MeowZeDung wrote: ↑4 years ago
I'm curious, when you were building the deck with your "4-card combos only" rule in mind, did you lay out all the combos on paper ahead of time, or did this gradually evolve? The more I think about it, the more I'm intrigued by any deck of a bunch of infinite but "bad" combos, and specifically how to build one from scratch. Are there any pieces in the deck that are only good for use in one of the four card combos and pretty "meh" everywhere else? If so, doesn't it hurt your soul to draw that dead combo piece when the other 3 cards don't come together? Ok, that's hyperbolic, but you get my point. Card slots are limited. Frankly, I find it very difficult to parse all this out in any sort of balanced way that would produce a functional deck, and in my attempts to produce a "fair" or "bad" combo, I often find myself realizing that I had a 2-3 card combo on my hands the entire time and didn't notice.
tl;dr - In your experience,
how many combos must a dedicated combo piece with no other utility in a deck apart from said combos fit in before you would even consider it?
A lot of your instincts are right here. This deck did gradually evolve, so my how to build from scratch advice is largely theoretical, other than the "guess and check" method which approaches 100% success rate if you're willing to play a bad deck for an incredibly long time. But I'm confident you're asking the right questions.
Are there any cards that are only good in one of the combos and meh everywhere else? No.
Does it hurt to draw a dead combo piece? Rarely
How many combos must a dedicated combo piece with no other utility need to fit in before I consider it? Zero.
How many combos must a dedicated combo piece with no other utility need to fit in before I keep it forever? Infinity.
I have considered mountains of cards for this deck. Some of them have been terrible and useless in most cases, but that didn't stop me from considering them. But by the time a card really makes the cut to stay in the deck, I've made appropriate considerations to make sure it isn't meh everywhere else. That's why my individual card analysis is formatted the way it is, a short description with a lot more detail on interactions with other cards, because no card exists in a vacuum. And sometimes bringing a card in means bringing more than one card in. Example:
Cavalier of Dawn is a great utility card. It finished a 4-card combo with 2 cards I already play,
March of the Machines and
Chrome Mox, and 1 card I have played in the past and am confident in,
Infinite Reflection. And it's synergy with both
Precursor Golem and
Mirror of Fate. And yet, I still added in
Phyrexian Metamorph at the time, to really make sure I had as much good context around the new addition as possible. Turns out that was overkill and Cavalier is just excellent, but you get the point. If a card in your deck is meh in all situations but one, it's because you let it be meh in all those situations.
So like, step one in not letting your combo pieces be dead cards is to just play good cards. My list of combo cards currently includes
Narset's Reversal,
Nahiri's Warth,
Chaos Warp,
Cavalier of Dawn,
Jeskai Charm,
Arcbond,
Detention Sphere... those are all answers. I've got 3 clone effects, which are generically good. I've got planeswalkers that are generically good.
Precursor Golem is 9 power over 3 bodies which is super relevant. There's an extra turn spell and some "draw seven"s. Most of my "combo pieces" are generally good cards that need nothing extra to make them playable.
Step two is making the cards more relevant yourself by including lighter weight synergies. Let's consider the three most "combo piece" cards I play.
Strionic Resonator does nothing on its own, but it's got like 20 effects it can target. It's a do nothing on its own, so I have an almost guarantee that I'll have something that works with it.
Mirror of Fate is an infinite combo piece with 4-cards, but it's also potentially a 2-card
Doomsday combo with 7 other cards in the deck, and occasionally just plays with
Temporal Mastery to
Time Stretch and win before the extra turns are done. The most useless card on its own is
Barren Glory, it has essentially nothing going on outside of a full setup, technically it's 9 mana to draw more with Zedruu or a big beater with
Opalescence, but it's definitely the deadest combo piece in the deck. But it's also the only combo that has multiple options for every other piece of the puzzle, with multiple avenues to empty my hand, clear my board, and get back to my upkeep. But it is definitely the most likely dead card in the deck, and often if I want to test 1 card it's the temporary cut.
Step 3 is not getting into topdeck mode. If you draw multiple cards a turn, one dead card doesn't hurt. If you have scry or loot effects, you can convert dead cards into live ones. If you have practical discard outlets, you have uses for a card even if its rules text is effectively blank. And in this format, there's no reason not to have access to these things, because you have a command zone to work with. In a deck full of bad combos, you don't need a commander as a combo piece, you want a commander that helps assemble other pieces or makes bad draws worth something.
And as far as dodging 2-3 card combos, you just have to be committed to it. You'll definitely run into accidents occasionally, but then it's off to gatherer again to find something more specific that fits as a 4-piece combo but not less. And the more specific card doesn't have to be worse. Sakashima and Detention Sphere combo for me because they have highly specific phrasing, but they're also really strong in part because of how specific they are. That's where I find a lot of my inspiration. I'll look at something like
Detention Sphere and think "that's very unique, I bet it can combo".
Mirror of Fate combo got in here as a consequence of trying to make
Temporal Mastery's exile clause beneficial. Precursor Golem is a fairly unique card I love and decided to make work. My OG combo,
Memnite/
Dissipation Field came to life from trying to loop with field. Something like
Prototype Portal probably isn't a bad place to start, but you're right not to want to play something like
Salivating Gremlins. You could start with something like
Prototype Portal,
Walking Ballista, and
Dross Scorpion. Then anything that triggers on an artifact or creature entering or dying makes a 4 piece combo. Those same cards could rearrange to have Dross Scorpion in the portal, and then with a mana rock, enough copies of scorpion, and a sac outlet, you get infinite scorpions, mana, and whatever that sac outlet was doing. But also if you have good artifacts,
Prototype Portal doesn't need to combo to be a good card. Sacrifice outlets are good to have. Mana rocks are good to have. Walking Ballista is just a good card, that is also coincidentally a spout for any infinite mana loop (just something to be careful around if you have triggers that give +1/+1 counters).
So find 4 or 5 cards like Prototype Portal that you really want to play, they don't have to be related to each other, challenge yourself to make them combo pieces, and then surround them with cards that are good on their own while making the cards you like most better. I wouldn't recommend trying to chain from one centerpiece card to the next sequentially like a rube goldberg machine, but rather choose your favorite build-around cards independently, and then hunt down the cards that work with multiple things well. For example,
Mirror of Fate and
Knowledge Pool are barely related other than me insisting on playing both, but
Echo Storm is an artifact clone, a reasonable card to play in a vacuum, that puts both of them over the top. The infinite Sakashima combo and
Swans of Bryn Argoll aren't related, but
Pandemonium is a spout for one that synergizes with the other. When I wanted another spell to untap
Strionic Resonator from
Eye of the Storm, I found
Catch // Release that also is a fine card just interacting with other players, and is a bomb with
Precursor Golem, and synergizes with
Azor's Gateway, and can give
Nin, the Pain Artist haste. Find a small pile of sweet cards you love, and then construct the web that ties them together.