Bo1 Historic Locust God Combo Deck Guide: Combo Your Way Through an Aggro Meta

Hello everyone! I’ve been playing a lot of different formats to grind ladder this month whether it’s Standard, Historic, Alchemy, some Bo1, some Bo3, so I see my fair share of metagames. Standard and Alchemy have been easy enough to pin down on what I should play, but Bo1 Historic was giving me more trouble.

There’s a lot of creature decks, but there’s also a decent amount of Enchantress and other combo decks as well. I was doing fine with Auras, but I was struggling against Enchantress and combo decks. Was there a deck that could prey on the creature decks while not being soft to the rest of the format?

I was scouring through Historic deck lists when I got reminded of a spicy list I tried out a little over a year ago, and it recently got a face lift.

HOW THE COMBO WORKS

Before I start, for those who don’t know how the combo works I’ll explain briefly. You need two tokens of any type on the board and cast an Indomitable Creativity for minimum x=2 targeting those tokens. If it resolves, it’ll pull out The Locust God and Sage of the Falls. The Locust God produces a 1/1 Flying Haste whenever a card is drawn, Sage of the Falls allows you to loot (draw a card, then discard a card) whenever a non-Human creature enters the battlefield.

So they come in, Sage of the Falls triggers off of The Locust God, you draw, discard, The Locust God triggers producing a hasty Insect, Sage of the Falls triggers, so on and so forth. Sage of the Falls trigger is a may so you won’t deck yourself out but you need to keep drawing and discarding until you have enough hasty attackers to kill the opponent.

OG Historic Locust God

by DoggertQBones

Buy on TCGplayer $139.84

Buy on Card Kingdom $274.09

Historic

Combo

best of 3

5 mythic

25 rare

9 uncommon

21 common

0

1

2

3

4

5

6+

Generate hand save deck (mtgo/arena) copy to clipboard (arena) Visual view Copy URL

Creatures (2)

1

Sage of the Falls

$0.35

1

The Locust God

$5.99

Instants (27)

3

Pact of Negation

$35.97

2

Flame-Blessed Bolt

$0.70

3

Spikefield Hazard

$2.37

2

Unsubstantiate

$0.70

4

Fire Prophecy

$1.40

4

Valakut Awakening

$39.96

4

Prismari Command

$3.96

1

Silundi Vision

$0.49

4

Unexpected Windfall

$3.96

Sorceries (10)

4

Hard Evidence

$1.40

2

Expressive Iteration

$1.18

4

Indomitable Creativity

$9.96

Lands (21)

3

Island

$1.05

4

Mountain

$1.40

2

Hall of Storm Giants

$6.98

4

Riverglide Pathway

$33.96

4

Stormcarved Coast

$15.96

4

Steam Vents

$71.96

60 Cards
$239.7

Sideboard

2

Nezahal, Primal Tide

$15.98

1

Aether Gust

$0.35

1

Narset’s Reversal

$9.49

1

Negate

$0.35

2

Fry

$0.70

3

Mystical Dispute

$1.17

1

Discontinuity

$3.99

2

Expressive Iteration

$1.18

2

Anger of the Gods

$1.18

15 Cards
$34.39

It has been a hot minute since I played Locust God Combo and was trying to figure out why it suddenly came back now. Upon seeing Unexpected Windfall and Hard Evidence, I was no longer surprised. The original Locust God deck took quite awhile to win as you had to work your way up to getting two tokens and then have the mana and Creativity to actually win. Furthermore, decks back then were more interactive so even if you had the combo, there’s no guarantee you’d even win off of it.

I wouldn’t say that this isn’t necessarily true now, but having multiple cards that produce multiple tokens is an unbelievable power boost to the deck. I queued it up in Bo1 and the wins came pretty easily. The deck was still a bit inconsistent and facing hard control decks was very difficult, but I was consistently beating creature decks, Enchantress, and the other combo decks which was very nice. With some practice, tuning, and a few subtle changes, I settled on a version I was happy with in Bo1.

Bo1 Historic Locust God

by DoggertQBones

Buy on TCGplayer $103.02

Buy on Card Kingdom $223.48

Historic

Combo

best of 1

5 mythic

22 rare

10 uncommon

23 common

0

1

2

3

4

5

6+

Generate hand save deck (mtgo/arena) copy to clipboard (arena) Visual view Copy URL

Creatures (2)

1

Sage of the Falls

$0.35

1

The Locust God

$5.99

Instants (27)

3

Pact of Negation

$35.97

2

Flame-Blessed Bolt

$0.70

2

Spikefield Hazard

$1.58

3

Unsubstantiate

$1.05

4

Fire Prophecy

$1.40

3

Valakut Awakening

$29.97

4

Prismari Command

$3.96

2

Silundi Vision

$0.98

4

Unexpected Windfall

$3.96

Sorceries (10)

4

Hard Evidence

$1.40

2

Expressive Iteration

$1.18

4

Indomitable Creativity

$9.96

Lands (21)

4

Island

$1.40

5

Mountain

$1.75

4

Riverglide Pathway

$33.96

4

Stormcarved Coast

$15.96

4

Steam Vents

$71.96

60 Cards
$223.48

Overall the deck is segmented into two halves: interaction and combo. Everything this deck plays has to contribute to one of those ends otherwise it simply won’t function. Let’s start with the combo pieces themselves.

The whole deck revolves around creating tokens and then popping them off with Indomitable Creativity to get your combo, so getting tokens is paramount. Our two premiere token producers are Hard Evidence and Unexpected Windfall. Hard Evidence produces two tokens FOR ONE MANA, but it’s not without it’s downsides. One of those tokens is a creature that most decks can likely interact with unlike an artifact token like the Clue or a Treasure, but it’s still invaluable in this deck. Unexpected Windfall tends to be the better producer as it’s an instant speed Tormenting Voice that creates two Treasures. Not only do you filter some cards, you get the tokens you need to combo as well!

The final token producer of the list is Prismari Command and although it only creates one treasure, it’s quite versatile as you can filter, kill a small creature, or destroy an artifact if the need arises! These are the actual pieces that make the deck function, but they aren’t the only important parts. A combo is nothing if you can’t find the pieces, so we have ways to dig through our deck beyond Prismari Command and Unexpected Windfall.

Silundi Vision digs 6 cards deep to find a Creativity or a way to produce 2 tokens which can be invaluable if you’re really under the gun. Valakut Awakening doubles as a way to put away the creatures if you drew them and a means to dig super deep in the deck if you pitch a full hand. Finally, we have 2 Expressive Iteration to help us find lands or combo pieces.

Now that we have the combo out of the way, how we do protect it and ourselves? We start off our curve with half land/half small removal spell Spikefield Hazard. This deck likes making use of MDFCs, and Hazard can be surprisingly good against a variety of decks, especially ones with Cauldron Familiar. To get that effect, but a little bit bigger, we also have two Flame-Blessed Bolt. Better Magma Spray has been excellent for me so far as most aggressive decks have loads of x/2s and smaller making this a really effective removal spell.

That’s not even all the creature removal! Next up we have the extremely important Fire Prophecy as a four of. Not only does it help filter through the deck, it has the important task of tucking a creature if we draw it! The combo doesn’t work if one of the pieces are in hand, so having multiple ways to put them away is crucial for this deck to work. Beyond creature removal, we also play some countermagic as well! Unsubstantiate is a cheap interactive spell that allows us to effectively stall decks looking to beat us down or interact. Bouncing it does make this a card negative play, but cards don’t matter too much when the opponent is dying to a swarm of Locusts!

Finally, we have three Pact of Negation to stop opponents from stopping us the turn we’re looking to go off. You won’t always have the luxury of sitting on a Pact of Negation when you’re looking to combo and the opponent has open mana, but it feels so nice when you can.

Combining the interaction and combo makes this strategy phenomenal against creature decks while still being strong against most of the field!

POTENTIAL INCLUSIONS / NOTABLE EXCLUSIONS

Hall of Storm Giants

The original list had Hall so it may seem weird to cut them. Although I like Hall, it just didn’t make much sense in the deck. Most games aren’t getting to the point that Hall is ever going to be animated and it entering tapped on a pivotal turn can be game losing. What about Control though? Those games will go long! Sure, and you’re likely to lose them. I don’t think adding Hall helps Control enough to justify the downside as realistically the control matchups are just pretty bad. You can add them if you want, but I’m not a fan.

Fading Hope

This is definitely a consideration for this deck as it does two things really well. One, it can stall any creature rather than having a toughness limit on what it works on. Second, it can help somewhat insulate the combo if the opponent happens to have removal when you’re trying to go off. It’s not perfect at either function, but doing both is definitely interesting.

Miscast / Spell Pierce

Cheap interaction that can help protect the combo is always a consideration. If you think there’s too much creature removal, try popping in a few of these.

Callous Dismissal

This was older tech used before we had good token producers, but this isn’t half bad still. Probably not good enough though.

Jwari Disruption

This deck likes MDFCs so this can be a consideration purely off of that.

Depths of Desire

Another bounce spell that produces a token. Almost certainly too weak, but something to consider.

Divide by Zero

I love Divide by Zero, even in Historic. I’d say it’s close to making the cut, but the lesson board is a bit too low impact to justify playing this over Unsubstantiate. If we could play Pest Summoning it may be a different story, but not worth it as it stands.

Shark Typhoon

This could be used as a pinch blocker or an alternate win condition. If the Bo1 meta gets more varied and more Control pops up, this is definitely a reasonable consideration.

Shatterskull Smashing

I like MDFCs, but this is generally going to be too pricey to ever matter.

Forbidden Friendship

Another way to produce two tokens, but this is so much worse than Hard Evidence.

Pirate's Pillage

This was the OG Unexpected Windfall and obviously a good deal worse. That said, I have considered playing a copy of this just to have 5 windfall effects so I wouldn’t completely discount it.

TIPS AND TRICKS

• This deck is pretty mana hungry so although we play a lot of MDFCs, they’re generally going to be played as lands rather than cast as spells.

• If you already have what you need to combo, be careful with how many cards you draw. Every additional card could mean accidentally drawing a creature.

• You only need two tokens, so don’t be afraid to block with a Crab, crack a Clue, or use a treasure if you really need to.

• If you drew a creature and don’t have a way to put it back into your deck, you can consider casting it against some decks. There’s a good amount of Historic decks that have no means to kill large, expensive creatures.

• There are two things you should know with Indomitable Creativity. One, you can go for more than x=2 when looking to combo. Why would you? You need two tokens to die for Creativity to work, if you think the opponent has interaction, but not a hard removal spell or counterspell (for example Lightning Helix, Prismari Command) you can target more than two tokens so they can’t kill one in response to stuff you out of the combo. Another thing to consider is using Creativity on opposing creatures. I had a game where my opponent played Hushbringer main so I went for the combo killing their Hushbringer as well which won me the game!

Thank you for reading and may your Locusts be plentiful!