I played this game in weekend ranked at Mythic in Gods Unchained. I played a few different decks, but happened to match up against combo magic with my light deck. There were a couple of key plays in this game that put the odds of winning in my favor. Of course, you have to draw the right cards, but understanding combo magic is the first step in beating it. My hope is that this post will help build that understanding for others.
Mulligan
The most important key to beating combo magic is to identify it! This happens in the mulligan stage. Make it a habit of checking your opponent's god power. I was mostly playing this deck for fun and not concentrating, but I did remeber to check the GP out of habit. Build good habits. They pay off.
Once I've identified combo magic, the cards I'm interested in change. For example, we know combo magic wants to play Lost in the Depths on a 1 mana creature, so we don't want to open turn 1 with a one mana creature. Mace of calling looks like a keep.
Martyr would make a nice turn 2 play. It's also >1 mana, but Martyr has a second benefit. While we don't know exactly which combo magic we're playing against, but most decks need to play - and kill off - their Warp Engineers. A 2/2 frontline means they need two turns to kill the Engineer.
1 Mana
They start looking for their combo pieces with the God Power. I play Mace of Calling.
2 Mana
More digging from our opponent. If he had LiTD, he couldn't play it, so his deck stays full of cards that aren't his combo pieces.
I shift my gameplan a bit based on what I drew. Now that I have 3 1-mana cards in hand, I decide to play them all at once. I'm expecting him to play LiTD, but the amount of favor we can generate with 3 creatures and a relic is nice. The sanctum is full of nice cards, and Pacifist grows with each creature played.
3 Mana
He plays LiTD, as expected. The race is on.
Drawing Canonize basically seals the game. I play the Martyr and generate 12 favor going face.
4 Mana
He plays clone after playing the single warp engineer. Now we know which combo he's playing: Schoolteacher. Teacher is only 2 mana, so you start cloning it after a single Warp Engineer. Portal Wranglers need 2 Engineers:
After the game is over, I checked the deck to confirm:
Against school teacher, Martyr is a hero. Our opponent has to kill off the Warp Engineer before he can combo. He also needs to have a direct damage spell in hand as part of the combo. I'm able to play Canonize on my Sailweaver. If he had two direct damage spells in hand, he could kill Martyr and then sac the Engineer, but he can't just throw the Engineer directory into my 5/5. This further delays his combo while drastically increasting the damage I can do each turn. I've stalled him and shortened his timer to 1 turn.
It's important here that I not play Canonize on the Martyr.
Also, just incase it isn't obvious: I waste no time the entire game trading out his Warp Engineer. This is a race against him playing solitaire. When he combos, it's a one turn kill from hand. Killing his Engineer actually helps him combo faster.
5 Mana
Our opponent takes a very long turn here. He can see the board + sanctum and knows that I kill him next turn. With 5 mana, he needs to:
- Kill my Martyr.
- Kill off his Engineer into my Sailweaver.
- Full combo
He's probably sitting on 3 schoolteachers: 2 at 0 mana and 1 at 2 mana. If he drew really well, it's possible he could have killed me this turn if it wasn't for that pesky Martyr. Instead, it's GG.
Conclusion
Playing against a combo deck is usually not very enjoyable. This is especially true for newer players who aren't intimately familiar with how the various combo decks work and have no firm grasp on what their opponent likely has in hand. Even for experienced players, if you don't draw just right, you lose. However, it's important to learn the combo decks to even recognize when you have drawn just right. Several times in this game, I could have played incorrectly and likely lost. Instead, understanding what I was up against gave me the W.
▶️ 3Speak