Instructions unclear, built my Kiki Jiki deck as a pure combo deck. It has over 300 infinite combos (after aggressive cuts which left hundreds of combo lines out). Protection? Who needs it when your turn5 win attempt will be followed by a different infinite attempt the next turn? Extensive digging and card draw? Why bother when the deck always draws 1-2 infinites in the opening 8? Board presence to fend of early aggression? Surely nobody will suspect anything with Kiki Jiki looking so innocent in the command zone!
This is a phenomenal explanation of why my friends - of different power levels - prefer some of my decks over others. THANK YOU. I’ve been scratching my head for over 3 years and you succinctly described my cedh vs casual deck building issues.
I had to realize that fulfillment in a game of commander can’t just come from winning. Know how to be a good winner/loser, learn how to have the emotional intelligence to allow a game to end so that another game can start. Also, knowing when a power level is appropriate for a group/expectation.
This video sums up alot why i changed my obeka deck. My obeka deck runs kiki jiki, who combos with archeomancer style creatures that return an extra turn spell to go inifinite. However the important thing is that both work really well outside of said combo. Obeka kiki allows you to make and keep a powerhouse etb creature each time its your turn. I no longer play the isochrin scepter combo which edhrec reccomends because outside of the combo isochron scepter is either useless or forces you to play worse instants in an attempt to keep its value outside of the combo (also the kiki archeomancer combo has way more backup and variance to allow for the combo rathsr than needing exactly 2 cards as well as serving as midrange still)
Cedh obeka should run isochron but thats the important destinction i have decided with my deck. Cedh obeka is vastly different in playstyle and basically is all combo or tutors for said combo
Yeah Isochron is a really potent card, and definitely one that I think people should be careful of. I don’t run it in any of my decks, both because I dislike the feel of the card and because it generally does either way more than the deck wants to do or nothing at all. The Kiki/Archeomancer package sounds quite fun and flexible by comparison.
I just discovered your channel and it's some of the most insightful content on how to build well rounded commander decks that are also fun to play with and against. I played magic most actively in a playgroup where we all play those solitaire engine decks with sparse interaction and the winner is whoever can out-engine the rest of the table. I was shocked to find out that people in another playgroup found it a bit annoying, but thanks to you i now much better understand this, as well as a ton of other things about EDH deck construction, thank you so much! On a side note i loved seeing Grismold here, alongside other center pieces in an abzan 60 card deck that gives my opponents tons of tokens and then kills them all for death triggers, which i dubbed "Orchard Massacre" (As forbidden orchard and a few cards named massacre are key cards). You really earned that sub, and i'm gonna watch the rest of your vids now and look forward to any future uploads.
You have a good looking face bro. Also good video. I often find myself magnetised to strategies that end up being too narrow for edh, and learning when to abandon a bad idea is a good skill to have.
Thanks! And yeah, knowing when to throw in the towel on a bad idea is a good skill for sure. Or alternatively, knowing when a bad idea is just too spicy to lose hope on. But that's a video for another day.
I find some of your videos to have titles that range from click-bait to pretentious, but most of that is probably that we disagree on what we value when it comes to edh games. Of course, I'm just some guy. This video explains the feeling I have when playing certain combos. I'm looking at my new izzet deck in a new light, so thank you!
I have a mono-red aggro EDH deck that has a pretty easy time switching to mono-red infect in the late game. It's a perfect example of what you were talking about. Being able to make little red guys unblockable and then pumping them up for massive power didn't always get there, but when it doesn't, having a couple creatures with infect hit the board suddenly puts me back in the game. It fits perfectly with what I'm already doing, doesn't feel like the only thing my deck can do, but it gives a relatively weak strategy a viable win-con. I also have a pure combo deck, but it's all about getting infinite ETBs, so there are maybe 50 cards in that deck that can either bounce themselves, make something free to cast, ping an opponent on ETB, etc. It's not an out of nowhere combo and it doesn't durdle after removal. If I loose one combo piece, I'll almost certainly get another soon, plus I'll be whittling away at life totals usually for a while before going infinite, so everyone knows what's coming. My most competitive decks, like you suggested, are also combo, but they all have four or five different directions they can take, and plenty of protection and redundancy. Overall, I think your advice not only lines up nicely with what I'm doing, but seems to align very nicely with what I've seen from the most experienced players I've worked with. Great video.
Really well-done video. I've been working on a Burakos/Guild Artisan deck and halfway through building got struck with the realization that Aggravated Assault is a great card for the deck, but couldn't really put my finger on what made it feel better as an infinite outlet than other decks that have done similar things. The fact that Burakos/Guild Artisan both trigger to make Treasures on-attack can feed into Aggravated Assault, but the deck also has a TON of ways to close the game by making lots of treasures, like Disciple of the Vault. Thanks for the clarity.
I think adding extra steps to a given combo is a good way to win. Finding creative ways to achieve your intended infinite/goal is rewarding in itself, and adding more pieces “to make the engine run” allows for more opportunity for interaction
The part at 19:03 about a beatdown deck that combos as a plan B describes my Gishath deck well. It’s built so that you can just dinosaur people, but it generates so much value that it’s not at all uncommon to fall into an infinite combo built from cards that are good for the deck regardless
This is a great explanation of how a combo in a lower-mid power level deck should work. I've built a deck recently of mono-red "aristocrats" utilizing the ETB/LTB burn effects with gaining value for creatures being sacrificed. The Kiki-Jiki/Zealous Conscripts combo is in the deck. Why? Kiki-Jiki can copy either one of the burn pieces for additional damage or a value creature to be sacrificed. Zealous Conscripts acts as removal by stealing an opposition creature and sacrificing it. Both cards offer value on their own in the deck with the upside of a combo if they ever come up together.
Great video! I play a lot of combo and this video got me thinking about specifically my Henzie list. The win condition is usually comboing out usually after turns of playing big creatures to widdle down the table/deal with threats. The decks main combo line is something along the lines of henzie, prowling geistcatcher, chainer nightmare adept, 3 mana dorks and a sac outlet, which are all cards i like to play for how they synergize with everything else henzie does anyways. It is an infinite that lets you loot through your deck and get a bunch of sac triggers. The combo is very fluid and I feel like im always finding new combos in the deck. My only thing is, the combo can also be fully done off sac'ing protean hulk with henzie and 5 open mana. This is something i found out after playing the deck for a while and every time i saw protean hulk I got a little closer to doing the full combo off just it until 1 day i figured out the line and now sometimes it feels like the deck wins in that same way stuff like kiki jiki combos do. So I guess the point of all this is where do you think my henzie list would land on this combo spectrum?
The non-protean hulk version sounds, as you say, very flexible and fluid, and definitely like the sort of fun list that I’d recommend to people not playing super high power who wanna play around with combos and more intensive synergies. The protean hulk conundrum is definitely a tricky one with no easy answer, since on the one hand I imagine it makes other lines feel weak and flimsy by comparison, but on the other hand it feels weird to cut out a card that works so well with the deck, or to choose not to use that line. Ultimately it’s a matter of preference and what kind of games you want to play with the deck.
What are you even doing, you're playing one of the coolest and most efficient beatdown commanders of recent time, just for you to combo out anyways, denying your opponents the warriors death and thus entrance to Valhalla. Some people just can't be helped, man
Hey, im going through your channel and the ideas you propose are great and you formulate them in a really digest way which i love On the facecam segments though, the lighting is poor and you aren't watching the camera the way you should :o Keep up the good mtg content your channel is a breath of fresh air !
Great vid. I think this is one of the biggest things I’ve been working on in my edh builds. Take nekusar for example. He punishes draws, we play wheels, they die. Sounds simple. Yet I see a lot of nekusar decks running instant speed spot removal and instant speed card draw. We want to jam our enchantment/creature punishers or play our sorcery speed wheels. Despite being in a great removal color, there’s no opening in our plan for playing on the opponents turn without passing up our own development. That’s surface level, but going even deeper is WHAT punisher suite do we prioritize. Adding discard punishers like lilianas caress adds a ton of damage and synergizes with our true wheel effects like reforge the soul. But does nothing for our time twister effects like game plan. Can we still run it? Another example: nekusar is in our command zone every game as a "freebie" punisher, but most of the effects that mimic nekusar are difficult to remove enchantments and only cost 3 or 4. He is more like an emergency button if we fail to find any punishers. Do we still run commander centric auras like curiosity and helm of the ghast lord? They synergize with creature punishers like niv mizzet the firemind (and parun) but they are neither a punisher nor wheel effect. And their reliance on creatures surviving makes them all the more tenuous. I still don’t have the answers for everything, but I think your video touches on the crux of optimizing a deck for a given purpose (even if that purpose is not to win as fast as possible cedh style)
My pet deck is an Aurelia Angels deck, a simple mid-rangey beatdown deck with a fair few moderate power synergies. However it's also an example of what you talk about at the end of this video, where it has a combo which can be used to deal an infinite amount of damage in a single turn. None of the combo pieces were put into the deck to be a combo, they were just powerful cards which synergised with the core game plan, and were each individually good cards. I'd played dozens of games before I even realised that there *was* a combo there, and it's great because when the combo does come out to kill 4 players in a single turn, everyone is like "welp, the big angel deck killed me with big angels turning sideways". No one gets mad (usually) because it's literally just the deck executing it's very clearly communicated gameplan.
The part of naturalistically adding combo pieces is so true. It's why I love running Doomsday in Nekusar. Nek already runs a bunch of different piles. All I need is a Lab Maniac and Doomsday.
that bit about slotting an unwieldly combo made out of brodly synergistic cards into an aggro deck really hit home for me. I loooooove to tuck combat celebrant combos into boros aggro decks
I have a Ghired Deck that runs value creatures that either have good ETBs or have attack triggers that scale exponentially with themselves. There’s a 3-card combo in the deck I only came across by accident with Eternal Witness, Dockside Extortionist, and Twinflame, assuming Dockside can etb for 5 treasures (which isn’t a hard ask as late in the game this combo is relevant) just by paying the strive cost. I don’t have a single Kiki combo (even though I run him in the deck for easy token copies to populate) but if I can find another way to make a token copy of Aurelia I can keep populating it and legend-ruling away the token that’s already used its attack trigger every time Ghired’s attack trigger populates it.
The beatdown deck w/ a combo can be very fun to play. I've got a Goreclaw aggro list. It runs a TON of mana dorks, a few haste givers, and lots of tutors. It's perfect for Temur Sabertooth infinites. The deck does general aggro snowball shenanigans, but if nobody stops the snowball I can easily tutor for a combo piece or two and all of a sudden I'm casting infinite Apex Devastators.
I have a deck that runs into the 90, 10 problem. The combo is unique though, and only works because of the deckbuilding of the main theme, so people usually don't mind. For anyone interested in the specifics. Temur adventures, but there's no sorceries in the deck other than enter the infinite. Possibility storm can be played to always hit enter the infinite with the sorcery side of an adventure. Borborygmos enraged is in the deck, and can be placed on top of the deck with enter the infinite. (Borborygmos and fblthp are also a backup, and were briefly the commanders) Finally, play a couple 0 mana creatures, and 48 lands, and it can kill a whole table on resolution, but is only possible because of possibility storm not seeing the adventures.
I had to start playing combos. Games going so goddamn long or games where I've gotten completely out paced and put too far behind to actually be playing the game. I refuse to just sit there watching other people play without a single chance of winning. So I like combos and I never tutor for the pieces and I always try to put ones in that fit the theme or the tribal and ones that don't rip the game away without any tells. Combos are always my secondary wincon and I honestly kinda think they're necessary in some pods.
Last idea seems like what I was thinking when I slotted Mana Echoes in my plan for my otherwise aggro Pashalik Mons goblins deck. Good to hear it's not actually that bad of an idea.
The explanation of Vadrok in this video only furthers my desire to build Jarad, using Ashaya and Urborg to turn him into an aristocrats commander where he's the sacrifice outlet on two fronts.
I have a Dargo and Silas Renn deck that has Dargo beat down as the main goal, with bursts of Artifacts and Goblins as sac outlets to ensure he can be on the field, some occasional big Demons to help with beat down and abilities, removal to stop obstacles, and Silas to help recover some lost Artifacts. Among those Artifacts is Corridor Monitor, because it fits well with getting Dargo out super fast with strats like tapping sol ring, untapping sol ring with CM, and then sacking both for Dargo, and just general utility. As I mentioned, I also have Goblins, such as Putrid Goblin and Mogg War Marshall for sac outlets, Crime Novelist and Treasure Nabber for utility, etc. I also have Goblin Matron as a tutor to help me react to certain situations. This means that Kiki-Jiki + Corridor Monitor fits as a good alternative win con for my deck, so I will trust that man.
my rocco street chef deck is a big value pile that tries to overrun you with counters and food/exile synergies. It just so happens that two cards that are insane i n this deck (Rosie Cotton for the food + counters synergy, and Herd Baloths for the, well, counters and tokens synergy.) These cards are both insane draws in the deck in pretty much any situation, while being a 2 card infinite combo, and an instant win with haste or if your army survives a turn cycle. It makes the deck very solid as a midrange pile, while having the option to break parity with a sudden combo
I would love to see a video going over more storm style combo decks, specifically something like an artifact based Aetherflux combo deck where the deck is more of a crazy valie engine that just doesn't stop when it goes off but is still mostly interactive and able to win without needing to play half your library in one turn
I run a beatdown deck that has a combo backup deck in Indoraptor (modified creatures). If Indo gets bogged down it runs a Necrotic Ooze/Cauldron/Ballista combo using Rite of Passage to ping the raptor to poke down the table as needed.
My Niv-mizzet parun deck I feel slots reasonably well into this philosophy. I'm running the wheel version of the deck without curiosity effects, and I'm using those slots plus another decent chunk of the deck for other cards that get value from drawing lots of cards like Chasm skulker and oneirophage as alternate wincons when niv inevitably gets focused down. Counterspells don't slot super nicely into this deck due to so many wheel effects being at sorcery speed and me needing to use all my mana every turn. It's definitely a lower power way to run the commander, but it makes it feel smooth to play against and with
Usually if you need a lot of draw to get to your combo it is a good idea to run Psychosis Crawler and if you're in red, also Glint-Horn Buccaneer. Addictionally if you are in red, you could just wheel a lot and also instal a Brallin, Skyshark Rider in your deck (or even as a commander either with or without that shark he sits on). There might also be other cards that do the same in other colors than red, I don't know. But this makes sure that on your way to victory, you're already defeating your opponents.
I have an Izzet tokens deck that plays [Haze of Rage] + [Stormkiln Artist] as a combo win condition, entirely by accident. I didn’t notice the combo until I was goldfishing the deck after putting both cards in. Haze of Rage is just a great win-con by itself, and Stormkiln Artist is a very useful enabler.
Old twin was also a tempo deck, with the backdoor plan of Bolt Snap Bolt etc. But this is harder to do in edh, so I see why you'd say it leans towards pure combo.
I almost always put a combo into my decks because eventually games gotta end. However, i always make sure the combopieces work well on their own in the respective decks. Kiki-Jiki and Restoration Angel in my Ghired Deck, Medomai and Ilharg in my Kykar Polymorph: Ghostly Flicker, Peregrine Drake and Izzet Chronarch in my Niv-Mizzet Parun & Jegantha Companion. Battlecruiser 5000 is my favourite way to play, but i always have the option to pull the trigger on Stax or other combo decks.
My Galea Kindler of Hope deck is like this. It's obviously a Voltron deck, but the backup plan is something like the reality chip, sensei's divining top, and aetherflux reservoir or something dumb. Usually you commander damage out one player then combo off the other two
I recently got the ixalan vampire commander deck, and thought to myself: "Sweet! I've got Exquisite blood and now only need Vito to start winning via combo!" Then realized I actually would enjoy playing with vampires rather than hyperfocusing on that combo or winning out of nowhere at random, so decided to not do that and cut EB entirely. I love interactive games, and if I don't enjoy getting exanguinated for 20 out of nowhere, I shouldn't be inflicting infinitely looping damage to my opponents either.
So my favorite deck I have is a Yasova Dragonclaw deck, built around the theft mechanic - not necessarily reliant on *her* theft, but a deck that often runs on me taking your things and making use of them, either by swinging or by sacrificing. Among its ramp is Kiora's Follower, and at some point I noticed it combos with Kiki-Jiki, who can also make a copy of nonlegends I steal with Yasova, so even more value out of them. I used to have Impact Tremors to have access to a burn wincon with this pair, but eventually cut it as I'm not generally doing enough with the card otherwise. A combo I *accidentally* built in was the classic Kiki Conscripts pairing - Conscripts was added because, well, more theft. I hadn't even considered that I could target Kiki-Jiki to untap him and make infinite Conscripts. So while the deck has some combos built in, it can also just win by beating you to death with Yasova - she's a 4/2 with Trample for 2G in the command zone. I've got Raised By Giants to make her stronger and able to steal more things, but a 3 mana 10/10 trampling commander isn't anything to sneeze at either. I also used to run Unnatural Growth, but swapped it for Zopandrel because it's a target for Natural Order in the deck. It runs a few targets for Order that basically all depend on what the current boardstate is like - I can get the thing cast turn 3 if my first 2 turns get me arbor elf or green zun's zenith fetching a Dryad Arbor, and them dropping Wood Elves on t2, and if that happens my two prime targets are new Ghalta (if my hand is full of creatures) or Aesi (if I've got lots of lands), though t3 zopandrel enables the beatdown strategy as well. It runs exactly one (regular) tutor, Mystical Tutor, because the deck's actual, singular, intended wincon is Insurrection (lmao), but it also can fetch Natural Order or some other important cards if need be. Personally I feel like a deck whose primary goal is to turn things sideways but that has the option to combo if given the opportunity is more fun than the inverse.
2:05 Figgin' tell me how to have fun... XD I really like playing combo. There is something satisfying about reading the board in order to pick the right moments to cast spells and execute a plan crisp and cleanly.
Agreed. The scenario described at that moment did sound like fun to me: a race of damage vs combo. Plus, as Snail even mentioned briefly in the video, combo decks often run control pieces to keep themselves alive long enough to combo, so there's still interaction happening even if one player doesn't commit to the board.
The last segment is why I've put a blood artist-like combo in it, kresh beatdown and combo as plan b - except im watching this video because sometimes it has just been convenient on-board to drop my last combo piece and win on the spot. Been getting a few comments and trying to find a balance
I really enjoy your videos! These have been some terrific discussions of how to reconcile deckbuilding ambitions with the consequential aesthetics of play when you get to the table. I'm curious about your take on Toralf as a combo deck. For whatever reason, the damage-doubler combo of excess burn hits one creature, hits another, another, another, then lethal to an opponent's face has been picking at the back of my mind since the card was released. However, I played it once in proxy when testing deck ideas with some friends, and one of them was furious when I did a quote unquote fair win with Chandra's ignition, facing no interaction at all on turn 6 or 7. Since that day, I've never played a proxy of it or put together a paper list, basically because I'm anxious about the problem at the crux of this video; is it possible to make a deck that features the Toralf combo prominently, but also has "fair" back up strategies that are fun and interactive along the way? I'd be excited to read feedback both from you, Snail, and from anybody else who sees this comment. In case it isn't immediately obvious, the combo involves having a Furnace of Rath or Insult // Injury effect that doubles all damage from sources you control (or from all sources, either one works). Then you have Toralf out and cast a Lightning Bolt on one of your opponent's creatures. It hits an x/1 creature for 6, and you have 5 excess damage for Toralf to deal to a different target. The doubler doubles it to 10, you target another creature controlled by an opponent, and repeat this until they're either out of creatures or the doubled excess is more than an opponent's life total. For a one turn win, you need at least three creatures under your opponents' collective control, and to cast Blasphemous Act, Chandra's Ignition, Earthquake, or a similar effect that will hit "all" creatures, thus you'll have a doubled excess damage swing per opponent's creature, hopefully enough for lethal across all opponents.
My Kogla deck is a humans & Kogla beat down deck that happens to have some infinite mana combos using Kogla to pick up a creature that makes a lot of mana and recast with boots on
I have an Experiment Kraj commander deck that focuses most on counters and stealing abilities or permanents. Due to many of the cards in the deck having activated abilities with good synergy, there are a small handful of ways of pulling off infinite mana, infinite +1/+1 counters, infinite -1/1 counters, and/or opportunities for card draw. How often have I been allowed to get to one of those points? Once. The deck runs fine without them, but should they happen, it can be game ending.
Ayo, you should really put some of the deck lists you reference in the description! As a Vadrok player myself, I'd love to see your friend's complete list!
I play a queza/lich's mastery combo deck. Its kind of the perfect combo for edh because I usually end up with the table having one more cycle before I win on my upkeep, where its my job to try to save myself and everyone else's job to smash me. The whole lead up and final round is always fun for everyone lol
I run niv mizzit in my agro ghyrson starn deck because niv synergies with starn by pinging for one and curiosity/ophedian/lookout are all ran for making starn really good at card draw
In your opinion, should I put existing blood and vitu in my mid-power life gain deck? Both pieces are good in the deck on their own, and totally worth running. But, I am still hesitant to put tow cards combo in a mid-power deck...
I have a dimir ludevic deck that goes infinite with the necrotic ooze / skirge familiar/asmondeus while the theme of the deck is around activated abilities and the combo fits well. The problem is that once you mill yourself enough you just won the game, its really easy to go online. I really like the deck because has really cool interactions but it really wins out of nowhere.
Just wanted to put to words an experience Me: owning the goblin/artifact precon and slowly replacing 1 card at a time, keeping it as a thing to play when I want some variety from my jodah meatballs&boardclears deck, my inalla wizards (very low power) deck for chill games, and whatever ive mashed together to test next One day I was organizing some card boxes, and found Godo, bandit warlord, and in a different box a helm of the host...realized I could put this in daretti's scrap decks as a cheeky sneaky wincon, I havent ever even played it yet, and the past few years I didnt get to play mtg at all anyways after covid and a move.
I think your deckbuilding philosophy and ideas are genuinely the most insightful and helpful I've encountered. Every single one of your videos has made me do some rethinking about my own deckbuilding. I think it'd be a great video idea if you built a deck start to finish or went through your deckbuilding process and explain your choices Edit: typo
I appreciate the kind words! I may do that at some point as I think it’s fun content to see different peoples’ processes and trains of thought while deckbuilding.
@@salubrioussnail omg thank you sm, just wanted to say that your videos are amazing and widen my view on the EDH format as a whole and your ideas are so interesting. Keep up the great work
Your friend vadrok deck seems fun, i think it might be the thing that lately i've been searching for. For a long time i want to make a mutate deck but mutate doesn't get a lot of support and have scarce supply it had made me staying away from it for a while, i also want to break my color pie all this year i've been playing a deck with golgari for it's main color so it made me want to try something a little different, and your friend vadrok deck could be the one i'm looking for. If it's not too much to ask can you maybe share his decklist
Yeah sure! It's a fun deck, though very much so a "toolbox deck" that takes a bit of time to develop a feel for all the right maneuvers. archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
I ended up making a tawnos tribal deck (5 cmc simic) coppies beast and bird spells that I enjoy. When u copy a mutate spell on the stack it will trigger 3 times them 4 time after whenever u mutate
In my Kreko deck I included Conspicuous Snoop, Goblin Recruiter, Mogg Fanatic and Kiki-Jiki. These cards allow you to do an infinite combo by turn 3 if you just open recruiter and 3 mountains and they are all goblins so go good with Krenko. But if I manage to pull this combo once to my group I will be satisfied and just take out Kiki-Jiki and Mogg Fanatic. Kiki-Jiki is just made to be abusable and Fanatic isn't that good as a one-drop outside an infinite combo.
My solution to this problem is pack my deck with about 16 cards that all interact with each other in one way or another that causes an infinite loop. If one combo gets shut out, you have about three more options to combo off with a card.
Beatdown with combo wincon is what my Marath list does. Cryptic Trilobite and any Hardened Scales esque effect wins the game with Marath, but having Scales out with Marath is an insane value engine, Trilobite also curves well with Marath and immediate activations to ping down dorks early game. I feel as if the deck may have a bit too much commander centric design (getting locked out when my opponent stole it with an Agent of Treachery), but besides effects like that, Marath already scales very well. Average mana value of 1.7 but still full of ramp as the commander is a manasink and a half (shoutout to when I drew only lands and was still in the game, casting Marath for 13 at one point)
I built an Urza, Chief Artificer deck focused on beat down with a combo backup lurking within. It feels like cheating when I spring into a combo, so I like to avoid them anymore + lots of people find it unenjoyable to work so hard during a game to build up their boards just for a player at the table to go infinite and kill everyone. If you just do combos but no one else in your group does, it’s probably time to reassess before you find yourself cut out of a group.
I generally play hard jank. If it works it isn't mine. That being said I will allow combos if they contain more than seven permanents and can't be tutored. I have a kaima deck that usually just kills with combat but has an eleven card combo for those lifegain decks.
I have two combo decks, queza and bruvac. Queza has nothing but interaction, drawing cards making everyone draw out and gaining life while killing the table. Much more exciting to play against. Bruvac on the other had is literally seeing who can kill me before I make the table mill their whole library. Not very fun……for the table Lmao. Haven’t quite made it to making an Izzet deck yet…..I despise them too much to join the club
I'm very interested in the idea of "naturalistic" combos, that sounds pretty cool. Allows you to do normal battlecruiser magic at casual mid power tables and cut through the board with a big combo if you can get to full strength. I'm not sure where to start with making a list like that though.
Personally I look to add combos only if they fit my commander/decks normal game plan. Ex) glint horn combo in a pirate tribal deck, gravecrawler loops in zombie tribal, etc.
As someone that stopped playing MTG circa 1998, and is just getting back into it (and Commander)... I really like this channel. I can see a Red/Blue combo-centric (but not combo-dependent) in my future. Thanks, Snail!
Dedicated Combos and Tutors see the same ire from EDH players for similar reasons. The point of 100 card singleton is supposed to increase variance and maximize replayability. Trying to play the same 2-4 cards every single game goes against the sentiment of the format.
Hey, I like your videos and I think it would be amazing if you would demonstrate this concept in a 'live build video' just like channels like Commander Mechanic do. Maybe even do a collab with him while focussing on your theories!
I have a deck that uses Eligeth to prove why cards like Ancestral recall and pot of greed are completely banned in major card games (we don't talk about pokemon)
2:05 Fun is subjective, what may not seem fun to you may be fun to other people, if u wanna stop a combo play more interactions, to me this video seems biased idk
When in doubt, talk with your group about what you're planning. Some groups like infinite combos, and some don't. Some like long and drawn out control games, and some don't. Some like all midrange decks with a million triggers going on the stack every turn, and some don't. If you blindside your group with a new deck or new addition to the deck, they may love it or hate it. Whether or not you want to take that gamble or discuss it with them beforehand is your choice.
I thought Walking Ballista + MIkaeus didn't work as a combo because of the text on Mikaeus: "Other non-Human Creatures you control get +1/+1. Meaning that Walking Ballista becomes a 1/1 rather than 0/0, so removing its counters do not result in it dying, you'd have to spend your last counter to do 1 damage to itself, which would not result in infinite damage. To make that combo work, you'd need a sac outlet (i.e., some third card), so calling it a "two card combo" is a misnomer.
It's a two card infinite in Grimgrin specifically, but yes this is true. I sometimes think of it as a two card infinite because of how often somebody has a blood artist effect or a sac outlet but it does require an outlet of some sort which makes it three.
I never feel bad about comboing off, I think people complain to much about combo my last lgs I literally had to tell some off my opponents that I wasn't going to change my deck just to make them happy which was by taking out the combos but the combos I use aren't the convoluted ones or the hard to put together ones I make sure I can get them fast and as efficiently as I can, even though im not a cedh deck it's a higher powered deck as I run things like necropotence survival of the fittest all that good stuff
I run a Golgari food deck that has an 8 card infinite combo in it. The only time I've ever gotten it off was when the deck had been repeatedly field wiped and graveyard exiled and i lost my good wincons. Why was i able to get it off even with loss of resources? The infinite combo is a natural consequence of the 8 types of cards i run in the deck. Not any one card is important it just happens naturally if the game goes on long enough.
There is a reason I have disdain for any commander that has a 1-card instant-win combo like Kiki-Jiki and Niv-Mizzet. It's simply far too easy to just randomly win after drawing one single card, no matter what else the deck is doing. It also annoys me that my pingers deck headed by Ghyrson Starn wants both Curiosity and Niv-Mizzet separately, and it unfortunately doesn't matter for the combo that Curiosity wants to go on Ghyrson Starn instead of Niv, because he triggers the combo anyway.
Usually, i run combos as a win con to, as you put it, cut through sloggy games. Except for a few decks that run just a bunch of them, but ive found those less fun as of late.
I think Combos end games in an anticlimactic way. I think they're fine as long as your playgroup is expecting them, but when the game ends abruptly from how two or three cards interact, it just makes the game lackluster. That Vadric combo feels a lot better, since you see the pieces piling up, and have a lot of windows to interact. Nothing feels worse than a Thoracle win where you have to be playing blue to stop it.
You do have plenty of non blue answers to thoracle wins. Things like endurance in green. Angel's grace or everybody lives in white. Red elemental blast or pyroblast or tybalt's trickery in red. And a billion effects like torpor orb printed on artifacts and creatures alike. These are all 1, 2, or even free mana options of interaction that are extremely efficient and also very good interaction pieces for many other things. This isn't to say disliking Thassa's oracle/demonic consultation combos in casual is wrong, it's very fair to not want that type of abrupt ending. I'm a fan of promoting more cards that meaningfully interact on the stack on all levels of play, though, and most of these (save for endurance) aren't super costly cards.
kikki jikki is kill on site. i like that. i use kikki jikki to magnet removal before playing the card i dont want them to kill. doesnt matter if i have the ham sandwich or not theyre gonna kill kikki jikki if they can or reveal that they dont have removal which works too.
I’ve seen a lot of players in my LGS try a combo deck as their first attempt into “high power” EDH… and not have much to do after someone stops the combo attempts. Then I get to hear that player complain about do nothing.
7:00 - 7:14 "Decidedly not an example of fun and dynamic gameplay" After watching the entire video, I had to return here to express my disagreement. Having interaction in one's deck is important. Far too few players run instant speed answer ls to common problems and then cry when they roll over and die to the same common combos. Maybe play Relic of Progenitus and Lanterns instead of crying that you lost to a graveyard combo? If your opponents are not taking advantage of the resource that is their graveyard, then you are already ahead - not tomention that those cards cantrip and are never dead draws.
Midrang soul crusher...😂😂😂😂😂 my man you know how to play. I am playing mardu colored aristocrats style and winning with a 4 permanents loop- one repeating creature one free sac outlet one free mana/treasure effect and one piner/life loss.
Instructions unclear, built my Kiki Jiki deck as a pure combo deck. It has over 300 infinite combos (after aggressive cuts which left hundreds of combo lines out). Protection? Who needs it when your turn5 win attempt will be followed by a different infinite attempt the next turn? Extensive digging and card draw? Why bother when the deck always draws 1-2 infinites in the opening 8? Board presence to fend of early aggression? Surely nobody will suspect anything with Kiki Jiki looking so innocent in the command zone!
Can I see your list?
I would also like to see your list
List please 🙏
Sounds incredibly unfun to have at the table.
so many /woosh
This is a phenomenal explanation of why my friends - of different power levels - prefer some of my decks over others. THANK YOU. I’ve been scratching my head for over 3 years and you succinctly described my cedh vs casual deck building issues.
it's rule zero. lots of cedh type of combo decks try to hide their wincons when playing with mid range decks.
"Everything needed to set up the combo is a solid goal in its own right"
Friendship ended with Kiki-Jiki, now I only trust reckless fireweaver.
Good Video!
Friendship regain with kiki-jiki. Now kiki-jiki and reckless fireweaver both are my best friends.
I had to realize that fulfillment in a game of commander can’t just come from winning. Know how to be a good winner/loser, learn how to have the emotional intelligence to allow a game to end so that another game can start. Also, knowing when a power level is appropriate for a group/expectation.
Nah, I just wanna destroy ur lands
This video sums up alot why i changed my obeka deck. My obeka deck runs kiki jiki, who combos with archeomancer style creatures that return an extra turn spell to go inifinite. However the important thing is that both work really well outside of said combo. Obeka kiki allows you to make and keep a powerhouse etb creature each time its your turn. I no longer play the isochrin scepter combo which edhrec reccomends because outside of the combo isochron scepter is either useless or forces you to play worse instants in an attempt to keep its value outside of the combo (also the kiki archeomancer combo has way more backup and variance to allow for the combo rathsr than needing exactly 2 cards as well as serving as midrange still)
Cedh obeka should run isochron but thats the important destinction i have decided with my deck. Cedh obeka is vastly different in playstyle and basically is all combo or tutors for said combo
Yeah Isochron is a really potent card, and definitely one that I think people should be careful of. I don’t run it in any of my decks, both because I dislike the feel of the card and because it generally does either way more than the deck wants to do or nothing at all. The Kiki/Archeomancer package sounds quite fun and flexible by comparison.
I just discovered your channel and it's some of the most insightful content on how to build well rounded commander decks that are also fun to play with and against.
I played magic most actively in a playgroup where we all play those solitaire engine decks with sparse interaction and the winner is whoever can out-engine the rest of the table. I was shocked to find out that people in another playgroup found it a bit annoying, but thanks to you i now much better understand this, as well as a ton of other things about EDH deck construction, thank you so much!
On a side note i loved seeing Grismold here, alongside other center pieces in an abzan 60 card deck that gives my opponents tons of tokens and then kills them all for death triggers, which i dubbed "Orchard Massacre" (As forbidden orchard and a few cards named massacre are key cards).
You really earned that sub, and i'm gonna watch the rest of your vids now and look forward to any future uploads.
But he has such a nice smile, and is a cool goblin
You have a good looking face bro. Also good video. I often find myself magnetised to strategies that end up being too narrow for edh, and learning when to abandon a bad idea is a good skill to have.
Thanks! And yeah, knowing when to throw in the towel on a bad idea is a good skill for sure. Or alternatively, knowing when a bad idea is just too spicy to lose hope on. But that's a video for another day.
@@salubrioussnail Having a pet deck concept in your back pocket makes living through the current release cadence bearable.
@@salubrioussnailI’ve been working on a 5-color manaless (no lands) dredge list for years, now. 🤣
I find some of your videos to have titles that range from click-bait to pretentious, but most of that is probably that we disagree on what we value when it comes to edh games. Of course, I'm just some guy. This video explains the feeling I have when playing certain combos. I'm looking at my new izzet deck in a new light, so thank you!
I have a mono-red aggro EDH deck that has a pretty easy time switching to mono-red infect in the late game. It's a perfect example of what you were talking about. Being able to make little red guys unblockable and then pumping them up for massive power didn't always get there, but when it doesn't, having a couple creatures with infect hit the board suddenly puts me back in the game. It fits perfectly with what I'm already doing, doesn't feel like the only thing my deck can do, but it gives a relatively weak strategy a viable win-con.
I also have a pure combo deck, but it's all about getting infinite ETBs, so there are maybe 50 cards in that deck that can either bounce themselves, make something free to cast, ping an opponent on ETB, etc. It's not an out of nowhere combo and it doesn't durdle after removal. If I loose one combo piece, I'll almost certainly get another soon, plus I'll be whittling away at life totals usually for a while before going infinite, so everyone knows what's coming.
My most competitive decks, like you suggested, are also combo, but they all have four or five different directions they can take, and plenty of protection and redundancy. Overall, I think your advice not only lines up nicely with what I'm doing, but seems to align very nicely with what I've seen from the most experienced players I've worked with. Great video.
Really well-done video. I've been working on a Burakos/Guild Artisan deck and halfway through building got struck with the realization that Aggravated Assault is a great card for the deck, but couldn't really put my finger on what made it feel better as an infinite outlet than other decks that have done similar things. The fact that Burakos/Guild Artisan both trigger to make Treasures on-attack can feed into Aggravated Assault, but the deck also has a TON of ways to close the game by making lots of treasures, like Disciple of the Vault. Thanks for the clarity.
I think adding extra steps to a given combo is a good way to win. Finding creative ways to achieve your intended infinite/goal is rewarding in itself, and adding more pieces “to make the engine run” allows for more opportunity for interaction
The part at 19:03 about a beatdown deck that combos as a plan B describes my Gishath deck well. It’s built so that you can just dinosaur people, but it generates so much value that it’s not at all uncommon to fall into an infinite combo built from cards that are good for the deck regardless
This is a great explanation of how a combo in a lower-mid power level deck should work. I've built a deck recently of mono-red "aristocrats" utilizing the ETB/LTB burn effects with gaining value for creatures being sacrificed. The Kiki-Jiki/Zealous Conscripts combo is in the deck. Why? Kiki-Jiki can copy either one of the burn pieces for additional damage or a value creature to be sacrificed. Zealous Conscripts acts as removal by stealing an opposition creature and sacrificing it. Both cards offer value on their own in the deck with the upside of a combo if they ever come up together.
This video was beyond helpful and I’ll actually be reconfiguring a lot of the decks I have
Great video!
I play a lot of combo and this video got me thinking about specifically my Henzie list. The win condition is usually comboing out usually after turns of playing big creatures to widdle down the table/deal with threats. The decks main combo line is something along the lines of henzie, prowling geistcatcher, chainer nightmare adept, 3 mana dorks and a sac outlet, which are all cards i like to play for how they synergize with everything else henzie does anyways. It is an infinite that lets you loot through your deck and get a bunch of sac triggers. The combo is very fluid and I feel like im always finding new combos in the deck. My only thing is, the combo can also be fully done off sac'ing protean hulk with henzie and 5 open mana. This is something i found out after playing the deck for a while and every time i saw protean hulk I got a little closer to doing the full combo off just it until 1 day i figured out the line and now sometimes it feels like the deck wins in that same way stuff like kiki jiki combos do. So I guess the point of all this is where do you think my henzie list would land on this combo spectrum?
The non-protean hulk version sounds, as you say, very flexible and fluid, and definitely like the sort of fun list that I’d recommend to people not playing super high power who wanna play around with combos and more intensive synergies. The protean hulk conundrum is definitely a tricky one with no easy answer, since on the one hand I imagine it makes other lines feel weak and flimsy by comparison, but on the other hand it feels weird to cut out a card that works so well with the deck, or to choose not to use that line. Ultimately it’s a matter of preference and what kind of games you want to play with the deck.
can i get your decklist by chance? i have been working on a mid to lower power henzie deck and this seems like a very fun list
What are you even doing, you're playing one of the coolest and most efficient beatdown commanders of recent time, just for you to combo out anyways, denying your opponents the warriors death and thus entrance to Valhalla.
Some people just can't be helped, man
Hey, im going through your channel and the ideas you propose are great and you formulate them in a really digest way which i love
On the facecam segments though, the lighting is poor and you aren't watching the camera the way you should :o
Keep up the good mtg content your channel is a breath of fresh air !
Great vid. I think this is one of the biggest things I’ve been working on in my edh builds.
Take nekusar for example. He punishes draws, we play wheels, they die. Sounds simple. Yet I see a lot of nekusar decks running instant speed spot removal and instant speed card draw. We want to jam our enchantment/creature punishers or play our sorcery speed wheels. Despite being in a great removal color, there’s no opening in our plan for playing on the opponents turn without passing up our own development.
That’s surface level, but going even deeper is WHAT punisher suite do we prioritize. Adding discard punishers like lilianas caress adds a ton of damage and synergizes with our true wheel effects like reforge the soul. But does nothing for our time twister effects like game plan. Can we still run it? Another example: nekusar is in our command zone every game as a "freebie" punisher, but most of the effects that mimic nekusar are difficult to remove enchantments and only cost 3 or 4. He is more like an emergency button if we fail to find any punishers. Do we still run commander centric auras like curiosity and helm of the ghast lord? They synergize with creature punishers like niv mizzet the firemind (and parun) but they are neither a punisher nor wheel effect. And their reliance on creatures surviving makes them all the more tenuous.
I still don’t have the answers for everything, but I think your video touches on the crux of optimizing a deck for a given purpose (even if that purpose is not to win as fast as possible cedh style)
My pet deck is an Aurelia Angels deck, a simple mid-rangey beatdown deck with a fair few moderate power synergies. However it's also an example of what you talk about at the end of this video, where it has a combo which can be used to deal an infinite amount of damage in a single turn. None of the combo pieces were put into the deck to be a combo, they were just powerful cards which synergised with the core game plan, and were each individually good cards. I'd played dozens of games before I even realised that there *was* a combo there, and it's great because when the combo does come out to kill 4 players in a single turn, everyone is like "welp, the big angel deck killed me with big angels turning sideways". No one gets mad (usually) because it's literally just the deck executing it's very clearly communicated gameplan.
Well explained! All your Magic videos have been excellent so far, I have subscribed.
The part of naturalistically adding combo pieces is so true. It's why I love running Doomsday in Nekusar. Nek already runs a bunch of different piles. All I need is a Lab Maniac and Doomsday.
that bit about slotting an unwieldly combo made out of brodly synergistic cards into an aggro deck really hit home for me. I loooooove to tuck combat celebrant combos into boros aggro decks
Gotta keep people on edge! Don’t let them stop fearing the power of your aggro
I have a Ghired Deck that runs value creatures that either have good ETBs or have attack triggers that scale exponentially with themselves. There’s a 3-card combo in the deck I only came across by accident with Eternal Witness, Dockside Extortionist, and Twinflame, assuming Dockside can etb for 5 treasures (which isn’t a hard ask as late in the game this combo is relevant) just by paying the strive cost. I don’t have a single Kiki combo (even though I run him in the deck for easy token copies to populate) but if I can find another way to make a token copy of Aurelia I can keep populating it and legend-ruling away the token that’s already used its attack trigger every time Ghired’s attack trigger populates it.
The beatdown deck w/ a combo can be very fun to play. I've got a Goreclaw aggro list. It runs a TON of mana dorks, a few haste givers, and lots of tutors. It's perfect for Temur Sabertooth infinites. The deck does general aggro snowball shenanigans, but if nobody stops the snowball I can easily tutor for a combo piece or two and all of a sudden I'm casting infinite Apex Devastators.
I have a deck that runs into the 90, 10 problem. The combo is unique though, and only works because of the deckbuilding of the main theme, so people usually don't mind.
For anyone interested in the specifics. Temur adventures, but there's no sorceries in the deck other than enter the infinite. Possibility storm can be played to always hit enter the infinite with the sorcery side of an adventure. Borborygmos enraged is in the deck, and can be placed on top of the deck with enter the infinite. (Borborygmos and fblthp are also a backup, and were briefly the commanders) Finally, play a couple 0 mana creatures, and 48 lands, and it can kill a whole table on resolution, but is only possible because of possibility storm not seeing the adventures.
I had to start playing combos. Games going so goddamn long or games where I've gotten completely out paced and put too far behind to actually be playing the game. I refuse to just sit there watching other people play without a single chance of winning. So I like combos and I never tutor for the pieces and I always try to put ones in that fit the theme or the tribal and ones that don't rip the game away without any tells. Combos are always my secondary wincon and I honestly kinda think they're necessary in some pods.
Last idea seems like what I was thinking when I slotted Mana Echoes in my plan for my otherwise aggro Pashalik Mons goblins deck. Good to hear it's not actually that bad of an idea.
It took me until today to actually notice the AI response about the island and mana rocks. Wonderful.
The explanation of Vadrok in this video only furthers my desire to build Jarad, using Ashaya and Urborg to turn him into an aristocrats commander where he's the sacrifice outlet on two fronts.
I have a Dargo and Silas Renn deck that has Dargo beat down as the main goal, with bursts of Artifacts and Goblins as sac outlets to ensure he can be on the field, some occasional big Demons to help with beat down and abilities, removal to stop obstacles, and Silas to help recover some lost Artifacts. Among those Artifacts is Corridor Monitor, because it fits well with getting Dargo out super fast with strats like tapping sol ring, untapping sol ring with CM, and then sacking both for Dargo, and just general utility. As I mentioned, I also have Goblins, such as Putrid Goblin and Mogg War Marshall for sac outlets, Crime Novelist and Treasure Nabber for utility, etc. I also have Goblin Matron as a tutor to help me react to certain situations. This means that Kiki-Jiki + Corridor Monitor fits as a good alternative win con for my deck, so I will trust that man.
my rocco street chef deck is a big value pile that tries to overrun you with counters and food/exile synergies. It just so happens that two cards that are insane i n this deck (Rosie Cotton for the food + counters synergy, and Herd Baloths for the, well, counters and tokens synergy.) These cards are both insane draws in the deck in pretty much any situation, while being a 2 card infinite combo, and an instant win with haste or if your army survives a turn cycle. It makes the deck very solid as a midrange pile, while having the option to break parity with a sudden combo
I would love to see a video going over more storm style combo decks, specifically something like an artifact based Aetherflux combo deck where the deck is more of a crazy valie engine that just doesn't stop when it goes off but is still mostly interactive and able to win without needing to play half your library in one turn
I run a beatdown deck that has a combo backup deck in Indoraptor (modified creatures). If Indo gets bogged down it runs a Necrotic Ooze/Cauldron/Ballista combo using Rite of Passage to ping the raptor to poke down the table as needed.
My Niv-mizzet parun deck I feel slots reasonably well into this philosophy. I'm running the wheel version of the deck without curiosity effects, and I'm using those slots plus another decent chunk of the deck for other cards that get value from drawing lots of cards like Chasm skulker and oneirophage as alternate wincons when niv inevitably gets focused down. Counterspells don't slot super nicely into this deck due to so many wheel effects being at sorcery speed and me needing to use all my mana every turn. It's definitely a lower power way to run the commander, but it makes it feel smooth to play against and with
Usually if you need a lot of draw to get to your combo it is a good idea to run Psychosis Crawler and if you're in red, also Glint-Horn Buccaneer. Addictionally if you are in red, you could just wheel a lot and also instal a Brallin, Skyshark Rider in your deck (or even as a commander either with or without that shark he sits on).
There might also be other cards that do the same in other colors than red, I don't know. But this makes sure that on your way to victory, you're already defeating your opponents.
Thank you for this suggestion. These sound like the perfect back up plan for my tutorless izzet combo deck.
I have an Izzet tokens deck that plays [Haze of Rage] + [Stormkiln Artist] as a combo win condition, entirely by accident. I didn’t notice the combo until I was goldfishing the deck after putting both cards in. Haze of Rage is just a great win-con by itself, and Stormkiln Artist is a very useful enabler.
Old twin was also a tempo deck, with the backdoor plan of Bolt Snap Bolt etc. But this is harder to do in edh, so I see why you'd say it leans towards pure combo.
I almost always put a combo into my decks because eventually games gotta end. However, i always make sure the combopieces work well on their own in the respective decks. Kiki-Jiki and Restoration Angel in my Ghired Deck, Medomai and Ilharg in my Kykar Polymorph: Ghostly Flicker, Peregrine Drake and Izzet Chronarch in my Niv-Mizzet Parun & Jegantha Companion.
Battlecruiser 5000 is my favourite way to play, but i always have the option to pull the trigger on Stax or other combo decks.
My Galea Kindler of Hope deck is like this. It's obviously a Voltron deck, but the backup plan is something like the reality chip, sensei's divining top, and aetherflux reservoir or something dumb. Usually you commander damage out one player then combo off the other two
I recently got the ixalan vampire commander deck, and thought to myself: "Sweet! I've got Exquisite blood and now only need Vito to start winning via combo!" Then realized I actually would enjoy playing with vampires rather than hyperfocusing on that combo or winning out of nowhere at random, so decided to not do that and cut EB entirely. I love interactive games, and if I don't enjoy getting exanguinated for 20 out of nowhere, I shouldn't be inflicting infinitely looping damage to my opponents either.
i also swapped vito for EB
So my favorite deck I have is a Yasova Dragonclaw deck, built around the theft mechanic - not necessarily reliant on *her* theft, but a deck that often runs on me taking your things and making use of them, either by swinging or by sacrificing. Among its ramp is Kiora's Follower, and at some point I noticed it combos with Kiki-Jiki, who can also make a copy of nonlegends I steal with Yasova, so even more value out of them. I used to have Impact Tremors to have access to a burn wincon with this pair, but eventually cut it as I'm not generally doing enough with the card otherwise. A combo I *accidentally* built in was the classic Kiki Conscripts pairing - Conscripts was added because, well, more theft. I hadn't even considered that I could target Kiki-Jiki to untap him and make infinite Conscripts.
So while the deck has some combos built in, it can also just win by beating you to death with Yasova - she's a 4/2 with Trample for 2G in the command zone. I've got Raised By Giants to make her stronger and able to steal more things, but a 3 mana 10/10 trampling commander isn't anything to sneeze at either. I also used to run Unnatural Growth, but swapped it for Zopandrel because it's a target for Natural Order in the deck. It runs a few targets for Order that basically all depend on what the current boardstate is like - I can get the thing cast turn 3 if my first 2 turns get me arbor elf or green zun's zenith fetching a Dryad Arbor, and them dropping Wood Elves on t2, and if that happens my two prime targets are new Ghalta (if my hand is full of creatures) or Aesi (if I've got lots of lands), though t3 zopandrel enables the beatdown strategy as well.
It runs exactly one (regular) tutor, Mystical Tutor, because the deck's actual, singular, intended wincon is Insurrection (lmao), but it also can fetch Natural Order or some other important cards if need be.
Personally I feel like a deck whose primary goal is to turn things sideways but that has the option to combo if given the opportunity is more fun than the inverse.
2:05 Figgin' tell me how to have fun... XD
I really like playing combo. There is something satisfying about reading the board in order to pick the right moments to cast spells and execute a plan crisp and cleanly.
totally agree
Agreed. The scenario described at that moment did sound like fun to me: a race of damage vs combo. Plus, as Snail even mentioned briefly in the video, combo decks often run control pieces to keep themselves alive long enough to combo, so there's still interaction happening even if one player doesn't commit to the board.
The last segment is why I've put a blood artist-like combo in it, kresh beatdown and combo as plan b - except im watching this video because sometimes it has just been convenient on-board to drop my last combo piece and win on the spot. Been getting a few comments and trying to find a balance
I really enjoy your videos! These have been some terrific discussions of how to reconcile deckbuilding ambitions with the consequential aesthetics of play when you get to the table. I'm curious about your take on Toralf as a combo deck. For whatever reason, the damage-doubler combo of excess burn hits one creature, hits another, another, another, then lethal to an opponent's face has been picking at the back of my mind since the card was released. However, I played it once in proxy when testing deck ideas with some friends, and one of them was furious when I did a quote unquote fair win with Chandra's ignition, facing no interaction at all on turn 6 or 7. Since that day, I've never played a proxy of it or put together a paper list, basically because I'm anxious about the problem at the crux of this video; is it possible to make a deck that features the Toralf combo prominently, but also has "fair" back up strategies that are fun and interactive along the way?
I'd be excited to read feedback both from you, Snail, and from anybody else who sees this comment.
In case it isn't immediately obvious, the combo involves having a Furnace of Rath or Insult // Injury effect that doubles all damage from sources you control (or from all sources, either one works). Then you have Toralf out and cast a Lightning Bolt on one of your opponent's creatures. It hits an x/1 creature for 6, and you have 5 excess damage for Toralf to deal to a different target. The doubler doubles it to 10, you target another creature controlled by an opponent, and repeat this until they're either out of creatures or the doubled excess is more than an opponent's life total. For a one turn win, you need at least three creatures under your opponents' collective control, and to cast Blasphemous Act, Chandra's Ignition, Earthquake, or a similar effect that will hit "all" creatures, thus you'll have a doubled excess damage swing per opponent's creature, hopefully enough for lethal across all opponents.
My Kogla deck is a humans & Kogla beat down deck that happens to have some infinite mana combos using Kogla to pick up a creature that makes a lot of mana and recast with boots on
I like the lighting for the face cam parts and how your eyes are looking relative to the camera in this video
I have an Experiment Kraj commander deck that focuses most on counters and stealing abilities or permanents. Due to many of the cards in the deck having activated abilities with good synergy, there are a small handful of ways of pulling off infinite mana, infinite +1/+1 counters, infinite -1/1 counters, and/or opportunities for card draw. How often have I been allowed to get to one of those points? Once. The deck runs fine without them, but should they happen, it can be game ending.
Ayo, you should really put some of the deck lists you reference in the description! As a Vadrok player myself, I'd love to see your friend's complete list!
Good call, just added it
I play a queza/lich's mastery combo deck. Its kind of the perfect combo for edh because I usually end up with the table having one more cycle before I win on my upkeep, where its my job to try to save myself and everyone else's job to smash me. The whole lead up and final round is always fun for everyone lol
I run niv mizzit in my agro ghyrson starn deck because niv synergies with starn by pinging for one and curiosity/ophedian/lookout are all ran for making starn really good at card draw
In your opinion, should I put existing blood and vitu in my mid-power life gain deck? Both pieces are good in the deck on their own, and totally worth running. But, I am still hesitant to put tow cards combo in a mid-power deck...
I have a dimir ludevic deck that goes infinite with the necrotic ooze / skirge familiar/asmondeus while the theme of the deck is around activated abilities and the combo fits well. The problem is that once you mill yourself enough you just won the game, its really easy to go online.
I really like the deck because has really cool interactions but it really wins out of nowhere.
Op suggests that there will be a ton of stax effects on the board when going for combo. it's pearl clutching
Just wanted to put to words an experience
Me: owning the goblin/artifact precon and slowly replacing 1 card at a time, keeping it as a thing to play when I want some variety from my jodah meatballs&boardclears deck, my inalla wizards (very low power) deck for chill games, and whatever ive mashed together to test next
One day I was organizing some card boxes, and found Godo, bandit warlord, and in a different box a helm of the host...realized I could put this in daretti's scrap decks as a cheeky sneaky wincon, I havent ever even played it yet, and the past few years I didnt get to play mtg at all anyways after covid and a move.
I think your deckbuilding philosophy and ideas are genuinely the most insightful and helpful I've encountered. Every single one of your videos has made me do some rethinking about my own deckbuilding. I think it'd be a great video idea if you built a deck start to finish or went through your deckbuilding process and explain your choices
Edit: typo
I appreciate the kind words! I may do that at some point as I think it’s fun content to see different peoples’ processes and trains of thought while deckbuilding.
Is there anyway we could see the full deck list for your friends Vadrok deck I’m very interested
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
@@salubrioussnail omg thank you sm, just wanted to say that your videos are amazing and widen my view on the EDH format as a whole and your ideas are so interesting. Keep up the great work
Your friend vadrok deck seems fun, i think it might be the thing that lately i've been searching for. For a long time i want to make a mutate deck but mutate doesn't get a lot of support and have scarce supply it had made me staying away from it for a while, i also want to break my color pie all this year i've been playing a deck with golgari for it's main color so it made me want to try something a little different, and your friend vadrok deck could be the one i'm looking for. If it's not too much to ask can you maybe share his decklist
Yeah sure! It's a fun deck, though very much so a "toolbox deck" that takes a bit of time to develop a feel for all the right maneuvers.
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
Was looking for a commet who asked for the vadrok combo list
I ended up making a tawnos tribal deck (5 cmc simic) coppies beast and bird spells that I enjoy. When u copy a mutate spell on the stack it will trigger 3 times them 4 time after whenever u mutate
the ideal infinite combo is made up of cards that would all still be in the deck if they weren't part of an infinite combo
In my Kreko deck I included Conspicuous Snoop, Goblin Recruiter, Mogg Fanatic and Kiki-Jiki. These cards allow you to do an infinite combo by turn 3 if you just open recruiter and 3 mountains and they are all goblins so go good with Krenko. But if I manage to pull this combo once to my group I will be satisfied and just take out Kiki-Jiki and Mogg Fanatic. Kiki-Jiki is just made to be abusable and Fanatic isn't that good as a one-drop outside an infinite combo.
My solution to this problem is pack my deck with about 16 cards that all interact with each other in one way or another that causes an infinite loop. If one combo gets shut out, you have about three more options to combo off with a card.
Beatdown with combo wincon is what my Marath list does. Cryptic Trilobite and any Hardened Scales esque effect wins the game with Marath, but having Scales out with Marath is an insane value engine, Trilobite also curves well with Marath and immediate activations to ping down dorks early game. I feel as if the deck may have a bit too much commander centric design (getting locked out when my opponent stole it with an Agent of Treachery), but besides effects like that, Marath already scales very well. Average mana value of 1.7 but still full of ramp as the commander is a manasink and a half (shoutout to when I drew only lands and was still in the game, casting Marath for 13 at one point)
You checked out Urban Daggertooth?
@@Tracker947 it was a recent addition, it's been a very good but it is very marath dependent still
A example for me beast tribal deck (tawnos cmdr) is lab man alt win when I deck myself with strix
I play splinter twin, kiki, saheeli combo in commander. Back up plan is force of will
What kind of izzet player are you to not run mana geyser, crackle with power and a copy spell????
Would love a deck list for your Glissa deck. I built her into Elf ball with Sagas
archidekt.com/decks/5035210/glissacruiser
Do you have that Vodrock list?
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
Can you sand the vodrok list if your friend is okay with that?
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
Can we have the list for the legendary Midrange Crusher 5k?
I built an Urza, Chief Artificer deck focused on beat down with a combo backup lurking within. It feels like cheating when I spring into a combo, so I like to avoid them anymore + lots of people find it unenjoyable to work so hard during a game to build up their boards just for a player at the table to go infinite and kill everyone. If you just do combos but no one else in your group does, it’s probably time to reassess before you find yourself cut out of a group.
I generally play hard jank. If it works it isn't mine. That being said I will allow combos if they contain more than seven permanents and can't be tutored.
I have a kaima deck that usually just kills with combat but has an eleven card combo for those lifegain decks.
Good stuff! Great explanation and conveying of ideas
Good video 👍
What are the chances of getting my hands on your friend's Vadrok list?
I have two combo decks, queza and bruvac. Queza has nothing but interaction, drawing cards making everyone draw out and gaining life while killing the table. Much more exciting to play against. Bruvac on the other had is literally seeing who can kill me before I make the table mill their whole library. Not very fun……for the table Lmao. Haven’t quite made it to making an Izzet deck yet…..I despise them too much to join the club
i love the little stick guy drawings
You lost me at “with cool friends.”
6:16 in turbo 2024, neither are cEDH players
I'm very interested in the idea of "naturalistic" combos, that sounds pretty cool. Allows you to do normal battlecruiser magic at casual mid power tables and cut through the board with a big combo if you can get to full strength. I'm not sure where to start with making a list like that though.
Personally I look to add combos only if they fit my commander/decks normal game plan. Ex) glint horn combo in a pirate tribal deck, gravecrawler loops in zombie tribal, etc.
As someone that stopped playing MTG circa 1998, and is just getting back into it (and Commander)... I really like this channel.
I can see a Red/Blue combo-centric (but not combo-dependent) in my future.
Thanks, Snail!
Hey, glad to hear it! And good luck with your combo-centric visions
hey buddy Im in the same boat. Commander didnt even exist back in our day. Hope you kept your cards. Some kid made a fortune off me.
Dedicated Combos and Tutors see the same ire from EDH players for similar reasons. The point of 100 card singleton is supposed to increase variance and maximize replayability. Trying to play the same 2-4 cards every single game goes against the sentiment of the format.
Hey, I like your videos and I think it would be amazing if you would demonstrate this concept in a 'live build video' just like channels like Commander Mechanic do. Maybe even do a collab with him while focussing on your theories!
Amazing video again, keep going
I have a deck that uses Eligeth to prove why cards like Ancestral recall and pot of greed are completely banned in major card games (we don't talk about pokemon)
2:05 Fun is subjective, what may not seem fun to you may be fun to other people, if u wanna stop a combo play more interactions, to me this video seems biased idk
When in doubt, talk with your group about what you're planning. Some groups like infinite combos, and some don't. Some like long and drawn out control games, and some don't. Some like all midrange decks with a million triggers going on the stack every turn, and some don't. If you blindside your group with a new deck or new addition to the deck, they may love it or hate it. Whether or not you want to take that gamble or discuss it with them beforehand is your choice.
I thought Walking Ballista + MIkaeus didn't work as a combo because of the text on Mikaeus: "Other non-Human Creatures you control get +1/+1. Meaning that Walking Ballista becomes a 1/1 rather than 0/0, so removing its counters do not result in it dying, you'd have to spend your last counter to do 1 damage to itself, which would not result in infinite damage. To make that combo work, you'd need a sac outlet (i.e., some third card), so calling it a "two card combo" is a misnomer.
It's a two card infinite in Grimgrin specifically, but yes this is true. I sometimes think of it as a two card infinite because of how often somebody has a blood artist effect or a sac outlet but it does require an outlet of some sort which makes it three.
@@salubrioussnail That's fair. I appreciate the explanation
I never feel bad about comboing off, I think people complain to much about combo my last lgs I literally had to tell some off my opponents that I wasn't going to change my deck just to make them happy which was by taking out the combos but the combos I use aren't the convoluted ones or the hard to put together ones I make sure I can get them fast and as efficiently as I can, even though im not a cedh deck it's a higher powered deck as I run things like necropotence survival of the fittest all that good stuff
I run a Golgari food deck that has an 8 card infinite combo in it. The only time I've ever gotten it off was when the deck had been repeatedly field wiped and graveyard exiled and i lost my good wincons. Why was i able to get it off even with loss of resources? The infinite combo is a natural consequence of the 8 types of cards i run in the deck. Not any one card is important it just happens naturally if the game goes on long enough.
Deeply curious what the combo pieces are
There is a reason I have disdain for any commander that has a 1-card instant-win combo like Kiki-Jiki and Niv-Mizzet. It's simply far too easy to just randomly win after drawing one single card, no matter what else the deck is doing.
It also annoys me that my pingers deck headed by Ghyrson Starn wants both Curiosity and Niv-Mizzet separately, and it unfortunately doesn't matter for the combo that Curiosity wants to go on Ghyrson Starn instead of Niv, because he triggers the combo anyway.
Comment for appreciators algorithm
Mutating on a manland sounds like a fun idea
Usually, i run combos as a win con to, as you put it, cut through sloggy games. Except for a few decks that run just a bunch of them, but ive found those less fun as of late.
I think Combos end games in an anticlimactic way.
I think they're fine as long as your playgroup is expecting them, but when the game ends abruptly from how two or three cards interact, it just makes the game lackluster.
That Vadric combo feels a lot better, since you see the pieces piling up, and have a lot of windows to interact.
Nothing feels worse than a Thoracle win where you have to be playing blue to stop it.
Torpor Orb.
You do have plenty of non blue answers to thoracle wins.
Things like endurance in green.
Angel's grace or everybody lives in white.
Red elemental blast or pyroblast or tybalt's trickery in red.
And a billion effects like torpor orb printed on artifacts and creatures alike.
These are all 1, 2, or even free mana options of interaction that are extremely efficient and also very good interaction pieces for many other things.
This isn't to say disliking Thassa's oracle/demonic consultation combos in casual is wrong, it's very fair to not want that type of abrupt ending. I'm a fan of promoting more cards that meaningfully interact on the stack on all levels of play, though, and most of these (save for endurance) aren't super costly cards.
@@deadmanjimmu This is the less sarcastic answer. I approve.
kikki jikki is kill on site. i like that. i use kikki jikki to magnet removal before playing the card i dont want them to kill. doesnt matter if i have the ham sandwich or not theyre gonna kill kikki jikki if they can or reveal that they dont have removal which works too.
I’ve seen a lot of players in my LGS try a combo deck as their first attempt into “high power” EDH… and not have much to do after someone stops the combo attempts. Then I get to hear that player complain about do nothing.
Can we get the deck list for the mutate deck ? Pretty please !
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo
Whenever i play agains combo i focus that player so they doenst win
7:00 - 7:14 "Decidedly not an example of fun and dynamic gameplay" After watching the entire video, I had to return here to express my disagreement.
Having interaction in one's deck is important. Far too few players run instant speed answer ls to common problems and then cry when they roll over and die to the same common combos. Maybe play Relic of Progenitus and Lanterns instead of crying that you lost to a graveyard combo? If your opponents are not taking advantage of the resource that is their graveyard, then you are already ahead - not tomention that those cards cantrip and are never dead draws.
A chair a day keeps the snail away...
The actual answer in 2013 was, time spiral/timetwister it all back, draw your deck, and do it again.
Midrang soul crusher...😂😂😂😂😂 my man you know how to play. I am playing mardu colored aristocrats style and winning with a 4 permanents loop- one repeating creature one free sac outlet one free mana/treasure effect and one piner/life loss.
can i have that vadrok, apex of thunder deck list?
archidekt.com/decks/4236279/neverbeforeseen_combo