Budget Magic: Duplimancy Trailblazer Combo (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to a bonus edition of Budget Magic! Today, we're heading to Standard to test out a brand-new Turn 4 kill combo involving one of my favorite unplayable cards: Vesuvan Duplimancy! We played Vesuvan Duplimancy for Against the Odds right after it was released a couple of years ago, and it was rough. But Wizards might have just printed the perfect combo piece to make the enchantment work in Outcaster Trailblazer! Not only does the three-drop make a mana when it enters the battlefield, but it also draws us a card when another creature with power four or greater enters the battlefield, which allows for some absurdly devastating combo turns with the help of Vesuvan Duplimancy's ability to copy our creatures.
Since the rest of our deck is almost all one-mana spells that can target Outcaster Trailblazer, the idea is that we can plot Trailblazer on Turn 3, and then, on Turn 4, play Duplimancy, unplot Trailblazer, and use the mana it makes to cast something like Ancestral Anger, Shore Up, or any of our other one-mana spells to target it, which will make another copy of Trailblazer thanks to Vesuvan Duplimancy. Since the new Trailblazer has four power, we'll draw a card from the original and make another mana, which we can then use to cast another one-mana spell targeting Trailblazer. Now, we have two Outcaster Trailblazers, so we'll draw two cards and make another mana, which we can use to cast another one-mana spell to target Outcaster Trailblazer. Eventually, we'll chain together enough spells that we'll draw our entire deck and find our one copy of Song of Totentanz to give our now huge board of Outcaster Trailblazers haste to win the game on the spot, hopefully on Turn 4! Oh yeah, and the deck is technically a budget deck, coming in at $100 in paper and 23 total rares and mythics on Magic Arena (although if you discount the mana base, it only takes nine rares and mythics to build)! Does the combo actually work? How often can we win the game on Turn 4 with Trailblazer and Duplimancy? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Duplimancy Trailblazer Combo
Wrap-Up
There's not much point in waxing poetic about Duplimancy Trailblazer Combo. The deck does one thing, but it does that thing surprisingly well. All in all ,we played 11 matches with the deck and won six, giving us an oddly solid 55% match-win percentage, which is honestly a lot better than I expected heading into our games. Along the way, we got several Turn 4 kills, which is super impressive for Standard.
The combo itself was great. We won the game every time we managed to find and resolve Vesuvan Duplimancy and Outcaster Trailblazer, usually immediately, although we did have one game where Song of Totentanz was one of the bottom three cards of our deck, so we had to wait a turn before beating down.
The challenges of the deck are twofold. First, control seems like a really tough matchup. All you really need to do to stop the deck is keep Vesuvan Duplimancy off the battlefield, which control decks can do easily with counterspells. Without Duplimancy, our deck doesn't do much of anything since we're overloaded on janky one-mana targeting spells to support the combo. The other challenge for the deck is consistency: sometimes, we simply can't find Outcaster Trailblazer or Vesuvan Duplimancy, and we spend the game doing essentially nothing. In reality, though, it comes together surprisingly often since we only need two combo pieces (and Otherworldly Gaze can help dig for them), and it's both hilarious and spectacular when it does!
So, should you play Duplimancy Trailblazer Combo in Standard? Maybe. The deck is definitely a glass-cannon combo deck, but it feels like a pretty solid glass-cannon combo deck, and it did post a winning record despite looking super janky in paper. While I don't think the combo is tier one or anything like that, it does have the ability to win a lot of games, especially in best-of-one, where opponents don't know what we're up to and can't sideboard in a bunch of counterspells to keep Vesuvan Duplimancy off the battlefield. If you like comboing off and winning on Turn 4 in hilariously janky ways, give Duplimancy Trailblazer Combo a shot! The deck is cheap to build, super unique, and way more competitive thank it look on paper!
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.
