PLEASE UPVOTE IF YOU LIKE THE DECK
This is the budget online version of my Tribal Elves Ramp Combo deck led by Momir Vig, Symic Visionary. To see the couple of changes I make for paper magic or the couple of more expensive but unnecessary cards that I personally play that aren't in the deck list here, check out the bottom of this deck description. Recently (2021) this deck has undergone major changes that have SIGNIFICANTLY increased the power, speed, and focus of this deck. While in some ways this has made it potentially less fun for some folks (less variation in infinite combos and game enders), it has definitely made it a strictly better and more competitive deck in many ways. Lower CMC, more mana sources, more focused combos, almost every card always useful no matter when you get it, more ability to snowball out, more easy tutoring, etc. However if you would like to see the still very strong, but less brutally competitive version of the list, check out this link Elfsplosion Tribal Elves - By Momir Vig Casual.
PURPOSE
The idea of this deck is to combo out as soon as possible while completely ignoring your opponents. In the early turns the goal is to play as many mana producing creatures as possible, preferably Elven ones, in order to ramp up the mana production potential. Then play Momir Vig, Simic Visionary as soon as possible. Next up tutor into Vizier of the Menagerie or one of his backups, then go off with whichever of the combos you are playing with, taking out all opponents simultaneously. The deck is capable of going off on turn 3 (very rare) but more often goes on on 4-5. The intention of the deck is showing massive timmy power by playing your entire deck, although actually playing all of it is not necessary, its just very exciting that you can.
WARNING
This deck can win the game as early as turn 3, and usually ends the game on turn 4-5. This kind of a consistent early win can very quickly become very unfun to play against, especially in a primarily multiplayer format like Commander. So feel free once you have shown off the absurd power of this deck to your friends, to actively avoid your game ending combos, and instead play the deck as if it were just a aggro Tribal deck. With just a few changes you could pretty easily make this into a more aggro style deck. If you make your friends too frustrated, they won't want to play against you anymore, and then you'll have nobody to play with. After all, winning isn't everything, especially if you no longer have people to play with. The more casual version linked up top is a cheap easy set of switch outs for a less brutal deck.
COMBO #1 - INFINITE EVERYTHING
- 4 elves. No specific ones are necessary.
- 1 of the following: Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid, Wirewood Channeler, Circle of Dreams Druid
- Staff of Domination
What you do then is tap one of the Tap for X Elves in order to gain 5 mana. Then spend 3 of those mana to tap Staff of Domination in order to untap the Tap for x Elf. Then spend 1 mana to untap Staff of Domination. Then you can repeat this series of events infinitely, gaining 1 floating mana each time you do. With this infinite mana you can use Staff of Domination to gain Infinite Creature Tap, Creature Untap, Card Draw, and Life gain. So now you can draw and play your entire deck or go straight after one of your combo wins. Online, you would progress to Win Condition 1 (Biovisionary), in paper you would go after Win Condition 2 (Walking Ballista), in either you can go after Win Condition 3 (Imperious Perfect) as a back up, or just play your whole deck and attack if you like.
VARIATIONS COMBO #1
COMBO #2 - INFINITE TUTOR AND MANA
- Quirion Ranger
- Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
- Any creature that taps for 2 or more mana. Choose 1 from Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid, Wirewood Channeler, Circle of Dreams Druid, Joraga Treespeaker, Incubation Druid, Leafkin Druid, Fyndhorn Elder, Greenweaver Druid, Llanowar Tribe, Marwyn, the Nurturer, Shaman of Forgotten Ways, Somberwald Sage, Canopy Tactician, Karametra's Acolyte
- The combo is very fast and straight forward. You get out your commander and preferably Vizier of the Menagerie, although Beast Whisperer can work as well. Ashaya makes all your creatures also forests, so Quirion Ranger can bounce itself, in order to untap another creature. So you tap your mana dork who taps for 2 or more mana, then bounce Quirion Ranger to your hand to untap and retap the mana dork, use 1 of that mana to replay Quirion Ranger, and repeat as many times as necessary, floating more and more mana each time. Each time you replay Quirion Ranger you trigger Momir Vig, Simic Visionary as well so you get to tutor a creature to the top of your deck and draw it, assuming you have Vizier of the Menagerie or Beast Whisperer in play. Online, you would then progress to Win Condition 1 (Biovisionary), in paper you would go after Win Condition 2 (Walking Ballista), in either you can go after Win Condition 3 (Imperious Perfect) or Win Condition 4 (Leyline of Abundance) as a back up.
COMBO #3 - PLAY DECK FOR FREE
- Enough lands and mana producing creatures to be able to generate 10 mana in a single turn.
- Primal Surge
This combo is very simple. You build up your mana production. Then you draw into Primal Surge. When you play Primal Surge you exile and then play the top card of your deck, and then you repeat this for every card in your entire deck. This is because there is only one non permanent in the entire deck, and that is Primal Surge itself. There are two potentially serious dangers in this combo however. One is if you play your whole deck, and then an opponent forces you to draw a card, which mills you out. With that in mind, it is usually much safer and easier, to just use it to play cards until you have one or more of your game ending combos out, and then stop, since even though you exile the card, you can choose whether or not to put it onto the battlefield, and if you don't, the effect doesn't continue repeating. The second is if you are playing the Online version of this deck, if you run into Infinite Reflection before you run into Biovisionary then you will have to play Infinite Reflection on a different creature which may or may not create a game winning state, and every creature that enters play after that will be made into a copy of that creature as it enters the battlefield. This doesn't happen often though and is not a problem in the Paper version of this deck.
COMBO #4 - JUST INFINITE ELVES
- Any creature that can tap for 1 green mana
- Imperious Perfect
- Intruder Alarm
Tap the mana dork for 1 green. Use that one green and tap Imperious Perfect to make a 1/1 Elf token. The elf token coming into play untaps all your creatures, and you repeat this as many times as you want. It's just a more direct way of getting infinite elf tokens, but hey, that's still enough to kill your opponents.
TUTORS
So obviously Momir Vig, Simic Visionary is an amazing creature tutor machine. Every Green Creature you play, lets you tutor up a creature of your choice to the top of your library, every Blue Creature gets you a free draw, and every Blue Green Creature let's you tutor a creature to the top of your deck and immediately draw it. This is of course the core of what makes this deck a fast, and reliable combo tribal deck. Not all the combo pieces are creatures however, which is why we have a Trophy Mage to find the Staff of Domination when it's time and Ethereal Usher to find Infinite Reflection
WIN CONDITION 1
Tutor and play Biovisionary. This will trigger Momir Vig, Simic Visionary which when paired with Vizier of the Menagerie or Beast Whisperer will allow you to tutor Ethereal Usher to the top of your deck and then draw it. Then you pay it's transmute cost to tutor Infinite Reflection to your hand and play it, targeting Biovisionary. This makes all creatures into a copy of Biovisionary. Destroying Biovisionary or Infinite Reflection will not stop this. So with all your new Biovisionary clones you win the game at the end of your turn. It's a peaceful, tutorable, and instantaneous win.
WIN CONDITION 2
Use Infinite mana to make Walking Ballista into an infinite direct damage machine and kill all your opponents. This only works in Paper magic though because on MTGO you have to actually play out every single step of the combo every time, so you would never manage to kill everyone before the turn timer ran out. Hence why we play the Biovisionary combo Online instead.
WIN CONDITION 3
Staff of Domination with infinite mana and Imperious Perfect can create an infinite number of elf tokens. Paired with Crushing Drawbridge if it's already out they all get haste, or if you pair Crushing Drawbridge with Thousand-Year Elixir then you can tap Crushing Drawbridge immediately to give all creatures haste, and attack with your infinite army. Online obviously it wouldn't be infinite, but if you pair it with Leyline of Abundance and it's ability to boost creatures, you could find a sweet spot. Generally though this is better in paper magic.
WIN CONDITION 4
BIG EFFECTS
- Eternal Witness is here, so that when you go to combo out, if one of your opponents destroys a combo piece, such as Staff of Domination, you can tutor up Eternal Witness with Momir Vig and immediatly get the Staff back, and your game ending combo is back online.
- Intruder Alarm is amazing, because although it may not be "infinite combo piece" important, with a bunch of mana dorks, you can tap them all, play a creature, untap them all, and then repeat it while you stack up mana.
DRAW/TUTOR EFFECTS
- Vizier of the Menagerie and Beast Whisperer, are so whenever you play a green creature with Momir Vig on the board, that you don't just tutor a card to the top of your library, you tutor it straight into your hand. This is of course SUPER POWERFUL.
- Any of the Blue Green creatures act as creature tutors when paired with Momir Vig, Simic Visionary.
WHY NO INTERACTION?
- The answer to this is pretty straight forward. We don't want to be the one reacting to faster decks. We want to force them to try to react to us and win before they can stop us. Every card slot that we use on being reactive instead of proactive means that we are slowing down our win condition by that much. Hence there is only 1 reactive card in this deck and that is Meteor Golem. It was chosen because it can deal with any card type, is in our colors, and is a creature, and hence tutorable. It's only purpose though is for rare situations like an opponent having a Platinum Angel.
PAPER VS ONLINE
These changes listed below are for if you are playing this deck in paper (actual physical cards), instead of playing it on MTGO. On MTGO you have to actually play out any infinite combos step by step, and there are turn timers, so many potential ways of ending the game, such as Walking Ballista with infinite mana, are not really viable online, but are much more expedient playing IRL. So when playing with actual cards, just make these three changes.
-1 Biovisionary >>>> +1 Walking Ballista
-1 Ethereal Usher >>>> +1 Sylvan Caryatid
-1 Infinite Reflection >>>> +1 Voyaging Satyr
EXPENSIVE ALTERATION
There are plenty of more expensive dual lands that you could add into this deck that I personally don't play because the financial investment just doesn't match up to the extremely minimal power increase. Some of the possible upgrades like Tropical Island or Gaea's Cradle are beyond insanely expensive. The two expensive cards that I play with though personally but did not include in the deck list above are Mana Crypt and Mana Vault. I just recently purchased 1 copy of each, so that I can use proxies in my decks most of the time, and have 1 legit copy of each for when I play in store events. If you decide to make this additional significant investment, these are the changes that I recommend. Note that if you buy the version of this deck with these two cards in it, just these two cards would be 40% of the total cost of the deck. So it is significant.
-1 Ilysian Caryatid >>>> +1 Mana Crypt
-1 Utopia Tree >>>> +1 Mana Vault
EXAMPLE OF MY MOST USED COMBO CHAIN
- Here is a step by step breakdown of my most commonly used combo chain to give you an example of what the deck can do. This is of course just one variation and is honestly one of the more complicated ones but is one that works Online very well.
DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE
These are cards that I hope they print one day that would go a long way towards empowering this deck and the things that slow it down at times.
1) A green or blue or hybrid creature that gives mass haste. This would mean I wouldn't need to wait a turn to combo out when I play the appropriate "tap for x" creature. Sure it would require another tutor through momir vig and more mana to accomplish, but just having the option to would be more than enough to warrant a slot. In addition, playing before combo time would still be useful because this deck has so many mana dorks, so it would speed things up.
2) A green or blue or hybrid creature that can tutor up a sorcery. This would be used to go straight to Primal Surge when enough mana is available. For instance in cases where I lack a draw mechanic to be paired with momir vig to get the remaining cards I need into my hand to use one of the other combos. I could tutor straight to this creature, play it, it gets me primal surge, and primal surge gets me everything else I need.
Anyways, if you enjoyed checking out this deck, and reading my write up to explain its mechanics, please show your support and upvote my deck. Enjoy