wrongwaygoback: The Single Best Combo Ever In Standard
Magic the Gathering Blog
So I thought I'd writeup a small walk-through of the single best combo in the current Magic the Gathering Standard format.

Combo Pieces:

Mirror of Fate
Immortal Coil
Colfenor's Plans
Platinum Angel

Support Pieces:

Anything that kills things (Doom Blade, Infest, Tendrils of Corruption]
Draw Spells [eg. Sign in Blood]
Discard Spells [eg. Mind Shatter, cyclers]

Win Condition:

That's your choice. The combo itself doesn't win you the game, just makes sure you have the cards to win the game. I recommend going for something fancy like Dread Warlock.

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First let's look at the cards:

Mirror of Fate [5]

Tap, Sacrifice Mirror of Fate: Choose up to seven face-up exiled cards you own. Exile all the cards from your library, then put the chosen cards on top of your library.

Immortal Coil [2BB]

Tap, Exile two cards from your graveyard: Draw a card.
If damage would be dealt to you, prevent that damage. Exile a card from your graveyard for each 1 damage prevented this way.
When there are no cards in your graveyard, you lose the game.

Colfenor's Plans [2BB]

When Colfenor's Plans enters the battlefield, exile the top seven cards of your library face down.
You may look at and play cards exiled with Colfenor's Plans.
Skip your draw step.
You can't cast more than one spell each turn.

Platinum Angel [7]

You can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game.

---***---

With that in mind, here's the combo.


Phase 1a: Filling your graveyard.

This can be done in a variety of ways. Probably the best way is to be killing your opponent's things in order to keep yourself alive. Or, you could dump your hand into the graveyard with Mind Shatter, or cycling it away. Or Rotting Rats. The main thing is to make sure you get at least one Mirror of Fate, plus your win condition, into the graveyard.

Phase 1b: Protecting Your Life

It's very important at this point to start protecting your life. This is why you cast Platinum Angel as soon as possible, in between the killing and the discarding and suchlike. Platinum Angel will protect you from losing to the Immortal Coil and the lack of library after Mirror of Fate.

Phase 2a: Crafting the Perfect Hand

With Immotal Coil and Platinum Angel in play, you can now essentially start filling up your Exiled zone without fear of dying. The important thing is to get your win condition (whatever it may be) plus a Mirror of Fate into the exiled zone so you can really start comboing out. You can either do this using the Mirror of Fate's drawing engine, or using Sign in Blood to draw two cards and Exile two others from your Graveyard.

Phase 2b: Setting off the combo

With Coil out, your life protected by Immortal Coil, and the Immortal Coil lose condition protected by Platinum Angel, it's now time to trigger the Mirror of Fate. You can essentially sacrifice the Mirror, and then put your win conditions from Exile onto your library. Note, that you can even use the Immortal Coil in response to saccing the Mirror of Fate in order to re-Exile the Mirror of Fate from the graveyard, allowing it to be one of your seven cards you then return to your library.

Phase 3: Pulling everything into your hand

With the seven cards in your library and everything else Exiled, you then cast Colfenor's Plans, drawing the exact seven cards you want. Either you can go off the next turn, or you can cast the Mirror of Fate again and get the next seven cards you want. Note you will want some sort of enchantment killer to kill the Colfenor's Plans, sending it to the graveyard, then you can Exile it with Immortal Coil and return it with the Mirror of Fate.

---***---

And there you go. For a mere 20 mana across four cards you have created the worlds best card drawing engine ever. Full stop. No questions allowed.

Also, if you ever pull this off, I will have your babies.

1 Comments:

I'm serious, I'll have all your lovely babies.

By Blogger wrongwaygoback, at 25 August 2009 10:36 AM  

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