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Much Abrew: Heliod Combo Company (Modern, Magic Online)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Lately, we've been playing a lot of Standard and Pioneer, but this week, we're getting back to our roots with some Theros: Beyond Deathinfused Modern action! Heliod, Sun-Crowned has been one of the most hyped cards from the set, and while the God has shown its power in Pioneer, it arguably has even more potential in Modern thanks to the number of different combos available. Our deck today—Heliod Combo Company—has three ways to go infinite with Heliod, Sun-Crowned, with a bunch of ramp to speed up the combo, tutors to find our combo pieces, and even a few creature-based ways to protect our combos from our opponent's interaction. How good is Heliod, Sun-Crowned in Modern? How consistently can we go infinite with the God?  Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: Heliod Combo Company (Modern)

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Discussion

  • That went well. We played a league with Heliod Combo Company and ended up feeding the children with a perfect 5-0 finish! Along the way, we showed the deck's power to race other unfair goldfish decks but also its resilience to fight through the removal and disruption of fair decks. While our sample size is small, the fact that we could pick up the deck in the dark and go 5-0 is a pretty good testament to the archetype's power!
  • I mentioned in the intro that our deck has three combos, so let's count them down. The first and likely one is Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Spike Feeder, which allows us to gain infinite life without any extra work or mana, sometimes as soon as Turn 3 with the help of Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise. While some decks can beat infinite life (Copy Cat Combo, for example) in a lot of matchups, gaining infinite life is as good as winning the game, and most of our opponents scooped once we demonstrated the infinite life loop. 
  • Our second combo is Heliod, Sun-Crowned (or Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit) with Kitchen Finks and Viscera Seer, which not only gains us infinite life by repeatedly sacrificing Kitchen Finks to Viscera Seer while using Heliod or Anafenza to negate Kitchen Finks' 1/1 persist counter but also lets us scry through our entire deck.
  • This infinite scrying sets up our third combo—Heliod, Sun-Crowned with Walking Ballista, which gives us infinite damage, assuming we can get two +1/+1 counters on Walking Ballista and use Heliod, Sun-Crowned to give it lifelink, so we can ping our opponent for one and then immediately put a counter back on Walking Ballista thanks to Heliod, Sun-Crowned's static ability. 
  • While all of our combos are great ways to close out the game, the deck's real power is the utility cards. Once Upon a Time is a broken Magic card and allows us to set up our combo with some consistency, while Collected Company can potentially find an entire infinite combo all by itself. Meanwhile, Ranger-Captain of Eos and Giver of Runes protect our combo pieces, and Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise speed up the process.
  • One thing I learned while playing the deck is that we usually don't want Heliod, Sun-Crowned to be a creature. While there are times when we want to go on the beatdown plan and turning Heliod into an indestructible 5/5 is helpful, in general, keeping Heliod, Sun-Crowned in enchantment mode is good since it allows us to dodge cards like Path to Exile and Reflector Mage. Viscera Seer can help here as well since it allows us to sacrifice creatures with white mana symbols to turn off Heliod, Sun-Crowned if our opponent tries to kill or bounce our God. 
  • The big reason why the Heliod Combo Company is a scary deck is because it seems to have the tools to compete against the Modern format's fair and unfair decks. We played Dredge (with no graveyard hate in our 75) twice and Storm and won both times, mostly by racing our opponent to infinite life. Meanwhile, we took down more interactive decks like Humans and Copy Cat with a resilient, fair game plan. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that Heliod Combo Company is a legitimate top-tier deck in the Modern format.
  • So, should you play Heliod Combo Company? If we can go 5-0 with the deck without practicing it at all, I think the answer is yes. It goes infinite as fast as other top-tier combo decks in the Modern format while likely being more resilient than decks like Devoted Vizier since one of our combo pieces is an indestructible God, rather than an easy-to-kill creature like Devoted Druid. If you like creature-based combo decks or just want to win some matches in Modern, give Heliod Combo Company a shot! The deck is very strong.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! 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.



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