He has braved the land of textbooks and term papers! He has gone where many others have failed before him! He has fought tooth and nail in the land of retail sales, and he has come back to his fans....
...All two of you.
Greetings, fans of the casual world! I'm back with something definitely less insightful than my last article (although fans of that work will be happy to know that I'm in the process of writing the follow-up).
A lot has changed since the last time I've written - including the release of a new set that made everyone jump up shouting, dance around in their underwear, and foul themselves in joy: Ravnica. (If you didn't do the last two, you probably never had the joy of playing with Invasion.)
As with any new set Ravnica is chock-full of new little combos that can be cute little tricks, or devastating game winning engines of brokenness. In to kick off my return to writing, I could think of no better thought than to share a few new combos with you - including one that might even be good enough for Legacy.
First I would like to introduce you to two very similar cute little two-card combos.
Out of these two, only the second is legal in Standard, but I can safely assure you that neither one is really competitive. Both combos are geared to set up a much shorter game through the use of two cards to deal a fresh steaming pile of damage; however, each is different and unique in execution.
The Mage/Proportions combo gives you an 11/11 with trample for a fraction of the cost of what you would actually have to pay for. Unfortunately, not only is it more expensive than Tinkering up a Darksteel Colossus, but it is more vulnerable. The catch is that most people won't hate you for playing with Aura-Touched Mage as they will hate you for playing Tinker in a casual game.
Now, the Howler/Might combo is a geared more toward a one-on-one casual, team, or three-player games, where you need a powerful finish to dispatch the second opponent. Unlike the previous combo, this is a one-shot affair - and a timely removal spell could mean a large portion of your life missing and two cards down the drain. Those of us who've played Hatred, however, might enjoy trying this combo out, and reminisce about ancient times.
After those to cute little combos, it's time for something with more meat to it.
Beacon of Creation + Perilous Forays
If you think that Skullclamp was bad with Beacon of Creation, well... you're in for a Rude Awakening. When this engine gets going, you'll be drawing business spells for the rest of the game, plus you'll have twenty-plus lands to perform whatever nasty tricks you have up your sleeves. Obviously it's a ton of fun to play, and has a lot of potential to fuel multiple decks - but here is one that I would like to share with you.
This deck is not particularly strong, but more of a general idea that has yet to be explored to its fullest. It is pretty much a deck that just wants to overrun its opponent with creatures/tokens/lands, and it makes good use out of the Foray's engine.
Up next....
Breath of Fury + some token creatures + Order / Chaos
This is a sure-fire way to claim a victory in those long drawn out multiplayer games that have gone into stalemates because no one packed any sort of mass removal (hey, it happens in my groups occasionally). Since no one can block as long as you have creatures, you can just keep pounding. In fact, throw Kiki-Jiki into the mix and you'll always have enough creatures to sacrifice. One idea that I've had brewing for it is a little something Boros-style....
The deck is pretty much just a Boros weenie deck with a combo-like finish. Kiki-Jiki + Flame-Kin Zealot are very good with Breath, and Kos just keeps making your creatures bigger with each attack. Promise of Bunrei provides extra creatures to keep the onslaught going, and Enlightened Tutor helps pull up the pieces you need. Of course, this is a mainly casual deck.
We now come to the combo that I think can take legacy by storm that is so brutal that you'll be crapping in your pants.
Flame Fusillade + Time Vault
Sure, it's expensive to get Time Vaults, but - what's that, you say? Everyone and their uncle has already thought of this combo? Well I could always throw in Urza's Contact Lens - but if your groups are anything like mine (after putting up with Lodestone Myr and the Lens, they banned the Lens) then you'll probably want to forget about this one.
In actuality, I had another combo that involves my new pet card from Ravnica: Cloudstone Curio. Notice how the Curio specifically says non-artifact - because if it didn't, we would see something like...
Mishra's Workshop to play Cloudstone Curio, play a Mox of some sort, tap the Mox, Black Lotus (returning Mox), Mox (return Lotus, tap Mox), enter infinite loop, sacrifice Lotus for three black mana, Tendrils of Agony.
Now there are two main ways to go with this: the first would be to use "comes into play" abilities over and over, and the second is to use it to build up a storm count for a combo deck. Seeing that I like storm combos, that is the route I'll be taking. How can we break Cloudstone Curio without artifacts? Oh where oh where are we going to find zero mana-cost creatures like Ornithopter, or cards with a free Mechanic?
Heh. As if you didn't know where this was going.
Cloud of Faeries and Kobolds can find yet another deck they can fuel some combo in. In fact, right now I would like to make my plea that their names should be changed to Combo of Faeries and Com-bolds respectively.
In case you were wondering what to do just simply play free creatures back and forth using the Curio, and after building a very large storm count, use a storm spell to finish them off.
Since this combo is colorless (yes, I know, Kobolds are technically Red) you can pretty much make the deck as you please. Since I like being unorthodox (and I know many a mage is going to go out and build the deck abusing Tendrils of Agony or Brain Freeze), I decided that I would build mine around Hunting Pack.
The object to the deck is to find the combo with the aid of Primordial Sage, and Glimpse of Nature, and then to just go crazy with a huge Hunting Pack. The deck doesn't win often, but I was going for uniqueness - not a super-streamlined-machine-of-death style deck. (You'd probably want to go blue/black for that - The Ferrett)
On a competitive side note I think that this combo might actually be able to make a slight splash in Legacy, but is probably nothing more than a tier 2 (or jank) deck in the making. The only reason that I think this might have any impact is that Vintage once had a similar combo that was featured in a deck known as Sensei Sensei. If someone can prove me wrong and figure out how to make this work let me know (I'm too busy trying to port Sensei Sensei to Legacy).
It's great to be writing again, and thank you for reading.
Andrew Lubich
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