Working on a Budget combo mill. I saw a few ideas for this combo floating around. My goal now is to make it more consistent without breaking the bank.
The primary Win con of this deck is to mill your opponent with Altar of the Brood.
The two ways to do this are with the Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond
or Midnight Guard
+
Ornithopter
+
Retraction Helix
This deck will go off on average of 4-5th turn. I have seen versions that will run a mana dork to move that up to turn three but the deck loses some constancy.
The secondary win con is to Budget-twin infinite elves with Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond
Optimal Win con,
Turn 1: Land + Altar of the Brood
Turn 2: Land + Dig with Impulse or Ancestral Knowledge
Turn 3: Land + Midnight Guard
Turn 4: Land(optional) + Presence of Gond. Win
You can use the optional land for Swan Song if they try to counter.
Second Optimal Win Con
Turn 1: Land + Altar of the Brood + Ornithopter or Shield Sphere
Turn 2: Land + Dig with Impulse or Ancestral Knowledge
Turn 3: Land + Midnight Guard
Turn 4: Retraction Helix. Win.
This option leaves you two mana so Delay and Swan Song are open to keep the combo intact.
Due to the need for this deck to go off early The card advantage had to dig deep pretty fast for combo pieces. Impulse was my benchmark on what the minimum need was. I was running Taigam's Scheming and it worked pretty well but I opted to try Ancestral Knowledge instead. This let me dig twice as deep with about the same speed. From play testing Ancestral Knowledge is amazing if you only need to dig for 1 card, it's Ok for 2 cards, and You might be losing if you need 3. As an example a turn 3 Ancestral Knowledge to dig up a Altar of the Brood and Midnight Guard will still let you net a turn 5 win with the right hand. Lastly there is a fun combo in Ancestral Knowledge
+
Retraction Helix
to dig through your deck till you get what you need.
This deck has a shaky match up vs super fast aggro so I added Shield Sphere as an early game body. It also serves as a secondary body for Retraction Helix
Dizzy Spell Was added to fetch key combo pieces. Another option is Drift of Phantasms instead. I like Dizzy Spell for its ability to fetch combo pieces and Swan Song in a pinch. But both would work since they go off at the same speed and grab the same amount of combo pieces. Both also work hard cast as mitigation if they would otherwise be dead cards.
Delay Was chosen as the second counter since I didn't feel like I needed another specific target counter. The draw back on it is also very minimal as most games wont last long enough for the spell to resolve again. I do feel however that it could be cut for 2 lands or 1 land and the 4th Dizzy Spell if you find yourself hard up on mana. The last thing I thought about swapping it out for would be Intruder Alarm If I did this I would swap Dizzy Spell for Drift of Phantasms
Alternate cards that were a bit expensive are in the Maybeboard. I also added the alternates to some of the cards that I added.
