Budget Magic: Sunshot God Combo (Standard)
Hey there, Budget Magic lovers, it's that time once again! Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might is one of the most interesting cards from Lost Caverns of Ixalan. The God's ability to increase all of our non-combat damage to its power can do some pretty explosive things, but figuring out the right way to build around it has been a challenge. A couple of weeks ago, we played a sacrifice deck featuring Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might on stream, and while it felt alright, it didn't seem to fully embrace the God's power. While we were brainstorming ways to build around Ojer Axonil, someone in chat suggested Sunshot Militia. If you are familiar with Sunshot Militia, it's considered to be one of the better commons in Lost Caverns of Ixalan draft but not really a constructed card. At first, I mostly wrote off the idea, thinking that Sunshot Militia simply wasn't strong enough for constructed, but the more I thought about the possibility of tapping two artifacts and / or creatures to deal a massive four damage with Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might on the battlefield, the more I became convinced that it might not only work but also might actually be the best way to break the red God in Standard! And that's what we are doing today, looking to combo with Ojer Axonil and Sunshot Militia in a deck that takes just 14 total rares and mythic wildcards to put together! Can the plan work? Is the red God good? Is Sunshot Militia constructed playable? Let's get to the video and find out! But first, a quick reminder that if you enjoy Budget Magic and the other content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.
Budget Magic: Sunshot God Combo
The Deck
At first glance, Sunshot God Combo looks like a weird version of Mono-Red Aggro. While we do occasionally pick up some aggro wins with the deck, in reality, it's a combo deck built to set up a board state where we can play Sunshot Militia and Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might in one turn, tap a bunch of stuff, and burn our opponent out of the game in one big combo turn!
The Combo
As I mentioned in the intro, this deck evolved from an attempt to figure out a way to break Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might in Standard. Before ending up with today's deck, I tried a bunch of different builds—sacrifice decks, burn decks, and spellslinger decks. And while some of them were okay, none of them really did what I wanted, which was to turn the red God into a game-ending combo piece. Eventually, thanks to a suggestion from Twitch chat, I landed on Sunshot Militia as being the best way to break Ojer Axonil. The idea is surprisingly simple: Sunshot Militia lets us tap two artifacts and / or creatures to deal one damage to our opponent. But with Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might on the battlefield, each activation will actually deal four damage thanks to the red God's ability! What this means in practice is that all we need to do to win the game with one big combo turn is to flood the board with random artifacts and creatures, drop Ojer Axonil and Sunshot Militia, tap our board, and burn our opponent for 20 damage, all in one turn!
Artifact and Creature Flood
So, how do we get enough permanents on the battlefield to win with Sunshot Militia and Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might? We've got a few different plans. First, all of the other creatures in our deck add multiple artifacts / creatures to the battlefield. Voldaren Epicure might be the best example of our combo's power. When the one-drop enters the battlefield, it deals one damage to our opponent (which will be four damage if we have Ojer Axonil out) and also make a Blood token, which means we can tap Voldaren Epicure and the Blood to Sunshot Militia to deal four more damage. This means that in our deck, Voldaren Epicure is often one mana, deal eight damage to the opponent's face, which is an absurd rate! Charming Scoundrel can make a Treasure token with its enters-the-battlefield trigger, which lets us do the same trick: tap the Scoundrel and the Treasure for Sunshot Militia to deal four damage if we have Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might on the battlefield. Finally, Geological Appraiser discovers something when it enters the battlefield, giving us yet another card that should add multiple permanents to the battlefield.
We also have a full playset of Collector's Vault, which probably looks odd in an aggressive red deck, but it's actually absurd with our combo. If we can play it early in the game, we can activate it every turn to loot for our combo pieces while also building up a huge pile of Treasures, which we can eventually tap for damage during our combo turn!
Burn
While our primary plan is to combo off with Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might and Sunshot Militia, we're not above throwing some burn spells at our opponent's face along the way. While cards like Play with Fire, Lightning Strike, and Embereth Blaze (along with Witchstalker Frenzy for bigger creatures) are in our deck to be removal, they also take advantage of Ojer Axonil's ability to power up our non-combat damage by throwing massive chunks of damage at our opponent's face.
We also have two End the Festivities in the main deck and two more in the sideboard, and I'm still not sure what to make of the card. It's obviously insane if we have Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might on the battlefield since it hits our opponent for four damage for a single mana while maybe sniping a small creature or two. (Sadly, Ojer Axonil only increases damage to our opponent and not to their permanents, so End the Festivities still only hits creatures for one damage.) But when we don't have the red God, End the Festivities is super matchup dependent. It's a massive blowout against some decks. We saw this against the go-wide Vampire deck, where it was almost a one-mana wrath, while in others, it's more or less a dead card since our opponent's creatures are too big to kill with one damage. Depending on the meta, I could see playing the full four copies in the main deck or cutting End the Festivities altogether. But for now, the 2-2 split between main deck and sideboard seems to be a nice middle-of-the-road plan.
Wrap-Up
All in all, we finished 4-2 with the deck at Mythic on Magic Arena, which is a solid record for a budget deck. More importantly, almost all of our wins came from our Sunshot Militia Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might combo! It turns out that Sunshot Militia is pretty absurd in Standard when it's hitting opponents for four rather than just one. And the plan of stalling out the game, building up some artifacts and creatures, and then winning out of nowhere with the combo worked surprisingly well, to the point where I really think Sunshot Militia might actually be the best way to break the red God in Standard!
As far as changes to make to the budget build of Sunshot God Combo, Geological Appraiser is probably the weakest card in the main deck. It's not bad, but at four mana, it's a bit expensive for what it does. I could see cutting it to play more burn spells, especially Virtue of Courage, which is sneakily powerful as a card-advantage ending along with being a bad Shock. Getting to five mana isn't that difficult thanks to Treasure production from Collector's Vault and Charming Scoundrel. While this would add a couple of more mythics to the deck, if you have the budget, that's probably where I'd start.
So, should you play Sunshot God Combo in Standard? I think the answer is yes! The deck looks weird on paper, but it plays surprisingly well, and it's a hilarious way to combo-kill opponents by surprise! If you're a fan of the red God or just like weird budget-friendly combo decks, give it a try!
With a few cuts, it's pretty easy to get the total cost of the deck down to eight rares and mythics. We drop Mishra's Foundry from the mana base and some of the rare burn spells, and replace them with more copies of Play with Fire and Lightning Strike. In theory, you could get the deck down to four rares (just the Ojer Axonil, Deepest Mights) by cutting Charming Scoundrel, but I think the two-drop is important enough to the game plan that this probably isn't worth it unless you are super desperate.
Finally, the non-budget build of Sunshot God Combo gets a few upgrades, mostly to the mana base (channel lands) and sideboard (Urabrask's Forge for control). But the deck is still pretty cheap even with the upgrades, especially in paper, where it costs just $86.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
