This is a 4-color Blackless creature-combo deck for Canadian Highlander.
Points:
Birthing Pod
- 2
Pod caries a ton of weight in the deck, serving to both help fetch up toolbox creatures such as
Knight of Autumn
and
Containment Priest
as well as pull together our combos (detailed below).
Summoner's Pact
- 2
This is maybe the most contentious pointed card in the deck for me? It can serve to assemble certain combos, and potentially grab some strong toolbox options. However, being limited to green makes it somewhat unappealing - if I'm dropping a pointed card somewhere, I'm dropping it here.
True-Name Nemesis
- 1
While yes, the deck is set up to combo off through most games, the deck is built to be capable of playing a fair creature beatdown game-plan as a backup should our opponents be able to dismantle our combos. With that in mind, TNN is a more-than-worthwhile use of a point. Additionally, I have considered tweaking our pointed cards to allow for
Stoneforge Mystic
and
Umezawa's Jitte
, though those cards feel less useful to the overall structure of the deck. Don't be surprised if they end up in the list eventually, though.
Survival of the Fittest
- 2
Survival is just busted. As a creature value/combo deck, this card can easily carry its weight, to the extent I've even considered making some concessions just to help it feel more powerful such as adding
Basking Rootwalla
. However, I don't want to lean too deep into a single card, so for now I'll just bank on it as a card so good I'm running
Fauna Shaman
just for consistency. If we don't have
Pestermite
or
Deceiver Exarch
out when our
Academy Rector
dies, this is a perfectly reasonable card to search up instead of
Splinter Twin
.
Enlightened Tutor
- 1
The tutor adds some additional consistency to the deck, helping ensure a Pod or Survival to help find creatures or get us a sacrifice outlet or Twin when we need it. This card does so much to help our deck run smoothly, and I couldn't imagine building the deck without it.
The Combos:
We have a few primary combos in the deck to help us pull together a quick win, and they break down into three general categories:
Kiki/Twin:
The first category centers around relying on a handful of different creatures to help win the game with either
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
or
Splinter Twin
.
Devoted/Vizier:
Devoted Druid
and
Vizier of Remedies
have become infamous in Modern for their ability to generate as much green mana as you'd like, opening the way to some powerful win conditions in the format. By itself, the combo doesn't accomplish much, but it can allow you to run out a number of cards in the deck instantly, and can end the game if you can find
Walking Ballista
with either a tutor effect or
Survival of the Fittest
.
Vizier Sacrifice:
The previous combo seems a bit out-of-place in the deck, with only one real way to abuse it, but it begins to make more sense when seeing that they serve a greater purpose in comboing with sacrifice outlets and Persist to enable infinite sacrifice effects. With a sacrifice outlet and
Kitchen Finks
plus either the Vizier or
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
, you can gain infinite life, and with
Murderous Redcap
you can win the game on the spot. Most notably, any of the persist creatures (including
Glen Elendra Archmage
) can kill in the combo through a
Goblin Bombardment
that can be tutored up by either our
Enlightened Tutor
or
Academy Rector
. To make up for the lack of tutors outside of Black, we're also running
Trophy Mage
as a way to search for our other sacrifice outlets in
Ashnod's Altar
and
Phyrexian Altar
.
Also important to note is that
Vizier of Tumbling Sands
with either Kiki-Jiki or Twin can also provide the sacrifice fodder necessary to win with Bombardment, or an Altar + Ballista. The same is true of the other Kiki/Twin combos, though those can win through attacks so they're less notable here.
Flip
