[Deck] Imperial Bomberman

[Wanderlust]

1. Overview
2. Decklists
3. Principles
4. Tips and tricks
5. Strengths
6. Weaknesses
7. The Sideboard
8. Thanks

(Primer last updated on 8/11/18 to include a new high-placing list in a large event and to finally remove all references to the banned Sensei’s Divining Top.)

1. Overview

Imperial Bomberman is a combo-control deck based around the infinite mana engine of Auriok Salvagers (“Bomberman”) + Lion's Eye Diamond (LED). Cracking LED for WWW and returning it to your hand for 1W with Salvagers nets W per loop. After making arbitrarily large amounts of W, the loop can be used to make mana of other colors. This mana is most often spent to make a gigantic Walking Ballista for the win. Imperial Recruiter, which searches up Auriok Salvagers or Walking Ballista, and Trinket Mage, which searches up Lion's Eye Diamond or Walking Ballista, serve as the deck's primary tutors, while also providing card advantage and a beatdown plan B. Cavern of Souls naming human (or sometimes construct) allows the crucial creatures in the deck to be cast through counterspells.

The Bomberman combo package is interesting in Legacy for its resilience: it completely disregards Abrupt Decay and solitary Lightning Bolts, and is strong against many forms of graveyard hate (ie., Surgical Extraction, Tormod's Crypt), since with enough mana available, Auriok Salvagers can stack a new trigger on top of the hate. Also, because of the tutor power of Imperial Recruiter and Trinket Mage, the deck's sideboard is very flexible, allowing for a suite of silver bullets to shore up most bad matchups.

2. Decklists with notable finishes

Top 8s:
April 1st, 2018 Christian Hammer, Top 4 at a 79 player event in Lucerne, Switzerland.
February 13th, 2017 Christian Hammer, Top 8 at a 47 player event in Lucerne, Switzerland.
April 13th, 2014 Conor Brown, Top 8 at a 52 player SCQ IQ in Northglenn, Colorado.

A sample maindeck, as of 8/11/18

4 Auriok Salvagers
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Trinket Mage
4 Walking Ballista
3 Hope of Ghirapur

1 Saheeli Rai

1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Mox Opal
1 Pithing Needle
4 Pyrite Spellbomb

2 Swords to Plowshares

1 Ancient Den
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Flooded Strand
1 Great Furnace
1 Island
1 Karakas
1 Plains
1 Plateau
2 Seat of the Synod
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island


3. Principles

A fundamental concept behind current builds is to run enough copies of the "kill conditions" to make Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond function as much like a 2-card combo as possible. Prior to the printing of Walking Ballista, 6-7 kill conditions were common (4 Pyrite Spellbomb, 1 Aether Spellbomb, and some combination of Nihil Spellbomb, Conjurer's Baubles, or Phyrexian Furnaces). Current thinking with Ballista is to run 7-10.

The deck draws strength from its ability to shift roles between combo, control, and even aggro. Almost every card in the deck is multi-functional. When on the combo plan, the breakdown of functionality is:

Engine:
Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond = infinite mana

Kill:
Pyrite Spellbomb or Walking Ballista = infinite damage
Aether Spellbomb = draw your deck into a kill condition

Tutors:
Trinket Mage
Imperial Recruiter
Inventors' Fair

Protection:
Hope of Ghirapur
Cavern of Souls

Mana:
Lands
Mox Opal
Lion's Eye Diamond

However, when in the control role, the deck can be broken down quite differently: Pyrite Spellbomb, Walking Ballista, Engineered Explosives, and Aether Spellbomb are a suite of removal rather than just the conclusion of the combo, while the tutors may not be gunning to simply assemble the combo, rather they may find a bullet to answer a specific threat. Even Auriok Salvagers, in the absence of Lion’s Eye Diamond, can still be a powerful source of card advantage.

Depending on the game state and the flex slots, the deck may even be able to shift into an aggro role. In flex-slot contention, Cranial Plating is a prime candidate to bolster this plan, while Lightning Bolt could join Walking Ballista and Pyrite Spellbomb to provide the deck a substantial amount of “reach” (direct damage which can kill an opponent outside of combat).

4. Tips and tricks

9 mana + Imperial Recruiter: with LED and a kill condition (in hand, battlefield, or graveyard), it takes a total of 9 mana to win the turn you cast Imperial Recruiter. Note that live LEDs can contribute to this total. “Counting to 9” in this deck occurs fairly often. The most appealing scenario: Ancient Tomb, Mox Opal, 2x LED, Imperial Recruiter, kill condition = win on turn 1.

As noted in Carsten Kotter's article on Star City Games, Aether Spellbomb essentially turns Trinket Mage + Auriok Salvagers into a (very expensive) 2 card combo: "play Trinket Mage, get Aether Spellbomb, bounce Trinket Mage, replay it, get Lion's Eye Diamond," combo off.

It's almost always best to crack LEDs in response to Imperial Recruiter or Trinket Mage "enters the battlefield" triggers instead of with the counterable spell on the stack. (Be sure to clearly announce that you are retaining priority when you announce the trigger.)

A really common misplay with the deck is to crack LEDs or other artifacts before making mana with Mox Opal, only to realize that you no longer have metalcraft. Mox Opal WILL make you sad if you are not paying attention!

5. Strengths

-Resilient to countermagic: Cavern of Souls makes the combo engine, and the main suite of tutors, uncounterable. Even without Cavern, many {U}-cost counterspells, such as Spell Snare and Flusterstorm, are blanks, while Spell Pierce is only conditionally relevant.
-Generally strong against any deck that wants to play creatures. The removal suite can answer most threats, and stalling with Imperial Recruiter or Trinket Mage chump blocks against the rest can buy enough time to assemble the combo.
-Answering disruptive creatures (eg., Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Phyrexian Revoker) is easy to do, given the slew of maindeck creature removal. Note that Pyrite Spellbomb, Karakas, Walking Ballista, and Engineered Explosives are all colorless and thus get around an active Mother of Runes protecting the hatebears. Many disruptive creatures, such as Ethersworn Cannonist, Gaddock Teeg, Leovold Emissary of Trest, and Lodestone Golem, do not stop our combo to begin with.
-Auriok Salvagers can stack triggers on top of one-off graveyard hate to blank it. This applies especially to Surgical Extraction, Tormod's Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, and Faerie Macabre.
-The deck is great against two of the most common removal spells in the format: Abrupt Decay and Lightning Bolt.

6. Weaknesses

-A slow goldfish (turn 3-4 consistently.)
-Mana-hungry. The mana base can be shaky under pressure from Ghost Quarter, Wasteland, Back to Basics, or Blood Moon.
-Susceptible to spot-removal: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Murderous Cut, Dismember, Fatal Push, etc. cheaply and effectively disrupt the combo by killing (or exiling) Auriok Salvagers.
-The deck presents a lot of targets for Stifle.
-Vulnerable to a long list of problematic non-creature (ie., harder to answer) hate, including: Counterbalance, Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, Chalice of the Void (although Walking Ballista now makes Chalice on 1 much less problematic), Pithing Needle, Null Rod, Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace, Mindbreak Trap, etc.

7. The Sideboard

Imperial Bomberman's sideboard is quite flexible. As a general rule, it's best to make all of our tutors live against the primary threats we aim to answer and to diversify hate as much as possible.

Potential Graveyard Hate:
Nihil Spellbomb - also conveniently draws our deck with the Bomberman infinite mana combo online.
Grafdigger's Cage - conveniently also good against Elves (Green Sun’s Zenith, Natural Order.)
Tormod's Crypt - the 0 cost can be important, because it allows Trinket Mage + acceleration to be grave hate regularly on turn 2, and even sometimes on turn 1.
Faerie Macabre - when faced with a truly graveyard-abuse heavy meta, a piece of hate tutorable with Imperial Recruiter.

Potential answers to troublesome artifacts and enchantments:
War Priest of Thune and Manic Vandal - Recruitable humans that go nicely with Cavern of Souls.
Qasali Pridemage - the most versatile card in this category - Recruitable, and kills most relevant pieces of non-creature hate, in addition to bolstering the beatdown plan. The only downside is the {G} in its mana cost - fortunately, Cavern of Souls on Wizard also casts Trinket Mage. Mox Opal also helps. Finding room for 1 Savannah in the 75 makes this card quite reasonable.
Reclamation Sage - Its advantage over Pridemage is the ability to be cast with only one color of mana off of, say, Mox Opal. This can matter under a Blood Moon.
Mangara of Corondor - can get cute with the Karakas in the main.
Seal of Cleansing and Oblivion Ring - tutorable with Enlightened Tutor.
Devout Witness - courtesy of Vintage.
Disenchant - oldy but goody.
Abrade
Fragmentize - doesn't destroy Chalice on 1, which was formerly the main reason not to play it, but now that an astute opponent will play Chalice on 0 more often than on 1 (since Ballista can still kill them under the combo if they go for 1), Fragmentize is in contention.
Boompile or Nevinyrall's Disk - for when killing just one thing at a time just isn't enough.

Potential Sneak and Show hate (all with uses in other matchups):
Phyrexian Revoker and Pithing Needle - to turn off Sneak Attack. Versatile - can also shut off Scavenging Ooze, Grindstone, Griselbrand, Planeswalkers, etc.
Ensnaring Bridge - relevant against Eldrazi.
Peacekeeper - relevant against Elves and Eldrazi.
Aether Spellbomb
(Oblivion Ring and Mangara of Corondor, from above, also relevant against Sneak and Show.)

Potential Storm Hate:
Ethersworn Canonist - doesn't even stop our own combo!
Children of Korlis (this tech courtesy of the Tin Fins progenitors Richard Cheese and .dk) - can be activated for profit in response to the final storm copy from their Tendrils of Agony that would otherwise kill you. Also playable against Burn and Dredge, unlike most other Storm hate.
Silence or Orim's Chant - probably too narrow for inclusion, but they are great 1cc answers to Storm.
Flusterstorm
Chalice of the Void - contentious, since it often hits our own combo. However, with Walking Ballista now allowing us to combo off even with Chalice on 1, Chalice is a much more appealing option. A 1-of in the board to tutor up with Trinket Mage seems very reasonable.

Other options:
Enlightened Tutors - more ways of finding silver bullets in matchups where you need to ASAP. Example: searching up Ethersworn Canonist or Chalice against Storm.
Meddling Mage - a versatile sideboard option. Relevant against most combo and control matchups.
Umezawa's Jitte and Cranial Plating – for when going beatdown looks likely (ie., in the face of lots of hate.)
Circle of Protection: Red - for burn, of course, which is a pretty dire matchup without this and the Enlightened Tutors to consistently find it.
Helm of Obedience - a hilarious way to respond to an opponent's Rest in Peace.
Painter's Servant + Grindstone combo - fits into the deck like a glove. However, does it solve enough problems to justify hogging sideboard slots?
Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon
Leyline of Sanctity

8. Thanks

Special thanks to .dk for contributing to the primer and for being a valuable testing partner and idea-generator for this deck. Also, thanks to the Front Range Legacy community for building a supportive scene here in Colorado.