Post #8: Number 3 Combo Please!

With the New Phyrexia Release, WotC gave standard a crazy combo cards in the form of Mindcrank, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Deceiver Exarch

In the first combo, a fully activated Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank kills an opponent in one go. After forcing your opponent to pitch a card in their graveyard or deal direct damage, it triggers the bloodchief ascension (to force them to lose 2) or the Mindcrank (forcing them to mill x cards). This combo requires an activation, either forcing your opponent to discard a card or dealing a point of damage, which could be difficult if you're late in the game. I think the combo won't see top 8 play in standard, but will catch people by surprise at a local fnm or a grand prix. If your opponent opens with a turn 1 Bloodchief Ascension, you know what to expect. Decks with this combo will probably be using red to activate the Bloodchief Ascensions quickly. I like this combo because it's very unexpected and could kill several players with a well-timed Slagstorm, hitting all opponents. I don't like this combo because it takes at least two turns to activate the Bloodchief Ascension, giving your opponent time to respond or race you in completing their combo or strategy. In Standard/Type 2, I don't expect this combo to make it to the top tables. For casual, I can see this combo making it into the Megrim/Liliana's Caress or in certain Mill archetypes as a faster win condition, but I don't expect the combo to make a significant impact on casual. 

In this second combo, we use 3 cards, including a Soul's Attendant or Suture Priest, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Leonin Relic-Warder. With a Soul's Attendant or Suture Priest on the board, then playing LRW followed by a Phyrexian Metamorph, you copy the LRW. With the copied LRW's 'enter the battlefield trigger,' copy exile the Phyrexian Metamorph, triggering the 'leave the battlefield' abilty, releasing the Phyrexian Metamorph from exile. This creates a cycle that enables you to gain as much life as you want. This combo already saw play in the Soul-Sisters variant and made Top 8 at the Star City Games Open in Louiville, Kentucky. The deck gains you a lot of life very quickly allowing you to force red decks to scoop and making your opponents almost completely unable to kill you. The combo also activates Serra Ascendant, making him a 6/6 lifelink/flyer that lets you end the game. The downside to this combo is that it requires 3 cards that makes it more difficult to pull off compared to the other two combos. I like this combo because it's relatively versatile, because the cards used to make the combo are still very strong in Type 2 play. In casual, I feel this combo could see play in mono-white Myr or certain white-heavy lifegain decks.  

For the final, and probably most impacting combo, Deceiver Exarch is a very cool card and very similar to Pestermite from Lorwyn. However, Lorwyn never had access to Splinter Twin. When you attach Splinter Twin on Deceiver Exarch, you can tap to make a copy of Deceiver Exarch, then untap the original copy of the exarch and repeat the process as many times as you like, giving you a semi-infinite army of 1-4 creatures that have haste. The combo wins once executed. Since they released Deceiver Exarch, the price of Splinter Twin jumped from around $1-2 to $9-10. This jump shows just how badly standard players have been craving a combo piece. At the Star City Games Open in Orlando, Grixis Splinter Twin received several spots in the Top 8. The reason this deck is so powerful (and generally splashes black or green) is because Deceiver Exarch is so resilient. The 3 mana 1-4 has flash, allowing him only to be responded to by instant speed answers (assuming you have splinter twin in hand) leaving out (Journey to Nowhere and Oust) and has 4 toughness, leaving it out of range of most red removal (Burst Lightning [not kicked], Lightning Bolt, Arch Trail, Slagstorm/Pyroclasm). Furthermore, this combo piece is a creature, leaving it out of range of the best counterspell in standard right now, Spell Pierce. With a handful of removal, countermagic, and card draw (from Into the Roil, Preordain, and Gitaxian Probe), the deck seems very good to play at local FNMs and can be played without Jace, the Mindsculptor (obviously better with Jace), which makes it a great budget deck to play (less than $100 without Jace) and can perform very well. As long as Splinter Twin remains in standard (till October), expect to see this combo kill people out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the deck loses to Suture Priest and has a difficult time competing with Stoneforge Mystic's card advantage to see consistent top 8 spots. For casual, this will add another alternate win for the red/blue decks looking for speed and add another combo piece to the Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind decks.


The thing about all 3 combos that I really like, they're all inexpensive to pull off, you don't have to break bank to obtain any of these cards and they're ascesible to anyone who likes playing combo decks. Personally, I don't like playing combo decks, but I'm glad WotC printed a few that could help incite some creativity and innovation from NPH.