Lately, the Issues section of StarCity has been dominated by one topic: Extended combo, and the role of Duress in keeping them down. Unfortunately, the debate so far seems to assume that the existence of a viable combo deck of any kind is more than just an unpleasant match; it's a sign that the environment is doomed, the apocalypse is upon us and that only divine intervention from the DCI will save us. Combo makes a showing in Extended after months of oblivion, and immediately we have people crying out for it to be banned back down. Rusty Kahl even proclaims grimly that black is the only thing holding the environment together -concluding at the end of his article that"You can play one of several decks as long as you are playing black, playing combo, or even better, playing black combo" - in spite of the fact that Justin Gary's deck was neither.

As an old combo player myself, I have to question this assumption.

Combo Winter is over, it's been over for a long time, and it's time to stop having flashbacks. Combo decks came to the Pro Tour, did well, but not trigger the banning criteria: It failed to actually dominate the field. In part, this was because of a number of good black spells that were going to show up anyway. The other part is that today's combo decks just don't have the speed of the old Saga-powered decks. Sure, some can list second-turn victories as possibilities... But that requires a near perfect draw and an opponent with no early disruption. I'll admit that it can happen; I'll counter that it's also possible that you'll have to Paris to three cards so as not to miss your first-turn land drop.

Before I wrote this, I went and tested the top Aluren and Hermit decks just to see how bad they really were. If they could pull off frequent turn 2 kills, and average around third-turn, I'd admit there was a problem. Unfortunately, I couldn't get either to a better average than turn 5 - turn 4 kills happened occasionally , but were balanced out by a number of draws where I was waiting until the sixth or seventh turn. I did manage a few turn 3 kills, but those were rare. That's slower than old-school Stompy - the only deck I'm aware of that's completely lacking in disruptive abilities. Sligh can supposedly match that as well, though I haven't experimented with it much lately.

If your deck can't disrupt an opponent's game plan, it needs to average a turn 4 kill itself. Otherwise it's going to lose to more than just combo.

So how do we slow these horrible nasty combo decks down? I'll show you a few methods, all without using Duress.

Aluren
The operation of this deck has been discussed in other articles, but I'll go over the basics just in case: Get Aluren into play. Drop a Wirewood Savage or Raven Familiar. Drop a Cavern Harpy. If you used the Savage, you draw a card and let the Harpy gate himself back; if you used the Familiar, he gave you a choice of three cards and now you let the Harpy gate the familiar instead and pay a life to bring the Harpy back. Repeat ad nauseum, draw your deck (picking up a Soul Warden eventually, to offset the life you'll pay to the harpy later) and either use Cloud of Faeries to generate an arbitrary amount of mana for a Stroke or start bouncing Maggot Carriers.

How do you stop this without Duress? The easy way is to lay an island; now he has to play around Force Spike, which will slow him by a turn. Or he can Cabal Therapy you to get the Force Spike* or other counters, but that will still slow him down and give you time to do your thing. That's half the battle; now it's up to your deck to finish him.

If you're not playing blue, you've still got a chance. A well-timed Naturalize or Disenchant will stop the combo; play it in response to his announcement of the Harpy, and it goes on the stack. Stack rules require the Naturalize to finish resolving before the Harpy can - so by the time the Harpy can trigger either the draw or its self-gating ability, the Aluren will be in the graveyard.

If you're not playing White, Green, Black or Blue, then you're playing with burn. Shocking the Savage or Familiar in response to the Harpy will stall the combo just as well. (Actually, killing the Savage works even better since he doesn't get the one free draw.) Of course, if you just randomly fire off your Naturalize, it will get buried on the stack and you'll lose. That's what happens when you make random plays against a Pro Tour-quality deck.

And on that note... If he does have another copy of the vital creature, then he can respond and bury your instant on the stack long enough to get his win. But again, that's just a sign of a PT quality deck; good decks with good draws are hard to beat, regardless of its archetype or what the matchups say.

Hermit Druid
This one is rougher. It hinges around a cheap creature and sorceries, rather than enchantments. Black, of course, has the standard discard and creature kill; the druid is vulnerable for a turn, unless he's dumped Anger already somehow. Blue can again use standard counters, either by Force Spiking an early Hermit, Enveloping the reanimation sorceries, or using any of a variety of bounce spells on the animated monsters.

Red can burn out the Hermit, unless he's managed to get his one mountain into play and dumped an Anger into the graveyard already. Pillaging the lone mountain is a good idea if the chance presents itself. The other option, of course, is just to ignore his board and race him.

White still has enough decent spot removal to come up with answers against the fat, and the deck isn't quite fast enough to beat a Circle of Protection. Varying the colour of the fat will get around one, but the Ghoul is the only thing that will pull off a one-turn kill; everything else gives the white player time to come up with something. Green will likely have to look to other colours for solutions, unless it's a monocolour variant - in which case it's probably Stompy. And if Stompy can't beat a goldfish in 4 turns, it needs to pack up and go home again.

Psychatog
Even calling this a"combo" deck is stretching, though I will admit that it's tendency to stall and finish with a nearly unstoppable one-turn shot does have a lot in common with combo. Some have described it as a very pure form of control, and I think that's the best way to deal with it. If you're running control yourself, focus on stopping the key spells (namely Fact or Fiction and Upheaval) while protecting yours. If you're running aggro, overwhelm him; hit him fast, and force him to defend himself instead of playing his draw spells. Basically, follow the advice given while 'Tog was dominant in Type 2, only using the wider range of extended tools.

I'm not saying any of these are easy victories; these decks did make the cut at a Pro Tour, after all. They'll have answers to your solutions, if the player in control can find them. And you'll need a deck that can follow through on any disruption you bring. But this brings back the interaction; it lets the better player with the better deck win. And that's what competitive Magic is really about, isn't it?

A Final Note on Duress and Therapy
There was something interesting I discovered when testing the combo decks, to see how dangerous they really were: Every one of them ran both Duress and Therapy. After looking at the various ways in which I could be disrupted while playing them, I realized that the combo decks are at least as dependent on Duress as anything else in the field - and they can make far better use of the Therapy, since they'll usually be using it to check for (and remove) the specific spells that can stop them. Rusty claims discard is the only thing holding Combo in check, while in fact it's responsible for providing combo with the insurance it needs to compete.

His opening quote from Team Academy speaks more to the dominance of black in general than to the dominance of combo. Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Vampiric Tutor are good cards (although Therapy is debatable when you don't know what you're facing). If you have swamps in your deck, you probably have those spells. If the dominance of black in general indicates an unhealthy environment, then banning Duress will do far more to inspire diversity than just jerking your knees at the mere existence of combo decks.

But I doubt that will happen. The legacy of Combo Winter is such that most people would like to see combo nonexistent. They'll look to ban the engines completely rather than support cards that make the engine viable. Personally, I feel that an environment without combo is lacking in diversity just as much as one that's missing a good beatdown deck. If Houston is anything to go off, though, Extended won't be lacking for either.