Ad Nauseam Combo

Modern Combo Competitive WUB (Esper)

RAID21

Land (21)

• 4x City of Brass
• 3x Darkslick Shores
• 2x Dreadship Reef
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 2x Plains
• 3x Seachrome Coast
• 4x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Instant (19)

• 4x Ad Nauseam
• 4x Angel's Grace
• 1x Lightning Storm
• 4x Opt
• 3x Pact of Negation
• 3x Spoils of the Vault

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Serum Visions

Creature (5)

• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 4x Simian Spirit Guide

Artifact (8)

• 4x Lotus Bloom
• 4x Pentad Prism

Enchantment (3)

• 3x Phyrexian Unlife

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Sideboard

Instant (12)

• 3x Darkness
• 2x Esper Charm
• 1x Gigadrowse
• 2x Hurkyl's Recall
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Patrician's Scorn
• 1x Repeal
• 1x Slaughter Pact

Creature (1)

• 1x Spellskite

Artifact (1)

• 1x Conjurer's Bauble

Land (1)

• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All

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The version of Ad Nauseam combo which I run.

The mana Base is quite flexible and can be changed, however DO NOT run fetchlands as they make our primary combo worst.

Mana Base Show

The mana base includes 21 lands and is the ideal amount for pulling off the combo efficiently. Alot of the lands in the deck are interchangeable to suit your playstyle and card collection. These changes include:

City of Brass can be replaced by Gemstone Mine . Gemstone Mine is the more popular option out of the two. City of Brass is run over Mana Confluence due to its interraction with a negative life total. You can't pay life if you have a negative life total but you can take damage.

Dreadship Reef can be replaced with any dual land, I use it in case I don't draw the necessary mana rocks during the game, the Reef is a great fallback.

Gemstone Caverns and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth can both be replaced by: Temple of Enlightenment, Seachrome Coast or Darkslick Shores. I use them as they provide niche abilities which sometimes saves the game or wins it faster. They dont punish the mana base too much so these can be added without worry.

Any fastlands (Seachrome Coast & Darkslick Shores) can be replaced with shocklands, only if you don't have the fastlands though. Shocklands have a similar issue with Mana Confluence with them being unable to be used in negative life.

The Combo Show

This section details how to play the combo if you're unfamiliar with it.The deck tries its best to form the combo of Angel's Grace and Ad Nauseam. These two cards allows the player to draw his/her entire deck and then win the game. Phyrexian Unlife is another way to prevent us from dying from Ad Nauseam and Spoils of the Vault will find us any combo piece we need. This gives us effectively 10 Angel's Grace and 7 Ad Nauseam, which with 8 cantrips is pretty darn consistent. The deck tends to win by turn 4 or 5, but my version of the deck can win as early as turn 2 provided you get the right draw.

How does the deck win so quickly?

The answer lies in the mana acceleration. Their are 2 cards dedicated to making this deck win as quickly as possible and they are: Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom. These cards are the reason why the deck wins consistently between turns 3-5. If you end up not drawing these cards however the deck is going to take a bit longer to get the mana to pull off the combo. Dreadship Reef helps this as we can store mana in the land to use all in one turn.

How does you win after drawing the entire deck?

Well the deck can win via two different cards. The primary wincondition is Lightning Storm , you cast this card by exiling 3 Simian Spirit Guide and then discarding 9 lands to deal 21 damage to the opponent. The secondary win condition is Laboratory Maniac + Serum Visions which requires us to have a little bit more mana available, Pentad Prism can be used to effectively filter our red mana into any colour. Remember that Pentad Prism uses the sunburst ability, so 2 Simian Spirit Guides will get us 1 . The easiest way to combat the problem is by making sure you haven't played a land till you have drawn the whole deck.

The deck runs two win conditions due to several reasons:

1. Spoils of the Vault can cause us many problems whilst trying to pull off the combo, it can end up exiling one of our win conditions, or even exiling so many lands that we end up not having enough damage to win. Some decks combat this problem by playing Peer Through Depths instead and running only one copy of Lightning Storm and no Laboratory Maniac.

2. Your opponent is at a ridiculously high life total making Lightning Storm impossible to kill with. Laboratory Maniac is there to save the day.

3. The opponent has hexproof. It's important to remember that Lightning Storm does target and hence can't get through Leyline of Sanctity. Guess what can? Laboratory Maniac. Note that I run Patrician's Scorn in the sideboard as this does beat Leyline of Sanctity, however, remember that is also destroys Phyrexian Unlife so you have to win through Angel's Grace.

Bad Habits Show

This is a small section dedicated to telling you what NOT to do when playing this deck, there are a couple of necessary things which you have to do which you might not necessarily realise if you just picked up the deck.

When you cast Ad Nauseam you MUST present the deck to your opponent and allow them to look through it. This is because the card says that you REVEAL cards from your library, if you don't present your deck you could get a judge called on you.

When you cast Lightning Storm you have to announce that you are retaining priority, literally say those words immediately after casting Lightning Storm . I believe on magic online that is by holding the CTRL key. If you don't then your opponent can allow the spell to resolve leaving it to deal 3 damage to the opponents face and there is nothing you can do about it.

DO NOT discard all of your lands when playing Lightning Storm unless you have to. The ability on the card can be activated by any player, so if you discard all of your lands the opponent can discard one land and redirect it back to you, because when you discard a land you may choose a new target for the spell.

The Spellskite Dance

What alot of people don't realise is that you can still hit the opponent when there is a Spellskite in play. If the opponent redirects the spell to Spellskite let the ability resolve, then discard a land to redirect it back at the opponent. This is the Spellskite dance which usually you will win, however sometimes you will run out of lands.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Exclude colors	RG
Legality	This deck is not Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	38 - 9 Rares 8 - 2 Uncommons 12 - 4 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.00
Folders	Modern