Against the Odds: Screaming Nemesis Combo (Pioneer)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Pioneer to play some Screaming Nemesis, but not just any ol' Screaming Nemesis deck. We're looking to turn the three-drop from a solid value play into a game-ending 20-damage combo piece! How can you combo with Screaming Nemesis in Pioneer? What are the odds that the combo works? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Screaming Nemesis Combo
The Deck
Hilariously enough, this deck was actually inspired by Richard, who was telling me a while ago about a janky combo he almost pulled off in Modern involving Screaming Nemesis and Insult // Injury. While the combo sounded sweet, I wasn't convinced that Modern was the best home for the synergy. So, I started brewing with it in Pioneer, and the end result was oddly sweet. Here's the plan.
First off, we have Screaming Nemesis and Boros Reckoner, which are basically the same card as far as our combo is concerned. If either three-drop takes damage, they deal that much damage to any target. We are looking to abuse this ability. While we don't need to mulligan to find these cards—our deck can play a fair-ish game reasonably well—we do need one of them for the combo kill to happen.
Step two for our combo is doubling our damage. Here, our best option by far is Insult // Injury, which doubles all the damage any of our sources would deal for one turn for just three mana. We also have Solphim, Mayhem Dominus, which also doubles damage but isn't as good in our combo for a strange reason: it only doubles the damage dealt to our opponent and their permanents, not our permanents. I'm pretty sure Insult // Injury would have this wording too if it weren't a split card, which caused Wizards to run out of room to add more text. While Solphim can still deal a lot of damage (and a 5/4 body for four isn't bad), it isn't quite enough to make our combo immediately game-ending by itself. For that, we need to have Insult // Injury.
The final piece of the puzzle is a way to deal five damage to our Screaming Nemesis or Boros Reckoner. Here, we have two one-mana options in Lightning Axe and Chandra's Defeat. Both work exactly the same in our combo, except we do need to keep a card in hand to discard to be able to cast Lightning Axe on the cheap. Here's the plan:
- Play Screaming Nemesis (or Boros Reckoner) on Turn 3.
- Play Insult // Injury to double our damage on Turn 4.
- Play Chandra's Defeat / Lightning Axe also on Turn 4, targeting our Screaming Nemesis.
When we pull this off, Insult doubles the damage that Lightning Axe or Chandra's Defeat deals to Screaming Nemesis, so, rather than five damage, it actually hits for 10 damage. Then, we'll get a Screaming Nemesis trigger that we can throw at our opponent. This would normally deal 10 damage, but Insult // Injury doubles that too, so we'll deal 20 damage directly to our opponent's face on Turn 4!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we ended up going 5-4 with the deck, which is pretty solid for a wacky Against the Odds brew. More importantly, we got most of our wins thanks to the combo! It was actually pretty easy to find the cards we needed to combo off and win the game, even though we need three pieces to combo, since we have redundancy with most of our combo pieces. (The only one lacking here is Insult // Injury, where Solphim tries its best but isn't quite good enough to get a one-shot kill.)
It also helps that opponents don't think of Screaming Nemesis as a combo piece, so playing a copy doesn't immediately set off alarm bells in our opponent's head. Ideally, we'll be able to run out Nemesis or Boros Reckoner on Turn 3 and then combo kill on Turn 4. It all falls apart if our opponent kills the Nemesis, but most opponents don't realize that if the Screaming Nemesis lives, they are just straight-up dead from 20 life the following turn, so it ends up living more than it should.
Plus, in some matchups, Boros Reckoner and Screaming Nemesis are fine as fair cards. If our opponent is looking to win with big ground creatures, our three-drops are very effective on defense since if they take damage, our opponent will end up taking just as much damage (or even more, if we have Solphim, Mayhem Dominus)! While I don't think the deck is top-tier or anything like that, the combo was actually oddly strong, and the deck worked a lot better than I expected! If you are looking for something janky to mess around with for fun, give it 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.
