Much Abrew: Turn 2 Cosmogoyf Combo (Modern)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Modern to see if we can win the game on Turn 2 with...Cosmogoyf?!? How can you (potentially) win on Turn 2 with Cosmogoyf in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Turn 2 Cosmogoyf Combo (Modern)
Discussion
- That went well! We crushed our league with Cosmogoyf Combo, going 5-0 through our matches and 10-1 in games, with our only game loss coming to Broodscale Combo! Maybe Cosmogoyf is actually pretty good in Modern?
- Our goal is simple: grow Cosmogoyf up to at least 20 power (by getting at least 20 cards into exile) as quickly as possible, which then lets us win by either attacking (although this doesn't happen all that often because Cosmogoyf doesn't have any evasion and is pretty easy to block) or throwing it at our opponent's face with Callous Sell-Sword or Thud. The actual winning of the game is pretty easy; the challenge is finding a way to grow Cosmogoyf quickly and making sure that we can find our combo pieces.
- We need Cosmogoyf so desperately (it's our only realistic way to win the game) that we're playing a full playset of Summoner's Pact just to find the two-drop. In fact, outside of two Disciple of Freyalise, which are essentially just tutorable lands, Cosmogoyf is the only card in our deck that Summoner's Pact can find. That's how important it is to our plan.
- As far as getting cards in exile, we have two plans, with the first starting before the game even begins with Serum Powder and Devourer of Destiny. Serum Powder is a weird, old mana rock. If it's in our hand while we're mulliganing, we can exile that hand and draw a new one, which, with a full hand, gets seven cards in exile before the game even starts! If we can chain together Serum Powder hands, we potentially can end up with more than 20 cards in exile before we even start our first turn. Meanwhile, we'll never actually cast Devourer of Destiny. But that's fine since if we have it in our opening hand at the start of our first turn, we can look at the top four cards of our library, put up to one back on our deck, and exile the rest, giving us another free way to exile cards that helps dig for our combo pieces.
- Our second self-exile plan is even more explosive but also way riskier, with Spoils of the Vault and Plunge into Darkness. For just a single mana, Spoils of the Vault can find whatever card we need and also put a bunch of cards into exile, although it can also just kill us if all the copies of the card we name are near the bottom of our deck, since we lose a life for each card we exile. Meanwhile, Plunge into Darkness lets us pay any amount of life, look at that many cards, put one in our hand and exile the rest! This means that if we are at 20 life we can pay 19 life, end up with 18 cards in exile, and most likely end up with whatever card we need in hand!
- We've also got Pact of Negation to protect our combo. The worst-case scenario is that we do a bunch of work to grow Cosmogoyf, get it on the battlefield, and throw it at our opponent with a Thud only for our opponent to have a counterspell to stop the Thud, which would probably mean we lose the game since we lost our Cosmogoyf for nothing. Pact of Negation solves this problem, giving us a free counter that we can use to defend our combo. Just don't cast it unless you are winning the game because outside of Manamorphose, we're unlikely ever able to pay for the Pact.
- The final piece of the puzzle isn't really necessary to win the game—everything we've talked about so far is more than enough to combo kill by Turn 3—but it is necessary for the Turn 1 win: Gemstone Caverns. If we are on the draw, we can start with Gemstone Caverns on the battlefield. During our opponent's first turn, we can cast Spoils of the Vault to exile a bunch of cards and find Cosmogoyf. On our Turn 1, we can play Cosmogoyf, and assuming we have enough cards in exile, we then can win on Turn 2, either by attacking or with the Thud kill!
- And that's basically the deck, outside of a wild sideboard that's just four copies of Chancellor of the Tangle (which in theory could let us win on Turn 1 and speeds up the deck even more against other fast combo decks); Temur Battle Rage, so we can win by attacking with Cosmogoyf if the Thud plan doesn't work out; Psychic Frog, as an additional threat against removal-heavy decks; and Break Out, which seems super risky mathematically, considering the only cards in our main deck it can hit are the four Cosmogoyfs and one Callous Sell-Sword, which we don't want in play anyway. (Although maybe if you also bring in Psychic Frog, there are enough two-drops that Break Out can sort of work.)
- So, should you play Cosmogoyf Combo in Modern? Based on our league, the answer seems like an easy yes! The deck is fast and oddly consistent, and it seems powerful. And the fact that we can accidentally kill ourselves so easily makes every game super exciting. Win or lose, the deck makes something big happen quickly, but with a bit of luck, it seems like it will win much more than it loses!
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.
