Rocco's Combo Life

Posted on April 27, 2022

When I was first picking up Commander as a format back in my college days, I played a ton of different decks. Much like now, my main deck at the time was Sharuum the Hegemon. I've talked about this deck substantially over the years, but it's truly been my baby for a solid decade now and despite some occasional minor updates along the way it's largely stayed the same. It's a deck that I cherish because it's strong and potent, yet built and played in a way that the whole pod can have a good time and we can have an actual game, even though Sharuum may present a greater challenge to a newer player.

Back then, however, I was definitely a bit more hardcore with my interest in Magic as a hobby than the majority of my playgroup. The majority of players just bought precons or made extremely basic decks around what random stuff they had on them. One of them played such a level of jank I wouldn't have been surprised if they pulled their deck out of a plastic bag unsleeved with a rubber band around it. You know the kind of players that I'm describing here. Well, some of those players felt that my deck was a little too strong and started ganging up on me.

They were feeling the combo aspect of it was a little much, although it would end games that had been going on for a while and we'd move onto the next one. To make a point, I decided that I was going to make a deck that was as combo oriented as possible. The result was a Garza Zol, Plague Queen deck where I shoved as many combos into it as I could to show them what a real combo deck looked like. The result? We got into a seven player game (remember we jammed these on big circular tables between classes so there were a lot of us) and I proceeded to lock everyone out with infinite mana and Capsize very quickly. The complaints generally stopped after that and I never played the deck again. That degree of combo isn't usually my speed after all.

...usually.

Enter Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer. The moment I saw this card I pretty quickly fell in love. It was like a Chord of Calling or Green Sun's Zenith on a card. I've played those cards in tons of ways over the years: Maverick, Elves, every Cube under the sun, and so on. They're just cards that resonate with me and so Rocco just seemed like an awesome card you could easily build around. A little too easily, perhaps, and in fact my first thought when I saw this was, "This card looks extremely breakable. How can we break this?"

I got to work and quickly made a list to see where we could go with it. Here's what I came up with:

Rocco's Combo Life | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer

Sorceries (8)
1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary
1 Cultivate
1 Farseek
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Open the Armory
1 Regrowth
1 Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood

The way I built this list was simple: think of every noteworthy creature combo in Naya colors and shove it in the deck. There were a couple that quickly jumped out to me right away and I quickly included in the list. Let's break down a couple of the more noteworthy ones.

The first was Devoted Druid and Luxior, Giada's Gift. This was a pretty obvious one, as it was one that had just come up with the release of Streets of New Capenna. The basic gist of this is that Luxior gives Devoted Druid +1/+1 for every counter on it. This includes the -1/-1 counters the Devoted Druid places on itself, meaning that Luxior grants a buff canceling out the -1/-1 counters. You can also get this effect with the help of Vizier of Remedies if Luxior isn't around or if you just need to tutor another creature. This means you can basically activate the ability as much as you want and can generate infinite mana in the process, allowing you to use all kinds of abilities like Walking Ballista, Temur Sabertooth, and more to great effect.

Speaking of Walking Ballista, this was another noteworthy combo that came to mind quickly. After all, Heliod Company - which focuses around this combo - has been fairly notable in Modern for a bit now, presenting a very quick kill. For a while, though, we had a similar sort of effect with Archangel of Thune - though this also tended to require shenanigans with Spike Feeder and/or Kitchen Finks with a sac outlet to keep it going. The gist of things here is that you give your Ballista lifelink or repeatedly activate Archangel of Thune to give it an endless supply of +1/+1 counters. With this, you can quickly mow down your opponents' life totals.

Then came the last real obvious one: Kiki-Jiki and Splinter Twin. I mean, c'mon, these had to be here! Kiki-Pod and Kiki-Chord were big decks in Modern once upon a time and it felt weird to not include the core ideas here as well. Rocco themself is basically a repeatable Chord of Calling and there's many of those kinds of effects here to really get it going. With Village Bell-Ringer, Restoration Angel (doesn't work with Splinter Twin, remember!), and Zealous Conscripts, there's tons of ways to make this work for an easy kill.

Last but not least is the ol' Reveillark combo. The way this works is simple: you have a Reveillark, a Karmic Guide, and possibly another creature with two or less power (though this last part isn't necessary). You first sacrifice the Karmic Guide and the other creature - if you have one - to some kind of sac outlet. Then you sacrifice Reveillark, triggering its ability to bring back Karmic Guide and the other creature. When Karmic guide enters the battlefield, its ability triggers, bringing back Reveillark and allowing you to loop this endlessly. Using this, you can gain infinite life with Kitchen Finks, deal a million damage with Goblin Bombardment, or use it as another Kiki-Jiki loop by sacrificing the Kiki-Jiki with the copy ability on the stack to make a copy of Karmic Guide and repeatedly bring Kiki-Jiki back to copy again.

Each of these combos forms the basic core of the deck. As you could probably tell, there's a decent amount of overlap between them, and as you play the deck, there's decent odds you'll find more ways they can work beyond what I listed above. For example, Grumgully, the Generous and Rhythm of the Wild were put in here to allow you to have an activatable Walking Ballista that enters for zero. They also, however, work quite nicely with Kitchen Finks. Similarly, Vizier of Remedies is here for Devoted Druid, but also plays perfectly with the Finks.

Past the combos, though, are a solid number of support cards. You'll find tons of ramp effects so as to get to these combos fast. You won't see things like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, or Jeweled Lotus, though, as I don't want this to be a fully crazy expensive cEDH deck or anything. Instead, we're rocking several different mana dorks, Farseek, Cultivate, and so on. There are a decent number of mana rocks still, but generally they're the ones you'd often expect. A bunch of cheap Ravnica block Signets, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, and the obligatory Sol Ring.

Unbound Flourishing and Erratic Portal are here as ways to make better use of Rocco as well, providing a way to make them more beneficial at lower costs as well as making them easier to recast. There're a few ways to get cards back from your graveyard too with Eternal Witness, Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary, and good ol' Regrowth - though Timeless Witness might work a little better with the creature theme. I do think an Eldrazi titan like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth would be an excellent fit here as ways to ensure you can get everything back, but they're a bit pricey so only use them if you have them.

What you end up with is an overall focused list. It wants to do one thing: get your board built up quick enough to get Rocco to set up your various combos. There's not a whole ton to it beyond that to be found in a deck like this. It's simple and linear, but that's all it needs to be. It's a dedicated combo deck, after all, and it's doing what it does best and doing it well. Originally, I created the deck with some pricier cards in mind, however, and while I toned it down for the list above, I'd also like to present the list I had originally:

Rocco's Pricey Combo Life | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer

Sorceries (7)
1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary
1 Cultivate
1 Farseek
1 Finale of Devastation
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood

There's a lot of potent cards that really add to a lot of major notable creature combos or consistency without pushing the deck into true cEDH territory that are a bit pricey. Dockside Extortionist works great with Temur Sabertooth, after all, so it makes sense that it would be here in a deck where the commander tutors up creatures. Craterhoof Behemoth and Finale of Devastation both gave you powerful spouts for your mana, Stoneforge Mystic found your Luxior, Grand Abolisher helped your game plan stick around. You get the idea. The same general concepts are overall the same, but the execution is slightly different.

If you have the money to go all out, then, hey, go for it. You could probably go deeper than this with cards like Phyrexian Altar, Food Chain, Allosaurus Shepherd, and all the fast mana in the world, but I didn't want to go that hard with it. A lot of these cards were cards that played well with Rocco by being tutorable or played in a similar vein to their actual tutor effect. Essentially, it was just ways to make it work the best without being too efficient, and even then it may still be a bit too easy to put all the pieces together.

Regardless of how you play it, this deck is great at doing what it does: finding the right set of creatures to lock up a game in no time flat. It's the kind of deck I would've used in the same vein as Garza Zol once upon a time in order to prove a point. Normally this is where I'd recommend trying it out at your next Commander night, but use caution when you do. This is not the kind of deck you want to play regularly unless your playgroup is a bit more on the competitive side, but when you do play it, you'll probably find yourself saying, "That was a hoot!"

Paige Smith

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