Much Abrew: Infinite Beck Combo (Pioneer, Magic Online)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week, during our Instant Deck Techs, the crazy Infinite Beck Combo looking to go infinite with Beck // Call and The Locust God came out on top. As such, we're heading to Pioneer today to see just how practical it is to make an infinite number (well, almost infinite) of hasty Insect tokens by using Beck to repeatedly trigger The Locust God's "whenever you draw a card, make a token" ability. To back up our combo, we have a bunch of tutors like Prime Speaker Vannifar and Neoform to help find our pieces, along with Sage of the Falls, which can replace Beck // Call in our infinite combo. Can this crazy four-color Vannifar pile with an infinite combo finish actually compete in Pioneer? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Much Abrew: Infinite Beck Combo
Discussion
- Record-wise, we played a league with Infinite Beck Combo and ended up 3-2, which is a pretty solid record for a very spicy deck!
- Let's start with the good news about Infinite Beck Combo: the combo itself is sweet and very game-ending; plus, thanks to all of our tutors, it's pretty easy to assemble.
- First, the combo itself requires a way to draw a card whenever a creature comes into play (either Beck // Call or Sage of the Falls) and The Locust God. If we can assemble this combo, the end result is that we get to draw our entire deck and make somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 hasty 1/1 flying insects, which should be enough to win against basically any opponent.
- While it might sound like we won't find these pieces all that often, part of the deck's power is that we have a ton of ways to find our combo pieces. For example, if we have Beck // Call in hand and a Prime Speaker Vannifar on the battlefield, any creature to sacrifice to Prime Speaker Vannifar should win us the game since we can chain Corridor Monitor into Bounding Krasis into Breaching Hippocamp into Samut, Voice of Dissent into The Locust God. On the other hand, Beck // Call with Neoform and any creature that costs four or five mana on the battlefield also finds our combo since we can either directly Neoform into The Locust God if we have a five-drop or Neoform a four-drop into Goblin Dark-Dwellers and then flashback Neoform with Goblin Dark-Dwellers to sac the Goblin and find The Locust God. Finally, Neoform with Prime Speaker Vannifar also wins us the game since we can chain creatures into The Locust God and then sacrifice Prime Speaker Vannifar to Neoform to find Sage of the Falls to fulfill the card-draw part of the combo and make a board full of hasty tokens to finish the opponent.
- Speaking of Sage of the Falls, it was very impressive—so impressive that I'm almost wondering if it's a better combo piece than Beck // Call. Being able to tutor up Sage of the Falls with Prime Speaker Vannifar and Neoform is very helpful, and if we cut Beck // Call, we could potentially use that slot on something like Chord of Calling to have even more creature tutors in the deck. Meanwhile, Beck // Call itself is awkward since it doesn't really do much of anything outside of the combo (although we did have one game where we flooded out, ended up with eight mana, and were able to win by fusing it).
- As for the bad news with the deck: the mana is very clunky. Most of our losses came to not having the right colors of mana to cast our spells in a timely manner. I know that we (likely wrongly) cut Once Upon a Time during sideboarding a few times, but after playing the deck a bit, I think that going up to the full four copies might be the best way to help fix our mana issues.
- The other downside of the deck is that we have very few flex slots. To make the Prime Speaker Vannifar chain work, we need a lot of underpowered "untap" creatures. And to make it work consistently, we need at least two "untap" creatures at each point on the curve, or else we risk fizzling the chain by drawing them naturally. Toss in The Locust God, Beck // Call, Neoform, and Prime Speaker Vannifar, and we simply don't have much room for interaction. Everyone's favorite planeswalker Oko, Thief of Crowns helps, but even with Oko, there isn't much room for interaction or to customize the deck.
- So, should you play Infinite Beck Combo in Pioneer? I think the answer is yes. I was surprised how easy it was to find our combo. On paper, the deck looks like a weird pile of cards, but in practice, it was fairly consistent, mana issues aside. While adding more Once Upon a Time (or finding another way to improve the mana base) is necessary, the deck seems pretty competitive. And when you combine that with being super unique and fun to play, you have the recipe for a sweet deck!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. 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.
