Pauper Midnight Presence / Devoted Presence combo (Pauper MTG Deck)

I've been playing this pauper deck recently and been having a lot of fun. This is a combination of other lists I've seen using the Midnight Presence combo. Here are the basics of how the deck works.

Combo

If you can get out Midnight Guard , then cast Presence of Gond on him, you can generate infinite tokens, since Presence lets you tap midnight to put a 1/1 elf warrior token into play and midnight untaps every time a creature enters play.

If you don't get Midnight Guard you can use Devoted Druid for a similar combo but its a bit more work. Devoted Druid can be untapped at any point by putting a minus one minus one counter on her, but obviously this would kill her quickly so we need something to make her bigger every time a creature would enter the battlefield. We do this with either Sigil of the Nayan Gods which gives +1/+1 for each creature in play, or with Ivy Lane Denizen who puts a +1/+1 counter on target creature whenever a creature enters the battlefield. With either of these two we can keep Devoted Druid healthy as we spawn infinite minions.

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Tutors

Because we require combo pieces, and without them the deck is mediocre, we run a number of tutors to dig up the pieces we need to combo off. Heliod's Pilgrim lets us tutor presence, or sigil if we need it. Commune with the Gods is primarily to draw to Presence of Gond but can also draw any other piece of either combo if needed.

Protection

The deck is very susceptible to targeted removal so we run a number of ways to dodge it. Vines of Vastwood is used to protect our Presence of Gond target from being burned or creature killed, since in response we can make it untargetable by the opponent. It does have other uses though -- it can stop opponents from doing combos they might have, give us a vital creature trade, or in some very interesting cases give us the extra mana we need from a Devoted Druid since it gives us +4/+4 for only 2 mana -- that means we can produce 2 more mana off the Druid than we spent into the vines. One game this allowed me to combo off on the turn I needed to in order to not lose the game. The deck runs four other dodge spells, 2 Standard Bearer and 2 Benevolent Bodyguard . I take them over other instant speed protection because they have bodies if we need to chump block against a strong aggro deck and because if mana is tight we can spend it for the protection a turn earlier.

Acceleration

The last two cards in the deck are Avacyn's Pilgrim and Elvish Mystic. I'd be lying if I said they were necessary, but they accelerate early and enables two versions of the combo to be possible on turn 3 with ideal draws.

Land base

With the land base I have now I rarely get stuck on mana, though Blossoming Sands and Evolving Wilds can hurt our tempo by coming into play tapped. I think the number of lands the deck runs now is pretty good, but there is some flexibility here.

Sideboard

The sideboard probably still needs some refinement. Relic of Progenitus is the classic graveyard hate deck thinning that is super good. 3 Veteran Armorer are in for Red or Black which post board will often have Electrickery or Shrivel. 2 Auramancer s are included in case your against a deck that kills your presence before you can combo off. Nature's Claim is our way of dealing with enchantments or artifacts. Journey to Nowhere helps us against decks with big threats. Especially against the Gurmag Angler s or Ulamog's Crushers that I occasionally see. Finally I currently have 3 Mana Tithe slotted in, mostly for use against counter heavy decks which will just leave 2 mana up to Counterspell or Mana Leak your presence. Its an easy swap to put these in over Vines of Vastwood or mana dorks in match ups like that.

Some additional thoughts and choices

There is one more version of the combo that I know of which works with Devoted Druid and Conclave's Blessing . It isn't included because usually having one of the combo pieces for her isn't hard, and because Conclave's Blessing only gives toughness. Sigil of the Nayan Gods and Ivy Lane Denizen give infinite / infinite creatures with the Midnight Guard version of the combo, and an infinite toughness creature just isn't as useful, not to mention its CMC is one higher than sigil. Conclave's Blessing does have one advantage when comboed with Devoted Druid in that it also allows the druid to generate infinite mana if desired. Since we don't have any great mana dumps this is usually a win-more condition and thus doesn't make the cut for the deck.

Another thing to note about this deck is it does combo well with Soul Sisters and Essence Warden. In my version I don't include these in favor of focusing on building and protecting the combo but you may want to experiment with them. In some match ups if I had them they would have made the difference, especially against the very fast burn decks in the meta. My main reason for not including is it feels like a win-more card. It mostly pays dividends when you hit your infinite combo, and if you do hit your combo it is rare that you lose -- though it has certainly happened to me once or twice.

Protecting your 1/1 elf creatures can be useful, especially post-sideboard against red or black to defend against Shrivel and Electrickery . This can make either Parapet or Lumithread Field good sideboard inclusions.

There are also more tutors that can be run. I use to run Totem-Guide Hartebeest effectively, and found getting to five mana to be relatively easy for the deck, but it was a bit slow and with the addition of Heliod's Pilgrim often ended up being unnecessary. I also use to run Commune with Nature , but I would occasionally wiff on it, and it was more common I'd need presence than that I'd need one of the two creatures to combo with. Someone I was playing with last night brought up Kruphix's Insight as a possibility, which I hadn't considered before. Ultimately I don't think it fits well in the deck because it only checks 6 cards and we're only running 8 enchantments, but if you run a build that runs more enchantments I could see this being a great addition.

There are also a lot of choices for protecting your combo and I'm currently struggling to decide what the optimal combination of protection cards are. The biggest problem the deck suffers from is counters, which makes Lapse of Certainty or even main-boarding Mana Tithe tempting. Lapse is just a bit too high on the mana curve to make the cut, needing six mana open to counter their counter spell when casting gond makes this a hard sell. Mana Tithe while cheaper is just too situational, and the main deck I've had problems with, Angler Delver, often ends up mana flooded and has kill spells to contend with as well. I use to run Ranger's Guile with pretty good success but currently opting for creatures that fill the same roll. Shelter, Shielding Plax , and Gods Willing are all good but don't make the cut for me because at the point your protecting your combo usually card draw and scry aren't relevant, and in most cases neither is Shielding Plax ability to stick around for multiple turns. All of these protection spells are worth playing with though, and which ones work best for you is probably based on both taste and the meta you're playing in.

I heard someone suggest in some match ups, specifically Turbo Fog, it can be worth running something like Viridian Longbow since fog only stops combat damage. You can combo off for infinite damage if you have two creatures out set up to untap each time a creature enters the battlefield. I wouldn't suggest running this in the main board, but in the sideboard as a one or two of I think it could make a lot of sense to slot in.

Splashing a third color

The above deck is tight enough that I much prefer the two color version, but I wanted to add a little bit about how one might splash a third color and which ones might be worth going for.

Splashing Red

In many ways Red seems the most logical color to splash. It shores up one of the most major weaknesses of the combo: summoning sickness. Impact Tremors gets around having to wait a turn to swing in with your infinite tokens by having them do damage as they enter the battlefield. Burst of Speed can be used in two ways, the most obvious one is to make a ton of tokens, then use burst of speed so they can swing in right away. The other one is, if you have seven mana, you can put out your full combo and combo off right away (cast midnight for 3, put gond on for 3, give haste for 1). Its rare to get into this case since you'd need seven mana, but if you're more concerned about single target removal than wipes and you don't have other protection getting the full combo out and making a ton of tokens on a single turn is huge.

Splashing Blue

The primary reason I see to splash blue is for counter spells. There is nothing worse than setting up your combo only to have Presence of Gond countered. Double blue is a bit too expensive for a splash, which makes running Counterspell unrealistic. Instead Dispel, Mana Leak, and Negate are options. Dispell is the cheapest and fixes most cases you're worried about, but since you're giving up other protection slots for it and some opponents run mostly sorcery speed kills I found side boarding them made more sense. Having too many counters also cuts into your combo pieces too much, so I'd suggest only running 4-8 counters.

With blue we also gain access to Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm which help draw combo pieces and keep us from getting flooded or screwed on Mana.

Another combo option also opens up with blue. This one I wouldn't suggest due to the 6 CMC of the creature involved, but I wanted to mention it for completeness. Sinking Feeling is an interesting spell, and in combination with Morselhoarder you get another creature that can untap infinitely. This means another possible target for Presence of Gond. tap morsel to create a 1/1, remove a -1/-1 counter from morsel to gain a mana, use the mana and put a -1/-1 counter onto morsel from sinking feeling to untap, repeat. It is worth noting this infinite untap isn't reliant on creatures entering the battlefield, so he can go off for infinite damage by himself with things like Viridian Longbow.

Splashing Black
The best reason to splash black is hand disruption. If you can take your opponent off of ways to disrupt your combo you have a pretty good shot. Thus cards like Duress are great! They let you take your opponents counter spell or kill spell and give you valuable information about how to play out your hand, whether you're likely to have to wait till you have protection to go off, etc.

Black also has a few effects that could be useful. First, there are several creatures that get +2/+2 till end of turn, or +1/+1 permanently per creature sacrificed. Bloodthrone Vampire and Bloodflow Connoisseur are examples of this. If the opponent has blockers in the way to stop those two threats you can also run Rite of Consumption, which also has the potential to gain you infinite life -- though the infinite damage is obviously more relevant. Overall though, black doesn't seem worth it. It seems like a weaker version of splashing red.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

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Date added	8 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Pauper legal.
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.17
Tokens	Elf Warrior 1/1 G
Folders	Found On This Site, Future Deck Ideas, Pauper, pauper, Pauper Fun!, Variations on Midnight Presence, twin combo, Pauper, Red deck wins, Pauper
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