With the release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, standard is hopefully in for a little bit of an overhaul. There’s so many awesome cards in the set, and one of the first things that many people do when a new set comes out is find combos. Well today, we have one of those very combos, and its INSANE
Shadow Clone Jutsu
We’re dubbing this combo the Shadow Clone Jutsu combo, and you’ll see why. This one comes to us from good ol’ Reddit. All we’re given is a GIF of the combo, and it goes by quickly so we’ll break everything down here.
Pieces of the Puzzle
All that we need to make this combo work are 4 cards and a bit of careful clicking.
First up, we’ll need in play the following:
Thousand-Faced Shadow
Thousand-Faced Shadow
Ninjutsu {2}{U}{U} ({2}{U}{U}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking.)
Flying
When this creature enters from your hand, if it's attacking, create a token that's a copy of another target attacking creature. The token enters tapped and attacking.
,
Lotus Cobra
Lotus Cobra
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, add one mana of any color.
,
Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
Ashaya, Soul of the Wild
Ashaya's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control.
Nontoken creatures you control are Forest lands in addition to their other types. (They're still affected by summoning sickness.)
and 6 lands. We’ll also want to have
Moon-Circuit Hacker
Moon-Circuit Hacker
Ninjutsu {U} ({U}, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking.)
Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card unless this creature entered this turn.
in our hand. Now comes the complicated part, going off.
First step is to go to combat, and attack with the Thousand-Faced Shadow (TFS) and Lotus Cobra. Assuming our TFS isn’t blocked, we’ll Ninjustu in Moon-Circuit Hacker (MCH). Since Ashaya makes all of our creatures Forests, Moon-Circuit Hacker will cause Landfall to trigger on our Lotus Cobra. We’ll want to make a blue mana with this.
Then, we’ll Ninjustu back in our TFS, creating a copy of Lotus Cobra, and triggering landfall again, making blue mana. Then we Ninjutsu back in our MCH, triggering 2 landfall triggers making 2 blue. Then we put back in TFS, making 2 Blue mana and a 3rd Lotus Cobra. Then we put in MCH, making 3 blue. Then we put in TFS making a 3 blue and a 4th Cobra. At this point, we’ll be looping this over and over until we have enough Lotus Cobras to kill our opponent outright, as the copies we make will be unblocked.
The math is a bit tricky to keep track of, but trust us when we say that you’ll only need 6 mana and these 4 cards to go off. Where dexterity comes into this is that on Magic Arena, you’ll have to select what mana you’ll want to make with Lotus Cobra for each trigger. The selector for this is right above the “next” button, so if you’re not careful, you’ll pass through blockers into damage and the loop will end.
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How to Build this Deck
Now this combo is a bit out there for sure, and the deck that we put this in would have to be build around getting to our combo and staying alive. Here’s a sample deck list that I put together that leans into a ramp strategy, as well as draw and some protection.
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There are definitely other ways to go about building a deck like this. White gives us access to more mass removal options and planeswalkers to help keep us nice and healthy for when we’re ready to go off, so playing Bant could make some sense. Additionally, Red and Black offer options for as well, so Temur and Sultai aren’t off the table either.
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Now is this combo good? Well, often times, combos that require more than 3 cards to execute often times don’t see the light of day. But in the right type of meta, this deck can definitely shine, and in more formats than Standard. We can definitely execute this game plan in Alchemy, Historic, or Pioneer as well.