Reformation Protocol

Modern* Combo Enchantment UBR (Grixis)

XxZadexX

Land (28)

• 3x Fiery Islet
• 4x Forgotten Cave
• 2x Lonely Sandbar
• 4x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Snow-Covered Island
• 5x Snow-Covered Mountain
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 3x Steam Vents
• 1x Watery Grave
• 4x Wooded Foothills

Instant (12)

• 4x Opt
• 4x Manamorphose
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 2x Shadow of the Grave
• 1x Lightning Storm

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Serum Visions

Enchantment (10)

• 3x Escape Protocol
• 4x Tectonic Reformation
• 3x Underworld Breach

Creature (6)

• 2x Thassa's Oracle
• 4x Priest of Urabrask

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Edge of Autumn

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Ominous Seas

Creature (1)

• 1x Street Wraith

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Description

A cycling combo deck that looks to either win via self milling with Thassa's Oracle or casting Lightning Storm with two tons of lands in hand on or after turn 4.

Creation

When the full Ikoria set was available to preview, I started trying to figure out a way to break Unpredictable Cyclone. I spent a couple days tinkering with several different cycling/enchantment combo decks (most of them using Tectonic Reformation) without much luck. Best I got them to perform was a chance of winning flat out on turn 5, which was a bit slow and wasn't anywhere near consistent. So I scrapped the idea for a while. Then I found myself perusing the rest of the Ikoria spoilers and found Escape Protocol. I had previously tried out Astral Drift without much success in the Unpredictable Cyclone builds, but the "return at the beginning of the next end step" clause prevented it from doing anything too nuts. However, Escape Protocol returns the creature to the battlefield immediately instead. So I figured I could use Burning-Tree Emissary or another creature/artifact that adds two or more mana on ETB to cycle through a crap ton of cards. The problem was, since it cost to cycle a land card and to pay for Escape Protocol’s ability, if I hit a non-land card off of the cycle ability, it would end the “cycle”. So, after a short search for a way to make it work, I found Priest of Urabrask (which I had no clue existed). Where Burning-Tree Emissary would simply keep the cycling going, Priest of Urabrask nets a every time I cycle a card, which opens up a whole world of possibilities. After messing with a few things and getting quite a bit of input from a friend on different cards and quantities thereof, this is what I came up with.

Gameplan

The Setup (Turns 1 - 3)

The first few turns are fairly simple. Your goal here is to have three lands, Tectonic Reformation, and Escape Protocol on the battlefield with a Priest of Urabrask and two lands in hand by turn 4. Optimally, it should look at lot like this:

• Turn 1: Play a land -> Serum Visions / Opt / Cycle a land
• Turn 2: Play a land -> Tectonic Reformation
• Turn 3: Play a land -> Escape Protocol -> Serum Visions / Opt / Cycle a land

The Combo (Turn 4+)

This is where things get a bit more complicated. Firstly, you want to be cautious about whether or not you play a land card this turn. If you don’t have more than one other land in hand to cycle with Tectonic Reformation, then you may want to consider not playing one. If you do play a land, though, it should preferably be a fetch if possible so you can have access to mana of any color later in the turn. Now, cast Priest of Urabrask, thus adding to your mana pool. Pay a to cycle a land card from your hand and a to pay for Escape Protocol’s triggered ability, which will now exile your Priest of Urabrask and return him to the battlefield, gaining you . You are now at . From this point onward, comboing is a delicate dance of gaining mana off of cycling cards (triggering Escape Protocol) and spending mana to get lands into your hand to cycle. The biggest things to remember are that dropping below two mana in your mana pool at any time will end the combo and that Manamorphoses are your best friends. Manamorphose both is a free redraw if you hit too many nonland cards and, very importantly, fixes your mana so that you can cast non-red spells with your ever-increasing pool of red mana. Once you have a comfortable amount and color of mana in your mana pool and either an Underworld Breach or a Shadow of the Grave in your hand, there are two ways you can win. Those two ways being either through self-mill and Thassa's Oracle or direct damage with Lightning Storm. However, you can typically pursue both at the same time and can switch between which one you want to go for at any time due to how the deck combos off.

• Underworld Breach

Spend two red mana to cast Underworld Breach. You may now cast Manamorphoses, Opts, Serum Visions, and Shadow of the Graves from your graveyard, which will make the delicate dance of repeated cycling you were doing into much more of a very aggressive waltz as long as you have a Manamorphose in the yard or in hand. The most important thing to remember when using Underworld Breach is to exile cards in this priority from your graveyard: non-draw spells -> lands not discarded this turn -> excess draw spells -> land cards discarded this turn -> remaining draw spells. Once you’ve started cycling through your deck at speeds rivaled only by Saffron Olive hitting swans and drawing some cards, simply find either a Thassa’s Oracle and mill yourself out or a Lightning Storm + Shadow of the Grave and return all the lands you’ve cycled this turn to your hand and dump them on your opponent’s face in the form of charge counters on Lightning Storm.

• Shadow of the Grave

Spend a black and a red mana to cast Shadow of the Grave. Often, this will require either casting a Manamorphose to fix your mana or cracking a fetch for a black mana source. Casting Shadow of the Grave, much like casting Underworld Breach, makes it VERY hard to whiff comboing off. So, once you’ve returned all the cycled and discarded cards to your hand, just continue what you were doing (cycling through the deck and enlarging your mana pool) until you hit a Lighting Storm, an Underworld Breach, or a Thassa’s Oracle. If you find a Lightning Storm and you have enough lands to discard to it to kill the opponent plus a few extra, start blasting. If not, keep cycling. If you find an Underworld Breach, refer to the previous section. If you find a Thassa’s Oracle and have the ability to convert mana to or make blue mana, simply mill yourself out and cast it (or cast it then mill yourself out and blink it with Escape Protocol).

Tips & Tricks

I’ll update this as I think of more tips.

• Manamorphoses are gold in this deck. Try not to use them unless you either need to or have an Underworld Breach.
• As long as you’re not down to two mana in your pool, when you cast a Manamorphose to get a redraw, create black or blue mana. Keeping one black and up to two blue mana in your mana pool allows you to cast Shadow of the Grave, Opt, or Serum Visions when you cycle into them
• When you’re comboing, if you have the option of casting spells from hand instead of from the grave with Underworld Breach, cast them from hand. You don’t want to exile lands that you’ve cycled this turn from your graveyard.
• If you have the mana to do so, casting a Thassa’s Oracle early on can be a really good idea. This way, if you ever are down to one land in hand, you can cycle it and target the Oracle with Escape Protocol instead to dig for an additional land
• Lightning Storm discards land cards to get charge counters. Meaning, you can cast Shadow of the Grave while Lightning Storm is still on the stack to return to hand all the lands you discarded to it.

Top Ranked	Achieved #20 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Modern 3 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Exclude colors	G
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	27 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.91
Folders	My Decks