Much Abrew: Taunter Extinction Combo (Historic)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Brash Taunter is one of the most fun cards from Core Set 2021, basically being an updated red version of Stuffy Doll. Perhaps the easiest way to build a Brash Taunter deck is to focus on being able to deal damage to our own Brash Taunter, rather than trusting that our opponent will deal damage to it for us. Sadly, Standard doesn't have great ways to deal large amount to Brash Taunter with just a single card (at least without having an absurd amount of mana). Enter Historic! In Historic, we have a two-card combo that should allow us to win the game on the spot in Brash Taunter and Star of Extinction, which deals 20 damage to everything—including our Brash Taunter—which we can then redirect to our opponent to deal 20 damage to their face and win the game. Our deck today is Historic Taunter Extinction Combo, essentially a mono-red artifact-based ramp deck that's looking to stabilize in the early game with removal before finishing the game with the Brash Taunter / Star of Extinction combo. How good is Brash Taunter in Historic? Can the combo actually work? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Much Abrew: Taunter Extinction Combo
Discussion
- As you probably noticed in the video, I recorded the matches before Monday's B&R update went into effect on Magic Arena (Wizards really needs to speed up the process of implementing bannings up a bit because having a few days of lag between the announcement and the actual update is really annoying), which means we did play against both Nexus of Fate and Gruul Aggro with Burning-Tree Emissary. The good news is that we beat both of the now-banned decks, finish with a 4-1 record overall, with our only loss coming to Dimir Flash, in a close match where we got punished for having a bunch of sorcery-speed wraths while our opponent could flash in threats on our end step.
- Oddly, the Brash Taunter / Star of Extinction combo felt relatively competitive. Yes, there are some bad matchups for Brash Taunter where it keeps getting bounced by Teferi, Time Raveler or is just exiled by Elspeth Conquers Death. But thanks to all of our ramp, in those matchups, we can theoretically get up to 12 mana so we can cast both Brash Taunter and Star of Extinction in one turn to win the game. On the other hand, we also found that Brash Taunter, even without Star of Extinction, can be hilariously effective in other matchups, blocking for days and fighting our opponent's big creatures to throw tons of damage at our opponent's face.
- One thing I've consistently been impressed with in Historic is the artifact ramp plan. With Solemn Simulacrum added to the format with Core Set 2021, we have a pretty consistent ramp curve, with Wily Goblin and Mind Stone getting us from two mana on Turn 2 up to four mana on Turn 3 and then Solemn Simulacrum or Pirate's Pillage getting us up to six or seven mana on Turn 4. This means that, in theory, we can win with the Brash Taunter / Star of Extinction combo as early as Turn 5!
- The other key card in the deck is Treasure Map, which not only works as a weird ramp spell if we are able to flip it but can also generate a ton of card advantage, not only turning the Treasure tokens it makes into new cards but also giving us a way to do something with Wily Goblin's and Pirate's Pillage's Treasure tokens later in the game when making extra mana isn't all that helpful.
- Apart from Brash Taunter and Star of Extinction, we also have Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as a backup finisher. In a deck that can make a lot of mana quickly, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is just too good to pass up, at worse being a wrath (that doesn't hurt us much because many of our important cards our colorless and Brash Taunter is expensive enough that we can often avoid exiling it while still hitting all of our opponent's permanents) and at best (like post–Star of Extinction, on an empty board) winning the game mostly by itself by ticking up toward its ultimate in just a couple of turns.
- In the sideboard, we also have Chandra, Awakened Inferno, which is our main tech against counterspell-heavy control decks. Control is an interesting matchup for our deck. It's hard to actually pull off the combo kill, but if we draw a Treasure Map or two, we can potentially just outdraw the control deck and run them out of cards in the late game, eventually allowing the combo or Ugin to slip through and steal the win. Chandra, Awakened Inferno greatly speeds up the process since it is uncounterable and the emblem is especially punishing against slow decks that don't have a clear, fast plan for winning the game.
- All in all, I was surprised at how competitive Taunter Extinction Combo was in Historic. We were playing at a fairly high rank and against some decks that were so good that Wizards banned them from the format, and we still ended up going 4-1! If you're looking for something spicy and different to do on the Historic ladder that is still good enough to win some games, give the combo a shot!
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.
