Magic: The Gathering's Most Broken Card Combos

[Music] many Magic the Gathering players ask the question can we unban Splinter twin in modern yet and the answer is no we can't unban Splinter twin stop asking or at least that's what wizards of the Coast's current stance on the matter is the Splinter twin deceiver exarc or Pastor might call is one of the most iconic in Magic the Gathering history as many Magic the Gathering players have fond memories of playing the deck in modern and even a period in standard but as iconic as Splinter twin certainly is it's actually quite far from being one of the most powerful combos that you can pull off with the entire Magic the Gathering card pool the Splinter twin combo is entirely legal in Legacy for example and absolutely nobody plays it there combo lovers have had a lot of fun throughout magic history assembling broken often unintuitive combinations of cards that sometimes slip through the cracks of Wizards of the Coast's design team the first such iconic combo is channel Fireball the centerpiece to the first turn one win many Magic the Gathering players discovered back in Alpha play a mountain then a black lotus crack the Lotus for triple green then cast Channel with a green and a red floating use that red and green plus 19 of your precious life points to C Fireball dealing 20 damage directly to your opponent's face before they even get to play a land the channel Fireball combo was so iconic it was chosen as the name for the most legendary promagic team of all time and that team's magic strategy website of course but if Splinter twin doesn't come close to competing with the most broken combos ever how does Channel Fireballs Stack Up what even are the most broken combos in Magic the Gathering history how would one even create a rank system for that so glad you asked here's how I'd do it to qualify a combo has to either win the game deterministically or at least deterministically create a one- hit kill threat that must be answered by your opponent otherwise you well hit once and kill them the combo must also be compact a convoluted series of multiple cards certainly can form a deterministic combo but the requirement of that many moving Parts tends to keep these strategies sufficiently in check lastly the combo must be capable of winning the game out of nowhere even when you're behind on board that last criteria Dooms the channel Fireball combo iconic and broken as it is since that combo requires you to be at 20 life in order to pull it off what's more a single lightning bolt heck even a gutshot from your opponent will end your whole career but with that criteria established what are the most broken combos in Magic history well with only a little bit of further ado let's take a look but first did you know that Wizards of the Coast has declared secret rendevu a crime that's right with the introduction of the crime mechanic in Thunder Junction targeting another player is now considered a criminal offense that means Wizards of the Coast doesn't want 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activate thesan stage I'm going to copy dark depths which is a little weird because this is a legendary land so what's going to happen is uh I make a copy of dark depths the first thing that will happen is the legend rule will happen so I get to pick one of these two dark depths I would like to keep I'm going to keep the thespian stage the dark depths will sacrifice itself now this as a copy of dark depths with no counters on it uh sacrifices itself too and I'm going to put a 2020 Merit L token into Play She rises from her Slumber oo I will you're going to do something tap but I have a merit L deps stage is the closest combo on this list to being non-deterministic since technically all depth stage does is put a 2020 flying indestructible creature token into play yeah 2020 flying indestructible that's all but the combo is strong enough to make the cut because it technically doesn't require you to cast any spells you just have to make land drops there's also a bevy of cheap ways to tutor for lands in Magic's fast card pool which makes this combo by far the most redundant crop rotation can find you a land at instance speed for a single Mana while Expedition map is tutorable off 's Saga a common theme you'll notice in a couple of these combos a single Elvish reclaimer or Knight of the reliquary can also set both pieces of this combo up as well as tutoring for ciri step to give your Merit lash protection from removal certain colors struggle to interact with the combo at all as the discard spells of black Mana the counter spells of blue mana and the removal spells of red Mana are all effectively useless not even a stifle effect on the dark depths trigger works because the self-sacrifice Clause is a state-based action that will simply trigger again after the stifle resolves that being said there are still a few ways you could interact with this combo one method is instant speed land hate like Wast land or bosu though this is only a temporary solution because of the existence of cards like life from the LOM pairing land destruction with surgical extraction is very effective though another method is instant speed Exile and bounce based spot removal as well as diabolic edict effects provided of course your opponent doesn't have additional sack floder spot removal is vulnerable to instant speed land tutors that fetch up a sajiri step though and of course there is always the classic pithing needle naming thespian stage if you manage to get it down before they get this combo off dark depths also holds the notable position of most powerful combo consisting solely of cards in a modern legal set that clip from Shuffle up and play was of course our no band modern episode and anytime a no- band list modern tournament occurs dark deps is consistently a top performer competing with eye of ugan elrazi and hak two of the most infamously broken decks in modern history number four on the list is responsible for one of the most powerful Legacy decks ever breach freeze the combo of Underworld breach brain freeze and a zeroc cost Mana producing artifact like Lion's eye Diamond underworld breach set off alarm Bell when it was previewed and for good reason it's not hard to produce enough Escape fodder to turn this card into essentially a better cheaper yog moths will underworld breach lets you cast spells from your graveyard by paying an additional cost of exiling three cards from your graveyard combined with a card like Lion ey Diamond you can generate tons of mana and storm count by repeatedly activating and recasting your zeroc cost Mana producer you'll need plenty of extra cards in your graveyard to keep doing this but brain freeze neatly completes this combo by targeting yourself you can easily Mill enough cards to keep the combo going and by targeting an opponent you can end the game via Mill the deck could even win on turn one if your opening hand had a land plus a lus pedal plus a breach plus a freeze plus a lion side diamond and that is only five cards so you even had room to protect it with force of will plus a blue card the combo isn't without risk though as lionside Diamond decks often are if your opponent s its interactions well it could leave you with an empty hand when your combo busts up but the deck is ultra consistent lightning fast and is easy to protect either with force of will or by splashing an additional color black for Thought Seas white for tfairy or silence or green for veil of Summer counter magic graveyard hate enchantment removal all theoretically stop this combo but the combo kills so quickly and consistently that you don't have much time to find or assemble these things and the combo deck has many ways to protect itself and clear problematic hate pieces the combo proved to be so powerful that breach freeze was banned in Legacy after only 45 days of legality these days the combo is only legal in Commander where it really only sees playing competitive EDH and of course vintage where breach is not restricted and you can use Black Lotus instead of lion's ey Diamond to pull off the combo and speaking of cedh coming in at number three is the classic Oracle demonic consultation combo for those of you fortunate enough to not know what the Oracle consult combo is I I almost don't even want to explain it to you it would be like shattering a pristine ice sculpture but I'm going to do it anyway cast th's Oracle then with the trigger on the stack cast demonic consultation and here's the only fun part of this combo name any card in Magic history that isn't in your deck some favorite cards of mine to name are you are already dead and abandon hope but without laws of Thunder Junction now legal might I recommend holy cow the scourge of high power EDH tables Oracle consultation is the Pinnacle of obnoxious broken combos costing just three total mana and requiring only two cards it's very easy to set up the combo with the protection of counter magic or even a preemptively cast silence it's also extraordinarily hard to interact with spot removal is useless since once the oracles enter the battlefield Triggers on the stack your Devotion to Blue can be zero and still win if you have an empty Library the best counterplay is to stifle the Oracle trigger after the consultation resolves since that will cause the Oracle player to lose to decking alternatively you can force the Oracle player to draw a card after the consultation resolves and their library is empty such as with baleful Mastery or activating a lauran of the third path if you can't do either of these things then countermagic is your next best bet you can also just cast a dress down before thesa Oracle resolves which will remove its enter the battlefield Effect one of the few places this combo was ever legal outside of EDH is a very brief period in historic after stricks Haven was released that combo used tainted packed instead of consultation but accomplished essentially the same thing provided you don't have more than one copy of Any Given card in your deck you can even play two oracles and two tainted packs in the deck to find the combo more consistently since you're guaranteed not to have two in deck when you combo predictably the Singleton restriction of this deck was not enough to weaken it and thassa's Oracle was banned in historic about a month after stricks Haven dropped all right I won't dwell on Oracle consult any longer we all know it and nobody likes it but it is wild just how broken a card thesa Oracle is that this relatively young combo can go toe-to-toe with some of the other names on this list now you could make a very compelling argument that number two on our list should really be number one after all when many Magic Gathering players think about broken combos this is the combo that most often comes to [Music] mind I'm referring of course to the key Vault combo time Vault plus voltaic key or manifold key or any other method of repeatedly untapping the time Vault time vault is a weird card card from the original Alpha set that allows you to take an extra turn at the cost of skipping a turn it enters tapped and you can't untap in your untap step unless you skip a turn but if you use something like voltaic key or again manifold key you can untap the time Vault without that cost every turn which means with these two cards in play you can take infinite turns time Vault has been the subject of much scrutiny over the entirety of Magic's existence Alpha cards are not exactly known for the most coherent rules text so the original wording of time Vault was a bit vague to untap it you must skip a turn could mean in order to untap the time vault in your untap step you must skip the turn or it could mean that you must skip a turn anytime you untap it after all Richard Garfield surely didn't intend for time Vault to make for easy infinite turns right uh right as written it certainly seems like the skip a turn Clause only applies to the untapped phase this interpretation was therefore the one most people agree on which is why in 1994 time Vault became the first card to ever be banned for power level reasons over the next 15 or so years Wizards of the Coast attempted to fix time Vault many times with many many araas to its text some of which accidentally only made the card even more broken than it was before eventually in 2008 the card was restored to its original interpretation and the original broken combination of Vault plus key was allowed to exist in vintage though time Vault itself was restricted the combo reached a new power level once urza Saga was printed in modern Horizons 2 see you need to play enough untapping your deck to consistently find them and execute the combo the problem is the various key variants are not particularly powerful cards outside of their interaction with time Vault so putting multiple copies in your deck has a real cost any copy you draw after the first is completely useless Ura Saga single-hand ly fixes this problem as its third chapter can tutor up your key a deck with four ERS of sagas and one manifold key is really a deck with five manifold keys where four of them are legitimately powerful magic cards on top of the redundancy they provide the fact that vault key is still a good deck in vintage despite Vault being restricted is a testament to this combo's power but as broken and consistent as the vault key combo is it's still not the number one most broken combo in Magic Gathering history that title belongs to flash Hulk it no no not torrential gearhulk yes I realize it has flash but flash Hulk refers to the combination of the literal card flash combined with protein Hulk as was the case with most of the combos on this list this combo resolves around a card doing something that its designers didn't intend flash was a card that was meant to to give creatures flash it was fair because it still made you pay the creatures full Mana cost the problem was there are many Magic the Gathering creatures that are as good as or better when they die than they are when they live cards like World spine worm and woodfall Primus for example are fantastic cards to flash in and not pay for but by far the most broken thing to do with flash is put a protein Hulk into play when protein Hulk dies you get to put creatures into play from your deck with total Mana value of six when you stop and think of all the creatures in Magic history it's not hard to assemble a game-winning combo that totals six Mana value you could kill with four virulent slivers and a heart sliver to attack for lethal poison damage since instances of poisonous stack or if you'd like to win at instant speed without needing the combat step you can use a creature package like one body double one carrying feeder or another one Mana sack Outlet one AR and one MOG fanatic you may notice that that is 12 Mana not six but that's because you first get body double and carrying feeder body double enters as a copy of Hulk which you then sack to your feeder and get an additional Hulk death trigger Fetch revelar and MOG fanatic then sack the MOG fanatic to Ping your opponent and Sack the revelar to your carrying feeder revelar returns fanatic and body double body double this time copies Revel Arc which allows you to demonstrate this Loop and deal infinite damage damage to your opponent this combo could legitimately win on turn zero that is on your opponent's upkeep when they go first put a gemstone Cavern into play Then Exile a Simeon spirit guide or Elvish spirit guide in order to cast flash again this is turn zero during your opponent's upkeep but if you do manage to cast flash you put in protein Hulk and there you go game is over your opponent wasn't even able to play a single land and they were on the play Flash Hulk is a five card combo gemstone Cavern plus spirit guide plus flash plus Hulk plus any card to pitch to the cavern were the only deck building cost is putting a single copy of each of the four Hulk tutor Targets in your deck sure you lose if you draw any of them but this deck wins so quickly so easily that there won't be time to draw them flash was banned in Legacy in 2007 but remained unrestricted in vintage for another year the combo was so broken in that format that many players confidently called it not just powerful and not just extremely powerful but well former scg writer and one-time vintage world champion Steven menendian went on record in 2008 calling the Vintage flash Hulk deck the most powerful and consistent deck in the history of vintage 3 months later flash was restricted in vintage and amazingly it took until 2020 for Flash to be banned in Commander though to be fair prot and Hulk had spent a long time on the band list itself before being unbanned in 27 17 all the combos on this list are broken to some degree or another the top three are particularly broken requiring minimal Mana investment to win the game instantly in the earliest turns of the game but given that flash Hulk only needs to cast one of its two halves and that half is a two Mana instant the centerpiece for the most powerful vintage deck ever Takes the Cake for the most broken combo ever in Magic history but now I want to hear from you what do you think of this list do you think I left some brok en combos off or are there other broken combos that well not the most powerful in Magic's history ever you think deserve their own place in the spotlight let me know in the comments below and if you've ever wanted to see our build your own precons in action well we had a shuffle up and play with build your own precon versus build your own precon tcc's final showdown and you can check that episode out here if you have not already done so and remember whether you want to defend against malware stream TV shows on available in other countries or just have secret Rendevous and do webcam magic crimes nordvpn is here to look out for you what's more if you sign up right now at nordvpn.com Taran Community you can get a 2-year nordvpn plan at a huge discount and four additional months for free what a deal again that's nordvpn.com tarian Community or just click the link in the description below to get protected with nordvpn today thank you nordvpn for sponsoring this video [Music] by Shuffle up and play I can't remember what we're doing today because what we're doing today is playing forgetful fish the format is formally named forgetful fish but this is informally called danen I always thought Dan Dan were the boats yeah me too yeah this is Dan and that's Dan as well yeah yeah exactly the core conceit is that we both share a deck we'll go to combats right away so I'm going to swing with danan in I will take the first damage so I will ro ro one of these basically it's a blue mag's dream I'm going to cast chared course I would like to respond I would like to crack this fetchland in response brainstorm in response naret reversal in response this is so good Dan Dan rules

Channel: Tolarian Community College

Views: 147,793

Keywords: magic: the gathering, mtg, thunder junction, wizards of the coast, tolarian community college, nerd, geek, card games, booster box, unboxing

Id: 2LakJU6Rwdo

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024