Historic Deck Snapshot: Tibalt’s Trickery Combo

Hello everyone! Today I’m coming at you with the meme that’s terrorizing Historic: Throes of Trickery. If you’re unfamiliar with the deck, let’s take a look at a sample version of the deck list from the illustrious Andrea Mengucci.

[sd_deck deck=”5LoQsBWmO”]

How Does This Deck Work?

This is a different take on the old Tibalt’s Trickery deck that made rounds at the beginning of Kaldheim’s release. Back then, you would have to find a 0 mana spell like Tormod’s Crypt and Tibalt’s Trickery, cast the 0 mana spell, cast Trickery in response, and hope to hit something good and not another Trickery or 0 mana spell. Although this deck was funny, it was naturally extremely inconsistent as you needed 2 cards to assemble the combo.

With Throes of Chaos coming out with Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, that’s no longer an issue. Now you can cast Throes, cascade into Tibalt’s Trickery, target Throes with Trickery as it hasn’t resolved yet, and have a very high chance of getting a high impact spell (as long as you don’t hit another Trickery)! This deck isn’t as fast now since, most of the time, you’re only doing something impactful by turn 4, but it’s significantly more consistent as you only need to mulligan to find one card rather than 2! Furthermore, since Throes has Retrace, you can keep casting it again as long as you have a land to pitch from your hand and a Tibalt’s Trickery in your deck!

How Do You Mulligan?

Very simple! You keep any hand with a few lands and a Throes of Chaos! The only exception to this is if you have more than one Tibalt’s Trickery in hand, you may want to mulligan as you can only cheat in a spell once.

Is This Deck Actually Viable?

Much more than you think! Despite it seeming very gimmicky, the deck has a very strong win rate as many Historic decks struggle to beat a huge spell on turn 4! Unless they’re playing counter magic, a lot of decks will unsurprisingly fold to a turn 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or something similar!

Does This Work Outside of Best of One?

Believe it or not, again yes! Mengucci himself had a nice 14-3 record with his iteration of the deck so it’s definitely viable in both Best of One and Best of 3!

How Do You Sideboard?

You only ever want to sideboard against decks that have counterspells as your game plan will be the most effective one against any other strategy. If you do run into a Blue deck, here’s how you should sideboard.

With this configuration, you turn into a weird Ramp deck that will always hit it’s land drops and eventually start slamming uncounterable spells or kill the opponent with creature lands.

Are There Other Variants of This Deck?

Of course! fireshoes, one of the pillars of the Magic community, has been testing his version extensively. Although it has a sideboard, he was predominately playing it in Best of One.

[sd_deck deck=”FfB8jC5Uz”]

To increase the density of excellent hits with Trickery, I’ve also seen versions using Emergent Ultimatum as an immediate game ender if it’s hit. Let’s take a look at Wyatt’s take on it.

[sd_deck deck=”IeYyA4Waa”]

With both of these versions, you can sideboard in a very similar way to the first version against Blue decks, but you can also take out worse threats for better ones depending on the matchup.

Lastly, there are versions that also run Gyruda, Doom of the Depths as an alternate win condition. Although it has next to no hits in the deck inherently, you can both hit off the opponent’s deck, get lucky and hit an Ulamog, or sometimes, a 6 mana 6/6 will be good enough to win anyway! Here’s a sample of that deck below.

[sd_deck deck=”HE3qU7xMM”]

Which Version is the Best?

It’s hard to say as all these versions have the same base game plan, but the exciting part of the deck is what threats you want to put main and how you want to approach the transformational sideboard. Personally, I think that Mengucci’s version is the best of the bunch, but all of them are more than viable. If you like memeing on Historic ladder while winning a bunch,is a great option this could be a great option!

Thanks for reading!