MTG Combo: Copy Artifact + Winds of Rebuke

dingusdingo on Sen Triplets Stax/Control

5 years ago

Thoughts for edits

Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek + Time Sieve suffers from being a 3 piece combo and from card quality. Foundry can be worthwhile for instant speed blockers, but the other two are dead draws without the combo assembled.

Sensei's Divining Top with either Grim Monolith + Power Artifact or Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter is a much nicer package, as all the pieces have strong value independently.

I would recommend Tainted Pact for running with Laboratory Maniac . It serves as an A + B combo for winning (+ draw 1 card ofc), and is safer for the purposes of your deck than Demonic Consultation , although you could easily run that for cheaper CMC comboing. Worth noting that Pact has synergy with Isochron, or can be used for getting the last combo piece for a Top combo.

It seems as if assembling infinite mana + draw deck is your goal. I would recommend slotting Copy Artifact + Winds of Rebuke as an alternate wincon to lab man wins. Combos with dramatic scepter (you copy the scepter, imprinting winds of rebuke, to mill everyone out and pass to them, causing draws into empty libraries for GG). Copy Artifact and Winds of Rebuke also both have very high card quality, both are playable independently.

My last combo suggestion is for Praetor's Grasp . Especially with Sen having the potential to steal combo pieces, you have the potential to stop win cons as well as getting closer to your own. Praetor's Grasp will run as a functional tutor here, grabbing faster ramp or the combo pieces you need.

ad nauseum is a strong card, but you should consider the following. You are already pressuring your own life total with Dark Confidant as well as Phyrexian Arena , plus incidental damage from Mana Crypt as well as Ancient Tomb and the talismans. Your average cmc 2.33, meaning your Ad Naus will usually dig 10-20 cards, depending on damage and what you flip.. You also don't run any rituals, and have no way of reusing rocks outside of Dramatic Reversal . Supporting cards like Chain of Vapor or Hurkyl's Recall give extra mileage to Ad Nauseum as they let you re-ramp your own mana positive rocks after landing the Ad Naus, and Yawgmoth's Will is a monster in Ad Naus decks. You are also light on creatures and pack a medium sized removal package, so creatures can get free swings and reduce your Ad Nauseum that way too. You are running white, so you could decide to make ad nauseum + Angel's Grace a win-con as a possibility too. Right now Ad Nauseum looks more like expensive card draw in this deck than a strong win condition. As it stands, I firmly believe Necropotence is stronger in this current list.

You should consider swapping slower, permanent based draw spells for faster, instant/sorcery speed draw spells. Brainstorm + Ponder + Preordain + Sleight of Hand will all bring down the cmc for Ad Naus, help guarantee smoothness in your early game, and give you cantrips to "win immediately" with Lab man. They also allow you to hold up counterspells more meaningfully. You could cut Padeem, Teferi, and the U/B Tezzeret, those changes alone would cut 10 CMC out of your deck for speed and Ad Naus purposes. For what it's worth, I also believe that Scroll Rack is most effective in edh with decks that sustain larger handsizes (gives ability to dig deeper), and would also be a proponent of cutting for a cantrip. One final note on card draw, your commander acts as card advantage for you,

Your removal package can be modified to be faster and stronger. Council's Judgment has some nice perks, but it should be tertiary to both Swords to Plowshares as well as Path to Exile . Both of them are just far more efficient. You also only have two answers to artifacts or enchantments on the board, Cyclonic Rift or Council's Judgment . 2-3 more bounce spells could help with board state by quite a bit, especially if you are able to stax them out of replaying their pieces. 1-2 pieces or artifact/enchantment removal will also go a long way to helping your board presence, especially since cEDH skews towards non-creature permanents.

Humility + Night of Souls' Betrayal is a nice creature lock, but I would rather see wipes in both of those slots. Humility wrecks card advantage from your own commander, and Night is low card quality outside of combo. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is the preferred -x/-x effect, as it kills many of the strongest hate bears in the format (+ lab man) and allows your own hatebears to win through beatdown. I wouldn't recommend Elesh in a bear-lite build, so I would propose two wipes or pieces or removal instead.

Disallow is high cmc for a counter, consider running something else if you still want Ad Naus. If you want to hamper activated abilities, run either Pithing Needle or Phyrexian Revoker , both can deal with some of the premiere critters of the format, from Sisay to Thrasios. There are still plenty of fantastic 1 or 2 cmc counters that are common in the format that you don't run, such as Negate and Counterspell . Special mention to Swan Song for also doubling as a dramatic scepter + Copy Artifact wincon

Land base looking strong. Only changes I would suggest are remove the ETB tapped manlands, because speed is important, as well as swap out the artifact lands for basics. With a very high artifact density, you don't need to be worried about metalcraft enabled for Opal, and having nonbasics that don't give abilities and only produce 1 color of mana is not worthwhile when you can get caught by someone else's Back to Basics

As a closing note, I wanted to draw your attention to cards I see that may pose a problem for this build. Kataki, War's Wage Back to Basics Stranglehold Ruination