Welcome to the latest edition of Madman Genius or Both? For this article, I will be discussing a deck I found awhile back while combing through the daily modern 5-0 lists. This deck jumped off the page at me because I hadn’t seen it before and because it seemed so simple.
This list is from a July 23, 2019 5-0 list by DRDUB on MTGO:
“Do less, accomplish more.” – Every self-help charlatan on the internet
This is not the most complicated deck as combo decks go. It’s kind of like Tron in that you’re really just looking to assemble one of each piece of your three card combo and once you do, you basically just win the game. This is one of those decks that likely gets an advantage in game one because your opponent probably hasn’t played against it and may have no idea what’s going on.
Here’s how the deck wins:
(1) Play one of your eight win conditions in Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station;
(2) Play one of your eight enablers in Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit or Solemnity;
(3) Play one of your twelve persist creatures and win the game. Your persist creatures won’t have counters on them when they come back due to either Anafenza or Solemnity, so you’ll either machine gun them out or mill their library and pass the turn depending on which engine piece you drew.
Yep, that’s the deck. Were you hoping for more? Sorry. There’s not more.
Given that I’ve played zero actual games with the deck, here is how I imagine the games playing out:
Turn one: Lead with Plains into Thraben Inspector. Your opponent should have no idea what is going on and may even wonder if they’ve been paired against someone who mistakenly queued some kind of standard Boros vehicles deck into a Modern event.
Turn two: If you look down at your hand and you don’t yet have the ability to win on turn four, you should probably hold up your mana and crack the clue on your opponent’s end step. Otherwise, you’ll have to run out one of your two drop persist creatures just to use your mana. Some opponents will figure out what is going on if you do that, which is unavoidable to a degree. Cards like Lesser Masticore and Safehold Elite are largely unplayable unless you’re creating an infinite loop by abusing the persist mechanic. The other turn two options you have are to run out Altar of Dementia or Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Just be aware that once your opponent sees Altar of Dementia, Anafenza, Solemnity, or Blasting Station, the jig is up.
Turn three: Depending on what you’ve done thus far in the game, you have options. On the one hand, you can cast Kitchen Finks and continue the savage white weenie beats. On the other hand, you probably just want to cast whichever piece of the combo you haven’t already played yet and set up a win the following turn.
Turn four: Win the game, hopefully. Put those four beautiful Plains to work by casting Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit followed by Altar of Dementia. Then sacrifice whichever persist creature you have in play as many times as you need to mill your opponents whole deck. The loop works equally well with Blasting Station, if not better depending on whether they have any Eldrazi that shuffle their library when milled.
DECK GRADE: MADMAN
This deck feels like a test version of a deck idea that has not yet been refined. The good news is that this 5-0 list was posted during Hogaak’s reign, and it seems like it should only have gotten better now that Hogaak is banned (and, presumably, the environment is less hostile to graveyard shenanigans). I think adding a card like Aether Vial would be a very interesting experiment because it not only gives you something good to do on Turn 1, it also would speed up your high roll games to a turn 3 clock, and allow you to win at instant speed.
Next, while I do love the 20 Plains 2 Ghost Quarter mana base, we can almost certainly afford to run some number of Horizon Canopys as flood insurance, if not the full suite of four.
Last, I’d like to squeeze in some number of Pact of Negation here, probably two to start with. Faith’s Shield is a fine card, but with 22 lands in the deck, you’re going to be in an awkward spot fairly often where you have access to three mana, and also have to spend all three of said mana to complete your combo. Pact gives you the ability to beat cards like Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push even if its worse against Abrupt Decay.
If you like what you see, give the deck a spin and let me know how it goes. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave any questions, comments or suggestions below!