Planeswalking – Combo Maker, Newts

Over time regular Magic players will find there is something specific about the game that resonates with them and keeps their interest. It can be an expensive and time consuming hobby so this bond is the key to keeping your interest once the post payday blues hit in. The social aspect of play, the buzz of competition, and the collecting, trading, and hoarding of (often shiny) cards, are things most players will crave. But I find myself obsessing over one thing – deck design.

While it is now pretty much the accepted standard that people will play with pre-built decks or build copies of ‘net decks’ designed by others, I’ve never really seen the appeal. I’m not saying I can build better myself – nothing could be further from the truth as my win ratio will attest – I just get my kicks from testing ideas that come to my otherwise idle mind. My preferred type of desk features one or two cards that I think are snazzy and then building on that to enhance their effects. The correct name of that is ‘card synergy’ or, more simply, a combo deck.

With Magic 2014 still reasonably fresh and attracting a lot of new/returning players, I wanted to give an example of such a combo deck that I built with my son from 2014 cards. While the core combo is quite complicated the setup is fairly basic and easy to follow and can be expanded upon in different ways. Also the cards used are not particularly difficult to find so it’s an ideal example. Note: when I talk about a card cost and it being cheap or expensive I am referring to its cost to cast, not any monetary value.

The reason the setup is easy is that each card names the other cards used in the combo. This combo was hard coded by the designers:

  Here we have a low cost, weak creature that has the ability to weaken another creature on death. Next to it we have a neat artifact that allows us to sacrifice any creature we have to gain 4 life. But if that creature is specifically a Festering Newt the effect is enhanced and causes life loss from our opponent(s) in addition to our life gain. A simple and limited combo. We’re going to need more newts to make this a game winner. Enter the Bogbrew Witch:

Here is the final card that is key to this combo. The Bogbrew Witch allows us to actively search for and bring into play more copies of our Festering Newt and Bubbling Cauldron cards. In addition to that the Witch enhances the Newt’s ‘on death’ weakening ability to be far more powerful. If you draw the Witch before you have any Cauldrons or Newts in play you can use it to finish setting up. Once this combo is out it triggers like this:

Pay (1) and Tap the Cauldron to sacrifice the Newt. Your opponent loses life and you gain it.

Upon its death the Newt gives an opponent’s creature -4/-4 until end of the turn. This should be targeted upon creatures that have less than 4 toughness so it kills them.

Pay (2) and tap the Witch to get yourself another Newt.

The timing is flexible as all of this can be done during or at the end of an opponent’s turn ensuring your resources are used up of the shortest amount of time. If you think your opponent is going to directly target your newts then only bring them into play right before you’re going to sacrifice them to limit their options.

Now this is all well and good but as Magic rules only allow for 4 of any one card to be in a deck you’re going to run out of Newts pretty quick and this is where you need to choose your own path. I went with the following two cards to help fix this issue:

  Once all my Newts are in my graveyard I can use the ability of the Corpse Hauler to get one back into my hand or the side effect of the Elixir of Immortality to shuffle my graveyard back into my library and start using the Witch to pull them out again. In addition, the Elixir has the nice bonus of some life gain and the Hauler can serve as a blocking cannon fodder if needed.

There is little to no focus on dealing standard combat damage in this deck but you can’t ignore the fact that your opponent will be attacking so I’ve filled the rest of the desk with some more cannon fodder in the form of weak creatures that can be easily brought back into play when killed such at the Tenacious Dead, and a couple of Vampire Nighthawks (from M2013) as their Flying and Deathtouch abilities make them superb deterrents for would be attackers.

The final card is really there to be a kick in the teeth, especially in multiplayer matches. Sanguine Bond is card that lets us cause life loss when we gain life. So when the Cauldron causes our opponent to lose 4 life and us to gain 4 life for sacrificing a Newt we get to assign an additional 4 life loss. However, in a four-player multiplayer game this gets a but crazy. Here are the steps:

Pay (1) and Tap the Cauldron to sacrifice the Newt. ALL opponents lose 4 life each. We gain life equal to that loss, so in a four player game you gain 12 life.

Thanks to the Sanguine Bond we can then assign another 12 life loss to a single opponent!

Then the Newt triggers. Upon its death the Newt gives an opponent’s creature -4/-4 as usual.

Sanguine Bond can also help later in the game when you are out of Newts and have no way to bring them back into play. Simply sacrifice any creature to the Cauldron for 4 life gain and that will allow you to assign 4 life loss to target player. Tenacious Dead are great for this as they can be returned to play after being sacrificed. Magic rules state that creatures with the Regenerate ability cannot use this ability if they were sacrificed, however the wording of Tenacious Dead bypasses this rule as it is simply returned to the battlefield, not specifically regenerated.

So now you have a multi card combo that is a pretty easy to execute, reasonably simple to build, and a hell of a lot of fun to play. My thanks again to the Wednesday Night Magic players at Geek Retreat, Glasgow for their help and continued support in my Planeswalking!