Against the Odds: The Water Crystal Combo (Pioneer)
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week we're heading to Pioneer to play one of my favorite Final Fantasy cards: The Water Crystal! While The Water Crystal can be good in many different styles of mill decks, it's especially good with Sphinx's Tutelage, which basically gives us something similar to the infamous Painter's Servant / Grindstone combo that's legal in Pioneer! When we draw a card Sphinx's Tutelage triggers to mill our opponent for two cards and if two of those cards share a color we repeat the process. The trick here is that if we also have The Water Crystal on the battlefield we'll mill 6 cards rather than just two, and we'll only need any two of those cards to share a color for us to mill again. What this means in practice is that if we're up against a mono-colored deck we're something like 97% hit at least two cards that share a color, which means we should mill our opponent's entire deck on the spot! Can the plan work? What are the odds of winning with The Water Crystal and Sphinx's Tutelage in Pioneer? Let's find out!
Against the Odds: The Water Crystal Combo
The Deck
The plan of our deck today is pretty straightfoward, it's looking to do one thing: get The Water Crystal and Sphinx's Tutelage on the battlefield together and draw a card, at which point we should mill our opponent's entire deck. Technically both cards could mill our opponent out by themselves, since Sphinx's Tutelage triggers whenever we draw a card and we have a bunch of card draw spells in our deck while The Water Crystal can mill our opponent equal to the number of cards in our hand +4 for six mana, although in reality most of our kills will come from the combo.
As I mentioned a moment ago, we've got a bunch of cheap cantrips and card draw spell in our deck which do double duty. In the early game they help us find our combo pieces, and once we have the combo assembled they give us a way to draw a card and trigger Sphinx's Tutelage to start the loop. Sure, it will trigger naturally on our draw step, but casting an Opt, Consider or Treasure Cruise speed up the process and makes sure our opponent doesn't get a chance to interact with it during our turn.
We've also got Stock Up to dig for combo pieces, although it is worth pointing out that even though we end up with extra cards in our hand, it doesn't technically draw us cards, which means it can't start the Sphinx's Tutelage / The Water Crystal mill loop.
The rest of our main deck is some interaction to help keep us alive long enough to get our combo assembled. Thoughtseize clears the way and ensure our opponent doesn't have a counter or removal spell to stop our combo pieces, while Fatal Push and Go for the Throat take care of opposing creatures.
Wrap Up and Odds
Record wise, we went 3-3 with the deck, good for a 50% win rate. While we might have gotten a little bit lucky to play against a ton of mono-colored decks, it is worth mentioning that every time we got the combo assembled it milled our opponent's entire deck! While that won't happen every time (as I mentioned before, against a mono-colored deck we're roughly 97% to hit at least two cards that share a color and go again), and it will get tougher if we play against multi-color decks with a mix of different color cards, Pioneer is also the perfect format for the combo. One of the hallmarks of Pioneer is the mana isn't great, which leads to a lot of mono-colored and two-color decks. Right now Mono-Red and Mono-Black are two of the top three decks on the meta, while Mono-White is also top tier. Meanwhile, of the top 10 decks in Pioneer only two have more than two colors in Hidden Strings and Jund Sacrifice. It's also worth mentioning that even if we get unlucky and the combo fizzles, it's not the end of the world like it is with many other combos, because we can always draw another card and start the combo again.
Overall, I think the combo has a lot of potential in Pioneer in specific. The meta just lines up really well with what it is trying to do. While I'm sure the deck could be improved around the edges, and there are some interesting hybrid possibilities (since we're already playing so many cheap cantrips and removal spells the shell could possibly support Arclight Phoenix or Cori-Steel Cutter as a backup plan). So far, The Water Crystal is living up to the hype and the possibilities seem endless!
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.
