Table of Contents
You may not know this about me, but my favorite card I’ve ever played in a competitive environment is Temur Battle Rage. Something about killing the opponent unexpectedly always struck a cord with me. Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes that style of game plan. Krowz developed a half aggro half combo deck that looks to play a good aggressive game that can suddenly kill the opponent in one turn no matter their life total! How? Let’s find out!
Creatures (14)
Instants (10)
Sorceries (4)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$275.2
Sideboard
15 Cards
$5.53
Deck Information
As I said before, the deck is split into just solid cards on rate and cards (while still good) that look to contribute towards the combo. For cards just played on rate, it’s hard to ignore the power of Luminarch Aspirant or Vanishing Verse. Luminarch Aspirant is just the best two drop in Standard, period. It scales well, it’s a must kill threat, and it’s easy to cast. The trifecta of a powerful card. On the other side of the spectrum, Vanishing Verse is likely the best removal spell in Standard, exiling most problematic threats.
For cards that are both strong and interactive, Silverquill Silencer and Graveyard Trespasser are great options. Both are strong on rate and can kill quickly, and while Silencer can disrupt the opponent’s hand, Trespasser can disrupt the opponent’s graveyard!
How about card advantage? This deck is packing plenty as well! Florian, Voldaren Scion is another great threat than can help you dig through your deck when you deal damage. However, that’s nothing compared to the sheer advantage provided by Showdown of the Skalds! Getting to functionally draw up to 4 cards and grow your creatures is a disgusting rate for 4 mana so it’s no surprise to see it in a deck that can pack it.
While these are all well and good, we’re playing a half combo deck too! So what helps us there?
Let’s break down the combo. First you need to cast a Hidetsugu Consumes All and get it to flip on it’s third chapter. Most players likely processed that it’s a 3/3 that grows when it deals damage, but don’t remember the nifty last line of text: if Vessel of the All-Consuming has dealt 10 or more damage to a player in one turn, that player loses. While that may seem extremely difficult to pull off, it isn’t here!
To get an OTK, it generally revolves around our two combat tricks, Angelfire Ignition and Kaya's Onslaught. Angelfire Ignition gives it the power boost, Haste, and Trample it needs (on top of Indestructible and Lifelink) and Kaya's Onslaught gives it double strike for a huge swing! It’s a pretty common play pattern to foretell a Kaya's Onslaught on 2, play Hidetsugu Consumes All on 3, and then have lethal turn 5 when it flips using the triggered ability! If you need more mana to help facilitate this combo, that’s where Killian, Ink Duelist comes in! Killian makes any spell you cast that targets creatures cheaper so it can help make your combat tricks cheaper or even removal for opposing creatures!
With these interlocking parts, this deck has two different axes to leverage that work in concert with each other. You don’t need to combo if you can just get them dead, and the opponent always has to worry about them being comboed out whether it’s by Vessel of the All-Consuming or one of your other creatures. This type of game plan is always scary to face and immensely fun to play!
Source
Krowz is a Magic streamer who took this list to rank 26 and then a modified version of this without Hidetsugu Consumes All to rank 19. He commented that this version isn’t necessarily an upgrade, but just a list that’s less dedicated to the combo and better against Jeskai. If you want to see his content, you can click here.
Started off as a meme but actually performed extraordinarily well with a score of 7-1 on stream. Might actually be on to something, although this list is leaning hard on the meme "combo" with consume, kaya and angelfire. #MagicTheGathering #MTGArena https://t.co/zu3d3AGmzh pic.twitter.com/TQCoRpw9vT
