>Introduction

Ad Nauseam is a dedicated combo deck in modern that seeks to win the game on turn 4, taking the full spirit of the old adage that modern is a T4 format. The deck has taken on a new form since the banning of one of the deck's core cards, Simian Spirit Guide. This deck looks to assemble one of two, three card combos to win the game on the spot. The deck has a lot of decision making and intricate puzzles to figure out that make it play unlike any other deck in the format.

>The Combo

The Basic Rundown:
Ad Nauseam Combo takes advantage of 2 cards that prevent you from losing the game, Angel's Grace or Phyrexian Unlife (a white card), along with 2 cards that allow you to draw or exile your entire deck, Ad Nauseam or Spoils of the Vault (a black card). You also need enough mana to cast these spells in a timely manner with a combination of lands, Lotus Bloom, and/or Pentad Prism. First, you cast one of the white cards which will protect you from losing the game due to state based actions (SBAs). Then, you cast Ad Nauseam, and repeat the process of adding cards into your hand until you "draw" your entire deck. Having your whole deck in hand, cast Intervention Pact (targeting anything) holding priority, Pact of Negation targeting Intervention Pact holding priority, cast An Offer You Can't Refuse targeting Pact of Negation, let it resolve and get two Treasures, then casting the second An Offer You Can't Refuse targeting Intervention Pact. This will net you 3 treasures total, which will allow to cast Lightning Storm. Target your opponent holding priority once more, and discard however many lands it takes to add up to their life total!

Alternatively, you can also win the game with a white card, Spoils of the Vault, and Thassa's Oracle in hand. To do this, cast a white card, cast Thassa's Oracle, and with the ETB trigger on the stack, cast Spoils of the Vault naming a card that is not in your deck to exile every card in your library. The ETB from Thassa's Oracle will cause you to win the game!

There is a lot to take in with this deck, and there a many other lines to winning the game. And there are quite a number of tricks this deck can pull off while your opponent tries to stop you from comboing. Check out the full details on each card in Card Choices and more intricate lines for winning in Tips and Tricks.

>Card Choices

>The Black Cards

Ad Nauseam
Spoils of the Vault

Often referred to as the black cards of this deck, these are one of two combo pieces you need to win the game. Ad Nauseam, our namesake, can draw your entire deck of cards. Since you lose life, it doesn't care if you have enough to pay for it and will bring you below 0. This is also a great draw engine as well though. This card is often casted on your opponent's end step to get you as many cards as possible while staying above 0 life. Just make sure to take care against decks with Lightning Bolt!

Spoils of the Vault is primarily a combo piece but can also be a tutor spell for when you don't have a white card out. Always play to your outs! Even if it may kill you, if you're going to lose the game anyway without a counter spell or without getting a Phyrexian Unlife down that turn, cast your spoils naming that card! It's better to go for the small chance of coming out with a win rather than scooping, even if the odds are against you. It leads to really amazing plays and is my personal favorite card to cast in the deck. Don't be afraid to make risky plays early in the game sometimes too. If you get mana screwed and need a land, or you would have the perfect hand if you had a lotus bloom in your opener, you can turn Spoils of the Vault into that card at a risk. Remember what you bottomed during mulligans, which cards are 4 ofs in your deck, and make a judgement call based on your opponent.

>The White Cards

Angel's Grace
Phyrexian Unlife

Both of these cards do the same thing in different ways. The white cards of this deck prevent you from dying to the effects of your black cards and are one of two combo pieces you need to win the game. Angel's Grace is an instant, uncounterable (except to Chalice of the Void) way to ensure that you will not lose the game this turn. This is important, because as soon as cleanup happens, this effect wears off and you will lose the game if you are below 1hp. A common beginner mistake is to cast one of your black cards on your opponents end step with this effect and lose on your upkeep.

Phyrexian Unlife is a more fragile version of this effect because it is a permanent, but it allows you to get around this scenario. You can have this card out and cast a black card at any time to exile or draw your whole deck on your opponent's end step and play out a win on your main phase. Losing life will also not give you poison counters. Also, those poison counters do not start until you are at 0 already. This means that if you are at 1 or above, even if your opponent swings at you with a million damage, you will still go into a negative life total without poison counters. You may want to let your opponent get you to 0 before you start casting your black cards to give you as much buffer time as possible! Just keep in mind that unless you have an Angel's Grace in hand, removal of this card with render you dead.

Also keep in mind, one of the biggest differences between these two cards is that Angel's Grace stops you from losing the game for any reason and Phyrexian Unlife only stops you from losing the game due to life loss. Drawing on your draw step with 0 cards in your deck will still lose you the game with Phyrexian Unlife but not with Angel's Grace.

>The Win Conditions

Thassa's Oracle
Lightning Storm

Thassa's Oracle is the sorcery speed win condition for this deck and Lightning Storm is the instant speed win condition. Read "The Combo" above to learn about the combo lines if you haven't already. Here, let's go over their tradeoffs and nuance.

Thassa's Oracle is a very cheap and powerful win condition in this deck. With this card, Angel's Grace, and Spoils of the Vault, you can win with just 4 mana total! You do need all 3 copies of these cards in your hand already though, otherwise you need more mana or a Profane Tutor coming off suspend to grab one. But profane tutor coming down on turn 4 does lead to a very easy line of 4 land drops into your 3 card combo. This is susceptible to specific hate though, most notoriously Endurance and Teferi Time Raveler. These are some of the best counters to this and these two cards are often main deck cards. Endurance will stop the trigger from winning you the game if you have more than 2 cards in your graveyard (and there will already be 2 with the Angel's Grace and Spoils of the Vault). Teferi will stop you from casting your combo with the oracle trigger on the stack, which is ideal so you don't exile your deck for nothing if your opponent has an out you can't answer.

Lightning Storm does cost considerably more mana due to needing 3 to cast it in a color we do not primarily use and needing an abundance of lands to discard to it's effect. Needing 7 total mana with an Angel's Grace and Ad Nauseam in hand or 6 mana with a Phyrexian Unlife on the field, you can instant speed react to anything your opponent does and kill them on the stack with this spell. It's a very powerful effect you can hold for your opponents turn to play around Force of Negation without needing Lightning Storm in your hand in the first place. This is assuming you have both copies of An Offer You Can't Refuse to make the additional red mana you need for these spells, always keep track of your graveyard and exile to see what you've used already! There are instances where you can kill your opponent with Lightning Storm already in your hand. If you are able to draw and save lands in your hand against a deck like shadow, you could feasibly win the game by casting this with only a few lands in your hand. Make sure you only discard exactly as many lands as you need to win though, so you can respond to any lands they may have to direct the damage back!

>The Mana Rocks

Lotus Bloom
Pentad Prism

Lotus Bloom is the closest we have in modern to a Black Lotus, we just have to patiently wait 3 turns for it to resolve. Assuming we hit all of our land drops, this puts us at a total of 7 mana. This is exactly enough to cast Angel's Grace, Ad Nauseam, and combo off with An Offer You Can't Refuse as explained in the combo section above. Lotus bloom also gives us excess mana to cast a value Ad Nauseam just to draw cards with the intent to get enough pieces to win the game the following turn. It notably also comes down the same turn that a turn 2 Profane Tutor suspend would, making for the perfect cascade of events to lead to a win! Keep in mind with suspend triggers, you can order them to come down before others, such as a game losing Pact of Negation trigger. This can set you up to pay for it with mana in case you need to, or get around some sort of upkeep effect your opponent may have on your turn.

Pentad Prism is an artifact that gives you as much mana as you put into it of different colors. Since the cost is 2, you put in 2 mana to bank for later use. Although you want to save all of that for a combo, keep in mind that if you play it on turn 2, you still have 2 mana up! You can use this mana for a Spell Pierce, Veil of Summer, or other spell that can keep you in the game even when you're "tapped out". Try to always use you land mana before using pentad's unless you need to though. Also, since it cares about the number of colors you use to cast it, sometimes taxing effects like Trinisphere or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben can boost the effectiveness of this card. If it costs 3 due to one of these effects and you pay with 3 different colors, you're banking 3 mana for later! This is great to do before you Slaughter Pact a creature, giving you more mana to work with on the following turn.

>Cantrips

Serum Visions
Sleight of Hand

Serum Visions was once the cantrip of choice due to it's bigger selection of cards. However, this iteration of the deck leans more into Lotus Bloom than before, and Sleight of Hand digs you deeper on T1 when you need the card most. Also, now that the deck is shuffling itself with the addition of Profane Tutor, scrying away unwanted cards is less useful and is sometimes useless when you want to cast Serum Visions the turn before Profane Tutor resolves.

It's also better than other cantrips like Opt and Consider because you want the knowledge of both cards when you are deciding what to keep. If you see both cards and realize you will not be suspending Lotus Bloom on T1, it will likely impact your card choices here.

>The Mana Base

You may have noticed that this is a fetchless mana base. This is unusual in modern! But the reason we do this is to make our filtering as efficient as possible and to keep our life total as high as possible. Cards that we have sent to the bottom of the deck with our cantrips are cards that we would not like to see again for the most part, and preventing shuffling helps keep it that way for as long as possible. There used to be no shuffle effects in this deck, and while that has changed with Profane Tutor, it is still something that can be relevant when digging for that last combo piece.

Fetch lands also have a life payment cost. Since this deck likes to abuse the fact that we can have a life total below 0, we would like to avoid an awkward situation where we need another land drop but cannot pay for it. I'll take this opportunity to take a look at City of Brass. The reason this card is used over others such as Mana Confluence is because the land deals damage to us rather than having us pay life. You can still use City of Brass at a negative life total, but cannot with fetches or Mana Confluence! Also, this damage goes on the stack, meaning we can tap City of brass for mana before the damage is done. This can be a get out of jail free card to produce 1 white mana for an Angel's Grace.

>Tips and Tricks

1. Tap your City of Brass to produce mana, and then with the damage on the stack, spend the mana that you need to cast an instant spell to save you from taking the damage until after the spell resolves. This is useful for casting an Angel's Grace at 1hp, or casting a Spoils of the Vault for a needed card while saving yourself an extra damage. Every life point counts in this deck!

2. If you happen to be low on copies of Thassa's Oracle in your deck (or another card with oracle in your hand already) after sideboarding or due to mill, exile, or discard effects, try to keep track of where it is in your deck. You do scry a decent amount and shuffle very little in this deck. A line that you can take to achieve a win by surprise, is that after having a white card played, you can cast Spoils of the Vault for the card that was scryed to the bottom of your deck. This will exile your whole deck and let you pick up that last card and cast Thassa's Oracle for a win. The easiest example is scrying Thassa's Oracle to the bottom and naming that, but you can also scry other cards like Pact of Negation to the bottom of your deck to prepare to counter something like Endurance for after it resolves.

3. Remember that Gemstone Mine sacrifices itself when it runs out of counters for mana. If you've been using Gemstone Mine early in the game for mana, a line that you can take to ensure you hit your untapped land drops is to use it's last counter before you play your land drop for the turn while you have 3 lands in play. You will add the mana to your mana pool, then sacrifice the land due to there being no mining counters, and then you can play either a Seachrome Coast or a Darkslick Shores untapped!

4. If your opponent decides to counter your Lotus Bloom coming off suspend and the only answer you have is An Offer You Can't Refuse, consider countering your own Lotus Bloom to give yourself some treasures for later. No sense giving them mana when you can just give it to yourself!

>Sideboarding

>Leyline of Sanctity

This card is an all star versus black decks that run Thoughtseize and Grief. Essentially being a static counterspell for hand hate, this prevents your combo from being taken out of your hand until they can remove it (if they can remove it). It can also prevent you from being the target of other combo deck pieces such as Archon of Cruelty or Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle as well as other disruption pieces like Endurance and Necromentia.

This is also a great card against burn decks, which we already have a solid matchup against, but this will usually seal the deal.

>Prismatic Ending

This is an excellent card from Modern Horizons we can use to exile a problematic permanent that has gotten through our counter magic. It's particularly effective against early game lock pieces like Chalice of the Void when we don't have an answer in our opening hand (just remember to pay a cost that is not equal to the chalice counters!). It can also get us an out from a Blood Moon with a basic land and an artifact mana producer (1 from a swamp or plains, 1 red source from a blood mooned land, 1 other color source from Pentad Prism or Lotus Bloom in a pinch).

This card is also just good removal for creatures like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Dragon's Rage Channeler, and Eidolon of the Great Revel who can beat us down while disrupting our scrying and spell casting.

>Slaughter Pact

The black version of Pact of Negation, this card is a free way to destroy a problematic creature from the board. It's most effective for "taxing" style creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Collector Ouphe, Meddling Mage, and lock piece creatures such as Magus of the Moon. While this is much easier to pay the mana cost for on your upkeep, you can also play this on your opponents end step, and avoid losing the game by casting Angel's Grace on your upkeep to follow up and win the game now that their creature is gone.

>Spell Pierce

This is a very versatile spell that works well against control, other combo decks, or game ending lock pieces like Blood Moon, Teferi Time Raveler, Trinisphere, etc.

>Sphinx of the Final Word

This card can be an instant win on your next turn for a hard control deck. It prevents your game winning spells from being countered, and it cannot be removed through most means other than a board wipe (something your opponent will surely side out in games 2 and 3). It does cost quite a bit of mana so it is reserved for strict UW control style decks that can't beat you down in the meantime. Do note that this will not make a Thassa's Oracle uncounterable if you plan to win via that route.

>Veil of Summer

Veil of Summer is a great card that has overlap for both blue control and black hand hate spells, the biggest problems for any combo deck. Not only does it effectively counter a Thoughtseize or a Counterspell, but it also draws you a replacement card when all is said and done. This is also notably one of the deck's only outs to Flusterstorm, a notoriously difficult card for us to beat. Keep in mind you need a City of Brass, Gemstone Mine, Pentad Prism, or Lotus Bloom to cast this spell!