2001)

Wizards of the Coast made what I think was a smart move, recently, banning Necropotence, Survival of the Fittest, Demonic Consultation, and Replenish. The purpose of these banning was mostly to cripple the ´´combo´´ decks that have been ruling Extended. I'm not going to comment much on the future role of combo in Extended. Instead, I'm going to give a little history on combo decks by examining the top ten combo decks of all time.

Let me begin by talking about ´´modern combo decks´´, and modern combos. By this I do not mean recent combo decks, but rather combo decks based on strong fundamental principles. Some early
ideas for combo decks were pretty bad, and never saw high-level play.

For example, shortly after Ice Age came out, there was some discussion of this combo: Zur's Weirding + 2 Fountain of Youth. With this combo, you could deny your opponent his or her draw phase each turn, and Zur's Weirding's life loss would be neutralized by your life gain.

Of course, it's not too hard to see that this combo is pretty bad. Your opponent would be denying you your threats, and his or her life loss would not be great enough to be a danger. Also, it does nothing for the current board position, and the individual cards aren't especially good by themselves. Fountain of Youth's life gain is too little to make much of a difference, and Zur's Weirding works as well against you as it does against you opponent.

Similarly, Stasis + Kismet + Birds of Paradise + Instill Energy is not an exceptional combo. While it's dominates the table better than the Zur's Weirding based combo above, this is a four card combo, your opponent still has options based on the cards in play, and in addition
to these four, you need a fifth: the win condition.

Modern combos work differently. The rely on few cards, or feature card drawing as part of the combo. They almost always ´´go off.´´ They go from no or almost no board presence to victory in a single turn. These modern combo decks are much, much more powerful than old combo decks used to be, and combo decks have gone from being looked down upon as too inconsistent to being universally feared.

I'll begin with a pair of honorable mentions. Channel + Fireball is the first ´´modern combo,´´ coming from Alpha, the original printing of Magic. Channel is a Sorcery that lets you, until the end of the turn, pay one life for one colorless mana. In this combo, Fireball merely serves
as a spell that turns X mana into X-1 damage. With three mana, two for the Channel and one for the base cost of the Fireball, X life can be turned into X damage. With a forth mana, X life can be turned into X+1 damage. If you and your opponent have tied life totals, four mana and
two cards will end the game. The only reason that this combo isn't featured more prominently in the list is that the two colors, red and green, provided no searching or card drawing at the time, and so, while Channel + Fireball was included in decks, there was no combo deck based on it.

One other combo deserves honorable mention, if only because it set in motion events leading to the strangest combo ever as well as some of the most errata on a single card. Time Vault + Animate Artifact + Instill Energy provides an infinite number of turns. Time Vault used to be (I say used to be because errata has changed it extensively) an artifact that could be tapped for an additional turn. The downside was that it came into play tapped and required the skipping of a turn to untap. Instill Energy, however, allows you to untap creatures and Animate Artifact allows you to turn an artifact into a creature. This combo was deemed overpowered by the DCI, and
resulted in the banning of and later errata to Time Vault. Today, there are plenty of infinite combos costing nine mana across two colors, and I believe that this is no longer a problem. I'm not including this combo in the list mostly because it's so far before my time. It's almost impossible to find deck lists. It also predates professional play, and as such, was never truly tested.

Here are the decks. Most of these you will have heard of. I'm hoping I can come up with one or two that will surprise you. Where possible, I've included relevant dates, so hopefully you can follow some of the historical development.

10. 14 (Decklist from Mike Cooper, February, 1998)

4:Buried Alive
4:Living Death
4:Vampiric Tutor
3:Mystic Tutor
3:Brainstorm
3:Impulse
4:Dark Ritual
1:Firestorm
3:Pyroblast
1:Spirit of the Night
3:Staunch Defender
3:Volcanic Dragon
3:Ancient Tomb
4:City of Brass
4:Gemstone Mine
1:Sulfurous Springs
3:Underground River
9:Swamp

´´14´´ is a combo deck that pioneered using the graveyard as a ´´storage point´´ for cards. This tactic has been abused by other combo decks, as well as by more traditional Replenish decks
recently. Volcanic Dragon is a 4/4 flyer with haste. Spirit of the Night is a 6/5 flier, also with haste. Buried Alive allows you to search through your library for up to three creatures. Living Death switches the creatures in play with the creatures in the graveyard. ´´14´´, then,
worked by using Buried Alive to put 2 Volcanic Dragons and a Spirit of the Night in the graveyard, followed by a Living death to put 14 points of power into play.

9. ProsBloom: (Decklist from J. Tackett, March, 1998)

4:Cadaverous Bloom
4:Squandered Resources
4:Prosperity
4:Natural Balance
4:Impulse
4:Infernal Contract
4:Vampiric Tutor
3:Power Sink
2:Abeyance
1:Meditate
1:Drain Life
1:Dark Ritual
1:Undiscovered Paradise
4:City of Brass
4:Gemstone Mine
4:Island
5:Forest
6:Swamp

ProsBloom was the first combo deck to perform really strongly at a professional level. It is a pretty definitive ´´modern´´ combo deck. ProsBloom uses Sqandered Resourses, Cadaverous Bloom, and Natural Balance to generate impressive amounts of mana, then Prosperity, Infernal Contract, and Meditate to turn that mana into card advantage, then, using Cadaverous Bloom, turns those cards into mana to fuel a massive Drain Life. Note the large number of tutors: 4 Impulse and 4 Vampiric Tutor.

8. Bargain (Decklist from Peter Sauer)

4:Yawgmoth's Bargain
4:Vampiric Tutor
4:Academy Rector
4:Soul Feast
4:Dark Ritual
4:Exhume
4:Skirge Familiar
4:Grim Monolith
3:Radiant's Dragoons
1:Claws of Gix
1:Yawgmoth's Will
1:Renounce
2:City of Brass
4:Phyrexian Tower
7:Plains
11:Swamp

There are three basic resources in Magic: life, mana, and cards (though there certainly are other resources, for the purpose of simplicity I'll intentionally ignore them). These resources are priced differently. For example, Hero's Resolve is an instant in type two right now that turns 2 mana and a card into 7 life. If it turned 2 mana and a card into 7 cards, or even 7 mana, it would receive a lot more attention. Life is worth less than cards or mana. Yawgmoth's Bargain
allows you to turn life into cards, and Skirge Familiar allows you to turn cards into black mana. That means one life buys either one card or one mana. The deck contains life gain, in the form of Radiant's Dragoons, which are creatures with life gain as a ´´comes into play´´ ability, and Soul Feast, which ´´steals´´ four life from your opponent and doubles as the win condition. Yawgmoth's Will allows you to replay the Dark Rituals for a lot of mana and the Soul Feast for the win.

7. CocoaPebbles (Decklist from Luc Bourdeau, January 2000)

4:Dark Ritual
4:Necropotence
4:Duress
4:Demonic Consultation
4:Acedemy Rector
3:Enduring Renewal
3:Mox Diamond
2:Phyrexian Walker
4:Shield Sphere
2:Mana Vault
4:Goblin Bombardment
4:Badlands
4:Scrubland
4:City of Brass
4:Gemstones Mine
3:Bayou
3:Phyrexian Tower

Enduring Renewal states that whenever a creature should go from play to your graveyard, it instead goes to your hand. That includes if you sacrifice the creature. Goblin Bombardment allows you to sacrifice a creature to deal one damage to any target. With these two cards and a zero casting cost creature, like Phyrexian Walker or Shield Sphere, a person can keep playing and sacrificing the creature to deal as much damage as is necessary. The first deck with this combo was called Fruity Pebbles. Someone had the idea to add black to the deck, in the form of Necropotence, and created a much more powerful deck, naming it CocoaPebbles after the black
cards.

This deck didn't actually see a great deal of tournament play. Michelle Bush, perhaps inspired by this deck, used the Necropotence engine to create one of the most deadly combo decks of all time.
CocoaPebbles deserves mention because it is a very powerful deck despite its replacement.

6. PandeBurst (or 21, or Blackjack. Decklist from Rajan Shukla)

4:Replenish
4:Pandemonium
4:Saproling Burst
3:Frantic Search
3:Attunment
3:Intuition
3:Vampiric Tutor
3:Lim-Dul's Vault
4:Force of Will
3:Duress
3:Impulse
1:Firestorm
4:City of Brass
4:Tundra
4:Underground Sea
3:City o' Traitors
3:Ancient Tomb
4:Gemstone Mine

Like CocoaPebbles, PandeBurst would have seen more play if not for the presence of Michelle Bush's deck. Like ´´14´´ PandeBurst loads up the graveyard, in this case with a Saproling Burst, which is an enchantment that produces creatures, 1 at 6/6 or 2 at 5/5, or 3 at 4/4 and so on, and Pandemonium, which deals damage to a target of your choice whenever you play a creature. It then uses Replenish to put these enchantments in play. The player uses Saproling Burst to put a 6/6 creature in play, dealing 6 damage, then it makes a 5/5 creature (turning the 6/6 creature to 5/5, but this has no impact), then a 4/4, and so on. This deals a total of 21 damage.

5. Megrim/Jar (Decklist from Randy Buehler, Erik Lauer)

4:Defense Grid
4:Lions Eye Diamond
4:Lotus Petal
4:Mana Vault
4:Memory Jar
4:Mox Diamond
4:Dark Ritual
1:Megrim
4:Vampiric Tutor
2:Yawgmoth's Will

4:Brainstorm
1:Mystical Tutor
4:Tinker

3:Ancient Tomb
4:City of Brass
2:Gemstone Mine
3:Underground River
4:Underground Sea

Memory Jar is an artifact you can sacrifice to force both players to draw seven cards, and then discard them at the end of the turn. With Megrim in play, each discard deals two damage to your opponent. The Megrim/Jar deck generates a lot of mana using Dark Rituals, Lion's Eye Diamonds, Mana Vaults, and less efficient mana producers, enough to cast two Memory Jars and to play Megrim. If your opponent discards 14 cards, Megrim deals 28 damage, enough to end the game.

4. Wall of BOOM! (Decklist unavailable)

Love it or hate it, Wall of BOOM! is an ingenious deck. The DCI issued errata changing the way Time Vault works. In doing so, they created a ´´between turns´´ phase during which you could choose whether or not to skip your next turn to untap Time Vault. Since there are no phases in which you can't pay mana costs, it follows that there are no phases in which you can't play mana abilities. Enter Wall of Roots. Wall of Roots can be used to add one mana to your pool, but
can only be used once during each turn. A high level judge ruled that, since Wall of Roots didn't specify any restrictions between turns, there were no restrictions between turns, and you could use it as many times as you wished. Of course, at that point your mana pool emptied at the end of your untap phase, and activated abilities can't be played during that step. Enter Stasis. This allowed you to keep that mana until your upkeep. During your upkeep, you could put that mana to put pressure counters on Magma Mine, which is an artifact that can build up counters and then be sacrificed for damage equal to the number of counters. Wall of BOOM!, then, used Wall of Roots +
Stasis + Magma Mine to deal an impressive amount of damage very early in the game.

Wall of BOOM! is one of the most controversial decks of all time. The ruling that Wall of Roots can be used without limit between turns attracted a lot of attention, and many judges refused to allow it. The DCI changed the errata on Time Vault in order to remove the ´´between turns´´ step, avoiding the question. Even so, the three cards are so unrelated, and the combo is so unintuitive that the deck's creation is quite a feat. I think it says a great deal about the complexity of Magic that errata to one problem card created a bizarre rules loophole allowing (or not allowing, depending on your point of view) a very, very strange combo.

3. High Tide (Decklist from Frederico Dato, Pro Tour Rome, 1998)

4:Time Spiral
4:Stroke of Genius
4:Turnabout
4:High Tide
4:Impulse
4:Intution
4:Force of Will
4:Arcane Denial
3:Mind Over Matter
2:Merchant Scroll
1:Rescind
22:Island

High Tide makes up half of ´´Combo Winter,´´ a period of about four months during which Extended was totally dominated by a pair of combo decks. It's even debatable that that period ever really ended. Combo has been strong in Extended ever since, but for these months, it seemed like combo decks were a step ahead of ´´anti-combo´´ decks.

High Tide is a card from the much-maligned Fallen Empires expansion. High Tide is an instant that causes Islands to produce an additional blue mana whenever they are tapped for mana. Time
Spiral is a sorcery that lets both players draw seven cards. It costs six mana but lets you untap six lands. After casting High Tide, you can tap six lands for twelve mana, then Time Spiral, draw a new hand, untap those six lands, and so on. Turn About lets you untap you land, and Mind Over Matter lets you discard cards to untap land. With Time Spiral and Stroke of Genius to draw a new hand, these cards can net a huge amount of mana, very quickly. The deck wins by casting a
massive Stroke of Genius to force the opponent to draw their entire deck.

Note the presence of 10 search cards in the deck, 4 Impulse, 2 Merchant Scroll, and 4 Intuition. The deck also runs a relatively large number of counterspells, allowing it to stall until the combo is in hand.

2. Trix (Decklist from Michelle Bush, February, 2000)

4:Illusions of Grandeur
4:Donate
4:Necropotence
4:Demonic Consultation
3:Vampiric Tutor
4:Force of Will
4:Dark Ritual
2:Lim-Dul's Vault
4:Duress
3:Mana Vault
1:Firestorm
1:Hoodwink
4:Underground River
4:Underground Sea
4:Gemstone Mine
2:Badlands
7:Swamp
1:Island

Illusions of Grandeur is a cute enchantment from Ice Age. When it comes into play, its caster gains 20 life. It has Cumulative Upkeep of two mana (meaning you have to pay 2 mana during the first upkeep it's in play, then 4 the next, then six, and so on). When it leaves play, it deals 20 damage to its controller. Michelle Bush, the inventor of this deck, had the idea of using Donate, a sorcery which gives a permanent you control to your opponent, to change the controller
before it leaves play, thereby making the player who gains 20 life you and the player who loses 20 life your opponent. The real strength of the deck is probably not the Donate + Illusions, but four support cards: Force of Will, which lets you counter spells while tapped out, Demonic Consultation, which lets you grab the card you need most, Duress, which gets rid of a troubling card in your opponent's hand, and Necropotence, which allows you to draw a huge number of
cards. This engine is so strong that Trix is capable of a transformational sideboard, bringing in up to 8 creatures to replace the combo.

In some ways, Trix is not a modern combo. It doesn't ´´go off´´ the way most combo decks do. Occasionally, the deck will draw Hoodwink to kill the opponent as soon as they have received
Illusions of Grandeur, but typically, the deck will allow the opponent to run out of mana to pay the upkeep. It is worth mentioning, however, that some decks have managed to beat Trix by maintaining the Enchantment long enough to kill the Trix player.

Wizards tried to cripple this deck twice. Firstly, they banned Mana Vault and Dark Ritual, two spells that speed up the mana development of the Trix player. This drew criticism for overly affecting people who weren't playing Trix, and Trix survived the attempt pretty easily. Just recently, Wizards made the move to ban Necropotence and Demonic Consultation, which should have a much stronger effect.

It's also worth noticing the name of the deck, Trix. Like CocoaPebbles, Trix continues the tradition of naming cards after cereals. There is another deck in Extended right now, Life, that
follows the pattern.

1. Academy (Decklist from Tomi Hovi, Pro Tour Rome 1998)

3:Abeyance
3:Power Sink
3:Intuition
3:Mind over Matter
4:Windfall
4:Stroke of Genius
4:Time Spiral
2:Scroll Rack
3:Voltaic Key
4:Mox Diamond
4:Mana Vault
4:Lotus Petal

3:City of Brass
4:Ancient Tomb
4:Volcanic Island
4:Tolarian Academy
4:Tundra

Tolarian Academy is a land that produces a blue mana for each artifact you control. With Mind Over Matter, which allows you to discard a card to untap a permanent, and Time Spiral to untap you lands, the Academy mana can be huge. That huge mana can be used to Stroke of Genius yourself (getting more cards to discard to untap the Academy) or eventually to Stroke of Genius your opponent, running him or her out of cards. It totally dominated Pro Tour Rome, and prompted a large number of bannings. Fortunately for combo layers, Wizards of the Coast failed to make some bannings, whichpermitted High Tide, already a competitive deck, to develop in Academy's void.

No look at the past is complete without a look toward the future. What, then, is the future of combo in Extended? It's true that combo has been crippled by the recent bannings, but there are several strong viable combo decks remaining. I've seen listings of mono blue ´´Trix´´ decks, using Intuition, Impulse, and Brainstorm in place of Necropotence. Nicholas LeBarre piloted a deck based on Fecundity + Ashnod's Altar + Saproling Cluster to top 8 at Worlds last year. Time will tell whether these decks become dominant in Extended in the future.

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