Much Abrew: Acrobatics Combo (Historic)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. A little while ago, we brewed a four-color blink deck on stream built around Lae'zel's Acrobatics, but we didn't get a chance to play more than a couple of matches with it. The deck was incredibly fun to play, so I've been working on it over the past couple of weeks. Today, we're finally going to give the deck a full run! The deck is basically a four-color Soulherder blink deck but massively powered up by a new addition: Lae'zel's Acrobatics. Lae'zel's Acrobatics is an absurd card in a blink deck. If we low roll, it's a slightly overcosted Ghostway. If we high roll, it basically says, "Trigger the enters-the-battlefield ability of each creature you control, then exile all your creatures and return them to the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step," which will trigger all the enters-the-battlefield abilities again! It's great by itself, but it gets even better in our deck because we're looking to combo it with Timeless Witness to get it back from the graveyard, which lets us blink our entire board twice each turn cycle (potentially getting even more ETB triggers if we high roll) since we'll blink Timeless Witness, which will then get back Lae'zel's Acrobatics with its enters-the-battlefield trigger! What busted things can Lae'zel's Acrobatics do in a blink deck? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Acrobatics Combo
The Deck
- On one hand, Lae'zel's Acrobatics Combo is pretty straightforward. It's a Panharmonicon-style blink deck overflowing with the best ETB creatures available in Historic. We have things like Wall of Blossoms and Mulldrifter for card draw; Skyclave Apparition, Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves, and Deputy of Detention for removal; Siege Rhino and Titan of Industry for lifegain; and a bunch of ramp spells to hold everything together, like Gilded Goose, Prosperous Innkeeper, and Tangled Florahedron, with the goal being to play a bunch of value-y ETB creatures and then blink them with Soulherder, Ephemerate, and Charming Prince to generate even more value until we eventually bury our opponent in card draw and value. We've played similar decks with Panharmonicon and Yarok, the Desecrated in the past. The play style is one of my favorites in all of Magic!
- What makes this deck unique is new Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate addition Lae'zel's Acrobatics. If you've been following the MTGGoldfish YouTube for a while, you might remember a Modern budget deck we played a few years ago called GW Interlude whose goal was to set Ghostway or Eerie Interlude alongside a bunch of ETB value creatures and Eternal Witness so we could blink our entire board multiple times each turn cycle. (We blink Eternal Witness, which gets back the Ghostway or Eerie Interlude from the graveyard so we can do it again and again and again.) Well, today's deck is similar but way scarier because Lae'zel's Acrobatics is a busted card in a blink deck!
- On level one, Lae'zel's Acrobatics is a great way to reuse our enters-the-battlefield triggers. We make a big board, play Lae'zel's Acrobatics to blink everything, and get to reuse all of our enters-the-battlefield triggers. But it's actually much better than that because if we high roll with Lae'zel's Acrobatics (which will happen 55% of the time), Lae'zel's Acrobatics will blink all of our creatures twice! What this means in practice is that if we high roll with Lae'zel's Acrobatics, it will trigger the ETB abilities on all of our creatures, exile them, and then return them on the next end step so we get all of the ETB triggers again. The four-mana instant generates an immense amount of value.
- It gets even better. Once we find Timeless Witness, we can Lae'zel's Acrobatics multiple times each turn cycle! We cast Lae'zel's Acrobatics during our turn; blink everything once or twice, depending on how we roll; and then use Timeless Witness to get Lae'zel's Acrobatics back to our hand so we can do it again during our opponent's turn! This quickly puts the game out of reach as we gain absurd amounts of life, kill all of our opponent's stuff, and draw through our deck.
- While the Lae'zel's Acrobatics loop is, by far, the most spectacular thing our deck can do, it's important to point out that we won a lot of games without it. The value plan with Soulherder, Ephemerate, Siege Rhino, and friends is more than good enough to beat a lot of decks.
- While our overall record with the deck was great (we ranked up through platinum with it on Arena), the hardest matchups are usually aggro. If our opponent has a fast draw and we have a slow draw (which happens sometimes because of our four-color mana base), we occasionally get run over before the fun starts. Otherwise, the deck felt great thanks to its ability to beat just about any deck in the format in the late game.
- In general, I'm pretty happy with the deck, but one small change I might make is adding more copies of Deputy of Detention. Deputy has fallen out of favor recently as players use things like Skyclave Apparition and Brutal Cathar, but Deputy of Detention is great in our deck because of how it interacts with Skyclave Apparition. One thing that tends to happen once we get our blink plan set up is that we turn a lot of our opponent's permanents into Illusion tokens by blinking Skyclave Apparition a bunch of times. Deputy of Detention is the perfect way to clean up a bunch of Illusion tokens since a single trigger will exile them all forever!
- So, should you play Acrobatics Combo in Historic? I think the answer is clearly yes. The deck is absurdly fun to play, does some crazy things, and is surprisingly competitive. If you like value, this is the Historic deck for you!
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. Oh yeah, and make sure to come back next week when we get to play with spicy new Dominaria United cards!
