"Unbeatable" card combo, or so he says...
Modern forum
Posted on June 12, 2025, 7:01 p.m. by Ogrecorps
Hello All! A friend in my gaming group says he has a 2 card combo that makes him "unable to lose the game". He, monologuing like a super villain that he is (he wins nearly all 1v1 games and 70% of free-for-alls) gave a number of hints, perhaps on purpose, perhaps unwittingly. I would like to give him a surprise and: A) figure out what he's planning B) get my other friends on board and C) squash him! Really make him regret giving me information!
In all seriousness, he'll have a grand time being defeated, especially if it had to be done using outside help and collusion.
Here's the clues: 1. A creature on the field that makes him "unable to lose the game". 2. A card in his graveyard that somehow protects that creature, giving it shroud or hexproof or something. 3. He plans to defend himself with about a dozen counter spells to prevent non-specific targeting with boardwipes. He also said this will protect him from us forcing him to sacrifice his precious creature. 4. He also plans to somehow recycle his graveyard back into his deck so we can't mill him out.
I think the first one could easily be Platinum Angel or Herald of Eternal Dawn. If I can identify key cards likely to be in his deck, I'd like to load my buddies and I up with cards like Bitter Ordeal and a couple other I can't remember right now that strip every card of a given name out of his deck. The look on his face will be SPETACULAR.
BTW, we are playing online so there's no cost limit but he keeps his camera on.
Also, yes, I could just become a better player to win more but I like to think I help keep things lively by orchestrating shenannigans - like the time The Villain announced the nonsense name of the deck he was going to play in the following game and I went on his public profile, found it, and sent copies to everyone else so we were all playing his incomprehensible eldrazi mess in the following game. He got quite the kick out of seeing, one at a time, each of us putting out lands and whatnot from his deck and then finally realizing that somehow we were all playing his deck - that only he knew how to use properly.
My thoughts on beating evil archvillains? Well in my experience everybody has a plan 'til they get Obliterate'd in the face
June 12, 2025 7:49 p.m.
Edit to my last comment: Arcane Lighthouse isn't Modern-legal. Got caught somewhere between EDH and thinking it was printed in Ikoria for some reason. No excuses for Bane of the Living. I've been playing a lot more EDH than Modern recently. All other suggestions still apply.
June 12, 2025 9:18 p.m. Edited.
wallisface says... #5
I mean, the guys deck can't be particularly good or it would have had some form of meta recognition by now - a 70% win rate would be absurdly high.
In any case, it should be trivial to beat whatever he's planning:
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Counterspells do nothing to stop board wipes like Supreme Verdict
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Graveyard hate in modern is super easy to come by and extremely trivial to include. Relic of Progenitus is perfectly main-boardable, and if you're especially worried about his graveyard shenanigans, there's Dauthi Voidwalker, Leyline of the Void, Surgical Extraction, etc. There's also Extirpate which he can neither counter nor respond to.
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I'm not buying the statement that his 2 card combo will prevent sacrifice, unless he's referring to targeted-sacrifice, and is planning on granting himself hexproof. In any case Sheoldred's Edict and Flare of Malice are incredibly hard to prevent happening.
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you could just ignore whatever nonsense he's doing entirely and perform a combo win that doesn't require interacting with him at all, aka something with Thassa's Oracle
Overall though, this "combo" sounds a lot like a house-of-playing-cards... in that it's going to collapse at the smallest hurdle. I imagine it's not going to be particularly fast, so if you're playing any aggro or combo deck with even adequate speed you should out-race him. And with the amount of information he's given you, it should be trivial to disrupt the pieces he needs to do anything if you're playing control. If you're playing midrange there's a change he can get setup before you can do your thing, but if that's the case the above suggestions should stop him from doing anything.
If price is truly no limit and you're really wanting to crush his dreams then just pick any current modern-competitive deck at complete-random and I'm sure you'll come out on top
June 13, 2025 5:04 a.m.
wallisface says... #6
I should also add, that by the sounds of this thread there's a good chance that you're friend has mistaken how the rules/interactions of certain cards work, or has severely mis-judged how a rule works. Please chuck up here the "combo" when you're aware of it so the community can make sure things are being played right! :)
June 13, 2025 5:07 a.m.
I mean if this is all about the meme and just beating the unbeatable... you can load up on cards like Leyline of the Void, Meddling Mage, Lost Legacy, Extirpate, Runed Halo type cards?
assuming if he isnt really applying pressure just Banefire with Leyline of Punishment?
June 13, 2025 11:29 a.m. Edited.
also could be funny to dust off an old Mindslaver decklist and see how that goes lol
June 13, 2025 11:49 a.m.
UPDATE: VICTORY!!
Here's the deck I used (warning, it is not great and I'm open to suggestions to improve it as a more general-purpose meme deck that strips out important things and leaves someone else to actually kill people in free-for-all format.) https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/18-06-25-SkD-grrr/?cb=1750236034
The story: 3 players, me with the meme deck, work friend with the "you cannot lose the game" mystery deck, and a third with a deck specifically filled with legendaries of as many types as he can make work.
My starting hand had Leyline of the Void and I kicked off hostilities with Bitter Ordeal and got to peruse through the "cannot lose" deck to see how it works. Key cards found: Herald of Eternal Dawn, Negate, Three Steps Ahead, Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, Virtue of Persistence. I took out one of the 4 Heralds. The legendaries deck built up nicely with about 6 or 7 big creatures with deathtouch (All-Out Assault) and flying and vigilance and lifelink and other such nonsense. This player normally likes to be fair (i.e. spread the damage around, not pick on anyone) when he feels like he's winning so I had to warn him off with the strongest arguments I could that I was absolutely not a threat to him, that I had built the deck specifically to counter the other player. Cannot Lose had no creatures out so Legendaries swung at him fully with enough to put him to -9 life. Looked like it was over already and then pop! Cannot Lose flashed out Herald of Eternal Dawn before combat damage was dealt, keeping him alive despite negative life.
Cannot Lose then quickly got out two lecture halls from Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, giving the herald and both lecture halls hexproof. Around here I realized a major weakness in my deck: it largely has to target something in the opponent's graveyard, making Leyline of the Void super not helpful. Happily, Cannot Lose Get Lostd it. Because nothing much was going to graveyards that I wanted to strip out, I built up a little supply of Extirpate and Surgical Extraction - this will be important later... Legendaries took about 6 turns and smashed Cannot Lose to about -30 life while enjoying all the lifelink that gave him.
It was at this point that Cannot Lose messaged me privately to say that he'd won, it was just going to take an hour. The next turn, he used Loran's Escape on his Herald and then used one of his Restricted Offices for a boardwipe. My defenses being so pathetic, were fine. Legendaries, however, got cleaned out, 7 or 8 big beasts in the graveyard... This left Cannot Lose as the only one on the table with any attacking power and a pair of Fountainports to slowly grow an army of fish with.
Somewhere in the excitement I'd stripped out all of his Get Lost, and Stock Up. I knew from searching his hand that he had a Negate still ready for something that might kill his Herald, the only thing keeping him alive. Then came the exchange I'm going to be hearing about all day today at work from Cannot Lose, the part where he's kicking himself for doing what he did: Legendaries brought out a planeswalker; Cannot Lose used Three Steps Ahead to counter it, putting a copy of one of his 2 counter spells in his graveyard. I targeted it with Surgical Extraction. He Negated. I surgical extracted his Three Steps and then Extirpated his Negate, successfully exiling all of his counterspells! He has already told me that he shouldn't have countered the planeswalker, that he should have just used fish from Fountainport to neutralize it.
And then Legendaries Ruinous Ultimatumd. Herald, hexproofs, and my two Wall of Vines all gone! Cannot Lose was at -30 something life and evaporated in a long silence followed by a drawn out frustrated groan. He'd nearly fought his way back and if only he could have had another Herald in hand to flash out or I hadn't stripped out his counterspells... He was also intimately familiar with Legendaries' deck because the two of them worked on it closely together so knew exactly how little strength he had left after all of those creatures got wiped with no serious options for bringing any back. Either way though, I still had 3 Sudden Spoilings in my library somewhere so chances were decent I'd get him killed for being in negative life sooner or later.
Thus began the long, slow final phase of the battle wherein I had only defensive creatures, and Legendaries had 40-something life but only one or two offensive options left in his deck which was down to about 27 cards to my 35ish. I used Liquimetal Coating and Splinter on one of his Plains, a generally useless move and one I probably should have saved for an actual threat but I was just happy Cannot Lose had lose'd. The end came when I fired off a kicked Sadistic Sacrament, ensuring that there wasn't going to be anything left to hurt me. Before I searched his deck, however, Legendaries capitulated and we called it there, official cause of death: inevitable milling out.
June 18, 2025 6:25 a.m.
Ogrecorps Nice work!
This sounds like a pretty fun casual group--big mana, lots of interaction, and plenty of trash talk. My interpretation of the two-card "can't lose" combo is the Herald of Eternal Dawn + Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, supported by Virtue of Persistence. Does that sound right? The "card in a graveyard that grants protection" is kind of a stretch to interpret as VoP, but if it was "a card that protects from the graveyard" i.e. a card that protects other cards from staying in the graveyard, that makes more sense.
June 18, 2025 12:34 p.m.
legendofa Yeah, he said that the idea evolved a bit from when he first told me about it. I was a little worried that he'd also throw an Enduring Angel Flip in a layer of protection but I didn't even know about the existence of Restricted Office / Lecture Hall. He's promised to show no mercy next time in retaliation but he usually wins anyway so I'm not scared. :P
June 18, 2025 3:35 p.m.
Poofy_Poof says... #12
Haha found your little discussion group Ill get you next time >:). Relating to win rate no Im awful at arena or competitive mtg but the multiple people modern format we use lets me do silly stuff. :)
legendofa says... #2
Somewhere in the depths of my profile, I have a theoretical combo that's something like 20 cards that I specifically made to be as "you can't lose the game" as possible, and people still poked holes in it.
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Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament also punish combos with low redundancy, on top of Bitter Ordeal.
I'm not quite sure what the second clue could be. Assuming your interpretation is correct, there aren't that many cards that grant abilities from the graveyard, and most of them are offensive, not defensive. Arcane Lighthouse strips shroud and hexproof without being countered, and Sudden Spoiling strips inherent hexproof and shroud, if that comes up. Yixlid Jailer shuts down all graveyard tricks, on top of the graveyard hate above.
If you plan on making it 3v1, have two people run hard control while the third goes for combo breaking. Metaphorically, get two people to hold him down while the third goes through his pockets. Or just go triple aggro and attack before he can get set up.
June 12, 2025 7:42 p.m.