Inspiration struck while I was in the middle of a game. Earlier, I had just taken apart a deck that included Tombstone Stairwell. Those of you who have been playing for under ten years will want to take a good look at that card. The first look suggests that if you are going to use the card, you’ll want to fill your graveyard more than anyone else so you can get more Tombspawn tokens than anyone else. That’s the way I used the card the first time I looked at it, too. Take another look.

The tokens are destroyed at the end of every turn.

Then new tokens come for everyone during each upkeep.

What can you do with a handful of disposable creatures each turn? Type in “sacrifice a creature” on Gatherer, then tell me again what you can do with all those creatures. I can see the grins forming on your faces.

Let’s take the thought process to the next step. What about all the creatures coming into play and leaving play for everyone? Suture Priest looks like a fun card, doesn’t it? My mind started doing flips when I saw this, trying to figure out how I could make this work for me. I was playing a game when I managed to get Elesh Norn into play. Yes, yes, I’m a douchebag for playing Elesh Norn, but let’s get past that for a moment. After a couple of creatures died, the next turn, I went for the gusto and put out Massacre Wurm, wiping just about every creature on the board, costing several players plenty of life . . .

The Tombspawn tokens are 2/2 creatures.

Massacre Wurm gives my opponents’ creatures -2/-2 when it comes into play, so it would kill all the tokens and make my opponents lose 2 life for each token that died! There are probably a couple of creatures in each graveyard, so that would be 4 damage! Hang on . . .

The Tombspawn tokens die all on their own, every single turn . . .

Massacre Wurm doesn’t have to kill the tokens; it just has to be on the board when they die . . .

If I’m in a four-player chaos game with Tombstone Stairwell and the Massacre Wurm in play, my opponents are going to lose 2 life per creature in their graveyards at the end of each player’s turn. If I can keep those cards in play for even one round of play . . .

So, what do we need to make this happen?

1. Creatures in Everyone’s Graveyards

The only way the Stairwell can put the Tombspawn tokens into play and remove them at the end of each turn is if there are creatures in everyone’s graveyards. I’m running eleven cards that will help me fill graveyards:

Plague Wind – I suspect this card won’t stay in the deck because of the high casting cost, but since it does exactly what I want and I’ve never run it before, it made its way into the deck.

Guul Draz Assassin, Royal Assassin, Avatar of Woe, and Evil Twin – While all of them are there to kill creatures, each of them brings something slightly different. The Avatar is an all-purpose, repeatable destroy effect, but it doesn’t often see play until later on. I’m counting on getting creatures in the graveyard early, so I hope to bring it out quickly. The Royal Assassin comes down early and discourages attacking. While I’d love to see opponents attacking each other, the Royal one has that side effect, and I’m prepared to live with it. The Guul Draz Assassin is a creature that isn’t likely to last. Paying the level up costs before it does anything effective will be a problem. In the end, he was the buy-a-box promo for Rise of the Eldrazi, and I wanted to get him into a deck before he rotates out of Modern. Evil Twin kills legends immediately, kills other problem creatures soon, or simply becomes a copy of a random creature on the board that would look good in front of me.

Mindslicer – Rather than go after the creatures on the board, the Mindslicer tries to fill the graveyards discard style. It doesn’t hurt that he is a creature as well, since I’ll want my own Tombspawn tokens.

Extractor Demon – He doesn’t actually get creatures into graveyards as much as cards into graveyards. I expect some of those will be creatures. If this card is in play, I’ll be far more willing to put the combo onto the battlefield even if everyone doesn’t have enough creature cards in graveyards. Once the Tombspawn tokens leave play at the end of a turn, there will be plenty of creatures leaving play for me to target the player with the least number of creatures in his graveyard with the milling effect. This guy will ramp up the effect of the combo very quickly.

Cunning Lethemancer – This card works far more slowly than the Extractor Demon, but it gives me a body and cards in graveyards early in the game.

Ratchet Bomb – This will be tricky to pull off—I will probably be taking as big a hit as anyone since I’m playing with a lot of permanents in this deck. I just didn’t want to pass up the ability to use some pinpoint mass removal.

Nevinyrral's Disk – Not nearly as tricky. I have almost no enchantment removal in this deck, so the Disk was added. With the metagame I play in, I should probably be running four Disks. One was what I had, so it will have to do.

Even with all these slots dedicated to filling graveyards, this is still the most difficult part of the combo. You may have a player or two trying to win with creatureless (or minimal creature) decks. If that is the case, you are going to want to bring those players’ life totals down significantly before trying to go off. When you have the Tombspawn tokens, attack them. They won’t have any tokens to defend themselves, so with luck, that will get you there. If not . . .

Falkenrath Nobles – The life-gain for you is nice but mostly irrelevant. Target the creatureless-deck guy every time a creature dies. Considering that six to ten creatures will be dying on each person’s turn when the Stairwell goes off, creatureless-deck guy will be dead just as fast as everyone else.

The more common problem is going to be graveyard removal. There are so many cards used in casual play that try to take advantage of full graveyards that you will probably have someone trying a recursion deck or other graveyard hijinx in every game you play. That guy isn’t the problem. The problem is that everyone knows that guy is going to be playing, so pretty much everyone is packing some graveyard hate. Whether it is Bojuka Bog, Tormod's Crypt, or some other handy card, you are likely to have to deal with at least one person who can empty his library and leave your combo useless against him . If he is particularly evil, he will empty your graveyard, letting everyone else use their Tombspawn tokens to attack you.

While I considered sitting on a counterspell suite, this deck is already a mana hog, particularly for black mana, so that is not really an option. Instead, you just want to make things happen quickly once you have the Stairwell and the Wurm out. More creatures in graveyards means more damage quickly. Go big or go home!

2. Get the Massacre Wurm and Tombstone Stairwell into Play

As soon as you have the 6 mana to cast the Massacre Wurm, you want to get it going. With luck, by now, you’ve managed to get a few creature cards into various graveyards, so you are ready to go. I’ve included a couple of Dark Rituals to give you that one-turn ramp if you are a little low on mana. I want him around for the following turns, so I have also included Swiftfoot Boots. I suspect I’ll be looking to up the hexproof Equipment in the deck, but adding the equip cost was something I wasn’t sure I wanted to do, so it currently sits with only one copy. We’ll see how that turns out.

I included Recall and Noxious Revival to pull either the Wurm or the Stairwell from the graveyard. I’m not sure which of these I’d like in the deck since one puts the card directly in your hand while the other is free and works at instant speed but only puts the card on top of my library.

There are two Liliana Vess in the deck. Initially, I simply wanted the ability to tutor for the key cards. Later on, I realized that forcing discard is a good thing, too. Even her ultimate can be a Plan B if I can’t get the Wurm and Stairwell to play nice together.

Finally, I included three Fact or Fiction and one Windfall. The Fact or Fictions allow me to dig into my deck and fill my graveyard while the Windfall does that for everyone. I’m not sure if these are the ratios that I want, but since these were what was available without ripping other decks apart, I will start with this and make changes as I play more games. Forbidden Alchemy is a less pricey alternative that is more available for newer players.

Given the choice, get the Massacre Wurm in play first. While he draws a lot of attention from your opponents, putting the Stairwell into play, then trying to put the Massacre Wurm into play the next turn, while paying the upkeep on the Stairwell, is a ton of mana.

So, all put together, what do we have?

"Can Wurms Climb Stairs?"

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Avatar of Woe
• 1 Carrion Feeder
• 1 Cunning Lethemancer
• 1 Evil Twin
• 1 Extractor Demon
• 2 Falkenrath Noble
• 1 Guul Draz Assassin
• 1 Mindslicer
• 1 Necrotic Ooze
• 1 Royal Assassin
• 1 Sangromancer
• 2 Vampire Nighthawk
• 4 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Silver Myr

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Liliana Vess

• Spells (13)
• 2 Dark Ritual
• 3 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Plague Wind
• 1 Recall
• 1 Windfall
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1 Noxious Revival
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (26)
• 19 Swamp
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Jwar Isle Refuge
• 3 Tombstone Stairwell

Buy This Deck

The Silver Myr is there for a little more blue mana and another body into the graveyard if need be. The Nighthawks are a great deterrent and can pick up a few life points early on. The Sangromancer, Carrion Feeder, and Necrotic Ooze all take advantage of the Tombspawn tokens. While they aren’t essential to the deck and would probably be cut in a more streamlined version of things, they looked like a lot of fun, so for now, they stay.

In three games, I’ve managed to have the combo go off only once. Unfortunately, a timely piece of enchantment destruction ended my fun. The two other games included a game that was cut short when half the players had to leave and a game in which Megrim/Liliana's Caress stopped my fun.

This is not a streamlined deck, and I haven’t played enough games with it yet to determine every change that should be made. Based on the limited games up to this point, I have a few suggestions if you are considering this deck:

• Get the Stairwell up to four copies. I knew I wouldn’t want to play it until later in the game, so I only included three copies. While that is still the case, it is better to maximize your chances. You absolutely must have Tombstone Stairwell if you intend to win.
• Falkenrath Noble is a solid card, even if this deck did not abuse him. As long as you are going to try to have Tombspawn tokens running around, you should have four of this card.
• Vengeful Dead is a complete win for this deck. I can’t claim credit for this idea; Brandon Isleib suggested it when I explained what this deck was trying to do. I will probably be looking to add four of these to the deck once I can pick them up.
• Cyclers are another good way to get some creatures into your own graveyard while receiving other benefits. Daryl Bockett recommended Twisted Abomination, Viscera Dragger, and Gempalm Polluter. These are all cards I can get behind

In spite of only having the combo go off once, the deck is still fun to play. My group has not recognized it on sight yet, and even if they had, it has no reputation yet. I hope to change that in the next few weeks!