Infinite Combos in Standard Pauper?

Rumor has it that infinite combos arrived in Standard Pauper and they are here to stay. You see, we have our share of unfair decks, just like Modern :)

If you checked the latest SPDC results you noticed Forli got to the finals piloting a deck which features an infinite combo, in Standard Pauper! I had seen the combo in action the day before, piloted by DrChrisBakerDC and I was impressed.

Before Dragons of Tarkir

There was already an infinite combo in the format that I was aware, but it was so clunky and hard to assemble that nobody ever tried it in tournaments.

You need two Midnight Guards, one of them enchanted with Karametra's Favor. You also need an Akroan Crusader enchanted with Dragon Mantle. So you cast Retraction Helix on the non enchanted Guard, bounce the Mantle, tap the other guard for red mana. Cast the Mantle again creating a token and drawing a card while activating the triggered ability of the Guards, untapping them. Now you can bounce the Mantle again and start over. This gives you infinite hasty tokens as well as drawing a lot of cards.

The New Combos

Of course that is a terrible combo because you need six cards spread across four color, pretty much unplayable. But Dragons of Tarkir brought us not only one, but two 4-cards combos! Four cards is still a lot to assemble, but it is much much easier.

The Scribe Combo

The first combo is the one used by Forli in the tournament.

Here you will cast Retraction Helix on Zephir Scrybe, bounce a Spidersilk Net and cast it again for free, which will untap the Scribe and allow you to bounce it again. Every time you do that, your Elusive Spellfist you gain +1/+0. So you will repeat it until the Spellfist is big enough to kill your opponent and attack. You want to use the Spellfist instead of a Prowess creature because it cannot be blocked.

The main strengths of this combo lie on the Zephyr Scribe itself, because it's ability helps you sculpt your hand in search for combo pieces and combo protection and also on the fact that it is a mono blue combo, so you won't worry about mana fixing.

The Impact Tremors Combo

The other new combo is a bit similar.

You cast Retraction Helix on a Midnight Guard, bounce an Ornithopter and cast it again. The guard will untap so you can repeat it. Every time the Ornithopter enters the battlefield, Impact Tremors will do one damage to your opponent.

This is harder to assemble because of the three colors, but Impact Tremors is a card that helps aggressive token decks, which makes me think a token decks with the combo as a plan B might be viable.

You can even make a Jeskai deck with both combos. I tried it but I didn't think it was good enough. Maybe after some more testing and tweaking, I can get to something competitive.

So what do you think? Both combos are a bit too hard to assemble and a bit too easy to disrupt. Anyway, Forli managed to get to the finals with one of them and it was just the first try. Can a true combo deck arrive to the top tiers of Standard Pauper?

Hopefully, we will talk about this again. Until then, have a good one!

rremedio