#combo decks

[magical-leak]

[island-delver-go]

Banter between my opponent and me when I break out my new lazav combo deck

(Source)

[commandtower]

Working on a Locust God based Draw deck, so i have a Thought Reflection, a Reliquary Tower, and a Thought Vessel. Looking to add a Skull Clamp and a Laboratory Maniac as well as a Coat Of Arms to sustain those locust spawn. As well as Ashnod's Altar for Mana gen to equip the Skull Clamp and theoretically go through my whole deck in one turn. However this is one potential combo and requires all of these. Are there any other cards you would suggest adding in to make this more viable? -phaithrider

Hi there, thanks for your question!

The Locust God has some definite combo potential and you’ve started with some decent cards here. The thought of pounding through your whole deck is pretty fun. Ashnod’s Altar and Skullclamp are obvious points. If you’re looking to expand on this idea, consider Mana Echoes as a redundancy for the Altar -- it’s probably better in this situation as the Altar/Clamp pair requires the Coat of Arms or another anthem effect to keep from having to use two insects every time, whereas the Echoes is a passive so you’re constantly netting Insects and mana through the Clamp.

The Laboratory Maniac is one win condition for the deck and definitely works for what you’re trying to do here, but it may be more consistent to just create a horde of Insects and go for combat kills. To that end, consider the combination of Windreader Sphinx and Breath of Fury, which lets you create additional combat steps as often as you like by dumping more and more Insect tokens out onto the field in the middle of your swing. Additional possibilities for this setup include Coastal Piracy, Bident of Thassa or Deepfathom Skulker, any of which will work in the place of the Sphinx (or alongside it). Further options include cards like Impact Tremors or Purphoros, God of the Forge which can turn your Insect generation into a chaingun of direct damage. As a side note, cards like Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind and Psychosis Crawler also work here, although they trigger on the card draw. Still, they should be useful for your deck. Altar of the Brood is another option here although it will require a bit of finessing and some additional card selection to keep your draws from outpacing the Altar’s effect.

Overall there are a lot of paths to take with The Locust God that all utilize similar bits and pieces. You can fashion together a pretty decent engine with any number of cards like these -- and the ones I mentioned are just a few examples. I would like to politely advise you to take stock of your playgroup when building this because it has the potential to be pretty backbreaking without too much effort, so you may want to tune this idea to suit the level of play in your area. Good luck with your build, and feel free to send me the list once you’ve got it together if you like. I’d definitely be interested in seeing what you come up with.

[magical-leak]

[magical-leak]

[damnyoumodoshuffler]

So I have built Combo Decks out of the following cards:

Harvest Pyre Nahiri’s Wrath Oboro Breezecaller

The first two are pretty jank but are a great laugh. The last one is potentially tournament playable, maybe even FNM winnable.

Would people be interested in blurbs on any of these?

[loreleywrites]

Into the Trash It Goes

On multiple occasions I have talked about how Myr lend themselves well to combo decks. Until today, however, I’ve never built one for you. What you’re about to see is a combo deck dripping with flavor, brimming with instant-kill potential, clanking with the machine-like interactions of artifacts, and buzzing with the screams of dying Myr. Lots of dying Myr. Take a look:

Creatures (19)

4 Disciple of the Vault

4 Perilous Myr

4 Myr Sire

4 Myr Retriever

3 Shimmer Myr

Instants (9)

4 Go for the Throat

2 Thirst for Knowledge

3 Machinate

Artifacts (8)

4 Genesis Chamber

4 Krark-Clan Ironworks

Lands (24)

3 Darksteel Citadel

4 Seat of the Synod

4 Vault of Whispers

4 Darkslick Shores

3 Glimmervoid

3 Island

3 Swamp

Blueprints of a Combo

Krark-Clan Ironworks

Activated abilities that give you mana without requiring you to tap anything are powerful indeed. Finding ways to break them can create a core for a combo deck that can fuel all sorts of other interactions. In this deck, the mana-generating card is Krark-Clan Ironworks. Just toss an artifact in and melt it down for two free colorless mana!

This deck runs on a 2.5 card combo. It takes three cards, but two of them are the same card: Myr Retriever. Here’s how it works:

Sacrifice Myr Retriever #1 to Krark-Clan Ironworks for two mana.

Use this mana to cast Myr Retriever #2.

Sacrifice Myr Retriever #2 to Krark-Clan Ironworks for two mana.

Myr Retriever #2 returns Myr Retriever #1 to your hand.

Use your two mana to cast Myr Retriever #1 again.

Rinse and repeat.

On its own, this gets you nowhere. You just cycle through the same Myr Retrievers again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and…well, you get the picture. What this combo needs is some extra cards to actually win the game.

Constructing Wincons

Genesis Chamber

Mechanically, the Krark-Clan Ironworks + Myr Retrievers core gives you four things to build upon:

Unlimited creatures entering the battlefield.

Unlimited creatures dying.

Unlimited artifacts entering the battlefield.

Unlimited artifacts being put into your graveyard from the battlefield.

Any combo deck built around this engine has to take advantage of one of these interactions. This deck weaponizes two of them.

First is Genesis Chamber, the most Myr-centric way of breaking this engine. Every time you have a Myr Retriever enter the battlefield, you’ll get a bonus Myr token along with it. This means you can amass an army out of nowhere, crushing your opponents in one single attack no matter their life total.

Second, the classic combo killer, Disciple of the Vault. This common has been doing great combo work over the years, being part of the infamous Sharuum the Hegemon + Sculpting Steel combo in Commander. In this deck, Disciple of the Vault revels in the deconstruction of his Myr servants, draining your opponents’ life until they’re good and dead.

Engineering Support

Shimmer Myr

Combo decks are fragile, needing a specific set of cards to win the game. Until those pieces are assembled, a combo deck needs to stand its ground. In addition, most combo decks have ways of digging to get those pieces. So how does this deck solve those problems?

First, a playset of Go for the Throat provides a cheap way to deal with problematic creatures. This is the kill spell I’ve chosen because of its flavorful ties with Mirrodin. In addition, Perilous Myr and Myr Sire are difficult creatures to attack into (while also staying on the theme of Myr!) Perilous Myr takes down attackers for little cost, while Myr Sire gums up the battlefield with tokens. Both creatures have death triggers, which means they have added value if you sacrifice them to Krark-Clan Ironworks for mana.

In order to help dig up the combo pieces, this deck features a few powerful draw spells. Thirst for Knowledge digs three cards deep, and we’ll almost always have an artifact in hand to discard for it. This is especially useful for our combo, as we don’t need both Myr Retrievers in our hand to start it off. The combo plays out exactly the same if we have one in the graveyard too! Machinate only draws one card, but we can dig much deeper with it because of how many artifacts we are playing. Both cards are instants, which gives the deck the most flexibility.

Speaking of instants, the major downside to combos involving permanents is that those permanents usually need to sit around before the combos goes off. But what if this entire combo could be performed at instant speed? I’ve included a few Shimmer Myr in the deck to give it some extra flexibility. So long as you untap with a Shimmer Myr and four lands, you’ll likely be able to fire off the combo at any time.

Forging a Foundation

Glimmervoid

The lands in this deck are essential to maximizing its power. Remember, artifact lands can be tapped and sacrificed to Krark-Clan Ironworks, producing three mana in a given turn. Artifact lands will also count towards Machinate, making it easier to find the combo pieces.

Glimmervoid will almost always stay on the battlefield, going a long way to fixing our colored mana. The flavorful Darkslick Shores also works towards that goal.

Planning Future Upgrades

Stoic Rebuttal

Because the core of this combo requires relatively few cards, there are many variations on how this deck could be built. My build is already in Blue, so it’s definitely possible to shift it to a more controlling build. Counterspells like Stoic Rebuttal and Remand are perfect for an artifact-heavy combo deck, being cheap answers to powerful threats.

My deck also features Black, and cards like Demonic Tutor can definitely go in place over the draw spells if you want to better ensure you get your combo pieces.

If you’re worried about losing for not getting Krark-Clan Ironworks, there are a few ways to shift the deck. Beaters like Arcbound Ravager and Myr Enforcer can step in if you fail to find your combo, or you can use Ashnod’s Altar as a backup sac outlet (Note that you can’t sacrifice your artifact lands to Ashnod’s Altar though.)

Finally, if you can reduce the cost of Myr Retriever with cards like Etherium Sculptor, you can also create infinite mana out of this combo engine. Myr Matrix seems like a perfectly reasonable place to dump that mana, and it also gives your utility Myr a little muscle if you need to switch into beatdown mode.

A Well-Oiled Machine

While my version of the Krark-Clan Ironworks + Myr Retriever combo deck is heavily rooted in flavorful interactions, the engine itself is flexible enough to be pushed in more competitive, more resilient, or more explosive ways. That’s the beauty of colorless combos; every player can approach them from a different viewpoint and produce myriad different decks from the same core.

Until next time, planeswalkers, may your Myr serve you well.

[mtg-talk]

When someone shows you a cool combo then immediatly uses it on you