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Main » Articles » 100 Combo Decks, Part 6

100 Combo Decks, Part 6

Abe Sargent
Posted on March 6, 2012
 Reddit

Bonjour! Today, we will be counting down the next ten decks I’ve made with a combo style. This article marks the halfway point in the project, with fifty decks completed and fifty more to go! The furor of deck-building continues at a brisk pace.

I initially planned to do this project in twenty weeks, making five decks a week. It was roughly planned to have one article every other week, counting down ten decks per article. However, the Dark Ascension articles threw me off the schedule, so I did two back to back to catch up. Then, I skipped a week and did another two weeks later, right on schedule. However, I’ve been building decks at a furious pace in real life, so I wanted to accelerate the timetable for this week’s article. I’ll take another break next week, but expect me to hit the schedule rough, and we should be over well before May.

If you haven’t read any of the other articles, the task is simple. In real life, with my own card collection, I aim to build 100 combo decks, play them, take pictures, and present them to you. At the end of each article, we have a poll with you voting on your favorite deck of that article. Once the series ends, we’ll feature the top ten decks from each of these articles in an uber face off of champions to crown a Best of the 100 award, chosen by you!

Building decks is always fun, but this project is different than many because I’m building the deck in real life as opposed to just in the article. It’s interesting to tackle something different. Anyway, ready for the decks???

Deck 41 – Do You Want to See My Aluren?

"Do You Want to See My Aluren?"

One of the annoying things about building around your card stock is that you often don’t have complete sets of things. I have just three Alurens. I really wanted to build a deck around them, but I didn’t have enough. I decided to build a deck that I thought could stand on its own but that also used Aluren in broken ways.

Combo: Aluren and Soul's Attendant are both out. You play and self-bounce either the Lion or ’Cloaker. Play and bounce it again and again for a huge amount of life. If you have out Stormfront Riders instead of Soul's Attendant, you make any number of 1/1 tokens.

Even without that, this deck is smooth. Would you like mana? We have an incredible twenty-six lands as well as four creatures that fetch a land when they enter the battlefield. I know how much decks like this guzzle mana, so I included a lot. You can bounce and replay any of the enters-the-battlefield (ETB) triggers. Kitchen Finks and Loxodon Hierarch yield you a ton of life. Multani's Acolyte and Elvish Visionary will net you cards a-go-go. Bouncing and playing them is very sexy. Unfortunately, all of my Fleetfoot Panthers are tied up in my other decks, so this deck doesn’t have any.

Anyway, this is another of the fun G/W bounce decks that I love so much, and if you see a little Equinaut in here, it’s intentional (Read all about Equinaut, one of my favorite decks, here. The deck in all of its glory is below.

 

 

Deck 42 – Quiet Vengeance

"Quiet Vengeance"

Many people are building variants of this deck. At first, I wanted nothing to do with such an obvious deck, but then I came across a full set of Quiet Speculations, and I knew I didn’t want the obvious U/G Quiet Roar deck, so I went with this instead—with the old classic but giving it a bit of gas. This deck has one major issue: the decided lack of Devil's Play. Having one or two to Quiet Spec into the ’yard would be amazing. I can’t believe Quiet Spec is as cheap to find right now as it is—I would have thought casual players would have been snatching them up for their decks post-Innistrad. You can purchase a play set for less than $1.50 over at CoolStuffInc.com right now. Grabbing one late-game x spell as an option for your QS would be nice. This deck is chock full of amazing QS targets. Just grabbing one each of Faithless Looting, Deep Analysis, and Firebolt is a ton of card advantage from a 2-mana sorcery.

If I owned more than two extra Firebolts, they would replace Spell Contortion. This deck wants to win with Burning Vengeance and by flashing back goods to add fuel to the fire. I only have three despite opening up three boxes of Innistrad, so the deck lacks a last bit of consistency. I think a deck with a good mana base that included green would be broken. Imagine adding cards such as Roar of the Wurm to this deck. On turn one, Quiet Spec. On turn three, drop Burning Vengeance. On turn four, flash back out a Wurm and deal 2 damage with the Vengeance. Keep on the pressure and draw cards with the Spec’d card-drawing or a late Grizzly Fate into damage and more power on the table. That’s a nasty deck.

Here is the deck for ya:

 

 

Deck 43 – I Sacrificed My Love for You!

"I Sacrificed My Love for You!"

Do you like Falkenrath Noble? If you don’t, you are screwed—this deck is all about the Noble. It wants to play a Noble and then sacrifice creatures constantly until someone has died.

Since the Noble just causes a loss of 1 life, I supplemented it with other guys that can help with damage or life loss. Say hello to guys like Perilous Myr, Mortis Dogs, Blistergrub, and Caustic Hound. Each is willing to head to the bin for the cause in order to knock some life off your foe’s life total. Whether it’s dying to further a Fallen Angel’s swing or biting it to kill another creature to Attrition or just adding to the plagues caused by a certain Phyrexian lord, this deck has plenty of ways to add fuel to the fire.

Since we are sacrificing anyway, I added a pair of Scavenger Drakes. Every time someone goes to the bin, these are permanently juiced, and they soon evolve into a major threat. The classic card to add to a deck like this is Grave Pact, and look: We have two. I wanted some card-draw, and since you gain life with the Noble, I figured Sign in Blood would be okay. As a cross between card-searching, life-gaining, and a sacrifice outlet, the odd-but-powerful Plunge into Darkness is perfect for the deck. Finally, we added a full set of Gravediggers to bring back a wayward sacrificee while also adding another body to the death furnace. Your majestic black deck is below:

 

 

Deck 44 – Scornful Chains of Fire

"Scornful Chains of Fire"

This is my new favorite deck because it’s so wacky and unreliable, and yet it’s a blast. Here are the fun things in this deck.

You want to drop a morph creature on turn three and transform it. You’ll have an 8-casting-cost creature in play, and we will abuse that in three ways in three different colors. The first is to play Rush of Knowledge and draw a ton of cards. You’ll be swimming in eight cards after you do that. The next option is to drop the powerful Torrent of Fire and dole out an incredible 8 damage to someone’s head. Ouch! But the most interesting thing here is Food Chain. If you exile that 8-casting-cost creature, and then you make 9 mana of any color, that can only be used to play creatures. Well, that’s okay—I have both Kozilek and its Artisan ready to pounce and destroy. The combination of these cards that abuse a quick 8-casting-cost card is very powerful.

Since we have a deck with a lot of larger casting costs, say hello to Heretic's Punishment. An Artisan will return to the battlefield a creature that is lost to the Punishment or some other way, so make sure to play those when you can. Ideally, this deck would add a Djinn to replace another card, but it’s not like I collected them when they were released. I added Guided Passage because you will probably be given one Birds of Paradise, one basic land, and one Cultivate or Darksteel Ingot. That’s 3 to 4 mana from one card!

Anyway, the deck is crazy-awesome and crazy-streaky. There are times when you have quick Eldrazi beats and just dominate. There are times you just explode into a ton of burn with Torrent of Fire and the Punishment. My favorite was a game where I went:

Turn one: Forest, Birds

Turn two: Land, morphed Egotist

Turn three: Land enters the battlefield tapped, Food Chain

Turn four: Land, morph Egotist, prepare for next turn

Turn five: Rush of Knowledge, draw eight. Exile Egotist for 9 mana. Drop land. Drop two morphed Egotists. Unmorph both with 2 remaining mana. Exile for 18 more mana. Say “hello” to Kozilek and Artisan.

That was a fun game!

Would you like to see the deck?

 

 

Deck 45 – Let’s Kick It!

"Let’s Kick It!"

I’ve had a fondness for B/R control-style decks ever since I realized that it was my favorite Draft color combination and strategy in a generic environment. When you don’t know which way to go, go for the B/R deck, you know? Then, decks like Machine Head came and went, and I grew happier. (Machine Head was an old Invasion-era deck with cards like Void, Skizzek, and Blazing Specter). This is a classic B/R control deck built around a combo element. It needs Rumbling Aftershocks out, and then it needs to kick creatures, artifacts, and spells to deal a lot of damage to stuff and control the board, eventually winning through either the Aftershocks or by a clear path it opened.

I’ve always felt the best kicker cards were in these colors. Agonizing Demise? That’s great; toss it in! Breath of Darigaaz? Yeah, let’s add the sweeper! Comet Storm? Sure, the x spell makes me happy! The same is true of the other cards as well. You can easily drop something like Skitter of Lizards with two kickers, dole out a pair of damage from the Aftershocks, and then attack with your 3/3 hasted friend. Cards such as it and Quag Vampires remind me a lot of Duskwalker and Pouncing Kavu.

Anyway, we have kickers that cause someone to discard, kickers that dole out even more damage, kickers that just kill, and even kickers that make a Chalice tap for more mana. Here is your Krazy Kicker Deck!

 

 

Deck 46 – Life 2: Life Harder

"Life 2: Life Harder"

At the end of the day, there are not that many things you can do infinitely. You can make infinite mana, infinite creatures, or infinite card drawing, and then you have infinite milling or infinite life. Anything else doesn’t really make sense. Infinite discard? No thanks. Maybe infinite graveyard removal? Nah. Perhaps infinite turning creatures into Goblins? Nevermind. I hope you don’t mind two decks in today’s countdown that make infinite life. We had the Aluren deck before, and now this deck is just dedicated to it.

Life was an old combo deck from ye olde days and did decently well in tournaments. The concept is simple. Use one of your en-Kor to target the Angelic Protector over and over again until you tire. Then, play Worthy Cause and sacrifice the Protector, gaining life equal to its toughness. Because each time I target it, it gains +0/+3, it’s all nice and big for the sacrifice, and you gain life equal to the number of times you activated it × 3 +2. (So, 3,002 life if you activated an en-Kor 1,000 times.)

Once you’ve made your ton of life, you need to win. In case people don’t concede immediately, I included some ways to keep playing. I have Soltari Crusader, which you can swing with and pump. Since I only had one copy, in went Spirit en-Dal. You can forecast them to give any of your Kor shadow or just play one and swing with it. Whichever makes you happy makes me the same. You’ll also draw two cards from Survival Cache and you have enough removal to make it through the game.

This is one of the cheapest combo decks you can assemble. The pieces are super-cheap with nothing higher than uncommon in the list. Since one of the three combo pieces is included with eleven copies, you can reliably find them, and the deck only needs to worry about the Protector and Cause. Note that one single removal spell can ruin your day, so it was common to play the Protector first and leave 1 mana open for the Cause. Immediately put a bunch of triggers on the stack, and if someone kills it with a Terror, just put a bunch more triggers on top, let them resolve, and Cause it before the Terror resolves. The deck is below:

 

 

Deck 47 – Wild Bill Hitchcock

"Wild Bill Hitchcock"

While everyone else was either playing with broken combo decks or Masticores, I played through combo summer with Wildfire. It was so much fun, and the ability to destroy lands and creatures en masse gave it a lot of power. The original version of this deck ran more targeted land destruction. Pillage was in Type 2, so it was a four-of. I also had two more Stone Rains. Today, I’m using better artifact mana plus a few new tricks. Lavaball Trap is perfect here, although a bit expensive. This deck often doesn’t know the meaning of expensive. You could easily drop a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt into a Grim Monolith and Voltaic Key and have 8 or 9 mana on turn two.

You want creatures that survive the damage from a Wildfire or Trap. Guys like Shivan Wumpus and Covetous Dragon easily fit the bill. Not only are they cheap to drop, but their disadvantages hardly matter in this deck. We have a pair of x spells to take out someone late. Even losing the occasional land to a self-sacrifice or a Wildfire, you will have enough mana to blast someone for 10 or 15 damage. Never ever play more than two Mountains unless you need to—you will lose fewer cards in the Wildfire.

This is a fun deck with a new shot of awesome from the future to inject fun and happiness. The deck is below:

 

 

Deck 48 – Don’t Look Now; You’re a Turtle!

"Don’t Look Now; You’re a Turtle!"

I sometimes like to include these lighter combo decks in the format just for fun. Do they win much? Not really. The above deck is as smooth as butter, and this is . . . well . . . not. Not every combo deck goes off or blasts foes with ease. In this case, it’s just about making opposing creatures Dragons, Kavu, or various undead types so that you can abuse your abilities to hose those types. It’s very simple. There are no major tricks of the trade—just a lot of fun. I don’t even have any spare copies of Unnatural Selection, just four each of Imagecrafter and Amoeboid Changeling.

We have a serious hatred of undead in cards like Undead Slayer, Blazing Torch, and Slayer of the Wicked. In today’s monster-heavy environment due to the current sets, they often work even without using our tappers to guarantee it. Then, we have the two protection creatures. One has protection from Dragons and the other from Kavu. We don’t see a lot of Kavu anymore, and Dragons are fairly uneven. Sometimes you see a lot in a game, and other times, you go a week or two without seeing any. Still, we can ensure fighting them when needed.

I simply added a few cards to the deck and called it a day. We have card-drawing and Disenchanting to fix any holes. And that’s a deck. It’s simple to play and see . . .

 

 

Deck 49 – Harvesting Your Love

"Harvesting Your Love"

This deck wants to push it’s mana to the limit and then x-spell your face in. To support that theme, we have a lot of mana acceleration and more. Let’s begin with the massive mana overload. We have twenty-six lands that can be fetched by a Sakura-Tribe Elder. Wild Growth loves to be put on one of those lands to make an extra mana. Mana Flare will double any land’s mana production, and Early Harvest will untap all of those pretty lands for another go. Finally, Overgrown Battlement can tap for at least 1 mana to add to your managanza!

There’s no question that we’ll spit out a ton of mana, so what’s next? Four Blazes from the original Portal set are ready to use that mana aggressively. You can easily make 15 mana in a turn and use that to devastate a life total (which is not yours, we hope). Supplementing that, we have a green Blaze: Wurmcalling. You can buy it back if you want, and it will make large dudes over and over again. Since the x spells and mana production take up so much of the deck, we have few slots left, so I choose to add Hull Breach to destroy artifact things that interfere with your plans. Browbeat usually draws you cards, but when it doesn’t, it will put someone in range of one Blaze. Finally, I added a pair of FTKs to defend the breach and kill an annoying dude.

This deck has a lot of consistency but still needs the Mana Flares. You can produce a lot of mana without them, but with one out, you can just flurry out your cards. That extra bit of gas can allow you to play Blaze at lethal levels. Anyway, here’s Johnny!

 

 

Deck 50 – Mono-Brown . . . er, Mono-Grey . . . um, Mono-Red/Grey

"Mono-Brown . . . er, Mono-Grey . . . um, Mono-Red/Grey"

I was in an artifact mood and built this right after the Wildfire deck, Wild Bill Hitchcock. This deck is even nastier if a Welder or Metalworker sticks. The goal of this deck is to use the artifact enablers to retrieve and abuse a variety of big artifact beaters and guys onto the battlefield. For example, a Metalworker on the third turn with just three artifacts in your hand gives you 10 mana on the fourth turn if you make all of your land drops. I wish I had more, but I don’t. Then, we have the Goblin Welders and Trash from Treasure, which will swap a good artifact from your graveyard for a not-as-good one in play. Finally, Kuldotha Forgemaster can sacrifice a few artifacts for one of the best in your library (usually a Blightsteel Colossus).

I included cards to sacrifice and ways to sacrifice. For example, a Spine of Ish Sah is a powerful removal artifact. You play it and crush any card in play you want. Then, you can sacrifice it to a Goblin Welder for anything, and it will go right back into your hand. Ideally, you sacrifice it for 7 damage with Bosh and bring it back, but you could also jump it into a Barrage Ogre or Forgemaster. Feel free to sacrifice an Arcbound creature and send its counters to another creature—or even a Strider after it’s used its ability. (A Wurmcoil Engine can be sacrificed as well, and it makes two dudes to replace it).

Mirrorworks is lethal here. A simple 2 mana can duplicate most of your artifacts, big or small. Whether it’s finding another use out of the trigger on a Peace Strider or making another Wurmcoil Engine, you’ll find the goods. The card-drawing is Dreamstone Hedron. Play it and sacrifice it after a while, and bring it right back into play with a Welder or Treasure.

After playing around with the deck, it’s very powerful, but the Incinerates and Lash Outs often feel superfluous. They don’t kill everything, and once you start these engines, you don’t cast them that much. If I had to do this deck all over again, I’d consider pulling them for other cards—perhaps Myr Sire, Perilous Myr, more Arcbound guys, or something else. Our final deck of today’s article awaits:

 

 

Now that you’ve seen all ten of the decks, which is your favorite? Do you prefer a classic combo deck like Life 2: Life Harder? Maybe you like the crazy hijinks of I Sacrificed my Love for You! Perhaps you like the smooth and nasty stylings of Wild Bill Hitchcock or Mono-Brown . . . er, Mono-Grey . . . um, Mono-Red/Grey. Whichever deck you like, from silly to spectacular, you have the chance to vote right now.

[poll id="141"]

I hope that you’ve enjoyed not only today’s article and its ten decks, but also the first half of the series. We’ve seen fifty real-life decks, and now we have a ton more to count down. Take a breath and ready yourself—the next articles are coming down the track!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent

TAGS articles, casual, deck lists, kitchen table, abe sargent, 100 combo decks, kitt, kitchen table tuesday

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