[Deck-Creation] Thopter-blight Combo

[Cire]

This deck is based on a simple idea:

Thopter Engineer, next turn shape Anew into Blightsteel Colossus and attack with 11/11 Trample, infect, indestructible, haste.

Thopter Engineer is a new card that reads:

Thopter Engineer 2R
Creature - Human Artificer
When Thopter Engineer enters the battlefield, put a 1/1 colorless Thopter artifact creature token with flying onto the battlefield.
Artifact creatures you control have haste.
1/3

There are better combo's out there especially since this one costs 7 mana and has no redundancy. Except the idea behind this deck - is that there is redundancy for shape anew in the old staple of polymorph. So this creates some interesting deck constraints: being that we can't run artifact so we can always shape into the colossus, and we can't run any other creatures but 1 thopter engineer and 1 blightsteel. Luckily legacy has 8 tutors that we can cast turn 1 into thopter: Worldly Tutor and Sylvan Tutor. Now since we need to cast the combo as soon as possible, and we can't run any creatures or artifacts, we need to turn to Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors for acceleration.

So the core of this deck is

1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Thopter Engineer
4 Sylvan Tutor
4 Worldly Tutor
4 Polymorph
4 Shape Anew
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors

If that wasn't weird enough - here are some other considerations. The first land we need to play must produce G for a tutor and follow it up with R for the Thopter. The 2nd land we play must be a 2 mana producing one, and the third must be able to produce blue. For the rest of the cards we simply need to think about the following - we need ways to shuffle collossus back into the deck if we draw it in our opening or during the next two turns (this is a turn 3 win combo deck) and we need protection. Honestly to make this deck worth it, we need to play as much protection as possible:

4 Pact of Negation
4 Force of Will
X Daze

Daze is currently an X, because I am unsure if running islands and fetchlands is the best move. The reason being is 1) fetch lands will lower consistency post mulligan due to the new scry rule (not that they lower consistency per se, but they take away the advantage of the scry during mulligan, and for a combo deck like this the scry is important) and 2) the land base needs to produce R/G the first turn, so the daze is only useful on the third turn. . . (but so is Pact. . . ). However, not running fetches makes brainstorm subpar.

As of now I will go the no-fetch route so the "shuffle" (since blightsteel shuffles back if sent to the graveyard) effects shall be

4 Brainstorm
4 Careful study

I thought about faithless looting, but we need to keep the blue count up for FOW. And while brainstorm is subpar, really we still need it since its an efficient shuffle effect (and it still digs 3 cards deep in case we need anything). Since we have chosen to eliminate daze, or at least I have chosen to eliminate daze, we now have 6 "flex" spots open in this deck. These 6 spots need to be used for protection, but it is unclear what we need to be protected from. The biggest offenders are what hurts combo decks always: discard, counters, removal and COTV.

We may run leyline of sanctity against discard, and hope for the best for everything else. I have chosen to do 4 leyline of sanctity and 2 gitaxian probe for now, but obviously this deck is a fun work in progress. I have no clue if my choices as of now were correct or what the sideboard could even look like. If you have any comments please feel free to make any.

Thopter-blight Combo Deck v.1

-2 Creatures

1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Thopter Engineer


-38 Other

4 Sylvan Tutor
4 Worldly Tutor
4 Polymorph
4 Shape Anew
4 Pact of Negation
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful study
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 gitaxian probe


- 20 Lands

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine


The game play is simple and straight forward.

Turn 1 = 5-Color Land + Tutor --> search for engineer
Turn 2 = 2-Mana Land + Engineer
Turn 3 = 5 Color Land + Poly/Shape --> Attack with hasted Blightsteel

Again - this deck is vulnerable to almost anything - but it's a fun idea I had that can win (goldfishing) reliably by turn 3. Does it have any more potential than that? Probably not.

[rufus]

Haste is nice, but it seems like running artifact manlands and standstill would just work better.

[lilevo]

I like this idea but wouldn't be better to play 4 Thopter Engineer and play the deck more like a mono U control deck?

[H]

I think a real problem this deck will have is that Shape Anew and Polymorph target. There is nothing to stop them from Abrupt Decaying your token and then you lose.

It might work, but AD and STP will probably often rain on the parade.

[ESG]

It's a flashy idea, but Stifle + Phyrexian Dreadnought does largely the same thing and is faster to put together. Dreadnought even got a new toy in Cloudform, and that wasn't enough to bring the deck back to popularity. Having no way to recur a dead Thopter Engineer seems perilous. If the Engineer gets countered, you have to hard-cast Blightsteel? You can't really play Engineer and a Polymorph effect in the same turn, and Pact is a pretty poor counterspell if you have to pass the turn. I think Apostle's Blessing would be more playable. I think the deck could go with Thopter + Sword and artifacts + Academy Ruins, so at least you would have an OK time against Abrupt Decay. But I also don't think Shape Anew or Polymorph meet the bar of playability for this format. Four mana is a lot.

[rufus]

Four mana is a lot.

Four mana may be a lot, but winning the game is well worth that price. (We see that with Ad Nauseam and Jace the Mindsculptor.) I agree that the posted game plan is fragile and unreliable.

[Freggle]

I played a Shape Anew deck in standard that used Splicers for Blightsteel. It was decent, Splicers and Board wipes and Giddeon.

I see that you want to go all in combo, but I have to agree with others that I don't think that is the best way to build this deck.

If you want a hasted Blightsteel and your playing red why not use Through the Breach and / or Sneak Attack, and still play your tutors.

If you want to go the Splicers route to give this deck more Anew targets it's notable that Blightsteel is a golem and thus gets all the Splicer boons.

I'd love to help develop the deck, but it does need some more work.

Edit: However, if you want to keep the deck as pure combo as possible then Thirst for Knowledge might be a good draw spell that would keep Blightsteel in the deck.

[Cire]

Hey everyone! Thanks for commenting!

A couple of thoughts that i'm hearing:

The problem of moving this away from pure combo is that it seems you can build combo decks with polymorph or shape anew alone that are just as good. For example you can play a deck with no creatures other than Emrakul and Dryad - find Dryad with a fetch EOT, accel into Polymorph and get Emrakul out. This can also be done turn 3 easy. The trick with that deck is that wasteland is an issue, and so is getting Polymorph into your hand. But you can really just play a personal tutor

So their you have a deck that looks like this:

8 Fetch
4 Tropical Island
1 Dryad
1 Emrakul
4 Polymorph
4 Personal Tutor
4 Pact
4 FOW
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful Study
4 Daze
4 Lotus Petal
4 Other non-creature accel
4 Flex

Why isn't a deck like that getting played? It has 12 protection spells AND it can get Emrakul out reliably by turn 3. . .

Same thing with the hypothetical splicer deck.

However - the real crux of this deck is that the engineer gives haste. It's not enough for you to get out Emrakul or Collusus by turn 3, it needs to attack on turn 3. . . . otherwise you can just play show and tell . . .

[rufus]

Hey everyone! Thanks for commenting!

A couple of thoughts that i'm hearing:
...
Same thing with the hypothetical splicer deck.

However - the real crux of this deck is that the engineer gives haste. It's not enough for you to get out Emrakul or Collusus by turn 3, it needs to attack on turn 3. . . . otherwise you can just play show and tell . . .

There's lots of possibilities. You can use Mogg Alarm + Mass Polymorph to make a synthetic Tooth and Nail. Both of those can be fetched with Personal Tutor or Burning Wish. The thing is, it's usually better to just pull out value pieces Griselbrand and Emrakul than a two card combo like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Pestermite.

[MaximumC]

There's lots of possibilities. You can use Mogg Alarm + Mass Polymorph to make a synthetic Tooth and Nail. Both of those can be fetched with Personal Tutor or Burning Wish. The thing is, it's usually better to just pull out value pieces Griselbrand and Emrakul than a two card combo like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Pestermite.

In Legacy you also get strange cards like :

Feldon of the Third Path - He takes some setup, but it's interesting, and if your re-animation targets make tokens....
Flamewright - An interesting ability, but too slow probably
Nahiri, the Lithomancer - Hey, it's on-color for Tempered Steel, anyway!

I think the only place this deck has legs is Modern. That format does not have much competition for a deck that nuts out on turn 4 with a hasty, 11/11 indestructible trampler.

I also agree this is not a dedicated combo deck. The reason is because there are better combos with pieces that are more useful on their own. However, assuming your deck is deploying lots of artifacts without actually running artifacts as part of its normal gameplan anyway, Shape Anew just becomes a 4 mana trump to anything going on the board not named Ensnaring Bridge.

I envision a tempered-steel-like shell powered by the new Thopter spawners as the place to be. Your choices for cards to enable Shape are:

Inkwell Nexus - So good it might be staple for this archetype
Blinkmoth Nexus - Ditto
Thopter Engineer - The best reason to try this combo is this sweet little lady. Turn 4 swing with BSC whaaaat
Blade Splicer - The spinal column of tempered steel when it was in Standard.
Pia and Kiran Nalaar - Seems very powerful as a curve-topper if you're heavy into artifact tokens.
Goblin Kaboomist - Needs to survive a turn to set you up, but it is a 2-drop. Might fit on curve.
Tuktuk the Explorer - He's fine, but you need a way to kill him. Sometimes your opponent will give you the option, sometimes not, but if you need to spend mana to do so then you've made your BSC more expensive.
Thopter Spy Network - Too expensive for what it does, but what it does is really sweet. Like BB, if this sticks around it can win all by itself.
Whirler Rogue - Another really decent card as a curve-topper, but I hesitate to call it as good as Pia or even Spy Network. Yeah, it can make your BSC unblockable, but I don't think that's going to come up much.
Gild - It's bad removal in the wrong color. Cute, though.
Parasitic Implant - It's like a bad Gild that gives you a 1.
Master Splicer - Pretty crappy unless you're all-in on Golems.
Vital Splicer - Sorta crappy unless you're all-in on Golems.
Sensor Splicer - Pretty crappy EVEN IF you're all-in on Golems!
Master's Call - Pretty crappy unless you're rocking the Anthem effects.
King Macar, the Gold-Cursed - Even worse than Gild!
Ghirapur Gearcrafter - Scrap'n the bottom of the barrel, are we?
Aspiring Aeronaut - Poop in a bag
Maul Splicer - Turds in your mailbox.

[Cire]

Okay - I'll move this into the modern thread since this isn't a legacy concept anymore. Thanks :tongue:

[Poron]

you can play a creature less build with just tokens and Polymorph/Proteus Staff for Emrakul.

a sort of 1 card combo.