Much Abrew: Ad Nauseam (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. A couple of weeks back, we featured Modern Ad Nauseam on Know Your Combos, and one of the big pieces of feedback was that we should follow up Know Your Combo videos by actually playing the deck. As such, we're taking Modern Ad Nauseam out for a spin today! Who will we kill more often with cards like Ad Nauseam and Spoils of the Vault—our opponents or ourselves? How competitive is Ad Nauseam Combo in practice? Let's get to the video and find out!
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Much Abrew: Ad Nauseam
Discussion
Normally, this is where we talk about the deck's performance, and while it is worth pointing out that we went 4-1 (although we did die to our own cards a bit), because we took a deep dive into Modern Ad Nauseam on Know Your Combos, I figured that it might make more sense to include that video here rather than rehash everything a second time:
One thing I will say about Modern Ad Nauseam is that playing the deck is a lot harder than it seems. While the main combos—Angel's Grace or Phyrexian Unlife plus either Ad Nauseam into Lightning Storm or Spoils of the Vault into Thassa's Oracle—are fairly straightforward on paper, there are a bunch of little things that matter in an actual game, especially after sideboarding. Small things can end up mattering, like playing Thassa's Oracle or Spoils of the Vault first or whether you should cast Veil of Summer before Spoils of the Vault so you don't end up accidentally dying to drawing on an empty library with Thassa's Oracle on the stack.
The good news is that the deck is powerful, so you can win a lot of games even when playing it at 90% proficiency, although taking the time to learn the deck's intricacies is important in the long run. Part of the reason why it's important is that one wrong move can swing the entire game, leaving you in a position where you either kill yourself with damage from Ad Nauseam or Spoils of the Vault or by drawing on an empty library.
In the end, I think most of our ratings from the Know Your Combos video hold up: Modern Ad Nauseam is slow for a Modern combo deck but extremely consistent and fairly resilient (especially after sideboarding).
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.
