Combo decks are one of Magic’s true pleasures. Seeing multiple, often unplayable, cards come together to create a win out of nowhere is an experience you never forget. That goes double if you figure out a combo yourself ahead of the rest of the community. This week, a player going by _perfectenshlag_ did just that. By bringing together a collection of bulk from recent sets, they’ve created the Dimir Daring Waverider Combo. This looks impossibly complex at first, but it can actually win the game on turn four fairly consistently.
Dimir Daring Waverider Combo
The Daring Waverider combo is quite convoluted, so you may want to take notes as we go along. Basically, it revolves around the interaction between three key cards. These are Daring Waverider (naturally), Breach the Multiverse, and Reenact the Crime. With Reenact the Crime, you can cast a Breach the Multiverse from your graveyard for just four mana. You can then use that to reanimate a discarded Daring Waverider, which in turn can recast Reenact the Crime.
Ideally, you’ll mill another copy of Breach with the first one, and can then cast it using Reenact the Crime. Hopefully, you can then repeat the above loop until you’ve gone through three of your Breaches, and have a fully stocked graveyard. At this point, you can cast another Reenact the Crime with a Daring Waverider, this time targeting a Funeral Room/Awakening Hall in your graveyard. You can then copy the eight mana side and reanimate your entire graveyard at once.
The deck actually doesn’t play a huge number of creatures, but the key thing you need to bring back here is Imodane’s Recruiter. This will give all of your Waveriders Haste and a nice power boost to boot. Assuming three to four Waveriders and one to two Recruiters, you’re looking at 18-26 damage coming at your opponent all at once. The deck also runs a single copy of Conspiracy Unraveler. This can provide an extra seven power in the air on your combo turn, or help you get there by cheating out your big spells.
That’s the crux of the combo. While the full decklist seems a bit creature-light, it’s worth noting that you will most likely get an opponent’s creature from each Breach that you cast. This gives you three extra hasty bodies to work with, which should be enough.
Setting It Up
The Daring Waverider combo is certainly impressive, but it can’t function in a vacuum. This is actually one of the more setup-intensive combos we’ve seen in a while. The deck usually needs a lot of cards in the graveyard in order to win. At the very least, you’ll need one Breach to get you started. To achieve this, the deck plays even more unconventional cards.
Looting effects are excellent here since they get your Waveriders and Breaches out of your hand and can draw you into your Reenact. To that end, the deck plays both Collector’s Vault and Matzalantli, the Great Door. Both do a great job of setting up your ‘yard for a relatively low cost. Liliana of the Veil also features as a one-of, fulfilling a similar role. One thing worth bearing in mind is that Reenact can only target cards put into your graveyard this turn. This means discarding Breach via one of these cards is one of the only ways to get the combo started.
The other way is to mill it via Jace, the Perfected Mind. Provided you can drop this and have it survive a turn cycle, you can mill 12-18 cards with his -X, which should be more than enough to get the combo started if you have a Reenact in hand. Jace can also draw you cards in a stalled-out game, but the mass mill is really what you’re running him for.
Another crucial part of getting the combo off is surviving long enough to do so. To that end, the rest of this deck’s slots are dedicated to removal and disruption. Rona’s Vortex and Bitter Triumph both feature, and both are fairly straightforward removal spells. Triumph lets you discard a Breach or Waverider as well, however, which gives it extra utility.
No Smooth Sailing
As cool as the Daring Waverider combo is, and as impressive as it likely looks when pulled off, it’s not a deck without problems. In the words of its creator:
“I haven’t even tried Bo3 with this yet. It’s a Bo1 deck in my opinion. It relies entirely on the graveyard. It will likely get destroyed after sideboarding…”
_perfectenshlag_
This is a very valid concern. While they did pilot the deck to a 27-17 record in Best of One on Arena, even _perfectenshlag_ themselves admits that sideboard cards can totally ruin its day. Graveyard hate is everywhere in Standard right now. Sideboards are running Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, and Ghost Vacuum. Any one of these can completely take the deck apart.
Unlike some combo decks, this one can’t really win without the combo. Trying to grind out a fair game will likely get you killed due to the lack of creatures on board. This makes the deck extremely vulnerable to graveyard hate, but also to straightforward Aggro.
“Red is definitely an issue. […] When you focus the deck on a combo, it is almost inevitable that to becomes weak to hard aggro.”
_perfectenshlag_
This would be a reasonable concern in a vacuum, but in the current Standard, it goes double. Gruul Prowess is the biggest deck in the meta by a fair margin, and Mono-Red variants are also lurking lower down the tiers. This means the chances of this deck getting run over in the early turns as it sets up are pretty high right now. As _perfectenshlag_ notes, you can combat this by adding more cheap removal. It’s unlikely to ever be a good matchup, however.
Ultimately, this isn’t a deck you should build for paper Standard, or Best of Three on Arena for that matter. What it is is one of the most ambitious, intricate combo decks Standard has seen in some time. It’s the kind of deck that reminds you why you love Magic, even as you lose with it again and again.
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