Much Abrew: Infinite Carnage (Pioneer)

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Pioneer for some infinite carnage—literally! Carnage, Crimson Chaos looks like one of the stronger fair cards from Spider-Man, but is its real purpose to be an infinite combo piece? Let's get to the video and find out!

Much Abrew: Infinite Carnage

Discussion

• Record-wise, Infinite Carnage was solid! We went 8-4 with the deck, good for a 67% match-win percentage!

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• Our deck's goal today is simple: go infinite with Carnage, Crimson Chaos, which is actually pretty easy. All we need to generate infinite carnage is Carnage itself and a clone that costs three or less mana, like Glasspool Mimic or Mirror Image. Let's say we cast Carnage and use its enters ability to reanimate Glasspool Mimic and copy Carnage. Since Carnage, Crimson Chaos is legendary, we'll have to sacrifice one copy to the legend rule, so we'll sac the clone copy and then immediately reanimate it with Carnage, Crimson Chaos's enters ability. And then we do the same thing—copying the Carnage, legend ruling, and reanimating it again. Basically, with just Carnage and one of the three-mana clones, we generate infinite enters and dies triggers.

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• Of course, this combo doesn't really do anything by itself, but we win the game on the spot if we add one more piece to the mix. We have two options here: Blood Artist effects like Vengeful Bloodwitch and Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, which offer infinite drain, and Desecrated Tomb, which makes a 1/1 flying bat token whenever a creature leaves our graveyard, giving us infinite Bat tokens. 
• While the combo is sweet and a great way to win the game by surprise, part of the deck's power is that it can also play the fair game really well. Carnage, Crimson Chaos was super impressive. We're playing cards like Insolent Neonate, Bloodtithe Harvester, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker to discard Carnage so we can mayhem it into play on the cheap. It turns out that lines like playing an Insolent Neonate on Turn 1, then sacrificing it to discard Carnage, Crimson Chaos and mayhem it into play on Turn 2 in order to reanimate Insolent Neonate, or sacrificing a Bloodtithe Harvester on Turn 3 to kill something and then sacrificing the Blood token it makes to discard Carnage and mayhem it into play to reanimate the Bloodtithe Harvester are actually super powerful and good enough to win a lot of games. My biggest takeaway from this deck is that Carnage itself is a super-legit card. 
• Throughout our games, we got to see the power of both the fair and unfair plans. We got several wins by beating down with Carnage, Crimson Chaos and friends, but we also had games where we were 100% to lose, only to have the infinite combo come out of nowhere to steal the win. This combination of being a solid fair deck with a game-ending combo is a pretty good place to be.
• So, should you play Infinite Carnage in Pioneer? I think the answer is yes! The deck posted a solid record, felt powerful, and can win both fairly and unfairly. At a minimum, Carnage itself is worth exploring more. (Could it be worth playing in generic Rakdos Midrange? It seems possible, at least.) But the combo doesn't take up many slots and adds a really powerful dimension to the deck. If you are looking for something different to try in Pioneer, give Infinite Carnage a shot!

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.