Love them or hate them, combo decks are a fundamental part of MTG. While it rarely feels good to lose a game out of nowhere to an absurd series of interactions, it’s hard not to admire the ingenuity involved. Playing these combos, and actually figuring them out in the first place, is not an easy task. For a while now, an insane combo deck relying on Channel and Realmbreaker to end games on the spot has been tearing it up in Timeless. Thanks to Bloomburrow, the deck got a very unexpected new addition.
The Channel/Realmbreaker Combo In MTG
Before we cover the newcomer, let’s quickly go over the deck itself. As the name suggests, the Channel/Realmbreaker combo relies on you casting the two titular cards. The deck is largely played in Timeless, an Arena-exclusive format with no ban list. Channel, a sorcery that lets you convert life into colorless mana, is the key card here. This is a card so powerful that it’s banned in Legacy and Commander and restricted in Vintage. The card is also restricted in Timeless, which is only fair given its power level.
Once you cast Channel, you can then spend 13 total life to cast and activate Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree. This allows you to tutor any number of Praetor cards from your deck into play. The exact number of Praetors played in the deck varies, but generally as long as one of them is Urabrask the Hidden things should work out. Urabrask gives your board Haste, which allows your new Praetors to swing in immediately.
Generally, you’ll need to wait until turn two to pull this combo off. After all, you need to generate the two green mana needed for Channel and find it as well. There are even ways for the deck to pop off on turn one, however. Countering a zero-mana artifact like Mishra’s Bauble with An Offer You Can’t Refuse will give you two Treasures, for example. Follow that up with Channel into Realmbreaker, and you have that rarest of things: a true FTK (First Turn Kill) deck in Magic.
The rest of the deck is largely dedicated to finding the combo pieces. Tutors like Diabolic Intent and Beseech the Mirror star, alongside Assemble the Team and Karn, the Great Creator. As with all good Combo decks, this list has a one-track mind.
A Two-Mana Praetor?!
So now that you understand the basics, how does Bloomburrow figure in? Well, despite how cute it appears on the surface, this new plane is actually harboring a Phyrexian fugitive. Three Tree Mascot, thanks to its Changeling ability, is a brand-new Praetor. And at just two colorless mana, it’s actually a significant addition to the deck.
To explain why, we need to look at how the deck is constructed. Some versions stack up loads of Praetors for redundancy, in case you draw one. Others keep to a tight set that just about gets you lethal, leaving more room for tutors and the like. The latter version is generally more consistent, but it can whiff if you draw your Praetors early.
Three Tree Mascot gives you an option that gets around this problem. If you don’t draw Mascot, then you can pull it from your deck as normal. If you do draw it, then you can pay for its cost using Channel, and get it on the board regardless, where other Praetors would be stranded in your hand.
Mascot also has an ability, which can be relevant in edge cases. For one generic mana, you can add one mana of any color. With Channel active, you can pay one life instead to generate whichever color you need. This can come in clutch if you need to drop a different Praetor from your hand.
You can check out this video from Turn One Win to see the new Mascot version of the deck in action. It’s a bizarre card to see in the deck, but it’s also an undeniably excellent addition. It doesn’t look much like the other Praetors, but it’s in the club for life now.
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