this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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This also works for Magic The Gathering.
Yeah. I'll just go ahead and leave this here:
A classic.
For the uninitiated, the likelihood of being able to pull off a 4-card combo on turn 1 is very small, even in unrestricted formats. Decks that rely on this interaction either include ways to win on later turns or are unreliable.
The typical variant I've seen is using a bunch more Moxes and Lotuses and so forth to play Ancestral Recalls/Timetwisters or Timewalks or similar to either pull the right cards from your deck or skip your opponent's turn until you draw them naturally. And doing such a thing nowadays is... expensive.
Also, if you shoot your load and your opponent has a way to counter your fireball, now you're standing there with your pants down around your ankles and 1 health. Ready to be done in by a single goblin, or possibly a stiff breeze.
Even so, in modern formats where Black Lotus, Moxes, and Channel are not outright banned you can only have one of each per deck anyhow. So the notion of having 4 of each to pad your deck out to the minimum 60 cards likewise goes out the window. Still, having this spread available is sort of like having a nuke in your suitcase. You're never actually going to set it off, but it's nice sometimes to let everyone around you know that you could if you really felt like it.
I also have an Enduring Renewal based infinite mana deck that is similarly impractical, but no less spectacular when you actually manage to pull off its core combo. Your ability to put your opponent into the negatives -- or yourself into an insurmountably gargantuan health pool via Alabaster Potions -- is limited only by your opponent's patience and lack of conceding on the spot in disgust as you shuffle your Ornithopter back and forth and back and forth...
I have a more straighforward lightning bolt/shock/goblin grenade deck that is less exotic, but considerably more reliable. The explosions it makes are smaller, but everyone explodes sooner or later.
Back in the day decks had a 40 card minimum and no max copies of cards. There were decks that were just mountains and lightning bolts. So getting a combo like this out wasn’t completely unheard of.
Nowadays, combos need lots of drawing and fishing to hit in the first couple turns.
Confirm, and I am guilty of having owned, and currently owning, functional decks that basically just boil down to mountains and lightning bolts. The "new" (decades old) rules forced me to diversify a bit, but Fallen Empires brought us the gift of the Goblin Grenade, so it's all gravy for me. Four goblins and four Goblin Grenades is a win, even if you don't attack with any of the goblins. You can spice things up in the interim with Lightning Bolts if you like.
Also, isn't a black lotus worth tens of thousands of dollars?
A mint Alpha Black Lotus would be in the hundreds of thousands.
A moderately played Unlimited Black Lotus would be in the thousands.
Not if you have a printer
I’d disagree. I keep up with both MtG and YGO (MtG as a game I like and YGO as a horrified observer), and the two games are not even close to equivalent here.
In YGO’s one official format, the oft-quoted statistic is that games don’t usually last more than 3 turns - those 3 turns being half the length of how MtG usually measures turns - Starting Player, Non-Starting Player, Starting Player, game. The interaction relies on your opponent having the right disruptive tool to slow down your combo.
For MtG, the only formats that are really like that are Legacy and Vintage, formats that are generally incredibly expensive to play in paper and definitely not where new players are gonna start. Even Modern, the next oldest and thus powerful format, has games that typically last at absolute least 3 turns for each player (twice the YGO standard) and most of the time last much longer. Then Standard, where new players are expected to start, has so much less combo “I win the game now” potential specifically because it’s a bad feeling for new players and the creators don’t want the format to be that fast. I can’t find a great source on it, but winning a Standard game anytime before turn 5 is notable, and usually means your opponent didn’t do anything.
Sure, it's 3 turns, but each turn lasts 10x as long as in Magic, so it evens out. Also, it's a pretty big exaggeration - the meme is "turn 3 dead", but you can usually last a couple more and hope to get some kind of out.
3 turns that are only so long because you're playing spider solitaire with yourself.
And with hand traps those turn become "our turn" anyway, making a still super interactive game equivalent to 15 turns. At least, theoretically.
Try a non-eternal format. I like modern; turn 1 wins are super unreliable.
I love drafting MtG. But I hate playing with the resulting deck.
Fucking MTG
Try a non-eternal format. I like modern; turn 1 wins are super unreliable.
If they are possible at all there's a problem.
If a deck lets you win on turn 1 6.25% of the time, and completely flop over 50% of the time, you'll lose often enough that your deck isn't going to win any tournaments. That's not an oppressive force in a metagame.
But if even that is too much for certain players, they can just avoid Vintage. There are non-eternal formats with no t1 wins. Pioneer, Standard etc have no such t1 wins.
Generally for certain decks that have the value of a car and only in certain formats.
Yeah, there are turn one kill decks, but they generally don't exist in the formats most players play and WotC will ban cards if they do show up.