Creating Combos in MTG
So in a past life, I ran a failed Magic: The Gathering blog. I have a few posts from then that I have kept on ice. Now while it may be cheating to post an article writi Now dear reader you may be thinking to yourself “Hey, isn’t using an article you have written previously against the rules of this blog?“ To that I say its my blog and I say it’s fiiiiiinnnneeeee.
Now please enjoy!
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Hello Everyone, and welcome to (NAME INSERT)! A new series on (REDACTED) where we take obscure cards and craft interactions/combos around them. This week is going to be a doozy folks so strap in and let’s all take a ride down this rabbit hole together.
Now that the weather is starting to warm up in my neck of the woods, I got in the mood to do a little spring cleaning. While I was cleaning out my closet, I found a big box of old bulk cards that I had lying around. I decided to go through them one last time before I got ready to sell them off. While ruffling through the bunch, I came across a card called Mortuary . Aside from the grisly art, one might look at it and say “huh” as they continue to fan across a stack of cards with their thumb, and I was no different. After a few minutes though, something about it kept calling to me. So I decided to take a break from sorting cards and run with it. Being new to the writing scene, I thought it would be a cool exercise to take this card, analyze it, and show my thought process for coming up with an interaction or combo built around it. So let’s hop into this week's segment of (NAME INSERT).
Being able to loop something back to the top of your library got me thinking. Looking at the card as it stands, it's a decent card advantage engine in some Sacrifice/Aggro shell that wants recur cheap creatures, but that's so plain. What if we take a step back and look at the ability, how could one break this effect? Usually the first step in breaking a card is to figure out a way to loop the effect. In this case the ability we want to loop is a creature dying, and going back to the top of the library. Once it's there, we find a way to get it back to the field in order to abuse enter the battlefield(ETB) or death triggers. Assuming we have a way to sacrifice the creature, which should not be too hard if we are in Black (Viscera Seer for example), the next logical question is "How in the world would you be able to get the card back in the same turn?” Well let’s dive back to the world of Amonkhet. Thankfully Nicol Bolas gave us a nice toy to play with called Vizier of the Menagerie . This creature lets you play the top card of your library as long as it's a creature card. Which is the perfect engine for our little combo. But what if we don’t want to move into a new color? We can be just as tricky in Black by using a creature that can draw us a card whenever something dies. Grim Haruspex is the prime example of this type of creature. There are others with this effect, but Grim Haruspex is the cheapest one with no caveats. This will allow us to draw the card instead of playing it from the top. We would have to stack the Mortuary trigger so that it resolves first, allowing us to put the creature we just sacrificed on the top of our deck. Then we can resolve the Grim Haruspex trigger, drawing us the card that we just put there.
Now that our engine is established, we need a creature to keep casting as our payoff. The easiest way would be to use a creature that cost 0, or refunds itself when it dies/enters the battlefield. After a bit of searching we have a few options for cards that do just that. Ornithopter, Cathodion, Priest of Gix. Each of these creatures, will in theory, be able to be cast for free. For example, we can sacrifice an Ornithopter, put it to the top of your library, then play it again for 0. Or we can play a Priest of Gix, sacrifice it, and use the 3 black floating to cast it again.
Let’s recap what we have so far. A way to sacrifice a creature, A refundable/free creature, A way to play said creature repeatably. What's left now is the pay off. What are we doing now that we have this loop? Well we have a multitude of options from here. We can go classic and use Blood Artist to drain everyone out of the game with the death triggers. We can go a bit more spicy and use Aetherflux Reservoir to gain a nonsense amount of life and shoot everyone down one by one. In the same vein, we can use Grapeshot, and burn everyone out of the game with a ridiculous storm count. We can also get infinite mana with any card that reduces the cost of creatures, for instance Ruby Medallion and Priest of Urabrask gives us infinite red mana, which we can then funnel into a massive Comet Storm. Or Priest of Gix and Jet Medallion which can fuel a giant Exsanguinate. If you don’t have any cost reduction cards lying around, you can also use Panharmonicon to double up on the mana that our creatures produce. Or if Mill is more your style, you can replace the Sac outlet with something like Altar of Dementia and mill everyone out of the game. Additionally you can use it on yourself and enable some graveyard shenanigans.
Maybe you don’t want to combo off, maybe you just want to keep the board clean. Throw in a Grave Pact and systematically wipe the board whenever it gets a bit too out of hand. This card can be slotted into really any black based deck. Orzhov Aristocrats, Rakdos Sacrifice, Golgari Graveyard, or even just Mono Black. I love old cards like this mainly for the surprise factor. Not many people are going to see this card and perceive it as a threat, which can let you fly under the radar until it’s too late and secure the win. Anyway, that's it for this week. I would love to hear from you guys if you think I missed any cards that can work with this strategy. Or other decks/strategies that could be a home for Mortuary . Leave a comment if you have any thoughts/ideas, or even if you just want to chat about cards. See you all next time!
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Now at the time I was quite proud of this. I would also like to come clean, at the time of writing this post I had taken quite the speculative position on the card Mortuary (possibly foolishly) hoping that my silly little failed blog would carry me to financial success $$$.
Suffice to say that was not the case, but it is a very fun reminder of my previous endeavors.
That’s all for this time folks, see you next time!
