Welcome back to the latest instalment of All's Fair in Love and Magic (or as I call it: AFiLaM). This week I explore some golgari colored combo decks. Strap yourselves in and enjoy the show!

Good things come to those who wait!

My goal this week was to build a deck that was a) B/G and b) a combo deck. My first deck which seemed good on paper didn't ever really come together to win very much. I'll list it out first and then go into what I found lacking and what might be worth playing to salvage it.

Wasteful Azusa

Essentially, I need disruption and discard. I need to be less reliant on getting certain pieces and I need less dependancy on many aspects of the combo. I'd probagly need to retool the deck completely and remove Azusa and maybe replace her with some newer cards like Rites of Flourishing that doesn't die to every creature removal spell that my opponents are packing. The theory of the deck was that with Crucible, and Squandered Resources you'd be able to ramp up crazy mana. Especially with Azusa letting you play three extra cards a turn. Mix in some Seed the Land activations and some Essence Wardens and you've got a ton of creatures and a ton of life... at least, in theory. In practice I fell victim to my own caveat's from a previous article: don't expect your spells to resolve. Don't expect your creatures to live. And don't expect your hand to remain intact. This deck was horribly prone to disruption of any kind.

However, that deck isn't the real winner this week. The following deck was my second attempt at a B/G combo deck that now works again with the fix to the Gravestorm mechanic on the card: Bitter Ordeal. The deck is the obvious, but powerful, Blowfly Infestation + Flourishing Defenses + Bitter Ordeal deck. And man, is this a flexible deck. First up, here's my pile o' sixty:

The obvious cards? Devoted Druid, Bitter Ordeal, Blowfly Infestation, Flourishing Defenses. I use a Vampiric Tutor because it's phenomenal. I use Diabolic Tutors for the rest since I need the ability to get any card I'm missing and they fit the bill very nicely. The strange inclusions? Kitchen Finks, Harbinger of Night, and Damnation I'd guess. Yeah, between the Damnations and Vampiric Tutor this isn't a very budget deck. Thankfully though this isn't building on a badger or anything and we can run some strong cards, even if they're a bit pricey. The Harbinger's were the inspiration for the deck. It does so many very cool things for the deck and with the Infestation that I just had to build around it. A very fun card thanks to all the -1/-1 counter cards in the recent sets.

So how'd it do?

10:20 PM hamtastic chooses to play first.
10:20 PM hamtastic keeps this hand.
10:20 PM dpresto1 keeps this hand.
... opponent mana ramps

... I play Blowfly, persist, and defenses
... I start the combo

10:26 PM dpresto1 has lost the connection.

While he did mulligan down to 4, I don't think his deck was prepared for any type of action that my deck was going to be producing. Namely, enchantments and combo. He ran pacifisims and at least three colors in his deck but didn't really seem to be ready for what Classic can throw around. So, he loses connection. If you remember alllll the way back to my last articles I have already ranted and raved about the foolishness of disconnecting in a game where you're losing to avoid the shame of defeat, so I won't go back over that. Well, any more than I have already anyway.

Next game!

10:38 PM JLOSCHEN joined the game.
10:38 PM hamtastic joined the game.
.... lots of elves
.... blowfly/Harbinger Shenanigans
10:47 PM JLOSCHEN has lost the connection.

Okay, now this is why I started this series. Who gives a rat's patootey if you lose a Casual game of Magic Online? Just concede and move on. But no, I'm about to wipe my opponent's board that started as a 1/1, a 2/2, a 1/2 and a 1/2 through some tricksy Blowfly tricks. Namely, put one on the 1/1 and one on the 2/2, then the 1/1 dies and triggers two more infestations, then, repeat for the rest of the x/2's. I was about to fire off a Bitter Ordeal after that to remove out a good chunk of his threats, but he, well.. yeah. Another disconnector.

Moving on. Again.

I didn't keep this game log because it was kind of long, but someone sat down at my table with their Prismatic deck. This is awesome, and yet another good reason to play Classic based games. Almost anything can be used to join your games (except Vangaurd and freeform, I guess). You never know what you're going to face off against. In this case, I found I was squaring my huge looping mill deck against a Prismatic deck. D'oh. I don't think I'll have time to do 200+ repetitions in my timeframe to win like that. However, the deck handles the dirty work by giving me a pair of Flourishing Defenses and a Blowfly Infestation. He eventually kills off my persist creature in such a way that I can make an unlimited number of tokens on his turn and I untap with a horde of weenies which swing for the win in a very 'plan b' sort of way. Woo.

And last but not least! I technically won this game on turn 9, but I stopped the combo so he could see it since he wasn't going to concede OR disconnect on me. Wow, quite a welcome change. He was playing a counterspell/deck manipulation/theif deck (persuasion, dream leash, etc). However, none of those cards would stop my combo from going off, and none of those cards were left in his deck after I was done with my first time through the combo. I left him with pretty much no action in his deck, leaving him to suffer a slow and tedious decking by removing any potential threats from his deck. You know you've done well when your mono blue thief deck opponent tells you he's falling asleep. Our very own dangerlinto got to watch the festivities with this deck.

I'll probably retire this deck here and now. Essentially, it's a great deck to play and has a lot of different ways to win. However, people don't like sticking around for a long time while you do your thing, and I certainly can't begrudge them that boredom. My only frustration is that instead of conceding and moving along many seem to prefer to chicken out and hide from the utter horror of losing a game in an anonymous setting. I may retool it to utilize Heartmender and the Harbinger, or maybe just leave it as it is and retire the Harbinger Combo deck as an undefeated champeen.

I hope you all had some fun during AFiLaM - Golgari Week! Join me next time as I look at a precon evolution that's sure to burn up the competition!