Locations
Is Demonic Pact Combo the Best Best-of-One Deck?
I think, dear readers, that the answer is yes.
I grind a lot of Standard on Magic: The Gathering Arena. You may have gleaned this, and that I can be rather opinionated based on my various commentaries on R/W Auras or Simic Beans.
I like to play a lot of different decks.
Before this past weekend, if you had asked me what deck I was most likely to win with, it would be some version of Mono-White Tokens. Why? Mono-White has the least math. The various aggro decks have to play more precisely to things like their breakpoints, or shave off a turn before the opponent can gain control with superior resources. The Mono-Red deck in particular - I do love a Rockface Village into a Screaming Nemesis let me tell you - can be so vulnerable to sideboard cards. Authority of the Consuls is unbelievable in Standard, especially in Best-of-Three.
But Mono-White doesn't care about most of the things that keep other decks up at night. If it wins, it wins by a thousand. If one of its engines is online - Caretaker's Talent or Enduring Innocence - it won't run out of cards. Just manage the opposing Screaming Nemesis and you'll have lots and lots of life to work with. Mono-White's removal is perfect for the Red aggro metagame, with Soul Partition, Lay Down Arms, and Sunfall all ready-made to blunt the offense that is Heartfire Hero.
Mono-White has a Jace problem, sure. But I still would have said I, personally, would be most likely to win with it.
If you asked me what deck I would play in a Standard, paper, RCQ... I would have said some version of Boros Auras. Why? So many tools. So many angles. Such card quality! Great sideboard cards. I intended, in fact, to play in one such RCQ last week, but have you tried to get your hands on a Sheltered by Ghosts? I bought the last two on this here site and two isn't four.
But then I tried my hand at Cat-Pact Combo.
I had been play-testing Premodern* with my friend, former JSS North American Champion, Andy Levine and Andy mentioned to me he had been playing some Cat-Pact. I wanted to try something new so I burned fifteen Rare and Mythic wildcards to put this together.
Cat-Pact Combo | FDN Standard | Michael Flores
- Instants (4)
- 4 Torch the Tower
- Sorceries (12)
- 4 Beseech the Mirror
- 4 Final Vengeance
- 4 Harmless Offering
- Enchantments (16)
- 4 Demonic Pact
- 4 Disturbing Mirth
- 4 Hopeless Nightmare
- 4 Nowhere to Run
- Artifacts (4)
- 4 Mazemind Tome
- Lands (24)
- 4 Swamp
- 4 Mountain
- 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
- 4 Blazemire Verge
- 4 Raucous Theater
- 4 Sulfurous Springs
Export Arena
As I said, this is a Best-of-One deck; and the most straightforward and simple implementation of the same. Four of everything! I based my list off of the one posted recently by LegenVD. 99% of the credit to him; 1% of the probably-worse-mana base to YT.
One of the reasons that this deck is so good is that it can so plausibly masquerade as another strategy. This deck has most of the trappings of the Black-Red sacrifice style that made Spiteful Hexmage such a star. But instead of a bunch of weird 1/1s that can grind out some extra value, it finishes the game with a two-card combo kill.
Here's how it works:
Demonic Pact is this insanely powerful Magic card. It's a little slow for 2025, but when I got back on the Pro Tour for the first time in ten years - back in Vancouver for PT Magic Origins - Demonic Pact was one of the exciting cards to try. Pact enthusiasts like Adrian Sullivan thought of it as a Cruel Ultimatum for only four mana... You just had to not die.
So, they would either figure a way to leverage all the advantages they were getting from Pact to defeat the opponent (not that hard when you're up four cards and four life); or they'd somehow get it off the battlefield before it bit them in the bum.
In 2025 thanks to Foundations, we have a better solution:
Now you get all the positive Cruel Ultimatum-esque features of your Pact, and then just toss it over to the opponent right before it kills you. It kills them instead.
Now if a two-card combo that got the other player for four extra cards (five sometimes) and got you four extra life weren't enough, the deck is situated particularly well right now.
Like Mono-White, Cat-Pact has the "right" removal spells.
Much has been said about Nowhere to Run. This card is at a perfect spot right now, bringing Heartfire Hero's power below one on the kill; ignoring Sheltered by Ghosts; and making Shardmage's Rescue rescue all of nobody.
Final Vengeance is a weirdo that isn't played in a lot of other decks. However this one is abundant with enchantments (and sometimes creatures thanks to Disturbing Mirth) for fuel.
Torch the Tower on the other hand is quite commonly played!
Together these two one mana removal spells do something special. That's right, they prevent the potential triggers on Heartfire Hero. Well they also do that but what is special in this deck is that, in a pinch, they can help you to sacrifice your Demonic Pact in the unlikely (but not impossible) case that it is about to kill you.
On the subject of sacrificing enchantments, Disturbing Mirth is great at that (especially on turn two, after a Hopeless Nightmare); and Beseech the Mirror is an extra set of Demonic Pacts on turn four; or an extra set of Harmless Offerings later in the game.
Contextually this deck is best in Best-of-One for three reasons:
- Nobody sideboards - That means fewer copies of Duress, and relatively few kinds of interaction from opponents that can stop the combo. Like Destroy Evil is a card... But a main deck card?
- Esper is so popular - This is a quasi mirror-match against Esper; except you have all the advantages. Both of you have Hopeless Nightmare and Nowhere to Run... But yours have targets! Their grinding engine is of little value against the bulk card advantage of your Mazemind Tomes and Demonic Pacts; and their creatures are simply tiny so they have problems pressuring you.
- This is an excellent anti-Red deck - Fast removal, Nowhere to Run for Snakeskin Veil or the equivalent, exile effects for Heartfire Hero; lots of ways to kill a Nemesis without triggering its damage redirection. No one is foolproof against the Red Decks, but especially if you're not too greedy with your Mazemind Tomes, this is a great deck for fighting red.
Andy told me he thought Golgari was the worst matchup, but luckily that deck has waned in popularity recently.
Personally, I've found the various Up the Beanstalk decks to be the toughest to beat. Leyline Binding in Domain can basically keep you off your combo. Repeated This Town Ain't Big Enough from Simic isn't a permanent solution, but they can force you to constantly reset Demonic Pact and kill you with Tolarian Terror in the meantime. This deck is beatable... But they put up a fight.
Potential Changes
Andy thinks that four Harmless Offerings is too many, especially with four Beseech the Mirror.
One thing I am going to test next is:
Or
Sheoldred is just a great card to Tutor for against aggro; and would give the deck a plausible way to win outside of the combo. You can win with 2/2 Manifest Dread creatures, combined with a bunch of Hopeless Nightmares; but it ain't easy.
Render Inert is just a cute one-of that can instantly win the game against Archfiend of the Dross.
Deadly Cover-Up is a card I want to try in part because someone got me with it! I foolishly put a Harmless Offering in the graveyard with Manifest Dread and they immediately pounced on that error by exiling all of them. I was still able to win with Disturbing Mirth, but it was the kind of thing that got me thinking. Also, this deck is not fundamentally good against go-wide. It's great against individual threats (especially small threats) but can fall behind to something like an Overlord of the Mistmoors or a bunch of rascally Rabbits.
Best-of-Three
For Best-of-Three I'd sideboard something like this:
Basically, I'd just want to create different angles. Sheoldred is great against aggro; but Archfiend of the Dross does double-duty. Sure, it's a sweet 6/6 for four... But what about Offering it harmlessly to the opponent right before... You know...
Something like that.
Mini-Report
I started my incredible respect for this deck right after the first Event I played with it? Why? It kept winning. Here's a mini-report.
1. Black-Red
Nothing super exciting on this one. Just kind of a time traveler. Back to the days of Felonious Rage and Callous Sell-Sword.
A deck with so many pump spells is necessarily super vulnerable to Nowhere to Run; and again, the removal in general in this deck (so many exile effects) make Cacophony Scamp and Heartfire Hero mediocre.
1-0
2. Green-White Midrange
This was a classic "you play Fortune, I brain it for four with Demonic Pact" sort of game. Just not a competitive matchup... They had small creatures. I had creature removal. Et cetera. Et cetera.
The one weird thing was that the opponent actually had an Insidious Fungus and conceded instead of using it on my Pact. I mean they would have lost eventually; but they didn't have to lose just then. Weird.
2-0
3. Mono-White Tokens
This was the perfect victory, and a great illustration of what makes Black-Red the "right" Black enchantments deck... At least for Best-of-One.
I love playing Mono-White into the Esper metagame. You just get one of your engine enchantments and you eventually overwhelm all their little chip shot grinding card advantage. But Cat-Pact don't play that!
Their Sunfalls and Lay Down Arms have little or nothing to do. My opponent kind of realized that and gave me a bunch of Maps with Get Lost. But those Maps were still relevant to help pay for Bargain!
I won north of 20 with them on no creatures and no cards in hand. Perfect victory, like I said :)
3-0
4. Esper
Round Three was a perfect victory, but Round Four was a perfect curve.
Turn one Hopeless Nightmare
Turn two Mazemind Tome
Turn three Draw with the Tome and Final Vengeance your creature (triggering Nightmare, natch)
Turn four Demonic Pact
At that point I cleared their hand and drew a ton of Nowhere to Run. There was Nowhere to Run for Esper's little 1/1s and 2/3s.
4-0
5. Reanimator
They even Duressed me!
This is clearly a benefit of Best-of-One but I really just killed a bunch of Overlords and ignored Atraxa. Demonic Pact resolved on turn four and it ended up a lot more impactful than the Zombify I saw coming.
5-0
6. Golgari Poison
I was worried about Golgari from Andy's scout, but this was a Poison deck, not the kind with 100 3/3s all of which have some kind of enchantment-killing line of text.
I couldn't have played this one worse. I mis-clicked three times; the opponent drew three copies of Fynn, the Fangbearer.
At one point I Beseeched (with no Bargain) to get a Torch the Tower to stop Fynn... But my only enchantment to sacrifice was my Demonic Pact. But then because I'm #trulyblessed I got paid because my opponent tapped out to Tear Asunder the Pact; so I could kill Fynn by sacrificing the Pact in response.
At some point I was just drawing three cards per turn, though; and Demonic Pact with Nowhere to Run in play makes Bloated Contaminator kind of inoffensive.
6-0
7. Dimir
I was super hyped to get the 7-0.
I didn't.
The game was super tense. Basically, I had to live through one turn to win. They had been tapping out every turn to hit me for five with Restless Reef, plus two 1/1 Otters. I don't have any good way to kill a Restless Reef, but Beseeched with no Bargain to get a Nowhere to Run. If they played exactly the same way they had the previous two turns, I could Nowhere to Run the Shark and get to my turn on exactly one life.
If I had had some foresight I probably should have reversed the order on my "I draw" and "you discard" turns. Instead of activating Restless Reef, they just cast a ton of spells and made both Otters lethal, so I couldn't defend myself effectively with the Nowhere to Run. If I'd flipped the order on the abilities, I might have been able to keep them off of critical mass. They got me exactsies.
6-1
8. Boros
Ho hum. Their car did not explode.
Or rather it did, but before crossing the finish line. Won on one.
7-1
So, I won the Event and got the Play-In Point, but failed to score the perfect 7-0. Still the deck was awesome enough that I played two more Events the same day, and 7-0d the third one. It's exciting! So exciting I put off writing about Premodern to tell you about it.
LOVE
MIKE
