To Arms! under the Scepter. You pay 2, tap the Scepter, and untap all creatures, but before that, you tap them for a lot of mana. Then, you use Filigree Sages to untap the Scepter and spend 3 of the mana you made. As long as you make more mana than you spent, you end up with extra mana. That extra mana builds and builds as you repeat the process until the deck explodes into mana and plays Fireball with Alloy Myr or a Pentad Prism.

In order to go off, you need a lot of mana—6. That’s 3 for the Sages and 2 for the Scepter. To help with that, we have Aphetto Alchemist, which can tap to untap any creature that makes mana. I wish I had more Palladium Myr, but I used most of the ones I had in another deck. All I had left was one, so sad face there. This would also work with more Alchemists, but again, sad face.

The rest of the deck is control and card drawing. We have some Counterspells, Jace's Ingenuity, and Telling Time, plus a single copy of Angelsong for the stick.

Anyway, this deck’s reliance on many creatures is a weakness, and it’s very hard to go off. It really needs more guys that tap for multiple mana in play. Not very many have been made outside of green, and I don’t have a lot of them. Perhaps I should raise the number of Gold and Silver Myr and replace things like the cute Angelsong or the Pentad Prisms. Here is the deck!

 

Deck 30 – Pandemonium in the Streets

"Pandemonium in the Streets"

I pulled some Pandemoniums for a deck, but I felt I didn’t have enough for the deck. I searched for other options and grabbed whatever I had sitting around to flesh out my combo engine. Once I had that core, I then tried to find a lot of cheap, big creatures. Disadvantages didn’t matter—I just needed cheap guys. You can drop a Force of Savagery, and it will die, but not before triggering these cards for 8 damage to someone’s face. You won’t need many of these high-powered creatures in order to kill folks.

The cheapest are the 3-mana fatties. Ball Lightning, Groundbreaker, Phyrexian Soulgorger, and Force of Savagery can all be played for less mana than it costs to drop a Pandemonium. They will wreak havoc on someone’s life total. At the 4 spot, we have Hunted Troll, Timbermare, and Spellbreaker Behemoth. The Timbermare is nice because you’ll slip in a hit with it for 5 damage in addition to triggering that Pandemonium, Surge, or Electropotence.

I like how the Behemoth plays with this deck because all your fatties are now uncounterable. You can get them all through a counter shield, which helps. Also helping the crew is Garruk's Packleader because you will be drawing a lot of cards. Imagine dropping a Phyrexian Soulgorger, slapping someone for 8 damage, and drawing a card for your trouble. That’s a powerful situation. I also love Thriss here. You can pump a creature +5/+5 in response to the Pandemonium trigger, and for a single mana, you add 5 damage to how much it deals. You are nasty, Thriss! Plus, you can pump a Timbermare or a tramply Ball Lightning. The Fireball here is a finisher to take someone out after the beats occurred.

Playing this deck comes down to making one of the enchantments stick. If you can get one to stay in play, you are winning. The Pandemonium might work for both players, but your deck nets the real advantage from it. You also have some serious firepower. Playing a Ball Lightning and swinging means that you can kill creatures or deal even more damage to someone’s face. It’s powerful stuff—and here it is!

 

[poll id="137"]

Just like last time, we're voting on your favorite deck from among these ten. Congrats to The Firebird of Death, Magma, and Stalling for winning last week! At the end, we’ll have a vote between all ten winners and see which of these twenty decks is your favorite! I hope you enjoyed today’s decks and perhaps found some ideas for your own designs. After all, that’s what it’s all about!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent

TAGS articles, casual, deck lists, abe sargent, 100 combo decks, kitt, kitchen table tuesday

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