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Thread: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

  1. #1
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    [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    The Four Horsemen is a deck which is similar in function to Cephalid Breakfast. However its components are not creatures, but artifacts, which is a switch that has some important implications.

    It is slower.
    It has more defense.
    It is harder to disrupt because few decks have artifact hate in their main.
    It is harder to disrupt because graveyard hate is largely ineffective.
    It is harder to disrupt because it is only two colors.
    The entire combo can be refitted with a different combo for game 2.

    Sample Deck

    1 Dread Return
    1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
    1 Sharuum the Hegemon
    1 Blasting Station

    4 Basalt Monolith
    4 Mesmeric Orb
    4 Narcomoeba

    4 Cabal Therapy
    3 Thoughtseize
    4 Force of Will
    4 Gitaxian Probe

    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder
    4 Lim-Dul's Vault

    3 Underground Sea
    3 Island
    1 Swamp
    4 Polluted Delta
    3 Flooded Strand
    3 Scalding Tarn

    Sideboard

    1 Crippling Fatigue
    3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
    4 Show and Tell
    3 Echoing Truth
    2 Ravenous Trap
    2 Spell Pierce


    I have given up on the cool anti-ant-graveyard stuff, as simply using the Show and Tell sideboard does a good enough job of creating the same protection.
    Explanation:
    Opening Hand
    There is a lot of cheap search so an opening hand of only one land is probably acceptible as long as you have two search spells also. Pretty much any two, three, or four land hand will be ok. But every hand is improved by some search cards in it. Five lands is ok if one of the other cards is Brainstorm.

    In Search Of
    Your goal here is to have Basalt Monolith and Mesmeric Orb on the battlefield. The deck has plenty of search to get you there and a bit of defense along the way. You should be able to assemble the pieces by turn 3 on rare occasion, but often by turn 4 or 5. If the opponent has proper defenses, you will probably be delayed a bit while you deal with that. So it is not an especially fast combo by Legacy measurements. However unlike faster combo you have a decent amount of protection to see it through.

    You also need Emrakul, Sharuum, Blasting Station, Dread Return, and three Narcomoebas anywhere in the library or graveyard. If some of these are in your hand (up to the number of Cabal Therapy in you library and grave yard) you will be able to discard them after you start going off. You do not need mana or any cards in hand. The combo takes several minutes to actually play out.

    The Infinity Mill
    Once you have the set up complete you can tap Basalt Monolith to untap itself as often as you like. Each time you do, Mesmeric Orb will put a single card from your library into your grave yard. Whenever you get to Emrakul its reshuffle trigger goes on the stack. If your opponent has any unknown resources (cards in hand, an active Top, etc.), you should just let it resolve immediately. Other than that, you are looking to reveal a Narcomoeba and a Cabal Thetapy. If you reveal Cabal Therapy first, keep going. If a Narcomoeba comes first, its ability goes on the stack. Do not let it resolve yet. Keep activating the Monolith with the Narcomoeba on the stack until you see a Cabal Therapy. When that happens allow the Narcomoeba to enter the Battlefield and, without passing priority, cast Cabal Therapy. The Narcomoeba will be safely back in your graveyard before your opponent can respond. Note that if Emrakul comes up with the Narcomoeba ability on the stack, you can let Emrakul shuffle it back in your library to essentially cancel the trigger. You are probably naming Swords to Plowshares with the first Therapy. If any of your Narcomoebas are exiled you have to go back to the search stage and get the Blasting Station in your hand and hardcast it. Now that you have seen your opponent's hand you can use the second Cabal Therapy in this same way to nab Stifle or Path to Exile. There really aren't any other cards to be concerned with (they should have countered one of your enablers if they had a counter). If the opponent has nothing pertinent from the first Therapy, you can use the others to discard combo pieces from your own hand if you are holding any.

    Once these details are in order it is safe to let the three Narcomoebas enter the battlefield. Then you are looking to get Sharuum, Dread Return, and Blasting Station in your grave yard before revealing Emrakul. This may take several times through the deck but it must be exactly this way. Once you get this, Dread Return Sharuum who brings in the the Blasting Station. When Blasting Station enters the battlefield you are in business. Just continue to bring the Narcomoebas onto the battlefield one at a time and sacrifice them to the Station as you do. You will do infinite amounts of artifact damage to any legal target including your opponent.

    Some tricks:
    If you have any reason to believe that your opponent suspects what your deck does for game two, you can sub out:
    4 Mesmeric Orb
    4 Basalt Monolith
    1 Dread Return
    1 Sharuum the Hegemon
    1 Blasting Station

    for:
    1 Crippling Fatigue
    3 Emrakul the Aeons Torn
    4 Show and Tell
    3 Echoing Truth

    ...giving you a transitional deck into Show and Tell -> Emrakul with plenty of defense.

    -The Crippling Fatigue is really only there against decks with Gaddock Teeg. There are other possible targets, but in all of those the opponent should not let you get to the stage where you are able to go off.

    -There are about a thousand tiny ways you can outplay your opponent with this deck. Watch what your opponent is doing with the top of his deck. A Mesmeric Orb cast at just the right time can wreck his Ponder or Brainstorm - and that is a game-winning play. Similarly, you can get extra mileage out of your own Brainstorms.

    -Be sure to do a lot of sideboard action after every game, even if you know you are going to be siding in nothing. You do not want your opponent to be able to guess which wincon you have.
    Last edited by Finn; 10-16-2011 at 09:23 PM. Reason: update
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  2. #2
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Matchups:

    The testing is limited so far, but the deck is starting to show up in tournament results. You can extrapolate more from that.

    Against anything that has no blue, it is a pretty easy ride. Death and Taxes has Revokers, but nothing else you HAVE to counter. And Zoo can put up fast starts and/or Qasali Pridemage. If it does both it is a better fight, but you are still in decent shape.

    Merfolk - pretty hard. They can hit you from so many angles and have speed to back it up. If they have no bounce in the SB, it is easier. Be sure to fetch basics when possible.

    U/W Mystic - This seems pretty favorable. Perhaps they don't have enough pertinent hate, but I seem to be getting through often.

    U/W Landstill - Favorable. Really only the counterspells and Engineered Explosives concern you.

    Show and Tell - If you side in the extra Emrakuls, you don't even need your own Show and Tell. Fun.
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  3. #3

    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    what are the thougyhts about adding a singleton life from the loam and academy ruins? they can boht be tutored with lim duls vaults, both are recovereable from the bin if they get milled with orbs and if you run intuitions it seems perfect to get the last combo piece ( get the pice you need,lftl,and acaemy ruins). it is a little slow but it guaruntees that you win the long game and helps fight through counter spells. thoughts?

    also thoughts on adding fate stichers? im not sold on them but the idea of being able to intuition for three fate stitchers for infinite untaps seems cute. not sure if i wanna include it tho.

  4. #4
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    The Crippling Fatigue in the sideboard is to remind you of how bad you are shredding your deck protectors. lol I tried out this deck for a bit and holy crap is it time consuming to kill people. Stupid powerful, I will admit, but I couldn't handle having to flip cards and shuffle that damned much. If anyone makes you actually go through the motions, you're going to time.


    It is stupid easy to pull off that combo as silly as it looks. It's resilient and easy to assemble. Doesn't even feel like it's 2nd cousin Breakfast combo at all.

    I highly recommend trying it out, but proxy it up and see if you can handle all that shuffling first. It was a little much for me.

    Much <3 for your deck ideas Finn, keep em coming.

  5. #5

    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Sweet list, pretty exciting abuse of weird synergies. There's one issue that needs to be taken care of rapidly, though: I seem to remember a thread trying to do something similar using the breakfast combo in which cdr, if I remember correctly, explained that a judge my consider it stalling to reshuffle your own deck over and over (something I didn't agree with but that, if true, could spell doom for this archetype).

    Other than that, there is exactly one thing I really dislike about the list: the manabase. You need to get to three mana to do anything relevant, have extremely low color requirements to work with yet still run four Underground Seas exposing yourself to Wasteland unnecessarily. A manabase closer to Ari Lax's ANT manabase with 10+ Fetchlands, five to six basics and only two Seas seems like it would be much stronger (and would probably help to improve the Merfolk matchup all on its lonesome).

    I also think cutting a little bit of protection (maybe a TSeize and a Misstep) for two more cantrips might be a good idea, if only to make the deck slightly faster.

    /edit: Have you tried running a few Sol-lands to accelerate out the combo-pieces? Turn four seems awfully slow against some decks, especially those running Daze.
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Sweet list and great idea. This seems more evil than letting your opponent sit through a high tide combo turn. :) I like that its a slightly slower breakfast but more resilient to common creature removal. I'm not a fan of so many probes though, and I think you need city of traitors and ancient tomb in there some where to speed up the deck. The final part of getting all 3 components into the graveyard without hitting Emmy sounds like it will take some time.

    The decks needs the 4th Narco, with just 3 you simply cannot pitch a single narco to force because you need dread return. Running 1 more dead card to + 4 pitchable cards doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. Cheers.

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  7. #7

    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    On the 'stalling' thing. You could just respond to emrakul's trigger and mill your whole deck then explain to your opponent how you're going to kill them if that's not enough for them then you just perform the combo over a few minutes.

    Overall huge fan of the deck though nice work Finn. The name is just adorable too. Maybe we should name it lucky charms like old school combo decks lol name it after breakfast cereals.
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    I feel like "Four Horsemen" is a whole lot cooler than Fruit Loops or anything like that.

    I also can't imagine that flipping the cards in your deck can construed as stalling when you've explained the combo and made it apparent that you're headed towards a definite outcome,

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Hate to spoil the party and stifle innovation but I just thought up a hard question. How does this compare to u/b buried alive necrotic ooze combo? Both are grave based 2 card combos. Both are weak to needle effects (ooze has a leg up because it has built in work around for revoker) and grave hate with show and tell sb plans.

    Ooze is not affected by artifact hate like pridemage. Ooze walks all over zoo. Ooze has + 2 more tutors in personal tutor. Ooze is cheaper (buried + reanimate is 4 mana). Most importantly ooze has less dead cards, (just trisk, aquamoeba and devourer). Ooze is very fast and can run 4 dark ritual, 4 lotus petal (lots of space because the combo is so compact) and can afford to board out accel for more protection.

    Nonetheless, awesome deck though.

  10. #10
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Always good to get insightful feedback. Here are some answers.

    @life from the loam and academy ruins?

    Had both of these in the first version. We must think alike. They did not last the first day of testing. You really don't want these cards in your hand and the occasions for which they are necessary are far less common than those they impede by taking up slots.

    @three fate stitchers

    No creatures for me thank you.

    @if I remember correctly...a judge my consider it stalling to reshuffle your own deck over and over

    This was among my first concerns with the deck. The advice that I got at the time was that if the deck had a reasonable chance of accomplishing its goal (a nonzero chance is not enough), then you should be OK if you do so rapidly - I mean physically flipping the cards quickly. But it is open to interpretation. I suspect that if this deck ever truly catches on, there will have to be a reckoning on this portion of the rules.

    But this presents an interesting slope for the deck with regards to both play and design. I reccommend dropping an extra Emrakul into the deck after sideboarding if you suspect graveyard hate and do not want to go Show and Tell for some reason. That significantly decreases the likelihood that you will get the cards to fall in just the right order on any given iteration. How far is too far for this kind of strategy? It could present a problem eventually. For example, imagine that an opponent uses Nature's Claim to destroy Basalt Monolith after you have begun to combo off. You could conceivably continue to go through the deck until only three copies of Basalt Monolith and Emrakul are in your library, thereby giving you an excellent chance to topdeck exactly what you need. The chances of managing it are infinitessimally small for any given iteration, but it is possible. That would be an illegitimate goal, but doing a little of it is common for me. And simply getting three specific cards into the graveyard before Emrakul is not nearly in that category. However, I have not yet had any issues of any sort concerning this. The deck typically finishes with plenty of time.

    I don't know what would happen if an opponent insisted on seeing it through when it is inevitable. But I imagine the staller would be that opponent and not the pilot of this deck.

    You need to get to three mana to do anything relevant, have extremely low color requirements to work with yet still run four Underground Seas exposing yourself to Wasteland unnecessarily. A manabase closer to Ari Lax's ANT manabase with 10+ Fetchlands, five to six basics and only two Seas seems like it would be much stronger (and would probably help to improve the Merfolk matchup all on its lonesome).../edit: Have you tried running a few Sol-lands to accelerate out the combo-pieces? Turn four seems awfully slow against some decks, especially those running Daze.
    Certainly the best manabase is open to discussion, and I consider it to be the most oportant issue facing the deck atm. But your two pieces of advice are at odds. (more basics, Sol lands) In particular, both decrease my chances of getting black. Unless I can play with more than four Polluted Deltas... The manabase I have is far more resilient to Merfolk than, say what Chapin wanted to try. I have not seen what Ari Lax is using, but there is no simple solution here.

    @I also think cutting a little bit of protection (maybe a TSeize and a Misstep) for two more cantrips might be a good idea, if only to make the deck slightly faster.

    This is a good idea that I am in favor of. Until very recently, I had been using Careful Study in the Mental Misstep spot, but I cut them. I am still unsure. I think the versions with insufficient search are playing fast and loose.

    @The decks needs the 4th Narco, with just 3 you simply cannot pitch a single narco to force because you need dread return. Running 1 more dead card to + 4 pitchable cards doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

    This is another very sound argument. It closely relates to the Careful Study position actually, since Narcos are the most common thing I have sitting uselessly in my hand. I have a feeling that I will eventually do this instead of going back to Careful Study. It also opens up options like casting them when the opponent is playing white.

    @This seems more evil than letting your opponent sit through a high tide combo turn

    It is not as bad as that, actually. This deck can't really fizzle.

    EDIT:
    @Hate to spoil the party and stifle innovation but I just thought up a hard question. How does this compare to u/b buried alive necrotic ooze combo? Both are grave based 2 card combos. Both are weak to needle effects (ooze has a leg up because it has built in work around for revoker) and grave hate with show and tell sb plans.

    I don't know a heckuvalotabout that deck. (I just looked at the list - really cool!) But I do know that this one is not particularly vulnerable to graveyard hate. In fact, it almost completely sidesteps it.
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    This deck is cool ! :D actually you will won't be having hard time dealing with those GY hates. I have a question though..

    What if either Orb or Monolith got "Extirpated" ?
    What if Sharuum or Dread Return is in my hand ? (Do i have to dig for Brainstorm?)
    What are the bad matchups for this deck?

    Thanks Finn

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    I played the deck this past Sunday and it was quite fun. Ended up 2-2, losing to Zenith Zoo (Game 1 he had Pridemage to stop me, Game 2 he resolved Choke the turn before I would have combo'd out.) and UW Landstill (He knew how the deck worked and what to counter - I was 3 mana short from hard casting Emrakul against him though which would have won me that game).

    I like the Careful Study suggestion as there were a couple times I had combo pieces in my hand that I didn't want there.

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    I would rather play see beyond over careful study. At least it isn't card disadvantage and doesn't open you up to graveyard. Being 2cc is pretty heavy though.

    @ mightingal, you can use the mill until therapy + narco combo to therapy yourself and send combo components from your hand to your grave. Then find emrakul and shuffle everything back into your library, repeat.

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Nice combo indeed, I saw this primer already on mtgsalvation a few months ago.

    One question I always asked myself:

    Why does this deck mess around with all this shuffling and hoping that the 3 combo pieces (Sharuum, Station, Dread) go into the grave before Emrakul? This seems really annoying, boring and time consuming to me.
    Why can't you just swap your library into the graveyard like Cephalid Breakfast does and win with some of the plenty win options (Karmic Guide stuff, Triskelion/Devourer, Bomberman...) ??

    Is it the fear, that a Narcomoeba gets destroyed? Is it less safe against GY removal? Or what are your reasons to play it your way?

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    The answer is protection from removal. In cephalid breakfast you have always 2 combo components + 2/3 narcos. If a narco goes farming, you can always sac your cephalid illusionist or nomad to dread return. You can't do that with orb-monolith. You can run only that many narcos. Also the Emmy loop let's you strip as many cards as you want from the opponent to make sure you combo off. It's a 100% win that way.

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    The reason is that you don't fizzle to creature kill or GY removal. Only to Exile effects and you play 13 spells to fight them.
    If your opponent kill a Narcomoeba, you mill, find Emrakul, shuffle and mill again. Your Narcomoeba will appear another time.
    In games 2 and 3, you side in another Emrakul and Dread Return. If your opponent break Tormod in response of the first Emrakul trigger, you mill until find the 2nd one and shuffle. If your opponent break Tormod in response of the Dread Return, you mill again until Emrakul, shuffle, lose the DR and go with the 2nd.

    Someone had try Wake Trasher in the SB? Is an alternative win condition, with Monolith it could be an 1000/1000 that can block like a champion, doesn't use the grave and can make a single attack for the win.

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Interesting concept. My only concern is about this part:

    Quote Originally Posted by Finn View Post
    Other than that, you are looking to reveal a Narcomoeba and a Cabal Therapy. If you reveal Cabal Therapy first, keep going. If a Narcomoeba comes first, its ability goes on the stack. Do not let it resolve yet. Keep activating the Monolith with the Narcomoeba on the stack until you see a Cabal Therapy. When that happens allow the Narcomoeba to enter the Battlefield and, without passing priority, cast Cabal Therapy. The Narcomoeba will be safely back in your graveyard before your opponent can respond.
    If I got the combo and the stack right, you keep revealing till you have a Therapy first and then allow Narcomoeba's trigger(s) to resolve. The point is that opponent can respond to Narcomoeba's trigger by exiling through Extirpate all your Narcomoebas. So, how do you beat Extirpate?
    I recognize Extirpate is a sb card only, but I think you'll see yourself not boarding in SnT Emrakul in some Mu's like Landeed because they play 4 Jace TMS and 1-4 Innocent Blood.
    Please note I'm unfamiliar with these kind of combo decks so sorry if I said something incorrect.
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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Quote Originally Posted by ivanpei View Post
    The answer is protection from removal. In cephalid breakfast you have always 2 combo components + 2/3 narcos. If a narco goes farming, you can always sac your cephalid illusionist or nomad to dread return. You can't do that with orb-monolith. You can run only that many narcos. Also the Emmy loop let's you strip as many cards as you want from the opponent to make sure you combo off. It's a 100% win that way.
    Then I'd try to add more disruptive creatures like Meddling Mage (great with Gitaxian Probe) or Grand Abolisher into the MD.

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    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    Quote Originally Posted by ivanpei View Post
    The answer is protection from removal. In cephalid breakfast you have always 2 combo components + 2/3 narcos. If a narco goes farming, you can always sac your cephalid illusionist or nomad to dread return. You can't do that with orb-monolith. You can run only that many narcos. Also the Emmy loop let's you strip as many cards as you want from the opponent to make sure you combo off. It's a 100% win that way.
    Then I'd try to add more disruptive creatures like Meddling Mage (great with Gitaxian Probe) or Grand Abolisher into the MD.

  20. #20

    Re: [Deck] The Four Horsemen - Orb/Monolith

    This doesn't seem like a 4 Sea deck. 2-3 at most. I don't forsee any issues casting your spells off 2 Islands and a Swamp ever, so why expose yourself to drawing Wasteable lands?
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