Combo decks in Magic: the Gathering are nothing new. These decks often require a very specific set of cards to win the game on the spot, and are built around getting to that combo. In Paper, you rarely have to go through each iteration of your combo loop. If you can demonstrate that the combo is infinite and can win the game, your opponent often will concede.
Online is a different story, especially on Magic Arena. When playing online, you often will have to go through the full combo loop and win the game, or your opponent concedes after going through nearly the entire combo. Today, we have a Combo deck in Historic that might just give you carpal tunnel, unless you have the APM of a Starcraft 2 Professional player.
Mono Black Paradox
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Today’s combo deck is Mono Black Paradox. This combo is essentially a 2 card combo, but requires some more pieces in play. So let’s look at the combo and how we’re getting there.
As the name of the deck suggests,
Paradox Engine
Paradox Engine
Whenever you cast a spell, untap all nonland permanents you control.
is a core piece of our combo. The other is
Acererak the Archlich
Acererak the Archlich
When Acererak enters, if you haven't completed Tomb of Annihilation, return Acererak to its owner's hand and venture into the dungeon.
Whenever Acererak attacks, for each opponent, you create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token unless that player sacrifices a creature of their choice.
. We take advantage of Acererak’s self bounce to cast him over and over, going through the “Lost Mine of Phandelver” dungeon to drain our opponent out of the game. We also have the ability to scry and draw through our deck to find another win condition.
How We Get There
Obviously we can’t just combo off with these two cards alone, so we need some specific cards to help us get there.
Since our lands don’t untap with each Paradox Engine trigger, we need mana rocks to combo off. Coldsteel Heart gives us our black mana for Acererak. Mind Stone and Guardian Idol give us some utility where needed in draw or as an attacker against control.
Hedron Archive generates us 2 mana, while also giving us 2 additional cards if we need it. The real “key” to this deck is Key to the Archive which gives us a powerful spell to help us out. Whether it’s a Day of Judgment or other removal spell to help stabilize the board, or Approach of the Second Sun as a way to gain some life, these spells are critical to the deck.
As for the combo, we want to assemble a board of paradox engine, and at minimum a Coldsteel Heart and and 2 more mana generating mana rocks. From there, we float all of our mana rocks, and cast Acererak. Choose the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and repeat the process making sure you hit the Dark Pool each time. One little trick here that you can use to speed up the process is double tapping the Q button, which will tap all of your artifacts for mana. If you have a Key to the Archive, you’ll have to choose the mana colors for it before everything will proceed.
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Support Cards
Our support cards are small things but very nice additions.
Fatal Push
Fatal Push
Destroy target creature if it has mana value 2 or less.
Revolt — Destroy that creature if it has mana value 4 or less instead if a permanent left the battlefield under your control this turn.
is a great removal spell here especially since we can trigger Revolt very easily. Ominous Traveler gives us some blockers that we can play, but also is a cheap way to trigger a bunch of Paradox Engine to amas a huge board if we have enough mana rocks in play.
One of the most pivotal cards is
Karn, the Great Creator
Karn, the Great Creator
Activated abilities of artifacts your opponents control can't be activated.
+1: Until your next turn, up to one target noncreature artifact becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its mana value.
−2: You may reveal an artifact card you own from outside the game or choose a face-up artifact card you own in exile. Put that card into your hand.
. We are playing a small Karn board of artifacts that we can leverage in our games. From silver bullets to additional win conditions, this is a fantastic consistency engine for us. We also get the added benefit that it turns off Witch’s Oven.
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This deck is super fun, and while the APM required to pull this off is high, this can definitely steal some games on the ladder.