I Attacked for Infinity | Brewer's Kitchen
Well, hello there! Brewer’s Kitchen here with another freshly brewed pile of cards. Today we are doing something that rarely happens in my videos: Attacking the opponent.
Does that mean we aren’t playing a degenerate combo deck or value pile for a change? Of course, it doesn’t.
The Gameplan
Despite the end goal of beating our opponent into the ground by combat, this deck mostly plays like a controlling combo deck. But instead of assembling a specific combo, we play two pairs of cards that both combo with each other. The first pair is the enablers:
Helm of the Host and Reflection of Kiki-Jiki (backside of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker) both create a hasty token copy of a creature we control. While that’s already good on its own with the right creature to copy, the best way to use an ability is always to go infinite. For the Helm of the Host trigger to loop into infinity, we’d need to enter another combat step with every copy. For the Reflection, we’d need to untap it and create a mana to pay for the activation costs. All of these conditions are met by just taking an extra turn.
Timestream Navigator was on my list to build a deck around for quite some time. It’s the first of two payoffs. While it sounds unintuitive, you can technically put a token on the bottom of your library. Even if it will immediately cease to exist, according to the rules of the game you still executed the necessary actions to activate the ability of the Navigator. If we equip a Helm of the Host, we’ll get a fresh copy of the Pirate at the beginning of every combat phase. Since it has haste, we can activate it right away to take an extra turn. This means, as long as we spend four mana to activate the Navigator every turn, we will take consecutive turns until we draw the last card from our library.
Reflection of Kiki-Jiki works pretty much the same, besides costing an additional mana per loop for its activation cost. Sadly, as fun as it is (not speaking for our opponent here), taking infinite turns doesn’t win the game. But relentlessly beating our opponent’s face does.
Combat Celebrant is the second and arguably more powerful payoff for copying. It automatically goes infinite with Helm of the Host. We can exert the Celebrant when it’s attacking, causing it to untap the rest of our team and giving us an additional combat phase which will create another token copy. While its ability explicitly prevents you from exerting it multiple times, every copy will be a new permanent with a fresh text box. Even if the opponent has blockers for it, we will create a new 4/1 attacker with every loop until they have no blockers and no life total left.
Untapping other creatures we control means that we can reuse Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to copy it again, giving us as many combat phases as we have open mana. While this is usually enough to win the game, the front side of the card Fable of the Mirror-Breaker will create a Goblin Shaman token that creates a Treasure whenever it's attacking. If the opponent can’t block it, it will repeatedly provide the mana to activate Reflection of Kiki-Jiki with every additional combat phase to truly go infinite until our opponent’s life total succumbs to the beatdown.
The rest of the deck is cards that help us stay alive, find the combo, or assemble it quicker.
Resolute Strike and Bruenor Battlehammer both help us cheat on the steep 5 mana equip cost of Helm of the Host. While Bruenor allows us to slap Helm onto every creature for free once it’s on the battlefield, Resolute Strike is way less mana intensive but only attaches equipment to a Warrior (e.g., only Combat Celebrant). Fighter Class will tutor up Helm of the Host. It also reduces its equip cost with its second level but that’s very clunky and should only be activated when we have the spare mana to do it.
Expressive Iteration helps us dig through our deck to find the pieces. Prismari Command and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker draw-discard abilities will help us get there as well, while generating value along the way.
Lightning Helix and Deafening Clarion give us a fighting chance against early aggression. These are definitely flex slots for generic removal/board wipes. Combining removal with life gain makes the Helix a real life saver against burn-style decks. Dealing 3 to everything with the Clarion usually sets go wide decks back enough to set up our combo. Both don’t really deal with big threats, but we are not trying to control the board, we just need to stay alive to assemble our parts to reach infinity.
Deafening Clarion can also give our team lifegain until end of turn. Combine that with infinite attackers and we get infinite life… but our opponent will also be infinitely dead. So far, I never had to use it this way but keep it in mind for that clutch situation where it’s relevant.
Lastly, we got a card that ties it all together. Chandra, Torch of Defiance digs us through the deck to find our pieces, adds mana to accelerate the combo, removes threats from the board, and her ultimate is an alternative win condition if attacking our opponent doesn’t do the trick. Once we assembled the Timestream-Loop, we basically just need to find a Chandra, ultimate her, and cast some spells. You could argue this to be a more consistent payoff for infinite turns, but in the end, the merciless beatdown of Celebrants will feel more badass when you get to pull it off. Nevertheless, Chandra is the unsung hero of this deck and definitely worth the full playset.
Bad Matchups
As you can probably imagine, this deck has some rough matchups. Spot removal can easily stop us before we go into the combo loop. Our lack of early game board presence and sparse early removal options before turn three can make aggro matchups a tough race to the combo. But even if we get into the attack loop, some mechanics are hilariously punishing. Technically, a 1/1 first strike can make all of our attacks futile since the Combat Celebrant Token is a 4/1. While this can easily be dealt with by removal, what about a 1/1 indestructible? Well, that could be dealt with by killing the opponent with taking infinite turns and ultimating Chandra. But what about Solemnity / Nine Lives? Yeah… that’s where it gets tricky. You could include a Bonecrusher Giant to prevent damage prevention for the combo turn or include something like a Brazen Borrower to bounce problematic permanents. My list has no such fail saves right now, so be aware that there are some (rare) unwinnable game states. If I could include any card in this deck from outside the Historic card pool, it would probably Venser, Shaper Savant. While it’s a bit pricy, it would act as a bounce spell for anything that prevents us from winning and would synergize beautifully with Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to soft lock our opponent.
I know… Alchemy…
You might have noticed, that the Bruenor Battlehammer in the deck list has a disgusting-looking Alchemy symbol in the card name. He got buffed a while ago, granting him an additional point of toughness. If you want to avoid anything Alchemy, the deck is easily converted into an Explorer deck.
The only two cards that wouldn’t be legal are Expressive Iteration and Lightning Helix. You can switch them out with any cards that do similar things, like Impulse to dig through the deck and Bonecrusher Giant to stop early aggression.
I’m usually playing Historic in my videos to have the biggest card pool available for my decklists, but I wouldn’t fault you for not supporting anything related to Alchemy. I know, some of the cards are fun to play with, but there is no doubt, that Alchemy is nothing but an attempt to make players waste their wild cards on made-up cards. If the cards would be free to play with, sure, but asking players to craft cards that can change their text boxes at any point without refunds in the Arena economy is absolutely predatory and maybe the worst thing Wizards has ever done to the game.
So, if you want to avoid all of this, switch out these two cards and queue into Explorer.
Wrap up
This deck started as an excuse to finally play Timestream Navigator. While it’s still a powerful part of the gameplan, Combat Celebrant is the one that actually wins the game. That being said, winning the game can be quite hard against spot removal. Even though I played ranked in my video, keep in mind, that this deck is on the jankier side. The only saving grace is that the matchmaking apparently classifies the list as off-meta and matches you up against slightly weaker decks in my experience. But one thing is for sure, it’s a blast once you assemble the combo. So, if you have the cards in your collection, give it a try and cheese out your opponents with Timestream Navigator.
If you have questions or ideas for this or any other deck, you can reach me on Twitter @Brewers_Kitchen or at brewerskitchen@mtggoldfish.com.
