It’s no secret that Magic: The Gathering players love combos. No matter which format you play, there’s bound to be a combo deck or two running amok. Usually, the more efficient, reliable, and effective this combo is, the more popular it’ll be. For this reason, there’s a huge amount of attention around two-card combos.
In Commander, some decks can even reach the upper echelon of a one-card combo. Alongside the deck’s Commander, which kind of counts as free, these decks can win out of nowhere. Now, as if that somehow wasn’t enough, MTG players have discovered a theoretical 0.5 card combo. With luck on your side, all you need to do is play your Commander and you’ll win.
Magic’s First 0.5 Card Combo
As part of the blistering spoiler season for the Marvel’s Spider-Man set, Chameleon, Master of Disguise was revealed yesterday. At the time, this card seemed just okay, since it was yet another copy effect, albeit with Mayhem attached. Much like Sakashima the Impostor, this new Villain helpfully skirts around the Legend Rule, which is always a nice touch.
Upon first glance, that looks like all she wrote for Chameleon, Master of Disguise. Now that a little time has passed, however, players have realized Chameleon might finally break copy effects. While this isn’t exactly hard to do, it has given us Magic’s first 0.5 card combo using Gyruda, Doom of Depths.
Essentially, if you set your deck up right, you just have to play Gyruda and then you win the game. This is thanks to the fact that Chameleon, Master of Disguise will be the 26th even costed creature copy effect in Magic. This makes it possible, albeit definitely not guaranteed, that you’ll hit a copy effect with Gyruda’s first Mill.
Following this, you can copy Gyruda to Mill again, ideally hitting another creature with a copy effect or two. Should luck be on your side, this loop will continue until you’ve hit all 26 copy creatures, Milling your entire deck. Since Gyruda’s Mill hits each opponent, all you have to do is pass after this, and each player will lose in turn order.
Sadly, as mentioned, this combo is luck-dependent. If your first round of Mill doesn’t hit any copy effects, this combo will be dead in the water. Thankfully, any copy effect in hand can restart the process, but opponents will have more time to react. Ultimately, this combo is far from guaranteed, but still, a 0.5 card combo is undeniably interesting.
It Only Gets Better
Thankfully, while this combo is far from guaranteed at the moment, it will only get better over time. While not all copy effects are even, or Dimir for that matter, Wizards is bound to print more of them. When this inevitably happens, this combo will only get stronger since the odds increase.
To further increase the odds, should you actually play this deck, you’ll want to mulligan aggressively. Ideally, you don’t want any copy effects in your opening hand, as you’ll need as many as possible in your deck. You’ll also want to shuffle your deck with an effect if you mulliganed away some copy effects to the bottom of your deck. Similarly, you’ll want plenty of ramp to play Gyruda as fast as possible, avoiding drawing into copy effects.
With that in mind, cards like Necropotence and Necrodominance should help keep copy effects in your deck. Sadly, while risky, drawing extra cards is unavoidable since Gyruda, Doom of Depths isn’t exactly cheap to play. Beyond just playing Gyruda, you’ll also need to protect them, unless your opponents are tapped out.
For this, your best option will obviously be counterspells, ideally, the cheaper the better. Sadly, even free counterspells will take up space in your hand, which means more drawing before playing Gyruda. If you get really lucky, however, you might be able to delay for a turn or two to have leftover mana to protect this combo.
Unfortunately, with all these hoops to jump through, actually having Gyruda, Doom of Depths work as a 0.5 card combo is very unlikely. As mentioned, however, things should improve over time, and this combo will get more consistent. If, or rather when, this happens, however, bans might just end up being needed to curb this potential problem.
A Long List
For now, even if this 0.5 card combo isn’t the most powerful in MTG, there’s no denying it looks interesting. The only real trouble with building a deck like this is finding all the cards you’d need. Thankfully, if you’re looking to do this, the above decklist should help you get started with all the compatible copy effects. Unfortunately, some of these cards are rather expensive at the moment; however, most copy cards are mercifully quite cheap.
As mentioned, there’s plenty of work to do to grow out this initial copy-focused list. Ramp, protection, and even noncreature copy spells can all make the cut with plenty of room to spare. While the goal will always be that 0.5 card OTK, it’d be foolish not to have a few redundancies built in. Thankfully, with plenty of graveyard-focused copy spells in MTG, especially in Dimir colors, this deck definitely isn’t a one-and-done threat.
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