Cryptolith Rite Storm - EMN Standard Legal Combo!

Standard Budget Combo RUG (Temur) Storm Theme/Gimmick

SorcerersBone

Creature (11)

• 3x Curious Homunculus  ^Flip
• 4x Thermo-Alchemist
• 4x Zephyr Scribe

Land (16)

• 4x Evolving Wilds
• 2x Forest
• 7x Island
• 3x Mountain

Enchantment (3)

• 3x Cryptolith Rite

Instant (17)

• 4x Anticipate
• 2x Artificer's Epiphany
• 2x Comparative Analysis
• 4x Expedite
• 2x Grip of the Roil
• 3x Learn from the Past

Sorcery (10)

• 4x Nagging Thoughts
• 2x Pieces of the Puzzle
• 4x Slip Through Space

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Sideboard

Artifact (1)

• 1x Prism Ring

Instant (6)

• 2x Reclaim
• 4x Unsubstantiate

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Maybeboard

Instant (4)

• 4x Geistblast

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Tired of the same old meta of aggro, control, and midrange? Mad that the only combo deck in standard is Displacer? Good news everyone! Cryptolith Storm is coming to a meta near you!

C-C-C-C-COMBOOOOOO: The whole deck is one big combo, but these are the main pieces.

• Cryptolith Rite + Thermo-Alchemist + Zephyr Scribe is the heart of the combo. A single Rite with 2 or 3 creatures combos with the entire deck!

• Learn from the Past : recur the deck infinitely! Very important! We don't want to deck ourselves, do we?

• Thermo-Alchemist or Comparative Analysis : every combo deck needs a card as a win condition. It just so happens that these cards are wincons AND are part of the combo!

Piloting the deck

• Start with an opening hand of a minimum of 2 lands. Preferably different colors, or one evolving wilds and any basic.

• use all of your mana before your next turn. The more mana you spend early, the faster you get to combo and win.

• if you must discard or exile cards from your hand, choose Geistblast first, then any land, then any cantrip, than pretty much any card other than the combo pieces.

• You can't possibly win if all 4 of each of these cards are in exile. Geistblast, Learn From the Past, Thermo-Alchemists, and Comparative Analysis. If your opponent isn't playing Eldrazi Processors concede immediately if these 16 cards are in exile.

Rationale

• Artificer's Epiphany : Strictly better version of Catalog, makes your opponent wary of turning your creatures into Clue tokens, and combos with Archive in the sideboard.

• Evolving Wilds: we're playing in 3 colors without decent fetchlands. It thins the deck a bit. It's a necessary evil.

• Expedite: Vastly underrated. At worst it thins the deck, at best it turns your T4 creature into a goddamn machine gun.

• Geistblast : a small bit of removal, that removes itself from the deck and doubles the drawing power of another card (i recommend Take Inventory. I'll explain there ). Also decent discard fodder in case you don't win with 20 cards in hand.

• Grip of the Roil : More often than not, you'll cast this for its surge cost. A bit of control goes a long way. At worst, target your own creature. You'll still be able to untap it.

• Pieces of the Puzzle: arguably the weakest card in the deck. Think of it like a CoCo for instants and sorceries, but doesn't play them. Unfortunately it'll chuck the main combo out. It's still strong in this deck given the other 31 cards it could pull, but could be stronger.

• Take Inventory : unadulterated card draw. First two copies are fine discard fodder. Combos with Geistblast to literally double the card draw.

SB Rationale

• Alhammarret's Archive: makes each draw card twice as efficient. Definitely a winmore, as you should be winning turn five. Will probably replacement with Prism Ring

• Anticipate: card filtering at instant speed might be better than straight draw in some cases. Only problem is that's all it really does. Might be used against a control deck after it taps out countering a spell or removing a creature.

• Nagging Thoughts : pretty good discard fodder for Epiphany and Scribe, but generally lackluster. Good against a discard control deck.

• Reclaim: sometimes your opponent just mercilessly destroys your combo, but your libray+gy size is too big to reliably reshuffle your combo pieces in and get them out quickly. This is a huge shortcut to LftP

• Unsubstantiate: A huge middle finger to control decks. Good luck removing/countering nothing! Also keeps stompy decks at bay, just bounce. Removes a token, resets meld and transform creatures, and generally causes an incremental tempo gain while also being a versatile defensive spell. Thanks Wizards!

Date added	8 years
Last updated	8 years
Exclude colors	WB
Splash colors	G
Key combos	Cryptolith Rite + Thermo-Alchemist + Zephyr Scribe
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Rares 8 - 5 Uncommons 34 - 2 Commons
Cards	57
Avg. CMC	2.29