Subject: New Exodus Combo Deck: Andymonium! Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 13:19:03 +0200 (MEST) From: Andreas Pischner To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi everyone! In this article, I bring you a new, tournament-worthy combo deck which, while of course not thoroughly playtested and perfectly tuned yet, I feel is already strong enough to hold its own in any Standard tournament, besting Suicide Black on speed! It started on the day of the pre-release. I had just opened my cards, unnerved everyone at my table by murmuring "Is this gruelingly bad", then taken my obligatory 0:2 first round loss (losing me about 20 rating points) and, sure enough, dropped from the competition. I then took some time to study the cards I got. I had just read Pandemonium and noticed that the creature coming into play dealt the damage, not the enchantment, and moved on to City of Traitors when I suddenly felt a shiver down my spine. I returned to Pandemonium and read it a second time. Pandemonium R3 Enchantment Whenever any creature comes into play, that creature's controller may chose to have it deal damage equal to its power to target creature or player. (some flavour text) I don't know what you think, but I got up and started trading for Phyrexian Dreadnoughts. It was remarkably easy to get them... On Wednesday, I found time to build the first version of this deck, and took it to playtesting. My partner only had a Suicide Black and a U/W control deck, which was fine with me, because it gave me the opportunity to test this deck for speed as well as for its ability to hold its own against strong opposition. After erasing my gravest deckbuilding errors (like including Mox Diamonds and Lotus Petals instead of Mana Vaults and just more lands), it took down the black deck about 75% of the time, and the U/W thing about 60% of the time (without SBing, of course). So I decided the deck is strong enough to be sent to you, o critical readers, and I trust in you to help me develop this deck even further into a killing machine which will blast through Standard the way Pebbles blasted through Extended. Because my first name is Andreas, I dubbed this deck: ANDYMONIUM!! Current version: 4 City of Brass 4 Gemstone Mine 4 Ancient Tomb 3 Undiscovered Paradise 4 Adarkar Wastes 3 Underground River 2 Sulfurous Springs 4 Mana Vault 4 Portent 4 Pandemonium 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought 4 Argivian Find 4 Enlightened Tutor 4 Vampiric Tutor 4 Intuition 4 Abeyance 60 cards Sideboard (just ideas): 4 Pyroblast 4 Disenchant 3 Mana Leak 3 Disrupt 1 Light of Day Comments: The deck is already fast and deadly. Against some decks, you can afford to split the combo in half and can drop the Pandemonium one round before playing Dreadnaughts, in other cases, you'll want a Mana Vault to do everything in one round (costing you 6 mana, or 7, if you need to Argivian Find the same Dreadnought. Add 2 more mana if Abeyance is needed). The Tutors, Intuitions and Portents help you find your combo very fast. The Argivian Find works with Intuition as well as in the combo. Improvements can quite likely be made on the mana base - although I like the idea of having 24 lands against a field full of Wastelands, perhaps there is room for more business spells, or more fast artifact mana. Also, a Crystal Vein or 2 extra would be helpful, I feel, if the colored mana base is still kept solid. In the SB I just noted I want Hydroblasts, not just to win the damage race against burn, but also to eliminate major threats like Goblin Vandals and Dwarven Miners. They should come in threes at least (so I can use Intuition on them). I am not sure if I need so many Mana Leaks and Disrupts. Disenchants, though, are very important because of Nevinyyral's Disk and Aura of Silence. The single Light of Day found with Intuition (and Finds) works well enough against many decks. O.K., so this is it. Have fun with it, and feel free to mail me any comments and ideas! ANDREAS PISCHNER magician@zedat.fu-berlin.de member of team "Highway to Hell" "42."