Khans of Tarkir block give up plenty of powerhouses in commander. Narset, Sidisi, and Tasigur are all powerhouses and in the mix, we have poor Sarruk, not really used at all in competitive groups. In a world where Animar and Maelstrom Wanderer exist there may not be much reason to use Sarruk. There are plenty of options to use but Sarruk gives us something that the others don't, your creatures can't be countered. This begs for abuse and can easily give you infinite damage with Kiki combo. So without many hatebears, lack of tutors, and little removal you definitely don't have too many options but I'm thinking there could be some use in this guy solely based on you have uncounterable turns into combo. The benefit that most of your combo is creature based so things like Thalia, Thorn of Amethyst and Vryn Wingmare don't really affect you.
The goal of this deck is simple. Assemble Kiki or Twin combo and swing for lethal. Sarruk makes your creatures uncounterable and you have plenty of interaction to stop people from hurting your combo. There is tons of ramp and a good amount of tutors to make sure you can get this combo as soon as you can.
Lands:
Tarnished Citadel
Command tower
City of brass
Mana confluence
Exotic Orchard
Taiga
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| I can be competitive, right?! |
Volcanic Island
Stomping Ground
Breeding Pool
Steam Vents
Arid Mesa
Verdant Catacombs
Misty Rainforest
Scalding Tarn
Polluted Delta
Flooded Strand
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Wooded Foothills
Karplusan Forest
Yavimaya Coast
Shivan Reef
Ancient Tomb
Gaea's Cradle
Grove of the Burnwillows
Dryad Arbor
Kessig Wolf Run
Kessig Wolf Run
2 Islands
Forest
Mountain
Fairly self-explanatory here. Running the maximum amount of Fetches/Duals/Shocks is often the right route for three color decks. There's a good amount of five color lands and I went with the pain lands as the last cycle as they can tap for colored turn one without any restrictions and the one damage is nothing in a combo deck.
I'll save you the trouble of counting and let you know that this deck runs 32 lands. The curve is kept super low and we're going to be running a ton of draw spells
so the land count doesn't hurt us. Also, it helps that we have this:
RAMP!!!
Carpet of flowers
Sol ring
Mana crypt
Mox Diamond
Chrome Mox
Nature's Lore
Three Visits
Bloom Tender
Llanowar elves
Elvish Mystic
Orcish Lumberjack
Birds of Paradise
Rattleclaw Mystic
Arbor elf
Somberwald sage
Shaman of forgotten ways
Treasonous Ogre
In total that gives us sixteen sources of ramp. If you want to think of every ramp card as half of a land that will bring us to 40 "lands". A vast majority of these cards come down turn one or two and allow us to get in an earlier Surrak and by extension earlier combo.
Speaking of combo we're going to need a few ways to find these cards. Since we're not running black we lose access to the best tutors but we still have a decent amount here
We're going to need a good amount of cards to enable the combo to go off without a hitch, let's take a good look at some protection the deck gets.
Answers:
Magus of the moon
Blood Moon
Sylvan Safekeeper
Spellskite
Plaxmanta
Glen Elendra Archmage
Force of will
Pact of Negation
Mana drain
Swan Song
Red Elemental Blast
Pyroblast
Muddle the mixture
Beast within
Vandalblast
Ancient Grudge
Chaos Warp
Caustic Caterpillar
Reclamation Sage
Venser, Shaper Savant
Snapcaster Mage
Eternal Witness
Regrowth
Pretty basic answers here, Magus of the moon and Blood may punish you a bit but with so many dorks in the deck if shouldn't be much issue. Plus you can tutor up basics if you want to set it up or need more red mana for combo.
Sylvan Safekeeper, Spellskite, and Plaxmanta all help out by giving your creatures protection for the turn you combo off.
Counters are self-explanatory, but extra focus on Muddle the Mixture here which can tutor up Survival of the fittest for wins with Kiki when needed.
Beast, Chaos Warp, Vandalblast, and Ancient Grudge are to take out pesky cards that could end up stopping you
from comboing out.
If you're missing a combo piece in the yard then you have Regrowth and Eternal Witness to get it back, they're also good to get back cards to protect combo for the turn
With all this talk about combo, it's about time I mention what how it works huh? Let's get into Combo pieces.
C-C-C-C-COMBO
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Pestermite
Deceiver Exarch
Sneak Attack
Splinter Twin
So it's pretty clear that with Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin and either Pestermite or Exarch you win the game. Sneak Attack plays a massive role in this as well. Sneak Attack + Imperial Recruiter can set up the entire combo.
Sneak in the recruiter and fetch Kiki.
Sneak in Kiki and copy Recruiter.
Fetch up Exarch/Pestermite and win from there.
If either is in your hand you can tutor up other creatures
Glen Elendra Archmage helps you protect your creatures from spells
Sylvan safekeeper works as well
Treasonous ogre can net you more mana so you can sneak attack in more if needed
Venser can bounce a problematic card
Reclamation Sage can take out a problematic enchantment/artifact
Magus of the Moon can make other mana bases sad as well as making sure you have red mana for sneak attack. The synergy with recruiter and sneak attack and recruiter here makes games pretty much end on the spot.
Sweet, so now you know how to win with the combo. Let's see what cards help us to get it in hand.
Tutors
Survival of the fittest
Worldly Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Gamble
Summoner's Pact
Green Sun's Zenith
Chord of calling
Not having black in the deck makes it difficult to search up things like Sneak attack and splinter twin so a majority of the tutors will often get you Kiki/Pestermite for easy wins. However, that's not all this deck has. Since there are multiple routes to victory we need to have plenty of ways to draw into those spells
Card selection:
Sensei's Diving top
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Sylvan Library
Temur Ascendancy
Ponder
Preordain
Brainstorm
Treasure Cruise
Dig Through Time
Windfall
Wheel of Fortune
Timetwister
With these cards, we have plenty of ways to make sure we draw into the combo early and consistently. It works very well with the low CMC of the deck as it's easy to draw a hand, play all the mana sources and then wheel into a new hand and repeat until you combo out. I cannot stress how important the draw seven effects are here as they can quickly end games for us by drawing into a piece or tutor we could be missing. That brings us to 98 cards including Surrak...
And finally, that leads us to the last two cards in the deck.
Goodies
Natural Order
Craterhoof Behemoth
Well, what kind of deck would it be if you couldn't win if something happened to your combo? Craterhoof is perfectly castable by itself but cheating him in is viable as well. You also will often have a good amount of creatures so unless there are consistent wraths that you can't counter for whatever reason this should be a problem.
With that, we have a solid 100 card deck to bring into the world.
This deck will not be competing with Tier one combo decks as it is typically slower and has trouble with creature hate but in the right meta it can do fairly well.
I think Surrak is overlooked since Animar and Wanderer run rampant. While he's not going to change the meta by any means he's overall decent and likely viable somewhere in tier three.
Anyway, that was my analysis on Surrak Dragonclaw, not crazy strong but can be built in an impactful way. Let me know what you think and let's start a discussion. I'm also curious if there is maybe a subpar general you'd like for me to take a look at in the future for another Spike me article.
Until then this is Doomblade, Signing out.
DECKLIST HERE!
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/surrak-dragonclaw-combo-1/
If you want to support the blog please visit my Patreon for more. Every little bit helps a ton and allows me to make more content for you guys in the future
https://www.patreon.com/diestodoomblade
so the land count doesn't hurt us. Also, it helps that we have this:
 |
| Hey, Remember this card? |
Carpet of flowers
Sol ring
Mana crypt
Mox Diamond
Chrome Mox
Nature's Lore
Three Visits
Bloom Tender
Llanowar elves
Elvish Mystic
Orcish Lumberjack
Birds of Paradise
Rattleclaw Mystic
Arbor elf
Somberwald sage
Shaman of forgotten ways
Treasonous Ogre
In total that gives us sixteen sources of ramp. If you want to think of every ramp card as half of a land that will bring us to 40 "lands". A vast majority of these cards come down turn one or two and allow us to get in an earlier Surrak and by extension earlier combo.
Speaking of combo we're going to need a few ways to find these cards. Since we're not running black we lose access to the best tutors but we still have a decent amount here
We're going to need a good amount of cards to enable the combo to go off without a hitch, let's take a good look at some protection the deck gets.
 |
| Tutor for wins or protect your wins |
Magus of the moon
Blood Moon
Sylvan Safekeeper
Spellskite
Plaxmanta
Glen Elendra Archmage
Force of will
Pact of Negation
Mana drain
Swan Song
Red Elemental Blast
Pyroblast
Muddle the mixture
Beast within
Vandalblast
Ancient Grudge
Chaos Warp
Caustic Caterpillar
Reclamation Sage
Venser, Shaper Savant
Snapcaster Mage
Eternal Witness
Regrowth
Pretty basic answers here, Magus of the moon and Blood may punish you a bit but with so many dorks in the deck if shouldn't be much issue. Plus you can tutor up basics if you want to set it up or need more red mana for combo.
Sylvan Safekeeper, Spellskite, and Plaxmanta all help out by giving your creatures protection for the turn you combo off.
Counters are self-explanatory, but extra focus on Muddle the Mixture here which can tutor up Survival of the fittest for wins with Kiki when needed.
Beast, Chaos Warp, Vandalblast, and Ancient Grudge are to take out pesky cards that could end up stopping you
from comboing out.
If you're missing a combo piece in the yard then you have Regrowth and Eternal Witness to get it back, they're also good to get back cards to protect combo for the turn
With all this talk about combo, it's about time I mention what how it works huh? Let's get into Combo pieces.
C-C-C-C-COMBO
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Pestermite
Deceiver Exarch
Sneak Attack
Splinter Twin
 |
| Yes, it's Sneak Attack in a deck with no Eldrazi |
Sneak in the recruiter and fetch Kiki.
Sneak in Kiki and copy Recruiter.
Fetch up Exarch/Pestermite and win from there.
If either is in your hand you can tutor up other creatures
Glen Elendra Archmage helps you protect your creatures from spells
Sylvan safekeeper works as well
Treasonous ogre can net you more mana so you can sneak attack in more if needed
Venser can bounce a problematic card
Reclamation Sage can take out a problematic enchantment/artifact
Magus of the Moon can make other mana bases sad as well as making sure you have red mana for sneak attack. The synergy with recruiter and sneak attack and recruiter here makes games pretty much end on the spot.
Sweet, so now you know how to win with the combo. Let's see what cards help us to get it in hand.
Tutors
Survival of the fittest
Worldly Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Gamble
Summoner's Pact
Green Sun's Zenith
Chord of calling
Not having black in the deck makes it difficult to search up things like Sneak attack and splinter twin so a majority of the tutors will often get you Kiki/Pestermite for easy wins. However, that's not all this deck has. Since there are multiple routes to victory we need to have plenty of ways to draw into those spells
Card selection:
Sensei's Diving top
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Sylvan Library
Temur Ascendancy
Ponder
Preordain
Brainstorm
Treasure Cruise
Dig Through Time
Windfall
Wheel of Fortune
Timetwister
 |
| A green deck with Library, what a twist |
With these cards, we have plenty of ways to make sure we draw into the combo early and consistently. It works very well with the low CMC of the deck as it's easy to draw a hand, play all the mana sources and then wheel into a new hand and repeat until you combo out. I cannot stress how important the draw seven effects are here as they can quickly end games for us by drawing into a piece or tutor we could be missing. That brings us to 98 cards including Surrak...
And finally, that leads us to the last two cards in the deck.
Goodies
Natural Order
Craterhoof Behemoth
Well, what kind of deck would it be if you couldn't win if something happened to your combo? Craterhoof is perfectly castable by itself but cheating him in is viable as well. You also will often have a good amount of creatures so unless there are consistent wraths that you can't counter for whatever reason this should be a problem.
With that, we have a solid 100 card deck to bring into the world.
This deck will not be competing with Tier one combo decks as it is typically slower and has trouble with creature hate but in the right meta it can do fairly well.
I think Surrak is overlooked since Animar and Wanderer run rampant. While he's not going to change the meta by any means he's overall decent and likely viable somewhere in tier three.
Anyway, that was my analysis on Surrak Dragonclaw, not crazy strong but can be built in an impactful way. Let me know what you think and let's start a discussion. I'm also curious if there is maybe a subpar general you'd like for me to take a look at in the future for another Spike me article.
Until then this is Doomblade, Signing out.
DECKLIST HERE!
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/surrak-dragonclaw-combo-1/
If you want to support the blog please visit my Patreon for more. Every little bit helps a ton and allows me to make more content for you guys in the future
https://www.patreon.com/diestodoomblade
Really like the article man - out of curiousity, any thoughts on Cyclonic Rift in Surrak? Seems like it'd be a very powerful include in the deck - is it viable at a competitive level? I would think with all that ramp, it could be incredible.
ReplyDelete-LordRewind
Yeah you can easily cut a counter or chaos warp for it
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