Gravetide Gifts

[Cire]

Gravetide Gifts

This thread is for discussion of a possible combo deck based of Muldrotha, the Gravetide



Fair warning - this combo isn't necessarily a "good" combo - in that it is a 3 card combo relying on the graveyard and on a creature and has at least 4 cards in the deck. Yes it only "costs" 4U mana, but still - there are better combo decks out there, and moreover, this deck is not even at a stage where we can think about how to make it more worthwhile to play than any existing deck. At the moment the idea of this thread is to make a pile of 60 cards where this combo can work on a fairly frequent basis.

Now. . . the combo. . .

Get Muldrotha, the Gravetide onto the battlefield then use the ability to cast a clone effect. Phantasmal Image/Dance of Many. Copy Muldrotha, the Gravetide and allow the original copy to die to the legend rule. Next cast Lion's Eye Diamond from the graveyard. Sacrifice it for enough mana to cast Animate Dead targeting the original Muldrotha, the Gravetide which is in your graveyard due to state based effects (Legend Rule). Then repeat with Dance of Many replaying LED again until you have as much mana as you want. Then you can use that mana to loop Muldrotha, the Gravetide and cast every non-enchantment permanent in your graveyard as many times as you want, and hopefully you have something that will allow you to use that infinite mana to kill.

Claymore noticed that since the combo requires at least Muldrotha, LED, Phantasmal Image/Dance of Many, Animate Dead & Win Con, the best way to assemble those cards is Gifts Ungiven as a tutor for 4 of the combo pieces. Combined with LED in hand and searching also for Unburial Rites, the combo becomes a 3 card combo consisting of Gifts Ungiven + LED + [any one of the other dead cards] and costing 4U (3U for the Gifts Ungiver + 3W for the Unburial Rites - WWW from the LED).

Looking at the cards needed, including Force of Will and Brainstorm and around 20 lands, we will have about 14 spots left.

Going forward for the remaining 14 spots we need to focus on one goal: to get Lion's Eye Diamond & Gifts Ungiven into our hands. Looking for protection and speed are goals that should come after we obtain some sense of consistency and can start experimenting. Thus as a beginning salvo I will suggest the easy route and add in enlightened tutor and personal tutor. Yes this is inefficient, but as a starting point I think it clarifies our goal and allows future renditions of this deck to know what the goal of each spot in the deck is. With six spots remaining we can choose between speed and protection. To start off with I will aim towards protection which may be a wrong choice in the end, but lets start there (the reason I did not choose speed, is that the best we can aim for seems to be turn 3). In terms of protection, the best combo decks run around 10-14. So far we run a full set of FOW, with 6 spots remaining. I suggest, to start with, running the 2nd best protection spell that is Thoughtseize, and making use of enlightened tutor, as a defense against aggro decks - ensnaring bridge. Anyway I give you . . . .

Gravetide Gifts

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Personal tutor
4 Enlightened tutor
4 Thoughtseize
3 Dance of Many
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Animate Dead
1 Unburial Rites
1 Pyrite Spellbomb

2 Phantasmal Image
2 Muldrotha, the Gravetide

4 Flooded Strand
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tundra
2 City of Traitors
2 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp


Yes, it's ridiculous collection of cards - and not much exists to suggest that it can get better, but please help make this deck better

[compacta_d]

Does Muldrotha not see previous Muldrotha's? Like if you have Azusa and cast 2nd Azusa you don't get 4 additional land drops right? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Assuming it works.

I would copy the Bomberman combo idea (i see spellbomb), except you get to make this reanimator style. Run Entomb instead of the weird tutors. You may be able to even copy the bauble thing that Bomberman does, although I like the Gifts Idea. Can run Intuition as well.

Natural Order may be able to help. This may be a Nic Fit style combo deck.

Walking Ballista is a good finisher and utility creature to kill things like Thalia and Ethersworn Canonist.

Once there are 2 Phantasmal Images in the yard, they can loop without targeting the yard.

Any Archeomancer effect can get storm win cons. Or just Storm Entity for big time swing.

Also Buried Alive can do something?

Ulamog can exile opponent's permanents. Big mana + cast eldrazi from yard. Obviously not the yard shuffle kind.

Cabal Therapy

Just my thoughts without playtesting it at all. Grain of salt here.

[Cire]

Does Muldrotha not see previous Muldrotha's? Like if you have Azusa and cast 2nd Azusa you don't get 4 additional land drops right? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I honestly do not know if the combo works within the rules - I am just working on the authority of random posters on themanadrain. Also - entomb doesn't work since the combo needs Gifts Ungiven + LED + [any one of the other dead cards] in hand.

However, working with the numbers, currently he only have sol lands for accel - as such this is a turn 4 combo. With that assumption (for now) we can cut out at least 2 of Personal tutor, Enlightened tutor, and even Phantasmal Image (since there will be at least 6 dead cards, you should have 1 in your hand by turn 4 with the draw and the tutors). That opens up 6 spots for Acceleration so we can be a turn 3 combo deck! exciting. Also, also ensnaring bridge is bad in this deck (shocker), so i'll leave those protection spots blank for now. Preferred win con is still an open question.

Gravetide Gifts (v. 2)


4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize
4 Dark Ritual
2 Dance of Many
2 Personal tutor
2 Enlightened tutor
2 [Open]
2 Lotus Petal
1 Animate Dead
1 Unburial Rites
1 Pyrite Spellbomb

2 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
1 Phantasmal Image

4 Flooded Strand
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tundra
2 City of Traitors
2 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp

[kombatkiwi]

The combo does work, you're right about the Azusa thing @compacta_d but that's a special case because since M14 there's a specific rule about cards that let you play additional lands.

As a deck along the lines of "Combo-control shell that auto wins off Animate Dead once you have access to some additional specific shit" this just seems strictly worse than Worldgorger, both in terms of the fact that you need SO MUCH more extra shit, and it's also trying to do dumb stuff that doesn't really work well like LED + FoW

[ShinKen]

@Cire: I don't think you're getting the point of entomb, it effectively makes it a 2 card combo: LED + Gifts, searching for muldrotha, rites, Phantasmal/Dance of many, entomb goes infinite, basically getting you 1 demonic tutor per new muldrotha. the first/2nd needs to find another clone/animate dead, but all subsequent ones can find for ex. aether spellbomb to draw the deck, multiples of combo pieces in response to surgical effects or just the finisher.

As for the win con - I'd go with something like a 2-of Collective brutality in the discard suite, it's early protection/removal and can drain the opp out with infinite mana from LED's.

I'd cut enlightened/personal tutor and put in ponders, maybe some more removal/discard; the card disadv. isn't great.

Honestly I agree that this combo's final form probably isn't any more viable than for ex. worldgorger combo, but it's still a really fun idea for an fnm or something.

[Cire]

@Cire: I don't think you're getting the point of entomb, it effectively makes it a 2 card combo: LED + Gifts, searching for muldrotha, rites, Phantasmal/Dance of many, entomb goes infinite, basically getting you 1 demonic tutor per new muldrotha. the first/2nd needs to find another clone/animate dead, but all subsequent ones can find for ex. aether spellbomb to draw the deck, multiples of combo pieces in response to surgical effects or just the finisher.

I guess i'm not understanding how entomb plays into this? The combo already goes infinite with Gifts+LED+Dead Card in hand, and Muldrotha only lets you play permanents from the grave, not spells, so you can't cast entomb with it.

Honestly I agree that this combo's final form probably isn't any more viable than for ex. worldgorger combo, but it's still a really fun idea for an fnm or something.

Indeed

[compacta_d]

I think comparing it to world gorger is incorrect.

The LED loop makes it more like Bomberman. Animate Dead and Phantasmal Image loop infinite in the same way with LED that Auriok Salvagers does.

Adding Blue and Black to what was an essentially mono white splash draws/tutors seems like a large boost in consistency to me.

this might even be a new dredge style combo to get cards in yard faster. IDK.

Protean Hulk can tutor out a lot of things, and get gravetide as well, or maybe a singleton body double.

This combo works a lot of ways.

[MGB]

Why isn't this in the Casual forum? It's strictly worse than any other graveyard deck in the format.

[Cire]

If that's the rubric we use for this section of the forum, then most decks in N&D don't belong in N&D. As it stands this deck is currently a fairly consistent turn 3/4 kill with around 10 open spots of protection. Those aren't really casual numbers.