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UW Helm

Legacy Combo Competitive Control Enchantment Prison WU (Azorius)

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Land (25)

Sorcery (4)

Enchantment (14)

Planeswalker (3)

Artifact (4)

Instant (10)

Sideboard

Enchantment (7)

Sorcery (3)

Instant (3)

Creature (2)

                                              RIP-LASH

<-- LARGESCALE REWORK IN PROGRESS: Description outdated -->

RIP-Lash relies primarily on Rest in Peace, a powerful effect that is usually relegated to the sideboard but always has a huge impact on the games where you want it. Since RIP combos with Energy Field and wins with Helm of Obedience, it is mainly a bonus that it also turns off cards like Dragon's Rage Channeler and Murktide Regent to give you an edge in matchups like delver, ANT, reanimator, dredge, and against any other archetypes that rely on their graveyard.

The secondary combo in this strategy is Thought Lash + Thassa's Oracle, giving you another axis to combo if your opponent stops the Helm combo using a Null Rod effect or some similar form of distruption. This combo also works nicely with Lantern of Insight, allowing you to see your top card and exile until you dig to your oracle. Thought Lash also has the bonus of acting similarly to your other permanent based disruption by allowing you to exile cards to prevent damage and stay alive until you can combo or cast your lock pieces. Additionally, Thought Lash + Lantern of Insight can combo with Counterbalance to allow you to exile cards until you have whichever cmc on top needed to counter a spell played by your opponent (generally you will also just use this combo to dig to oracle for a win, but if you can't draw the oracle right away, or it's in your hand and you can't cast it on the same turn as Thought Lash and need to protect your pieces until you can, this is a good method to do so).

RIP + Helm

1: Cast Rest in Peace

2: Cast Helm of Obedience

3: Activate Helm of Obedience for X = 1, milling the opponent's entire library since no cards are put into their graveyard thanks to Rest in Peace

Thought Lash + Oracle

1: Cast Thought Lash

2: In your upkeep, use Lantern of Insight + Thought Lash to exile cards off the top until your top card is Thassa's Oracle, then move to your draw step and draw the oracle.

3: Cast Thassa's Oracle, then with the oracle trigger on the stack activate Thought Lash to exile your library.

RIP + Energy Field

1: Cast Rest in Peace

2: Cast Energy Field

3: As long as Rest in Peace is in play, your opponent cannot damage you since no cards can reach your graveyard to trigger Energy Field's sacrifice.

TLDR: establish a lock with hateful effects like Energy Field, Rest in Peace, Counterbalance, Curse of Silence, or Meekstone. Then win with RIP + Helm OR Thought Lash + Oracle.

  • The primary sequence you are looking to establish with this strategy is one where you slow down or lock out your opponent. From there you are trying to make your land drops and play out enchantments so that you can use Serra's Sanctum to cast your combo pieces, which all involve a fair amount of mana to go off (4 mana for Thought Lash & 5 mana for Helm). The other reason for needing to slow your opponent is that both combos are difficult to win with in one turn (if you have enough mana it is possible, but generally you would rather combo sooner instead of waiting to get to cast everything on the same turn. This is matchup/board state dependent though). The other reason for the lock/prison approach is that cards like Energy Field are sometimes impossible for your opponent to remove and stops them from being able to win (especially game 1). This means that against decks like delver, if you can resolve RIP + Field then you have as much time as you need to win the game since they can't get damage through and usually have between 0-1 answers for Energy Field, even in post-board games.

  • The other axis you can approach a game from is trying to win via combat with construct tokens from Urza's Saga, though this is usually more effective at simply forcing your opponent to address the constructs rather than being something you can rely on winning the game itself. Urza's Saga also gives you something to spend your mana on and makes it difficult for your opponent to sideboard if they need to keep in creature removal when the rest of your strategy makes creature removal a dead draw.

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Casual

98% Competitive