General combo in cube: thoughts on the "showdown turn"

[James Stevenson]

On the topic of counterspells, I want to share an awesome play we had with my cube last week. I had one creature in play, and my opponent cast faceless butcher. I bounce my guy and he's forced to hit one of his own creatures. The creature he chose was draining whelk. He had a bounce spell and a removal spell in hand, and countered my next two plays, keeping me on my empty board. It was so cool.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'm thinking something more along the lines of rewind and draining whelk. Some dirty dralnu du louvre action, decks that want mystical teachings and teferi mage of zhalfir--decks that do everything EOT. I feel like you kind of need that play style around to police the combo decks, which otherwise can operate on a spell axis that no one else is any good at operating on. In order to have that, you need non-conditional hard counters that can produce good value. You usually don't find that at 0-2cc anymore, and 3cc feels so awkward, especially if your tempo decks can easily trump that mana investment.

Though looking at your list both remove soul and exclude look great.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I've always wanted Draining Whelk and the other creature + counterspell cards to be good, and I have fond memories of Whelk slicing apart midrange decks in Block/Standard. There are so many hijinks you can pull when blink and instant-speed reanimation turn into counters. In that vein, even if Draining Whelk is too expensive and Mystic Snake is only on our radar because of how bad most of the UG cards are, I'd try them along with Silumgar Sorcerer.

 

[safra]

Oh yeah, forgot about Silumgar Sorcerer! sweet card.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I would add Suffocating Blast, sweet 2-for-1. Force of Will has always been disappointing for me, so I sold it.

 

[Tyrole]

Rune Snag is a really bad card, y'all. I guess that's what you get when a selesnyan devotee tries to build a counterspell suite.

I really like CML's list, but glad to see I'm not the only one baffled by the Rune Snagging.

FoW was a trap in my cube when I ran it; 2-for-1ing yourself was almost always bad. But I learned a lot about how card advantage focused draft decks from my cube tend/need to be, which is invaluable information.

This is one of my favorite threads so far - tons of good ideas, and a great approach to a challenging topic. Fastbond has been one of the key combo enablers in my cube. There are a few (degenerate?) things you can do with Courser of Kruphix, Zuran Orb, Crucible of Worlds, etc.. I honestly didn't plan it, so it was pretty cool when a drafter accidentally put a deck together and went infinite. That said, it's relatively disruptable, which is one of the key criteria Safra established (great job distilling these ideas, btw). The only piece that is even potentially poisoness is the Orb, but it can still be useful in some other strategies as well.

Aside from that, the idea that combo does not inherently have to be a 1 turn "go off and win" seems like one of the key ideas in this thread. The broader (and better, imo) definition allows space for designing non-degenerate combos, which may help riptide cubes better appeal to the powermax public without compromising our design principles.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I know I keep on distracting the conversation away from catagorizing and towards topics like disruption, but thats because I don't think you can just boot strap a combo deck into a cube. The combo deck has to feel like a natural organic part of a living system. Most of our cubes are so creature based, that creature based combo is all that we can support, and those combo decks tend to be rather boring i.m.o. Obviously I am drawing an exception for aggro-combo, but thats because aggro needs all the help it can to stay interesting.

What makes a combo deck exciting isn't so much the power level of the cards, as is the power level of its cards' emergent properties. This is really what I was trying to say, and failing, with my vintage vs. pauper comparison. Both pauper and vintage--despite being on opposite ends of the "power spectrum" can support decks that feel exciting in ways that modern's splinter twin never will.

A ripetide cube can easily support splinter twin or persist combo (as we run modernesque creature focused environments) but those combos feel flat and unintersting to me. The emergent properties of drawing and casting two value spells, that don't require any strategic shift from the deck's stock beatdown or control plan, and winning, is much less interesting than having to shift the strategic focus of your entire deck to playing towards an exhilarating outcome.

However, the combo deck has to fit within the properties of the system to be cubeable. Familiar combo is a relatively hated deck in pauper because most of WOTCs anti-combo cards tend to be printed at uncommon or higher. Since other decks don't have effective tools to interact with familiar combo, it feels more like a difficult to deal with invader than a legitimate part of the format. Compare that with Vintage combo decks, which have long been acknowledged as an organic pillar of the format, and where every deck has tools to effectively interact with them.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Do you have examples in mind of combo decks you find interesting (beyond the bounceland-based ones, which I really like)?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'm a big mana guy in general. That feeling of having a supercharged deck is too good. Though I like the living death combo decks I run in the innistrad cube, III's spider spawning combo decks, and despite just bashing them, I do really like the aggro-combo decks.

What I've really enjoyed about combo in cube, is when you are executing a plan building up to some spectacular finish, and the opponent is presenting a solveable puzzle of either active disruption or perceived disruption, where you are reevaluating the game state to figure out how to get your pieces together and execute your combo. The sort of situation where casting a cantrip feels amazing because your potential draws can have such insane effects.

 

[vennythekid]

I've been playing Splinter Twin in Modern for a while now, and I have to say it's much more exciting/interesting than simply "I put my two cards together gg move on."

What I find so interesting about the deck (in Modern, not cube) is that it's fundementally a tempo deck that leverages the threat of the combo rather than the strength of the combo itself. In every game that you play T1 Steam Vents or Serum Visions, your opponent has to consider the possibility of losing to the EOT Exarch, untap, Twin on T4. This tension allows you to play a weaker beatdown plan to great effect, and makes mana management for both players of the utmost importance, punishing ineffcienecies with game losses.

The other interesting thing about the deck is the array of builds the deck has, ranging form all-in U/R Twin focused soley on comboing with extra Pestermites, Slight of Hand, and Kiki-Jiki; to U/R Twin with a more controlling gameplan with extra Cryptics and Mana Leaks; to RUG Twin focusing on the beatdown plan with Tarmogoyf; to Grixis Twin focusing on griding a Midrange gameplan with Koglan's Command and more removal. They are all fundementally tempo decks, but swap utility creatures and spells to emphasize some core strength of the "tempo" deck archtype.

The powerful disruption availible gives a fundemantal layer of interaction for the Twin player and presents meaningful descisions to be made about how to craft a gameplan. When my opponenet quickly develops his mana to represent Abrupt Decay/Path to Exile, or I cast Probe/Peek/Clique and see removal, I now have to weigh the strengths of potentially 2-for-1-ing myself into removal versus trying to leverage tempo to finish the game "the fair way." I find this tension exciting, and makes for close, interactive games.

Personally, I think if we want to make combo decks interesting in Cube, we can learn a lot from Modern Twin decks. Here are the big takeaways:
1. The combo peices are weaker Magic cards than the non-combo pieces availible (look at Tarmogoyf vs Exarch for a comparison). The combo is also a 2-for-1 if it gets disrupted, so you can't just fire it off in the dark (if you expect any removal).
2. The threat of a combo is a strength that can be used to leverage tempo for an aggressive deck.
3. Tempo support cards should be present both for and against these decks. Vendilion Clique style cards seem especially well suited, as they work for and against the combos while putting on-board pressure. Typing this out makes me want to find more of this type card for the decks.

The main problem I can see with this type of deck is it forces decks to have the proper removal for the proper creatures on a specific turn, or risk losing on the spot, which confines deckbuilding. On one hand, it keeps "cute" decks in check by forcing them to have a more focused gameplan, but on the other, it pushes out "just dudes" decks that can't beat it without playing their own combo (Melira/Persist) or disruption-focused dudes (like Thalia, Qasali Pridemage, Linvala, etc).

 

[ahadabans]

The main problem I can see with this type of deck is it forces decks to have the proper removal for the proper creatures on a specific turn, or risk losing on the spot, which confines deckbuilding. On one hand, it keeps "cute" decks in check by forcing them to have a more focused gameplan, but on the other, it pushes out "just dudes" decks that can't beat it without playing their own combo (Melira/Persist) or disruption-focused dudes (like Thalia, Qasali Pridemage, Linvala, etc).

I have a love/hate relationship with combo, and this is exactly why. It feels great when you assemble it. But it also feels bad sometimes if the matchup suddenly becomes an unwinnable race.

I want to reduce the number of non-interactive games and combo is often contrary to that goal. There's a sweet spot which is hard to find, where a combo takes just enough effort to assemble but still leaves your opponent with options (but not so many options that the combo feels like it wasn't worth assembling). There really isn't much that falls into that category for me. So while I often get excited and want to talk about how to make combo viable in cube, it almost never carries over into my actual cube. The few times I've seriously attempted adding it, I never got out of my testing phase.

My latest attempt at combo is with Burning Vengeance (coupled with Haakon/Nameless Inversion - the one combo that I find works pretty well in cube at my current power level). I tested it with a friend last weekend and got it online once. It was cool, but the effort involved was large and I'm not sure it was worth it in the end. Burning Vengeance also didn't do much in the flashback deck (due to density issues). So it likely won't stay in my cube unfortunately. I had high hopes for it but it just feels a little underpowered compared to much easier to assemble synergies. I really dig graveyard synergies though, so I'm disappointed.

 

[vennythekid]

The "I didn't draw the proper sideboard/hoser/disruption card so I lose" felling is the thing I hate the most about the Modern format at the moment, and my post echoes that a little bit. The funny thing is that Twin is considered a "fair" deck in the format right now.

I've been thinking about this post most of the morning, but have also been thinking about how the Modern format could be improved in this regard. Rather than wait for Wizards or players to "fix" this, I kinda want to make my own Modern format, where combo is a healthy part of the format (specifically Twin combo, maybe?). I'm thinking this might be doable in the form of a cube. Some thoughts about a "combo" cube:

1. This gets really tricky to balance, as I don't want to have an environment where it's my combo versus yours, and let's just ignore each other and do our own thing and see who is faster. I want to avoid this as much as I can.

2. The "fair" decks are going to have to be strong, proactive, and efficient. Somewhere between Modern GBx and Legacy Delver, maybe? I want the games to feel like the interactive games that get played in Modern (as opposed to the quick ROFL stomps that are wont to happen).

3. These strategies have to exist within the context of limited. This means giving players space to draft their own decks, not my constructed decks shuffled together. This is a thing I would worry about happening by adding combo decks.

4. There should be drafts where one or more of the combo decks DON'T get drafted. The drafts should feel unique and varied from week to week, and "forcing" the same deck over and over might need to be disincentiveized.


Things I'm thinking about and would like your I input on, before I draft up a post in the Cube Lists forum and start putting this together for real:

1. I've never put a Cube together from scratch, I've only tweaked preexisting lists (Thanks Jason!), so I would need some sort of starting point. I think this should be a tight 360 list though.

2. What other archetypes, cards, and designs interact with Splinter Twin deck in fun, novel, or interesting ways? My favorite matchup in Modern is the U/R Twin mirror, lol, so I need ideas here.

Things to chew on for me... I'm super excited that after all this lurking I've finally found an idea for a cube, and can't wait to start designing it!

 

[ahadabans]

This might sound counterintuitive, but I almost think this idea would work better in a lower powered environment.

Here's why I think that. There is a a tendency for people to migrate over time to the most effective and efficient strategies. Take my burning vengeance example above. If you can just assemble a regular old control build (with wrath's, et. all), or something like a reanimator/graveyard recursion deck with way more options and power pieces... then what is the incentive for someone to build the burning vengeance deck? I would try and build it simply to see if it could be done, but no one else at the table is going to bother. So you are somewhat constrained by the power level of the average cube deck. If it's too high, the only viable combo decks will be broken shit that kills people on turn 4. "Fair" combo decks just won't be worth the time to assemble.

This might be going in a different direction than you want, but what if you just didn't play super efficient stuff? And so the only way to make a deck above curve was to exploit synergies? It's not combo in the sense of storm or whatever, but it essentially forces you to think in the context of assembling decks where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (which is technically what "combo" is when you get to the heart of it).

I always come back to my pet card of pet cards Haakon, Stromgald Scourge because it does so many things right in my mind. You can't just put that in any deck because there is no way to cast him from your hand. Once he's in play though, he enables a lot of things. You can go for the nameless inversion combo. You can build a knight deck around him. Or you can run zero knights and still use him as a recursive engine in something like Pox. You don't win the game when he comes down, but if your opponent can't permanently deal with him, he wins a lot of games. Yet he is still gated in that his clock is super slow and you eat 2 life every time he dies. Cards like that which encourage you to come up with interesting deck ideas. You can never run enough cards like those IMO, combo cube or no.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Those are some really great posts about twin: basically, its that feeling of perceived pressure, and leveraging it to your advantage, that makes it fun. Thats the same way that my aggro-combo decks work (and to a lesser extent heroic decks).

With that style of combo, I've moved away from running instant speed double strike effects, to avoid the removal issue you mentioned. It feels much more fair, and gives them more of an opportunity to play around things, when they can see the assault strobe or the fabled hero.

Maybe you just want to run splinter twin targets that don't have flash, like in presence of gond combo




Or you can make the combo more complex, where you are just making a bunch of bodies and than sacrificing them to a kill condition.

That would be splinter twin +




The deck might take inspiration from something /cough described here.

Some of these cards would also be pretty good with bouncelands....

 

[Dom Harvey]

Insofar as the Twin combo with Pestermite/Exarch is interesting in Constructed, it's because there's enough instant-speed interaction to make it a fun dance. I'm sceptical that you can reach that threshold in Cube, and even if you can it disproportionately weakens colours like green that don't have answers that are both good and broadly applicable (unless Naturalizes are really good in your environment). If you manage to balance it properly, what's the payoff? You can have an 'obvious' two-card combo that wants to end the game on the spot? The games you win by Twinning a Snapcaster or w/e are kinda fun, but mostly Twin either wins the game or is a dead card; as others have said, I'd rather my combo pieces be good in their own right but exceptional in a certain context. That's why I like Heroic/Voltron strategies: your pieces all help you advance towards the same goal, but when combined at the right time they are more than the sum of their parts.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Maybe it's better to focus on engines then? Engines and more synergistic kills? Specific two card combos seem bad for a lot of reasons already specified.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Thats my favorite

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

On one hand, it keeps "cute" decks in check by forcing them to have a more focused gameplan

I wanted to pick this part out, as I found it was kind of a mixed bag. Some drafters have a really hard time sticking to a focused gameplan (those sort of messy midrange or control deck that are more wild imagination than practical ideas) and nothing really strong arms those players into drafting focused builds like the threat of a strong combo deck. On the otherhand, if exploring and experimenting with different ideas in the cube environment is what those players enjoy most, you've really taken something away from them.

I think rasmus is right about developing engines. Engines need a source of fuel, and you'll ideally also want something(s?) in the environment that can actively prey on the combo decks, so as to prevent them from becoming dominant.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Depending on deffinition of cute.

Sitting around pondering and spinning sensei's divining top while trying to set up your weird 5 card combo that kills someone slowly: not so great
assembling the aristocrats engine that gives you value, and all the cards are mostly interchangeable: Little more interactive.

I tend to find that the former is usually an all or nothing proposition: If you end up assembling your wombo combo, it usually ends up either killing someone instantly or being disrupted by a well timed mana leak or disenchant and then your deck does nothing.
The latter tends to have weaknesses the average deck can run cards to exploit (Since disenchant is shit and if your combo is creature based, people will have creature removal) and also operates better when it's not "comboing off".

Those are wholly stereo types though, and mostly end goals. If you can get a deck that
-Anyone can interact with
-Doesn't insta win when it finds the cards it needs
-The cards it needs exist in redundant categories

And it doesn't involve creatures at all, have at it. But I have not found that white whale

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

That makes a lot of sense though: riptide cubes tend to be very creature focused, so naturally the fuel they would use for a combo deck should be based around creatures. A combo deck powered by sacrificing creatures seems a natural fit, and something maybe we could explore a bit more?

However, if we build a format with a different fuel source (say mana generated by bouncelands, rituals, or invasion lands) than we can change the nature of the engine.

Has anyone given any thought to combining the two concepts? Sort of a cube version of elves without the elves? The fundimental engine of the penny pincher cube is using looping untap effects to produce a mass mana machine. How about looping untap effects on mana dorks?

Another source of fuel that some combo decks use is waste. Spider spawning works using this system, where the very act of playing the game produces waste material, which becomes the future fuel for an infinite token producing engine.

I think part of the appeal of these engine decks is that most magic decks are very linear, and its exciting to build into a deck a system or sub-system that is actually self-sustaining.

 

[vennythekid]

Okay, so I've re-read through this thread a few more times while thinking about this, and I've found myself lost in terms of terminology.

What are the distinctions between "engine", "combo", "synergy/synergistic kill", "cog", etc?

From what I've gathered, (and this might not be accurate):
Engines are cards that convert one type of resource into another for the benefit of the player. Trading Post is an iconic one because it can do this for many resource types.
A combo is a multiple card combination that leads to an infinite resouce. Splinter Twin + Deceiver Exarch or Melira + Kitchen Finks + Viscera Seer are examples.
A synergistic kill is when cards interact favorable with each other but do not loop to be infinite. This is the one I'm most unclear about. The aristocrats synergy between Bloodsoaked Champion and Falkenrath Aristocrat results in a large, indestructable Falkenrath is an example.
A cog is a card that enables synergies/combos without contributing to the combo itself. Something like Satyr Wayfinder or Thought Scour in a Spider Spawning deck are examples.

Sorry if this section is redunant/not helpful, this is mostly for my own understanding.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Those are fair questions. At least on my end, I'm using a pretty direct analogy to a car engine.

A combo engine is a combination of cards that work together to create a cycle. The engine parts are usually interchangable, as they are just there for the purposes of resource conversation. An engine needs some sort of fuel to power its interactions. It must have a continuous fuel source on one end, and a source of (hopefully) game winning output on the other end.

The fuel source in the familiar deck is high octane mana (bouncelands). The combination of cards working together to create a cycle that converts that fuel into output are: cloud of faeries, archaeomancer (or mnemonic wall) and ghostly flicker. Sometime it may need slightly more cards depending on the game state (the namesake familiars, which act like a supercharger). When those pieces are operating together, it produces an infinite cycle. The output from each cycling of the engine is enough to keep the engine going, but because we are using high octain fuel (bouncelands) and a supercharger of sorts (the familiars) we produce excess output with each cycling of the engine. We can than leverage our hundred million mana excess, by putting it into another engine piece capable of ending the game, or recalibrating the engine away from mana production to golem production.

You could use terms like cogs, but at the end of the day I think we are all searching around to describe that sort of mechanical relationship of moving parts working together to process fuel and produce an output.

All magic decks are systems, but most of them are much more linear than the above. They consume a resource, which they use to exert an action, which results in waste. Some of them may use resources more efficently than others, or use their resources to make more impactful actions, or use resources to disrupt an opponents use of resources, but its still a linear line of consume->take->waste.

Even the aggro-combo decks are more linear, and though they focus on drawing together a combination of cards to end the game, they are not really a combo engine. If might be a better analogy to think of those decks like combining explosive components, the threat of which you than try to leverage. This is part of why I am such a proponent of burst damage in aggro archetypes, as it adds a combo feel to them, even if we aren't setting up a true engine.

Put speaking of creature based engine pieces:

 

[Dom Harvey]

Devoted Druid is great; turning Vines of Vastwood into Dark Ritual is always a good time

 

[Chris Taylor]

The reason I see creatures as the central part of these combo decks is not because of their abundance, it's because each Color can interact with them (even if it's like... Pit fight in green)
trading post and bounce lands are cool, but not every Color can interact with the opponents graveyard or land base respectively

 

[vennythekid]

Aren't there lots of colorless card that interact with both of these resouces? Or are they at fault for being too narrow?