Do you hate combo decks?

[Aetherium Slinky]

This divides opinions. Some people love brewing and playing combos, some hate them with a passion. There don't seem to be too many people in between these two extremes.

Do you hate combo decks? If so, why? If not, why?

[CleanBelwas]

Most definitely not, I love combo decks.

I totally get why some people don't like them or like playing against them, but for me, I think they're great.

For me, there are two big reasons why I like them. The reasons are true in all formats, but especially so in EDH.

1. They end the game.

If everyone is playing a combat or creature focussed deck, it is possible (and I daresay even likely) for board states to stall. No one has any profitable attacks without dying or being seriously weakened on the crack back. This can lead to games taking a very long time, and this kind of game is not my preference.

I understand the feel bads with this. Some people like that kind of stand off. It's like a game of chess, waiting for someone to make the crucial move. Not moving too early or too late. This can be exciting in its own right, so having this sort of state ended out of the blue when somebody assembles a combo can be rough if this is the kind of game you like.

And obviously I get that there are more ways to play than "combo or combat", but these two archetypes are among the most common.

2. Combos can be powered up or down so they are always appropriate for your meta.

Two card combos are a thing. Curiosity and Niv, Malcolm and Glint-Horn Buccaneer, Pact and Thoracle. If you're playing in a high powered meta, these are great, efficient and effective.

However, assembling the Stations combo, and I mean the full stations combo (the "Great Machine"), not a mini one that just uses grinding or blasting with some other stuff, is not so easy or efficient.

This means that your deck can have a game ending combo in it without warping your meta to the point that it is no longer appropriate for the desires of your group as a whole.

You can further add to this balancing by ensuring you run an appropriate amount of tutors. Either loads, a few, or none, depending on what your group likes.


I will personally almost always run at least one combo in a deck. Usually 3 cards or more and usually no tutors (or at least, no tutors without type restrictions) so that I have that out if a game is going too long and getting stale, but I'm not aiming for it to the point where I'm combo-ing off before my friends have finished casting their cultivates and hedron archives.

[Bonethor]

I will personally almost always run at least one combo in a deck. Usually 3 cards or more and usually no tutors (or at least, no tutors without type restrictions) so that I have that out if a game is going too long and getting stale, but I'm not aiming for it to the point where I'm combo-ing off before my friends have finished casting their cultivates and hedron archives.

I'm kind of in the same boat myself, although it has been a while since I've last seen a board stall in my meta. We mostly try to build for synergy and if there's a sufficiently expensive (MV -wise) or complicated combo with cards that are individually good I'll try to make that work. Tutor -wise I try to use narrow ones when possible (transmute ftw).

It's mostly about trying to make a deck play consistently but differently so that it stays fresh. Point is still to win when I'm far enough ahead, but at least they had plenty of chances to stop it.

Of course for higher powered decks much of the above flies out the window but even with those I like multiple avenues to win and prefer synergistic cards; in Aminatou I'll rather have extra turn spells and try to compensate for those than use Altar of the Brood or Corpse Knight - now something like Sunscorched Desert on the other hand..

But yeah I believe EDH is all about neat interactions and combos + synergy are in the center of it, but there are also no neat interactions if your opponents can't interact.

[Bonethousand]

I agree, I tend to steer away from combos that are less than three or four pieces. I play pretty battle-cruiser'y, but I like that combos finish the game. Hell, some of my favorite win cons are cards with just "you win the game" stapled on, and those are really no different.

What does rub me the wrong way are two card combos, since my meta runs low on interaction. Honestly, I think it only feels bad for two reasons:
1) only like two people in my playgroup actually care to learn all the combos, so there have definitely been times when an obvious combo piece has hit the board and then someone has gone, "oh, that's what that does? I would have countered it if I knew," and
2) if they're the famous combos, they're just not that interesting. Like, it feels like 85% of combos are just assembling infinite mana. And to that I say, "...neat." Give me something creative that I can be happy I lost to.

No one ever feels bad if everyone gets to play the game. Fast combos get in the way of that.

[Slyvester12]

I love combos. They're the main reason I started playing EDH in the first place. My favorite combo is using Myr Galvanizer and a bunch of other pieces (usually including a clone of Myr Galvanizer) to make infinite mana (sorry, Bonethousand) and then kill everyone with infinite Myr taps and several clones of Myr Battlesphere. It's incredibly hard to assemble all of the necessary pieces, but winning with combat just never feels that good.

[The Golgari Guy]

I used to think that combos where boring and a bit unfair.

Then, I realized that with combat-based strategies, you often kill one or two players first, and the others have to wait for the game to finish. Sometimes they wait for more than one hour, and that's not fun at all. Combos, on the other hand, usually kill everyone so that one can just go to another game.

Thus, I'm starting to reevaluate combos in the positive sense.

[mynameiscalled]

I don't like playing against them, but I am guilty in playing one myself - Worldgorger Dragon in Vintage.

If it's a known combo deck I don't mind, but if it's some kind of personal-not-widely-known-brew-of-some-weird-triggers-and-combos (like the previous sentence) I don't really like playing against it - I tend to play a lot of aggro decks on auto pilot casually; tryharding only if it's a tournament setting.

[Aetherium Slinky]

I don't like playing against them, but I am guilty in playing one myself - Worldgorger Dragon in Vintage.

If it's a known combo deck I don't mind, but if it's some kind of personal-not-widely-known-brew-of-some-weird-triggers-and-combos (like the previous sentence) I don't really like playing against it - I tend to play a lot of aggro decks on auto pilot casually; tryharding only if it's a tournament setting.

Did I understand correctly that you've got casual EDH decks that don't have combos and then you have a(?) cEDH deck that tries to combo off as fast as possible?

[mynameiscalled]

Sorry - I just now understood that this question is posted in EDH, not in general deck related forum...

It's been a long day.

[Mynus]

Combos are really fun, you want cards to do cool things together. However, I am not of fan of the "infinite" combo, when a deck is built around 2 cards to win, and it searches for that combo every time, that play-style is really boring and repetitive to me.

[Bonethousand]

My favorite combo is using Myr Galvanizer and a bunch of other pieces (usually including a clone of Myr Galvanizer) to make infinite mana (sorry, Bonethousand) and then kill everyone with infinite Myr taps and several clones of Myr Battlesphere.

No offense taken. That's the best part of EDH being a casual format; to each their own as long as it's fun.

[The Golgari Guy]

and it searches for that combo every time, that play-style is really boring and repetitive to me.

This is a big factor. I would say that the problem most of times are not the combos per se, but playing a bunch of tutors to always get the same combo. This is fine in cEDH of course, but in casual it may lead to all games feel too "samey".

[robort]

No I don't really like them. A 1 trick pony that does the same thing over and over. I like seeing variety and different things.

[Mynus]

and it searches for that combo every time, that play-style is really boring and repetitive to me.

This is a big factor. I would say that the problem most of times are not the combos per se, but playing a bunch of tutors to always get the same combo. This is fine in cEDH of course, but in casual it may lead to all games feel too "samey".

This is spot on for me. If an infinite combo happens in a game because you drew the cards throughout the game by chance, and it is played to end the game - great, but when every tutor that can go in a deck is in there and played, this leads to the exact same game. I like commander for the variance and variety, I don't want to end every game the same way. This is why I don't like my friends Heliod, Sun Crowned deck; Heliod is in the command zone, so he only needs one tutor to go get the other piece (Walking Ballista, etc); I have never seen that deck win any other way.

[Morganator 2.0]

There's more to combo decks than just playing the same combo though. They need a protection package, card advantage, removal to eliminate stax pieces, and the well-built combo decks will layer their combos and streamline them to eliminate dead cards. Building a functional homebrew combo deck is difficult, and it's hard to execute when other players have their own interaction. If you go up against a combo deck it's very easy to be a reductionist and say that it wins the same way every time, but that undermines the complexity of what combo decks actually do.