I cast Channel for a 20-Point Fireball - A brief history of the Combo-Kill - Part 2

The Age of Insanity - Tempest/Urza's Block

(Author's Note: Several corrections have been made.)

Arguably one of the craziest and most powerful eras for Magic has to be the introduction of Tempest & Urza's block. Blue control hit its peak with the powerful 'Draw, Go.' archetype. Combo-Aggro had power thanks to Recurring Nightmare-Great Whale combo, and Oath of Druids. Straight Mono-Red & Mono-Black Aggro were sensational too thanks to new options like Cursed Scroll, and the 5th Edition reprints including the dreaded Necropotence.

Despite the drastic increase in power level, this was a fun and diverse time for magic. Lots of different strategy's prevailed with close to a dozen tournament viable decks (a pretty big variation to the modern 2-3 top tier decks that exist in Standard now), but there was a dark shadow underlying the whole thing - which led to largest banning of cards in Standard from before or since.

Prior to Tempest, magic's power level in standard had remained fairly stable. 4th Edition & Chronicles along with the Ice Age & Mirage blocks, had created a remarkably balanced card pool with lots of options and a relatively slow game pace. Much of this was due to the fact that 4th Edition had removed most of the overpowered cards from the earlier sets, but retained enough strong cards to be a solid base. Ice Age & Mirage were good extensions of that base, offering solid supporting options with a minimum of broken cards. After a series of much needed bans, the environment was an interesting and all-around fun one.

Then came 5th edition...

5th edition was the first major shake up the game would have and certainly would not be the last. Many staples of the game up to that point were removed. Some like Swords to Plowshares, Hypnotic Specter, Ivory Tower, Land Tax, and Lightning Bolt (just to name a few) were due to power concerns (a point of interesting contention - that will be discussed in a later post), while several others that had been banned in 4th (Balance, Strip Mine, and Mind Twist for example) were removed because they would simply never be unbanned should they be reprinted - and who wanted to open up a card they could not play?

This would not have been a problem, except that 5th Edition was huge (and is still the largest base set to date at 449 cards.) and not terribly balanced. While 4th edition had been generally strong all around, 5th edition was both bizarrely strong and terrifyingly weak. Many strong cards (Necropotence, Armageddon) were reprinted that probably should not have been, while many added to the set (Flare, Feroz's ban to name two) were simply useless. The large size of the set also made it very hard to collect many needed cards, creating a lot of frustration for players. Many just picking up older product that was still pretty cheap instead, since base at that time consisted of nothing but reprints.

The dust had barely settled when Ice Age rotated out and Tempest came in. The new set was good.. REALLY good. Where Ice Age had been slow and moderately strong, Tempest was fast and very strong. New fast mana like Lotus Petal let decks speed up drastically and gave existing combo decks like ProsBloom a powerful boost. Living Death became a potent creature combo, letting players intentionally throw creatures into their graveyard only to bring them all back for a cheap 5-mana, while at the same time blowing up all creatures in play. It was an insane time of high power, and it was a warning of what was to come.

For Urza's block came out to replace Mirage. And it was bad... really really bad.

I will not mince words: Urza's block is and shall remain the most broken and overpowered block in the history of Magic. Alpha/Beta/Unlimited and Arabian Nights may have been overpowered and unbalanced, but that was due to the original conception of how the game was intended to be played versus how it actually turned out it would be played. Urza's block had no excuse - the modern Tournament scene had emerged some 3 years earlier and had stabilized by then. Wizard's by all accounts knew what NOT to do but, pretty much as they continue to do to his day, it failed to stop them from doing something incredibly stupid. It would not really be until Affinity in Mirrodin that Wizard's would again repeat such a mistake.

The following deck utterly dominated the Standard scene. The entire format became this deck and decks designed to try and stop this deck.

Academy

Lands:

4x Tolarian Academy

2x Wasteland

12x Island

Artifacts & Enchantments: 

3x Mind Over Matter

4x Mana Vault

4x Lotus Petal

2x Mox Diamond

3x Sapphire Medallion

3x Voltaic Key

2x Scroll Rack

Instants & Sorceries

4x Power Sink

2x Intuition

2x Brainstorm

1x Capsize

4x Time Spiral

4x Stroke of Genius

4x Windfall

This thing was insane. It could generate infinite mana, draw infinite cards, and deck you all in the span of about 5 turns. Every. Single. Time. Where as ProsBloom's mana sources could be disrupted, you could do next to nothing about Tolarian Academy, unless you lucked out drawing a Wasteland. Even then, the deck could tap the Academy in response and float a bazillion mana. It didn't really need Academy to win either, since Mind Over Matter let it untap anything it wanted and you just could not stop every single acceleration card it could throw at you.

It dominated the field for nearly 3 months. Then Tolarian Academy and Windfall were banned to stop it.

It didn't work.

This thing rose up in its ashes:

Spiral Blue

Lands: 

24x Island

Artifacts & Enchantments:

4x Mana Vault

3x Mind Over Matter

Instants & Sorceries

4x Force Spike

4x Counterspell

3x Forbid

4x Intuition

4x Brainstorm

3x Meditate

4x Stroke of Genius

3x Time Spiral

This deck illustrated two of the insane ideas Wizards tried out with Urza's block: Free spells, and old powerful effects with an increased cost.

Time Spiral was the devastating masterful result of this fusion....

View Card

Essentially all Time Spiral was a free Timetwister that thinned itself out of the deck. Without Force of Will available, this card simply swamped the competition. It could draw its entire deck in a single turn when it went off.

It was no surprise then that another series of bans followed consisting of: Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Night, and Time Spiral itself. All of these were cards that were enabled degenerate combos, and it was expected that a LAST Urza's block would be brought under control.

Oh one has to love naivety...

Because lets take a look at the only deck EVER to get a card emergency banned because the potential for refinement and abuse was just too good.

Broken Jar by Erik Lauer & Randy Buehler

Land:

3x Ancient Tomb

4x City of Brass

2x Gemstone Mine

3x Underground River

4x Underground Sea

Artifacts & Enchantments

4x Defense Grid

4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Lotus Petal

4x Mana Vault

1x Megrim

4x Memory Jar

4x Mox Diamond

Instants & Sorceries

4x Brainstorm

4x Dark Ritual

1x Mystical Tutor

4x Tinker

4x Vampiric Tutor

2x Yawgmoth's Will

Unlike the other decks I have talked about, this one was an Extended deck. It was only ever played in a single major tournament, and it came in 3rd and 4th respectively.

So you may be wondering: Why did this thing end up causing the only emergency ban in the history of Magic?

Well it was all due to the card which ended up banned. This one:

View Card

Basicially you accelerate this card out, easy thanks to Tinker. Then use it to cycle through your deck over and over and over and over.... You can replay everything thanks to Yawgmoth's Will..

Then all you do is drop Megrim and end the turn... and your opponent has to discard EVERY CARD he just drew, 7 cards at a time for 2 damage each.

It was fast and terrifically strong, and with refinements and tuning it would have had a devastating impact in every format. And so, barely two weeks after the last banned announcements, this card was retroactively added to the those bannings.

To say this has been an exhaustive list of the crazy combo decks that came out of Urza's block would be a lie. These are merely some of the powerful combo decks that the block generated.

Others such as: Tinker, Trix, Rector, Oath, and Rec-Sur (just to name a bare handful) were incredibly powerful decks in their own right and led to countless victories for players of the combo deck.

The legacy of Urza's block continues to remain that is was the greatest combo enabled in the history of Magic, with many of its cards now either banned/restricted or still making an impact in tournaments today.

That is all for now on the history of the combo-kill, next time I will be shifting to strategy with 'the Art of Tutoring'.

I cast Channel for a 20-Point Fireball - A brief history of the Combo-Kill - Part 1

(Editor's Note: I made some minor corrections for grammar and spelling. Also I will be updating this and all future posts with links to the cards in question.)

I love COMBO. Set a few cards in motion, and watch the interactions leave your opponent in the dust. Playing a combo deck is a thrilling experience, as you watch yourself spiral towards victory or burn out before victory can occur. Hands down, Its probably one of the most fun aspects of Magic and one of the reasons I still stay in the game

However, It does have its dark-side. It's a side so menacing that it threatened to destroy the game outright on multiple occasions and has led to player frustration and even in one case an emergency ban. That is the dreaded quick kill with no defence.  Sometimes its turn 1, other times its turn 2 to 4. It doesn't matter, the deck WILL go off, it WILL win. Short of a really really bad hand (less likely with the modern Paris Mulligan rules), the deck transforms the metagame into: People playing the broken deck vs. People playing the anti-broken deck. Not exactly a fun environment to play in is it?

Now, we are going to have to make a distinction here about what constitutes a Combo deck and what kinds of Combo decks we are talking about here. First off, its easy to say that any deck in which two or more cards DO something together can be viewed as a combo. (ie. Casting Giant Growth on a Scryb Sprites). While technically correct the true hallmark of a combo deck is when the deck is when these interactions either: A) allow you to win immediately upon their resolution, or B) Grant you a massive advantage that is continuous throughout the rest of the game. Traditionally,'A' is known as 'Fast-Combo' while 'B' is 'Slow-Combo' but for most players its the former that they regard as the true Combo deck.

And its the 'Fast-Combo' that we will be talking about today, in all its horror and glory. Lets not waste time, and dive right in!

The Early Combo: Man were they crazy

Combo has existed since the games earliest days. Back in those now mythic times it was possible to pull any of the Power 9 in a pack for about $3. Also the banned & restricted list, and even deck building rules, had yet to come into being. As you can imagine, this made the game very very skewed and lead to monstrosities like this:

Twisted (40 card-version)

Instants & Sorceries:
4x Ancestral Recall
4x Timetwister
4x Time Walk
4x Wheel of Fortune
4x Psionic Blast
4x Lightning Bolt

Lands:
4x Volcanic Island

Artifacts:
4x Black Lotus
4x Mox Sapphire
4x Mox Ruby


Proxy it and play it. It will go off almost always on the first turn. Likewise it requires minimal skill to play.

Basic strategy is like this:
     - Play land, Moxen or Lotus as able.
     - Cast hand, ending with Timetwister.
     - Repeat.

You can also wait a turn thanks to Timewalk, and Wheel of Fortune is there if you don't draw Timetwister.

Making the jump to 60 cards was easy too. Just add 4 Demonic Tutor, 4 Underground Sea, 4 Mox Jet, 4 Black Vise, 4 Fork. You still win.

As you can see, this early combo monster and others like it let to the creation of the first Banned & Restricted list.

And here it is:

Banned:
All ante cards.
Shahrazad

Restricted:
Ali from Cairo
Ancestral Recall
Berserk
Black Lotus
Braingeyser
Dingus Egg
Gauntlet of Might
Icy Manipulator
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Orcish Oriflamme
Rukh Egg
Sol Ring
Timetwister
Time Vault
Time Walk

As you can see, this list was idiotic. Sure it eliminated some of the most broken cards from the game, but it ignored others and restricted cards that had no business being on the list in the first place (Dingus egg!? Orcish Oriflamme?!!). And so much of the list was changed some four months later.. but that was not before this card lead us to our second combo deck:

View card

Essentially you could on the first turn (or at latest turn 3-4) cast Channel plus Fireball for an ungodly amount of damage. It was fast, lethal, and efficient. You could also run Channel in any Green deck for obscenely fast creature play. Even when it was restricted, it could lead to incredible quick game kills.

Tragically in modern play, Channel is effectively dead. Its too good as a 4-of to be reprinted or unbanned in most formats, and as a 1-of in Vintage its unplayable due to its double-green casting cost. Its an amazing card though, and if you play with it you will be amazed as to its sheer power.

The classic Channel-Fireball style post-restriction was best shown in this deck from Bertrand Lestree in the first Magic World Championship (He came in 2nd). Its not really a combo deck - but its a fun one to see none-the-less.

"Proto-Zoo" - Bertrand Lestree (Decklist from www.classicdojo.org)

Land:
4x Mishra's Factory
2x City of Brass
2x Bayou
4x Tropical Island
4x Taiga
4x Volcanic Island

Creatures:
4x Kird Ape
3x Birds of Paradise
3x Argothian Pixies
2x Whirling Dervish

Instants & Sorceries
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Fireball
2x Psionic Blast
1x Control Magic
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Channel
1x Sylvan Library
1x Regrowth
1x Demoic Tutor
1x Mind Twist

Artifacts:
1x Icy Manipulator
1x Chaos Orb
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Emerald

It still has the chance to go off turn 1 thanks to Channel-Fireball, but even so it's really just a powerful aggro deck.

Classic Era - Mirage

Combo slowed down drastically when the format's split into Type 1 (Vintage) and Type 2 (Standard). The removal of the older powerful cards left 'Fast-Combo' with limited options. The increased number of restrictions in Vintage also helped pare down the possibility of truly broken possibilities.

Ice Age saw the rise of the Necro deck thanks to Necropotence - but that was less a combo and more an extremely powerful card warping the format. (And will be the subject of a later post). Fallen Empires gave us the amazing High Tide, but that card would not emerge as a powerhouse till the Tempest & Urza's blocks became legal a few years later.

Then into the combo field came Mirage block, an excellent and varied set unfortunately mired by the mess of bizarre rules calls and other problems that came out of the, at the time, new 'Phasing' ability. However, one of the strongest classic combo decks emerged thanks to several new cards but largely thanks to this:

View Card

Squandered Resources effectively doubled your mana supply for the low low price of sacrificing a land. Combining this with land fetch cards like Land Tax gave you a massive game edge, but it was not until it was paired with this one that it became a powerful mana accelerating engine:

View Card

By itself its not a particularly good card: Its effect is symmetrical and evens's out land advantage, but its cost is so high that it becomes pointless. In the straight game with green acceleration you are simply giving your opponent too much of an advantage, since they will get a full turn with their new land while you will have to wait to use your own. Without acceleration, its one land. Only ONE. As land control, its too slow and irrelevant for most decks.

Yet, combined with Squandered Resources its free mana and instant acceleration. Not to mention deck thinning, so with draw effects you are less likely to draw unneeded land.

All that was left was to figure out how to abuse the massive mana engine.

And here it is:

ProsBloom - by Mike Long (Deck list from www.classicdojo.org)

Land:

4x Undiscovered Paradise

6x Island

8x Forest

8x Swamp

Enchantments:

4x Cadaverous Bloom

4x Squandered Resources

Instants & Sorceries

4x Impulse

4x Prosperity

4x Natural Balance

2x Elven Cache

3x Memory Lapse

1x Power Sink

4x Vampiric Tutor

3x Infernal Contract

2x Drain Life

As a combo deck, this one is probably one of the best examples of pure combo insanity - and this was legal in STANDARD till the rotation of Mirage.

Essentially all you do is ignore your opponent for 4 or 5 turns and go off and win with a large drain life. Thanks to the additional mana accelerating beast of Cadaverous Bloom and the amazing tutoring power of Vampiric Tutor, this deck was fantastic in performance and consistency.

The strategy is simple: Drop Squandered Resources, get a draw effect and bloom in hand.. preferably with a natural balance as backup for more mana - and draw your deck into your hand. Then throw it away to Bloom and win with a giant Drain Life.

There are some caveats about this version of the deck however - First off, its insanely life cost heavy. At the time the deck was built, you did not lose if you had a negative life total until the end of the phase. It was not uncommon for players to have their life total go negative to around -6 or -7 and then use drain life to push themselves back to positive life to win the game. As this is no longer possible, you have to play a lot more carefully then you would have.

Also, several cards that would have helped this deck win were not legal at the time.

Here is the version I played for a while, pretty much for fun. Its crazy fun.

ProsBloom by Mythrian (Modified from Mike Long's Original)

Lands:

4x Gemstone Mine

2x City of Brass

10x Island

3x Forest

3x Swamp

Enchantments:

4x Cadaverous Bloom

4x Squandered Resources

2x City of Solitude

Instants & Sorceries

4x Impulse

4x Natural Balance

4x Meditate

3x Infernal Contract

2x Prosperity

1x Stroke of Genius

4x Duress

2x Demonic Tutor

2x Drain Life

2x Regrowth

This version is much improved and wins constantly. With Duress to defend the combo and City of Solitude to prevent an opponents interference, counter magic becomes dead in hand or the graveyard. Meditate is an amazing draw spell and Stroke of Genius acts as both personal acceleration and an alternate win condition.

All in all, this thing was powerful and nasty - and as the deck was almost entirely Mirage Block, it lead to the banning of Squandered Resources in Mirage Block constructed events.

--

Alright, that will be all for now.. tune in next week for Part 2, when we talk about the infamous Tempest/Urza Block combo cycle.