Inalla Combo Control
Approximate Total Cost:
The thing about Inalla that jumps out at me and did when she was first printed is that she's basically a combo outlet that sits in the command zone and can't be interacted with at all except with something like Torpor Orb. Despite my misgivings about eminence and everything, this deck has turned out to be really fun. Most fokls I run into are surprised by the design, whereas she's normally jamming lots of wizard ETBs.
What I set out to do with this deck was essentially replicate a draw-go control deck- to follow the mantras of
- Hit your land drops
- Never tap out
- React, don't act
It's basically a CEDH deck without all the ramp and a smaller selection of tutors and no stax elements. So it does pretty well if I run into stronger decks. It also plays a slow enough game that gives aggro decks time to overrun it if they're careful.
The latest thing I've done with this deck is straight up cut all the red. I've wanted to do this for a while and it's worked out fine. The bits of artifact answers can be reasonably handled with permission and bounce. And the deck runs way more smoothly from a mana perspective.
In this deck, Inalla, Archmage Ritualist never hits the battlefield. Most of the time I couldn't cast her if I wanted to, and her ability on the battlefield does not engage with my gameplan at all. But she combos and generates a little bit of card advantage, basically serving as the engine to make it so this deck can turn the corner without having to play bad cards.
The best thing about Inalla is that she really only has two play two bad cards to combo, and could get away with zero - the two bad cards in the deck are:
But Expedition Map could and might replace Crystal Shard someday since it can fetch Riptide laboratory which does the same thing.
Altar is irreplaceable and it's good enough with its ability to make the Bloodline Necromancer combo work.
The chief combos we win with are:
Timestream Navigator + bounce effect
Archaeomancer + Time warp + Bounce effect
Bloodline Necromancer + Ashnod's Altar
But Timestream Navigator is basically a combo by itself - it takes two extra turns for 11 mana and it's very hard to lose after doing that.
Spellseeker, Intuition and Time Spiral are the main ways of finding wincons. Seeker is a one card combo essentially, being able to win by getting demonic and vampiric tutors for 4 mana.
All in all this is one of my favorite decks if not my current favorite. It plays a pretty unique game compared to most combo-control decks I've played that have to commit to playing too many bad cards to function and can get serious whiffs with ramp heavy hands from time to time. The opening hands in this deck are the best part - there is basically no air in there.
As far as feedback goes I would love your thoughts on a few things I am noodling on:
* Should I cut the bloodline necro/altar combo entirely? It's good. But it's somewhat vulnerable to hate and requires a bad draw (Altar).
* Do you like the idea of Expedition Map for Crystal Shard
* Does Expropriate really make sense to you in this deck?
