Combat Research

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Standard Brawl Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Combat Research

Enchantment — Aura

Enchant creature

Enchanted creature has "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw a card."

As long as enchanted creature is legendary, it gets +1/+1 and has ward . (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays )

GregariousG on You Wouldn't Download A Spell | *Primer*

2 months ago

To Lastline77,

I’ve never liked the look of tags in my posted lists. I just use a separate Word document to making categories for ramp, draw, interaction, etc. That’s just easier for me. For me, deckbuilding is just as entertaining as playing. I really enjoy making a concept, playing it, and moving pieces around. I started a long time ago so I’ve gotten better, hopefully. After building , playing, and tweeking, I can just know what each piece is supposed to do and whether it is effective or not. I can walk you through my thought process for this Ivy build. When I saw Ivy, I knew off the jump that she would make a good tempo commander because of her low cost and copying ability. Because this was going to be Simic Tempo, I need a low curve. Thus, most of my cards should sit between and and very few high cost cards. If you look through my editing history, you can see the few amount of high end creatures and spells were continuously cut. As well, tempo decks want to draw a lot of cards. Because of that, I stacked the deck with Combat Research-effects and looked for new ones with each set. The ETB draw enchants are also good, which is why there are so many. At first, I had the stereotypical ramp package, with mana dorks and land fetches like Cultivate. However, I noticed that drawing cards is just as good as some of the classic ramp spells. For example, Enter the Unknown is probably one of the best ramp pieces in this deck. The ability to have an extra land drop per target for just . is busted. Thus, there is no point to have Three Visits when I can drop two or more additional lands. As well, ramp that copies, like Migratory Greathorn is just better than Three Visits because it can be copied. Besides card draw, this deck needs all of the interactions, aka counterspells and protection. This is one of the reasons why there is so much draw; this deck needs interaction. I always want a counter or protection in my hand. Two reasons. First, a tempo deck that gets interacted with early generally doesn’t do anything for the rest of the game. You want to control the pace as much as possible. Second, Ivy tempo is a major problem once it gets going and people will notice. That’s when the removal and the board wipes start to fly. However, this is Ivy tempo. With overwhelming card draw and interaction, you probably won’t care what the opponent is doing. Opponent going to Farewell the board. That’s great because you have Slip Out the Back to phase out or just a counter. However, you need that card advantage. As for switching out cards, this comes best through playing testing. For example, Double Major is in 50% of the 8,378 Ivy decks recorded by EDHREC. As of a few days ago, my deck was included in that number. However, Double Major has always been on the chopping block. Great on paper, awkward in play. This might not be true for others, but Double Major was rarely worth it. There are easier and more curve-friendly ways to get copies of Ivy. This was a long rant but I hope it kinda helped.

Breakaway on Ultra Budget Mono-Blue Spirits

4 months ago

Hi nuperokaso,

Thank you for the recommendations!

I like Hidden Strings as it super-charges everything that your cards want to do: it "ramps" by untapping lands, gives "vigilance" by allowing you to both attack and stay on defense. This creates additional creature synergies as you it untaps creatures for Shacklegeist or lands to draw with Spectral Sailor. It also lets you cast more spells while untapping lands so that you can counter things on your opponent's turn.

I sometimes use You See a Guard Approach to tap down a big attacker and save myself from a beating or to get a problematic blocker out of the way so that Combat Research or Hidden Strings can do their thing. I agree that Shore Up is better, but I like the flexibility of You See a Guard Approach.

Azoth2099 on [Rafiq of the Plenty] EDH

10 months ago

Drannith Magistrate, Deep Gnome Terramancer, Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar, Ohran Frostfang, Veil of Summer, Silence, Legolas's Quick Reflexes & Conqueror's Flail could all be great here!

Also 1-drop card draw enchantments like Curiosity, Curious Obsession, Combat Research, Keen Sense & Sixth Sense trigger twice with Double Strike, and get out of hand really quickly!

legendofa on

1 year ago

Looking at a meta Dimir Pioneer deck, https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-rogues#paper the new Faerie Mastermind has found a place, and Kaito Shizuki and Into the Story have slots. (Links not enabled, I apologize.)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-mono-blue-spirits#paper has Curious Obsession and Combat Research.

Expressive Iteration got banned in Pioneer for being too efficient at creating and maintaining a hand state.

You had mentioned the mulligan rule earlier. I'm not an expert on hypergeometric calculations, but that is an accepted part of play at all levels, and goes a long way to minimizing the rate of unplayable hands. How does Shota's deck perform if you assume one mulligan on a hand with 0-1 or 5-7 lands, keeping all hands with 2-4 lands?

My thoughts of Witching Well and Opt were more to demonstrate that in particular has the ability to fix mana in hand at any budget. I didn't really make that clear in my post. If the tournament decks aren't running these cards, it's because they're running more efficient options.

Magic is absolutely a tough nut to crack, and I don't pretend to have all, or most, or any answers outside of quick searches of tournament lists and results and my own experience. The topic of balancing all the needs of your deck--mana, card draw, threats, responses--has had literal books written about it by high-level professionals, and then all the advice changes every few years. What works now might not work two years from now, and today's weird jank draft filler becomes tomorrow's top-tier combo piece.

One more thought, and this is my personal response to your earlier statement that "Most people would call you crazy if your "fun hobby " is fun 75% of the time." In baseball, if you succeed as a batter by getting on base 40% of the time, that's very notable. At the time of this writing, in the MLB, only fourteen people out of over 1,000 have an On-Base Percentage over .400, and exactly one person, Luis Arráez of the Miami Marlins, has an OBP of .500. So a 75% "fun" rate isn't necessarily grounds for craziness.

Again, if you decide you're not having fun and want to pack it in, I wish you the best of luck. If you want to stick around and chat without actually playing, please do. If you simply want to make a clean break, I hope you find the hobby that brings you lasting satisfaction and fulfillment.

Elsterooo on The most toxic pioneer ever was!

1 year ago

I'm glad you do!

Thank you so much, I initially thought about her but had tunnel vision apparently. She absolutely needs to be tested. Aqueous Form would be out and since we don't want the buff from Combat Research we would arrive at Sixth Sense.

I assume we keep Hope of Ghirapur, but we can experiment with that slot. She also eats removal.

Downside could be going up in CMC, but Aqueous Form doesn't come down on t1 anyway, so we just lose the scry.

Jupiter_Ascendancy on Assassins Guild

2 years ago

This is a good deck so far, but I think there are a couple of things you can do to improve it by a good margin.

1- Mana base: Your mana base is 100% fine for a casual deck, but in competitive Legacy, it's very slow. In Legacy, you do NOT want to have access to less mana in a turn than you potentially could. 24 lands is also probably too much given your mana curve, you probably won't need more than 4 lands in a game and extras will just clog up your hand. I would run 4x each of Hallowed Fountain, Watery Grave, Godless Shrine, Marsh Flats and Flooded Strand, and 1x Polluted Delta.

2- You'll want some more control elements to make sure you can measure up to other Legacy decks, Swords to Plowshares and Spell Pierce would improve the deck a lot. It's tempting to just let creatures do that work, but this is Legacy, and your creatures might not make it past their summoning sickness turn if you don't do something to either protect them or force your opponents to focus more on their board.

3- Play into some of the assassin themes a bit, some good cards you should probably consider are Combat Research, Scarblade Elite and Nekrataal.

4- Build a sideboard. If you're looking to make your deck viable in a competitive environment, it needs to have some level of variability. Some cards I would recommend for it are Hydroblast, Massacre Girl , Narset, Parter of Veils, Void Rend and Tormod's Crypt.

This looks like a good casual deck, but since you mention you're looking to make it work as a competitive Legacy deck, I think you'll need to bring up the deck's power a bit.

Jupiter_Ascendancy on Selesnya Auras 2.0

2 years ago

Good deck so far!

I think if you decide to splash a color, I would go with blue. Having Cartouche of Knowledge, Staggering Insight, Combat Research and counterspells seems quite useful to me. It would help you replace a lot of the less-powerful cards you're running (like Angelic Gift) while staying true to the theme of the original deck. If you'd rather keep the deck Selesnya then 100% do that, but I think in this case Bant would be more powerful than Abzan.

If you're staying Selesnya, I would recommend you look into Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr  Flip and Sky-Blessed Samurai, I have had a lot of success with those two cards.

This is a good outline so far either way. Nice job!

Crazy_Bomb on

2 years ago

I like the deck. The Mana-base struggles without many pain-lands or slow-lands. Also if you remove the enchantment synergy creatures you could add Illuminator Virtuoso, Dorothea, Vengeful Victim  Flip, Slip Out the Back, Homestead Courage and more Timely Interference (keeping Combat Research). Also, March of Swirling Mist while not always being a single target spell, triggers multiple Illuminator Virtuosos and Stormchaser Drakes and can phase out Dorothea's Retribution  Flip tokens after damage for cheap 4/4 tokens the next turn.

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