Last night, I was at a local card store preparing for Friday Night Magic. It was about forty minutes before the tournament began, and a few of us decided to play a game of Commander to pass the time. Thirty-five minutes later, in the midst of a game with no one dying and with a fairly good state of equilibrium, someone dropped Grim Monolith followed by Power Artifact (which together make infinite colorless mana) and his commander Oona to win the game right then and there. I thanked him profusely and was really happy—I was glad that after putting a half hour or so of my time into a game that it wasn’t called on account of time. Someone winning is a good thing.

I think it’s time to talk about the good of combo and the bad of combo. In a story I related recently, I encountered a particularly unfortunate combo Commander deck online, and I will look at that deck today and why it’s bad for multiplayer both in real life and online. Then, I will show you the good of combo and where it is a valuable thing indeed. I want to draw a distinction between good combo and bad combo. Let’s go!

Afterward, I packed the deck away and never played it at a multiplayer table again. In fact, about a month later, I took it apart completely and built a different Vintage deck. I learned a valuable lesson. I know that in this life, each of us is the only person we’ve ever been. We’re all biased. But at the end of the day, we are in a world populated by other people, and we have to take them into consideration. Life, and multiplayer Magic, share this connection—the game is not just about you, and it’s not just about you having fun. It’s about everyone having fun. And they didn’t when I played my Vintage storm deck.

If you’re going to play a combo deck at the multiplayer table, good! I built a Hatred combo Commander deck just a few weeks ago, so I respect combo in multiplayer. But a good combo ends the game immediately. Let’s shuffle up and move on. A good combo does not take a long time to play out. That’s the difference.

A few weeks ago, while playing a normal online, multiplayer Commander game with my very powerful (sarcasm mode engaged) Jacques le Vert deck, I ran into a foe with a powerful combo deck that killed everyone on the third turn—which, again, is fine by me. I don’t mind a combo kill at all. What I do mind is this particular one. What I’ve done is try to recreate that deck as well as I can, which is pretty easy since I saw most of it. Here it is:

"Bad Combo! Bad!"

• Commander (1)
• 1 Griselbrand

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Blood Pet
• 1 Memnite
• 1 Ornithopter
• 1 Phyrexian Walker
• 1 Shield Sphere
• 1 Shifting Wall

• Spells (43)
• 1 Ad Nauseam
• 1 Cabal Ritual
• 1 Dark Ritual
• 1 Shred Memory
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Blackmail
• 1 Cabal Therapy
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Duress
• 1 Grim Tutor
• 1 Hymn to Tourach
• 1 Imperial Seal
• 1 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 1 Tendrils of Agony
• 1 Thoughtseize
• 1 Yawgmoth's Will
• 1 Accorder's Shield
• 1 Bone Saw
• 1 Chimeric Mass
• 1 Chrome Mox
• 1 Claws of Gix
• 1 Darksteel Relic
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Feldon's Cane
• 1 Fountain of Youth
• 1 Grim Monolith
• 1 Herbal Poultice
• 1 Lotus Petal
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Mishra's Bauble
• 1 Mox Diamond
• 1 Paradise Mantle
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spellbook
• 1 Spidersilk Net
• 1 Tormod's Crypt
• 1 Urza's Bauble
• 1 Welding Jar
• 1 Zuran Orb
• 1 Mox Opal

• Lands (50)
• 43 Swamp
• 1 Crystal Vein
• 1 Ebon Stronghold
• 1 Glacial Chasm
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Peat Bog
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

Buy This Deck

The deck wants to play Ad Nauseam and draw the entire deck. The total combined casting cost of everything in the deck must be lower than the amount of starting life. In this case, everything other than Ad Nauseam and Griselbrand, the commander, is 33, so when you draw your deck, you will lose around 30 life. In order to accommodate this, we need as many lands in the deck as possible, so it has a 50% land section.

Now, this is hardly a new idea. This combo of drawing your deck, building a big storm count, and going off with Tendrils of Agony for the win has been in tournaments for a while. Someone just took a tournament-winning combo and built a Commander deck around it, designed to go off immediately. Then, he played cards that either make mana or cost nothing so that his storm count would be huge, and he kills everyone at the table with a huge number of Tendrils.

I included every tutor I could under 3 mana that is online, and I skipped the powerful Brainspoil due to its casting cost. Every tutor is valuable because it finds Ad Nauseam (save for Shred Memory, which tutors up the Demonic Tutor, master of all tutors). I can’t remember who the commander was, but I know it was not Maralen, so I went with new guy Griselbrand, who could reignite the flame later in the combo if it stalled or was stopped. I also tossed in Feldon's Cane—to reset the library in case of a bad counter that would come its way—and Yawgmoth's Will—to reuse cards.

Anyway, the deck is about finding the combo, protecting the combo, and playing the combo. It just needs one card to win! That’s cute, right?

Maybe so, but this is a particularly bad deck to play online because it’s such a click-fest. When someone resolves Ad Nauseam, he flips a card, then clicks whether to stop, and if he keeps going, he flips another card, maybe loses some life, and chooses to keep going . . . and it takes a while. It can take five minutes just to resolve Ad Nauseam. Then, he has to play all of these cards, which takes forever. And don’t forget playing the Tendrils and choosing a target for every storm card on the stack. Considering all of this, it can easily take fifteen minutes to actually combo someone out. Sound familiar?

It really resembles my old storm deck around Mind's Desire. Both are storm combos that take about fifteen minutes to win. During that time, no one is having fun but you. And remember my point above? Multiplayer is about more than just you.

Now, I would never say don’t build this Ad Nauseam storm deck. You might want to build it just as a proof of concept. “Look, I built this combo deck for Commander that wins in three turns!” Perhaps you and your buddies have a Combo Night, when everyone builds cutthroat combo decks and sees who wins first. I understand that, and I would never say, “Don’t ever build this deck ever!” What I will say is: Don’t play this deck at a general multiplayer game. First of all, it’s boring for others, second of all, it will receive much hate by others in future games, and third of all, it can develop a bad reputation for you in the area and prevent people from playing against you. You don’t want any of those things to happen.

Suppose that I’m playing a R/G aggro deck with cards such as Spearbreaker Behemoth and Shivan Wurm running around. Maybe I included a couple of Relentless Assault effect to give me a few more attacks. Perhaps one of them is Aggravated Assault. I can add Bear Umbra and Nature's Will to the deck. That way, I can combo out by making infinite attacks in one turn. It’s a normal deck with a combo win condition if it’s needed.

Some of these pieces are a bit obvious. If you are playing an Esper-colored Commander deck, and suddenly you drop Kismet, I think we all know enough to understand what is coming next will not be pretty. Virtually no one plays Kismet unless Stasis or Winter Orb or Meekstone or something else follows. It screams out, “I’m a combo!” Some cards scream it out even more. If someone Duresses you, and I see Power Artifact, I don’t need to see Grim Monolith to know where that is going. There are a lot of cards that broadcast combo, such as March of the Machines, Dross Scorpion, Mycosynth Lattice, Opalescence, and Enduring Renewal.

The best combos to add to an existing deck are those that do not seem like combos at the time, but when put together, give you a win. For example, take a Spirits-and-Arcane deck in Commander. It just looks like fun, right? Have a few ways to mass-mill your library, such as Hermit Druid or many of the cards in Innistrad block. Once you have a giant graveyard packed with every Arcane card in the game in your colors and some fun Spirits (with everyone thinking that you have a fun tribal deck), play Ire of Kaminari on someone for a bunch of damage, and you’ll probably slay him. Then, Chandra Ablaze, Past in Flames, or Recoup it (or use cards in other colors such as Eternal Witness, Regrowth, and so on) for another hit, and slay someone else. Nail some other people, and slay them, and you win out of nowhere with what was supposed to be a fun little Arcane deck. Sure, it was fun, but you had a backup plan in case the game slowed down and went on too long.

Remember that in addition to some cards that shout combo, there are also some commanders that do. No one screams it louder than Maralen of the Mornsong. But there are others, from the commonly played Zur the Enchanter to Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed.

Many commanders tell people what you are playing—Azami, Lady of Scrolls says one thing, and Rhys the Redeemed says another. While I do like commanders that don’t give away too much, sometimes you just can’t help it. So, if you want to keep your deck from sending up a combo flare, and you want to keep your combo on the hush-hush, make sure the actual commander doesn’t give away the secret.

Therefore, if you are considering combo, my recommendation is to either have a combo that slays everyone quickly or add a few combo cards to decks that already exist, and if possible, to have those combo cards not look shockingly out of place.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s discussion about combo in Commander. What’s your combo experience been in Commander and multiplayer? Let us know in the comments.

See you next week,

Abe Sargent