Rating the aspects of a combo deck
General forum
Posted on Dec. 27, 2022, 6:19 a.m. by jethstriker
If I remember correctly, whenever Inquest magazine features a combo deck, they have four aspects for the deck in which they give a rating on scale separately.
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Power - The ability of the deck to kill the opponent or create an advantage upon assembly of the combo.
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Speed - The amount of turns required to assemble the combo.
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Consistency - The frequency and ease of the assembly of the combo.
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Resiliency - The ability of the deck to recover when the combo is contested.
I know every single one these is important to keep in mind when constructing a combo deck, but if you are forced to take a single one as a priority, which one do you pick?
wallisface says... #3
Just as a secondary list of rating aspects, here’s four I use when evaluating decks (they were on some article years back that i’ve forgotten. Note they apply to all decks, not just “combo” decks):
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“Doesn’t Lose to Itself” - this is kindof the same as your Consistency rating. The ability for the deck to draw what it needs consistently, to not lose-to-itself by drawing useless cards late game, and its ability to reliably draw a decent starting hand. Decks like Crabvine would be rated low here, while Jund would be fairly high.
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“Free Wins” - this is your Speed and Power ratings kindof munged into one aspect. How many matchups in the meta is your deck heavily advantaged in. Fair decks will often rate really poorly here, as they have to work for their wins. Whereas many more aggressive or combo-based decks can score much higher here.
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“Resistance to Hate” - similar to your Resiliency aspect, how strong is the deck in the face of mainboard/sideboard hate pieces? Artifact decks, and decks heavily reliant on the graveyard, often fair really low here.
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“Flexibility” - how good your deck is to adapting its gameplan to new circumstances. Flexible decks are able to attack/win from many different angles, and often have toolbox elements available to them allowing them to disrupt their opponents in different meaningful ways. Decks worse at being flexible include stuff like Burn, Tron (slightly less-so now that it runs 4-mana-Karn), and a decent chunk of combo decks (though, some newer combo decks seem to be changing that viewpoint).
Regardless of which rating system you use, I would heavily suggest against picking only a few aspects to focus on as priority. Top performing decks can’t generally afford to be terrible in any of these aspects. Something without speed/power is never going to win games before the opponent does. A deck without consistency is going to lose-to-itself constantly, and generally be super-frustrating to play. A deck without resistance is going to get constantly hosed by even the most trivial interaction.
December 27, 2022 4:46 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #4
With the understanding that there is a threshold for power and a format dependent threshold for speed, I prioritize resiliency. Your opponent isn't going to just sit there and let you do whatever you want. So it is important to be able to win through interaction.
Or maybe your opponent won't interact with you and just complain that your deck is "non-interactive". That seems to work out for Modern and Pioneer players. In that case it is probably better to focus on resilience to bans instead of resilience to interaction.
December 28, 2022 9:25 p.m.
wallisface says... #5
Gidgetimer your second para might have been applicable to modern pre-MH2, but nowdays it's almost impossible to find any Modern deck that isn't packing a decent chunk of interaction. Those decks that don't interact, just don't exist anymore - the battles of attrition are strong enough that if you're not joining in, you're not participating.
December 28, 2022 11:04 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #6
wallisface- I'm just salty about bannings from many years ago because people didn't want to interact with combo decks. So instead of interacting they just complained and then the combo decks were "too prevalent" since you could get free wins because people refused to adapt.
December 28, 2022 11:30 p.m.
I feel like this is very format dependent, if your Legacy or Modern deck isn't fast you might as well have not shown up, to say nothing of Vintage. I don't usually build combo decks for 1v1, but I do have a couple in decks. To decide if I want to use a combo over just using generically powerful cards, I usually need to decide if the deck won't be fast enough without it, and that's usually a big factor, my combo decks tend to use them as a way to win or lock a game faster than they could using a 'fair' strategy. Thus, any 1v1 combo has to be fast enough for it's format, next I worry if the deck is just bad cards when it isn't comboing off, then if it has ways to recover if the opponent disrupts me. Obviously the combo has to have the raw power to win/be able to win through expected levels of defense, but if it's not fast enough it doesn't matter how thorough it is it'll never happen.
In Commander I tend to build combo decks to have multiple paths to victory, both to make it easier to draw into stuff but also to have different ways to win that may bypass different defenses. My Tatyova deck is designed to be able to combo off through any defense that can be arranged, but it's still pretty hard to assemble it's combo because there just isn't enough copies of combo pieces I can run. I don't like EDH combos that are easily disrupted, if I manage to 'do my thing' I usually want to win, so that's why Tatyova has so many diverse ways to win, including methods that don't target anything or use damage. I think I actually prioritize raw power a lot more in Commander vs 1v1 where speed is the #1 criteria. In Commander it's relatively easy to do something like generate an infinite army and still lose compared to 1v1 where a big advantage is usually enough to win.
shadow63 says... #2
I'd figure out what combo you want to play first. Also its heavily format dependent
December 27, 2022 8:15 a.m.