Against the Odds: Dawnsire 100-Damage Combo (Edge of Eternities Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition (and our first Edge of Eternities edition) of Against the Odds! The goal of our deck this week is simple: deal 100 damage to our own creatures! Why would we possibly want to do this? Let me explain. Our deck today is built around the new spacecraft Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought, which deals 100 damage to a creature or planeswalker when we attack once it is powered up. The idea of our deck is to power up Dawnsire, probably with Systems Override, then attack with a Screaming Nemesis or creature enchanted with Pain for All and throw Dawnsire's 100 damage at that creature, which will then throw that 100 damage at our opponent's face, winning us the game on the spot! Can the plan work? How good are spacecraft? Let's get to the video and find out!
Oh yeah, this video was recorded during early-access day for Edge of Eternities. Thanks to Wizards for hooking me up with the free account to use for the day!
Against the Odds: Dawnsire 100-Damage Combo
The Deck
Our deck today is trying to do one thing and exactly one thing: win by hitting our own creature for 100 damage! Here's the plan. First, we need to get Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought on the battlefield and then get at least 10 charge counters on it to turn on its 100-damage ability. In theory, we could also eventually get it up to 20 counters and build a 20/20 flyer, which can also win the game in a single attack, although this isn't likely in practice.
How do we get 10 counters on Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought? In theory, we can do it with the station mechanic by tapping our creatures to charge it up slowly. We've got mana dorks to ramp into Dawnsire, including Sunset Strikemaster and Zookeeper Mechan, but we can also use them to station if we don't need the mana. Meanwhile, Tersa Lightshatter and Clive, Ifrit's Dominant are for digging through our deck to find our combo pieces, but they are also decent for charging up our spacecraft. Finally, Nova Hellkite is in our deck mostly because I wanted to see how good warp cards are with station; since it seems like that is one of the intended uses of the warp mechanic—you can cheat your creature into play on the cheap and use them to station before they exile at the end of the turn. In hindsight, I sort of wish I played the 9/9 warp robot instead. Nova Hellkite was good, but in reality, we didn't use it for stationing that often.
Honestly though, we aren't really planning on powering up Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought slowly with station. Instead, we're looking to do it all at once with Systems Override, which can add 10 counters to a spacecraft for a turn for just three mana, making it the perfect way to turn on Dawnsire. Systems Override is also pretty funny since no one expected a Threaten in Standard, so we sometimes got free wins by stealing a big creature from our opponent for a turn and smashing them for a bunch of combat damage.
Systems Override happens to be perfect for our deck for another reason: both of our finishers—Pain for All and Screaming Nemesis—cost three mana. Both cards do the same thing as far as our combo is concerned, which is shoot any damage that they (or, in the case of Pain for All, the enchanted creature) happen to take directly at our opponent's face. This means that if we can get Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought up to at least 10 counters, attack, and throw Dawnsire's damage at one of our finishers, it will then toss 100 damage at our opponent's face, winning us the game on the spot.
I mentioned a moment ago that Systems Override is perfect for the deck because our finishers cost three mana, so let's take a quick look at our curve. Dawnsire costs five mana, so, assuming we have a land to play the next turn, we'll have access to six mana, which is exactly enough to play Systems Override and either Screaming Nemesis or Pain for All and win the game!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, I'm honestly not sure of our exact record (my tracker doesn't work on early-access day), but we came in slightly below a 50% win rate. The deck is super funny (who doesn't want to win by dealing damage to their own creatures?) but can also be a bit slow. We had several losses where we would have been able to combo off and win if we had one more turn.
The plan of using Systems Override to charge up Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought worked great, though, and it made the deck play like an actual combo deck, where we can win the game by surprise from a board state that doesn't look especially threatening. If I were starting the deck over, I'd definitely play a couple of copies of Bygone Colossus over Nova Hellkite. I left it out initially because it's only a 9/9, which leaves us one charge counter short of turning on Dawnsire, but in practice, we can probably tap a random mana dork or card-draw creature at some point in the game to get the last counter.
While I'm still not sure exactly how good Dawnsire is—in some matchups, it's hard to find the time to get it on the battlefield since it doesn't do anything right away—all in all, I loved the deck. The idea of using essentially the Magic version of the Death Star to throw 100 damage at a lowly creature only to somehow win the game as a result is just too hilarious to pass up!
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.
