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Turbo-Face: A New Mirrodin-Legal Standard Combo Deck?

The God Hand:

Turn 3: Forest, Deconstruct Cathodion. Tap Mountain. 3GGGR in pool. Cast Seething Song. 1RRRRRGG in pool. Cast Biorhythm with Birds of Paradise in play. Shake hands while she stares in disbelief, since she thought that she was safe tapping out on turn 3.

Let’s get started: Here are three games with my Biorhythmic monstrosity (which I’ll list for you in a moment):


My turn 1: Forest, cast Birds of Paradise.

Her turn 1: Mountain cast Skirk Prospector.

Turn 2: Forest, cast Chrome Mox (imprinting Creeping Mold), cast Solemn Simulacrum. Search for a Mountain. Cast Pyrite Spellbomb.

Her turn 2: Mountain, cast Goblin Piledriver.

My turn 3: Cast Seething Song. Cast Rorix. Pyrite Spellbomb the Goblin Piledriver. Swing with Solemn Simulacrum and Rorix.

Her turn 3: Mountain. Cast Goblin Warchief. Sacrifice Prospector. Cast Goblin Piledriver. Attack with Warchief and Piledriver.


She’s at twelve, I’m at fifteen.


My turn 4: Attack with Rorix.

Her turn 4: Mountain, Clickslither. Attack with Clickslither, Piledriver, and Warchief. I block Piledriver with Solemn Simulacrum, Clickslither with Bird.


She scoops.


Game number two, against R/W.


His turn 1: Plains.

My turn 1: Forest.

His turn 2: Plains. Silver Knight.

My turn 2: Mountain. Cast Bird of Paradise.

His turn 3: Mountain. Attack for two.

My turn 3: Forest. Cathodion. Pyrite Spellbomb.

His turn 4: Lightning Rift. Mountain. Cycle Secluded Steppe to shoot Bird.

My turn 4: Mountain. Cast Birds of Paradise.

His turn 5: Plains, Plains, Mountain, Mountain untapped. Silver Knight on the board.


At the end of turn I shoot the Silver Knight, and he shoots the Bird.


My turn 5: Cast Seething Song. Cast Rorix. Attack for nine.

His turn 6: Plains.

My turn 6: Forest. Attack for nine. He casts Wing Shards. I bury Cathodion, taking three manaburn. He is at five.

His turn 7: Cast Renewed Faith.

My turn 7: Attack with Rorix. He is at 5.

His turn 8: Mountain cast Exalted Angel face up.

My turn 8: Cast Solemn Simulacrum. Attack.


Angel blocks and dies. He is at nine.


His turn 9: Akroma’s Vengeance.


I draw a card.


My turn 9: Cast Cathodion.

His turn 10: Cast Lightning Rift, Silver Knight.

My turn 10: Forest. Cast Pyrite Spellbomb.

His turn 11: Exalted Angel face up.


I still can’t win.


My turn 11: Mountain.

His turn 12: Cycle, shoot, cycle, shoot, cycle, shoot, cycle, shoot. I’m at eleven. Attack for four flying. He is at thirteen, I’m at seven. He has no mana untapped.

My turn 12: Seething Song. Biorhythm. Spellbomb him. Shake hands.


Now you have two examples – a long game and a relatively short game. Here is the last example: The perfect game. How often does it happen? In six or seven rounds of Swiss, I imagine you’ll get the God draw at least once.


My turn 1: Forest, Bird.

Her turn 2: Island.

My turn 2: Mountain, Cathodion.

Her turn 2: Plains. Cast Isochron Scepter with Boomerang.

My turn 3: Forest, Deconstruct Cathodion. Tap Mountain. 3GGGR in pool. Cast Seething Song. 1RRRRRGG in pool. Cast Biorhythm. (one card in hand) Shake hands while she stares in disbelief.


Yes, she misplayed. No, she wasn’t expecting a turn 3 kill. This happened the first time I played against Sara and her U/W deck, which can handle this deck fairly well, but she had no idea to keep Mana Leak mana open. Isochron Scepter with Boomerang is amazing, and she thought she had a free turn. (She’s too damn used to those long Onslaught Block games.)


And so it goes.


Have I mentioned I love Mirrodin? Well, I do, and this is the best of the new decks I’ve designed for Mirrodin Standard. Let’s go through it card-by-card, sorting through the good and the necessary. As usual, when I show off a deck, I’m going to rebuild it right before your very eyes, tweaking it as necessary. The decklist below is the result of an awful lot of testing, but I’ve got the second round coming up, and the sideboard especially is prone to changing.


4 Birds of Paradise

4 Cathodion

2 Plated Slagwurm

2 Rorix Bladewing

4 Solemn Simulacrum

4 Chrome Mox

4 Seething Song

4 Deconstruct

4 Biorhythm

2 Creeping Mold

4 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Wooded Foothills

12 Forest

6 Mountains


Sideboard:

4 Naturalize

3 Starstorm

3 Decree of Annihilation

4 Shock

1 Platinum Angel


First, the new cards:


Plated Slagwurm

8/8. Untargetable by my opponent. For seven mana, and in this deck? Sign me up. Although the lumbering monstrosity has no evasion, it plows through almost every blocker available in new Standard. The question I have to ask myself now, is he just an overcosted Chainer’s Edict? Against creatureless decks, I love him. Against Goblins, Zombie-Bidding, WW, and the new Fish decks, I have to wonder.


Seething Song

No, it isn’t Dark Ritual. Yes. It is barely playable. But also, yes, it gives me a third turn win.


Deconstruct

Destroy target artifact. Add GGG to your mana pool. Hmm…that seems good. First off, it doesn’t cost anything. Combo it with Cathodion and get six mana, plus one for Plated Slagwurm on turn 4without any other acceleration. Or use it to win on turn 3. Uh… Okay. I will.


Cathodion

It’s a smaller, cuter version of Su-Chi. Will it sometimes sting you for three? Yup. Will it sometimes win the game on turn three? Yup. Does it have 3/3 body for 3? Yup. Is it good? More or less, yup.


Chrome Mox

If you read my last article, you may have noticed something: Both of the decks played with this card. Make that three of three. Is there a trend? Yup. People have told me it is worse than Mox Diamond. To which I say nothing; I just look at them as though they are kindergartners or Europeans from the 14th century. I don’t landscrew myself; I just get one mana of whatever color I need?


But I can get two-for-oned? Wait – Mox Diamond was two-for-one also. And it could landscrew you. Just shut up and play the card…


Solemn Simulacrum

If you look at the e-league tournament results, you’ll notice something: There are a lot of these guys running around. Why is that, do you suppose? My guess is because it’s, uh, good. I’m hoping they’ll send me a foil one of these guys in the mail one of these days… Mostly because I still have Voidmage Prodigies who are staring at me and mocking me. It’s as though Wizards wanted to prove they can make even the best played in the game suck.


Pyrite Spellbomb

The last new card to talk about in my maindeck. This serves the dual purpose of killing Silver Knights or your opponent. Remember that while you can win with Plated Slagwurm or Rorix Bladewing, your primary solution is to Biorhythm your way to victory. This card can also stack up in threes to shoot down Akroma, Angel of Wrath. (Ideally, of course, you would just cast Biorhythm and then shoot your opponent for six damage – but, uh, never mind that part…)


A few of the old cards that might need some explaining: Creeping Mold is there because Mirrodin has brought around a bunch of very troublesome artifacts. There are all sorts of annoying enchantments to haunt this deck, and lastly, there can be a few lands that might get out of hand. Creeping Mold has fluctuated between being the Mold and being Naturalize. I’m still not exactly sure. The lands that I want to deal with – Goblin Burrows, Unholy Grotto, and occasionally Temple of the False God – are not really that difficult to overcome. Creeping Mold can keep U/W down to a lower number of land than optimal – and Akroma requires three white. We’ll see.


The land base is simple and stable. Temple of the False God might be a welcome addition, and then again it might not. As I said, the second round of playtesting has begun, and I’ll see what happens with each result.


Goblins

First-round playtesting: 6 for 10 matches, 13 for 23 games.


Goblins is a deck capable of a third-turn kill. Against my deck, a Goblins build that doesn’t run Shock is a bye. Now, wait – how can I claim it is a bye if I have barely a 56% game win percentages in the first game?


Well, how does it deal with my creatures? Gempalm Incinerator. If they are leaving mana open to kill Birds of Paradise on turn 1 or 2, then they have already lost the game. Goblins is an aggressive deck that nonetheless can’t really outrace Turbo-Face…. But at the same time, Goblin Sharpshooter is amazing when it hits, and it can cause serious damage to me or to my team. Sometimes Turbo-Face doesn’t draw a Biorhythm, or can’t cast Rorix until turn 6.


Sideboarding strategy: +3 Starstorm, +4 Shock, +1 Platinum Angel, -4 Solemn Simulacrum, -2 Creeping Mold, -1 Biorhythm, -1 Pyrite Spellbomb.


Platinum Angel can be hard to deal with when it comes out on turn 3 or 4. Starstorm gives you a Wrath of God effect that won’t destroy your Slagwurm or Rorix. Shock gives you more ways – and in some ways, easier methods – for killing the Goblins player after a Biorhythm.


I’m not sure about pulling the Simulacrums. They trade with Piledriver or Warchief to give you the better end of the deal, and they accelerate your mana. I don’t know for sure yet.


What does Platinum Angel read?”You cannot lose the game, your opponents cannot win the game.” So… Cast Biorhythm. They have the Shock and you don’t. Wait – shoot! They can’t kill you. Swing, Platinum Angel, swing! This trick worked so well for me in the Goblin and Zombie-Bidding matchup (they can cycle Gempalm Polluter at you after ‘rhythm) that I upped the Angel count in the board.


New sideboard:

4 Naturalize

2 Decree of Annihilation

3 Starstorm

2 Platinum Angel

4 Shock


After the new board, I played 4 matches against Goblins. Turbo-Face went three out of four matches, six out of eight games.


Against U/W Control, first round of testing:

2 out of 10 matches, 10 for 28 games.


Luckily, U/W Control loses to most of the decks in the format. Unluckily, Turbo-Face loses to U/W Control. With complete surprise, or a God draw, you can win. The problem is that you can’t really expect to combo, and that means you need to have alternate wins.


Sideboarding: +2 Decree of Annihilation, +2 Platinum Angel, +4 Shock. -4 Biorhythm, -2 Creeping Mold, -1 Deconstruct, -1 Seething Song.


Now you are basically playing Erhnam-Geddon. Plan? Drop a huge creature before they can deal with it, and then cycle the Decree. In theory, you can drop Rorix, Slagwurm, or Angel on turn 3. Then cycle the Decree on turn 4. You should be able to win before they get Wing Shards mana.


I tried this match-up again, with an LD transition sideboard, and it actually works. With four Creeping Molds, four Molten Rains, and four Stone Rains to go along with three Decree of Annihilation, you can win…. But then you lose to everything else. An alternate sideboarding strategy I found was to leave the Shocks out and the Creeping Molds, the Deconstruct, and the Seething Song in. I liked Shock because it made Rorix kills easier, but the Spellbomb can work for that, and the Pyrite Spellbomb is more effective than Shock because it acts more like Barbarian Ring or Seal of Fire; it’s harder for the UW mage to deal with.


No new tweaks to the deck really came around here, although Platinum Angel + Biorhythm can be devastating if they tap out. Maybe a third sideboard plan is possible against bad or unsuspecting players?


For the second round of playtesting I did four matches. Turbo-Face won 1 of 4 matches, and 5 of 11 games.


Against R/W Control, first round of testing:

4 out of 10 matches, 12 out of 25 games.


I’m content to have a 48% winning percentage here. After sideboarding, you actually have a fairly decent chance of outright winning. Here and against Astral Slide decks are where I want the maindeck Naturalize… But at the first testing point, I still couldn’t justify it. Now I want to try it. By being able to take out Lightning Rift, I eliminate the threat of losing creatures other than to Wing Shards. So I can concentrate on comboing off. Silver Knight is still fantastically annoying, but that is what the Pyrite Spellbombs are for.


I added Platinum Angel to the main, just to see what would happen: They can’t Starstorm enough to kill her until turn 6, so she works wonders to protect the combo. Her presence also prevents a Decree of Justice from beating you when they create soldiers in response to your Biorhythm.


You have to expect R/W will have more creatures than you, just like Goblins or Zombies do; that makes your burn or your flying Platinum Angels more important. I decided that because she will help in so many matchups, I would move her to the maindeck.


The new deck went from 48% game win to 54%, winning 2 out of 4 matches and 6 out of 11 games.


Here is the new look (which, incidentally, shores up the matchup against the new MBC and Mono-Black decks that were in the e-league tournament):


4 Birds of Paradise

4 Cathodion

2 Platinum Angel

2 Rorix Bladewing

4 Solemn Simulacrum

4 Chrome Mox

4 Seething Song

4 Deconstruct

4 Biorhythm

2 Naturalize

4 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Wooded Foothills

11 Forest

5 Mountains

2 Temple of the False God


Sideboard:

2 Naturalize

3 Decree of Annihilation

3 Starstorm

2 Plated Slagwurm

1 Rorix Bladewing

4 Shock


Speaking of these e-league tournament decks, I decided to test against them when I found out what they were. After all, MBC made a resurgence and I need to check my results against that, at least…


Or maybe I didn’t really need to.


Against MBC (winner of e-league type 2):

7 out of 10 matches, 16 out of 23 games.


I will admit something: The person playing the MBC deck had almost no experience at first, we only ran through a couple of test runs against other decks before we got down to the playtesting nitty gritty. But even still, I hope that MBC represents the best of the new field. It gives my deck a very good chance. This MBC build doesn’t do much of anything before turn 4. Maybe a morph or Leaden Myr here, maybe a Terror against a Birds of Paradise there. To demonstrate how bad this matchup is for them: I started by letting Oblivion Stone go off; after all, I was usually able to trump their Visara by playing a Spellbomb and a Biorhythm.


I’m kidding. Mostly.


Sideboard: +2 Naturalize, +2 Starstorm. -4 Solemn Simulacrum.


Against Mono-Black (e-league, 5-8th place):

9 out of 10 matches, 19 out of 26 games.


Oh. You can’t deal with Platinum Angel? Ouch. That sucks. You don’t play with creatures? Uh. Biorhythm? Okay, moving on…


One highlight of this match: I haven’t drawn much of anything all game, and it is really late – like turn 23 or something. He is sitting with a grip of one card at maybe fifteen life. I have two Birds and a Cathodion on the board. He casts an entwined Promise of Power, then Terrors both of my Birds, and casts double Phyrexian Arena, basically guaranteeing that he’ll draw either Consume Spirit or Diabolic Tutor. (That’s what triple Extraplanar Lens will do for you.)


I, of course, topdeck Biorhythm and win with a Pyrite Spellbomb.


There are a few other decks out there. The Bidding decks haven’t gone away, so I did test first round against Goblin and Zombie-Bidding. Neither were very difficult matches, although I did not do better than 50% against Goblin-Bidding. The problem is the timing of that damn Sharpshooter-is-a-Fireball combo. I can’t seem to beat the timing rules.


I expect to see RG LD in full-force, and that may present a problem or two. WW and MWC are both still very strong decks.


Against WW, first round testing:

4 out of 10 matches, 12 out of 26 games.


White Weenie is just so good right now. These numbers reflect my build of the deck – and that is probably not even the optimal build. WW can have as many as five creatures out by the time I combo. Even on my turn 3, they can have at least two creatures, and perhaps four. Just like in Onslaught Block, I think there are a few matches that I just plain lose. This may be one of them. It isn’t unwinnable. Starstorm + Pyrite Spellbomb for the Silver Knights can lead to a Biorhythm victory, and Rorix can take to the skies against an unprepared opponent. Maindeck Naturalizes stop Worship or Story Circle. It ultimately comes down to a question of play: Who makes fewer mistakes?


The first article I ever wrote for StarCityGames – about Angry Hermit, Part II, in Pro Tour Houston-style Extended – included the comment that the format was the healthiest format ever. I was wrong. New Standard is looking to be the healthiest format. At least the Standard Grand Prix are going to be very diverse, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rogue decks all over even when it comes to Worlds next year.


Here is the final list as of right now:


Turbo-Face, Original Combo Deck by Stormskull 9/16/2003

4 Birds of Paradise

4 Cathodion

2 Platinum Angel

3 Rorix Bladewing

4 Solemn Simulacrum

4 Chrome Mox

4 Seething Song

4 Deconstruct

4 Biorhythm

1 Naturalize

4 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Wooded Foothills

11 Forest

5 Mountain

2 Temple of the False God


Sideboard:

3 Naturalize

2 Decree of Annihilation

3 Starstorm

3 Flashfires

4 Shock


You can reach me for questions, or comments at [email protected].