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Tishana Combo: The Card Advantalanche

Commander / EDH* Budget Combo Elves GU (Simic) Ramp Voltron

Rzepkanut


Maybeboard


This was one of my all time favorite magic online decks to play. So I am building it in paper. Seriously its so fun. You get to ramp like crazy and draw like a million cards. There are so many ways to use the same cards for either tempo or comboing out and winning its amazing. Games are over between turn 5 and 8 usually. The deck just has a great matchup against pretty much anything that doesn't run lots of board wipes.

How The "Combo" Works

Blinking, bouncing and copying effects drawing a ton of cards is the "combo". They are extremely flexible in this deck. They draw a ton of cards targeting Tishana late game, or early game they can reuse an ETB removal dork like Acidic Slime or copy a mana dork. Blink effects also work like a counterspell to protect an important creature from opposing spot removal. It's not hard to accumulate a 30 something card hand at the opponent's end step and attack for the win the next turn. Many people scoop just to me drawing 20 cards (which is a let down really). Vizier of Many Faces and Cackling Counterpart are especially great because you can use them to copy Tishana and when you choose the real Tishana to keep, you get a card draw trigger, and then the card goes to the graveyard to be cast one more time! A common line for me is casting (or tutoring out the Vizier with a Birthing Pod or something) and Embalming it the same turn to draw a million cards.

Psychosis Crawler is best way to win with Tishana's insane card draw. It will do huge amounts of damage with all the card draw triggers happening so we don't even need to attack to win. But if we plan to attack, there's also ways to give the Crawler or Tishana unblockable or haste or cast them with flash end of turn to one shot kill players literally outta nowhere. Also Berserk and/or Overwhelming Stampede (Berserk for the team) will get the job done in one attack too.

How To Play Tishana Combo

This deck will generate 8+ mana by turn 5 most games, sometimes turn 4. A lot of the time we go turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 play a 3 drop mana dork, and turn 3 we have between 5-7 mana to play a big spell like Mana Reflection. Something like that happens in a decent percentage of games. Getting to play Tishana turn 3, and drawing 3 cards is a fine way to jump start an early mid game.

You need to mulligan until you find mana dorks to cast. That's why there are so many mana dorks in the deck, we want to flood the board with them starting turn 1. But to push the mana production into truly epic quantities we have some "big mana" cards. Notably Tishana combos with a couple specific mana dorks Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix & Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, to generate a proportionate amount of mana to the amount of card draw done. Its also quite possible to draw into Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx from Tishana and explode with mana the same turn as casting her. I always consider if avoiding making a land drop before casting Tishana is better in case I draw into Nykthos. There isn't a minimum amount of mana needed to combo specifically, but even when I don't have a counter or blink spell (like Essence Flux) in hand I always try to leave blue mana up for them to protect Tishana once she comes down and draws me a bunch of cards.

Its unfortunately kind of a glass cannon and very weak to board wipes. If we have 5 or 6 lands in play, and have already drawn cards off casting a Tishana, a board wipe isn't that bad. Its the early ones that hit before casting Tishana that really slow down progress and wreck games. If we get our first wave of mana dorks wiped away too early, then its potential for winning drops quite a bit. I've been adding counter magic to protect from this, but its the decks Achilles Heel. Powerful enchantments can help keep a board presence through most board wipes, but it's important to play cautiously and not run into a situation where a board wipe kills everything you have if possible.

Sometimes you flash in Tishana in response to a board wipe just to draw a bunch of cards before everything dies. She's great to sacrifice to Profaner of the Dead to get her into the command zone to cast again. Killing this commander is often a mistake if you are playing vs. this deck, because I usually try to recast her as often as possible. Unless I somehow couldn't get value from casting her or could not afford to cast her, she is pretty crucial for our normal game plan. There are ways to win without her but she does it best. The backup backup wincon is chipping away with mana dorks...maybe win with Overwhelming Stampede. Tishana's the primary win condition and half of the card draw engine, and without her available the deck isn't nearly as explosive.

Wild Pair + Psychosis Crawler Combo

Here's a cool interaction that came up already. I had bounced Tishana to my hand to replay her to get another card draw trigger, and when she was re-cast from my hand it triggered the Wild Pair in play. Because Psychosis Crawler and Tishana, Voice of Thunder both have the same power and toughness all the time I was able to choose it as it's pair amazingly. So the Crawler came into play before Tishana's card draw trigger went onto the stack and it surprisingly killed my opponent without attacking!

Where's the Lab Man?

Laboratory Maniac is an option that I didn't take. He can win games for sure but I opted to cut him for more countermagic. I decided any games he would win, I was winning anyways. If you love him then put him in some where I guess, but it seems unnecessary to me though.

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92% Casual

Competitive

Revision 28 See all

(2 years ago)

-1 Lurking Predators main
+1 Mirrorhall Mimic  Flip main
Date added 7 years
Last updated 2 years
Exclude colors WBR
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

11 - 0 Mythic Rares

39 - 0 Rares

28 - 0 Uncommons

13 - 0 Commons

Cards 101
Avg. CMC 2.86
Tokens Copy Clone, Myr 1/1 C, Plant 0/1 G, Timeless Witness 4/4 B, Vizier of Many Faces 0/0 W
Folders Need to build
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