The Contenders
"In the blue corner, weighing in at 0.05 ETH, the Stormfield combo deck!"
"In the black corner, weighing in at 1.18 ETH, the scourge of F2P decks everywhere. The dominator of the weekend ranked and extender of game times! Holder of cards you'll never attain! It's Board Wipe Death!"
The Match
Easy win for Stormfield.
As you can see, this combo deck is actually hoping to match up against hard control decks. BWD might be the best matchup you could hope for:
- Sleep does nothing to you
- Burst damage limits their ability to heal
- Their win conditions don't start until 7 mana
The above match wasn't a one-turn kill, but I took a calculated risk:
- If they had blackblood blast, it would have killed them to play it
- I had an extra Pixie to replace any creatures taken out by single-target removal
- Foresight told me I had an extra finishing spell coming up next turn
- They would be so close to death that even Neferu wouldn't have saved them (they take 3 damage and I finish with direct damage).
Deck Details
Firstly, I take no credit for this deck. Countless others have been playing it (or more expensive versions of it) ever since the buff to Stormfield. If I've made any contribution, it's drastically lowering the price. The whales use:
Instead, we run:
These cheaper cards are actually pretty solid.
- Vow of Learning's versatility is underrated (in my opinion), but it replaces Ancient Texts for direct damage in a pinch. If you already have the damage cards in hand but need creatures, it doubles as card draw. If you need just one more turn to pull off the combo, the heal can make the difference.
- Form of Wisdom will trigger if you draw a spell. All our spells are 3 mana or less. Definitely not as good at drawing cards as Pallas' Wand, but for the price, it's great.
General Strategy
The idea is simple. In a single turn, you want to:
- Get 6 creatures on board.
- Cast 2x Stormfield
- Go face with cheap spells (each doing a minimum of 12 damage)
First Key: Card Draw
We've got to find our combo pieces, which means we need to cycle through our deck quickly.
Second Key: Mana Cost Reduction
In order to play all our cards in a single turn, we need them to be cheap. Luckily, some of our card draw does double duty. I did go out and buy Dimension Door tonight (~$3.50 each), as it's amazing for this deck. It reduces the mana cost of the card no matter what.
Be as efficient as you can. Don't use Assistant Alchemist to reduce Stormfield from 2 to 1 mana. Use it to reduce a 1 mana card to 0 and hope you draw a Warp Engineer. Use her on the Stormfield.
Third Key: Buying Time
Keeping the opponent's board clear is key to giving you enough time to collect your combo pieces. You want to prioritize the use of these cards for removal, as they can't do face damage. (Your God Power can, but isn't affected by spell boost.)
Be as efficient as you can, but also recognize that you may sometimes need/want to use a face damage spell to take out a critical creature.
Final Key: The Combo
In a perfect world, you wind up with something like this in your hand. I've included Final Draft to point out that Demetrios can often give you that cheap damage spell you need even if he dies his first turn.
This is 10 mana and does well over 30 damage. You want to collect these cards while also lowering their cost. Knocking off just 4 mana means you win the game at 6 mana. Against a deck like DBW that is trying to stall until 7 mana anyway, you win. They can't put enough pressure on you early game to matter.
Additionally, you'll be playing some creatures, and can likely chip away a bit. If you get them down to 24 HP, you only need 2 of the damage cards.
Bad Matchups
Hidden Rush Deception
Armor Lurkers! Can't clear them until they've done at least some damage to you. You also can't risk spreading the combo out over 2 turns due to Rapture Dance at 6 mana.
Other Aggro Decks
They can overwhelm your removal spells early game. You have much less time to get the combo together, and you may find yourself sacrificing pieces of it to stay alive.
Closing Thoughts
I've finally found a Magic deck I think I can enjoy while grinding for flux. With the meta currently shifting Nature into more control variants, this might work for weekend ranked. However, supper aggro War and (especially) deception is going to give you a hard time. I might start the weekend with one deck and then switch to this ~1500 MMR. This seems to be where I start running into all the 1-2 ETH control decks.
I hope you enjoyed seeing sweet vengeance on BWD. I know I enjoyed dishing it out. Let me know what you think of the deck, and I hope you give it a try!