I was going to reply on Twitter to @wrongwaygoback’s recent piece on combo decks, but my thoughts evolved into something actually pretty long, so I decided to hammer out my own blog post.
First, you need to go read that piece. I’ll wait…. OK, done? Great, then let’s move on.
To start off, I think the math needs some comment. As was noted, the probability of drawing at least one copy of a card is a lot better if you have 8 of them than if you have 4. We all sort of know that but it can certainly be eye-opening to However, those numbers are really optimistic. For example, the 39% probability of drawing at least one in your opening hand (I actually get 40% when I calculate it, but close enough) includes horrific opening hands that you wouldn’t likely want, like six lands plus your combo card, or no lands plus four copies of your combo card. So those numbers, even for the 8-card case, are really the upper bound—the situation really isn’t even as good as those numbers indicate. (Note those numbers don’t include mulligans, which both improves the situation in terms of odds but makes it worse in terms of card parity, which is rarely good. Mulligans also complicate the math.)
What I really want to get into, though, is the even messier (both conceptually and mathematically) issue of what a “combo” deck really is, at least in many cases. For the very essence of many combo decks is that most of them don’t rely on a single card, whether 4-of or 8-of, but the deck’s ability to generate multiple cards at the same time; hence, “combo.” This actually creates more difficulty, since you need not just one card to be an 4-of, but two. For the sake of argument, I’ll consider a simple two-card combo with no tutors running 4 of each combo piece. So, what’s the probability that you draw at least one of each card (assuming you’re on the draw)?
I won’t bore you with the probability formulae for this, but here are the results:
Opening hand: 15%
Turn 1: 18%
Turn 2: 22%
Turn 3: 27%
Those are not what you’d call really strong odds, and this again is somewhat optimistic in that it includes all hands that have at least one of each card, meaning it includes degenerate hands with no lands, or hands with 1 land and three of each combo card, etc. Even if you make one of the two combo cards an 8-of via some efficient tutor your probability of having at least one of each is only 40% by the time you’ve seen ten cards. I believe this is the reason a lot of combo decks have been historically unstable and many decks are really mixtures of combo and control, because they need to assure that they can live long enough to get both pieces. The 50-50 point for at least one of both pieces with a 4-of and an 8-of is when you’ve seen 12 cards, which is still a lot. Even non-tutor searching cards like Brainstorm (or my favorite from the old days, Impulse) improve your odds enough to be highly worthwhile.
There are perfectly viable approaches to solving this kind of probability problem. Consider Thopter Depths from last extended season. The deck didn’t become dominant until both the Dark Depths–Vampire Hexmage combo and the Thopter–Sword combo were run in the same deck. (Certainly, it was good before, but even better after.) Muddle the Mixture also really helped, because transmuting for 2 got you a Hexmage, a Sword of the Meek, or a Thopter Foundry—and it could also protect combo pieces if you already had them out there by being a counter. Muddle rocked in that deck.
Now, this analysis doesn’t apply to all combo decks, since in many cases casting one part of the combo generates the other, e.g., Polymorph gets you your big fat creature without you needing any other specific card. However, you have to meet another condition, a game state condition: you have to have a creature in play. That one isn’t too hard to achieve, though, so the combo makes sense as being viable. Pyromaster’s Ascension doesn’t require a specific second card to “go off” but also does require that you achieve a specific game state, and again one that’s not too hard to reach (multiple instances of the same card in your graveyard), but probably harder than “have at least one creature in play.” These one-card “combos” have the same probability analysis that Neale showed (that is, really bad without a tutor), but they do require a little more than just the combo card. So there I think Neale’s analysis is definitely something to consider when building a combo deck of this type. Note that Hypergenesis is this kind of combo deck, but cascade gave it an avenue to having many cards that would trigger the combo, and thus a reasonable probability of “going off.”
However, there are still other ways to go besides one- and two-card combos. Consider the most recently-popular “combo” deck in Standard, one that many wouldn’t classify as a combo deck at all: Mythic Conscription. Sovereigns of Lost Alara combos with Eldrazi Conscription, but the Sovereigns tutors for the Conscription (much like Polymorph). In addition, this generally also depends on game state, as the modus operandi of the deck was not to attack with Sovereigns, but to use Sovereigns with another creature to do damage the turn Sovereigns come into play. So in that sense, it’s a little like the Ascension deck, since when it started there were no good, efficient tutors for Sovereigns.
But Mythic Conscription doesn’t actually require Sovereigns to win. Technically, Polymorph can win by hard-casting Emrakul (lots of luck with that game plan) and Pyromaster’s Ascension can win without the Ascension (barely), but these are horribly difficult ways to win. Mythic Conscription, on the other hand, is as much an aggro/ramp deck as it is a combo deck—you can easily win without the Sovereigns or the Conscription seeing play at all, usually on the back of other very strong cards like Knight of the Reliquary or Baneslayer Angel, which could ramp out very early. Because of this, lots of people wouldn’t classify it as a combo deck at all.
Now, I’ve played Mythic Conscription a fair amount, and I’d say a majority of my losses were games that I would have won had I drawn Sovereigns at any point in the game. As a pure aggro/ramp deck, it was a good deck, but it was Sovereigns that made it into a top-tier deck. On that basis, I’d claim that it’s reasonable to label it, at least in part, a combo deck—just one where the combo is not actually required.
Anyway, I want to finish by considering the end of Neale’s post which was essentially “don’t build combo decks around Pyromaster’s Ascension and Fauna Shaman because there aren’t good tutors for them.” I agree that those aren’t the best centerpiece combo cards. I’ve never had any interest in the Ascension combo decks, and I think Neale has hit the underlying reason why.
However, I don’t see Fauna Shaman as a card to build around in a combo deck—Shaman is the tutor for some other combo piece, as in the recent Italian national champion Soverign Conscription deck. Or maybe Shaman is not a combo piece, but just a really good card because it allows you to viably run a bunch of utility 1-ofs that you can tutor for, like in the Spanish national champion Naya deck. I think those aptly demonstrate that the Shaman is the real deal, even if the Naya deck isn’t really a combo deck at all, and the Bant deck is only kind of a combo deck.
Postscript: I love both of those builds, though I think I’d run the Lotus Cobras in the main in the Bant deck and put the Walls in the sideboard.