MicroBrews #2: Ki-Ki-Ki Combo Breaker

Features

SwaggyMcSwagglepants

15 June 2016

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Hello, and welcome back to MicroBrews. I’m Swaggy, and I’ll be your host today :3

Here are the basic gists of this series for the new reader:

• I might cut the diamond, but I don't polish it: By that, I mean most of these lists are rough concepts and are not polished into that smooth, shiny list that happens when people grind hours into it. If you have a suggestion, take it to the deck link.
• Keep it to constructive criticism: I'm not going to listen to anyone saying things like "You're such a bad deck builder Swaggy, why don't you stop playing Magic and get a life, nerd." I have faith that you readers are good people and can avoid this, but once in a Blood Moon someone will say stuff like that, and I'd like to discourage it straight away.
• This is a Spikier brew column: If I'm going to build a deck, I have to believe it can face the format. It might be more than capable of it, or it might fall flat. But if I personally think it's a flop, then I won't post it. Also, I'm really not going to look into casual formats or custom formats.
• Post your own decks in the comments! These are lists I'd love to edit and display! Of course, I want them to be competitive, but anything goes. However, this is not another "Advertise your Deck!" so don't spam it; this is strictly for creative or competitive rogue decks. I will definitely prioritize Modern, since that is the format I currently play, but Pauper and Canadian Highlander are so open that a list that looks somewhat competitive is up for contention. I might do a Standard MICROBREWS before a rotation because there aren't set rules about what you need in a certain deck, which makes brewing much more fun and enjoyable for me!

Without further ado, let's begin!

A couple of days ago, I watched a video on mtggoldfish.com about a deck called Nahiri's End.

The first thing I thought was "WOW! This list looks super sweet." Then, I thought of the old Tier 3 archetype Twinning End, which was a Living End deck that also ran the Splinter Twin Combo to attack from another angle. And so my mind immediately thought, "Let's make a Nahiri, Kiki-Resto Combo, Living End deck!"

Here is a List:

4x Simian Spirit Guide 4x Street Wraith 4x Monstrous Carabid 4x Deadshot Minotaur 2x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 2x Restoration Angel 3x Fulminator Mage 1x Pale Recluse 1x Igneous Pouncer 4x Violent Outburst 3x Beast Within 3x Demonic Dread 3x Living End 3x Nahiri, the Harbinger 3x Wooded Foothills 3x Bloodstained Mire 2x Copperline Gorge 1x Blackcleave Cliffs 1x Godless Shrine 1x Overgrown Tomb 1x Temple Garden 1x Sacred Foundry 1x Stomping Ground 1x Blood Crypt 1x Swamp 1x Forest 1x Mountain 1x Plains

Really short overview:

A Living End deck that can attack from another angle by either hardcasting the Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Restoration Angel infinite combo or by reanimating them with Living End.

Now let's really break down this list!

Cards:

Cyclers:

Deadshot Minotaur and Monstrous Carabid: Creatures with beefy bodies that cycle for one mana. These creatures are easy to dump into your bin for when you want to cast a cascade spell to hit your Living End. These also let you to run fewer lands because you'll be drawing lots of cards every turn.

Street Wraith: Basically the same deal as above, however, this cycling ability costs no mana. This makes it easy to find another creature to cycle or a combo piece while also being able to deploy your disruption spells or cycle other creatures.

Igneous Pouncer and Pale Recluse: These guys are not only very beefy, they also help you sift for your lands. Since the deck runs so few, these are essential in enabling you to cast the spells at your top end, most importantly Nahiri. In addition, they're great mana fixers – as long as the color(s) you're looking for correlate to the basic land types these guys can find.

Disruption:

Fulminator Mage: These guys are a great way to make sure your opponent can't disrupt your plans. Just pop one off, and one of their lands is dead. And, if you have a Fulminator Mage in your bin when you cascade into Living End, you just get to Stone Rain one of their nonbasics again. If you just have Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker out, you can hop onto the value train and either pop two of their nonbasics, or make a copy of the mage each turn and Stone Rain them every turn.

Beast Within: It kills any permanent your opponent throws out, and when you cascade into Living End, their beast is just gone. All around solid.

Living End Combo Pieces:

Violent Outburst and Demonic Dread: if you're familiar with Living End decks, you know why these cards are included. If you're not, let me give you the scoop. Living End is the timeshifted version of Living Death. It has no mana cost, but you can suspend it. However, you can't assure you'll have enough time to have a suspended Living End go off, because Modern can be a fast format. That's where our cascade pieces come in. You may have noticed that there isn't a card with a converted mana cost below 3 in the deck. Besides Living End. Now, cascade says that you cast a spell with a CMC less than the cascade spell's CMC. So every time you cast a cascade spell, you'll hit Living End without fail. This also essentially means you have more than 4 copies of Living End in the deck for consistency purposes.

Violent Outburst is much better, since it's instant speed and doesn't need a target to have it resolve. But Demonic Dread also accomplishes our goals quite nicely.

Living End: Yeah, this is why the deck works. Since we have cycled (hopefully) anywhere from 3-9 creatures early on in the game, when we cascade into this, the opponent will usually be boardwiped and you will have an arsenal of big, beefy bodies onto the battlefield. Also, if you just have an empty board and your opponent is an aggro deck like Zoo, Burn, or Death's Shadow, you can just cast a cascade spell and boardwipe them.

Kiki-Jiki Combo Pieces:

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Restoration Angel: So for those of you who don't know the Kiki- Resto Combo, I will explain. You use Kiki's ability to make a copy of Resto. When that Resto enters the battlefield, the blink ability will go onto the stack, and you can use it to blink your Kiki. Kiki will re-enter untapped, and since it has haste, it can make another copy of Resto, which can blink Kiki, which can make another copy of Resto… you get the point. Extremely similar to the Splinter Twin combo.

Nahiri, the Harbinger: This card does SO MUCH WORK. Her +1 says 'target card in your hand gains cycling '. Also, she can just find one of the combo pieces we need with her ultimate. We don't really need any other discard outlets to dump Kiki combo pieces into the bin since she's just so good.

Simian Spirit Guide: Just gets all the combo pieces out faster, or lets me cycle an additional card. Makes everything faster, which is always good.

Strengths of this list:

This list has an insane amount of inevitability: Not only is this deck hard to really disrupt, it can just win the long game by attritioning out the opponent's lands and cycling your creatures, and if there is a gigantic board stall, you can eventually just Kiki Combo out.

The deck has multiple angles: Hopefully this was somewhat obvious. It can either go on its primary Living End plan, or try to assemble the Kiki Combo by either discarding the pieces and using Living End to reanimate them both, or just hardcasting.

This version is less susceptible to Graveyard hate than traditional Living End: Since you can win by using Kiki Combo, your opponent just resolving a Turn One Leyline of the Void or in Game one where you're playing a deck that has mainboard Scavenging Ooze or Relic of Progenitus (which aren't super effective against living end anyways) it isn’t game over.

Weaknesses of this list:

By running Kiki Combo, you need to cut more cyclers and disruption, making the deck a bit less consistent: Although Nahiri does pick up some of the slack for the reduced amount of cyclers, you still can't rely on just drawing a cascade spell as much as you can in traditional Living End.

Since you need 4+ mana to resolve Kiki Combo, you need to run an extra land and Simian Spirit Guide: The real issue here is those slots could be used for more cyclers or just disruption. Another Beast Within or Fulminator Mage would be much appreciated.

Matchups

In this section, I will give Game 1 matchups against the Top 10 (in my opinion) decks in the Modern Metagame.

• : 49%. I think they can apply pressure onto your hand and destroy your creatures, but some games, you'll just slam them with T1 cycle, T2 cycle cycle, T3 cycle Simian Spirit Guide into Violent Outburst, get dudes, slam face. Also, Liliana of the Veil isn't that strong against this list.
• Affinity: 47%. They get nut draws all the time, but we have a ready to use boardwipe at our disposal, and if the board stalls out, not only can we kill their stuff, we can Kiki combo for the win. The issue is they have lots of evasion, and Galvanic Blast deals with a lot of dudes in our deck.
• Infect: 45%. This deck is not good at beating other decks with nut draws. Although we do have some interaction, infect can easily slide around it and punch us for 10 poison while we sit there looking at a graveyard full of cycled card.
• Burn: 45%. They can hit us to the face more, and we deal ourselves a lot of damage by using a greedy manabase and Street Wraiths. Our Living End as boardwipes are much better in this matchup than against infect, and Eidolon of the Great Revel will hardly ever ding us.
• Ad Nauseum: 43%. We might be able to knock out one of their enchantments or a Lotus Bloom/Pentad Prism early on, and that’s really our only hope. Otherwise, we really have to race them for the win. Also, they run Pact of Negation, and that’s bad for us. If we are able to disrupt them enough, we should have enough time to set up a win.
• Lantern Control: 70%. I think it is VERY hard to lose in this matchup. Inquisition of Kozilek and Abrupt Decay do nothing, and most of the time, milling us helps us out. And, we can still Kiki Combo from the bin if they mill it out. If the Lantern Control deck has Thopter Sword in it, I can see the matchup sinking all the way down to a 57.5%. if its also running 2-3 mainboard Ghirapur AEther Grids, the matchup might sink to a 50%. But Game 1 you probably have on lockdown, and if you can eek out another game, you're good to go.
• Merfolk: 50%. It’s a race, and if you can just stall the board until you can assemble Kiki Combo or just beat harder, you can probably win the game.
• Abzan Company: 52%. Using Violent Outburst in response to their combo just blows them out sooooo hard, and if we resolve Living End with some dudes, they really can't hope to beat us by beating down unless they draw Gavony Township.
• Tron: 57.5%. Running some mainboard land destruction is really good against them, and Kiki Combo is also super strong against them even if they have an Emrakul out. Maybe Pyroclasm might be decent for them since it kills Kiki-Jiki, but it's still bad for the tron player.
• Scapeshift 60%: If you can get a Fulminator Mage out, just pop it off to stall them, then if you have a cascade spell, play it and keep popping their lands. Beast Within also works as a Stone Rain against them. Eventually you'll grind out enough of an advantage to win the game.

Tips and Tricks

• If Restoration Angel and Deadshot Minotaur are Living Ended, and Restoration Angel is the only creature with flying on the battlefield, you will have to use Deadshot Minotaur's ability on it.** Just something you should watch out for.
• Violent Outburst IS AN INSTANT!!!: Don't cast it on your turn unless they're tapped out! You can cast it before blockers, or when your opponent resolves Emrakul, you can cast it in response to the annihilator trigger, or in response to a Scapeshift, cast it so you can get a Fulminator Mage to pop one of their lands.
• Watch your life total: IT's going to go down faster than Infect or Grixis Delver's life does in the beginning turns. And believe me, they go down to 14 regularly by Turn 2. Street Wraith and a greedy manabase means that you need to take the pain, as well as take preventive actions to make sure you don't get hurt more.

Final Words

Well, I hope you enjoyed this weeks MicroBrews. This will be continuing, and I hope to reveal many more exciting and innovative decklists.

Remember to post your lists! This will hopefully be a place where people will share ideas and talk about brews together. And, if you're lucky, I will choose one of the coolest lists to deck tech or reconstruct here!

Next week, I'd really love to either deck tech a new

Modern Prison list (and not a list that’s just Play Blood Moon/Land Destruction and control the game. Sorry Skred and Blue Moon!)

OR

A Pauper deck that has new Eternal Masters rarity-shifted Commons

Please submit your brews! I can think of jillions myself, but they aren’t nearly as good as some of the ideas the entire community has!

Happy Tapping!