Breya, Combo Queen
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Table of Contents
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Introduction/About Me
Welome to this decklist! In this article I will explain how to play and build an extremely fast and consistent combo deck for cEDH.
I started playing magic around Nemesis's release. I played casually with friends at school up until about Betrayer's of Kamigawa where I switched schools and ran out of people to play with so I stopped playing. Fast-forward to Rise of the Eldrazi. I had a bunch of friends getting into the game so I thought I would start playing again. I was really upset with the power level of the eldrazi (keep in mind I started playing in Nemesis) so I didn't open packs until Scars of Mirrodin where I fell in love with my favorite plane (again). I attended my first FNM and it was draft, a format I had never played. I got pretty good at drafting rather quickly, winning multiple FNMs and lots of prize support. I stopped drafting a bit before Mirrodin Besieged. I tried playing standard with a infect deck I cobbled together from the cards I got from the drafts and proceeded to get crushed at my first event by Lotus Cobra into Frost Titan. During this time I was playing kitchen table magic on weekends or whenever I had free time. One day a friend of mine shows up talking about this new cool format with all these different rules blah blah blah. I didn't want to hear about it as I didn't want to pick up a new format. Well I got pressured into building a deck so I took 30 bucks to a local shop and spend money on singles to build a super jank Ob Nixilis, the Fallen deck. The deck was okay to play but a lot of the fun was the format. I proceeded to build a mono blue Sakashima, the Imposter deck that I loved that actually got me into the format. Next deck was combo Sharuum the Hegemon which dominated my group for awhile and forced my group into an arms race where most games were over by like turn 7. That group mostly fell apart due to school and work but I managed to meet new people to play with (and some oldies) and here we are.
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Commander Analysis/Why Play This Commander
Reasons Why You Want To Play Breya
You like playing combo
You don't like winning through multiple combat phases
You like fast paced decks
Budget isn't an issue
You like playing a lot of colors
Reasons You Won't Like Breya
You prefer hour plus long games
You like winning by attacking
You like to win through attrition
Budget is a concern
You like playing one or two color decks
You like control or aggro based decks
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Deck History
The first time I heard about Breya was when she and Vial Smasher the Fierce got banned from Duel Commander. I was curious as to why but didn't really get an answer at the time. I started looking at lists trying to see why she was broken enough to get banned. All the lists I saw on www.mtgtop8.com were all just control lists playing Bomberman as the primary wincon. To me that did not feel like a real combo deck. I wanted to combo out as quickly and consistently as possible. So I started looking at the lists I could find on other sites where there were a ton of combos people were playing. My original list had like 6-7 infinite combos, some needing Breya and some not. As I started collecting cards to build the deck I realized that it would probably be better if I condensed the combos I was playing and just added more tutors in the slots that were freed up. The more combos I cut and the more tutors I added, the better the deck became. Over the past few months I have been making the deck faster and more consistent with every revision. Now the deck is the bane of my play group, winning on average turns 4-6 even through disruption (although I have won on turn 3).
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Current Decklist
Use the Deck Tags and Deck Builder Tool to create your decklist!
I also like to sort my decklists according to function and then separately according to card type, but that's totally up to you.
Breya, Combo Queen By Function
Approximate Total Cost:
If you wanna see my current foiling of the deck , I have the list on on Archidekt. A bunch of cards that are not available are foil peeled and I can't really show that. It also doesn't show my Japanese foils. Currently the only cards I am missing in foil are my duals, Verdant Catacombs, Grindstone, and Prismatic Vista.https://archidekt.com/decks/231440#Breya,_Combo_Queen
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Alternate Decklists
So the popular alternative to this deck seems to be control based builds. These colors let you play all the best control cards in the format. You can also play a much cheaper version of this deck, but be aware that the consistency and speed of the deck will suffer.
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Card Choice Discussion
Tutors
I playing all the best tutors available, and I am also playing some bad ones. I am playing almost no generic draw spells. This is because to win with this deck you need specific cards to win each game. Something like Divination is rather weak because sure you are getting card advantage but you are very unlikely to draw the right card you need to win. I'd rather be a turn slower to get that specific combo piece I need to become victorious rather than drawing 6 cards and wiff.
Ramp/Fixing
All the broken mana rocks plus some fair ones. When you are doing something this degenerate, you want to do it fast. Chromatic Lantern is an all star. It is basically your only out against Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, and Blood Sun and I have won games because of Chromatic Lantern under an opposing Blood Moon.
Removal
I chose as many catch-all cards as I could. EDH has a huge card pool so you never know what kind of hate your opponents will be playing. Stuff likeUtter End is really nice because it gets rid of any real threat to the deck and exiles it so you don't have to deal with it twice. Supreme Verdict is another one that hits everything and it can't be countered. Evacuation is an interesting add but it clears the board and can be used to cast Force of Will for free.
Counter Magic
I chose the best counters available. Misdirection isn't really a counter but can deflect your opponent's removal to their own cards. Muddle the Mixture also acts like tutor if necessary. I chose the best free counters available that can be cast reasonably. Swan Song is a house in this deck. Countering just about any relevant disruption for 1 mana is HUGE.
Lands
For this build I went all out on my mana base. You really need to so you can play four colors without any hiccups. You need your fetches, duals, and shocks to keep the engine going. You will notice that there is only one utility land, Academy Ruins are utility. You can't really afford to play a lot of colorless producing lands because you will end up being unable to cast your spells. At first I didn't want to play them, but the artifact lands are really nice. It sucks that they tap for one color, but it is a such a good feeling to go infinite in response to someones kill spell on the stack by sacrificing your lands to Krark-Clan Ironworks. Also if you need mana to start one of your combos, you can sacrifice the land to get going. The five color lands are really nice as they use your life as a resource or gives your opponents 1/1s (Forbidden Orchard). The games are usually over by time the loss of life or the potential damage matters.
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How to Play
Part 1: The Opener
Part 1: The Opener
This is one of the hard parts of playing this deck, whether to keep or mulligan. When looking at your opener you want to think "how can I win in the next 4-5 turns?" If you can't its usually a mulligan UNLESS you are playing a very disruptive opponent. Sometimes you want to keep hands if it has say a Grand Abolisher. If your hand is all disruption with no tutors or combo pieces send it back. Also you need to look at the lands. If you plan on winning with Breya, consider counting the mana sources in your hand. If you have like 3-4, its usually pretty good. A good/great hand has 3-4 sources of mana (including mana rocks), tutor(s), and combo pieces. Disruption is good too but not always needed as a lot of opponents are just way too low for them to have a way to disrupt your board/game plan. Whether to keep or mull for some form of disruption is in my opinion a meta game call. Also if your hand has combo pieces which don't work together you might want to mulligan. If you know your opponent has a lot of disruption you may want keep those and offer the combo you don't plan on winning with as bait.
Part 2: Game Plan
After you keep you want to have your gameplan mostly planned out. You generally wanna drop your mana rocks asap and either play your combo pieces or start searching. Turns 1,2, and 3 should be dropping either mana rocks or tutoring, with 4-6 casting combo pieces and killing your opponent. If they have disruption, don't panic. The deck is very resilient to hate so just wait until you either have your own disruption or can activate through removal. An example of this would be if you have Breya and Eldrazi Displacer. You sac the tokens to get the money to blink Breya, in response they Doom Blade, in response to the removal spell you activate Eldrazi Displacer again, and proceed to go infinite at instant speed.
Part 3: ?
There really is not a Part 3. Your opponent should be dead. If for some reason the game keeps going your game plan should be to go infinite again but with some form of backup such as Force of Will plus blue card, Grand Abolisher or they tap out.
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Opposing Commander Match-Ups
Aggro: Pretty easy matchup. The deck is so damn fast by the time they can cast say an Atraxa, they are already dead
Control/Stax: Generally an easy matchup unless they have relevant disruption. This disruption can be mitigated by playing a Grand Abolisher before attempting to combo off. At worst they kill it, which spends their mana and uses one of their disruption spells. One of the guys in my meta plays Sen Tripelts Stax. The way I found to beat this is just dump your hand to prevent them getting value off their commander and to just grind them out with Breya's ability to give creatures -4/-4. Eventually they can't cast their commander and have no resources so you can combo out freely or they just concede.
Combo: [haven't played a lot of this] I would assume it is based on who kept the better hand, with the player having the faster combo/relevant disruption favored.
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Credit & Thanks
A lot of the combos I got from other lists from a long time ago so I can't credit people specifically, but I did get that part of the deck from Tapped Out and MTGSalvation.
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Change Log
Changelog Date
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10/09/2019
-Ash Barrens
+ Prismatic Vista
-Ash Barrens
+ Prismatic Vista
