Breakfast Combo
Best case scenario you will pull this off on turn one... but more likely turn two. You will usually not have protection but if you do then waiting to hold up protection may be preferable, play the table and be smart.
Costs: U1
This combo is weak to
Faerie Macabre
as it can be used through
Grand Abolisher
. This combo is also weak to
Stifle
or
Counterspell
s. However if you can keep the breakfast pieces in play when you dread return then you can
Memory's Journey
the targeted cards back on top of the library and mill them back into the graveyard.
Alternatively you can go for an unprotected upkeep win by searching with
Protean Hulk
for
Cephalid Illusionist
,
Nomads en-Kor
and
Laboratory Maniac
on your upkeep. This may be necessary if you have dread return in hand or unavailable for some reason. Or if opponents are on Rest in Piece,
Grafdigger's Cage
.
Hermit Druid Combo
Costs: UG
You go for the
Hermit Druid
line if you can get him out on turn two to try to win turn three. I would always recommend having protection magic up as this line is very easily disrupted.
This combo is weak to so many things that it has forced us to run all the most defensive counter magic.
The Following are all spells that would be acceptable to have in hand when attempting to Activate
Hermit Druid
Misdirection
would be ok here too in control heavy metas.
Bomberman Combo
Costs: W3 or WW5 or W1+GU (Hermit Druid Combo) or W1+U1 (Flash Hulk Combo) or W1+U1W (Breakfast Combo)
Most of the time we will be using this combo as our back up win condition for if our
Laboratory Maniac
gets exiled but it can definitely still be a very fast line that we can drop in one turn and win on the spot.
In the event
Laboratory Maniac
is exiled then we have
Riftsweeper
to get him back. If we are cut off from Labman for good from a
Praetor's Grasp
then we still have an out.
There are a lot of other cards that will work here, to win us the game. We can make infinite Birds with
Swan Song
or Apes with
Pongify
. Destroy all permanents with
Assassin's Trophy
Other notable cards that could be run to win on the same turn...
There are lot's more I'm sure but this card slot needs to fill more than just this roll.
Lines of Play
We have too Stages to our gameplan. In the first stage of our game plan we want an opening hand that will give us a clear line to victory by our third turn of the game. If we can get our library into our graveyard we can win the game from that point on. If we can assemble a combo that puts our library into our graveyard by turn two or three we should go for it. Ideally we want protection magic to help force our spells through but a second line of attack if our first line failed will help ensure we are still relevant in the game. When our opponent gets ahead of us on board we try to play around it as best as we can, however if we can't win through whatever is on board we have low to the ground answers to all threats we can tutor for to trade the card for an opening to try to win through.
Unfortunately if our opponents manage to get enough graveyard exile effects then we have a hard time winning the game from this position. We can play our commanders for value and hope to answer our opponents while also trying to find
Laboratory Maniac
+
Hermit Druid
or
Laboratory Maniac
+
Cephalid Illusionist
+
Nomads en-Kor
. These are the last combos you want to consider.
Once our Library is in our Graveyard we are very vulnerable to graveyard exiling effects. We have a weak point in our second half of our deck in that we have to cast
Dread Return
. We have two ways of protecting our graveyard from this point if we get hit with
Faerie Macabre
.
Krosan Reclamation
and
Memory's Journey
If
Dread Return
gets countered.
Krosan Reclamation
Memory's Journey
At this point you have threatened a win by turn two or three with protection. You have then tried to win on the following two turns after. If you haven't won by this point then you've had 3+ counters played against you or your opponents have played graveyard hate beyond our abilities to answer. Congratulations you have warped your meta against you. Fortunately for us this means that we can play some cards that prey on decks that try to answer our game plan. We get heavy hitters in
Carpet of Flowers
and
Mystic Remora
. In the event that these cards aren't good in a match up then it probably means we are already favored anyways.
Its important to note here that you can no longer cast spell loops with infinite Mana from the Bomber man combo if you lose both
Krosan Reclamation
,
Memory's Journey
and
Riftsweeper
.
If our opponent doesn't target these spells with targeted graveyard hate then we should be good.
Shred Memory
gives us a very hard time but we can survive through it and potentially win. But at this point our game plan is pretty shot and were spending most of our Mana each turn trying to not die to decking ourselves let alone interacting with other players.
Tutor Spells and Targets
These will be your typical tutor targets you will be looking for in your opening hands.
Interaction Spells
-
Assassin's Trophy
<-- Answers most relevant stax pieces and when cast infinitely is devastating.
-
Autumn's Veil
<-- Protects us while we combo off
-
Chain of Vapor
<-- This card does so much for us. Usually it's used to trade for an opening to combo off
-
Dispel
<-- This card is primarily used to protect our combo but I mean
Ad Nauseam
is an instant...
-
Flusterstorm
<-- Protects our combo
-
Force of Will
<-- We have made a few deck building choices to facilitate this card but its worth it
-
Mental Misstep
<-- Most Spells in Cedh are 1cmc, Especially the ones that interact with our combos
-
Pongify
<-- It's a blue answer to creature based hate or commanders
-
Silence
<-- Protects our combo turn
-
Spell Pierce
<-- This card is only good in the early game(which is what we want) but is bad against early fast mana
-
Nature's Claim
<-- Efficient answer to artifacts and enchantments.
-
Swan Song
<-- This card is one of the best low to the ground counter spells
-
Winds of Rebuke
<-- Messes with other peoples top of deck tutors, trades tempo, allows for an opening to combo off and if you cast it 50 or so times your opponents won't have decks anymore. What's not to love
-
Collective Brutality
<-- Very useful utility spell
-
Toxic Deluge
<-- Best mass creature removal in our colors. If we had red I would run
Fire Covenant
-
Caustic Caterpillar
<-- Answers a lot of hate pieces while being easy to tutor up in our deck
-
Deathrite Shaman
<-- This creature is amazing, it's basically a Planeswalker
Other Card Roles
Fast Mana
The fast Mana in this deck really isn't replaceable other than Lion's Eye Diamond if your going to build it with a Nooze combo instead of Bomberman. We need to get under control and other combo decks.
We are running a creature ramp package as it turns on our Diabolic Intent and because the majority of what we need is colored mana. These creatures allow us to make strong turn 2 plays.
Carpet of Flowers
is the only exception for creature ramp here because if our opponent isn't running blue then were already in a good place at the table.
Notable Exclusions
We are not running any colorless lands as we cannot afford a single mulligan due to Mana restrictions. We do not run
Dryad Arbor
because despite making
Green Sun's Zenith
into a ramp spell and giving
Protean Hulk
an additional target to put into play for
Dread Return
, the tempo loss of
Dryad Arbor
is too great and will cause us to mulligan hands we would otherwise keep. Our deck is built so that
Dread Return
will be able to be flashed back regardless of what line we take already to
Dryad Arbor
does nothing to help this game plan. In its place we can run another interaction spell as it really shouldn't be considered a land slot to begin with.
The reason to run
Cabal Therapy
is to target ourselves so we can discard either
Angel of Glory's Rise
or
Dread Return
in the event we have them in our hand when we want to combo off. The down side for
Cabal Therapy
is that we have to sacrifice a creature to activate it. There is a good chance we will have one but not a guaranteed chance so there may be times were it simply isn't good and would cause a mulligan anyways. If we are on the
Hermit Druid
line we only have exactly enough creatures for
Dread Return
and therefore can't afford the costs of
Cabal Therapy
. In these cases we instead run
Collective Brutality
as it doubles with our secondary same turn win condition slot. Alternatively we have Lion's Eye Diamond that can discard our hand post
Hermit Druid
or
Flash
Protean Hulk
. We instead choose to evaluate our opening hand and may or may not need to mulligan based off whether we have a clear line to win the game. So for example if we can get
Hermit Druid
down for turn 2 and can tutor up
Lion's Eye Diamond
by turn three, then we can still resolve Hermit Druids ability and be able to discard our relevant pieces in the same turn. Otherwise we accept that it's a mulligan, it is a game of odds and chance after all and I hate to dedicate a slot to this otherwise.
Survival of the Fittest
deserves honorable mention here too.
Playing this requires you to play
Angel's Grace
which is a 6 Mana combo.
Angel's Grace
itself at worst buys you a turn in certain situations but overall is unimpressive without
Ad Nauseam
as it also requires white Mana which is our splash color.
Ad Nauseam
is difficult to cast without a fast Mana base using Mana Rocks over the Mana Dorks our deck uses so at best it would be a single target back up plan we can tutor for but requires 5 Mana which can be difficult for our deck to hit without additionally tutoring for
Mana Crypt
at which point I've tutored twice and could have gone for a more efficient combo. The main upside for this would be you are provided with an additional combo. The main downside is you can't run cards like
Tarnished Citadel
which provide our deck with consistency.
The main reason for running this would be for the loops with
Noxious Revival
but our
Krosan Reclamation
provides us with more utility from our graveyard as we can return
Gitaxian Probe
and
Reanimate
for a win the very next turn after a failed
Dread Return
. In hand from this point
Timetwister
just resets our deck less our exiled
Dread Return
which doesn't leave us with a clear line to victory. Alternatively
Krosan Reclamation
in hand from this point allows an additional attempt at winning the next turn for a total of 4 turns in a row were our opponents need answers or we win.
Worst Case Scenarios
We have put our whole library in our graveyard and an opponent counters our
Dread Return
. Pass turn and an opponent plays a
Rest in Peace
/
Tormod's Crypt
/
Relic of Progenitus
. Your best line is to now return
Laboratory Maniac
and
Gitaxian Probe
if possible. This is a slow line that does not interact with your opponents but it keeps you in the game and provides a winning line.
We draw narcomeoba on the turn we want to activate
Hermit Druid
. I've gotta say this one really sucks because the odds of it happening are so low but it just means were a turn behind. Fortunately our deck is built in a way were we actually control our draws quite a bit so a blind draw narcomeoba shouldn't happen too often.
We have both
Angel of Glory's Rise
and
Dread Return
in our opening hand. But if we can still resolve a
Hermit Druid
activation by turn 3 and get
Flash
in hand by then, we can
Flash
in
Angel of Glory's Rise
at instant speed.
One of our opponents resolves a
Trinisphere
... before we can combo off
