So with the banning of Temporal Fissure, the dominant combo deck and a couple variants have gone by the wayside. What is there left?
For the sake of this post, I'm defining a combo deck as a deck that using a specific set of cards creates a position where it will win in one to two turns. Decks like elves (Distant Melody plus lots of elves) or Songs of the Damned combo (Songs plus lots of cycling creatures in the yard) don't quite seem like the same thing to me, so I'm leaving them out for now.
Here's what there is in the way of combos that I've seen, from strongest to weakest as I see them:
I'm linking jphsnake's build on MTGOStrat because I think it's probably the best known, but the deck has been around since Guardian was printed, and other Freed from the Real decks have existed for a long time. The deck wins by generating infinite mana with a Guardian and Freed. It is able to protect itself with blue counterspells and Vines of Vastwood (which can be cast from an apparently tapped-out board state with a Wall of Roots). The deck can also play like a U/x cloudpost deck, ramping into insane mana and chaining draw spells; Train of Thought can get very silly with an active axebane on the board. This helps offset the potential card disadvantage from having the axebane killed in response when you move to enchant it.
The win condition in snake's deck is two Viridian Longbow and one Capsize; Drift of Phantasms can be used to tutor for either of them - the longbow via Trinket Mage. There are other possible win conditions but this seems reasonable to me.
Deck strengths: blue card draw, blue/green cards to defend the combo, combo kills the same turn if you have a guardian already in play. Walls help stall vs. aggro; longbow can be very good vs. aggro and (especially) vs. delver even with no combo in sight.
Weaknesses: four-card combo for the actual kill (axebane, freed, longbow, another wall in play) - having an additional wall can be a problem vs. decks that pack a lot of edicts. Weak to artifact removal, though capsize is a second win condition.
Despite the weaknesses, I think this deck has a real chance to do well in dailies; the combo can get online fast enough to win vs. aggro and there is enough card draw and protection to win a long game vs. control.
Yeah, that. Check the Fissureless Familiar Storm deck by Ministered by Angels for an example; the point is that with the three cards listed, plus enough familiars and/or lands that produce multiple mana, you can get infinite mana; if you also have one of your eight creatures that draw cards when they come into play, you can use that mana to draw out your entire deck.
Besides the esper familiar build, there's also a u/g build possible based on dogbiscuit's tournament deck; this version uses cards like Overgrowth to enchant a land or two to produce large amounts of mana per tap.
Once you get to infinite mana and draw your entire deck, you could use practically any win condition - a couple Prophetic Prism and a Kaervek's Torch? Whatevs. Ministered's decklist uses Parasitic Strix to drain out his opponent - I'm a bit dubious simply due to the fact that there are only 4 black cards in the deck so he might need to spend a lot of time drawing into them; my personal favorite win condition here is Sage's Row Denizen, but really if you can get this deck to work, who cares how you win exactly?
One weakness here is that unlike the fissure deck, you don't have storm to just power your win condition spell through your opponent's counterspells; also, cloud of faeries is just about as vulnerable as a creature can be - there are spells in every color that can kill it at instant speed. Finally, the clock can be a real issue if you have to draw through a lot of your deck to find your win condition.
A major advantage here is that you can get your combo off without having to go through an untap phase with any combo pieces on the board; all you need is some multiple mana lands and/or familiars on the board. Technically you could probably go off from nothing but lands, but I have a hard time seeing that happen.
Also, this deck is kind of pricey to put together, what with the clouds and snaps, for something nobody's sure will actually work.
Project X is a deck that uses this combo; basically, Ivy Lane Denizen makes persist creatures immortal - when the creature comes back from the graveyard, you put a +1/+1 counter on it, which wipes out the -1/-1 counter, which means it's ready to persist again. The linked deck uses 4 Carrion Feeder and 3 Bloodflow Connoisseur to take advantage of this by easily growing to 20/20 or bigger and threatening to swing in for lethal. The deck can deal with chump blockers by using Elvish Herder to give the big guy trample.
Project X pairs the combo win with an aggro package of 4 Putrid Leech and 3 Nest Invader and throws in 4 Bequeathal, which is basically a green Thoughtcast in this deck. The theory is that the deck can put on early pressure and force the opponent to deal with the aggro threats instead of holding removal for combo pieces. This seems like a pretty promising approach; another possibility for the combo is to run a more controlling/reactive Tortured Existence build and flip into aggro mode once the combo is assembled.
Strengths: lots of synergy. Most of the cards are good to reasonable on their own.
Weakness: removal on denizen is hard to recover from if opponent can stabilize versus the early aggro. Attackers can be chump blocked unless a fourth combo piece comes out.
No link to a decklist; if anyone has a link to a good article or forum post, I'm happy to edit it in.
This is a true two-card combo - put Presence of Gond on a non-summoning-sick Midnight Guard, then you can tap the guard to put a 1/1 Elf into play, causing the guard to untap, and repeat for profit. The following turn, you get to attack with your dudes for infinite.
As a two-card combo, this one is inherently easier to put together than the ones listed above, which is good, because green and white only have Commune with the Gods as a way to tutor/dig for the combo. That's better than what they had before, which was nothing but a few cantrips, but it's much less good than the card draw and/or tutors available to the first 3 decks.
Another bonus here is that green and white have a lot of ways to protect the combo - green has Vines of Vastwood and friends, and Wrap in Vigor is an option for keeping the tokens alive through sweepers, though Prismatic Strands in white is probably better, especially since you should be fully untapped once you make your first attack. Also, if your opponent only has sorcery-speed point removal (or has instant-speed removal blanked on your turn thanks to a vines or Apostle's Blessing or similar), he's out of luck as you still will have the 40 elves to beat face with. Even instant-speed enchantment removal doesn't help much unless your opponent also has a sweeper, as you can put as many tokens as you want into play in response.
The biggest problem with this deck is one card: Crypt Rats. If the rats are back, that makes this deck immeasurably less attractive.
I have this one at the bottom of my list due to the lack of digging; even with commune I don't know if this can be a consistent deck. There's some possibility of putting the combo in some sort of green/white aggro deck a la Project X; anyway, the simple 2-card combo seems powerful enough to be worth mentioning even if I'm skeptical that it will work out.
I feel like Midnight Gond probably deserves to be higher. Either of the key cards (or both) can be splashed colors in a blue based deck, more like UG, to give you access to the countermagic and draw that this would need. I'm guessing a UGw Bogle shell would be really good.
Project X combo would be good in TortEx but I'm less convinced about a separate shell. Has that deck been putting up results already?
The combo I'll contribute for consideration is the glass cannon of Pauper: Treasure Hunt plus Scrapyard Salvo, with the full 24 artifact lands (plus Piranha Marsh basically doing the same thing as a factland if you play it instead of discarding). I'm tweaking Treasure Hunt decks in Legacy and Modern as well, it's such a silly card.
Pros: Easy to pick up and play. The Pauper version has the simplest decision tree since you don't have the high density of utility lands in your deck compared to the other formats. Opening hand doesn't have a Hunt? Mulligan. It can win as early as t3 if you're real lucky with your Hunt. Creatureless combo is harder to disrupt/delay for most decks. You can sideboard into different wincons if needed; Salvage Slasher with Soaring Seacliff and/or Smoldering Spires for aggro decks that won't be running removal.
Cons: Basically an auto-scoop to permission decks makes it more of a meta choice in the event that Delver/MUC/Teachings constitutes a small enough portion of the metagame; it's been unplayable with UxPost decks around but could be fringe-playable with the new bans. High variance against discard: weak verging on dead against targeted, strong verging on amazing against non-targeted. The deck will sometimes fizzle on its own, either not seeing a Hunt in all your opening hand mulligans (feels like this happens 5-10% of the time?) or hitting your Scrapyard too early to recover.
I don't think anything but wall combo has put up any results out of these, and wall combo only a couple 3-1s months ago. There may have been a soul sisters/presence of gond deck? Not sure.
Treasure hunt deck looks interesting. Do you fill in with basic lands, so 4 hunt, 4 salvo, 24 arty lands, 4 marsh, 24 basics?
I don't think anything but wall combo has put up any results out of these, and wall combo only a couple 3-1s months ago. There may have been a soul sisters/presence of gond deck? Not sure.
Treasure hunt deck looks interesting. Do you fill in with basic lands, so 4 hunt, 4 salvo, 24 arty lands, 4 marsh, 24 basics?
Not so many basics. I still haven't found the perfect mix, but ideally you probably want 4 Izzet Guildgate so you can turn 1 that, turn 2 an untapped source to Hunt with and still be able to turn 3 Salvo off of a Mountain if you get lucky with your Hunt going deep. Some builds I've done have had the Ravnica bouncelands, letting me get extra value out of Piranha Marsh and matchup-specific utility lands like Bojuka Bog. Sideboard (or maindeck, meta-dependent) can run other lands like Kabira Crossroads or, especially with karoos, Glimmerpost. I've still not tested with some land builds that could be good though, it's a work in progress.
Also, only 1 Salvo in the maindeck with 2-3 in the side. You probably lose to permission game one 90%+ of the time like this but A) that should happen anyway if they counter your first Hunt and B) you give yourself the lowest chance of hitting an early Salvo. My first Hunt is 75% to chain another; 66% on the second one and 50% on the third. If you go all the way and hit your fourth Hunt, it should be the second play of your fourth turn and you will almost always have the required number of factlands in the 'yard to untap on turn 5 and win with Salvo.
Oh yeah, other pro: the deck costs nothing. But I'm excited for the bans to take effect so I can run this in a DE and see how it shakes out.
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Contraption is a new artifact type. There are currently no artifacts with this type. And there's no current game meaning of "assemble."
I don't think anything but wall combo has put up any results out of these, and wall combo only a couple 3-1s months ago. There may have been a soul sisters/presence of gond deck? Not sure.
no there hasn't been a showing from any of these... a variation of the Freed deck showed once and I honestly don't think it'll be a regular competitor
I did try to work the presence combo into that deck as I'm sure many others did, but it just didn't hold up... the combo is basically the same thing as the freed combo; put down a dude and enchant it, after sickness you "win".. actually i guess presence is stronger than freed because it only requires two cards while freed needs a third that is an actual win con
interesting combo choices... I know they're not as much literal combos, but no eye candy? or TE? think those will be closest to regular competitive combos we'll see honestly at least until someone comes up with a surefire way to abuse the Cloud mana engine as I've been saying for awhile now lol
TE isn't a combo deck; it's a control deck with some strong synergies. (Or sometimes a midrange deck for some green/black builds). Wee Fiend, I guess... just "pump spells and dudes" doesn't feel esoteric enough to be much fun as a combo deck. Might as well say burn is a combo deck because it relies on a combo of 6-7 burn spells to the face.
Presence has the advantage of being a true two-card combo but the disadvantage (without working in something like Mob Justice) that you give your opponent an untap phase to find an answer (and more if he has fog effects).
There were a few lists that had Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond following a Wall of Glare + Sandskin (or the Innistrad improvement) and placed in dailies. I don't think that's a very good lock though. Bounce, Doom Blade, sacrifice effects, Viridian Longbow, etc. beat it.
Besides, I don't want to combo into something that goes long. I've played 4 dailies with 2 different midrange/control brews, and I'm tired of playing for 3 hours at 100% effort for no tix while others are getting 3-1s on the back of about 40 minutes of play. I've been surprised to see how short some of the Love Train videos are on Dan's (magicgatheringstrat's) YouTube page.
Wee Fiend, I guess... just "pump spells and dudes" doesn't feel esoteric enough to be much fun as a combo deck.
But it does fulfill your idea in that it "creates a position where it will win in one to two turns". If your opponent doesn't have at least one answer for your Kiln Fiend/Nivix Cyclops, they are dead next turn to a wide variety of card combinations available to the deck. Heck, I had an all-in monored version that could win on turn 2.
By your initial standard, I would include Wee Fiend here. I'd also include Songs of the Damned/lifedrain dredge but probably not Tortured Existence; the distinction here for me being that I'd see the one-shot kill as more combo-y while TE is a synergy deck with a bunch of smaller combos, in my estimation. I'm guessing you are moreso wanting to talk about combos that aren't already prevalent in the meta? Either way, you should keep this thread going until you get a collection of the options and then maybe do a poll thread to focus discussion on the top one(s).
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Contraption is a new artifact type. There are currently no artifacts with this type. And there's no current game meaning of "assemble."
Actually interesting to think about - all the other creature combo decks basically have the same problem wee fiend does - if the opposing deck can just kill your guys before you untap, you can't win. Saw Dan Hornung lose to a pretty bad mono-removal orzhov deck with love train and that was basically his problem.
Actually interesting to think about - all the other creature combo decks basically have the same problem wee fiend does - if the opposing deck can just kill your guys before you untap, you can't win. Saw Dan Hornung lose to a pretty bad mono-removal orzhov deck with love train and that was basically his problem.
Exactly. For the purposes of this thread, I think you just have to find where you want to draw the line between combo and synergy.
My estimation of the combos discussed in order of power level:
1. Cloud/Flicker/Wall. Monocolor, all good cards, inevitability in the right shell. A stable, slower combo.
2. Wee Fiend. Another proven contender can be tuned really well for different metas.
3. Gond Guard. Could certainly fit into a GW aggro shell or Elves splashing just for Guard.
4. Axebane/Freed. Strong, but being a 4 card combo makes it pretty easy to disrupt/delay, even with it's ability to dig and transmute.
5. Songs. Initial combo is monocolored but you can splash fairly easily to supplement. Dredging and cycling are efficient mechanics. Just a shade under Axebane/Freed, I think.
6. Project X. Would be higher if you didn't have to go into black for Carrion Feeder. I think the TE version would be stronger than a midrange rock build. Looking at other options on Gatherer.
7. Landhunt. I've written a whole article on this that I might post but it's inability to deal with permission and targeted discard effectively is rough.
Also, I don't know Eye Candy or Love Train by name. Help?
Edit: Regarding Project X and other sac outlets. There's no good replacement: Ashnod's Altar was printed at common in Chronicles Demonic Appetite solves nothing but he's a cool card and I wanted to mention him. Thermopod seems... bad, but pretty funny. Viscera Seer would just be played in addition to Carrion Feeder.
Actually interesting to think about - all the other creature combo decks basically have the same problem wee fiend does - if the opposing deck can just kill your guys before you untap, you can't win.
Yep, that's why combo is really weak in Pauper these days
Eye Candy is another name for the Cyclops/Fiend deck (no idea why people call it that). Not sure what Love Train is.
Called eye candy because of the cyclops (eye) and the many little spells that pump it (candy), just a fun name. Though I have to say I hate the name Love Train and if the deck starts showing I won't refer to it as that lol it says nothing about the deck, what it does, etc.
Besides, I don't want to combo into something that goes long. I've played 4 dailies with 2 different midrange/control brews, and I'm tired of playing for 3 hours at 100% effort for no tix while others are getting 3-1s on the back of about 40 minutes of play. I've been surprised to see how short some of the Love Train videos are on Dan's (magicgatheringstrat's) YouTube page.
policehq,
True midrange / control players don't mind playing four long matches, but not placing never feels good. I agree it is frustrating seeing Green White Hexproof and Cyclops / Fiend pilots go 3-1 with minimal effort. Fortunately, this should change with the new format. This is something I have addressed before and one of the reasons I was in favor of the banning Temporal Fissure. I disliked that certain low quality players were able to play non interactive decks and easily prize, since the midrange and control decks that could beat them were unplayable due to heavy the presence of Temporal Fissure.
Dan's videos are all short because he is playing in the Tournament Practice Room. This means that he often does not need to fully execute the combo to win the game since his opponents concede. Additionally, many of his opponents just concede the game or match early far prior to his combo turn, since he is playing a non tournament caliber deck and generally suboptimally.
TE isn't a combo deck; it's a control deck with some strong synergies. (Or sometimes a midrange deck for some green/black builds). Wee Fiend, I guess... just "pump spells and dudes" doesn't feel esoteric enough to be much fun as a combo deck. Might as well say burn is a combo deck because it relies on a combo of 6-7 burn spells to the face.
Tom the Scud,
In JustSin’s An Introduction to Competitive Pauper, 2nd Edition, he generally correctly labelled all the various archetypes. I agree with your assessment of Tortured Existence decks. Cyclops can be classified as an Aggro-Combo deck, if you want to be technical. As far as categorizing Burn, I would refer to it as the "Lava Spike" archetype based on this book cover:
1. Cloud/Flicker/Wall. Monocolor, all good cards, inevitability in the right shell. A stable, slower combo.
Pasqual,
This deck requires some way to generate additional mana from your lands, which probably implies a second color for some combination of Karoo Lands and Land Auras or Familiars.
Viscera Seer would just be played in addition to Carrion Feeder.
Viscera Seer will never see play, at least in a traditonal Tortured Existence shell. There is a possibility the card will see play in a Project X type deck, but since it is not a win condition itself and is not great outside the combo I have my doubts.
Called eye candy because of the cyclops (eye) and the many little spells that pump it (candy), just a fun name. Though I have to say I hate the name Love Train and if the deck starts showing I won't refer to it as that lol it says nothing about the deck, what it does, etc.
JustSin,
I only refer to the Nivix Cyclops deck as Cyclops or Cyclops / Fiend, but I admit Eye Candy is a better name than the dreadful and long time inaccurate Wee Xerox. I will never have any reason to refer to the Love Train deck beyond this post. However, Love Train is a reference to the card Train of Thought.
This deck requires some way to generate additional mana from your lands, which probably implies a second color for some combination of Karoo Lands and Land Auras or Familiars.
True. My comment was mostly referencing that being monocolored for your basic combos pieces gives you more flexibility and power in building a deck around it.
Viscera Seer will never see play, at least in a traditonal Tortured Existence shell. There is a possibility the card will see play in a Project X type deck, but since it is not a win condition itself and is not great outside the combo I have my doubts.
Viscera was definitely meant for a more Project X-like shell. I wouldn't call it great either but it's certainly a good card that saw Standard play during its time, even if it doesn't quite have a home in Pauper right now.
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Contraption is a new artifact type. There are currently no artifacts with this type. And there's no current game meaning of "assemble."
True. My comment was mostly referencing that being monocolored for your basic combos pieces gives you more flexibility and power in building a deck around it.
Pasqual,
Yes you need your deck to primarily be base Blue and probably do not want to be running Urza's lands otherwise you will have color requirement issues, in an already potentially fragile deck.
Viscera was definitely meant for a more Project X-like shell. I wouldn't call it great either but it's certainly a good card that saw Standard play during its time, even if it doesn't quite have a home in Pauper right now.
My mistake. Your comment was in reference to Project X only. I confused it with a comment from someone else who suggested I play Viscera Seer in Red Black Tortured Existence.
So Alex Ullman on his facebook page put Fiend as the number one deck in the format since the bans, with the cloud of fae deck in the top ten but not top five. (Based on results in the reported dailies). A presence of gond deck managed to make at least one 3-1; I don't think any other combo decks have shown up.
So Alex Ullman on his facebook page put Fiend as the number one deck in the format since the bans, with the cloud of fae deck in the top ten but not top five. (Based on results in the reported dailies). A presence of gond deck managed to make at least one 3-1; I don't think any other combo decks have shown up.
I did two DEs and 0-2 drop'd both of them with Landhunt, sad to say. All my games are close but I'm usually 1 turn, sometimes 2 turns, too slow. Until a better/faster/more resilient wincon comes along I think I'll have to require Landhunt. For the record my losses were to Stompy, WB Rebel noTron, some UWR control brew, and Delver.
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Contraption is a new artifact type. There are currently no artifacts with this type. And there's no current game meaning of "assemble."
This is based on percentage and weighted percentage (for 4-0s v 3-1s) in the winners metagame of Daily Events reported by Wizards, since the bannings. If your disagreement is due to either the data from the more comprehensive statistics you are keeping or due to the questionable viability of the deck in the current format, I get that.
One thing to realize is that some of the Black(/x) midrange players may not be very skilled players or have well tuned decks. Even in a deck that has tools to beat the deck poor deck choices, keeps, sideboarding and play can all lead to disaster. Cyclops is not a very forgiving deck to opponent's mistakes. I had to learn my lesson the hard way a few times. Now I only rarely lose to the deck. One winning pilot cut 4 Delvers for 2 Mogg War Marshall and 2 non creature cards from the stock shell, likely to fight edicts and other attrition cards.
I look forward to your upcoming detailed full metagame analysis. I know different times of day and the week have slight different metagames, due to player location and type. I will be curious if your full results show anything different from Wizards partial results. Keep up the good work. If you don't want to go in depth on your reasoning for a statement here and save it for your articles, I understand. I'm not going to question someone studying the format constantly on a brief response. An explanation however brief here or in your writing would help.
Ya Fiend to me personally is just a faceroll type of list. You remove 1-3 creatures in a single game and its scoop. No different then Poison or any number of other 'combo/faceroll' lists.
But, I'm so happy its a thing. It enables 'new' players to buy into a competitive deck for what? 10-40 bucks. Hopefully cash out a few times and buy into a more engaging list
Project X is a deck that uses this combo; basically, Ivy Lane Denizen makes persist creatures immortal - when the creature comes back from the graveyard, you put a +1/+1 counter on it, which wipes out the -1/-1 counter, which means it's ready to persist again. The linked deck uses 4 Carrion Feeder and 3 Bloodflow Connoisseur to take advantage of this by easily growing to 20/20 or bigger and threatening to swing in for lethal. The deck can deal with chump blockers by using Elvish Herder to give the big guy trample.
Project X pairs the combo win with an aggro package of 4 Putrid Leech and 3 Nest Invader and throws in 4 Bequeathal, which is basically a green Thoughtcast in this deck. The theory is that the deck can put on early pressure and force the opponent to deal with the aggro threats instead of holding removal for combo pieces. This seems like a pretty promising approach; another possibility for the combo is to run a more controlling/reactive Tortured Existence build and flip into aggro mode once the combo is assembled.
Strengths: lots of synergy. Most of the cards are good to reasonable on their own.
Weakness: removal on denizen is hard to recover from if opponent can stabilize versus the early aggro. Attackers can be chump blocked unless a fourth combo piece comes out.
I've been playing this deck for about a week now, and I've found that the Elves toolbox package helps the deck quite a large deal. Eyeblight's Ending has been an amazing timely piece of removal. My current list looks like this
For the sake of this post, I'm defining a combo deck as a deck that using a specific set of cards creates a position where it will win in one to two turns. Decks like elves (Distant Melody plus lots of elves) or Songs of the Damned combo (Songs plus lots of cycling creatures in the yard) don't quite seem like the same thing to me, so I'm leaving them out for now.
Here's what there is in the way of combos that I've seen, from strongest to weakest as I see them:
1 - Axebane Guardian/Freed from the Real
http://mtgostrat.com/2013/07/my-train-of-thought-decks-im-thinking-of-abusing/
I'm linking jphsnake's build on MTGOStrat because I think it's probably the best known, but the deck has been around since Guardian was printed, and other Freed from the Real decks have existed for a long time. The deck wins by generating infinite mana with a Guardian and Freed. It is able to protect itself with blue counterspells and Vines of Vastwood (which can be cast from an apparently tapped-out board state with a Wall of Roots). The deck can also play like a U/x cloudpost deck, ramping into insane mana and chaining draw spells; Train of Thought can get very silly with an active axebane on the board. This helps offset the potential card disadvantage from having the axebane killed in response when you move to enchant it.
The win condition in snake's deck is two Viridian Longbow and one Capsize; Drift of Phantasms can be used to tutor for either of them - the longbow via Trinket Mage. There are other possible win conditions but this seems reasonable to me.
Deck strengths: blue card draw, blue/green cards to defend the combo, combo kills the same turn if you have a guardian already in play. Walls help stall vs. aggro; longbow can be very good vs. aggro and (especially) vs. delver even with no combo in sight.
Weaknesses: four-card combo for the actual kill (axebane, freed, longbow, another wall in play) - having an additional wall can be a problem vs. decks that pack a lot of edicts. Weak to artifact removal, though capsize is a second win condition.
Despite the weaknesses, I think this deck has a real chance to do well in dailies; the combo can get online fast enough to win vs. aggro and there is enough card draw and protection to win a long game vs. control.
2 - Cloud of FAeries/Ghostly Flicker/Mnemonic Wall
Yeah, that. Check the Fissureless Familiar Storm deck by Ministered by Angels for an example; the point is that with the three cards listed, plus enough familiars and/or lands that produce multiple mana, you can get infinite mana; if you also have one of your eight creatures that draw cards when they come into play, you can use that mana to draw out your entire deck.
Besides the esper familiar build, there's also a u/g build possible based on dogbiscuit's tournament deck; this version uses cards like Overgrowth to enchant a land or two to produce large amounts of mana per tap.
Once you get to infinite mana and draw your entire deck, you could use practically any win condition - a couple Prophetic Prism and a Kaervek's Torch? Whatevs. Ministered's decklist uses Parasitic Strix to drain out his opponent - I'm a bit dubious simply due to the fact that there are only 4 black cards in the deck so he might need to spend a lot of time drawing into them; my personal favorite win condition here is Sage's Row Denizen, but really if you can get this deck to work, who cares how you win exactly?
One weakness here is that unlike the fissure deck, you don't have storm to just power your win condition spell through your opponent's counterspells; also, cloud of faeries is just about as vulnerable as a creature can be - there are spells in every color that can kill it at instant speed. Finally, the clock can be a real issue if you have to draw through a lot of your deck to find your win condition.
A major advantage here is that you can get your combo off without having to go through an untap phase with any combo pieces on the board; all you need is some multiple mana lands and/or familiars on the board. Technically you could probably go off from nothing but lands, but I have a hard time seeing that happen.
Also, this deck is kind of pricey to put together, what with the clouds and snaps, for something nobody's sure will actually work.
3 - Carrion Feeder/Safehold Elite/Ivy Lane Denizen
Project X is a deck that uses this combo; basically, Ivy Lane Denizen makes persist creatures immortal - when the creature comes back from the graveyard, you put a +1/+1 counter on it, which wipes out the -1/-1 counter, which means it's ready to persist again. The linked deck uses 4 Carrion Feeder and 3 Bloodflow Connoisseur to take advantage of this by easily growing to 20/20 or bigger and threatening to swing in for lethal. The deck can deal with chump blockers by using Elvish Herder to give the big guy trample.
The glue that holds the deck together is Wirewood Herald, which can search for Denizen, Elite, Herder, or other tech like Essence Warden, Scattershot Archer, or Nameless Inversion.
Project X pairs the combo win with an aggro package of 4 Putrid Leech and 3 Nest Invader and throws in 4 Bequeathal, which is basically a green Thoughtcast in this deck. The theory is that the deck can put on early pressure and force the opponent to deal with the aggro threats instead of holding removal for combo pieces. This seems like a pretty promising approach; another possibility for the combo is to run a more controlling/reactive Tortured Existence build and flip into aggro mode once the combo is assembled.
Strengths: lots of synergy. Most of the cards are good to reasonable on their own.
Weakness: removal on denizen is hard to recover from if opponent can stabilize versus the early aggro. Attackers can be chump blocked unless a fourth combo piece comes out.
4 - Presence of Gond/Midnight Guard
No link to a decklist; if anyone has a link to a good article or forum post, I'm happy to edit it in.
This is a true two-card combo - put Presence of Gond on a non-summoning-sick Midnight Guard, then you can tap the guard to put a 1/1 Elf into play, causing the guard to untap, and repeat for profit. The following turn, you get to attack with your dudes for infinite.
As a two-card combo, this one is inherently easier to put together than the ones listed above, which is good, because green and white only have Commune with the Gods as a way to tutor/dig for the combo. That's better than what they had before, which was nothing but a few cantrips, but it's much less good than the card draw and/or tutors available to the first 3 decks.
Another bonus here is that green and white have a lot of ways to protect the combo - green has Vines of Vastwood and friends, and Wrap in Vigor is an option for keeping the tokens alive through sweepers, though Prismatic Strands in white is probably better, especially since you should be fully untapped once you make your first attack. Also, if your opponent only has sorcery-speed point removal (or has instant-speed removal blanked on your turn thanks to a vines or Apostle's Blessing or similar), he's out of luck as you still will have the 40 elves to beat face with. Even instant-speed enchantment removal doesn't help much unless your opponent also has a sweeper, as you can put as many tokens as you want into play in response.
The biggest problem with this deck is one card: Crypt Rats. If the rats are back, that makes this deck immeasurably less attractive.
I have this one at the bottom of my list due to the lack of digging; even with commune I don't know if this can be a consistent deck. There's some possibility of putting the combo in some sort of green/white aggro deck a la Project X; anyway, the simple 2-card combo seems powerful enough to be worth mentioning even if I'm skeptical that it will work out.
Project X combo would be good in TortEx but I'm less convinced about a separate shell. Has that deck been putting up results already?
The combo I'll contribute for consideration is the glass cannon of Pauper: Treasure Hunt plus Scrapyard Salvo, with the full 24 artifact lands (plus Piranha Marsh basically doing the same thing as a factland if you play it instead of discarding). I'm tweaking Treasure Hunt decks in Legacy and Modern as well, it's such a silly card.
Pros: Easy to pick up and play. The Pauper version has the simplest decision tree since you don't have the high density of utility lands in your deck compared to the other formats. Opening hand doesn't have a Hunt? Mulligan. It can win as early as t3 if you're real lucky with your Hunt. Creatureless combo is harder to disrupt/delay for most decks. You can sideboard into different wincons if needed; Salvage Slasher with Soaring Seacliff and/or Smoldering Spires for aggro decks that won't be running removal.
Cons: Basically an auto-scoop to permission decks makes it more of a meta choice in the event that Delver/MUC/Teachings constitutes a small enough portion of the metagame; it's been unplayable with UxPost decks around but could be fringe-playable with the new bans. High variance against discard: weak verging on dead against targeted, strong verging on amazing against non-targeted. The deck will sometimes fizzle on its own, either not seeing a Hunt in all your opening hand mulligans (feels like this happens 5-10% of the time?) or hitting your Scrapyard too early to recover.
Treasure hunt deck looks interesting. Do you fill in with basic lands, so 4 hunt, 4 salvo, 24 arty lands, 4 marsh, 24 basics?
Not so many basics. I still haven't found the perfect mix, but ideally you probably want 4 Izzet Guildgate so you can turn 1 that, turn 2 an untapped source to Hunt with and still be able to turn 3 Salvo off of a Mountain if you get lucky with your Hunt going deep. Some builds I've done have had the Ravnica bouncelands, letting me get extra value out of Piranha Marsh and matchup-specific utility lands like Bojuka Bog. Sideboard (or maindeck, meta-dependent) can run other lands like Kabira Crossroads or, especially with karoos, Glimmerpost. I've still not tested with some land builds that could be good though, it's a work in progress.
Also, only 1 Salvo in the maindeck with 2-3 in the side. You probably lose to permission game one 90%+ of the time like this but A) that should happen anyway if they counter your first Hunt and B) you give yourself the lowest chance of hitting an early Salvo. My first Hunt is 75% to chain another; 66% on the second one and 50% on the third. If you go all the way and hit your fourth Hunt, it should be the second play of your fourth turn and you will almost always have the required number of factlands in the 'yard to untap on turn 5 and win with Salvo.
Oh yeah, other pro: the deck costs nothing. But I'm excited for the bans to take effect so I can run this in a DE and see how it shakes out.
no there hasn't been a showing from any of these... a variation of the Freed deck showed once and I honestly don't think it'll be a regular competitor
I did try to work the presence combo into that deck as I'm sure many others did, but it just didn't hold up... the combo is basically the same thing as the freed combo; put down a dude and enchant it, after sickness you "win".. actually i guess presence is stronger than freed because it only requires two cards while freed needs a third that is an actual win con
interesting combo choices... I know they're not as much literal combos, but no eye candy? or TE? think those will be closest to regular competitive combos we'll see honestly at least until someone comes up with a surefire way to abuse the Cloud mana engine as I've been saying for awhile now lol
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Presence has the advantage of being a true two-card combo but the disadvantage (without working in something like Mob Justice) that you give your opponent an untap phase to find an answer (and more if he has fog effects).
Besides, I don't want to combo into something that goes long. I've played 4 dailies with 2 different midrange/control brews, and I'm tired of playing for 3 hours at 100% effort for no tix while others are getting 3-1s on the back of about 40 minutes of play. I've been surprised to see how short some of the Love Train videos are on Dan's (magicgatheringstrat's) YouTube page.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=496372
But it does fulfill your idea in that it "creates a position where it will win in one to two turns". If your opponent doesn't have at least one answer for your Kiln Fiend/Nivix Cyclops, they are dead next turn to a wide variety of card combinations available to the deck. Heck, I had an all-in monored version that could win on turn 2.
By your initial standard, I would include Wee Fiend here. I'd also include Songs of the Damned/lifedrain dredge but probably not Tortured Existence; the distinction here for me being that I'd see the one-shot kill as more combo-y while TE is a synergy deck with a bunch of smaller combos, in my estimation. I'm guessing you are moreso wanting to talk about combos that aren't already prevalent in the meta? Either way, you should keep this thread going until you get a collection of the options and then maybe do a poll thread to focus discussion on the top one(s).
Exactly. For the purposes of this thread, I think you just have to find where you want to draw the line between combo and synergy.
My estimation of the combos discussed in order of power level:
1. Cloud/Flicker/Wall. Monocolor, all good cards, inevitability in the right shell. A stable, slower combo.
2. Wee Fiend. Another proven contender can be tuned really well for different metas.
3. Gond Guard. Could certainly fit into a GW aggro shell or Elves splashing just for Guard.
4. Axebane/Freed. Strong, but being a 4 card combo makes it pretty easy to disrupt/delay, even with it's ability to dig and transmute.
5. Songs. Initial combo is monocolored but you can splash fairly easily to supplement. Dredging and cycling are efficient mechanics. Just a shade under Axebane/Freed, I think.
6. Project X. Would be higher if you didn't have to go into black for Carrion Feeder. I think the TE version would be stronger than a midrange rock build. Looking at other options on Gatherer.
7. Landhunt. I've written a whole article on this that I might post but it's inability to deal with permission and targeted discard effectively is rough.
Also, I don't know Eye Candy or Love Train by name. Help?
Edit: Regarding Project X and other sac outlets. There's no good replacement:
Ashnod's Altar was printed at common in Chronicles
Demonic Appetite solves nothing but he's a cool card and I wanted to mention him.
Thermopod seems... bad, but pretty funny.
Viscera Seer would just be played in addition to Carrion Feeder.
Yep, that's why combo is really weak in Pauper these days
Called eye candy because of the cyclops (eye) and the many little spells that pump it (candy), just a fun name. Though I have to say I hate the name Love Train and if the deck starts showing I won't refer to it as that lol it says nothing about the deck, what it does, etc.
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policehq,
True midrange / control players don't mind playing four long matches, but not placing never feels good. I agree it is frustrating seeing Green White Hexproof and Cyclops / Fiend pilots go 3-1 with minimal effort. Fortunately, this should change with the new format. This is something I have addressed before and one of the reasons I was in favor of the banning Temporal Fissure. I disliked that certain low quality players were able to play non interactive decks and easily prize, since the midrange and control decks that could beat them were unplayable due to heavy the presence of Temporal Fissure.
Dan's videos are all short because he is playing in the Tournament Practice Room. This means that he often does not need to fully execute the combo to win the game since his opponents concede. Additionally, many of his opponents just concede the game or match early far prior to his combo turn, since he is playing a non tournament caliber deck and generally suboptimally.
Tom the Scud,
In JustSin’s An Introduction to Competitive Pauper, 2nd Edition, he generally correctly labelled all the various archetypes. I agree with your assessment of Tortured Existence decks. Cyclops can be classified as an Aggro-Combo deck, if you want to be technical. As far as categorizing Burn, I would refer to it as the "Lava Spike" archetype based on this book cover:
https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/5346_606463489385429_753289130_n.png
Pasqual,
This deck requires some way to generate additional mana from your lands, which probably implies a second color for some combination of Karoo Lands and Land Auras or Familiars.
Viscera Seer will never see play, at least in a traditonal Tortured Existence shell. There is a possibility the card will see play in a Project X type deck, but since it is not a win condition itself and is not great outside the combo I have my doubts.
JustSin,
I only refer to the Nivix Cyclops deck as Cyclops or Cyclops / Fiend, but I admit Eye Candy is a better name than the dreadful and long time inaccurate Wee Xerox. I will never have any reason to refer to the Love Train deck beyond this post. However, Love Train is a reference to the card Train of Thought.
Eric
True. My comment was mostly referencing that being monocolored for your basic combos pieces gives you more flexibility and power in building a deck around it.
Viscera was definitely meant for a more Project X-like shell. I wouldn't call it great either but it's certainly a good card that saw Standard play during its time, even if it doesn't quite have a home in Pauper right now.
Pasqual,
Yes you need your deck to primarily be base Blue and probably do not want to be running Urza's lands otherwise you will have color requirement issues, in an already potentially fragile deck.
My mistake. Your comment was in reference to Project X only. I confused it with a comment from someone else who suggested I play Viscera Seer in Red Black Tortured Existence.
Eric
I get it, but that's not really the focus of the deck lol I just personally find it a bit silly
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I did two DEs and 0-2 drop'd both of them with Landhunt, sad to say. All my games are close but I'm usually 1 turn, sometimes 2 turns, too slow. Until a better/faster/more resilient wincon comes along I think I'll have to require Landhunt. For the record my losses were to Stompy, WB Rebel noTron, some UWR control brew, and Delver.
not really sure I agree with that
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JustSin
This is based on percentage and weighted percentage (for 4-0s v 3-1s) in the winners metagame of Daily Events reported by Wizards, since the bannings. If your disagreement is due to either the data from the more comprehensive statistics you are keeping or due to the questionable viability of the deck in the current format, I get that.
One thing to realize is that some of the Black(/x) midrange players may not be very skilled players or have well tuned decks. Even in a deck that has tools to beat the deck poor deck choices, keeps, sideboarding and play can all lead to disaster. Cyclops is not a very forgiving deck to opponent's mistakes. I had to learn my lesson the hard way a few times. Now I only rarely lose to the deck. One winning pilot cut 4 Delvers for 2 Mogg War Marshall and 2 non creature cards from the stock shell, likely to fight edicts and other attrition cards.
I look forward to your upcoming detailed full metagame analysis. I know different times of day and the week have slight different metagames, due to player location and type. I will be curious if your full results show anything different from Wizards partial results. Keep up the good work. If you don't want to go in depth on your reasoning for a statement here and save it for your articles, I understand. I'm not going to question someone studying the format constantly on a brief response. An explanation however brief here or in your writing would help.
Eric
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GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
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An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
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But, I'm so happy its a thing. It enables 'new' players to buy into a competitive deck for what? 10-40 bucks. Hopefully cash out a few times and buy into a more engaging list
I've been playing this deck for about a week now, and I've found that the Elves toolbox package helps the deck quite a large deal. Eyeblight's Ending has been an amazing timely piece of removal. My current list looks like this
1 Elvish Herder
1 Essence Warden
3 Nest Invader
3 Putrid Leech
4 Safehold Elite
4 Wirewood Herald
3 Bloodflow Connoisseur
2 Ivy Lane Denizen
3 Tragic Slip
2 Unearth
4 Bequeathal
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Eyeblight's Ending
3 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Golgari Guildgate
7 Forest
7 Swamp
4 Duress
1 Tragic Slip
2 Scattershot Archer
2 Diabolic Edict
3 Gleeful Sabotage
1 Putrid Leech
2 Serene Heart
I don't know if this can be a thing, I doubt it, but this deck is sure fun.