Much Abrew: Guardian Sunmare Combo (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! I spend a lot of time looking through Magic decklists, and every once in a while, I stumble upon a deck that just blows me away with how perfectly it was built. Today's deck, Guardian Sunmare Combo, is one of those decks. Is the deck good? I have no idea. However, considering the goal is to combo off with Guardian Sunmare, of all creatures, by naming "Horse" with Roaming Throne, I think the deck is just about perfect for what it's trying to achieve. Basically, if I were building an Against the Odds deck around Guardian Sunmare, I would hope to end up with something very similar to this list, although I doubt I actually would have! How can you combo off with Guardian Sunmare in Standard? Is Roaming Throne actually good outside of Commander? Does the deck even work? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Guardian Sunmare Combo
The Deck
We're built around the Aetherdrift rare Guardian Sunmare, a five-mana 5/5 with ward two that tutors a nonland permanent with mana value three or less directly to the battlefield if it attacks while saddled. While we can use this ability for value, that's not exciting enough for us. Instead, we're trying to turn Guardian Sunmare into a one-shot-kill combo piece thanks to some sneaky deck-building. Here's the plan.
Apart from Guardian Sunmare, our next most important card is Commander all-star Roaming Throne, which lets us name a creature type and doubles any triggers that creatures of that type generate. In our deck, we're planning to name "Horse" with Roaming Throne to power up Guardian Sunmare. Roaming Throne does three important things in our deck. First, it's a four-power creature, so we can use it to saddle Guardian Sunmare. Second, Roaming Throne doubles the ward trigger on Guardian Sunmare, which actually is super important to the deck. If not for ward on Roaming Throne and Guardian Sunmare, it would be too easy to disrupt our plan with removal. But having ward two (and especially once Roaming Throne doubles Sunmare's ward to four) makes it much more likely that our combo pieces will stick around so we can attack with a saddled Guardian Sunmare. Finally, Roaming Throne lets us tutor two things onto the battlefield with a single Guardian Sunmare attack, rather than just one, which is what allows us to one-shot kill with the deck...
Let's say we attack with a Guardian Sunmare and double-trigger it thanks to Roaming Throne. How do we win the game? While we can just tutor up some random stuff for value—removal, bodies, or ramp—the primary plan revolves around four one-of enchantments. The most straightforward combo kill is to use Guardian Sunmare to tutor up Twinblade Blessing and make Sunmare a 5/5 double strike along with Draconic Destiny to pump it and give it flying and firebreathing. This will make Guardian Sunmare a 6/6 flying double-strike. Then, we can simply spend the rest of our mana pumping it, thanks to Draconic Destiny, to get its power high enough to kill our opponent from 20 with a single attack. If this plan doesn't work because we don't have enough mana or our opponent has a flying blocker, we can always tutor up something like Unflinching Courage along with Twinblade Blessing, which lets us hit for 14 and gain 14 life, or Sheltered by Ghosts to gain 14 and remove our opponent's best permanent. Basically, if the coast is clear, we win the game with a single attack. And if the coast isn't clear, we still gain a ton of life and hit our opponent for a ton of damage, even if it isn't quite lethal.
The most important thing to realize about this deck is that it's a combo deck, even though it might look like a midrange deck at first glance. We're unlikely to win fairly, so the rest of our deck is designed to strengthen and add consistency to our combo. Nature's Rhythm finds Guardian Sunmare and Roaming Throne. Thanks to harmonize, a single copy potentially can find both of our combo pieces over two turns!
We also have some ramp to get us to Guardian Sunmare as quickly as possible. These cards also give us our nut draw. The most powerful thing our deck can do is Llanowar Elves on Turn 1, which gets us to Lumbering Worldwagon on Turn 2. This gives us enough mana to cast Guardian Sunmare on Turn 3, which should set us up to win by Turn 5. (We can't quite win on Turn 4 since we'd need to spend mana on Roaming Throne, which leaves us slightly short on mana to pump with Draconic Destiny enough for lethal.) It's also worth mentioning that Outcaster Trailblazer also works really well with Roaming Throne. If we don't have our Horse, we can put Roaming Throne on Druid or Human to draw two cards off Outcaster Trailblazer every time we play a creature with power four or greater. Oh yeah, all these cards are also tutorable by Guardian Sunmare.
Finally, we have Invasion of Gobakhan as additional protection for Guardian Sunmare, and Soul Partition, which is mostly used for removal, although we can use it in a pinch to save our Roaming Throne or Guardian Sunmare from a removal spell so we can cast it again later.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 11-8 with the deck, good for a 58% match-win percentage, which is surprisingly solid for such a wild brew. The deck actually plays shockingly well. Throughout our matches, we got multiple one-shot kills with Guardian Sunmare. But even less spectacular Guardian Sunmare attacks were great, letting us tutor up Temporary Lockdown to blow up aggro or even just Outcaster Trailblazer to draw cards. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd change a single thing about the deck. It feels like it could be a competitive lower-tier deck in the format. Shout-out to whichever Platinum-Mythic Rank Player built the deck—it's one of my favorites I've played in Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard!
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.
