Love them or hate them, combos are one of the Magic archetypes that are ever-present in Constructed formats. In the past, Combo decks in Modern have been front and center in the metagame. You might remember the days of Twin Combo being a huge issue, so much so that they had to ban Splinter Twin to deal with it.

Today, the power level of Modern has shifted so that Twin Combo isn't nearly as dominant as it was back then, but the combos have also shifted. Two of these Combo decks are among the most powerful the format has ever seen.

Fun Modern Combo Decks

How we are breaking this down is not just the top of the pile. We are looking for competitive Combo decks that are also fun to play with. Let's look at which fun combos in Modern MTG right now are worth playing.

Tameshi Belcher

Goblin Charbelcher, built around the Artifact of the same name that costs , is a pretty good deck, and it's the epitome of a Combo deck: do the thing (as fast as possible), or lose.

The deck is a sort of "Oops, All Spells" deck, as all the Lands the deck runs are Modal Double-Faced Cards (MDFCs). Charbelcher reveals cards until it hits a Land card, and it sees all those MDFCs as nonland cards.

However, unlike traditional Belcher decks, this one runs Tameshi, Reality Architect, a Legendary Creature. He can return cards like Lotus Bloom from the graveyard to give you a massive big-mana turn to get Goblin Charbelcher out and protect it. It also makes Belcher a bit more resilient, as the deck plays more like a Control shell than a typical glass-cannon Belcher.

Once Belcher is out and activated, as long as you have more than 20 cards in your deck, it's lights out for the opponent.

• Key Cards: Goblin Charbelcher, Tameshi, Reality Architect, Lotus Bloom, Whir of Invention, and MDFCs such as Sea Gate Restoration, Sink into Stupor, and Jwari Disruption
• Viability in Competitive Play: This is the most fringe deck in this list of decks, and it's got legs on it to be competitive, but it's also jank, which means it is an odd, off-meta decks that wins in ways nobody expects.

Jeskai Ascendancy Combo

Funnily enough, this came from a Standard deck, back in Khans of Tarkir (KTK). The core of the deck is built around Jeskai Ascendancy, a Enchantment.

When you cast a noncreature spell, the Ascendancy untaps each Creature you control, gives them +1/+1 until end of turn, and allows you to draw a card, then discard a card. If one of those Creatures is a mana dork (a cheap Creature that taps for mana), you have infinite mana as long as you keep finding cheap castable spells.

This deck wants to win via combat after casting a few spells and getting Ascendancy to trigger a few times. While combat is usually how you win, some decks run Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and just aim to cycle their deck out to win the game.

• Key Cards: Jeskai Ascendancy, mana Creatures, cheap noncreature spells, and cantrips (cheap spells that replace themselves by drawing a card)
• Viability in Competitive Play: Jeskai Ascendancy isn't ran often, but it does tend to get good results. The truth is that the combo is fun, even if it's less powerful than the others on this list.

Ruby Storm

One of the menaces of Modern used to be Storm, but little by little, it was pulled back until it almost disappeared. Now, thanks to a few new cards, it's returned to terrorize Modern with all-new tricks. Ruby Storm isn't so much a combo deck as it is a combo engine.

The engine works around rituals, which are cheap spells that produce more mana than they cost, along with cost reducers in Ruby Medallion, which costs , and Ral, Monsoon Mage, which costs , plus cheap draw spells that keep the engine churning through the deck.

The aim is to cast enough spells in one turn to deal lethal damage with Grapeshot, a Sorcery whose Storm ability copies it once for each spell cast before it that turn.

• Key Cards: Grapeshot, Ruby Medallion, Ral, Monsoon Mage, Pyretic Ritual, Desperate Ritual, Manamorphose
• Viability in Competitive Play: This deck has seen a lot of play in Modern competitive leagues, and while it's not as ubiquitous as Storm used to be, it's still a threat when someone shows up with a brew.

Living End

This is another one that has been kicking around Modern for a long time. The deck tries to get as many cheap Cycling Creatures into its graveyard as possible, often running cards in colors it can't even hard cast, which means paying their full mana cost.

Once it has a big enough graveyard, the player casts either a Shardless Agent or a Violent Outburst, a Instant that is back in Modern after the unbans. Both have Cascade, which digs through the deck for the only spell in it with a mana value below three: Living End, which has no mana cost at all.

Living End forces each player to Exile all Creature cards in their graveyard, Sacrifice their board, then put all the Exiled cards onto the battlefield. The result is impressive, and even if it doesn't win the game on the same turn, it creates a nearly impossible board state for the opponent to deal with.

The deck can cobble together a win, but it's very much a one-trick pony. Statistics suggest that the deck wins 70% of the games in which it resolves Living End but has an overall win rate of around 51%.

• Key Cards (2): Violent Outburst/Shardless Agent, Living End
• Viability in Competitive Play: Living End Reanimator remains a solid Modern archetype, and players still play it relatively often in leagues.

Goryo's Vengeance Reanimator

Goryo's Vengeance Reanimator is an oldie but a goodie, and it's gotten a few more interesting toys to work with. The goal of the deck is to get a huge Legendary threat into the graveyard (ideally something like Griselbrand or Atraxa, Grand Unifier) and then use Goryo's Vengeance, a Instant, to Reanimate it.

Vengeance would normally Exile the Creature at end of turn, so the deck uses Ephemerate, which costs just , to Blink it. This means Exiling it and returning it to the battlefield as a brand-new permanent. The deck doesn't automatically win like some of the infinite combos in this list, but it puts the opponent so far behind that they usually just scoop.

• Key Cards: Atraxa, Grand Unifier/Griselbrand, Goryo's Vengeance, Ephemerate
• Viability in Competitive Play: Goryo Reanimator is established in Modern as a deck that sees regular play. Current lists also include copies of Psychic Frog and Solitude as useful alternative options in case the combo doesn't work out.

Devoted Druid Combo

Many years ago, Devoted Druid, a Creature, was considered to be a Commander-only card, but it's been putting up some significant numbers in Modern recently as well. The core of the combo works around an interesting interaction. Druid can tap for one Green mana and, by putting a -1/-1 Counter on itself, untap itself. With just two toughness, that means after two rounds of tap/untap, the Druid is dead.

However, Vizier of Remedies, which costs , says that if one or more -1/-1 Counters would be put on a Creature you control, that many minus one are put on it instead, turning the Druid into an infinite mana generator. Playing Walking Ballista from your hand is the obvious win condition here, but you could play around with the actual win condition if you wanted to.

Other versions of the list may run Craterhoof Behemoth in place of the Ballista. Toolbox strategies employ Nature's Rhythm or Green Sun's Zenith as Tutors, which are spells that search your library for the exact card you need.

• Key Cards: Devoted Druid, Vizier of Remedies, Walking Ballista
• Viability in Competitive Play: A very competitive brew with a win rate above 50% (and Devoted Druid combo lists have been around since 2018, to be fair). The versions of the deck running Tutors make for a more resilient and reliable list.

Broodscale Combo

Broodscale Combo starts the list because it's one of the most competitive combo brews in Modern MTG at the moment. The core of the combo focuses on Equipping Blade of the Bloodchief, which costs , to Basking Broodscale, which costs , then getting a single +1/+1 Counter on it.

From there it's off to the races, as the Broodscale produces an Eldrazi Spawn token, which can then be sacrificed for mana, adding another counter to the Broodscale thanks to Blade of the Bloodchief. Walking Ballista turns that infinite mana into infinite damage, although other lists have abused the infinite Enters or Leaves triggers.

• Key Cards: Basking Broodscale, Blade of the Bloodchief, Walking Ballista
• Viability in Competitive Play: Broodscale Combo is one of the top-tier decks in Modern right now and has put several pilots into Top 8 slots.

Conclusion

Modern is one of those formats where things are always changing. The format might be solved, but then a new set drops and you have to consider what is likely to show up from that set. Modern will continue to be a popular format because the new sets are always giving brewers new ideas to try.