From card to combo: A Journey with Johnny/Jenny
Sometimes you’re lucky and find a combo on a blog (like @mtg-brokentoken), or you hear it through word of mouth, or you just happen to see two cards next to each other and know that destiny has joined them and you shouldn’t separate them. Other times, though, you have to work for it. Today, I’m writing a guide on how best to make a combo from scratch. I’ll be using a combo I’ve mostly already posted, but I may also respond to this article with others.
I also apologize for the length of this article, it does run longer than intended, but I wanted it to be thorough. I’m a visual person, so also give examples where I could, and have used images to break up the blocks of text and help people find their place if they lose it.
Step 1. Find a card. Maybe it’s a Legendary Creature you want to use as a Commander. Maybe it’s a card you opened in a pack that caught your eye. Something this preview season seem a little unique or rare? Perfect, let’s try it. For this example, we’re going to use Famished Paladin.
Step 2. Break it down. Once you have a card in mind, you need to break it into parts. Much like fixing a timepiece, you need to know how each cog in the machine functions, especially if you’re adding a new one. Famished Paladin is a white 3/3 Vampire Knight for 1W, and has two abilities. The first ability says it doesn’t untap on your untap, the second says it does untap whenever you gain life. Vampires go together well with lifelink and lifegain, so that’s one option for triggering the second ability that works well with the tribe. Knights can be given Double Strike from Kinsbaile Cavalier, which could be helpful if the Paladin could tap for an ability, to make use of the potential double-untap. Speaking of untapping, there’s also the option of looking to the answers for Exert, as they also skip an untap, so Always Watching is near the top of the list if using it for combat, and there are quite a few ways to untap things outside the untap step, such as Synchronized Strike. (or the tl;dr version: There’s a lot of ways you can go with this, potentially.) This leaves the ability that untaps it whenever you gain life, so we should look for something that gains you life, and if it does cost you tapping, it’s basically free since the Paladin will simply untap.
Step 3. Build it up. So you’ve found a card, you figured out what makes it tick, so now we make it tock. We’ve (mostly) narrowed it down to finding a good life-gain effect. Now we’re at the hard part, and why I’m very optimistic about the recent announcement regarding a Magic app. “Gain life” (without quotes) gets 1033 results in Gatherer. Adding a colon increase the chances of a tap ability gives us 266 results, which seems the best starting point. “Gain life” in quotes gets 165 results, but leaves out anything saying “Gain # life” where # is a number, be it 1, 2, 3, or even X. That means you’re going to be spending some time perusing Magic cards. That’s why this is the hard part. There are a lot of Magic cards, and it’s typically better to look at more that don’t quite match than to miss something that might.
Ajani Steadfast gives Vigilance and Lifelink. Lifelink doesn’t limit itself to combat damage, so Lifelink is an option if we do a third card so the Paladin can tap to deal damage. Use the Longbow with Lifelink to clear the board first, then go for the opponent’s throat. Doing it this way, with only one damage each time, makes them less likely to respond (if they even can) until you’ve already taken out much of their stuff.
(Soul Warden gives life whenever a creature enters the battlefield, but you then need a way for the Paladin to tap to create creatures. Presence of Gond comes to mind, but you wouldn’t easily find it for this search, as Presence doesn’t gain you life but has a tap ability, and Soul Warden does gain life but doesn’t have a colon. Furthermore, by spreading to three cards it’s just more ways your opponent could cause problems and less likely you’d draw the appropriate cards.)
Auto-Key would be a good option, but only silver-bordered cards make contraptions, and contraptions only crank once every three turns, typically.
Ephara’s Radiance is an option, but it costs two mana to activate, which would likely limit the number of times you can use it. Is it possible to make work? Probably, but less cards is almost always better when it comes to combos.
Resplendent Mentor isn’t found until about halfway down the second page, but fits the bill perfectly. We don’t need to find a third card, nor have to worry about drawing it.
Words of Worship changes card drawing to life gain, but then we’d need a way to make Paladin draw.
There are also quite a few creatures that can tap to gain life, but unless you have Grusilda to combine them, it doesn’t much help you. If you do have Grusilda, you could combine the Paladin with Thraben Doomsayer, and have Soul Warden to get a creature, thus gaining a life and untapping. Or just combine the Paladin directly with something like Silent Attendant, though these options mean you have at least a three-color deck, and a reliable way of getting certain creatures into your graveyard. Yeah. Nine paragraphs later and 200+ cards, all to find one good card and a few “Plan B”s. I did mention this was the hard part, right? Keep in mind that if you don’t find a card that completes the combo, it means you’re going to need to look at what you have so far and do a new search. (Such as for combining two creatures with Grusilda if you’re playing silver border, or finding Soul Warden and then something to make the Paladin make creature tokens, or even after you find Ajani Steadfast {or something else that grants lifelink}, having to search for Viridian Longbow or similar.)
Step 4. Time to rev the engine. Now that we’ve got multiple cards, it’s important to clarify what we have. These terms are fairly loose and not common parlance, but will help to check if a combo is “complete.” (...or “compleat”, I suppose.) For this section, we’ll take a brief interlude from the Paladin. As for why this section is important, “Loop” provides the best example if you’re thinking of skipping some.
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- Synergistic - These cards just help each other, or make them do a little more. Darksteel Reactor + Dismantle is a good example of this, as is Darksteel Reactor and Doubling Season. If you have Doubling Season, the Reactor wins at the beginning of your 10th turn. If you have Dismantle, you can double it after your 10th turn (because it has Indestructible) so you will win. Coretapper is a creature that can tap to add one charge counter, or sacrifice itself to add two, so it goes a bit faster than the other options, since you can both tap it and then sacrifice it on turn 9 (or earlier if someone is going to kill it) and should win. In much the same vein, Paradox Haze gives you a second upkeep each turn, doubling the speed, but still requiring you get to the second upkeep of the 10th turn to win. Each of these cards work synergistically with Darksteel Reactor (and often with each other) to maximize what they do. Even if you have all 5 cards, the Reactor would make 1 counter, Doubling Season makes it two. Paradox Haze gives second upkeep, which the Season brings to 4. Coretapper taps for one, which Doubling Season makes two for a total of 6, then sacrifice the Coretapper for 2 which Season doubles to four, for a total of 10. Dismantle it for ten (which Doubling Season still doubles) and you’re at 30 and win potentially one turn after playing it. But you need to have all the pieces, because they amplify their efficiency off each other.
Another example, though with far more options, are Elves. Elvish Archdruid gives +1/+1 to other Elves, increasing their usefulness, and can tap for green mana equal to the number of Elves there are, increasing its own usefulness when there are Elves. This synergy ramps up, simply making each card that is part of it more useful.
- Loop - This is something you can use over and over, hopefully it includes at least one “may” clause or activation you can choose not to use so it doesn’t result in game loss. If it would, you’ll need a way to break the loop or have it win on the spot. One example would be Polyraptor and Aether Flash. Neither have abilities that say “may” so it would continue indefinitely unless stopped. Despite this, if you have something else that also trigger when a creature is dealt damage or enters the battlefield, this could change from a loop to a game winner. Impact Tremors is a great example, and why it’s important to review what type of combo you’ve created.
- Engine - This is something that will typically give you an advantage that builds up over time, greatly increasing your chances to win, but it on its own doesn’t actually win. The tl;dr version is these cards work to power up the rest of your deck, driving deck construction to lean a certain way. Boon Reflection doubles your lifegain, but doesn’t on its own gain you life (even if it did, even a million life doesn’t win without Felidar Sovereign). Wound Reflection is similar, doubling life loss, but doesn’t on its own cause any, and you need to take half (or more of) your opponent’s life for it to finish the job. Thought Reflection doubles card draw, and you do draw one card each turn, so it slowly builds up advantage. Each of these help you make more of a situation, but won’t win the game alone (but they still tend to look pretty cool) With just a little preparation, that incremental advantage becomes an avalanche. If you have an Engine, you want to find cards that will maximize its effectiveness. Boon Reflection wants to be in a deck with cards that will gain you life, Wound Reflection wants cards that will cause your opponents to lose life (and damage causes loss of life), and Thought Reflection wants to be in a deck where you’re either drawing extra cards or getting benefits from drawing extra cards (like Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Howling Mine, or Chasm Skulker).
Last example is Lovisa Coldeyes. She alone is an Engine, making Barbarians, Warriors, and Berserkers stronger, even though she isn’t one. Boldwyr Intimidator IS a Warrior, and also makes sure all the Warriors you do have can’t be blocked by Cowards (or Changelings, conveniently), and has the ability to make other creatures Warriors or Cowards. If you make your deck including Warriors naturally, these two cards will give them +2/+2 or potentially make them unblockable. Engines are all about building your deck a certain way.
Game-Ending - This is typically the goal, especially when playing competitively. This is like Niv-Mizzet, The Firemind + Curiosity, hoping your opponent has less life than you have cards in your inventory. Or, from the Loop section, adding Impact Tremors, Purphoros, or Warstorm Surge (or all three) to the Aether Flash + Polyraptor combo makes it Game-Ending.
- Nonbo/At Odds - This will happen sometimes, and it’s an important part of why you should review your interaction. A nonbo is two cards in which one stops the other from doing what it wants to do. Hushwing Gryff stops Enters the Battlefield effects from happening, so a card like Cathars’ Crusade won’t trigger. Cathars’ Crusade is effectively useless when the Gryff is out, so you typically don’t want both on the battlefield or even in the same deck. Szadek, Lord of Secrets has an “instead” ability (a replacement effect, in game terms), that makes it so he doesn’t actually deal combat damage to players. Because of this, any card that triggers when he deals combat damage only triggers when he is blocked or blocking. His ability wants him to deal combat damage to players (which then gets replaced by milling and adding +1/+1 counters), and he even has Flying to increase the chances he’ll be able to do so. Spirit Link wants him to deal combat damage, which doesn’t happen when his replacement effect happens. These two cards pull you in opposite directions, so are “At Odds”. Sometimes there are ways to get the cards to compromise, such as giving Szadek Vigilance so he can still block to deal damage to creatures, or Chandra’s Ignition so everything ends up taking damage and triggering abilities to opponents. Other times, such as with Coastal Piracy (sadly which didn’t get a reprint for Ixalan), you need to choose one of the two abilities that you like more, in the long run. There are times, though rare, in which a card may be “At Odds” with itself. The primary example of this is Anya, Merciless Angel. In a 2-player game there is no problem, but in a multiplayer game her abilities lend themselves to an aggressive strategy, in which you would want to be attacking players to get them weak, but her abilities also stop if you take a weak opponent out. Because of this, you want to weaken all of your opponents, but not actually kill any of them. A single opponent losing takes away a potential +3/+3 for Anya.
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Though the Paladin and Mentor do make a Loop (able to repeat an arbitrarily large number of times), and they could be considered an Engine (cards/combos that are used to increase the effectiveness of other cards in the deck) we want to make them Game-Ending.
There are quite a few cards that can use the lifegain loop in order to grow quite large, or even (in the case of Archangel of Thune) make all of your creatures quite large. In this case, they have a synergy with the Engine that we’ve built so far, but don’t actually become Game-Ending since you still need to attack (or use Wall of Limbs’ ability, which sadly doesn’t work well in multiplayer, though there are options like Strionic Resonator). Sunbond is an enchantment that has a creature get a +1/+1 counter whenever you gain life, so perhaps putting it on something with some evasion should get the damage through.
To convert the lifegain directly into a game win, Sanguine Bond, Defiant Bloodlord, or Cliffhaven Vampire all convert your life gained into life lost by at least one other player. Though there are circumstances in which this won’t kill a player (Abyssal Prosecutor, Platinum Angel, any card that lets them have less than 0 life, Platinum Emperion, ...), in most situations this will result in a game win.
So, the tl;dr version of the entire article: Find a card, figure out what part of it is useful, and find a card that works with that. Then, if it’s still not useful enough, find more cards.