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Spinning the Top: Dirty Rotten Combo BreakerBy Devin Malko on March 26th, 2009 · Filed in Multiplayer, Casual · 33 CommentsSpinning the Top: Dirty Rotten ComboBreaker The early stages of your third game of the night are going quite well. Sensei's Divining Top (Go top!) is giving you a steady stream of quality draws, Stillmoon Cavalier is holding the fort against small attackers, and Reveillark is waiting in hand for when the wrath hits. The board position looks good for you, and you are hoping to pick up your first win of the evening when John over in seat 4 lays down his sixth mountain to go with his Izzet Guildmage (his first, and so far only, play of the game). He taps all six and an arbitrary number of Lava Spikes later, everyone at the table is dead. Wait, what? Spliced Together and Copied With Hello everybody, and welcome to the second edition of Spinning the Top. The topic du jour is Combo, that specter haunting almost all large multiplayer games. Combo, as you’ve probably picked up in competitive magic, is a broad term that refers to decks that seek to assemble a combination of cards that allows them to instantly or assuredly claim victory. Combo in constructed duels has a long history of alternating between dominant, such as Academy in Combo Winter, to humorous at best, like Seismic Assault with Dakmor Salvage into Swans of Bryn Argoll. Most of us are aware of what attracts players to combo, and most players have played a dedicated combo deck at least once in their duel careers; but Combo has a place in multiplayer magic that has no real parallel in competitive constructed. But I’m not one sided in my affections for Magic; sometimes a lil’ dirty rotten combo is exactly what the doctored ordered, so Spinning the Top is going to present a balanced look at combo in multiplayer. I’d like to talk first about the three things that give Combo power in multiplayer; the 4 levels of combo decks you’re likely to run into; and then how to fight them, how to build them, and how to play them. By Your Powers Combined, I am Combo Deck! Combos Advantages in multiplayer are extreme compared to duels. They’re successful here in a way seen no where else except Vintage, and there’s three main reasons: Always Broken 1. The Legacy (and larger) Cardpool: Most multiplayer groups rely on some combination of the Legacy/Vintage Banned/Restricted lists and something creatively called “Frown Technology.” Frown Technology is best defined as social disapproval, and perhaps even boycotting, of players who make use of unbalanced cards or overpowered deck constructions. The level of implementation of the various banned lists that are available can make for interesting differentiations in what sort of combos are powerful in a given metagame. A community that allows Tinker but disallows Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain will find that artifact based combo decks become respectably powerful, while Trix-like blue/black control-into-a-combo decks suffer in comparison. All in all, this can lead to overly high power levels and consistency among combo decks depending on what cards are allowed. Not quite as unconditionally broken For example, most play groups will a Crop Rotation to be played, most of the time probably at the 4-of level. When being used to assemble Urzatrons and 8-Posts, Crop Rotation is merely powerful, not broken, and in fact as a color fixer it is downright weak when compared to powerful favorites such as Harrow. So, if you tuck 4 into your 49 land deck to be able to find Wastelands and Mazes of Ith, you’re not likely to provoke any sorts of reactions. Most of your opponents will not consider this play a combo at all. When you tuck them into your Monogreen Tooth and Nail deck, suddenly you’ve brought the issue to the forefront of the groups consideration. If the rest of the deck is powerful enough, the discussion will very rapidly turn to exactly where the point lies at which Crop Rotation is broken, and whether you can play them at all, or which decks can and can’t play them. Some groups will say “Let's see the deck” to determine if it's powerful enough; other groups will simply say “Banned in Legacy; Banned Here.” But as we’ll discuss in the next section, Tooth and Nail is not really a Dirty Rotten Combo, as it consists of just one spell cast and some deck building decisions that give powerful endgame considerations to a mana-ramping deck. Now, tuck them into your 40 artifact, Time Spiral into Mind Over Matter Academy deck and there will be no debate; people will express severe distaste and you’ll experience the full force of “Frown Tech." You’ll almost certainly be hated out of every game you play, your combo will be torn down every time you try to assemble it by the combined power of all your opponents, and generally, the deck will not be fun to play, thus convincing you to shelve it and play a different deck, the exact point of the Frown. Combining some level of the Vintage/Legacy lists with this sliding scale of legality for certain cards results in Combo having a stronger cardpool to work with than any other format I’ve yet seen. 2. Setup’s a Breeze, Cleanup’s a Pain: Combo's traditional enemy has been giving up time for the opponent’s plans. Creature-based combos that take too long will eventually give the opponent time to either draw removal or force chump blocks, while spell-based combo will eventually allow for your opponent to draw their discard/counter magic or race you. Unimpeded, most Standard decks will win the game in 6 or 7 turns at the latest, while most multiplayer decks unimpeded may take 15 to kill everyone, and they are never unimpeded while facing down seven foes. The Combo deck in an 8-man game has time to wait for its cards to come together, wait for its board position to develop to the levels it needs to be for the combo, and wait for opponents to make themselves vulnerable. The ability to sit on your heels and let your opponents duke it out (See Victual Sliver!) can allow you time to get to huge levels of mana and the multiple permanents in play required for the combo to do its dirty business. Many multiplayer combo decks are sensitive during their setup phase, but if they are unknown during this point, they can get away with anything; suddenly dropping the bomb card or pair of cards with their exaggerated mana presence compared to their duel counterparts. Even combos that take multiple, checklist-like steps to be completed in order to win can be scary in multiplayer if your available resources are distracted by dealing with the three aggro decks that are also threatening to kill you ASAP. 3. If Control Beats Combo, and No One Plays Control…: In the classic Rock-Paper-Scissors of Magic, Control beats Combo beats Aggro beats Control; however, if you look at the elements of control decks that typically stymie combos, you’ll find they are underrepresented in multiplayer magic. Targeted discard, countermagic, and Meddling Mage-type effects are all decidedly subpar when there are eight other players to deal with, and as such don’t see as much play. While some games will feature someone playing Morphling-for-the-Win MUC with 8 free counters and 12 more normal ones, most won’t; and many games will be played with no Counterspells at all. This allows Combo decks a little more leeway in terms of the walls they have to climb to effect their victory. Johnny Combo doesn’t have too much to fear from the first turn Duress, he’ll both draw more cards then normal to replace the lost card, and the chances of his being chosen for such an effect if his deck is unknown are slim. The Dirty Rotten Combos aren’t all-powerful however in this regard, as they are far more likely to run into Disenchants, board sweepers, and Purifies than in duels, and this can limit their effectiveness if the combo relies on those type of cards. As you’ll rapidly become aware, the degrees to which a combo works can vary dramatically form deck to deck--some win automatically, others simply give the deck a huge edge to work with in order to pull off the win down the line. I consider Multiplayer Combo decks to come in four levels, each of which has their own approaches and responses: The first two levels are generally considered “clean” decks. Playing them in most circles will not result in anger from your friends; and they will generally be viewed as powerful, synergistic strategies and not as mean-spirited abuses of the game. Level 1: Super Synergies: The first level of Combo decks are less like true combos and more like very focused deck designs. A multiplayer classic like Forced Fruition/Arcane Lab would fit in this category. The “combo” doesn’t only not instantly win, it doesn’t even guarantee victory. Another in this category might be something like Solitary Confinement/Skull of Orm. These type of decks tend to play reasonably fairly for the early stages of the game and then “Poof,” huge game advantage. When one of these combos is completed, the proper response is not usually to shuffle up for the next game, but to determine how to crawl out from underneath it to win. Never Fun Level 2: Oops, I Won: This level of decks consists of decks that have a normal framework of usable cards, maybe some utility creatures, some card draw, some control elements, and tucked among the rest of the deck is two or three card instant or near instant win combination. A classic of this genre is a deck like Assault-Elves. Lots of mana elves power out large beaters and elf-lords, but should the deck happen to drop Aggravated Assault with a Wirewood Channeler out, suddenly the deck wins with a huge Fireball from nowhere, the “oops, I won” moment. Some multiplayer control decks will play like this, with control, sweepers, and countermagic and then something along the lines of Panoptic Mirror/Time Walk, which is an extremely popular combination. Single card combo decks (Decks like Enduring Ideal and Tooth or Nail) tend to play a lot like these level of decks despite being fundamentally different; beating them usually requires you to behave as if you were playing against a deck of this type. Everyone plays this deck once The next two levels are what I consider Dirty Rotten Combo. They do not allow a great deal of interactivity or opportunity for players other than the pilot and can often create discussion about the local banned lists and whether the power balance in the group needs adjustment. Level 3: Hard Locks and Bagels For All: This is the level of decks that create unbreakable locks against multiple or all opponents. These are perhaps the most reviled of all decks that can possibly appear in multiplayer, and choosing to shuffle one up is considered an expression of misanthropy by many players. The classic deck of this genre would have to be Erayo, Soratami Ascendant/Arcane Lab, as it creates a total lockdown against all of the opponents, followed with a spell like Sunder or Evacuation and your friends will not long be your friends. The other most common (and one of the most hated decks I’ve ever seen played, period) is Mycosynth Lattice/March of the Machines/Master of Etherium with cards like Hurkyl’s Recall and Shattering Spree playing support and extra annoyance along the way. We’ll return to this deck later in the article as an example of how to build and play combo decks in multiplayer. Level 4: Dumb Long, Solitaire for Groups: If you are familiar with the “Long” series of decks in Vintage (Grim Long, Doom Long, Super Long and their descendants) you know they are complex, involved storm/mana accumulation decks whose winning turn takes quite a while to execute, and unfortunately at no point along the way is victory a foregone conclusion. When players speak in hushed, or quite heated, tones about “Those damn Combo decks,” these are exactly the type they are talking about. Taking advantage of extra time and relaxed anti-combo situations, many dark-hearted or naïve Johnnies will build decks with an extremely complex, long final win condition. It can be something as complicated as Dream Halls/Niv-Mizzet/Null Profusion or as frustrating as Beacon of Tomorrows/Planar Portal/Much Artifact Mana. Either way, these decks do not engender happiness at the hands of your opponents, and the wasted time you put them through in your pursuit of a victory will cause most of them to sulk at you for your apparent desire to punish them for wanting to play Magic. How to Be the Dirty Rotten Combo Breaker We’ve now discussed what makes the combo decks strong and the different flavors they often come in; how about we get to why you’re here? I bet you’re asking, “How do I kick the cream out of these Dirty Rotten Combo Players?”; well, the answer is simple, and as my scoutmaster would be so proud to hear, be prepared. The preparation you need to beat powerful, complicated combo decks is both rooted in your deck design and critical in your gameplay. Most of the time, we know when a combo deck is being played against us. Usually within the first three or four turns, we can even tell which deck it is. In these circumstances where Johnny Combo’s Erayo-Lock deck is a known quantity, we need to keep him in mind at all times. Most combo decks are able to win games turns before they actually go off, just because they are alive and healthy long enough to try going off. Whenever the board state allows the swing, hit the combo player around a bit. This not only forces him or her to consider chump blocking with what may be a combo piece, but it brings them closer to instant speed burn-in-response reactions to combo attempts. If you look across the field and see three players dropping a couple of midrange creatures and Johnny playing random parts one, two and three of the seven card combo he’s hoping to make your life hell with, risk a couple of points of lifeloss and hit him up, hard if you can. If you know the deck well enough, save your removal and countermagic to target the key pieces of the decks engines and combos. A nearly active combo is a bigger priority than almost anything else a player can do. Deal with them accordingly. Does this have a noncombo use? When the combo decks are unknown, they are unpredictable. This is perhaps a Hard-Lock deck’s biggest asset, as many of the lock pieces are mediocre to poor on their own. I’ve yet to see Psychic Possession come down except as part of a combo, and Lotus Bloom is usually begging for a big storm turn at some point. When you see these type of cards come down, the million dollar trick is to guess the combo in advance and shred only the most important piece. This is often hard to do, and instead you will usually need to resort to saving general purpose response to the last moment they are needed and attempt to keep the combo player in check until the time is right to kill/remove them consequence. Deck construction will also allow us to get a large leg-up on the dirtiest rottenest combos around. Preparation should start with the kinds of effects every multiplayer deck should be trying to pack. These cards include Disenchants,Boomerangs, Vindicates, Terrors, and other flexible responses to varying cards. While these cards are good almost every game they are played in, they take on an extra power and use when they can remove a combo player's threatening nature completely. There is a sub-class of cards that are particularly good against combo that are generally frowned upon otherwise in multiplayer but have a long history in duels. I'm referring to Lobotomy-effects, which should get quite a deal of consideration from you when specific card combos are ruining your day over and over again. Cards like Extirpate, Lobotomy, Splinter, Cranial Extraction and others give you the ability to totally censor an opponent's deck, thus removing them from threat, if the deck is combo dedicated enough. Target Combo Scoops What if I hate my friends and Magic? Well then, a Dirty Rotten Combo deck may be right for you! But seriously, there is something fun to many players about coming up with and assembling a powerful combination of cards and attempting to get this mechanism to go off and win the game for you against your opponent’s best efforts. When this mood strikes, playing a combo deck like the ones we’ve talked about can be fun and entertaining (to an extent; no one likes to spend all evening getting group killed by their friends, or on the flipside, constantly living under the clock). So, how do we build them to both succeed in their combo and to win? To be unfortunately honest, the best of the combo decks come from the last two levels, Hard-Locks and Dumb-Long interactions. These may be annoying for your opponents, but they are devasting when executed, and if we are going to reach for a win, these are probably the best way to get there. As I foreshadowed earlier, I’m going to talk indepth about a Shards of Alara update to the Mirrodin-block Classic, Mycosynth Lattice->March of the Machines landless lockout. The key is simple; Mycosynth turns everything into a artifact (especially lands!) and then March of the Machines makes everything a creature (Lands become 0/0s!). Lands die so quickly after that that they cannot even be tapped for a mana first, thus locking our opponents entirely into the mana they have from nonland permanents already in play. As many players can be caught with nothing else out producing mana, this can often be a total lock, especially against decks with zero nonland mana sources. First we need to include the Combo Pieces themselves; in this case, they are Mycosynth Lattice and March of the Machines. We’ll include Master of Etherium in this section, as he’s a nice little extra spice to the combo that really helps it hum (he keeps your lands alive!). In addition, he takes the salt of the wounds a little bit for your opponent, by turning a game of who-decks-first into a real out and out kill fest.
Now we need ways to find these combo pieces quickly and powerfully. As two of them are artifacts, the quick choice is Fabricate. If your playgroup plays by the Vintage restricted list, I would definitely play 1 Tinker and 3 Fabricates, but for this deck we’ll play a four pack of Fabricates and call it a day. Card draw and card selection are another favorite. Because of our heavy artifact theme in this deck, I’d pack a four pack of Thoughtcast in here to let us draw multiple cards a turn and then play them down. I’d also be tempted to play Howling Mines here as the extra draws are totally irrelevant once the combo comes down, but we have 2 more powerful tools to use. The first is the new planeswalker, Tezzeret the Seeker. He can both fetch combo pieces and provide a back up win condition, and since we’ll be building in a considerable artifact mana subtheme, he’ll do his best Garruk Wildspeaker impression. The other card is one that doesn’t see much play in constructed but can absolutely bonkers in finding pieces in casual, Ancestral Knowledge. It digs 10 cards deep, and then lets us axe any that we never want to see, and let us arrange the rest, and the tempo of the upkeep will be easy for this deck with its artifact mana.
Finally, I’m going to add some protection elements to the deck; these will serve to play out the deck faster, as well as protect the combo. First I want to add 10 artifact mana sources to allow us to hit Tezzerets and Lattices as early as possible. I like Izzet Signet; it's just a quality mana source all around, and it will fuel both our Hurkyl’s Recalls and our Shattering Sprees. The next 4 are going to be Mind Stones, a powerful mana producer, as well as extra cards if we need it. Finally, I want to add 2 Coalition Relics. They accelerate hard, but if we have no 2 drop they seem much less amazing. Now I want to add 6 general defensive slots. Three Force of Wills as
Hint: This card is slow With the remaining 6 slots I want to pack a little mini-combo in a combo for extra hilarity and 4 anti-creature defensive cards. The mini-combo I want is a Quicksilver Elemental and a Chandra Nalaar. When Chandra is latticed into an artifact and marched into a creature, Quicksilver Elemental can copy her and use her ability an infinite number of times in a turn. It’s a nice quick win if combat damage is being prevented somehow. The last four slots in the deck are very much up for grabs, but I want to pack some toolbox in here for Tezzeret to go grab. I’m going to put an Executioner’s Capsule, a Dispeller’s Capsule, a Pithing Needle, and a Darksteel Reactor if we have to drop the combo early and lock ourselves out of the game too. They give us a way out to almost any bad situation and also give some Cranial Extraction protection to try to draw out a win. A little bit of mana magic and the resulting deck is:
Now this deck will make people very angry, very often. The speed and relative reliability of the land lockout is downright cruel and unusual, but we can do it. Playing this deck properly revolves around timing it properly, using your best judgement to read opponent’s resources and determine when you think each piece can come down safely. Don’t drop any one of the pieces if the following pieces are going to be turns and turns behind. This exposes that piece to destruction for a long time and is almost always the wrong play. Stand Strong and Fight the Power Nine, RogueNewb By Devin Malko on March 26th, 2009 · Filed in Multiplayer, Casual · 33 Comments |
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