[Deck] Food Chain Combo

[nevilshute]

Food Chain Combo - Currently being revised as of February 17th, 2015.



(link to the old primer: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...od-Chain-Combo)

I - What is the deck about?
II - Examples of decklists
III - How does the deck win?
IV - Key Cards
V - Utility creatures
VI - Protection
VII - Cantrips
VIII - Lands
IX - Less common Cards
X - Sideboarding
XI - Why Play This Deck?
XII - Matchups
XIII - Articles, videos etc.


I - What is the deck about?
The Food Chain deck is a midrange BUG deck, utilizing strong, grindy bug-cards such as Deathrite Shaman, Baleful Strix and Abrupt Decay, but with the possiblity of a combo finish. The combo revolves around resolving a Food Chain and a Misthollow Griffin. Once this is achieved the griffin is exiled with the Food Chain to generate five blue mana. Four of those five mana are used to recast the griffin from exile. This process is repeated an arbitrary large amount of times each time netting an extra mana and creating infinite mana of all colors - which can only be used to cast creatures. From here there are usually two ways to win. Either the 'half-combo' where "all" you are doing is casting 3-4 Misthollow Griffins which can then act as a vigilent, flying, unremovable army of 3/3, or the 'full combo' where you cast a big fatty to just end the game. This was once Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Many have since moved on to play Tidespout Tyrant as the winning fatty. Bouncing your opponent's entire board is usually just as effective as swinging with Emrakul. And being blue and CMC8 is a lot better than being non-blue CMC15.

The deck should not be viewed as a straight up combo deck as in that respect it isn't even remotely as consistent (or consistantly fast) as some of Legacy's other combo decks (like storm or sneak and show). Instead it should be viewed as a robust midrange deck that has it in its arsenal to just win on the spot, but which will often not do so but instead grind out victory. The Misthollow Griffins are actually also very effective at grinding. They can often be recycled for very good value out of the graveyard, either by getting eaten by your deathrite for life or being delved away to pay for a Dig Through Time. The fact that the griffins can't be hit by Abrupt Decay and that they usually make for a very, very unprofitable Swords to Plowshares target also enhance their value and help towards making up for the relative weakness of a 3/3 flier for 4 mana. We haven't even mentioned how good it feels to pitch one to a Force of Will or Misdirection.

II - Examples of decklists
Jeffrey Chen - SCG Premier IQ, February 15th, 2015 - First place finish http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=80067

4x Baleful Strix
1x Birds of Paradise
4x Deathrite Shaman
2x Genesis Hydra
4x Misthollow Griffin
1x Tidespout Tyrant
2x Vendilion Clique
4x Food Chain
3x Abrupt Decay
4x Brainstorm
2x Dig Through Time
1x Dimir Charm
4x Force of Will
1x Misdirection
3x Manipulate Fate
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Swamp
1x Bayou
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Polluted Delta
3x Tropical Island
3x Underground Sea
4x Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard:
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Abrupt Decay
2x Disfigure
2x Golgari Charm
2x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Venser, Shaper Savant
3x Duress

Jonathan Job - SCG Open Los Angeles, March 23rd, 2014 - Fourth place finish http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=65228

4x Shardless Agent
1x Deathrite Shaman
4x Misthollow Griffin
4x Noble Hierarch
2x Tidespout Tyrant
2x Wall of Blossoms
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Vendilion Clique
2x Venser, Shaper Savant
4x Food Chain
1x Sylvan Library
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
1x Misdirection
3x Manipulate Fate

3x Forest
4x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Scalding Tarn
4x Tropical Island
1x Underground Sea
3x Verdant Catacombs
1x Karakas

Sideboard:
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Null Rod
2x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Obstinate Baloth
1x Misdirection
4x Submerge

Martin Bosco - TLA - 2013 - Legacy - Jouernaut. First place finish out of 497 (27.10.2013) http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12104

1x Dryad Arbor
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Birds of Paradise
2x Mulldrifter
2x Progenitus
3x Misthollow Griffin
4x Fierce Empath
4x Noble Hierarch
2x Daze
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
3x Manipulate Fate
4x Natural Order
4x Food Chain
2x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Forest
2x Scalding Tarn
2x Windswep Heath
4x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Tropical Island

Sideboard:
3x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Relic of Progenitus
4x Show and Tell
1x Griselbrand
2x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Omniscience

Gottfried Sjödahl - Danish Legacy Masters 23.03.13 - 4th place finish out of 85 players http://mtgpulse.com/event/12649#177066

3x Misthollow Griffin
3x Fierce Empath
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Baleful Strix
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Brainstorm
3x Abrupt Decay
4x Force of Will
3x Manipulate Fate
4x Ponder
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Food Chain
1x Swamp
1x Island
2x Underground Sea
2x Bayou
3x Tropical Island
4x Polluted Delta
3x Verdant Catacombs
3x Misty Rainforest

Sideboard:
2x Obstinate Baloth
3x Spell Pierce
3x Golgari Charm
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Misdirection
1x Duress
1x Cabal Therapy
3x Relic of Progenitus

III - How does the deck win?

Fighting Fair:
You have a decent shot at winning many of your matches simply by playing fair, grindy magic. Deathrite Shaman, Baleful Strix and Abrupt Decay are mighty good magic cards and if you get into a grindfest then Misthollow Griffin synergizes very well with Deathrite Shamans and give you a boon in grinding out a game (an example could be to repeatedly chump block a big Tarmogoyf and just keep eating your own griffin and replaying it). Manipulate Fate also works very well when trying to gain a foothold in a grindy game as it is effectively card advantage. The trick in this scenario is often to play like a control deck. Kill their relevant threats with Abrupt Decay, hold down the fort with Strix and attack their life total and graveyard with Deathrite Shaman. If you get to resolve a Manipulate Fate start thinking about shifting gears and going on the aggressive.

Half Combo:
If you have a Food Chain out as well as access to one or more of your griffins you get to go infinite a.k.a. you can now produce as much mana of any color as you want with the only caveat being that you can only use it to cast creatures. This means that your griffins now effectively have vigilance as you can attack with them and then, during your second main phase, you can exile them to Food Chain and recast them. It also means that any griffin is able to step in front of an attacker and block, and then, before damage, you can exile it to Food Chain to pseudo Fog them. Ideally you will have resolved a Manipulate Fate earlier during the game and have access to at least three griffins. A lot of the time, opponents will have a hard time dealing with this and you can steam roll them to victory.

The Combo Kill:
Calling it a kill might be a bit of a stretch as your opponent probably won’t die until your attack step during your next turn, but in a vast, vast majority of cases it will de facto mean victory. Like with the ‘Half Combo’ you have Food Chain out and access to one or more griffins granting you infinite mana. The difference is that you now also have access to your combo finisher. This card can be a variety of different bombs or creatures that tutor for them. In days past it was either Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, or a Fierce Empath that tutored him up. These days we use Tidespout Tyrant and/or Genesis Hydra to tutor him up.

The way it works with Hydra is: you make infinite mana. You cast Hydra for X = [the size of your library or more]. This way, as Hydra is cast, its trigger lets you reveal your library when you cast it and put into play one permanent with CMC X or less. You choose Tidespout Tyrant. Tyrant gets put into play (it isn’t cast, so it cannot be countered) and then Hydra resolves and is now X/X. Winning from here is usually arbitrary. You exile and replay your griffins each time bouncing one of your opponent’s permanents. Once done with that you can start bouncing your own Hydra and replay it to start putting in Baleful Strix and then bouncing those and replaying them, drawing as many cards as you feel like. Usually a scoop will have occurred by now.



IV - Key cards

Combo enablers:

• Food Chain: Not much to be said about this card. The combo engine of the deck. It’s worth it to note that Pithing Needle naming Food Chain will do exactly nothing. Food Chain’s ability is a mana ability and therefore cannot be stopped by a Pithing Needle. Nor can it be Stifled or even responded to. Phyrexian Revoker can stop Food Chain as it stops mana abilities, so be aware of that sucker.
• Misthollow Griffin: The other half of the infinite mana loop. A 3/3 flyer for UU2 is not something to write home about. They shine in two situations. 1 is to pitch to a Force of Will or a Misdirection (value town) and 2 is in conjunction with a resolved Food Chain. In both situations the griffins are worth their weight in gold. But if you are able to resolve a Manipulate Fate then just casting a Griffin every turn is not too shabby.
• Tidespout Tyrant: When comboing off most often our win condition.

Tutors:

• Genesis Hydra: For the most part a fantastic upgrade to Fierce Empath. Lets you "tutor" for Tyrant for the win and - more importantly - when without Food Chain can still be a very effective card that will do a pseudo Cascade and can put a Deathrite, Strix or Food Chain uncounterably into play while acting as a relavent threat by itself.
• Manipulate Fate: Ah, the most efficient tutor in the deck and one of the most fun cards to resolve. Will nearly always be a “reader” as not very many people will have seen it before. In this deck it’s stupidly good. The card might as well read: U1, sorcery. Search your library for 3 cards named Misthollow Griffin and put them into your hand. Shuffle your library. Draw a card. Seeing as this is a bit of a rogue deck most opponents won’t know what this is for the first time they play you. I mean, reading the card, it just looks bad. The truth is that this is often what allows you to set up a win. If you already have one of your griffins in hand then go find 2 griffins and another copy of Fate. Once an opponent is wise to what you’re up to this card will have a big countermagic bulls eye on it so be mindful of that. But that can also work in your favor as it can be used to bait out countermagic when you already have a griffin in hand.

V - Utility creatures

Having a saturation of spells at both 2, 3 and 4CMC ramping mana is often where you want to be. Ideally you want creatures on the board already before resolving a Food Chain too. That means playing enough cheap creatures that actually matter. Examples of those:

Mana Dorks:

• Deathrite Shaman: The jack of all trades when it comes to mana dorks. Ideally you want your dork to always be able to generate mana on turn 2 and as such an argument can be made for Noble Hierarch over DRS. But the versatility, ability to act as a win condition of his own and his synergy with a griffin in the yard (the only place we do NOT want our griffins to end up) make him quite exceptional.
• Noble Hierarch/Birds of Paradise: Mana ramp is great and is an integral part of the deck as it allows us to power out a Food Chain on turn 2. The Exalted from Hierarch can often become relevant as well.

2cmc 'cycle' creatures:

• Baleful Strix: A fantastic value creature. Pitches to Force of Will and Misdirection, replaces itself and trades with flipped Delvers and Tarmogoyf. The effectiveness of this guy usually is connected to how many Tarmogoyfs are being played in a current meta. The more Goyfs, the better Strix usually is. A very effective tool in prolonging games to the point where you start to gain control.
• Wall of Blossoms (RETIRED): We need a 2CMC creature to help our mana curve out and make comboing off with Food Chain more smooth. The wall is also great at blocking
  Nimble Moongose and Mishra’s Factories all day long and cycles when he enters the battlefield. The advantage of this creature over Baleful Strix is that it is mono colored. Occasionally it is a problem to get a strix down using Food Chain as it can only create one color mana per activation.
• Coiling Oracle(RETIRED): Like Strix this pitches to force of will and has the added bonus of occasionally giving you a 2nd land drop in one turn. Downside is that you have to reveal the card drawn. Also 1/1 Vanilla is infinitely worse than 1/1 flying deathtouch in most situations.

Evoke creatures: (Mostly retired mechanic. While Evoke is very abusable if you have a Food Chain out, the creatures with Evoke are too weak without Food Chain. Playing them fills up your deck with clunky cards that situationally can be very strong, but will often be weak).

Evoke is a mechanic that has a very abuseable synergy with Food Chain. When you cast something for its evoke cost the "must sacrifice" clause in the Evoke cost is actually a triggered ability. This means you can respond to it by exiling the creature to the Food Chain. Now because Food Chain only cares about the converted mana cost of the creature, and the converted mana cost is always what is printed in the top right hand corner then you get to ramp mana from this interaction. As an example: pay UU1 to cast Aethersnipe for its evoke cost. With the evoke sacrifice clause on the stack, exile Aethersnipe for its converted mana cost 6+1 = 7 mana of any one color. Now both the evoke trigger and Aethersnipe's bounce trigger will try and resolve. Aethersnipe is no longer on the battlefield to be sacrificed so that ability fizzles. If what it targeted with the bounce effect is still a legal target upon resolution, the bounce will still happen, and you now have 7 mana in your pool. Pretty neat

• Aethersnipe: The bounce effect will from time to time become your only main deck answer to some permanent based hate. An example of this is its relevance in game one against Death and Taxes as a Phyrexian Revoker colds our Food Chain. Is also a nice additional answer to Show and Tell and of course acts as a way to get our own Griselbrand into play without a Griffin (see above).
• Mulldrifter: As with Aethersnipe, Mulldrifter is another way to exploit the synergy of Food Chain and Evoke. Some players (including myself) have moved away from playing this creature as it is really only a card when there is a Food Chain resolved. That being said, when that is the case it is awesome. It then nets us 3 mana of any one color and draws us 2 cards.

• Others:
  
  • Shardless Agent: Some people have chosen to go all in on the midrange plan. This creature symbolizes that transition. If you play this, then you want enough value cards to cascade into. With it, you can make some sweet plays like cascading into a Manipulate Fate with Food Chain out and turn one Shardless Agent into three griffins plus drawing a card for your troubles. This card requires more build-around than most people care to consider and I'm not sure I favour it in this deck.
  • Vendilion Clique: Significantly improves our storm matchup to run a few of these. It's just an all round value creature that our mana base can support and I like running one to two.
  • Venser, Shaper Savant: A nice utility creature that can put some work in, in some odd situations, like saving our Food Chain (for a turn, at least) from an Abrupt Decay, to bouncing a land with an Infernal Tutor on the stack. Still, at 4cmc, and in relation to your main combo plan, you've got to ask yourself how often you're going to enjoy this guy sitting in your opening hand.
  
  

Warning: the rest of this primer has yet to be updated (February 17th, 2015).

VI - Protection

Counterspells:

• Force of Will: this card is particularly relevant when playing with the Griffins as they can be pitched and still played later from exile. Pretty straight forward.
• Misdirection: this will be meta dependant. It’s awesome to have 1-2 extra force of wills in counter wars, but Misdirection can also do a lot of work to re-direct an Abrupt Decay trying to pick off your Food Chain or a wayward Hymn to Tourach.
• Daze: Can be used to protect the combo while going off on early turns. Quickly loses its relevance though.
• Spell Pierce: stays relevant for longer but not as good on the combo turn as Daze unless you have waited an additional turn to leave up the U required. Would rarely see how both Pierce and Daze can be fit in so it will usually be one or the other if either at all.

Targeted discard:

• Duress, Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek. They can all be relevant in different scenarios. Running discard should mainly be to pick off something like a Thalia or Revoker, or alternatively, an Abrupt Decay or to help fight faster combo decks. Some people prefer to have discard in the sideboard to bring in and then rely solely on countermagic to protect the combo game 1.
  

VII - Cantrips

• Brainstorm: Not going to write an essay on why Brainstorm is awesome.

Whether or not you want to run Brainstorm's less beautiful cousins, Ponder or Preordain, will depend on how you decide to balance your deck between cantripping creatures and cantrip non-creature spells. This is actually a point of some contention. Most people recognize that the deck needs to run a critical number of creatures to opperate. As such and argument can be made for running cantripping creatures over cantripping instants and sorceries. Examples of these creatures are the aforementioned Mulldrifter and Court Hussar as well as Raven Familiar. The issue with these creatures are that they are quite mediocre up until you get a Food Chain resolved. Once that happens it quickly becomes value town. The problem with this is, that we want our cantrips to help find the Food Chain, not to be awesome once we've found it. I believe the proper way to go about it is to run some number of "elvish visionary" type creatures (2-drops that draw a card when entering the battlefield) along your mana dorks. As such we can meet our need for having enough creatures but should still have room for some non-creature cantrips.

VIII - Lands

• This will greatly depend on your deck construction. For a combo deck this deck is hungry for mana and so don't get too overreliant on our mana dorks thinking that means we can skimp on land. I'd say we need to run at least 19 lands. 20 might be more correct. I'd argue that you should be working to include some basics in whichever list you end up with. Against wastelands you'll often need to be able to fetch out an island and a forest. The first to be able to cantrip and the latter to be able to put out mana dorks and eventually ensure you can produce the G for Food Chain.
• Ancient Tomb: I personally like running at least two of these. Especially if you're running Natural Order as you will more often be able to combo on turn 2.

IX - Less common cards

• Natural Order: Some people are having success with running a Natural Order package as a secondary combo plan to Food Chain. The upside is that you are able to attack your opponent from different angles and won’t get colded by an ill-timed Surgical Extraction or the likes. The downside is mostly the space it takes up in the deck. You typically sacrifice either cantrips or counterspells both of which are needed to enhance your Food Chain plan. You also need to up your green creature count. You are also likely to have to make consessions on your "plan B" as it is hard to fit in main deck grindy cards like Baleful Strix and Abrupt Decay when you have dedicate space for this combo. Makes the deck more explosive but worse at its midrange plan.
• Lim-Dûl’s Vault: The main issue of the deck has always been to find a reliable way to tutor for Food Chain. Cards such as Intuition have been tried to limited success. Even a white splash for Enlightened Tutor. LDV seems like the best option if your mana base can support the black splash. I’d recommend running this as a one- or two of.
• Show and Tell: Some decks run a transformational sideboard plan which seeks to transform the deck into a show and tell deck siding in more emrakuls and griselbrands.
• Vela the Night-Clad: An alternative win con to Emrakul. Avoids combat so isn't bothered by cards like Ensaring Bridge. Also pitches to Force of Will and can be tutored up Empath. One problem, though, is that targeted creature removal will stop us from winning. Once she enters the battlefield they can respond to us casting our first Griffin by casting a Swords to Plowshares on her.
• Drift of Phantasms: This is at times used as a one-of because of its versitility. It can tutor for Food Chain (albeit at sorcery speed and for UU1) as well as for Fierce Empath. It can, alternatively, also do quite a decent job at blocking. And if it does end up on the battlefield like that it can always be fed into the Food Chain for mana when you need to.
• Shardless Agent: An argument can be made about running Agent as a way to strengthen our non-combo plan. Also, Agent into Manipulate Fate with a Food Chain on board will usually = three Griffins in play and infi mana. Playing this card or not will depend on how big of an emphasis you want to put on being a combo deck.

Retired cards

• Maga, Traitor to Mortals: Used, predominately early on, as an alternative win con to Emrakul. Maga has pretty much been retired now. You can’t use the Empath to tutor for Maga and the win depends on an EtB trigger than can be stifled.

X - Sideboarding
How you sideboard with this deck will depend wholly on your strategy. Some people aim to run transformational sideboards. Either something like a Show and Tell package or alternatively a beatdown plan including Tarmogoyfs and Vendilion Cliques. In my opinion, all plans need to take into account our weak matchups which is primarily other combo decks. We need graveyard hate to fight dredge and reanimator and we need answers to storm combo decks as well.

Other than that we need a way to answer hatebears. Abrupt Decay is great at this and since our mana base is much stronger than many other combo decks (it needs to be as we are more mana hungry) we don't have to settle for bounce spells. Running sweeping effects such as Golgari Charm or Dread of Night is also a good way to go about hitting Death and Taxes and Maverick.

A template for a sideboard might look something like this:

4x Gravehate
2-4x Additional countermagic. Flusterstorm or Swan Song are strong
2-4x Abrupt Decay
2-3x Sweeper effects, Golgari Charm for instance.

Some other cards to consider would be:

Misdirection
Thoughtseize
Spellskite
Jace, the Mind Sculptor

XI - Why Play This Deck?

How does this deck compare to other (combo) decks?

So why play this deck? Well it's a lot of fun first of all. There are other faster and more consistent combo decks out there, but this does have some merits when compared to them:

• No reliance on the graveyard: Unlike many other combo decks of the format we don't care one iota about graveyard hate (extraction effects on a discarded or countered Food Chain notwithstanding).
  
• Combo unaffected by Gaddock Teeg: Okay mr T(eeg) stops Natural Order, but our main plan shits all over him seeing as our combo is mainly creature based and Food Chain is 3CMC.
  
• Combo (largely) unaffected by Thalia: Getting a Food Chain on the battlefield at 4CMC can be tricky but otherwise your combo, much like with Teeg, doesn't care about the Tax that Thalia demands.
  
• An Emrakul that doesn't care about Karakas: You hard cast Emrakul. It's the only way for you to get him into play. That means you get an extra turn. That means screw Karakas. If they bounce him, make another million mana with your griffins and re-cast him, get another extra turn and Bob's your sister
  
• The ability to play a "normal" game of magic: Unlike nearly all other combo decks in legacy The Food Chain deck is able to actually cast spells that can fuel a non-combo win strategy. Guess what, Deathrite Shaman is a really good creature, Baleful Strix is a really good creature. In a weird way, Misthollow Griffin is even - in this deck - a really good creature. It flies, it is immune to two out of the format's three most played removal spells (Abrupt Decay and Swords to Plowshares) and the deck runs a tutor that for 2 mana tutors up all three of them and lets you cantrip (Manipulate Fate).
  
  In practice this means, that where most combo decks get completely shut down by certain combo hosers, the Food Chain deck is able to deploy a secondary strategy that is quite solid. I like to run this deck like a midrange BUG deck with a strong combo element to it. That means running a full set of Deathrites as well as some Abrupt Decays in the main.