Today I want to present a combo deck designed by Tiggupiru which just won him the finnish Highlander nationals. In the center of this build is a well known friend of the format Protean Hulk. I like this deck very much and that’s why I decided to give it some space on the blog. You can also find Tiggupiru’s list and discussion on our forums http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=463.0. He was kind enough to explain the deck and show how it works.
Here is the list:
How the combo works:
The combo itself might not be obvious just by looking at the list. It basically goes like this:
1)Get Hulk into play with an sacrifice outlet
2)Sacrifice it, and fetch karmic Guide (targeting Hulk) and one mana sacrifice outlet (just to be sure)
3)Sacrifice Hulk, fetch Saffi Eriksdottir, Tidehollow Sculler, and Mesmeric Fiend
4)Sacrifice the Sculler/Fiend duo while their abilities are on the stack so they remove the cards permanently (this step makes sure you don’t need to play around anything)
5)Sacrifice Saffi with her own ability, targetting the Karmic Guide and then sacrifice the Guide, which reanimates Hulk
6)Sacrifice Hulk, and get Reveillark
7)Sacrifice Guide and then Reveillark to reanimate Saffi and Guide (targetting Reveillark)
8)Sacrifice Saffi with her own ability, targetting the Karmic Guide and then sacrifice the Guide, which reanimates the creature whose ETB-ability you want to abuse
Rince and repeat.
With the current creatures in the deck, you are able to gain infinite life (Kitchen Finks, Obstinate Baloth), infinite power and toughness (Nantuko Husk, Carrion Feeder), infinite green mana (Wall of Roots), infinite card draw (Wall of Blossoms), infinite lockdown (Yosei), infinite hand disruption (Tidehollow Sculler), and infinite permanent destruction (Terastodon, Shriekmaw).
Even though you can’t usually win on the same turn, the game should be unloseable at this point.
How the deck compete with different decktypes:
The hand you looking for to mulligan to, is green one mana accelerant, sacrifice outlet, and either Natural Order/Pattern/Rector. Naturally, any tutor for those will do and against control, you want to see a discard spell or two, to make sure the coast is clear when you go off.
Against aggro, you pretty much want to go off as soon as possible. You do have the means to stabilize, though, but against evasion you have only limited answers, so safest bet is just go for the combo. The above mentioned “perfect” hand is the one you’ll be looking for.
Against control, you like to see the whole combo and some disruption. I am usually pretty happy to have some card advantage as well, like Yavimaya Elder, Night’s Whisper, Grim Discovery, Phyrexian Arena, and so on. You can outdraw blue decks, but that requires some luck. Although, when they need to tap for the card draw, you are free to combo off. This is a tricky matchup, and you have couple of ways to go here, as hitting them with your utility creatures is also a good idea.
If your field is full of aggro, consider switching Phyrexian Arena to Loxodon Hierarch. Obstinate Baloth, Tarmogoyf and Wall of Omens are mainly against aggro, so you might need consider taking these out for some card draw or disruption, if you find yourself playing against control all day long.
At the nationals, I expected more of midrange and control decks and thus this list is light on anti-aggro. I was really glad to see the meta filled with aggro as this is not very common thing in Finland, despite the fact my deck was not geared towards dealing with decks like Naya.
I had couple of good things going for me though: combo is traditionally good against field of aggro, and many game ones saw me combo off before opponent even realized they were in a short clock.
Landbase is far from perfect. Couple of the losses I experienced were caused by not being able to find green mana, or that at least decimated the rest of my chances to mount a comeback after an aggressive start from the opposition. I am unsure which direction to take the lands, or should I add nonland cards to combat the mana screw (e.g. Sylvan Ranger could be decent here). Needs more testing. There are good number of nonbasics as your mana dorks are able to get you out of the blood moon/back to basics range before it can be played, and sometimes you even have the luxury of fetching nothing but basics. You could probably squeeze one or two more of those though.
Last thoughts:
As you can see this list is very flexible. Many choices Tiggupiru made are not finally. Thats why the deck is so strong in my opinion. It provides a lot of answers to aggro, control or midrange and is also able to accomplish his own goal in a constant amount of time. As he mentioned you can try to add some other cards and adjust the deck just as you want on your local meta. I am very happy to see a viable combo deck again and hope this deck will get some attention. If you interested in the report from the tourney just click on the link and you can read how the deck fought his way to the 1st place.
so far~
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