Magic Deck Vortex: COMBOS Ninth Edition

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Ninth Edition Combos (2005) Featured Combos. Last updated 7-16-05 (35 Combos - 16 Deck Links) NOTE: All cards from Ninth Edition CORE SET are highlighted yellow
Teferi's Puzzlebox - Underworld Dreams
OK.. so they reprinted both of these guys in Ninth (as they did in Eighth Edition). Perhaps Wizards is trying to tell us there is a killer deck using these two cards that's been in the Future, Future league for years. However, our goal is to find it. One of you loyal visitors of MDV needs to send me your deck. Seriously. Anyway... with this combo, every time your opponent draws - they instead switch out the cards in their hand for new cards from their library. If Underworld Dreams is in play, they take one damage for each card in their hand. Ouch.
Grave Pact - Carrion Feeder and/or Spawning Pit
FYI - really, any card that allows you to sacrifice a creature for an effect is a combo card for Gravepact. Moving along, Grave Pact can really hurt your opponent. In fact, a useless fact for you is that I HATED to play against this card because my friends black Gravepact deck always had ways to sacrifice his own creatures.. which meant I sacrificed mine to. Carrion Feeder and Spawning Pit are both easy ways for you to sacrifice your creatures.. thus making it easy for your make the effect symmetrical with Grave Pact.
Hypnotic Specter - Dark Ritual
This really isn't a combo, but it's a good way to gain advantage in the early game. If you have both in your hand the first turn, you can cast him on turn one and start crippling your opponent from that point on. Making your opponent discard a card every turn (at RANDOM!) is good for you and VERY bad for your opponent. What makes this a 'combo' is casting him on turn one. Without a turn one Specter because of the ritual.. he might be worthless.
Weird Harvest - Blood Oath
This is really a one time combo wonder that tricks your opponent into thinking he's doing the right thing by searching his library for as many creature cards as you... only to be hit by a Blood Oath.. dealing uber damage to him for each creature in his hand after Weird Harvest assuming you choose the card type 'creature'. I wish Wizards would have reprinted Blood Oath in the Core Set this time around. Oh well.
Booby Trap - Aven Windreader
Booby Trap is one of those really fun cards I am glad to see reprinted. My first attempt at using this cards is found in this deck here, although it doesn't use Aven Windreader. However, don't underestimate the power of the Windreader. Not only is it an Orcish Spy without the tap symbol but it's a 3/3 flyer to boot. You can easily cast it before the Booby Trap and set up the Booby Trap a turn or two later to ensure your opponent falls into it and loses 10 life. Mind you there are many other ways to set up a successful Trap, but Aven Windreader is consistent and can be a good beatdown before the trap hits.
Battle of Wits - Ivory Mask
Not that I encourage making decks with Battle of Wits (personally I don't like the card as it's troublesome to have a 250 or 200+ card deck .. in my humble opinion) but if you are going to use the card and make a deck around it you are going to want to limit your opponents from wreaking havoc on your win condition. Wow.. that was a run on sentence. Anyway, with cards like Cranial Extraction, Denying Winds and Millstone running around in your casual surroundings you are going to need some protection against that. Ivory Mask combos with Battle of Wits because it prevents your opponent from removing any cards from your library. You see, all mill type cards (to the best of my knowledge) TARGET a player. Ivory Mask denies them of this. Have fun with your hard to shuffle deck!! [grin]
Marble Titan - Thran Weaponry
This was the best I could do.. I mean I just wanted to post a combo for the Titan since this is it's first appearance in a CORE SET. However, Than Weaponry was the best I can do. Have pity on me. Anyway, if you time it correctly, you can keep all of your opponent's creatures tapped while untapping your own .. and all it costs is 2 mana (assuming you were able to pay the semi-large echo cost of the Weaponry). Here's how it works: With both cards in play, tap the Weaponry giving all creatures +2/+2 while it's tapped. (You may need something like Turnabout to tap all of your opponent's creatures) . When your opponent is done and it's your turn, do not keep the Thran Weaponry tapped so that all of your creatures (assuming they have less a 3 power) will untap and then you can attack. Before you attack though, tap your weaponry for 2 and give all of your creatures +2/+2. Then, when it's your opponent's turn he won't be able to untap any of his creatures (unless they had zero power to start). Repeat this until you win. Hope that helps. ???
Mind Bend - Paladin en-Vec
Simple. Mind Bend your Paladin en-Vec to read something like "Protection from green" instead of "Protection from red" or whatever and win with him. That's all. Nice and short. Enjoy!
Verdant Force - Slate of Ancestry
Picture this, every turn (even your opponent's) you get at least one 1/1 Saproling token to control. After a few rounds you will have a nice little mold army. Say you have 10 creatures now (total)... activate the Slate of Ancestry for only 4 mana and draw 10 cards. That makes discarding your hand look like nothing. I am glad Wizards reprinted Verdant Force. It's a great card and I hope it makes some tournament play.
Storage Matrix - Icy Manipulator
The key to Storage Matrix is the fact that is says "As long as Storage Matrix is untapped..." With this mind you can cause your opponent some kind of disruption with the Matrix if you tap it after their Untap step. And what better way to tap it than with the amazing Icy Manipulator. This way when your untap step comes around the Matrix is tapped and thus you untap everything all at the same time... untapping the Matrix again for when you opponent has to go through their untap phase. Only being able to untap lands, artifacts or creatures each turn can be very crippling depending on the deck.
Hell's Caretaker - Squee, Goblin Nabob (Avalanche Riders)
Hell's Caretaker was one of those "wow" cards that were reprinted in Ninth Edition.. for me at least. Now the trick to the caretaker is card advantage and comes into or leaves play effects. If you want card advantage, you could always sacrifice Squee to get another creature in your graveyard into play and just get Squee back during your next upkeep. If you want a cool comes into play effect to simulate land destruction, try Avalanche Riders... they are sure to cause you opponent mana problems. Remember, the trick to using the Riders successfully is sacrificing them (to the Caretaker) in response to their echo upkeep .. so that you can trade them for a different creature in your graveyard and then just use them again during you following turn.
Mortivore - Traumatize
This combo was submitted in the forums by JSweeney. Mortivore reads "Mortivore’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of creature cards in all graveyards... ". If you can find a way to load your opponent's graveyard with lots of creatures you Mortivore gets much bigger. What better way to do this and mill your opponent at the same time than Traumatize? Try it. You'll like it.
Imaginary Pet - One with Nothing
This combo was submitted in the forums by JSweeney. Do I really need to explain this one.. I mean ... come on! It used One with Nothing!!!
Yawgmoth Demon - Myr Servitor(2) or Nuisance Engine
Pay for the Demon's upkeep cost (sacrificing an artifact) with Pest tokens from the Engine or with two Myr Servitors. When you have two in plan and sacrifice one during your upkeep, it will just return to play and allow you to sacrifice it to the Demon again .. thanks to the recursion ability of the Servitors.
Natural Affinity - Ensnare
To the right is a deck called Paper that utilized this combo. The deck would win by casting Natural Affinity.. thus turning all lands into 2/2 creatures. After attackers are declared and before your opponent has the chance to block you return your two tapped islands to pay the alternate casting cost of Ensnare… thus tapping all creatures. Since your creatures are already attacking and your opponent has no blockers, it is very possible for your opponent to take lethal damage depending on where you are in the game. Fun combo.
Form of the Dragon - Convalescent Care
Form of the Dragon is limited to only casual players since it's too slow for any tourney deck... and thus I feel mandated to post a combo using it since it's appearing again in Ninth Edition. Enter Convalescent Care from Onslaught. At the beginning of your upkeep, since your life total was set to 5 at the end of the player's turn before you, you gain another 3 life and draw a card. While the life doesn't really help you since you life goes back to 5 before the end of your turn, you at least get a personal howling mine effect and a temporary jump in life. If this doesn't work for you, you could always donate it to your opponent and then once your opponent's life total become 5, brand it back to your side and kill your opponent.
Naturalize - Day of the Dragons
According to www.magicthegathering.com, if you disenchant or naturalize the Day of the Dragons as the card goes on the stack, all of your creatures are removed from the game and you get to keep your 5/5 flying dragons. Let's say you have 10 Saproling creatures in play and you pull this combo off. Now you have 10 5/5 red flying dragons... too bad they don't have haste.
Zealous Inquisitor - Pariah
Zealous Inquisitor is good. It's even better than you'd think as it has a great ability and a solid 2/2 body for 2W -- I hope Wizards doesn't make this an uncommon in ninth edition.. but anyway, I digress. If you enchant the Inquisitor with Pariah all damage that would be dealt to you is instead dealt to the cool looking cleric. For only 1W you can redirect (remember Shaman en-Kor?) to an opponent's creature. If you want to maximize the combo, add Heartstone to the mix so that it only costs you W to redirect the damage.
Weathered Wayfarer - Urza's lands or Legendary Lands
So, will white ever need the land search in Standard? Who cares. I'm all about casual bliss. Weathered Wayfarer is a great descendant of the (think loud booming, echoing voice) GREAT LAND TAX. Want a quick way to search out your Urza land trio (Mine, Tower, Power Plant) or your Minamo - Tolarian Academy land combo? Weathered Wayfarer is the key. What's really, really great about the Wayfarer is that it doesn't specify 'basic land' which is why you can search out a Legendary Land or whatever land of your choice.
Wrath of God - Mobilization
Remember Counter-Post, also named Finkel Post? Counter-Post overwhelmed opponents with board sweeper Wrath of God in combination with Kjeldoran Outpost to generate creatures even after the board was cleared. This combo is of a similar strategy except that Mobilization, from Onslaught, is a bit more versatile. It doesn't cause you to tap it to generate a token Soldier.. so you can generate tokens as many times in a turn as you can spend the mana.
Your Combo Here!
You could have your combo featured in this spot right here (not literally, but on a future combo page). Try to make sure your combo works and that there isn't already that combo on any other MDV combo page. You can always search GOOGLE to make sure before submitting it. I greatly appreciate your efforts to make these combo pages better. Every once in a while I have a page chock-full of your submitted combos... although I will admit about 75% of all submitted combos are duplicates. Email the webmaster with any combos you'd like to submit, or submit them in the MDV forums.
Cowardice - Sway of Illusion
Cowardice combos well with any card that can target creatures, but what if you could target as many creatures as you wanted.. kind of like Artificial Evolution except without all of the needed mana. Sway of Illusion fits the bill by costing only 1U and netting you a card also. With this and Cowardice you can pretend you just cast a selective Upheaval on your opponents creatures. By the way, this makes for a great multiplayer deck. Anyway, the goal here is to target as mana threats (creatures) on the board as possible with Sway of Illusion, return them all to their owner's hands and then move in for the kill with your army. Don't forget to draw your card. Evil, evil combo. I can see why some people hate blue. I, for one, love it. [evil grin]
Nekrataal - Skull Collector
Nekrataal has this neat little comes into play ability of killing creatures. Mind you they can't be artifact or black creatures, but it's still creature control at it's best. Also note that as of Ninth Edition, he will now be a Human Assassin. Very cool. Anyway, Skull Collector is part of the post-Stampeding Wildebeests cycle in SOK and because of it he is efficiently costed with a 'return a black creature to your hand' drawback that occurs during each of your upkeeps. Why not make the most of this drawback and use it to cast Nekrataal every turn.. killing more creatures more often. Side note: Bone Shredder is a better combo with Skull Collector than Nekrataal mainly because it does the same thing for one less mana and has flying. However, Bone Shredder wasn't in Ninth Edition (mainly because it has Echo). Darn.
Megrim - Necrogen Mists or Bottomless Pit
Megrim is a black mage's best friend. And what better way to strengthen a friendship than to add something that encourages it. Both Bottomless Pit from Stronghold and Necrogen Mists from Mirrodin are the catalysts you need to make Megrim most effective thru forced discard every turn. If you want to make sure your opponent has cards to discard every turn add Howling Mine to the mix. Note: The ironic difference between the two cards is this -- Bottomless Pit causes random discard and is uncommon -versus- Necrogen Mists which causes discard (not random) and is rare. Shows you how magic has evolved in several years. Necrogen Mists, in my opinion, should have stayed uncommon. That's just me.
Coat of Arms - Endless Swarm
With Coat of Arms, you can really make your Epic spell effective by making all your 1/1 green Snake tokens 100/100 with some time. Since you can't play any spells you need to make those Snakes do all the work for you by overrunning your opponent. Remember to put some cards in your hand that you can use an ability on the card for an effect without actually playing it like Cyclers from the Onslaught block or Shinen creatures from the Kamigawa block.
Viashino Sandstalker - Scent of Cinder
The Viashino are a strange race. When I first saw them in the Mirage block I thought they sucked. Then they came out with this card called "Scent of Cinder" from Urza's Destiny. With the Scent card you can deal X damage to any target where X is the number of red cards you have in your hand. In a normal red deck the goal is to burn your opponent as quick as you can so drawing a late game scent of cinder sucks. With the Viashino (Sandstalker or Sandswimmer, for instance), you can keep your hand full of red cards to deal damage with the Scent.
Groundskeeper - Army Ants
Groundskeeper is a card capable of combo'ing with many cards including Seismic Assault, Trade Routes, Overlaid Terrain, Constant Mists, Excavation, Goblin Trenches and so on. However, Army Ants is one of my favorites mainly because I get to link to the coolest named deck on Magic Deck Vortex (next to Booby's) -- Hungry Sleepy Bubbly Ants by Anthony Alongi. Anyway, with both cards in play you can destroy at least one land a turn for 1G and a tap of the Ants. Fun, fun!
Furnace of Rath - Repercussion
Furnace of Rath should really read "Kill your opponent twice as fast" instead of it's current wording. Seriously though, Furnace of Rath just begs to be combo'd with whether it's a lone Fireball or an Arc Lightning. However, what it really likes to be combo'd with is a permanent that has the potential to deal lots of damage. Repercussion fits the bill. Scenario. I have both cards in play and cast shock on your creature. You creature takes 4 (because of the furnace) and you take 8 damage (because of the repercussion and the furnace). Not bad for mono-red combo. Come on Wizards, reprint Repercussions!!
Trade Routes - Thoughts of Ruin
Thoughts of Ruin... the new Armageddon! Mind you, it's very situational but why not make it situational to your advantage. Trade Routes will do two things. One, it will prevent your lands from being put in the graveyard for one mana each. Two, it will boost your hand size so that you can nuke all of your opponents' lands. Trade Routes will also give all of your lands in hand a pseudo cycling for 1 mana. If you really want to have fun with this pair of cards, add Seismic Assault for some spice!!!
Bottle Gnomes - Skeletal Shard
Want to gain three life a turn for 3B and have a chump blocker too? Then put a little Bottle Gnomes loving and some Skeletal Shards into your deck. The gnomes can block an opponent's attacker and then sacrifice itself to gain you three life. When you gnomes are dead in the grave just spend 3 or B to bring them back to your hand thanks to the Shard. Then you get to cast them all over again and experience the fun the funny looking gnomes have to offer. Bottle Gnomes are a great utility creature for any deck, but when you can reuse them over and over again, they become a great asset.
Spirit Link - Skirk Fire Marshall
Talk about major life gaining. Say you have 10 creatures on the board in a multiplayer game and Spirit Link on your Skirk Fire Marshall. When you finally go off with the Marshall's ability, for each point of damage dealt, you gain that much life. So... 10 damage to yourself+10 damage to each other player+ so much damage to 10 creatures (lets assume each actually takes 3)... then you gain like 70 life (assuming about 4 players in the game). Test of Endurance anyone?
Royal Assassin - Kismet
This is one of the reminiscent combos of my early days of magic when I would run around casting Dark Ritual and Hypnotic Specter a lot. The concept of this combo is simple. Kismet makes all of your opponent's creatures come into play tapped and Royal Assassin taps to destroy a tapped creature. This means that each turn your opponent casts a creature, it will come into play (tapped), and you can tap your assassin to kill it.
Death Pits of Rath - Aether Flash
Where Simoon and Death Pits of Rath combo well to wipe the board clean of all creatures on your opponent's side, this combo takes care of any future creatures your opponents' plan to cast after Simoon. Or... even without Simoon. This combo is a nice way to lock up the board in your favor. With the flash shocking every creature that comes into play, the death pits puts them in their grave quicker than your opponent can say "Counterspell" ... Unless they countered either enchantment.. or Naturalized one of them.. or whatever. Enjoy the combo while you can keep it on the table.
Ornithopter - Celestial Kirin - Conspiracy
For all of you people trying to convince yourself that Evermind can activate the Celestial Kirin and destroy all permanents with a casting cost of zero, stop hurting yourself. It doesn't work. However, if you do want to try and make it work, think Conspiracy. Announce spirit as the creature type when Conspiracy comes into play so that when you cast a 0 cc creature (spirit because of Conspiracy) it will destroy all lands and tokens and anything else that costs zero. Understood? Great!
Millstone - Thran Turbine
Millstone is one of those fun, staple cards we all start our milling career with... and what better way to mill than to mill for free. With Thran Turbine you can activate the Millstone during your upkeep every turn without paying any real mana for it. Thran Turbine is by far one of my favorite cards from Urza's Saga. It has much more potential for any deck using cards with mana activation costs playable during the upkeep. Did you know that the Thran Turbine was originally designed to help pay the Echo cost on creatures with echo in the block? Yup. What's Echo? Go check out the Urza's Saga visual spoiler. Also note that this is one of the few cards that have been reprinted in every CORE set. Hmmph.
Biorhythm - Myojin of the Cleansing Fire
This is a combo that was originally submitted by hahairule via email. Myojin of the Cleansing Fire, after removing the divinity counter, removes all creatures from the playing field.. except for itself. This is a wonderful thing considering what's about to happen next. Follow it up with a Biorhythm and your opponent will be at zero life. Simple, effective, yet costly. This is a late game combo at best. It works great as long as your opponent isn't playing any creature that's indestructible.
Did you know...?
To the right and left of this text is something called the MDV Deck Link. You will only find these link buttons on the combo pages. When you click on a MDV Deck Link it will take you to a deck related to the combo where you found it. If the button is to the left of the combo text, this means there is a deck already linked. If the link is to the right, there is a deck found or that is going to be posted. Or it is a combo I am currently looking for a deck using it. Mind you, not all decks links are going to center around that particular combo, although some do. Remember, I strongly encourage you to not copy any deck on MDV, but to use it as a reference or inspiration for your own. Enjoy the combo pages! ~John Streetz~