General ETB Combo Archetype

dbs

dbs

I'm working on building a new archetype into my cube. In a standard cube, Enter the Battlefield decks or Flicker decks are almost exclusively midrange-y value decks, so in the design of my combo cube I strayed away from building these in as themes. However, a lot of the basis of combo archetypes are recurring effects that you can string together in one combo turn, and bounce/flicker/ETB effects can lend itself to this kind of play... but we have to be careful about keeping the super efficient cards out so that the best shell for this archetype doesn't end up being a value midrange deck.

I thought I'd do a dump of my thoughts on the subject, but I would love to hear additional directions and card suggestions!

Starting Place: Bounce

White was the first place I looked in the design space, especially because of:



These guys let you recycle ETB effects and take bodies off the board, reducing the midrange feeling... but I was mostly attracted to them because they're basically one card combo engines. Since they can always bounce themselves, they give you a starting place for repeated (1) ETBs, and (2) creature casts.

With this as a general starting point, you can start putting together a supporting cast pretty quick.

Similar Effects:



Gaining Mana:



Card Draw:



Extra ETB Triggers:



Using Creature Casts:



Using ETBs:



Good ETB Creatures:

Trying to avoid being midrange-y:


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Hypothetical Decklists:

To try to flesh this out, I built a number of hypothetical decklists. All of them feature Whitemane Lion and Stonecloaker, but they certainly wouldn't have t0 - I think any of these decklists would probably still be viable with other cards in those slots.

GW Aetherflux Reservoir








Bant Elves










Jeskai ETB Go-Wide










And finally, a god-damn masterpiece featuring



GWB Karametra









 
dbs

dbs

I integrated this theme into my cube and drafted (i.e. forced) the following list:

Bant ETB Combo from CubeTutor.com













I went 2-1 in matches, losing to GB Lands Prison. The deck was way more complicated to play that I expected. It had several overlapping ways to win almost none of which involved doing combat damage. A couple of sample wincons and engines that emerged while playing the matches:



This engine gets you above 50 life extremely quickly. Aetherflux + Metamorph came up for me in 2 different games, once with the Lion to combo off immediately. The other game I just chained a bunch of cheap spells: Stirrings, the Moxes/Bauble w/ Trinket Mage, Recruiter of the Guard all represent ways of getting above 4 spells in one turn.



The combination of Panharmonicon with E Wit then either Paradoxical or Parallax Wave to recur was absolutely devastating. Once you have Recruiter of the Guard you can then go fetch all the ETB creatures out of the deck and game usually ends shortly afterwards.



At some point during the draft I realized that Psychic Corrosion was a perfect alt wincon because of all the incidental explosive card draw. Whereas Aetherflux Reservoir was more of a slow grindy way to win (unless you have Metamorph), Corrosion was more a swingy sudden combo win.



Similar to Corrosion, I also realized Upheaval happened to be perfect in the deck so I jammed it in. It gives you more casts for the Reservoir gameplan and with the grim monolith + helm ramp, Mox Emerald, and Eternal Witness, it completely locks the game out with a recursive loop.

Interesting take away: The deck didn't actually need a large raw number of creatures like an Elves + Glimpse style combo deck does because the deck lets you replay the same creatures over and over again. Instead you just want card draw and ways to tutor up the creatures you need. This in turns opens up space to fit in the various different powerful artifact enablers.
 
dbs

dbs

Peter LaCara said:
The best example of this archetype I can think of actually comes from Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. Check out Yeva's deck, Ancient Wilds. It was fun as hell to play. It leaned heavily on Roaring Primadox and Erratic Portal (and Thragtusk...). It's where I would begin for inspiration.
Click to expand...

A Roaring Primadox deck sounds like a reasonable approach to recycling creature casts + ETBs once per turn in a lower power environment. But frankly even in a Grillo-style cube isn't it pretty bad? Like compare that to Oversold Cemetery, Genesis, Key to the City + Drake Haven, Fangren Marauder + Trading Post, Salvaging Station + Executioner's Capsule or any of the other once-a-turn value engines in that environment... You'd have to be closer to a core set power-level, I'd imagine.

Onderzeeboot said:
Another great white bounce creature for this is:



Also...

= Infinite 1/1's.

Also works with Stonecloaker (but you need to tap the token) and Kor Skyfisher (at sorcery speed)
Click to expand...


Yeah, Earthcraft is so much more powerful than Cryptolith Rite it's kind of insane. It's still been a lot of fun for my group so I'm leaving it in, but turn 1 mox -> Burning-Tree Emissary -> Earthcraft has happened 3 times so far in draft matches, and whew that's a beating.

But I'm actually super interested in Kor Skyfisher. Here's the reason:

Cast/ETB Recycling combo actually spreads out a little more than I thought. For example, the big recursion decks really love getting all those ETB triggers. I mean with stuff like:



But Second Sunrise doesn't care about the permanent type. Because the cast payoff cards (like Aetherflux Reservoir) often also don't care about the specific type, you can also spread out in the direction of abusing Artifact synergies. I got thinking about this after my response to the "blue-red spells-a-turn" thread. Unlike Whitemane, Skyfisher let's you get extra casts of your cheap artifacts. This leads to an overlapping mesh of three archetypes:
  1. ETB effects/Creature Casts
  2. Recurring Permanents from the Yard
  3. Artifact Shenanigans
I'm gonna start looking at:


and artifact creatures as a way to really flush out the overlap between these archetypes. It could simultaneously further de-poison the creature-cast-storm and artifact archetypes. I don't know if that's exactly what you had in mind with Skyfisher, but holy cow it's got me thinking. Thanks!
 
dbs

dbs

I'm considering this as a possible set of inclusions to support this overlap:



I think the following cards are probably too strong, at least for my environment:
 
japahn

japahn

I doubt very much Junk Diver and LED would be too strong. You're running Skullclamp. And Hangarback Walker.

While they may combo in conjunction with these other cards, by themselves they are probably unplayable. Therefore, probably bad includes, not for being too strong, but for being too narrow.

Auriok Salvagers might be fine, though.
 
dbs

dbs

japahn said:
I doubt very much Junk Diver and LED would be too strong. You're running Skullclamp. And Hangarback Walker.

While they may combo in conjunction with these other cards, by themselves they are probably unplayable. Therefore, probably bad includes, not for being too strong, but for being too narrow.

Auriok Salvagers might be fine, though.
Click to expand...


Oh sure, this seems like a reasonable analysis. I've drafted my particular environment around 20 times in the last 6 months, and when I say I think LED and Junk Diver are too strong, I mean in the context of my intuition about the decks people build and how the games play out. I'm not trying to argue that LED is abstractly better than Skullclamp.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
How have people experienced Mentor of the Meek? I ran it for a long time but it never quite found its feet. Then again, I never did all that much to explicitly support it.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

dbs said:
A Roaring Primadox deck sounds like a reasonable approach to recycling creature casts + ETBs once per turn in a lower power environment. But frankly even in a Grillo-style cube isn't it pretty bad? Like compare that to Oversold Cemetery, Genesis, Key to the City + Drake Haven, Fangren Marauder + Trading Post, Salvaging Station + Executioner's Capsule or any of the other once-a-turn value engines in that environment... You'd have to be closer to a core set power-level, I'd imagine.
Click to expand...
Oh sure, Primadox sucks. But that doesn't mean that the basic idea of the deck isn't sound. Temur Saberthooth is a much more cubeworthy card that enables all sort of shenanigans.

Consider:
 
Velrun

Velrun

Peter LaCara said:
Consider
Click to expand...

Took me a few seconds to properly consider. At first I thought it was an infinite combo that could deal 20 damage. Then I realized it is a fair ‘2 mana = 1 damage’ combo that is instead very difficult to deal with because Burning-Tree Emissary is always safe in the hand, Temur Sabertooth can get indestructible if you always keep 2 mana open and have another creature on the board and Outpost Siege is an enchantment. This makes for an almost bulletproof combo.

What other shenanigans does Temur Sabertooth enable?
 
dbs

dbs

It looks like someone drafted (or maybe forced - thank for you testing if that's the case!) the creature version of the archetype on my cubetutor:

Knifethrower's draft of Combo Cube on 18/11/2018 from CubeTutor.com













The deck looks pretty good although I don't see how you're ever supposed to case Mind's Desire or Hunting Pack without some way of generating mana like Cryptolith Rite or Earthcraft or Turnabout. You can pretty much only cast those spells if you get Cloud Key + double Sensei's Top for the zero mana storm combo, which is not likely to happen consistently enough (although it's cool as hell). They left both Panharmonicon and Temur Sabertooth in the board so you could probably switch those two in instead (although you'd be left with Cathar's as your only explosive wincon - which means maybe swap one Top for an Enlightened Tutor which was in the sideboard?

EDIT: frankly the more I look at it, with double trinket mage and gifts ungiven and eternal witness, you can reasonably consistently find double top, cloud key, and a storm card. Sabertooth and Panharmonicon can be a sideboard plan against decks with sweepers to handle the infinite 4/4 tokens. This deck is way sicker than I first thought.

Either way this looks reasonably close to my first draft of the archetype (at least in colors and ETB creatures) which makes me think (n=2) that Bant is the most natural home. I might have to do further balancing of the ETB creatures in the cube - I was thinking of balancing this archetype via the choice of payoff cards but it probably makes more sense to look at the bread-and-butter ETB creatures instead.
 
dbs

dbs

Onderzeeboot said:


RAWR!
Click to expand...

I had never really considered this card before, but it's a perfect fit for me. It produces a very natural overlap between creature-cheat and ETB storm. I put together a sample storm decklist:

Zacama ETB Storm from CubeTutor.com












The core of this deck is a creature-based card draw engine to get you to your combo pieces:


Mana generation:


You have a small tutor package for finding Zacama:


The ETB looping package:


The Zacama-cheat package:


Then the win conditions:


Paradox Engine also gets you bonus Fauna Shaman/Elvish Piper activations + extra mana from the moxen/Llanowar Elves.

What if you don't find Zacama? The alternative win-con is probably doing Kyren Negotiations + Paradox Engine the "fair" way with Kor Skyfisher recursion, relying on Burning-Tree Emissary and Helm of Awakening for speed.

The deck seems pretty fun. This shell is medium-fast with pretty high consistency, but low resiliency/interactivity. I'm not sure how good it is, but finding the lines has just gotta be enjoyable. Zacama's going in the cube 100%.
 
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