This is a very all-in version of the Devoted Druid/Vizier of Remedies combo. It's looking to abuse the London Mulligan rule and kill consistently on turn 3 without disruption.
Generate Infinite Mana
The backbone of this combo is the interaction between
Devoted Druid
and
Vizier of Remedies
. If you have these two cards on the battlefield you can demonstrate an infinite loop by tapping the druid for mana and untapping it for free.
Rules wrinkles
The reason this combo works is because the Vizier's ability is a replacement effect. You attempt to pay the cost to untap the druid and zero -1/-1 counters are placed instead.
It's worth noting that you need you the devoted druid to not have summoning sickness, but you can combo off the moment Vizier enters play because you only need its static ability.
This combo generates infinite mana at instant speed. Even if your opponent ever tries to respond to an "untap" activation with a removal spell you can just untap with the removal on the stack and still go infinite.
Keep in mind that if Vizier is not out you can use the untap ability even if the druid isn't tapped. This is useful to kill our own druid in response to an exile effect so that it ends up in our graveyard for a later
Postmortem Lunge
.
It's interesting that this combo doesn't work with something like
Solemnity
because that prevents you placing counters at all.
What do we do with all this mana?
So we've generated infinite mana, but how do we win? The cleanest way is
Walking Ballista
. We just cast an arbitrarily large Ballista and ping our opponent for lethal.
We're gonna need some backup
What happens if we can't go off with Ballista? For instance if they have a
Stony Silence
or
Leyline of Sanctity
or if they made us discard the Ballista. In times of trouble
Shalai, Voice of Plenty
acts as a backup win condition. As long as we can get through with at least one attacker we use Shalai's activated ability to put as many +1/+1 counters as we want.
The third musketeer
While Ballista and Shalai are the actual win conditions, it's actually
Duskwatch Recruiter
that feels like the third piece of the combo. Once we have druid/Vizier to generate infinite mana, we use recruiter to look through our whole deck to find our win condition.
Vivien's Grizzly
is included as an alternate recruiter because at three Mana we can cast neoform sacrificing Vizier or druid.
Win on turn three
While this combo needs very specific cards to work, there is a lot of redundancy in the cards we use to assemble the combo. Let's look at the typical play pattern that leads to a turn three kill.
As previously mentioned, we need devoted druid out a turn before we combo off so that it doesn't have summoning sickness. This means in order to win on turn three, we'll need her on turn two. The most obvious way is to play it from hand, but failing that we can use
Eldritch Evolution
or
Neoform
sacrificing a Mana dork (
Birds of Paradise
or
Noble Hierarch
).
Now to win on turn three we'll need our Vizier. Once again we can play it from hand or tutor for her. As an added option,
Finale of Devastation
becomes available on this turn. Note that it can grab two creatures if one is in the graveyard.
With vizier out we can go infinite and float 100000 green Mana. Now we need to find a win con. We can either chord for the recruiter, cast Eldritch evolution (it's okay if you have to sacrifice the druid or Vizier because you already have all the Mana you'll need), or cast neoform if you still have a one CMC creature.
Why do we need duskwatch recruiter?
With all the tutor in our deck, duskwatch recruiter may seem unnecessary, but it is actually crucial. If we ever tried to Eldritch evolution or chord of calling for the Ballista it would enter the battlefield as a 0/0 and die before we could respond to pump it. Instead we tutor the recruiter to the battlefield and then use his ability to put the Ballista into our hand so we can cast it for a huge x value.
Odds and ends
Let's talk about the cards we haven't mentioned yet.
Spellskite
protects our combo pieces from removal and can even survive a
Lightning Bolt
. It can also steal good effects from the opponent, like a
Temur Battle Rage
or a
Welding Jar
activation.
Incubation//incongruity lets us look for missing pieces or Mana dorks while allowing us to bring in a touch of interaction.
Dryad Arbor
can be fetched to save us from a
Liliana of the Veil
minus or in a pinch can be sacrificed to Eldritch Evolution.
Vivien's Grizzly
is a three Mana recruiter so we can neoform a druid or Vizier.
Postmortem Lunge
can let us retrieve our creatures from the graveyard and has a particularly interesting interaction with devoted druid.
Let's imagine a scenario where we have enough Mana and cards to combo off, the only problem is we're about to play devoted druid so it will have summoning sickness. You can put two -1/-1 counters on it so that it dies, then bring it back with haste using postmortem lunge. The lunge is mana neutral because you can tap the druid for two green.
Call to action
I am by no means an expert and I would love to hear your feedback about this deck. Please comment with any suggestions or questions. If you enjoy the deck or the description I would love an upvote.
Thanks for stopping by!!
