Muldrotha, 98 permanents, the oxford comma, and Primal Surge!
Game Winning Combos!
-
Primal Surge + Deck Construction - This puts our entire deck on the battlefield. We end up with Laboratory Maniac and a way to draw a card for an immediate win. If Underrealm Lich is in play we must bounce / destroy it for the Laboratory Maniac win. We also have counterspell backup in Siren Stormtamer and Glen Elendra Archmage as well as instant-speed Shroud from Neurok Stealthsuit to protect the win.
-
[Necropotence or Doom Whisperer] + Second Chance + Muldrotha. Set our life to 5 or less on opponent's end of turn, then crack and replay Second Chance to take as many turns as necessary to win!
-
Muldrotha + Deadeye Navigator + Lion's Eye Diamond. Crack Diamond for UUU, use 1U to blink Muldrotha to replay Diamond from graveyard and repeat. Alternate colors every few iterations for infinite mana and recursion.
-
Muldrotha + Lion's Eye Diamond + [Phantasmal Image or Dance of Many] + [Dance of the Dead or Animate Dead or Necromancy]. Copy Muldrotha, Legend Rule lets you keep the copy and send the original to the graveyard, reanimate the original, let the copy card go to the graveyard. Then repeat forever cracking the Diamond after each Legend Rule-ing for infinite mana and recursion. There are a lot of pieces to this combo but they are all good outside the combo so it's worth the card slots. With a perfect hand of {Land, Land, Lotus Petal, all three pieces of this combo, and a way to draw/tutor} we can go off on turn 2!
-
Defense of the Heart. Cracking a Defense of the Heart can either be huge value with Vorinclex and Consecrated Sphinx or it can win the game immediately if you have 4 mana sources by tutoring Sidisi and Rune-Scarred Demon. Sidisi exploits itself, then tutor for Animate Dead and Lion's Eye Diamond. Cast Muldrotha with the Diamond and 3 of the mana sources. Cast the Diamond from graveyard then cast Animate Dead with it reanimating Sidisi. Sidisi exploits itself again and tutors for Phantasmal Image. Use the floating B and the 4th mana source to cast Phantasmal Image copying Muldrotha and you're in the infinite mana/recursion combo!
Prison / Stax
Muldrotha's endless recursion allows for a Prison / Stax sub-strategy to let us live long enough to assemble a combo or elicit a salty concession from players with empty boards and no hope of catching back up.
Pernicious Deed is an all-star! Being able to delete everything CMC<=5 every turn is fucking brutal!
Smokestack is also pretty great, make sure to carefully stack Upkeep triggers for maximum value:
- Bottom: Add Soot Counter
- Middle: All Cumulative Upkeeps
- Top: Sacrifice [x] Permanents
This way we sacrifice before adding a counter or paying upkeep costs. Choose Elephant Grass or Mystic Remora to reset the cumulative upkeep when we replay it with Muldrotha. It also lets us sacrifice our ETB creatures like Coiling Oracle or Hostage Taker for additional value. Another cheeky move is to sacrifice [Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Dance of Many, or Necromancy] and the creature associated with it, then replay the enchantment to get both back. I usually leave the soot counters at 2 or 3 so I don't get super blown out if someone kills Muldrotha.
Tangle Wire is similar - stack Fading on top of the 2nd ability so you have to tap one less thing. (Two less things because we always tap Tangle Wire to itself)
[Strip Mine or Wasteland or Ghost Quarter] + Muldrotha + Exploration lets us destroy a land every turn without giving up mana development. To avoid a little of the retribution I tend to activate Strip Mine and say "A land is going to be destroyed, everybody argue your case!" so players can "democratically elect" a land to destroy hahaha.
Self-Sacrificing Permanents!
Fonts, Vessels, Capsules, Spellbombs, Seals, and more. These cards are usually worse than the instant/sorcery versions of the same effects; often costing more mana, but mainly because they sit on board telegraphing their abilities for all to see.
Muldrotha makes them much better by turning them into pseudo lock pieces with her recursion! Eventually the goal is to build up an impenetrable wall of disruptive permanents so we can win at leisure or at least dissuade opponents from attacking us long enough for them to kill each other first. This is parallel to the prison strategy, some decks absolutely fold to Spore Frog + Seal of Doom + Aether Spellbomb recursion!
