[DECK] Hedron Alignment Combo

[Finn]

FTW, that may work. I really do not know, as it is a different deck. Would it be better than the Enchantress deck that already exists though? If not, don't bother.

Question:
The deck absolutely needs a free card that exiles from the graveyard. So, Surgical Extraction or Faerie Macabre? I have been testing with the fairy, but it is often stuck in my hand. I actually think that Extraction will do the same, but I am open to suggestion about it. Having a Relic or two is almost certainly advisable, as once it is deployed it serves the same purpose. But of course it suffers the same problem.

With all of this graveyard hate, I am wondering if there is some cool way we can make other decks depend on their graveyards more than they typically would and then make them pay for it. I had a deck that did this back in the Treasure Cruise era when decks were even more blue-centric to modest success. http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ght=extraction

Possibly a small package like this:
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
2 Archive Trap

I'm not sure if that will do, so here is a compromise.

4 Hedron Alignment
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Lim-Dul's Vault

4 Surgical Extraction
2 Extirpate
2 Murderous Cut

2 Conjurer's Bauble
4 Lotus Petal

2 Ancient Tomb
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
2 Island


The Conjurer's Baubles are for Thoughtseize and company. In the spirit of durdling, I am also wondering about Snapcasters and Cabal Therapy again. This setup works well with Surgical Extraction and Intuition.

[FTW]

Why Surgical Extraction main? Would you just target one copy and then "fail to find" the others so you don't have to exile the other in your GY and the one in your hand? You're just using it as a 0cc [card]Coffin Purge[/card] then, which makes me wonder if Macabre would be better because it at least blocks Delver.

So my understanding is this plays out as a 3-card combo:
1 - Cast Alignment for 2U
2 - Upkeep, with trigger on stack, Intuition for 2U into 3 Alignments
3 - With trigger still on stack, use 0cc exile to exile one copy

It looks like your list is just cantrips and FoW and mana acceleration, trying to power out this combo as quickly as possible.

Realistically, no matter how many cantrips and sol lands you throw in, this is not going to be even one of the top 5 fastest combo decks in the format. Legacy just already has consistent combo decks that goldfish faster. Even rogue decks like Food Chain can go off at a similar clock but with fewer moving pieces needed to start.

Instead of just trying to go off quickly, what if you play the same Alignment+Intuition+exile strategy but in a Ux control-combo shell? Sort of like the role Splinter Twin had in Modern. Sure, the deck could just go off on turn 4. But more often the deck played out as an interactive Ux deck that could disrupt other linear decks but could also threaten to go "Oops, I win" once the game is under control. That may be your best niche, since otherwise you're trying to all-out goldfish a 3-card combo that involves resolving 2 3cc spells...

A lot of the cards would be the same, except you could play more interaction in place of some of the dig spells and mana accel.

E.g.


//Spells: 26
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
4 Innocent Blood
3 Spell Pierce
2 Counterspell
1 Murderous Cut

//Combo: 7
4 Hedron Alignment
3 Intuition

//Other Permanents: 8
4 Relic of Progenitus
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

//Lands: 19
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Underground Sea
3 Island
2 Swamp
2 Ancient Tomb

//Sideboard: 15
3 Surgical Extraction
1 The Abyss
2 Flusterstorm
2 Toxic Deluge
1 Spell Snare
2 Disfigure
1 Noxious Revival
1 Intuition
2 Inquisition of Kozilek


Or something roughly like that. You'll probably get random incidental value from Relic shutting off DRS and Delve stuff, and in a pinch it at least cantrips for you.

Web of Inertia might be interesting to shut off creatures in such a deck until you can assemble the win. Or Ensnaring Bridge maybe.

[Finn]

Some results to report. I playtested this list extensively over the weekend:

4 Hedron Alignment
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Lim-Dul's Vault

4 Surgical Extraction
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Murderous Cut

1 Coffin Purge
2 Conjurer's Bauble
3 Mox Diamond

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
1 Island

I began the first maybe six or seven games with the Lotus Petals when I realized something I really should have seen without the bother of testing. Lotus Petal is entirely wrong since you need exactly three mana two turns in a row, with the second turn being on your upkeep. So the Petals can almost never save you a turn. I switched them to basically Mox Diamonds and tweaked the mana base.

Goldfishing (22 games):

Wins on my upkeep on turn...
1 (0 times)
2 (0)
3 (6)
4 (11)
5 (4)
6 and up (1)

These numbers tell me that it is remarkably smooth and reliable. I got this far with two other combo decks in the past that were rogue at the time, Four Horsemen and Belcher. Four Horsemen was less consistent in a lot of ways. Belcher reliably went of on turn 2 at the latest, often winning a turn or two later attacking with tokens. But that does mean an actual kill turn between 1 and 4. This deck nearly equals that.

Against Pox:

Abysmal. Sinkhole hurts. Smallpox is terribly hard to overcome. I actually do not know if it is typical for Smallpox to hinder combo decks so much. Hymn to Tourach is about the same. All in all, painful games. I won a few of these because I extracted all of his good win conditions and we played on pointlessly until he realized he was going through his deck faster and with fewer cards left in it. It hurts to recall this again. Learning experience...deep breaths. Moving on.

Against Death and Taxes:

Decent. All preboard, I won 6 of 10. The DnT board is scary though, so it does not look great. Like all combo decks facing DnT I won a lot when I did not see Thalia and I lost when I did.

Against Shardless BUG

Bad. Thoughtseize in this deck pretty much sends me go into a tailspin. The Conjurer's Baubles are supposed to help with that but they are not strong. I think that a sideboard could be assembled to handle the combination of Force of Will and discard. But at what expense?


Upcoming changes to reflect issues.
It is terribly fragile. If they counter Alignment or make you discard it, the whole deck nearly unravels. The problem is that the tools to repair the situation are weak and useless as far as enabling the deck in other circumstances. I view this as a deal-breaker for building the deck fast. I want to reimagine it as control with a combo finish, similar to what some folks in this thread have advocated, and what I have hinted at. Here's a start:

4 Hedron Alignment
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Archive Trap
1 Recall

3 Baleful Strix

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Surgical Extraction
2 Murderous Cut

4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
3 Island

This deck should be lots of fun to play because of all of the cool interactions. Recall really is not the best, but my efforts with Shrouded Lore were very bad. My figuring is that my next tests will reiterate the problems with having an Alignment end up in the graveyard, but fill me in on the details of how to manage the deck in a longer game.

[apple713]

Stuff

I would imagine chrome mox is better because if the low land count and synergy with hedron.

Also, i cant imagine why you have archive trap included.

Side note, mono blue control has not prrformed well in legacy for as long as i can remember. Other formats have had success but i dont know that you will have what you need without opening your self up to other color options.

At this point wherr you play a slow control deck thats rather weak with a fragile combo, what is the advantage over other decks?

[rufus]

I want to see Hedron Archive in a troll mode deck like:


4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void

4 Force of Will
4 Flusterstorm
4 Intution

4 Hedron Archive
4 Embargo
4 Pucca's Mischief
4 Thought Lash

4 Maelstrom Djinn

4 Chrome Mox
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
8 Island


More seriously:

What about Day's Undoing or Diminishing Returns as a way to put stuff back into the library?

[Finn]

I did a good bit more testing of this and it feels pretty fragile because of the fact that you must have complete control of the zone each of the four cards are in for victory. It goldfishes brilliantly, but both discard and countermagic are very hard to combat. I am thetefor done with this deck for now.

[Malchar]

Against discard it might be time to use skull of orm :)

[Blastoderm]

I love the idea but you're soft to abrupt decay as well as graveyard hate :(

EDIT: Oh shit it has hexproof! I'm an idiot.

[Freggle]

To piggyback on what FTW said a page ago this might be a good to great enchantment combo deck.

I don't think you want to to be Enchantress, but you can use the engine of:

4 Kruphix's Insight
4 Commune with the Gods
4 Sylvan Library
[potentially] 4 Enchantress's Presence / Ponder / Brainstorm

You have a really good exile spell in Oblivion Ring

And a solid back-up plan in Replenish post replenish exile 1 with oring, and put one back in the yard with seal of primordium
…or Sylvan Library / Words of Wind Combo

You have hate for common hate in

Seal of Cleansing / Seal of Primordium
Stony Silence
Oblivion ring
Ground Seal

Or you could have a transformational board into RIP / Helm, and or maindeck Parallax Wave // Opalescence combo --exiles all non-hexproof Enchantments and creatures at instant speed, and makes your dudes pseudo vigilant.

So with a list like the one below you have the following combos:

Insight or Commune into Replenish to cheat piles of enchantments into play. –Perhaps Herdon Combo

Words of wind - Sylvan -- you can replace your additional draws to bounce up to 3 a turn per Sylvan.

herndon combo

The List:

3 Replenish
4 Kruphix's Insight
4 Commune with the Gods
4 Hedron Alignment
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Wild Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
2 Seal of Primordium
3 Sylvan Library
3 Words of Wind
4 Enchantress's Presence
1 Opalescence

4 Misty Rainforest
2 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
1 Plains
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
4 Serra's Sanctum
5 Forest

[Finn]

Freggle, the combo itself is very strong and compact. Intuition on upkeep is an extremely strong wincon. Fitting this into anything else simply weakens the best part of the deck.

It's problem is its susceptibility to hate and the lack of good redundancy.

[atosecond]

I actually think Thing in the Ice fits the Combo-Control game plan very well, but I'd defer to Finn.

Not sure if this makes a mono-U variant viable.

I do definitely prefer discard in general to counters in decks like these.

[Finn]

Darn. I still have this built and I really do win a lot of games with it. It has all of the same problems as ever. But the deck wins so resoundingly rather often.

I have to wonder if going into green for Regrowth and/or Abrupt Decay is worth the effort. Regrowth would certainly go a long way to shoring up the fragility, but I probably lose nearly a full turn on average.

[btm10]

Darn. I still have this built and I really do win a lot of games with it. It has all of the same problems as ever. But the deck wins so resoundingly rather often.

I have to wonder if going into green for Regrowth and/or Abrupt Decay is worth the effort. Regrowth would certainly go a long way to shoring up the fragility, but I probably lose nearly a full turn on average.

You also get Krosan Grip to break up relevant Graveyard hate, get to play mana dorks like Hierarch or DRS, as well as some enchantment synergies. You could even go Bant for combo-control and even more enchantment synergies.

[atosecond]

Darn. I still have this built and I really do win a lot of games with it. It has all of the same problems as ever. But the deck wins so resoundingly rather often.

I have to wonder if going into green for Regrowth and/or Abrupt Decay is worth the effort. Regrowth would certainly go a long way to shoring up the fragility, but I probably lose nearly a full turn on average.

What about Noxious Revival Finn?

Phyrexian mana, instant speed, shouldn't be too bad at slowing the deck down.

[Finn]

We disregarded noxious revival back when we first considered it. But honestly nobody ever tested it that I know of. Reconsidering it though, it really seems good for what this deck wants. Being instant and free is great for outmaneuvering hate too. And you don't really HAVE to go into green for it.

Hmm.

[Smea.gol.lum]

We disregarded noxious revival back when we first considered it. But honestly nobody ever tested it that I know of. Reconsidering it though, it really seems good for what this deck wants. Being instant and free is great for outmaneuvering hate too. And you don't really HAVE to go into green for it.

Hmm.

Noxious Revival could be fine as a 1-of. Then you can make an Intuition pile consisting of 2 Hedron Alignments and 1 Noxious Revival in case of having exiled Hedron Alignment already (e.g. via FoW).

Other cards to consider:
Ancestral Knowledge (digs 10 cards deep for Intuition while exiling Alignment in top 10 if wanted, could be too slow though)
Rite of Undoing (exiles Alignment in gy, slows down opponent, creates card advantage in conjunction with SDT: tap SDT, in resp bounce it, requires you to run enough permanents that you can bounce though, e.g. SDT, Knowledge, CB, Copy Enchantment)
Copy Enchantment (copy Alignment, bounce Alignment with Rite of Undoing later on)