Who knew this would become a killer combo card?

I should start by saying that this series really began with my last article on Ad Nauseam - I really enjoyed writing that article and I thought it would be nice to continue in the vein of what it brought to the table - an idea. Now, quite honestly, if I was going to write articles about decks that were immediately and guaranteed tourney viable, I'd be writing about decks everyone has already seen and were already part of the meta game, with in-depth discussions about their play style and various minutiae that could result in further optimization.

These articles are not about that. They are called "Starting Point" for a reason - they are essentially a place where I can bring to the table a deck concept that hasn't been used before in a tournament, or something vastly different that what has been used before, or at least a major departure from an established archetype featuring new card technology. (Which sometimes are old cards - how difficult tenses are with these classic releases!) Hence, in the long run I am fully aware that you may have already tried the concepts presented on your own, or that they may not, in fact, work out to be a top-notch tournament deck. I'm also aware they are generally untested. However, I still hope they'll have value to the community as a springboard to either perfecting the idea or putting it on the shelf to move on to the next idea.

On to business - this time I wanted to take a look at the Painter's Servant/Grindstone combo. This is not a new combo to anyone (I hope), in that the minute Painter's Servant was released people realized it's combo potential with Grindstone. However, in classic, we are short some of the requisite cards to make the default Painter deck - Red Elemental Blast and Active Volcano are not online, and the former of the two really hurts. With Red Elemental Blast, Painter combo would have access to eight 1-mana cards that play as both an instant vindicate/counterspell with Painter in play. Also, the combo is generally used in Vintage where pretty much every deck other than Stax plays blue, so Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast are never much of a dead card anyway. And while some people would have you believe the same percentage of classic players play blue as in Vintage, the top 8 results just don't corroborate that theory. We still have goblins and affinity and Red Deck Wins to combat, not to mention various Zoo and RG beats decks in which Red Elemental Blast is nothing but a dead card. Hence, I with plan A out of the question (for now) I though it might be better to go with a Plan B - don't worry about trying to make cards work with Painter's Servant - just use it as a 2 card win condition.

Here is what I ended up with:

Lands and Mana (23)
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
5 Island
1 Plains
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Academy Ruins
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Ancient Den
4 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt

The Combo (5)
3 Painter's Servant
2 Grindstone

The Control Suite (16)
4 Counterbalance
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Echoing Truth

Draw/Tutors (16)
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
3 Argivian Find
3 Trinket Mage
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Tezzeret the Seeker

Sideboard (15)
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Stifle
1 Moat
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives

The first and most important point of the list understand is that it is *NOT* a combo deck. I suspect it would be very hard to play this deck like a combo deck - you need quite a bit of mana (6) to play and activate all your combo pieces all on one turn, and we don't have the acceleration this format really wants. The deck would better operate like a Bomberman list with a little less in the way of threats and a little more heavy on the active control, with the threat of an "I win" condition. I feel this is acceptable because, unlike Bomberman, the combo is just two piece. Secondly, as I noted previously, the deck doesn't require you to have Painter's Servant in play in order to function. The failing, I feel, of the 8 Blast approach in classic is that there is far too much creature removal around to depend on Painter. I'll get into that in a little bit.

Land Count

Too Slow? - Go Combo Mana!

Another question people are bound to have is "if this is a control deck, why are you risking running Mana Crypt? My answer would be this: If I could run 4x Mana Crypt, I wouldn't be running a control version of the deck. It would totally go for broke. And there you have it. A turn 1 mana Crypt is so insanely good with Intuition or Trinket Mage or and of the other combo pieces, you get to simply go from 1st to 4th gear. Think about it - with a turn one crypt, you could conceivably play both Grindstone and Painter on turn 1, then activate them next turn. 3 points of damage? I think it's worth the risk. But even if it pops up later in the game, it's worth noting that Grindstone costs 3 to activate. Playing it, Painter and activating it all in one turn is quit a bit easier on a crucial turn 4/5 if you lay down a Mana Crypt that turn or the turn before.

The Combo
The combo is pretty self-explanatory if you click on the cards - but here it is. Painter is going to make every card, including the ones revealed by Grindstone, have at least one of the same color. By the terms of Grindstone's ability, this means it will never fail to find a pair of cards with the same color, and will therefore put the opponent's entire library into their graveyard. There are only a handful of ways of stopping said combo. Firstly, and most importantly, removing all the Painter's Servants from play will do the trick. So you don't want that to happen. Next, Pithing Needle or Null Rod can stop you from activating Grindstone. I personally think this will be the most used way to stop such a deck. Lastly, the player could make themselves untargetable via something like True Believer - this is actually most effective way to stop such a deck. Of course preventing the actual cards from getting into play will work, but in terms of reactionary counters, the deck is will suited to handle those control measures. However, there is one other way to defeat such a deck - Gaea's Blessing. If the opponent has a Gaea's Blessing in their library, there are no if and/or buts about it - Grindstone will put the opponent's entire library into their graveyard, and then Blessing will trigger and put their entire graveyard into their library. We'll look into the sideboard for answers to the problems with the combo later.

I also feel it's important to not that Painter should be played like a combo piece - not put into play until absolutely necessary. That is, you don't want to give your opponent extra chances to take him out, and especially you do not want to expose him to Swords to Plowshares any more than is necessary - Argivian Find isn't going to help there. That being said, - it is a 1/3 creature. He can block a wide variety of creatures in a pinch, but I'd suggest using it sparingly in such a position.

Draw/Tutors

An Instant Regrowth for 1 mana? Sign me up.

At first look, one might also wonder why not 4x Enlightened Tutor? I think the problem with Enlightened Tutor is you very rarely want to see more than one of it. A turn 1 Enlightened Tutor is OK if you have lot of combo and all the mana you need, but that's not what you are looking to do with this deck - you are a control deck (there it is again). Much like Bomberman, it's a nice card to have and it can help alleviate the "I need it now" to satisfy the combo needs of the deck, but it's card disadvantage and not too fast. You might want to get a turn 2 Counterbalance off a turn 1 Tutor, but you are rarely going to go get a turn 2 Painter form the same turn 1 Tutor.

Another slightly off inclusion is the single Tezzeret the Seeker. Tezzeret is a odd piece to include, as his cost is very prohibitive, but remember, you are a Control deck. In a long game, Tezzeret can: Find both pieces of your combo and put them into play - without playing them. Chalice for 1 or 2 bugging you? No problem. Tezz doesn't care; He can untap your artifact lands and artifact sources for extra mana; And of course he can accidentally "Oops, I win" a game by holding out until turn 6 and then sending 5/5 Artifact lands, Grindstones and Chrome Moxes against your opponent. And at worst he pitches to Force of Will. He is an possible alt win condition, stall tactic and tutor rolled up into one. I think he deserves one slot.

Intuition is it's own awesomeness. It does serve as the basis for the tutoring I mentioned before, but from time to time it might serve as a backup control plan - Intuitioning 3 Force of Wills so you get one in a pinch is what I'm talking about here. Trinket Mage gets you both Grindstone, Sense's Divining Top, the two artifact lands, Chrome Mox and from the board it can get Engineered Explosive and Tormod's Crypt. One play that is especially effective, however, is to go get Mana Crypt. You see, with 3 mana, if you go get Mana Crypt, block Tarmogoyf to just keep yourself in play, then lay down a land and Mana Crypt, low and behold you have the very amount of mana you need to play Painter, then Grindstone, then the activation cost.

Protection

Paying for counterspells is for suckers.

The goal with this Painter deck is to protect Painter. Unlike Vintage where creature removal is light, in classic it is still very prevalent. If Painter's Servant was a 2 mana, non-creature artifact it would be a slam-dunk combo that cost no coloured mana and would cost far less than Leyline of the Void/Helm of Awakening (Even if Leyline came into play free). But since it's on a 1/3 body, one can't dismiss the fact that pretty much every single piece of creature removal the format runs is able to take Painter out of the picture.

There are a couple keys with Counterbalance, but the big one is, if you can, always leave it set to 1 against anything showing black, and 3 against anything showing green. Your main enemies from the opponents hand are Extirpate and Krosan Grip. Extirpate is particularly nasty since there is no way to protect yourself from it if you use the Intuition route to grab your combo parts. In fact, if you see Extirpate, you might even want to go ahead and just hold onto your hat - you are in for a rough ride.

Sideboard
Normally, I wouldn't bother to go into the sideboard since it usually contains cards that are answers to easy to recognize threats. In this case however, I thought the sideboard bears mentioning and some explanation.

First of all, all 4 Swords to Plowshares are in the sideboard. This is really a meta call. You can board these in when you see zoo-ish or other aggro-type decks, but the list of decks that this will be effective against is getting thinner, and some of the top decks it it completely useless against. I would, for example, board in STP vs a deck like RG beats where I was unconcerned about their ability to control my combo and more concerned about their ability to slip in 2/3 and 3/3 and 3/4 creatures before I could set up a defense. You also have Moat and Ensnaring bridge and Circle of Protection: Red to help there, which are enough cards to completely fill in for the slower part of your control suite - counterbalance. Don't forget that you can also name "red" with Painter and Circle of Protection red could possibly keep them out of the game for a very long time, but i wouldn't count on that.

Hurkyl's Recall is a star performer. Retuning Chalices, Null Rods and Pithing Needles at the end of their turn and going off on yours is a good way to negate those cards. Stifle is here for one reason and one reason alone - to stop Gaea's Blessing's trigger. Explosives is a great catch-all against Fish at x=2 (Again, keep Painter in your hand as long as you can) and Crypt is of course very useful against graveyard operated decks, but also has the added advantage of working very well against Gaea's Blessing as well - since their whole library is in their graveyard, and Gaea's Blessing's trigger uses the stack, you can respond to it by removing their graveyard from the game.

And we’re off...

There were a lot of version this deck went through, some of which I think have merit in at least mentioning. The first was having a suite of Stifles and a Dreadnought available for another alt win condition. I think this method might still be more viable out of the board than the Moat and the Bridge, but I ultimately dropped it because Stiflenought is just as susceptible to a lot of the same hate that would hit an all artifact combo anyway. Also, although I hated to do it, I had to drop Thirst For Knowledge in favour of more early control elements, namely Daze. If I was running a more combo-oriented version of the deck, TFK would have definitely made the cut. Lastly, I was tempted to put Blue Elemental Blasts in the sideboard in place of Plowshares, but I figured that if so little of the deck was going to rely on Painter, Swords would be the best call.

Have fun out there!

Dangerlinto.