Hello there, this is Brewer’s Kitchen: long time Magic player and jank enthusiast.
Now, I know Amonkhet Remastered just released and this deck plays none of the new cards.
Well, maybe I built this deck two weeks ago and took too long working on the video, or perhaps there are no new cards that would fit the deck…
Both are true but we do still play cards we haven’t seen in a while, and that’s what Amonkhet Remastered is all about, right?
The Gameplan
The theme of the deck is playing permanents that care about and copy instants and sorceries.
Going back through the Historic card pool we discover Primal Amulet and The Mirari Conjecture, but we also play the still Standard-legal Thousand-Year Storm.
These cards reward us for playing a lot of instants and sorceries, and enable us to copy them. But with all these permanents that care about spells, we need spells that care about permanents, preferably ones that are also sweet to copy.
Genesis Ultimatum and Mythos of Illuna are exactly that.
This style of deck is nothing new, but with the addition of Jumpstart, we got a missing piece that drastically improves our consistency both in the early game and throughout the combo finish:
Explore is basically copies five to eight of Growth Spiral.
Early in the game, we use these to ramp into our payoffs, but they also allow us to keep comboing off once we start copying them.
Then we have to play cheap spells to fuel Thousand-Year Storm and flip the Primal Amulet: Opt is a great way to filter through our deck. Shock is cheap removal. And also our win condition? I’ll get to that later.
Then we have Storms Wrath as a sweeper and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath as an additional threat.
Showcase:
There is still a lot to talk about but what better way to explain it than through showing you the deck in action?
As always, I’ve made a video showing you how to pull off the combo. You want to read more about the intricacies of the deck? Just scroll past this section for now, but be sure to check out the video afterwards. It’s one thing to read about it, but it is a thing of beauty to see it in action.
[sd_deck deck=”9MI3kdu9e”]
The Combo:
Even though we have multiple different payoffs, the game always boils down to the point where we copy a Genesis Ultimatum and proceed to win the game from there.
In the early turns we ramp and keep the board clear. Once we find a window to play a payoff (Primal Amulet, The Mirari Conjecture, Thousand-Year Storm), we are all in on finding and copying an Ultimatum as soon as possible. Once we’ve done that, we are likely to get more of our payoff permanents onto the battlefield. Explore, Growth Spiral,and Genesis Ultimatum all put lands into play and draw cards, so especially when copied, they help us keep the combo going.
Once we’ve found Thousand-Year Storm, we are likely to just win in the same turn by casting and copying a Shock.
In the next section, I’ll break down all the cards and how they fit the gameplan.
Full Decklist Breakdown:
Shock: Cheap removal in the early game, and win condition in the late game. Don’t hold on to them until the combo finish! The Mirari Conjecture can get them back when you need them later.
Opt: The other one-drop spell; this one just filters through our deck and helps to find our payoffs.
Explore: This is an unassuming but essential addition from the new (okay, it was new when I built it) Jumpstart set.
Similar to Growth Spiral, it draws a card and plays an additional Land. Being a sorcery may actually be an upside, since we can get it back with the second chapter of The Mirari Conjecture. It also profits from Primal Amulet’s cost reduction.
Growth Spiral: This fills pretty much the same role as Explore; both of them help us ramp in the early game and combo off later. Once we have the Thousand-Year Storm, these spells can act as rituals since we can put multiple Lands into play if we copy them. This makes sure we can extend the combo until we cast/copy a Shock for lethal.
Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath: Uro is just so good that we play two copies, even though it doesn’t fully support the gameplan. It acts as an alternative win condition and can be put onto the battlefield with Genesis Ultimatum.
Storm’s Wrath: We cannot try to pull off a crazy combo without adequate protection from go-wide strategies. A Goblin or Vampire deck will not give us the time to cast one of our payoffs, so having a sweeper is our only hope against these decks. Hitting Planeswalkers means this is not always a dead card against control decks.
Primal Amulet: This is our first and cheapest payoff. The cost reduction effect is mostly irrelevant for our deck, but with our plethora of cantrips, we can usually flip this into Primal Wellspring the following turn. Once it flips into the land, we can use it to copy Genesis Ultimatum. Using the Wellspring to cast a Mythos of Illuna copying the Wellspring sets up for some ridiculous future turns (Game 1 in my video).
Mythos of Illuna: This might be the most fun card in the deck, both copying our permanents and being copy-able itself. Using this to copy Thousand-Years Storm lets the deck get out of control very quickly. Sometimes we just use the Mythos as a removal spell by copying and fighting threats.
The Mirari Conjecture: The second payoff . Like the Amulet, it takes some time to copy spells with this, but while the Amulet needs spells to function, the Conjecture provides us with them. We can loop this and Mythos of Illuna if the game goes long.
Thousand-Year Storm: Our final and strongest payoff. We only play two copies since our deck is so good at filtering through our library. We got the ramp to play this early but the main plan is to find this with Genesis Ultimatum. Once we put this onto the battlefield we can chain cantrips until we can copy a Shock for lethal.
Genesis Ultimatum: The biggest spell to copy. A copied Ultimatum looks at the top ten cards of our library, puts all permanents into play, and the rest into our hand. Since the lands enter untapped, we can often continue casting spells afterwards.
Lands: We play 26 Lands which is not all that many considering we play Explore, Growth Spiral and Uro, but since we are not trying to ramp into Ulamog, Ugin, or other giant threats, we prioritize having a critical number of spells over land drops. Always make sure to keep red mana open once you try to combo finish, so that you have the resources to play a Shock at the end.
Plan B
You might have noticed that we rely on two copies of Thousand-Year Storm to win the game. While we are likely to find them when comboing off, there are some scenarios where our opponents will remove them before we can go off, but then you just have to get creative. Here are some other ways to win a game:
Mythos of Illuna: The Mythos can copy any permanent. If our opponent presents a huge threat, we can just make our own copy, and if we copy the Mythos, we now have multiples of this threat. In addition to this, we can use the second mode on Mythos to fight smaller critters with our newly created threats.
Looping Mythos and Conjecture: If we have a Mirari Conjecture and use a Mythos of Illuna to copy it, we can get back the Mythos next turn and repeat the process. After a few loops we begin having a Conjecture trigger of every kind triggering every turn. In a couple of turns, we can copy multiple permanents every turn and return every spell from our graveyard. This grows exponentially until we end up copying every spell multiple times and getting them all back from the graveyard every turn. Just don’t deck yourself…
Uro: Well what can I say… sometimes Uro is enough to win games by himself.
Wrapping Up
Ok let’s be honest here: this is not a competitive deck! But it is a blast to play.
I decided to feature this deck in a video after copying Mythos of Illuna eight times, copying my opponents Craterhoof Behemoth and then attacking for 552 out of nowhere.
I fear that the introduction of Thoughtseize is awful for decks like these, but they can’t always have it… right?
Until next time, keep on brewing!
