Much Abrew: Liquimetal Combo (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. This week, we're heading to Modern to play an old combo that, before Modern Horizons 2, mostly lived in the realm of Against the Odds: Saheeli Rai with Liquimetal Coating to make infinite copies of Saheeli Rai, which allow us to win the game by milling our opponent with Altar of the Brood. The problem with the combo in the past was that it was super inconsistent, taking three pieces to win the game, with one being Altar of the Brood, which is mostly a dead card until we combo off. But now, thanks to Modern Horizons 2, the combo suddenly is much more consistent as we have Liquimetal Torque joining Liquimetal Coating and Urza's Saga to find our one copy of Altar of the Brood. Oh yeah, since we're playing a bunch of Liquimetal cards that can turn things into artifacts, we get to back up our combo with Shenanigans...literally...along with Thieving Skydiver to steal our opponent's permanents and Abrade as a two-mana instant-speed Vindicate! Does Modern Horizons 2 mean it's finally time for Liquimetal Combo to shine in Modern? Let's find out on this week's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: Liquimetal Combo
Discussion
- Record-wise, we finished our league 4-1 with Liquimetal Combo, and that might undersell just how good the deck was. We won our first four matches without dropping a single game before finally getting out-valued in match five by a five-color Elemental deck. Considering we're winning with a fairly janky three-card combo, the deck felt surprisingly competitive.
- The combo itself is pretty simple and requires three pieces to win the game. We need either Liquimetal Coating or Liquimetal Torque, which allows us to turn Saheeli Rai into an artifact so we can use Saheeli's –2 to copy itself. This will lead to us legend-ruling away one of our Saheeli Rais, which is fine. We keep the new copy and repeat the process, giving us infinite Saheeli Rais entering the battlefield. The last piece of the puzzle is Altar of the Brood, which mills our opponent for one whenever a permanent enters the battlefield. Our infinite Saheeli Rais will mill our opponent's entire deck and cause them to lose when they draw for their turn.
- While finding all of the pieces necessary to combo might seem like a long shot, when you actually dig into the list, we have an insane amount of redundancy. We have two Liquimetal Coatings, four Liquimetal Torques, and four Karn, the Great Creators that can tutor up a Liquimetal Coating from our sideboard, which means we essentially have 10 copies of our Liquimetal combo pieces. Likewise, even though we have just a single Altar of the Brood in our main deck, thanks to four copies of Urza's Saga and the four Karn, the Great Creators (which can snag one from our sideboard), it's like we have nine copies, so the odds of us finding both a Liquimetal card and a Altar of the Brood are pretty high, which means we just need to draw a Saheeli Rai to go infinite and win the game.
- In theory, we can go infinite as early as Turn 3—Turn 1 Altar of the Brood, Turn 2 Liquimetal Coating / Liquimetal Torque, and Turn 3 Saheeli Rai. This isn't especially likely since we only have one Altar of the Brood, but that's okay. Liquimetal Combo doesn't need to combo quickly to be effective because we have a solid backup plan built around having so many copies of Liquimetal Coating and Liquimetal Torque.
- When we're not comboing, we're making our opponent miserable by turning their permanents into artifacts and killing them with Abrade and Shenanigans or stealing them with Karn, the Great Creator. With the help of Liquimetal Coating, we can go on a land-destruction game plan with Blood Moon to deal with non-basics and cards like Karn, the Great Creator, Abrade, Thieving Skydiver, and Shenanigans to take care of whatever basics happen to slip through the Moon's grasp. Sometimes, we don't even need to combo to win—we can just crush our opponent's will to keep playing by destroying all of our opponent's threats and resources.
- So, should you play Liquimetal Combo? I think the answer is a clear yes. The deck combines pretty much everything I love in Magic. We're built around a janky combo, and we can blow up our opponent's lands and / or stick a Blood Moon on Turn 2 with the help of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. The deck is basically a prison-combo hybrid, which is a super-unique and rare archetype! Plus, it felt extremely competitive, almost giving us the 5-0.
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.
