A probable Magic card printed in this foul year of Our Lord, two-thousand and twenty four. I had sort of taken a break from the game months ago, but then I see this and throw together what is ultimately the combination of two decks I've been tinkering with over the years: grindy Abzan midrange and Lands.
Datura stramonium
Approximate Total Cost:
The general idea of the deck is to just be a grindy midrange Abzan lands deck, slowly building your manabase and sculpting your hand, boardstate, and graveyard towards the ultimate goal of comboing out.
There isn't a real A+B combo here. That's not to say it's nondeterministic, either, at least not in the way Storm is. Generally speaking, the idea is to shift your lands between play and the graveyard to produce infinite or near infinite landfall triggers, and win from there. To do this, you're going to want a way to sacrifice your lands, recur those lands, some way to sustain the costs, and a payoff or two.
Land Sacrifice:
Squandered Resources
Zuran Orb
Sylvan Safekeeper
Constant Mists
Recursion:
Splendid Reclamation
Aftermath Analyst
World Shaper
Shigeki, Jukai Visionary
Seasons Past
Payoff:
Retreat to Hagra
Dread Presence
Field of the Dead
The Necrobloom
Scute Swarm
Felidar Retreat
The Meathook Massacre
Spelunking helps our lands come into play untapped, which helps with mana costs when comboing out, as Nissa, Resurgent Animist does in a similar way (and she finds Analyst, the only other Elf).
Once the cycle has concluded, you drain everyone out with Retreat, Presence, or killing your own massive army of tokens with Meathook.
Beyond that, typical Abzan stuff. Slow the game down, survive, and then combo out. You don't even need to combo out with this deck since running the table over with zombies again and again is also completely valid.
Here's a fun example combo line.
With The Necrobloom available in the command zone, Spelunking, Zuran Orb, and a lot of lands in play including Hall of Heliod's Generosity and any cycling land, with Splendid Reclamation and Shigeki, Jukai Visionary in hand.
1) Tap lands for mana
2) Sac lands to Zuran Orb
3) Cast Splendid Reclamation
4) Return lands to play untapped, including Hall of Heliod's Generosity and Tranquil Thicket
5) Tap Thicket for mana before saccing it
6) Channel Shigeki, Jukai Visionary returning at least Reclamation and Thicket
7) Activate Hall, putting Shigeki back on top of my library
8) Cycle Thicket, drawing Shigeki
9) Assuming we're mana positive at this point, we can repeat this cycle and generate infinite mana
10) Cast The Necrobloom at some point to generate infinite tokens and mill with Dredge and Thicket/Shigeki/Hall
11) Channel Shigeki to return The Meathook Massacre
12) Meathook for X=2, killing your tokens and wiping the table
The deck sort of reminds me of Doomsday in a sense. Lots and lots of avenues to win and combo out.
