Bad Idea - Rushin' River Cascade Combo

It's a bad idea, but the Mississippi River combo deck thread (https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...chnique-Combo)) has me wondering about whether there's a "go fast" version of the cascade combo deck possible. I'm putting this here in the hopes that I'll stop thinking about it.

The lists I've been coming up with are something like:

3 Tibalt's Trickery
4 Hazoret's Undying Fury

4 Violent Outburst
4 Throes of Chaos
4 Creative Technique
4 Invoke Calamity
4 Noise Marine
4 Seething Song
4 Mizzix's Mastery

4 Gemstone Caverns
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Sandstone Needle
4 City of Traitors
4 Tinder Farm
4 Boseiju, Who Endures
1 Forest


The idea here is to fire off Throes of Chaos or Violent Outburst into Tibalt's Trickery and then chain off free casting or copying to make lethal damage with Noise Marines. That said, there are several different challenges with making this work: It's very hard to find a 23 card lands-only mana base that can support firing off Outburst or Throes of Chaos reliably on turn two, but the deck needs to have a high spell density to make Undying Fury credible so it can't play many more lands. Having a large number of copies of Tibalt's Trickery makes for high fizzle rates early in the combo, but having a small number makes the copies of Throes and Outburst dead ends later. There's a limited number of ways to chain "cast without paying" so the list uses some less-than-ideal cards -- Invoke Calamity needs cards in the graveyard while resolving, Mizzix's Mastery needs cards in the graveyard while being cast, and Seething Song needs cards in hand to be useful as part of the combo. Undying Fury will get worse and worse as the various cascade effects thin the deck.

Getting in on the ground floor of the bad idea thread

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Getting in on the ground floor of the bad idea thread

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I guess it's time to find some high school student to code up some NFTs then.

Maybe the newly spoiled Chandra:
https://mythicspoiler.com/mom/cards/...opesbeacon.jpg

Is a better approach than the Hazoret's Undying Fury / Invoke Calamity idea. Then it could be a chain engine that's indifferent to mana cost and is more reliable once it goes off with cards like Aminatou's Augury and Emergent Ultimatum.

Ok so real talk I have been banging my head into the wall for the last few weeks because the idea of Invoke Calmaty->Hazoret+0 Cost spell has been on my radar for a while now and what I have right now is this:

4 empty the warrens
3 wheel of fate
4 desperate ritual
4 pyretic ritual
4 increasing vengeance
4 seething song
4 hazorets undying hury
4 simian spirit guide
2 manamorphose
4 rite of flame
4 crashing footfalls
4 invoke calamity


15 mountain

Right now the format I'm on is NBL modern as I keep retrying. Shells and pieces to make this work

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Ok so real talk I have been banging my head into the wall for the last few weeks because the idea of Invoke Calmaty->Hazoret+0 Cost spell has been on my radar for a while now and what I have right now is this:...
Right now the format I'm on is NBL modern as I keep retrying. Shells and pieces to make this work

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A dream is to hit Invoke Calamity of Hazoret's Undying Fury and then use calamity to cast Fury again. (Calamity does not target, so it can be used to cast spells that went into the graveyard after it was cast.)

With all those rituals, and increasing vengeance it seems like you'd want some kind of recursion like Past in Flames or Underworld Breach that actually casts from the graveyard.

I wonder if there's a way to make Collected Conjuring work, though that would obviously require a very different approach since it only hits sorceries, but it can chain to recur 0 cost ones with Finale of Promise.

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Originally Posted by rufus

Underworld Breach that actually casts from the graveyard.

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Ultrabanned in Legacy within ~1 month, in part due to a collaborated effort on this forum.

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Originally Posted by rufus

A dream is to hit Invoke Calamity of Hazoret's Undying Fury and then use calamity to cast Fury again. (Calamity does not target, so it can be used to cast spells that went into the graveyard after it was cast.)

With all those rituals, and increasing vengeance it seems like you'd want some kind of recursion like Past in Flames or Underworld Breach that actually casts from the graveyard.

I wonder if there's a way to make Collected Conjuring work, though that would obviously require a very different approach since it only hits sorceries, but it can chain to recur 0 cost ones with Finale of Promise.

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Oh I know the dream. I have this on MTGO and sitting on my desk right now.

The rituals are necessary to turbo Fury.
And also to bank mana in-between castings of Wheel where you whiff and then go again.
Vengeance ended up just being nuts. So you cast it during your ritual chain and then it's in the GY so when you cast Calamity you're going to get the double copy effect.
That also means Finale of Promise X=2 lets you cast a 0, AND the Vengence from the GY targeting the 0 giving you 3 total castings.
I tried CoCon, it didn't work. I tried Finale and Electro dominance, I don't think they work well.

I even tried Invoke the Ancients and Rhonas Last Stand in pioneer.
When I say I'm trying everything to make this work I mean everything.
Right now the SB is 4 inevitable betrayal.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

...when you cast Calamity you're going to get the double copy effect. ...

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oh, I brainfarted and though that calamity had the same "exile and copy" template as Mizzix's Mastery.

If we like copying, there's Bonus Round. The "two treasures" spells - Pirate's Pillage/Unexpected Windfall/Big score (and maybe Inspired Tinkering) also have some positive interaction with copy effects and should be pretty gassy as hits off of Undying Fury. (There's even janky treasure acceleration with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, though that's a big push on the mana base.)

A cost reducer like Ruby Medallion could do a lot of work in this deck.

Have you considered adding sol lands to the mana base? There are lots of spells that will turn colorless mana to red mana in the list.

Ok maybe not literally everything but I know I don't want bonus round because i have to cast it first.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Ok maybe not literally everything but I know I don't want bonus round because i have to cast it first.

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Well, it does say "bad idea" at the top here.

In legacy you could try for Ignite the future as a hit from Invoke Calamity too.

Ignite + Vengence = 6.
Build your own Hazoret and a half.

This is a great opportunity to pimp out your deck in Foil Russian cards. Especially because most of them are cheap (not competitive staples).

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Originally Posted by FTW

This is a great opportunity to pimp out your deck in Foil Russian cards. Especially because most of them are cheap (not competitive staples).

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Sorry, invoke was printed too recently and the foil is therefore unplayable

I do suspect rufus' Throes + Trickery tech may have more juice in it than just the sideboard package I'm using it for over in my deck's thread but my thoughts on that topic were more in a "Rhinos-esque" fair deck space, using MDFC lands and stuff, though. This is a much more aggressive take, but I will confess it would be fun if you can get it to work.

I feel like the manabase in the OP isn't optimally suited to the selection of spells in the same list. I appreciate the framework is likely still in quite a lot of flux here, but it looks like the primary "starters" you're using are 4x Throes and 4x Violent Outburst. If that's the case, and you're already running 4x Ancient Tomb 4x City of Traitors, I have to believe this spell suite is asking for at least 1x Mossfire Valley as without Mossfire that's 8x lands that are very bad at casting half of your starters.

Were you confident enough with this as a starting framework of spells that you'd want some input on the manabase? It looks like you're trying to hit 3 CMC and 5 CMC a lot, which means I do think you have more space for non-Sol Lands to better provide your colors.

... okay, played around with the idea a bit, what about something like this? Is this too far from what you were aiming for? (Even if so, I think the Manabase is a closer approximation to appropriate if you want to be running Violent Outburst)

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/uZkPyo2r_UKbiCGmDaIcxA

4x Throes of Chaos
3x Violent Outburst
4x Tibalt's Trickery

4x Chancellor of the Annex
4x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Apex Devestator
4x Creative Technique
4x Turntimber Symbiosis
2x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1x Sire of Insanity

4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
4x Hickory Woodlot
4x Sandstone Needle
4x Tinder Farm
4x Mossfire Valley
2x Taiga

Basically this version of Turbo Throes + Trickery is Turn 2 Hypergenesis deck but the attempt at finding some competitive advantage is that your key spell has Retrace and you're running 26 lands, so you survive discard and can try jamming it multiple times if needed.

I think the problem with the initial list you posted is that the preponderance of 3/4 mana cascaders causes the chaining to cycle through the low CMC part of the deck and quickly deplete the deck of all its Tibalt's Trickeries. This one is just trying to get something hard to deal with before that happens. Hitting Apex Devastator or CT should result in going over the top in most gamestates. Other hits are less guaranteed to win you the game, but hopefully they're enough that your opponent can't ignore them and you can try to leverage Retrace to jam again the next turn.

As it stands I don't think this list as a deck in general but it's the best I was able to do with the premise of this thread in the time allotted and I think it does ... function, and even if you don't like it maybe there's something you can salvage from it (like the manabase at least if your making the core of your deck Throes / Violent Outburst). With regards to the manabase, Mossfire Valley is an important upgrade over Taiga. Mossfire Valley can cast Violent Outburst when combined with any of the 8 colorless Sol-Lands, and still casts both VO and ToC just as well as Taiga in every other scenario except for 3x / 4x Mossfire, which is immensely unlikely.

Also, importantly, Gemstone Cavern doesn't turn either your Turn 2 Throes or your Turn 2 Outburst into a Turn 1, so I'm skeptical they make a lot of sense. It can enable a Turn 2 CT, but reliably casting both Outburst and Throes T2 when they have such different color/CMC needs seems hard enough without a land that's often a Wastes and with such a low land-count since we need to drown Tibalt's Trickery in alternatives to hit so it doesn't keep hitting one of your starters and depleting all the trickeries out before you get anywhere.

... that's it.

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Originally Posted by Rationalist

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... that's it.

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Wow, that's a lot of thoughtful and constructive feedback. Thank you!

Turntimber Symboisis and winning creatures as a payoff package is also clever thinking.

Edit: I finally busted out the spreadsheet this morning, and that does look like a well-optimized mana base.

I did some looking into the decks that got Tibalt's trickery banned in modern, and maybe the issue is that the all-in approach should be running more, rather than fewer lands.

One of the approaches in modern was something like:

4 Throes of Chaos
1 Tibalt's Trickery
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

52 lands

This will wilt in the face of countermagic, but should be decent(ish) against discard, and, using the mulligan rule to find throes can attempt to go off pretty reliably.

And, puling the Throes, Trickery, and 10 lands and replacing those with a 15 card cascade/creative technique package like (4 Creative Technique, 4 Boarding Party, 3 Maelstrom Wanderer, 4 Apex Devastator) turns it into a sub-optimal counterspell resistant infinite turn cascade combo deck more in line with (https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...chnique-Combo)) Rationalist's list is already running 40 lands, so 42 shouldn't be that far off.