Hello again, Premodern humans! Trix and Bargain are all well and good, but if you prefer your combo decks with just a little bit of jank, then this edition of Brewing with Andy might be for you. Seriously, though, I suspect that both of these decks could pick up a significant number of wins, especially against unprepared opponents.
First up we have one of the lesser-known, but very aptly named breakfast cereal combo decks: Life. Let’s get right to the list.
SIDEBOARD
This deck takes advantage of the Oracle text on Nomads en-Kor and Shaman en-Kor, which reads, “{0}: The next 1 damage that would be dealt to [cardname] this turn is dealt to target creature you control instead.” This allows you to target a creature, such as Daru Spiritualist or Task Force an arbitrary or “infinite” number of times, even without any damage actually being dealt to the en-Kors to begin with.
As you probably noticed, this combo produces a creature with arbitrarily large toughness. So what do we do with that, besides block Blastoderms and Kavu Titans all day? That’s where the sacrifice outlets come in. Starlit Sanctum, Worthy Cause and Animal Boneyard will all convert those Clerics and Rebels with infinite rear ends into infinite life for you. Now, having infinite life is normally enough to not lose against most decks, but to actually win the game, we’ll need to go one step further. You could just throw a couple of Gaea’s Blessings in the deck and call it a day, but thankfully there’s a quicker way to do it: Test of Endurance. Just get to your next upkeep and boom, game over.
I know what you’re thinking, it sounds cool, but isn’t that, like, a four-card combo? How do you actually assemble something with that degree of complexity? Well, this deck just so happens to tutor harder and more effectively than any other deck I’ve ever seen. Living Wish is the most versatile tutor in the deck as it can find any of the necessary creatures out of the sideboard, as well as Starlit Sanctum and a few other good utility creatures. The deck also runs three copies of both Eladamri’s Call and Survival of the Fittest to make sure the creature side of things is completely covered. And finally, there are Academy Rectors, which can be found with any of the other tutors, and in turn can search up the Animal Boneyard or Test of Endurance to complete the combo.
I don’t know if Life is going to take down the next Premodern tournament, but the deck actually can perform very well against creature decks, is capable of comboing off quickly, and is extremely resilient to disruption due to its redundancy and tutoring power.
Finally this week I have my Premodern build of Fluctuator.
The concept of this deck is pretty simple. Get a Fluctuator in play, then cycle as much of your deck as you can. Once your graveyard is filled with cycling creatures, cast Songs of the Damned (usually off the Lotus Petal or Dromar’s Cavern), and then cast Haunting Misery for the win. If you have Fluctuator in play but your opponent has counterspell mana up, you’ll need to save your land drop for the Dromar’s Cavern, so you can bait out the counterspell with Orim’s Chant before going for the combo off the Lotus Petal. The nice thing about Dromar’s Cavern is that it doesn’t take up a non-cycling slot, as it will come into play and bounce one of your other cycling lands, letting you get one more or draw or restart the chain.
Is it the peak of intellectual stimulation? No, but it’s a cheap deck to pick up play around with and can goldfish as early as turn two or three.
Anyway, that’s all for today. As usual, leave comments in the Premodern Facebook group, or hit me up on Instagram @mtgdojoera!