It is a great time to be a Classic enthusiast. So much has happened recently to really give the format a life and identity of its’ own; from the format-specific restricted list to the release of Master’s Edition, Classic is truly becoming a unique and powerful place to play Magic.

The latest drop in the Classic bucket comes with the retroactive release of Weatherlight online. Originally released to the cardboard world in the summer of 1997, Weatherlight rounds out the Mirage block, which is the first block to be released online to a strictly Classic crowd. From a Constructed standpoint, Weatherlight is a mixed bag, adding some powerhouses from days long past (such as Ophidian), some great utility cards (like Phyrexian Furnace), and some absolute bombs that will prove to impact the format in very strong ways (Null Rod, Abeyance) for some time to come. However, there is a standout addition in Weatherlight that I’ve been waiting patiently for, and that should prove to get any true combo player’s blood boiling.

Doomsday is the worst-kept combo secret in Weatherlight, as the card has been a combo enabler for nearly a decade for paper players. It found itself added to the Vintage restricted list shortly after its debut, only to be finally removed in September 2004 in the DCI announcement that gave birth to Legacy (and consequently immediately un-banned the card in the fledgling format.) Since that day, Doomsday has seen many different applications in both Eternal formats as a strong (if fragile) combo enabler. With the card pool available to Online Classic, it should prove to do the same here as well.

EXAMINING THE CARD

The current Oracle text for Doomsday reads:

Search your library and graveyard for five cards and remove the rest from the game. Put the chosen cards on top of your library in any order. You lose half your life, rounded up.

This wording reveals why the card has been in and out of trouble with the DCI since it was dropped on the Magic-playing public. There are several things going on here, and it is important to understand how they work together to make up such a powerful package.

COST

There are two separate costs for Doomsday. First, the actual casting cost is three black mana. In Classic this cost is easily accessed, even on turn one, via Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual (with Chrome Mox or other such acceleration), allowing you to immediately bring the card to bear. The secondary cost, which requires you to give up half of your life total, is one that is historically inconsequential to combo players. Life total matters very little if you are poised to immediately win the game. However, in a format that thrives on shock lands in the absence of true dual lands and currently features a metric ton of easy, cheap, and fast direct damage options (such as Lightning Bolt), it does become a concern. The effect Doomsday creates needs to be massive to be worth it.

EFFECT

The current gold standard in Classic for search cards is Vampiric Tutor. For one black mana and two life spent, you have the ability to find any card in your library and seat it atop your library, ready to use with the next available draw effect. This card is so strong, it was one of two cards to be featured on the recent Classic restricted list debut. Doomsday, by comparison, finds you five cards. It lets you find them from your library or your graveyard, and then it allows you to stack the top of your deck with them in any order you like.

That qualifies the card as the bargain of the century compared to the casting cost.

Now, this does not come without a few downsides. In order to play Doomsday, you pick the five cards you want, and remove everything else from the game. This puts you in a very serious danger of being decked. As stated above, your post-Doomsday life totals also fall to a precarious level. Basically, it brings you to brink of losing the game, while providing you with what should be your keys to winning the game outright. In other words, you need to make sure that you can take your five cards and win as fast as possible.

EXAMINING THE DECKS

THE WIN COMBINATIONS

Again, we’ve established that Doomsday is a combo enabler that should set you up to win the game at all costs. To that end, any Doomsday combo deck should seek to put together a five-card combination that will achieve that end.

Predict, Grapeshot, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Conjurer’s Bauble, Second Sunrise

This combo aims to win the game as soon as you draw into the top card of the stack, which is Predict. Play Predict, targeting yourself and naming Grapeshot, which is the next card in the stack. (Brain Freeze or Tendrils Of Agony also work, but are more expensive) This causes you to discard Grapeshot and draw the next two cards in your library, which are the Bauble and Diamond. Break the Diamond for three white mana, and then crack the Bauble to draw Sunrise. Play Second Sunrise, returning the Bauble and Diamond; again, break the Diamond for three white mana, and break the Bauble, returning Sunrise to your library and then drawing it. Loop this combo as many times as you want to build up a huge Storm count, and then sacrifice the Diamond for red mana, and target Grapeshot with the Bauble, returning and playing it for the win.

This is a strong combo, but it does bear some warning. First, the obvious weakness is that it is susceptible to graveyard hate, which is still abundant in the wake of Flash combo. Second, it’s important to note the vulnerability to deck manipulation; if your opponent forces you to mill your library or discard at the wrong point, you can’t win. Also important is that a simple draw spell aimed at you can make it impossible to win as well or force you to lose outright.

The beauty of this combo, however, is that it only costs 2U after you play Doomsday. As a result, it is feasible to win on the same turn you cast Doomsday with enough mana acceleration and a draw source to start the ball rolling.

Ideas Unbound, Sensei’s Divining Top, Sensei’s Divining Top, Helm Of Awakening, Brain Freeze

This is basically the same combo that currently powers the Sensei Sensei archetype. Draw and play Ideas Unbound, drawing both Tops and the Helm. Play Helm, and then play the Tops for free, sacrificing one to draw the other, replaying it, and looping the combo, until your Storm count is high enough to mill your opponent’s entire library. Use a Top to draw the Freeze, mill away, and then pass the turn, forcing your opponent to lose when he cannot draw a card in his draw step.

Post-Doomsday cost: 2UUU. Due to the higher cost, this takes more of a setup, and is one of the harder combo costs to achieve due to the dedicated blue and lack of acceleration in the deck. However, it is unaffected by graveyard hate, which is a giant plus in this metagame.

Predict, Auriok Salvagers, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Pyrite Spellbomb, Shallow Grave

Another pre-existing combo, this one finds its home in current Salvager LED combo decks. Doomsday serves to speed up the process of assembling the pieces.

For those unaware of how it works, you again cast Predict, naming (and therefore discarding) Salvagers and drawing LED and the Spellbomb . Break the Diamond for mana, crack the Spellbomb to draw Shallow Grave, reanimate the Salvagers, and use its ability to bring the LED back from the graveyard. Each time you sacrifice the Diamond and return it with the Salvagers ability, you gain one mana in the process, so you can repeat until you have enough mana to recur and use the Spellbomb enough times to kill your opponent.

Again, we’re back in the realm of susceptibility to graveyard hate, which is a problem. Also, you need a variety of different mana with this combo on the turn you go off; Predict costs you 1U, and the Spellbomb costs you 1 to get it into play before you can use the LED (to avoid discarding it to the Diamond’s ability.) Next, you sacrifice the Diamond for three black mana, use one to activate the Spellbomb to draw Grave, and spend the other two to cast it. Now, you have Salvagers in play, and still need another 1W to get moving on the combo. This version needs some serious thought and time to set up.

OTHER COMBOS TO CONSIDER

The beauty of Magic: The Gathering is that there are so many ways to win with five given cards. Feel free to look into other options; there are viable builds that use Doomsday to set up a stack involving Erratic Explosion and Draco to deal a quick sixteen damage, with a draw spell to facilitate things and plenty of cheap burn to do early pre-combo damage. For another direction, the current Vintage Doomsday stack du jour involves the following:

• Ancestral Recall
• Black Lotus
• Dark Ritual
• Mind’s Desire
• Research // Development

The idea is that the Recall draws you into the Desire and the mana to play it with three or four Storm copies. You’ll get to Research for free for any cards from your deck that were removed via Doomsday such as (Yawgmoth’s Will and Tendrils Of Agony) and play them with the remaining Desire copies, which will allow you to replay the Lotus and acceleration to win the game. This is a promising combo that is a bit harder to initialize due to the lack of cheap draw and free mana in Classic, but it is possibly the strongest option of the bunch. I’m sure there are people hard at work on a way to make it viable...

PROTECTION

The beauty of Doomsday combo is that the card drastically reduces the number of necessary pieces that need to be assembled to win. You can essentially count off the five combo slots in any build and not need to worry about the rest of the deck being clogged up with components. Indeed, sometimes even those five are used in the decks anyway, gaining you more extra slots.

This is about as good as it gets for combo decks, because it means that it is possible to jam-pack the rest of the deck with protection. Many of the existing Classic combo decks, such as Burning Desire (Storm) or Dragon, need to devote large amounts of space to not only the combo itself, but also to acceleration and tutors. This leaves precious little space for protection; in fact, some combo decks in the format can only devote five slots overall. Because Doomsday requires so few spaces for the combo, and usually very few spaces for acceleration and tutors, it sits in a unique position of being able to pack in more protection than even most dedicated control decks can. Indeed, there are existing Legacy versions of the deck that dedicate a full twenty-one slots to protecting the combo!

I’m not going to dig too deeply into theory here, as I’ll show some lists below that will demonstrate things better in context. It should be sufficient to note that most decks use a solid combination of discard (Duress, Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy) and counters (Force Of Will), while some delve into preventative hosers like Xantid Swarm, Orim’s Chant, and Abeyance (which arrives alongside Doomsday in Weatherlight.) Builds can make a difference here as well; running the Helm/Top combo directly lends itself to fitting into a Counterbalance control shell. The possibilities are really endless here, but the important thing to remember is that the size of the combo allows you to really build the deck to your personal play style, be it slow and controlling or win-as-fast-as-possible.

SOME SAMPLE LISTS

To finish, I wanted to toss up some potential Doomsday lists to use as a good starting point in experiencing what the card and archetype can do in Classic. These are only un-tested rough outlines, so have fun with them, but by all means, put in some work of your own to fine-tune for the metagame and discover what works.

Again, these lists aren’t tested and are incredibly rough. They’re just thrown together to show you what directions are possible. I’ll plan to follow this up with a second article, where I’ll plan to pick and tune a list, play out some goldfishes to show how it functions, and then run it through the Online gauntlet once Weatherlight hits and the cards are available.

Until then, start counting the days. Doomsday is drawing near!

-DJ