You are: Home -> Articles -> Feature Article |
Editor: James Mikhail. Monday 18th October 2004.
|
Seriously Fun - Thief in the Garden
Combo Decks are the probably the most fun part of Magic as they give card interaction. There's nothing more fun that cards that word together to produce an effect. Unfortunately it is probably a good time to note that the bane of all combo decks are control based decks which has the ability to disrupt the game winning combo with well timed removal or counter. Famous Combos Black Lotus / Channel / Fireball Who has not heard of this combo? A first round kill if you are lucky and before cards like Misdirection and Force of Will there was nothing your opponent could do but concede. Illusions of Grandeur / Donate A whole deck archetype came out from this combo which involved giving the Illusions to your opponent and either destroy the Illusions or wait until the cumulative upkeep did it for you. Now comes the fun part of this article, how do you come about to create a competitive combo deck? Construction of a combo deck requires 3 main components : (1) Game Winning Combo For a combo deck to be worth while, getting the
combo should ensure the win otherwise it's probably not worth it. (2) Finding the pieces
This can be achieved through various card tutors or an effective draw mechanism. (3) Mana Acceleration
Speed is the essence. The idea behind it is very simple, the faster you pull the combo out, the faster you win. Quick mana could power it out faster for the win. Thief in the Garden.dec 4 Intruder Alarm Fetches 4 Trinket Mage Mana Acceleration 4 Birds of Paradise Control 4 Tel-Jihad Justice (Serum Visions) Win 3 Fireball Land (20) 4 Forbidden Orchard The components for the above deck are analysed below : (1) Game Winning Combo The deck revolves around three pieces Intruder Alarm, Lifespark Spellbomband Forbidden Orchard. This will generate an arbitarily large amount of mana of which you can use Petals of Insight to dig for your fireball or if you have a fireball on hand, you can go for the game. (2) Finding the Pieces Sylvan Scrying for the Forbidden Orchard.
Trinket Mage for the Lifespark.
Scry and Sensei's Top for the Intruder Alarm. There's quite a lot of redundancy in this deck which should enable you to get the pieces you need pretty consistently. Petals of Insight Petals of Insight is just more redundancy for your fireball. (3) Mana Accelerants Birds of Paradise and Chrome Mox are probably the best two mana accelerants currently in Type 2. Chromatic Sphere is technically a mana smoother but its ability to cycle itself is important. Unlike KCI, there isn't really that much hate for this deck with very few decks currently packing removal for the Intruder Alarm. The spellbomb is fine as the best time to use it is the round you go "off" and you can sacrifice it in response to any removal attempt. What's the best way to test a combo deck out? The Goldfish test. Play as though you have no opponent and see how long it takes to deal the 20 points of damage. I have to admit I always enjoyed playing a combo deck as it is relatively brainless, you don't really interact that much with your opponent. You're just pushing for the combo and the win. A comparison between the current few combo decks : 1 Twiddle Desire aims for 5/6 round kill. 2 KCI aims for a 4/5 round kill. 3 Thief in the Garden aims for a 3/4 round kill. The speed in which Thief of the Garden goes off is extremely important as it can mean the difference between winning or "I would have won if I had one extra round". If played well it's consistently faster than the current crop of combo decks and much more hate resilient (all the artifact hate around) than KCI. Match-Ups There's no real point to put match-ups for a combo deck. It "just wins" or it doesn't with little or no interaction between the decks. I did run the deck against the two more popular archetypes namely Ravager Affinity and Tooth & Nail. Some notes and observations are collected below. Ravager Affinity The ultimate in synergistic decks, you can be dead by round 4 on a pretty consistent basis. You're not aiming to gain board position but to stall them for a round or 1. A little well time hate Tel-Jihad Justice on the Cranial Plating can buy you the one extra round you need to "go" off. Previous skullclamp affinity was nastier as it usually won a round earlier than both the Vial or the Mantle Raffinity build. Any extra rounds are always good for this combo deck. Sideboard - -2 Trinket Mage
-1 Sylvan Scrying
-4 Chromatic Sphere +4 Oxidize
+3 Naturalize After sideboard you now have 11 sources of artifact hate, this should buy you enough time for your combo to go. It might be wise to mulligan in one piece of hate unless you have a hand that can go off in 3 rounds. Tooth & Nail T&N is sort of a combo deck as well. The earlier rounds will usually see them tap out ramping up their lands for a Tooth and Nail. This plays very well into your strategy as the only version you are afraid of is Counter Tooth and you can reasonably assume in the 3rd / 4th round a T&N will have tapped out for a Solemn. Sideboard - No Changes No changes required to sideboard. It's a race and hopefully you are just a little faster than T&N. How to play this deck? (1) Mulligan aggressively, knowing which hands to keep and which to send back is essential. A sub-optimal hand is as good as a loss. (2)Lifespark Spellbomb should usually be saved for the round you intend to go off. This is important as you can play around the hate. (3) You may need to play around targeted creature kill however it is a good feeling that a single Electrostatic Bolt will not be enough to destroy the Forbidden Orchard. Conclusion Props : I will not take credit for Thief in the Garden.dec, all props have to go to the person who brought the idea to me namely Toshi Onishi. I took a concept and refined it to the decklist you see above. |
