Much Abrew: Expedited Inheritance Combo (Modern)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! Expedited Inheritance is one of the wackiest cards from Murders at Karlov Manor. While it can offer a ton of card advantage, the fact that it's symmetrical—potentially drawing our opponent as many cards as it draws us (or even more)—makes it tricky to build around. Well, Modern player smop1 was up for the challenge, with a deck that isn't just playing Expedited Inheritance but also goes infinite with the combo of the enchantment, Marauding Raptor, and a bunch of cheap artifact creatures before we eventually draw our entire deck and finish our opponent off with an Aetherflux Reservoir! Can the plan actually work? Is Expedited Inheritance actually good? Let's find out on today's Much Abrew!
Much Abrew: Expedited Inheritance Combo
Discussion
- Record-wise, I jumped into a league with Expedited Inheritance combo and went 2-3. Thinking we could do better, I headed right back into another league and went 2-3 again, which I guess means Expedited Inheritance Combo is a 40% win rate kind of deck.
- The idea is pretty wild. Here's a quick overview of the plan: First, we need Expedited Inheritance so that whenever a creature takes damage, its controller gets to impulse draw that many cards. Next, we need Marauding Raptor, which happens to be the perfect way to power up Expedited Inheritance. The Dino makes our creatures cost one less but also deals two damage to them when they enter the battlefield. The two damage is supposed to be a drawback, but it's actually an upside with Expedited Inheritance since each creature we play will draw us two cards. We really need at least one of these two cards in our opening hand to keep, and having both is ideal.
- Once we get Expedited Inheritance and Marauding Raptor on the battlefield, the rest of our deck is full of cheap artifact creatures that become free with the discount from Marauding Raptor. This includes Memnite, Ornithopter, Combat Courier, Haywire Mite, and Inquisitive Puppet, all of which cost zero mana with Marauding Raptor on the battlefield. We also have Myr Retriever, which technically costs a mana, even with the Marauding Raptor discount, but makes up for this by returning one of our other artifacts from our graveyard to the battlefield when it dies. So, we start chaining these creatures together, and each will die from the two damage from Marauding Raptor but draw us two cards with Expedited Inheritance, which should find us another free creature to keep the chain going.
- As we combo off, we should be able to draw our entire deck, including four copies of Myr Moonvessel, which might look like just another free artifact creature but is actually essential to our combo. We can play Myr Moonvessel for free thanks to Marauding Raptor. It will die from the Dinosaur's damage and make one mana, which essentially makes it a ritual. We'll draw all four copies of Myr Moonvessel as we combo off and draw our deck, giving us four extra mana, which we can use to cast our finisher in Aetherflux Reservoir. By this time, we should have cast 10 or 15 spells, so we simply play Reservoir, sling a couple of more free spells to gain some life, and then shoot our opponent for 50 with Aetherflux Reservoir to win the game, all as early as Turn 3!
- That's the primary plan of our deck, but this does have one problem: it's reliant on Aetherflux Reservoir to win the game, which means a card like Karn, the Great Creator or even just Pithing Needle can shut down our combo. As such, we need a backup plan for winning without the artifact, which leads us to Mystic Forge and Goblin Bombardment. The idea here is that we can use Mystic Forge to cast our artifact creature from the top of our deck (for free with Marauding Raptor) and then, in response to Marauding Raptor's damage trigger, sacrifice the creature to Goblin Bombardment to throw a damage at our opponent's face. While it's unlikely that we can win in one turn this way since we'll eventually hit multiple lands on the top of our deck and fizzle, over the course of two or three turns, we should be able to generate enough damage to burn our opponent out of the game (or at least burn the Karn, the Great Creator out of the game to turn on Aetherflux Reservoir).
- And that's basically the deck! If you decide to pick it up, my advice is to mulligan aggressively. Without an Expedited Inheritance and a Marauding Raptor, our deck is full of underpowered (or even zero-power) creatures that don't do much of anything. As a general rule, I won't keep a hand that doesn't have at least one of Expedited Inheritance or Marauding Raptor, and our best hands will have both of the combo pieces.
- Also, make sure to hold onto Myr Moonvessel. It might be tempting to run it out randomly to chump block, but we really need it in hand to make mana during our combo turn, or else we risk comboing off but not having enough mana to cast Aetherflux Reservoir to win the game. Remember, once we get the combo set up, we need at least one (and ideally two) free creatures in hand to start the combo, so it's often better to hold onto random Memnites and Ornithopters rather than running them out for no real purpose.
- So, should you play Expedited Inheritance Combo in Modern? I'm honestly not sure. I don't think the deck is truly competitive—it takes a bit of setup and requires a lot of bad cards for the combo to work. But on the other hand, I'll also say that the deck won more than I expected. While going 4-6 isn't great, it's also not bad, especially considering we're built around one of the jankiest and weirdest mythics from Murders at Karlov Manor. Overall, I would say it's a great deck to play for fun because it's super unique and wins in a really hilarious way. But if your goal is to 5-0 a league, there are easier ways to go about it.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
