Celestial Hex

Posted on November 13, 2013

In this week’s experiment, we buffer our life total and then use a vampiric hex to bring forth a celestial convergence, ensuring our victory.

Normally when I build a combo deck, I like to really build a combo deck. That is to say, I want my entire deck to be the combo—a machine of sorts, in which every piece has a role to play in the grand design. This is in contrast to so-called combo decks such as in Modern with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Pestermite. These decks have a two-card, instant-win combo, but the rest of the decks are control or midrange shells—they just happen to include an instant-win combination.

Unfortunately for me, Wizards of the Coast doesn’t really support dedicated combo decks anymore. The last time I remember seeing one in Standard was with Pyromancer Ascension in Zendikar block. Wizards doesn’t want to support decks that don’t interact with their opponents.

Anyway, this week, I’m going to diverge from my normal dedicated-combo inclinations and cover a nonstandard control deck that uses a two-card combo for victory.

A long time ago, when I first started Magic, it was around the time of Nemesis. Despite Mercadian Masques block being considered among the worst ever, Nemesis and Prophecy hold special places in my heart. In addition, my first deck was a mono-white life-gain deck, so, naturally, Celestial Convergence provides a nice bit of nostalgia for me.

We may not always want to wait seven turns. However, for a dedicated control deck full of powerful spells, seven turns may not be too long. For example, I could imagine recent Standard decks playing Celestial Convergence over something such as Nephalia Drownyard. Of course, it’s more vulnerable and takes a spell slot, so the land would probably still be the better bet, but the point is that seven turns for a control deck isn’t the infinity we might imagine.

However, I do want to retain some level of combo element—and not just throw Celestial Convergence in a control shell. To that end, we need a way to remove the counters faster than the one-turn-at-a-time-over-seven-turns method. Fortunately, there just so happens to be a way to remove all of our enchantment’s counters at once.

Vampire Hexmage is a card that’s already used in Constructed two-card-combo decks. Normally used with Dark Depths to make an indestructible 20/20, with Celestial Convergence, we can just instantly win—though we are restricted to the Convergence’s trigger during our upkeep. Oh, and of course, we need to have more life than our opponent has.

Basically, if we play Vampire Hexmage on turn two and Celestial Convergence on turn four, we can remove all of the omen counters. However, we don’t actually win until Celestial Convergence’s upkeep trigger resolves, so we’ll still have to wait until the upkeep of our fifth turn. That means we can keep the Hexmage around to block and then sacrifice or wait until the actual upkeep trigger is put onto the stack—in response, sacrifice the Hexmage, and when the ability resolves, we’ll win.

So, now that we have the technical details of the combo out of the way, we’ll need ways to ensure we have more life than our opponent does. That means we’ll need normal control shell elements. However, normal control decks tend to live by the Magic: The Gathering principle that only the last life point matters; however, in this deck, every life point matters, especially since we won’t often be reducing our opponent’s life.

To compensate, I’ve filled the deck with normal control elements with tacked-on life-gain.

Tribute to Hunger – At 3 mana, this is slightly more expensive than a Doom Blade or a Go for the Throat, and it has the additional downside that the opponent is able to choose the creature that dies, but the life-gain is what’s important here, and most other life-gain removal spells don’t have instant speed and have much higher mana costs.

Absorb and Fall of the Gavel – Absorb and its brother Undermine—and their descendant Punish Ignorance—are some pretty sweet Invasion counterspells. The going rate for counterspell nowadays, in the form of Cancel, Dissipate, and Dissolve, is 3 mana, so Absorb is right on par there with only the third mana a little steeper in cost in that it requires . Fall of the Gavel is much more expensive, but we do gain more life. I’ll throw one in there for theme’s sake.

Chastise and Dramatic Rescue – These are two more life-gain removal spells, though Chastise only works on attackers and costs 4. Dramatic Rescue is only 2 mana, but it’s just a bounce spell. I filled the deck with one- and two-ofs to provide some versatility. Feel free to stock up on your favorite life-gain removal.

Dromar's Charm – Dromar's Charm is a pretty useful spell, as charms tend to be, as it provides you with three options. It can serve as removal for a small creature, as a counterspell at the normal 3-mana requirement, or as life-gain in pinch—such as when we’re behind but when a Celestial Convergence is about to finish the game.

Renewed Faith – The cycling mode of Renewed Faith is the most useful. It’s like a Think Twice with 2 life tacked on—but without a flashback option. That sounds pretty bad, but spending 2 mana to gain 2 life and draw a card will help keep us ahead while digging toward our combo pieces. And, of course, we have the 6-life option when we need it.

Intervention Pact – This spell is a one-of, last-minute measure. Notably, it will be most interesting when we’re about to fall behind on life just before Celestial Convergence goes off, but we cast the free spell to gain life instead of lose it and then win the game. That’s what Limited Resources podcast listeners call best-case-scenario mentality—or BCSM—but it will have other uses, and this is an experiment after all. The best part, perhaps, is that when we do enact the above play, we can have Celestial Convergence resolve first—winning us the game—before the Intervention Pact trigger resolves and forces us to pay or lose.

Sphinx's Revelation – Perhaps the best fit for this deck, apart, perhaps, from Absorb, is Sphinx's Revelation. Already played as an extremely powerful card in popular control decks, Sphinx's Revelation provides much-needed card-draw while also gaining a potentially large amount of life.

The good part about running a control deck with a life-gain component is that a lot of the pieces are interchangeable. This is the upside of a combo deck that is based on only two cards instead of many important pieces. I’d recommend more Sphinx's Revelations, but if you don’t have those, don’t want to bother with Intervention Pact, or can’t find quite enough Absorbs, other options include Azorius Charm, Reviving Dose, Kiss of the Amesha, Survival Cache, and Truce or Temporary Truce.

The deck also has a couple more pieces that aren’t control spells.

Lost Auramancers – This is one of my go-to combo supporters for its ability to fetch enchantments. Though it’s decidedly weaker than Academy Rector, it’s also much less expensive in terms of dollars. The deciding factor for this deck is that Lost Auramancers is also a combo with the already-included Vampire Hexmage.

Thrull Parasite – As a 1-drop, the Parasite can come down early and let us start extorting, which is powerful in combination with Celestial Convergence. Not only does it increase our life total, but it decreases our opponent’s. The bonus upside of this Thrull is that it speeds up the vanishing of our Auramancers and the de-omening of our Convergence.

"Celestial Hex"

If you like the idea of alternate win conditions, Celestial Convergence is an often-forgotten option. Test of Endurance and Felidar Sovereign, eat your hearts out.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com