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RIP: Ravager Infinitely Persists
A New Combo Deck by ktkenshinx
With the 10K now in the books, and the metagame looking ripe for the taking, I now present this deck. Read on to learn more.
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What is the Combo?
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Persist looked breakable from the start. When rumor mill informers first spoiled the mechanic months ago, players from every format sought to bust the ability in half. For those of you unfamiliar with the precise, official wording of the mechanic, here it is below:
Rule 702.76a Persist is a triggered ability. "Persist" means "When this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it."
There are a number of creatures that currently have Persist, none of which are particularly exciting. There is, however, a low-cost, overlooked instant that gives any creature in Magic Persist. I am talking about Cauldron Haze
Quote:
Cauldron Haze, (1)(B/W)
Instant
Choose any number of target creatures. Each of those creatures gains persist until end of turn. (When it's put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.)
With the persist pool effectively widened to every card in all of Magic, I searched for guys that could abuse Cauldron Haze. A lot of ideas had been thrown out, but all of them were too expensive, involved too many cards, were too vulnerable to disruption, and were overall too slow and not viable for a combo win condition. After some searching, I found a gem. Two gems actually, both of them extremely well-known, and both of them comboing with Cauldron Haze for the lethal beginnings of a competitive deck.
Quote:
Arcbound Ravager, (2)
Artifact Creature – Beast
Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on Arcbound Ravager
Modular 1 (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. When it’s put into a graveyard, you may put its +1/+1 counters on target artifact creature).
Here is how the Ravager combos with Cauldron Haze.
Step 1: Cast Cauldron Haze targeting Arcbound Ravager. Ravager gains Persist
Step 2: Sacrifice Ravager to itself. This puts Ravager into a graveyard from the battlefield.
Step 3: Persist triggers and makes the Ravager enter the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it.
Step 4: The Ravager also enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it.
Step 5: The Ravager enters the battlefield with both a +1/+1 and a -1/-1 counter on it. When you check for state-based effects, the following rule triggers: “If a permanent has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it, N +1/+1 and N -1/-1 counters are removed from it as a state-based action, where N is the smaller of the number of +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters on it.”
Step 6: The Ravager now has neither a +1/+1 nor a -1/-1 counter on it.
Step 7: Because the Ravager is naturally a 0/0, state-based effects send it to the graveyard.
Step 8: The Ravager, however, still has Persist, courtesy of the Cauldron Haze. This means it comes back into the battlefield.
Step 9: Repeat steps 3 through 9.
What does this mean? The Ravager enters an infinite loop of entering and re-entering the battlefield. It cannot stop and the game is thus a draw. Before I proceed to how we turn this loop into a win condition, let me address a few FAQs regarding the combo
Question 1: How does Ravager keep Persist even after it enters the graveyard? Doesn’t Persist go away like any granted ability would if its recipient entered a graveyard? For instance, if I gave Flying to my creature until end of turn, and I somehow killed it and brought it back, it would not have Flying anymore. How does this combo get around that?
In order for Persist to work at all, it must be able to function in the graveyard. When Cauldron Haze gives Persist to the Ravager, he gains the triggered ability persist. Referring to the rules…
Quote:
112.6b An ability that states which zones it functions in functions only from those zones.
112.6h A trigger condition that can't trigger from the battlefield functions in all zones it can trigger from.
That is to say, Ravager has Persist in the graveyard and in play. As long as he stays exclusively in those 2 zones, he will have Persist for the whole turn. As the infinite loop only functions between the battlefield and the graveyard, Persist will always be on the Ravager.
Question 2: Can’t you voluntarily end the loop with an ability or spell?
Some spells and abilities will end the loop. For instance, if you exile the Ravager from the Graveyard, it will not Persist back into play. You cannot, however, target the Ravager once it is already in play. Why? State-based effects are killing it every time. That means that neither you nor your opponent has priority to kill the Ravager while it is in play. You cannot, for instance, sacrifice the Ravager to itself to end the loop, because before you even have priority to do that, the Ravager dies because of the 2 state based effects (removal of counters and 0/0). Of course, you can kill the Ravager BEFORE it gains Persist to stop the infinite loop, but that is a way of stopping the combo period, not voluntarily ending an infinite loop.
Question 3: If there is another Artifact Creature in play, can’t you bounce a +1/+1 counter to the creature to end the loop? After all, wouldn’t Ravager then gain back his -1/-1 counter, thus preventing Persist from triggering again?
The state based effect that cancels out counters actually removes them. By the time you can use Modular to move a counter, the +1/+1 counter, and the -1/-1 counter, are both already gone.
So, how do we turn this into a kill? The answer is simple: Disciple of the Vault.
Quote:
Disciple of the Vault, B
Creature – Human Cleric
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose 1 life.
As we know, whenever a player’s life total hits 0, they die from state-based effects. Thus, with a Disciple in play, your infinite loop of Haze/Ravager becomes a kill mechanism.
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Decklist and Basic Strategy
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To summarize, the deck will contain 2 combos:
Cauldron Haze + Arcbound Ravager
Cauldron Haze + Arcbound Ravager + Disciple of the Vault
Why have I listed 2 of the 3 combo pieces as a separate and distinct combo? Because both combos do different things.
COMBO 1: HAZE + RAVAGER
Draw the game. Whenever you want. At instant speed. Worldgorger Dragon got banned for this very reason; you could intentionally draw a game that was going poorly for you. RIP does this as well, but it does it consistently at instant speed. Did your opponent cast a game winning spell? Draw the game in response. Did your opponent cast a draw spell to get some new counters? Draw the game in response. Did your opponent just tap out to cast a powerful card? Draw the game in response. As long as you have a) a Ravager in play or
an Aether Vial with 2 counters on it, and c) a Cauldron Haze in hand, you can draw the game at instant speed. This is a brutally unfair strategy that I will discuss at length later in the thread.
COMBO 2: HAZE + RAVAGER + DISCIPLE
Kill your opponent. Whenever you want. Also at instant speed. Again, this is contingent upon having Disciple and Ravager in play. But if you have Aether Vial, Dark Ritual, or any number of nasty cards, you can do this quickly, efficiently, and at instant speed.
Those are the 2 combos for the deck. Here is the RIP deck itself. I will explain card choices in depth after presenting the deck as a whole.
RIP: Ravager Infinitely Persists
Lands: 17
4 Underground Sea
1 Island
2 Swamp
4 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
Creatures: 8
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple of the Vault
Spells: 35
4 Cauldron Haze
4 AEther Vial
3 Daze
4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
Sideboard: 15
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 4 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 4 Wipe Away
Individual card choices explained:
Aether Vial: Amazing in this deck. Circumvents countermagic for 1-2 of your 3 combo pieces, acts as a virtual mana accelerator, can be dropped on turn 1, and enables instant speed wins in the first few turns of the game.
Dark Ritual: Enables turn 2-3 wins. Versatile card that can accelerate virtually any part of the deck if need be.
Ponder / Brainstorm Finds combo pieces cheap and early. Both pitch to FoW. Brainstorm hides cards from Thoughtseize, Duress, and Therapy.
Intuition: At one point, this was Mystical Tutor, but I found that I needed creature combo pieces more than I needed instants. Mostly used at end of turn to get one of your combo pieces into your hand. Can also be used to get a Thoughtseize, FoW, Daze, or sideboard card if the situation arises. Also pitches to FoW.
Thoughtseize: Versatile and cheap disruption. For the budget minded player, this can easily be Duress; most threats are non-creature anyway.
Daze: Excellent in the early game for protecting your combo and disrupting your opponent’s plans. Critical against burn decks.
Force of Will: With 19 blue cards in the deck, you have more than enough to ensure that you can pitch something to FoW. Same as Daze but a more guaranteed solution.
Pithing Needle: Ravager is vulnerable in the graveyard. Needle stops Relic and Crypt, the two biggest problems you might have. It also takes care of Explosives, Deed, Lavamancer, etc. and any other nasty activated abilities you might come across.
Relic of Progenitus: Dredge is big. Dredge has a ton of discard. Relic gives you a slight edge in this matchup.
Duress: Supplements Thoughtseize to take care of countermagic and burn.
Wipe Away: Uncounterable way of getting rid of Leyline, Blood Moon, Counterbalance, Trinisphere, Chalice, etc. 3 CC means that it can circumvent Chalice, Gaddock, and Counterbalance in the vast majority of situations. Instant speed means you can do it at the end of your opponent’s turn to guarantee combo ability on your own.
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How Do You Play RIP: In Depth
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So, how do you play the deck? In any given game, you have basically two plans.
PLAN A: DRAW THE GAME
In any given matchup, you are going to be drawing more games than you are winning. Indeed the average number of games that this deck plays in any given match is about 5. It is painfully easy to draw the game in this deck, and it can be done as early as turn 2 or 3 (1 as well, but that is rare). Here are the most common draw-the-game scenarios.
Turn 1: You only have 2 of your 3 combo pieces in your hand. You Thoughtseize your opponent, revealing a nasty hand. You resolve to draw the game.
Turn 2: Play a land. Play Dark Ritual. Play Arcbound Ravager. Play Cauldron Haze. Go to the next game.
A similarly common scenario:
Turn 1: Land, Aether Vial
Turn 2: Ponder/Brainstorm. You don’t find a Disciple. Your opponent, however, is on a roll, getting out some good creatures or looking strong.
Turn 3: With 2 counters on your Vial, you can now drop Ravager into play in response to anything that your opponent does. You can then Haze and draw the game.
There are lots of different draw-the-game scenarios, but all of them are equally unfair and dishonorable. At the price of 4 mana and 2 cards, you can restart any game that is not going your way. Remember, Worldgorger Dragon got banned for doing that at Enchantment speed (admittedly Necromancy could to it at Instant speed). RIP consistently can draw the game at INSTANT speed.
This strategy is extremely frustrating for your opponent. You continue to casually draw the game with your infinite loop, and they continue to get angrier and angrier, plunging more headlong into a charge to destroy you or stop your combo. After you have drawn the game 3 times in a row (as testing will show, this happens a lot) your opponent starts to do things like mulligan away perfectly decent hands just to try and find Crypt/Leyline/Relic/etc; anything to stop another draw.
In tournaments, your rounds are constrained by time. You can draw the game so quickly that you will still have time to play subsequent games in order to win a match. This converts drawing from a liability into a strategy; rest a lost match to try again. RIP consistently gets decent and playable hands, whereas some decks can get stuck with bad ones; if you keep drawing until your opponent gets caught with a crappy hand, you are going to triumph.
Why is drawing the game good? RIP is strongest in the early turns of the game. If you are getting into trouble by turn 4 or 5, you can just start over back when you are strongest. Also, I must emphasize that the deck consistently draws strong/playable hands. Other decks do not have this consistency at all times. If you play 10 games against an opponent owing to drawing the game over and over again, you are more likely to encounter their shitty hand against one of your strong ones.
PLAN B: WIN THE GAME
In Game 1 of any matchup you want to try and win the game. It is far easier to win pre-sideboard than after, as with most combo decks, so you want to make this your priority. Ideally, you want to get a turn 1 Vial, turn 2 Disciple, and turn 3 Ravager/Haze. A turn 1 disciple and turn 2 Ritual/Ravager/Haze is the best case scenario, but a Vial/Disciple/Win strategy gives you way more room for protection courtesy of FoW, Thoughtseize, and Daze. It also lets you assess your opponent’s cards, dig a bit deeper into your own deck, and overall feel more comfortable before trying to win.
Always try and win during your opponent’s turn whenever possible. If you are on the play and your opponent plays a fetchland on their turn 2, win in response to the fetch being cracked. If your opponent casts Duress/Thoughtseize, try and win in response to that. If your creatures ever get targeted with a burn spell, respond with Brainstorm and Cauldron Haze, Ritual/Intuition/Cauldron Haze, or some other suitably clever instant speed retort.
The bottom line is simple: win at instant speed, and only try and win when you can protect your combo.
Here are some common criticisms of the RIP deck and combo:
It’s a 3 card combo. That makes it too slow.
In the first place, the individual components are extremely cheap. In the second place, you have a ton of tutor/draw to find your pieces. In the third place, as long as you have 2 of the 3 combo pieces, you can always convert your “Win” strategy into a “Draw” strategy and try again.
Your creatures are too vulnerable to burn spells and removal effects.
You can react at instant speed to any burn or removal effect to win or draw the game. This means that your opponent has to play extremely cautiously, giving you more time to draw into FoW, Thoughtseize, Daze, etc. It forces them to draw redundant kill spells just to try and stop your combo, and for every redundant spell they draw, you can draw a counterspell or another combo piece. They will be trying, with great paranoia, to prevent you from winning, instead of going for the win themselves.
The combo is too vulnerable to countermagic.
Aether Vial protects your combo from counterspells. Additional counterspells and disruption help as well. The only truly vulnerable part of the combo is Cauldron Haze, especially because it dies to Spell Snare. That said, instant speed allows you to try and combo at the most opportune moment. Your 11 protection/disruption spells help as well.
The combo is bad because Card X beats it.
As usual, just because Card X beats Card Y, that does not mean that Card Y is bad. Tarmogoyf loses to Terror. Counterbalance loses to Krosan Grip. Ichorid as a deck loses to Leyline. Just as I am sure all of you angrily respond to each of those statements with a hundred alternate scenarios, so too does RIP have a response to each of its own threats.
Intentionally drawing the game is dishonorable and mean. This deck is for assholes.
Winning is winning. If you don’t like it, play Chess.
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RIP in the Legacy Metagame
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How does RIP match up against the Legacy metagame? I tested 40 games each against the following decks: 10 games on the play, 10 games on the draw, and 20 games post-sideboard. The results were overwhelming and impressive.
1. Tempo Threshold (Canadian Threshold)
2. LED Ichorid
3. UWG Goyf Landstill
4. Merfolk
Here are those results. A win means that RIP won. A loss means that RIP lost. A draw means that RIP drew the game such that the opposing deck could not stop them, and the game started over.
1. Tempo Threshold: 8 wins – 15 draws – 17 losses
2. LED Ichorid: 12 wins – 17 draws – 11 losses
3. UWG Goyf Landstill: 10 wins – 17 draws – 13 losses
4. Merfolk: 15 wins – 18 draws – 7 losses
A little interpretation of the results
Temp Threshold: I knew this was going to be a nightmare match going into it. Not only do they have the full arsenal of countermagic and removal that Goyf has, but they have more of it AND burn. Half of my wins basically happened blazingly fast in game 1 (I had a turn 1 win with a god draw hand), and the other half happened off of sub-optimal hands for them in games 2 and 3. Drawing against Thresh was a little easier, but still quite difficult, as they could often respond to a Haze with at least 2-3 removal spells/counter spells.
Card redundancy is also problematic with Tempo Thresh; you can Thoughtseize a FoW, but they still have Counterspell, Fire/Ice, and Swords in their hand. This gives you an unpleasant game 1, and forces you to board in your Duress’s for game 2, in a rather desperate effort to beat them.
LED Ichorid: There is only one card that is a problem in this deck: Cabal Therapy. Therapy can really fuck up an otherwise pristine turn 2 or 3 win. Due to dredge, it does so with frightening consistency. Almost all of my 17 draws and 13 losses were because Therapy crippled my ability to seek out a Disciple (or prevented me from drawing the game period). The way to beat Therapy is Brainstorm. Strategic Brainstorms can really save this matchup, so do not blow them all early digging for cards. FoW is similarly helpful in this regard.
The speed of the deck is also sometimes annoying; there were many games where, if given one more turn, I could have won. But because of Flame-Kin Zealot and a gigantic army of Bridge from Below zombies, I had to settle for a draw instead. For the most part, however, you can race Ichorid; just watch out for Therapy.
UWG Goyf Landstill: A decent matchup; about 50-50 in the long run. Thoughtseize is spectacular in this matchup, because Landstill does not have AS many counters as Thresh does. Normally Thoughtseize and FoW/Daze are enough to protect your combo, or at least protect an intentional draw. I found myself consistently getting owned by two cards; Swords and Spell Snare. 2 1 CC cards that completely devastate RIP’s strategy. If they are also holding Daze or FoW, you are in serious trouble.
Merfolk: An excellent matchup. Your goal is simple; outrace them. Your average Merfolk deck has only 8-12 threats to watch out for; Daze, FoW, and Stifle. Cursecatcher can be a random annoyance, but for the most part it is not serious. Stifle is a real pain if you keep a low land hand and have a fetchland blown away. Stifle also causes serious problems with the triggered ability Persist. Thankfully, you have way more card-digging spells than your average Merfolk deck, and you have a pretty decent chance of getting an answer to their spells. Moreover, a lot of Merfolk players will Stifle a land instead of waiting to Stifle the Ravager. This means that by the time you get your combo going, you are less likely to encounter this card.
Admittedly, my testing did not account for either 43 Land or Aggro Loam, both of which made powerful showings at the St. Louis 10K. As such, I will update this with the testing results from those matches. I will also admit that not all decklists are the same, and perhaps I did not test against representative lists with the “latest tech” or what have you. While this may be true, the results still withstand scrutiny; even a teched up deck is fairly similar to an earlier version.
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So there you have it. RIP (Raveger Infinitely Persists), the new combo deck for the Legacy format. Any comments or questions? Criticisms or complaints?
-ktkenshinx-
A New Combo Deck by ktkenshinx
With the 10K now in the books, and the metagame looking ripe for the taking, I now present this deck. Read on to learn more.
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What is the Combo?
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Persist looked breakable from the start. When rumor mill informers first spoiled the mechanic months ago, players from every format sought to bust the ability in half. For those of you unfamiliar with the precise, official wording of the mechanic, here it is below:
Rule 702.76a Persist is a triggered ability. "Persist" means "When this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it."
There are a number of creatures that currently have Persist, none of which are particularly exciting. There is, however, a low-cost, overlooked instant that gives any creature in Magic Persist. I am talking about Cauldron Haze
Quote:
Cauldron Haze, (1)(B/W)
Instant
Choose any number of target creatures. Each of those creatures gains persist until end of turn. (When it's put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.)
With the persist pool effectively widened to every card in all of Magic, I searched for guys that could abuse Cauldron Haze. A lot of ideas had been thrown out, but all of them were too expensive, involved too many cards, were too vulnerable to disruption, and were overall too slow and not viable for a combo win condition. After some searching, I found a gem. Two gems actually, both of them extremely well-known, and both of them comboing with Cauldron Haze for the lethal beginnings of a competitive deck.
Quote:
Arcbound Ravager, (2)
Artifact Creature – Beast
Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on Arcbound Ravager
Modular 1 (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. When it’s put into a graveyard, you may put its +1/+1 counters on target artifact creature).
Here is how the Ravager combos with Cauldron Haze.
Step 1: Cast Cauldron Haze targeting Arcbound Ravager. Ravager gains Persist
Step 2: Sacrifice Ravager to itself. This puts Ravager into a graveyard from the battlefield.
Step 3: Persist triggers and makes the Ravager enter the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it.
Step 4: The Ravager also enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it.
Step 5: The Ravager enters the battlefield with both a +1/+1 and a -1/-1 counter on it. When you check for state-based effects, the following rule triggers: “If a permanent has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it, N +1/+1 and N -1/-1 counters are removed from it as a state-based action, where N is the smaller of the number of +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters on it.”
Step 6: The Ravager now has neither a +1/+1 nor a -1/-1 counter on it.
Step 7: Because the Ravager is naturally a 0/0, state-based effects send it to the graveyard.
Step 8: The Ravager, however, still has Persist, courtesy of the Cauldron Haze. This means it comes back into the battlefield.
Step 9: Repeat steps 3 through 9.
What does this mean? The Ravager enters an infinite loop of entering and re-entering the battlefield. It cannot stop and the game is thus a draw. Before I proceed to how we turn this loop into a win condition, let me address a few FAQs regarding the combo
Question 1: How does Ravager keep Persist even after it enters the graveyard? Doesn’t Persist go away like any granted ability would if its recipient entered a graveyard? For instance, if I gave Flying to my creature until end of turn, and I somehow killed it and brought it back, it would not have Flying anymore. How does this combo get around that?
In order for Persist to work at all, it must be able to function in the graveyard. When Cauldron Haze gives Persist to the Ravager, he gains the triggered ability persist. Referring to the rules…
Quote:
112.6b An ability that states which zones it functions in functions only from those zones.
112.6h A trigger condition that can't trigger from the battlefield functions in all zones it can trigger from.
That is to say, Ravager has Persist in the graveyard and in play. As long as he stays exclusively in those 2 zones, he will have Persist for the whole turn. As the infinite loop only functions between the battlefield and the graveyard, Persist will always be on the Ravager.
Question 2: Can’t you voluntarily end the loop with an ability or spell?
Some spells and abilities will end the loop. For instance, if you exile the Ravager from the Graveyard, it will not Persist back into play. You cannot, however, target the Ravager once it is already in play. Why? State-based effects are killing it every time. That means that neither you nor your opponent has priority to kill the Ravager while it is in play. You cannot, for instance, sacrifice the Ravager to itself to end the loop, because before you even have priority to do that, the Ravager dies because of the 2 state based effects (removal of counters and 0/0). Of course, you can kill the Ravager BEFORE it gains Persist to stop the infinite loop, but that is a way of stopping the combo period, not voluntarily ending an infinite loop.
Question 3: If there is another Artifact Creature in play, can’t you bounce a +1/+1 counter to the creature to end the loop? After all, wouldn’t Ravager then gain back his -1/-1 counter, thus preventing Persist from triggering again?
The state based effect that cancels out counters actually removes them. By the time you can use Modular to move a counter, the +1/+1 counter, and the -1/-1 counter, are both already gone.
So, how do we turn this into a kill? The answer is simple: Disciple of the Vault.
Quote:
Disciple of the Vault, B
Creature – Human Cleric
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose 1 life.
As we know, whenever a player’s life total hits 0, they die from state-based effects. Thus, with a Disciple in play, your infinite loop of Haze/Ravager becomes a kill mechanism.
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Decklist and Basic Strategy
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To summarize, the deck will contain 2 combos:
Cauldron Haze + Arcbound Ravager
Cauldron Haze + Arcbound Ravager + Disciple of the Vault
Why have I listed 2 of the 3 combo pieces as a separate and distinct combo? Because both combos do different things.
COMBO 1: HAZE + RAVAGER
Draw the game. Whenever you want. At instant speed. Worldgorger Dragon got banned for this very reason; you could intentionally draw a game that was going poorly for you. RIP does this as well, but it does it consistently at instant speed. Did your opponent cast a game winning spell? Draw the game in response. Did your opponent cast a draw spell to get some new counters? Draw the game in response. Did your opponent just tap out to cast a powerful card? Draw the game in response. As long as you have a) a Ravager in play or
an Aether Vial with 2 counters on it, and c) a Cauldron Haze in hand, you can draw the game at instant speed. This is a brutally unfair strategy that I will discuss at length later in the thread.COMBO 2: HAZE + RAVAGER + DISCIPLE
Kill your opponent. Whenever you want. Also at instant speed. Again, this is contingent upon having Disciple and Ravager in play. But if you have Aether Vial, Dark Ritual, or any number of nasty cards, you can do this quickly, efficiently, and at instant speed.
Those are the 2 combos for the deck. Here is the RIP deck itself. I will explain card choices in depth after presenting the deck as a whole.
RIP: Ravager Infinitely Persists
Lands: 17
4 Underground Sea
1 Island
2 Swamp
4 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
Creatures: 8
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple of the Vault
Spells: 35
4 Cauldron Haze
4 AEther Vial
3 Daze
4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
Sideboard: 15
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 4 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 4 Wipe Away
Individual card choices explained:
Aether Vial: Amazing in this deck. Circumvents countermagic for 1-2 of your 3 combo pieces, acts as a virtual mana accelerator, can be dropped on turn 1, and enables instant speed wins in the first few turns of the game.
Dark Ritual: Enables turn 2-3 wins. Versatile card that can accelerate virtually any part of the deck if need be.
Ponder / Brainstorm Finds combo pieces cheap and early. Both pitch to FoW. Brainstorm hides cards from Thoughtseize, Duress, and Therapy.
Intuition: At one point, this was Mystical Tutor, but I found that I needed creature combo pieces more than I needed instants. Mostly used at end of turn to get one of your combo pieces into your hand. Can also be used to get a Thoughtseize, FoW, Daze, or sideboard card if the situation arises. Also pitches to FoW.
Thoughtseize: Versatile and cheap disruption. For the budget minded player, this can easily be Duress; most threats are non-creature anyway.
Daze: Excellent in the early game for protecting your combo and disrupting your opponent’s plans. Critical against burn decks.
Force of Will: With 19 blue cards in the deck, you have more than enough to ensure that you can pitch something to FoW. Same as Daze but a more guaranteed solution.
Pithing Needle: Ravager is vulnerable in the graveyard. Needle stops Relic and Crypt, the two biggest problems you might have. It also takes care of Explosives, Deed, Lavamancer, etc. and any other nasty activated abilities you might come across.
Relic of Progenitus: Dredge is big. Dredge has a ton of discard. Relic gives you a slight edge in this matchup.
Duress: Supplements Thoughtseize to take care of countermagic and burn.
Wipe Away: Uncounterable way of getting rid of Leyline, Blood Moon, Counterbalance, Trinisphere, Chalice, etc. 3 CC means that it can circumvent Chalice, Gaddock, and Counterbalance in the vast majority of situations. Instant speed means you can do it at the end of your opponent’s turn to guarantee combo ability on your own.
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How Do You Play RIP: In Depth
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So, how do you play the deck? In any given game, you have basically two plans.
PLAN A: DRAW THE GAME
In any given matchup, you are going to be drawing more games than you are winning. Indeed the average number of games that this deck plays in any given match is about 5. It is painfully easy to draw the game in this deck, and it can be done as early as turn 2 or 3 (1 as well, but that is rare). Here are the most common draw-the-game scenarios.
Turn 1: You only have 2 of your 3 combo pieces in your hand. You Thoughtseize your opponent, revealing a nasty hand. You resolve to draw the game.
Turn 2: Play a land. Play Dark Ritual. Play Arcbound Ravager. Play Cauldron Haze. Go to the next game.
A similarly common scenario:
Turn 1: Land, Aether Vial
Turn 2: Ponder/Brainstorm. You don’t find a Disciple. Your opponent, however, is on a roll, getting out some good creatures or looking strong.
Turn 3: With 2 counters on your Vial, you can now drop Ravager into play in response to anything that your opponent does. You can then Haze and draw the game.
There are lots of different draw-the-game scenarios, but all of them are equally unfair and dishonorable. At the price of 4 mana and 2 cards, you can restart any game that is not going your way. Remember, Worldgorger Dragon got banned for doing that at Enchantment speed (admittedly Necromancy could to it at Instant speed). RIP consistently can draw the game at INSTANT speed.
This strategy is extremely frustrating for your opponent. You continue to casually draw the game with your infinite loop, and they continue to get angrier and angrier, plunging more headlong into a charge to destroy you or stop your combo. After you have drawn the game 3 times in a row (as testing will show, this happens a lot) your opponent starts to do things like mulligan away perfectly decent hands just to try and find Crypt/Leyline/Relic/etc; anything to stop another draw.
In tournaments, your rounds are constrained by time. You can draw the game so quickly that you will still have time to play subsequent games in order to win a match. This converts drawing from a liability into a strategy; rest a lost match to try again. RIP consistently gets decent and playable hands, whereas some decks can get stuck with bad ones; if you keep drawing until your opponent gets caught with a crappy hand, you are going to triumph.
Why is drawing the game good? RIP is strongest in the early turns of the game. If you are getting into trouble by turn 4 or 5, you can just start over back when you are strongest. Also, I must emphasize that the deck consistently draws strong/playable hands. Other decks do not have this consistency at all times. If you play 10 games against an opponent owing to drawing the game over and over again, you are more likely to encounter their shitty hand against one of your strong ones.
PLAN B: WIN THE GAME
In Game 1 of any matchup you want to try and win the game. It is far easier to win pre-sideboard than after, as with most combo decks, so you want to make this your priority. Ideally, you want to get a turn 1 Vial, turn 2 Disciple, and turn 3 Ravager/Haze. A turn 1 disciple and turn 2 Ritual/Ravager/Haze is the best case scenario, but a Vial/Disciple/Win strategy gives you way more room for protection courtesy of FoW, Thoughtseize, and Daze. It also lets you assess your opponent’s cards, dig a bit deeper into your own deck, and overall feel more comfortable before trying to win.
Always try and win during your opponent’s turn whenever possible. If you are on the play and your opponent plays a fetchland on their turn 2, win in response to the fetch being cracked. If your opponent casts Duress/Thoughtseize, try and win in response to that. If your creatures ever get targeted with a burn spell, respond with Brainstorm and Cauldron Haze, Ritual/Intuition/Cauldron Haze, or some other suitably clever instant speed retort.
The bottom line is simple: win at instant speed, and only try and win when you can protect your combo.
Here are some common criticisms of the RIP deck and combo:
It’s a 3 card combo. That makes it too slow.
In the first place, the individual components are extremely cheap. In the second place, you have a ton of tutor/draw to find your pieces. In the third place, as long as you have 2 of the 3 combo pieces, you can always convert your “Win” strategy into a “Draw” strategy and try again.
Your creatures are too vulnerable to burn spells and removal effects.
You can react at instant speed to any burn or removal effect to win or draw the game. This means that your opponent has to play extremely cautiously, giving you more time to draw into FoW, Thoughtseize, Daze, etc. It forces them to draw redundant kill spells just to try and stop your combo, and for every redundant spell they draw, you can draw a counterspell or another combo piece. They will be trying, with great paranoia, to prevent you from winning, instead of going for the win themselves.
The combo is too vulnerable to countermagic.
Aether Vial protects your combo from counterspells. Additional counterspells and disruption help as well. The only truly vulnerable part of the combo is Cauldron Haze, especially because it dies to Spell Snare. That said, instant speed allows you to try and combo at the most opportune moment. Your 11 protection/disruption spells help as well.
The combo is bad because Card X beats it.
As usual, just because Card X beats Card Y, that does not mean that Card Y is bad. Tarmogoyf loses to Terror. Counterbalance loses to Krosan Grip. Ichorid as a deck loses to Leyline. Just as I am sure all of you angrily respond to each of those statements with a hundred alternate scenarios, so too does RIP have a response to each of its own threats.
Intentionally drawing the game is dishonorable and mean. This deck is for assholes.
Winning is winning. If you don’t like it, play Chess.
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RIP in the Legacy Metagame
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How does RIP match up against the Legacy metagame? I tested 40 games each against the following decks: 10 games on the play, 10 games on the draw, and 20 games post-sideboard. The results were overwhelming and impressive.
1. Tempo Threshold (Canadian Threshold)
2. LED Ichorid
3. UWG Goyf Landstill
4. Merfolk
Here are those results. A win means that RIP won. A loss means that RIP lost. A draw means that RIP drew the game such that the opposing deck could not stop them, and the game started over.
1. Tempo Threshold: 8 wins – 15 draws – 17 losses
2. LED Ichorid: 12 wins – 17 draws – 11 losses
3. UWG Goyf Landstill: 10 wins – 17 draws – 13 losses
4. Merfolk: 15 wins – 18 draws – 7 losses
A little interpretation of the results
Temp Threshold: I knew this was going to be a nightmare match going into it. Not only do they have the full arsenal of countermagic and removal that Goyf has, but they have more of it AND burn. Half of my wins basically happened blazingly fast in game 1 (I had a turn 1 win with a god draw hand), and the other half happened off of sub-optimal hands for them in games 2 and 3. Drawing against Thresh was a little easier, but still quite difficult, as they could often respond to a Haze with at least 2-3 removal spells/counter spells.
Card redundancy is also problematic with Tempo Thresh; you can Thoughtseize a FoW, but they still have Counterspell, Fire/Ice, and Swords in their hand. This gives you an unpleasant game 1, and forces you to board in your Duress’s for game 2, in a rather desperate effort to beat them.
LED Ichorid: There is only one card that is a problem in this deck: Cabal Therapy. Therapy can really fuck up an otherwise pristine turn 2 or 3 win. Due to dredge, it does so with frightening consistency. Almost all of my 17 draws and 13 losses were because Therapy crippled my ability to seek out a Disciple (or prevented me from drawing the game period). The way to beat Therapy is Brainstorm. Strategic Brainstorms can really save this matchup, so do not blow them all early digging for cards. FoW is similarly helpful in this regard.
The speed of the deck is also sometimes annoying; there were many games where, if given one more turn, I could have won. But because of Flame-Kin Zealot and a gigantic army of Bridge from Below zombies, I had to settle for a draw instead. For the most part, however, you can race Ichorid; just watch out for Therapy.
UWG Goyf Landstill: A decent matchup; about 50-50 in the long run. Thoughtseize is spectacular in this matchup, because Landstill does not have AS many counters as Thresh does. Normally Thoughtseize and FoW/Daze are enough to protect your combo, or at least protect an intentional draw. I found myself consistently getting owned by two cards; Swords and Spell Snare. 2 1 CC cards that completely devastate RIP’s strategy. If they are also holding Daze or FoW, you are in serious trouble.
Merfolk: An excellent matchup. Your goal is simple; outrace them. Your average Merfolk deck has only 8-12 threats to watch out for; Daze, FoW, and Stifle. Cursecatcher can be a random annoyance, but for the most part it is not serious. Stifle is a real pain if you keep a low land hand and have a fetchland blown away. Stifle also causes serious problems with the triggered ability Persist. Thankfully, you have way more card-digging spells than your average Merfolk deck, and you have a pretty decent chance of getting an answer to their spells. Moreover, a lot of Merfolk players will Stifle a land instead of waiting to Stifle the Ravager. This means that by the time you get your combo going, you are less likely to encounter this card.
Admittedly, my testing did not account for either 43 Land or Aggro Loam, both of which made powerful showings at the St. Louis 10K. As such, I will update this with the testing results from those matches. I will also admit that not all decklists are the same, and perhaps I did not test against representative lists with the “latest tech” or what have you. While this may be true, the results still withstand scrutiny; even a teched up deck is fairly similar to an earlier version.
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So there you have it. RIP (Raveger Infinitely Persists), the new combo deck for the Legacy format. Any comments or questions? Criticisms or complaints?
-ktkenshinx-
OMFG
