One of the cool things about MTG is the vast number of different combos available for players to build their decks around. Whether you’re focused on trying to generate infinite mana, draw your whole deck in one go, or even deal infinite damage, there’s a neat combo for everyone.
Interestingly, over the past week, an unexpected combo deck has arisen in Pauper centered around Balustrade Spy. Balustrade Spy has been a popular combo piece in Legacy and is banned in Pioneer. However, without modal double-faced cards in the mix, the card hasn’t really shined in Pauper.
Following an appearance at Paupergeddon last weekend, though, the wild “five-land Spy” combo deck appears to be gaining popularity. Two players made top eight of the latest Magic Online Pauper Challenge with the archetype, showcasing its prowess. Playing a five-land deck may seem weird, but there’s a method to the madness.
How the Combo Works
- Mana Value: 3B
- Rarity: Common
- Stats: 2/3
- Card Type: Creature- Vampire Rogue
- MTG Sets: Gatecrash, Iconic Masters, Double Masters, Ravnica Remastered, Foundations Jumpstart
- Card Text: Flying. When Balustrade Spy enters the battlefield, target player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a land card, then puts those cards into their graveyard.
The goal behind this archetype is to get all five lands from your deck into play, then cast Balustrade Spy. Balustrade Spy is an interesting card that allows you to mill cards until you reveal a land card. Well, if you have no lands left in your deck, you end up milling over your whole library as a result.
From there, you have two ways you can win the game. The first is to use your one-of Dread Return that you mill over to bring back Lotleth Giant. This deck plays a high density of creatures, so reanimating Lotleth Giant should be enough to win the game in most circumstances.
In order to cast Dread Return, you do need three creatures in play. Balustrade Spy counts as one. If you’ve made a Food token with Many Partings at any point, you can bring back Cauldron Familiar that you mill over. Malevolent Rumble makes an Eldrazi Spawn that helps the cause.
You can always unearth Dregscape Zombie as your final creature after milling your whole deck, too. Conveniently, casting Balustrade Spy and unearthing Dregscape Zombie takes five mana total, and this deck plays exactly five lands.
Of course, sometimes this line isn’t reliable if the opponent has lots of removal at the ready. Fortunately, there is one other way to win the game. You just need to have found and cast one of your copies of Conjurer’s Bauble prior to casting Balustrade Spy.
Then, after resolving Balustrade Spy, you use Conjurer’s Bauble to put Song of the Damned back on top of your deck and draw it. Casting Song of the Damned will give you the mana necessary to flashback Crawl from the Cellar targeting Lotleth Giant to set up a win.
Once again, casting Balustrade Spy and Song of the Damned takes five mana total, so it makes sense why five lands is the sweet spot for this strategy.
Finding Lands and Balustrade Spy
- Mana Value: 5G
- Rarity: Common
- Stats: 5/7
- Card Type: Creature- Treefolk
- MTG Sets: Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Card Text: Reach. When Generous Ent enters the battlefield, create a Food token. (It’s an artifact with “2, Tap, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.”) Forestcycling 1 (1, Discard this card: Search your library for a Forest card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
Most of the rest of the deck is filled with cards that play one of two roles. First, you need cards that find your five lands. Casting Balustrade Spy with lands still in the deck doesn’t accomplish what you want.
Most cards that find lands in this deck are creatures, making Lotleth Giant a more reliable kill condition. For just one mana, both Generous Ent and Troll of Khazad-dum can cycle to find your next land. Once you have access to two mana, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Gatecreeper Vine become live.
Obviously, you still need your first mana to start the chain. Beyond just naturally having one of the five lands in your opening hand, you also have access to a playset of Land Grant. Land Grant makes it more likely that you’ll have a functional opening hand without actually increasing your land count at all.
Once you have your land situation figured out, you still need to have Balustrade Spy at the ready to win the game. Undercity Informer isn’t Pauper legal, so you don’t have any redundancy. The good news, though, is that you have some ways to find Balustrade Spy.
We mentioned Malevolent Rumble earlier, and this addition is a godsend for the deck. Between digging for Balustrade Spy, helping enable Dread Return, and giving you an extra mana to work with when applicable, Malevolent Rumble does it all. It even fuels Exhume, which can bring back one of your landcyclers or Sakura-Tribe Elder.
You’ll also find a full playset of Dimir House Guard. Dimir House Guard essentially acts as a three-mana tutor for Balustrade Spy. Dimir House Guard makes this archetype more consistent than you might think.
Fast But Vulnerable
- Mana Value: 1W
- Rarity: Common
- Card Type: Instant
- MTG Sets: Modern Horizons 3
- Card Text: Choose one-
- Thraben Charm deal damage equal to twice the number of creatures you control to target creature.
- Destroy target enchantment.
- Exile any number of target players’ graveyards.
Overall, this deck’s performance this weekend is very impressive. This version of Balustrade Spy combo is still pretty new, so there’s plenty of room for exploration to help improve it further. It is pretty consistent and setting up a turn four or five kill isn’t difficult. The main issue comes from this deck’s vulnerability to hate.
According to one of the pilots to make top eight of the Pauper Challenge, graveyard hate is a real problem. Both pilots lost to Boros Bully in top eight, in part because Thraben Charm could disrupt the combo at instant speed in game one.
Adding extra copies of Duress to the maindeck can definitely help with that, but that’s not the only matchup that’s problematic. Mono-blue Faeries has access to a slew of fliers and Counterspells. Spellstutter Sprite in particular is immune to Duress, which is awkward.
Following the recent ban announcement that gave Pauper a major shakeup, there’s a good chance mono-blue Faeries gets even more popular. Players may also start packing more graveyard hate like Nihil Spellbomb in preparation to face five-land Spy. So, if this shell intrigues you, just know that it does have its limitations, even if it presents a very powerful gameplan.