MTG Combo: Midnight Guard + Ornithopter

TMBRLZ on Azorius Mill? Are you mad?

8 years ago

I would strongly consider the advantages of Altar of the Brood mainboard and/or sideboard. My point here is you don't have to waste time with the sideboarding things to deal with Stony Silence.

Look at it this way:

You don't even know if your opponent has SS for sure in their sideboard. SS is staple sideboard tech and has no place in a meta mainboard list. So you're left to assume that if they're running any flavor of white that they'll bring it in. You don't KNOW. You're answer to it is also in your sideboard. If you bring in Demystify to deal with a suspected SS, only to never see a SS then you've just removed two or three cards that were infinitely more valuable to you.

As for adding black. Two or three Watery Grave or Godless Shrine would do you fine if only for the card I suggested. You could fetch for them with your Flooded Strand.

I'll also make one more suggestion that might be a bit odd at first. By adding black you open yourself up to another option to make your combo move MUCH faster.

Disciple of Deceit

Back in last standard I had a Jeskai combo deck that manipulated a number of combos such as the Midnight Guard + Ornithopter and Briber's Purse + Zephyr Scribe combos in conjunction with Retraction Helix and Altar of the Brood on board. It also used Jeskai Ascendancy to make it easier to combo and loot the deck out for tech. I later realized the value of Disciple and added her as the entire deck ran off of 0 through 3 drops and I could quickly recycle one card for the other I needed. I already had Springleaf Drum (which I'd also consider as you can use it with your zero drop creatures to accelerate your mana) so using it in conjunction with her helped me combo out faster. She was the cheapest tutor in standard at that time. The deck was turn 2 capable to say the least. Turn 2 was next to impossible, but possible.

I've spent a lot of time staring at some combo decks and I've learned the faster you can combo the better. Your opponent has less time to learn and less time to respond. This deck you have is an awesome idea but I feel like with just enough tweaking and searching you can make it much faster and more reliable.

Please toy with some of my suggestion. Make a copy and just add some black and test it out. You might enjoy the results.