Sometimes in Magic, you feel like a game is in the bag. You are miles ahead of your opponent and are positioned firmly in the driver’s seat, knowing that the next turn you will claim victory and all the glory that entails. Then, you stare on in disbelief as your opponent plays card after card, creating a stack of spells that end with your crushing defeat. You then swallow your pride, pick up your deck and say “game two” as you try to figure out what just happened.
Combo decks have existed since the very start of Magic the Gathering and have been the bane of most players, both casual and competitive. Through a series of stacked triggers, complementary effects and powerful payoffs, players have been able to win games out of nowhere. Now while I am no fan of these styles of decks, I have to say I am in awe of the players that come up with these brews. While some combo decks are simple two card affairs, some are marvels of deck building that make me very jealous for those players knowledge and skill of the game.
One such deck is currently making the rounds on Arena’s Historic format, and has halted my advance up the ladder on more than one occasion. So today, while we wait for Kaldheim to release so we can try out some new decks, I thought it would be good to look this new threat to better understand how it works so we can see what can be done to beat it. So, let’s have a look at Neoform combo for Historic.
Let’s start off by looking at the meat of the deck, with the actual combo itself. The idea is to play a Sea Gate Stormcaller along with a copy of Neoform. Because of Sea Gate Stormcaller’s ability, the Neoform will be copied, leaving the original on the bottom of the stack. With the copy we get a Dualcaster Mage making another copy of the original Neoform. We then repeat this with the rest of the Dualcaster Mages in the deck and then again with a playset of Glasspool Mimics, each copying a Dualcaster Mage. Lastly, with the last copy of Neoform we get a Tuktuk Rubblefort to give all these Dualcaster Mages haste, and then use the original copy to get Combat Celebrant in order to attack twice. GG. Game two.
As you can see, this is a heck of a swing that can ends games in an instant. The rest of the deck is aimed at supporting this combo either by acceleration, card filtering or counter magic to protect the combo. For acceleration we have a collection of mana producers in the form of Llanowar Elves, Gilded Goose and Tangled Florahedron to give us the mana to play everything as early as turn three. Next, we have a playset of Shimmer of Possibility to help us dig down to find our combo pieces. And finally, we have Pact of Negation to stop anyone preventing us from going off.
We finish off the deck with our mana base, with full playsets of Ketria Triome, Cragcrown Pathway // Timbercrown Pathway, Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway, Hinterland Harbor and Breeding Pool. If you aren’t swimming in wild cards then you could decide to go for a slightly more budget mana base. But the deck is designed to “go off” asap, so good fixing is a priority in order to make sure you don’t stumble and give your opponent a change to find an answer.
And that is Neoform Combo for Historic. As far as I can tell, the original deck was created by an Arena player going by the name of Stiggy, so full credit to them on their fine work. What do you think about today’s deck? Is this what you want to play in Historic, or have you a different brew you want to try out? Please let me know in the comments below, and while you’re there you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.
We also have a Patreon so if you want to support future content for the site consider becoming one of our Patrons. Just a $1 a month would do so much to help us create more of the content you enjoy. If you have any ideas for new and exciting decks you want me to look at you can contact me directly @TenguPlaysGames over on Twitter. But until next time remember no matter the game you play or where you play it, Good Luck and Have Fun.
