The 'new' The Great Aurora combo
Standard forum
Posted on Sept. 15, 2015, 4:56 p.m. by pleasiodmakerblooloo
So we've all seen the The Great Aurora decks that focus on getting more permanents and increased hand sizes to tilt casting The Great Aurora in their favor. But what about a combo that literally forces the opponent to scoop. What if you start with the regular plan, more lands + cards etc, but then cast Omnath, Locus of Rage (or any other landfall fatty), exile them with something like Suspension Field and then cast The Great Aurora. This would put your opponent in a virtually un-winnable position. Any thoughts?
Epochalyptik says... #3
Unless the cards that you're playing can all win the game on their own (without The Great Aurora), you're going to get shrekt trying to set up or if The Great Aurora is countered.
And if they can, what's the point of playing The Great Aurora?
September 15, 2015 5:44 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #4
@omnipotato: When you shuffle your permanents into your library, Suspension Field's effect ends and Omnath, Locus of Rage or other exiled card returns immediately. When you put lands onto the battlefield during the second part of The Great Aurora's resolution, you get all those landfall triggers.
September 15, 2015 5:45 p.m.
omnipotato says... #5
Ah, for some reason I thought with The Great Aurora you shuffle in everything including graveyard and exile zone
September 15, 2015 5:58 p.m.
NEEDING 9 mana to win a game is not a good win-con.
September 15, 2015 6:07 p.m.
CheapnFast says... #7
Well, since the Great Aurora costs so much, play mana dork creatures (Rattleclaw Mystic, Whisperer of the Wilds, etc.) to cast it quicker and then if you don't get your combo, the rest of the deck could just be a simple ramp deck that wins of off of powerful landfall triggers like Omnath's or Grove Rumbler's.
September 15, 2015 6:08 p.m.
Atarka's Command would be a great addition to this deck as well. And If you were to play Rattleclaw Mystic then he could be easily flipped up to make The Great Aurora cost much cheaper.
September 15, 2015 6:15 p.m.
nobodygaming says... #9
I had a question about this in the EDH forum a few weeks ago. Turns out the way the card is worded is too limiting for any kind of landfall trigger to be inserted onto the battlefield before The Great Aurora finishes resolving. Basically it looks like this
- Play landfall trigger
- Exile it with Suspension Field
- Cast The Great Aurora
- what happens now is Suspension Field leaves the battlefield along with the rest of the permanents and TGA finishes off the remaining steps of the spell (card draw, play lands) then when that has finished resolving the exiled card checks for Suspension Field and returns when it sees its gone.
Until we have a Kanye West-type card that interrupts TGA, we can't use it in any fun ways outside of a big dumb green board wipe.
September 15, 2015 6:32 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #10
@nobodygaming: That's incorrect. Suspension Field has a single ability with a set duration. When that duration is up, the exiled card immediately returns to the battlefield.
With some older cards, such as Oblivion Ring, the return clause was on a triggered ability. For cards like that, this interaction won't work. The ability won't be put onto the stack until The Great Aurora finishes resolving. But for Suspension Field and its ilk, it works just fine.
September 15, 2015 7:38 p.m.
nobodygaming says... #11
That makes sense to me since the example I asked about specified an enchantment like Zendikar's Roil and not a creature. What I want to know is where does the creature come back in while TGA is resolving? After the board wipe during the deck shuffling? After that but before lands come in? The idea that Suspension Field gets a spot on the stack before TGA exiles itself is a bit odd to me
Btw this was the thread in question
September 15, 2015 7:51 p.m.
A combo relying on 3 colors, 3 cards, one that costs 7 and one that costs 9... That's not a reliable combo, it's easily disrupted, countered and the casting cost of aurora is toooooo damn high. There are way better things to ramp into...you know... things that impact the board.
September 15, 2015 9:37 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #13
@nobodygaming: Once again, Suspension Field's effect does not use the stack. The creature is returned concurrently with the exile effect's expiration. Once the duration of the effect is up (i.e., once Suspension Field leaves the battlefield for any reason), the exiled card is immediately returned to the battlefield.
For The Great Aurora, this occurs as all permanents are being shuffled away. The returned creature will not be shuffled away because it was not a permanent at the time the shuffle effect was applied.
Also, it doesn't matter what the permanent card is. It matters what kind of effect was used to exile it. If the exile effect and the return effect are part of two separate triggered abilities, then the return ability must trigger and use the stack. If a single exile effect establishes a duration for which the card remains exiled, then the card is returned immediately when the exile effect is over.
Notice how the card cited in your thread was Oblivion Ring—the same card I referenced earlier as an example of two distinct triggered abilities. Because Oblivion Ring has one triggered ability that exiles and one that returns, the return process uses the stack (it's the effect of the second triggered ability). Therefore, it won't work with The Great Aurora.
September 15, 2015 11:08 p.m.
nobodygaming says... #14
Yeah that was how I understood it with Oblivion Ring. The confusion I had was because the card I used as an example wasn't a creature and couldn't be exiled with Suspension Field without some weird hijinks using something like Starfield of Nyx
Thanks for clarifying that for me though. I've only been playing for a few months and some interactions are still really weird and new to me. And yeah there aren't many people I know who are interested in getting the finer details on point for a card like The Great Aurora despite how interesting I thought it could be.
September 16, 2015 12:52 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #15
The "issue" with The Great Aurora is sort of like the issue with Day's Undoing: it's an interesting card, but the effects are written in such a way that they work to minimize the potential for abuse. You'd need to cobble together a few other cards and some extenuating circumstances to actually produce meaningful interactions with them. Some options are limited; for example, Zendikar's Roil would need to be animated in order to be an exile option for most of the single-ability, set-duration exile effects of the kind that work with The Great Aurora.
Creature-based landfall effects are the easiest to get back online during the resolution of The Great Aurora, but the question still remains whether you should bother pursuing these interactions for a 9-drop that doesn't win the game.
In Standard (the current forum), I'd imagine you'd get beaten down by midrange or aggro (or whatever the short- to medium-range flavors of the month are) while you're still setting up, and control would just prevent you from going off.
omnipotato says... #2
How does that help The Great Aurora or its effect?
That combo (if it even is one) is possibly the highest mana costing combo of all time.
A spell that costs as much as The Great Aurora should get the opponent to scoop immediately anyway (like Omniscience or Plague Wind), it shouldn't require all this setup.
September 15, 2015 5:38 p.m.