Do you like loops? Because I like loops. And I'm here to show you the loopiest of loops in Standard (specifically B01 in Magic Arena)
This deck is designed to loop. The key loops involve
Tamiyo, Collector of Tales
and
Narset's Reversal
and their interactions with delay and extra turn cards in order to slowly but surely grind the game to a screeching halt.
--
Let's start with the basic loops. These are the loops that keep you alive through the early game until you can assemble the mana needed for a game ender loop:
To survive the early game, you are going to need the turbofog elements. The
Root Snare
Pause for Reflection
Tamiyo Package is quite common in Simic and Bant Turbofog lists. What you have that most don't is the ability to
Narset's Reversal
your fogs to reuse them. Do this freely, you need to survive to 10 - 12 mana if you want to win.
Another basic loops is
Bond of Insight
Narset's Reversal
. If you are at 8 mana, this combo will give you limitless fogs over time.
-
Cast Bond of Insight and [Narset's Reversal it.
-
Bond returns
Root Snare
and Reversal.
-
Opponent's turn, cast Fog.
-
Repeat 1 2 3
Take the above loops and throw Tamiyo into the mix. And you start to see some really crazy fog loops that barely graze the edge of finite bordering into infinite. Remember, Tamiyo grants the ability to return a Fog once every 3 turns. If you have Root Snare and Narset's Reversal, you've already stalled for 2 of those turns.
--
So what is the end goal of our turbofog loop? The answer is the 3 card infinite turns loop that does not use
Nexus of Fate
!
-
Cast
Karn's Temporal Sundering
, targetting yourself and something.
-
Cast
Narset's Reversal
, copying the Sundering. Retargetting is not necessary.
-
Cast
Tamiyo, Collector of Tales
. -3 to return Narset's Reversal.
-
On your extra turn, cast Karn's Temporal Sundering to bounce Tamiyo.
-
Narset's Reversal the Sundering.
-
Tamiyo to recur the Narset's.
-
Repeat 4 5 6 every turn.
This loop is the backbone of the deck, but it's only an enabler not a win condition. This combo eats 12 mana from your pool every iteration, though since each iteration produces an extra turn you can simply untap before continuing. Your goal is to eventually hit
Omniscience
and use this to instantly take infinite extra turns (Omniscience is not strictly necessary, but this combo is excruciating to pull off without it because you need to ramp to about 14-17 mana or so before you can get a win condition online)
So we have infinite turns, and we've dug into
Omniscience
. Now what? This deck has multiple win conditions. And it won't surprise you to learn... that one of the win conditions is another loop!
Win condition 1:
Nissa, Who Shakes the World
eventually animates every land in your deck into indestructible and mauls them.
Win condition 2: The secondary infinite turns loop (this is a 4 card infinite combo that requires 14 mana total without Omniscience, with 7 of it blue, it is not practical unless you basically have everything. To put it in perspective, 4 Breeding Pools and a Nissa generate a "mere" 10 mana, including 5 blue):
-
Cast
Karn's Temporal Sundering
targetting any opponent permanent.
-
Narset's Reversal
the Sundering, same targets
-
Cast
Bond of Insight
-
Narset's Reversal
the Bond, recurring 2 Narset's Reversal.
-
Eventually, you will
Clear the Mind
to break the symmetry on the Bond of Insight mill. Your opponent will be decked.
Win condition 3: No extra turns kill loop. With
Omniscience
simply loop
Bond of Insight
and
Narset's Reversal
until both players are decked. Then pass the turn. This is the fastest kill in the deck.
Note that this deck is horrific against anything that isn't worried about Fogs. You play this against Esper Control and you are in very deep trouble. Interestingly enough, this deck has less issue with Grixis Control because their sacrifice based removal and discard is useless against Tamiyo, and they often resort to the aggro Bolas plan when pinched. You can Reversal their Thought Erasures, and they are vulnerable to being killed by a runaway Nissa who is simply stuck on board for too long.
There is no reason to play this in B03. B03 is Esper Control's domain and you don't want this deck to meet that deck. Additionally, why would you resort to Karn's Temporal Sundering when Nexus of Fate is much easier to loop?
