Magic-GAF: Going to my first competitive EDH tournament tonight. Nervous, my deck isn't finished. Here's what I'm bringing, and what it does:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1038173
The deck is a little slow for combo thanks to the lack of 1-drops capable of getting animar out on turn 2; I feel like Elvish Spirit Gude & Simian Spirit guide could speed the deck up a turn, but they're dead draws unless my hand is already kind of nutty.
I'm only running two cards capable of powering out a turn 2 animar, and trying to think of what I can do to add a third (arbor elf).
For those of you who don't know, here's how the deck functions (the main combo):
t1: mana accel (if possible; if not, delay the combo a turn)
t2: Play animar.
t3: Use a combination of untappers/mana-neutral creatures (deceiver exarch, wood elves, peregrine drake, palinchron, metamorph etc) and bounce (man 'o war, venser, aether adept, shrieking drake, etc) to put an absurdly large number of counters on animar. You may now draw a large portion of your deck by repeatedly bouncing replacement creatures if you don't have a way of ending the game (mulldrifter, sea gate, elvish visionary), or just sit back and tutor for anything to end the game: palinchron always does it, primeval titan usually can, and tidespout tyrant makes people wet their pants.
If you draw into Time Warp/Stretch/Temporal/Walk, you can cast one, and tutor up a chronarch (inf. with riptide), witness (inf. with curio/shard/basically everything), or mnemonic wall. Hold back your bounce effects. Use them to take 3+ turns in a row, kill an opponent, and hope to draw into an infinite.
4: Did you not draw any of the tutors, combo enablers, sifters, or pieces of time magic in your deck, despite half the deck being these? Sucks. Keep casting shrieking drake/man 'o war/whatever, hope Animar doesn't die, and try to win via aggro.
Otherwise, win the game in any of the ways stated on turn 3.
Here's a very incomplete list of the win conditions/infinite combos:
Birthing Pod + Time Warp effects + any creature.
The pod chain is set up such that you can keep podding into Izzet Chronarch effects turn after turn, then pod into creatures capable of bouncing said effects. While this isn't technically infinite, it's very easily tutorable, fast, and hard to predict.
Time Warp effects + One of the following: (Cloudstone Curio, Tidespout Tyrant, Crystal Shard, or Riptide Laboratory if card 3 is a wizard or you have a bounce wizard) + one of the following: (Eternal Witness, Mnemonic Wall, Izzet Chronarch, Archeomancer)
Pretty self-explanatory. It's slow and you need a -ton- of mana to do it, but with Primeval Titan tutorable in most games, it still comes up pretty often.
Imperial Recruiter.
Yes, that is the only non-general card you need.
Play imperial recruiter grabbing phyrexian metamorph. Cast metamorph copying recruiters, grabbing shrieking drake. Cast shrieking drake (you now have three counters on animar and metamorph is free) bouncing metamorph. Cast metamorph copying shrieking drake until animar is large enough to kill your opponent, and then cast it again to kill their general. Attack for lethal.
This can happen on turn 3, and is best suited for 1v1 play.
Aluren + any 3cc or less bounce creature
This is the only turn 2 infinite in the deck. You play aluren, then animar for free, then infinite man-o'-war or whatever. It's powerful but incredibly unlikely; also, I don't run enchantment tutoring.
Shrieking Drake
Gives you the ability to pay U in order to put a counter on animar. Not powerful, but when you consider how useful shrieking drake is in other combos, it is a -fantastic- backup plan.
Palinchron + animar at 3+ counters (if you don't otherwise have the mana) + 4 or more islands in play
Generates infinite mana & power for animar.
Cloudstone Curio + any two non-artifact mana-neutral creatures.
This could give you anything from just near-infinite counters (deceiver exarch & wood elves) to infinite mana (peregrine drake + anything)
Intuition
If there's only one other person in the game, name:
Academy Ruins
Mindslaver
Life from the Loam
and you have just won the game via infinite lock.
If you're low on mana and the game has just begun, name your three targets as:
Utility land (usually cradle)
Fetchland (usually rainforest)
Life from the Loam
You will never miss a land drop for the rest of the game, you just tutored a nonbasic, and you can infinitely recur strip mine if you wanna be a dick.
My favorite, and the most common:
Tidespout Tyrant + Basically Anything + Animar
Mana crypt, mana vault, simulacrum, sol ring, top, expedition map, ULAMOG, wood elves, exarch.....
I'd say there's close to twenty cards in the deck Tidespout can go infinite off of. He's completely nuts in here, and although expensive, he can come out on turn 4 with the fixing/accell in this deck. Best part is, he's VERY often underrated. In games with early interruption, I will commonly cast a Concecrated Sphinx of Primeval Titan unnecessarily to serve as a kill-target, as many players have never seen a tidespout hit the field.
Imma stop for now, because you get the point, but there's 10+ more where that came from. They're just easier to see.
Please let me know if you think of any improvements. The following cards are currently not in the deck due to cost concerns:
Volcanic Island
Taiga
the RU shockland
any onslaught fetches I'm missing
Temporal Manipulation
Capture of Jingzhou
Loyal Retainer
