Combo is one of the fundamental Magic: The Gathering archetypes. The ability to win the game on the spot by playing a few specific cards has a timeless appeal to it, after all. As a result, most new expansions enable one or two spicy, game-winning interactions these days. We saw this with Aetherdrift, Foundations, Duskmourn; the list goes on. Tarkir: Dragonstorm, however, may just have all of these sets beat. Thanks to a couple of cards from the latest MTG set, there’s a turn one OTK possible in Standard for the first time in a long time.
This combo is, as you’d expect, incredibly specific. It requires a perfect opening hand to pull off, making it statistically unlikely at best. The flip side is that this combo can win you the game before your opponent has made their first land drop. There’s a huge amount of risk/reward at play here, but explosive power on this level can’t simply go ignored. Before you dive into the new Standard, make sure you’re aware of this absurd new combo.
A Turn One OTK In MTG Standard?!
Credit for the discovery of this new turn one OTK in MTG Standard goes to Turn One Win on YouTube, according to a tweet by MTG Creative Combos sharing it. As mentioned, pulling it off is far from easy. You need a specific seven-card opener to do so, consisting of the following:
- Mountain
- Cacophony Scamp
- Mox Jasper
- Wild Ride
- Leyline of Resonance x2
- Leyline of Transformation
With this as your starting hand, you’ll be able to put all three Leylines into play right away for free. Make sure you name ‘Dragon’ with Leyline of Transformation: that’ll be important later.
When your turn actually begins, play your Mountain and tap it to cast Cacophony Scamp. Thanks to Leyline of Transformation, this handy one-drop will be a Dragon in addition to its other types. This means you can drop Mox Jasper and tap it for an additional red mana, which can then fund Wild Ride.
As combat tricks go Wild Ride isn’t hugely impressive. We’re well past the point where +3/+0 for one mana at sorcery speed is any good. What’s crucial about the card for our purposes, however, is the fact that it grants Haste. This means our Cacophony Scamp can swing right away, even if it’s the first turn of the game. It’ll do so with 10 total power, too, since Wild Ride’s attack buff will be copied twice by your Leylines of Resonance.
When Scamp attacks and blasts your opponent for 10 damage, you’ll then have the chance to sacrifice it to its Proliferate effect. You’ll then get to deal damage equal to its power to your opponent again, resulting in 20 damage total. That’s a legitimate OTK in MTG Standard: a rare thing indeed.
Sculpting A Suitable Shell
So that’s how the new turn one OTK in MTG Standard works. The big question is what deck, if any, can support it? While the fantasy of winning on the first turn is exciting, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s very unlikely to happen. You need a deck that’s capable of playing out a real game the rest of the time too, and that takes some finesse.
Obviously you want to max out on playsets of your five combo pieces, so that takes up a good chunk of the deck right away. It also informs a lot of other card choices, since you’ll want to pick pieces that synergize with those locked-in slots. Since we’re playing four Mox Jasper, for example, it may well be worth leaning further into Dragon synergy. Something like Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant feels good here, as a way to ramp and provide pressure in the air alongside a Leyline of Transformation.
Sarkhan’s ability to gain Flying makes it a fine candidate for pump spells, which this deck will want to run plenty of. While Monstrous Rage doesn’t allow for a turn one OTK, it can still provide one as usual from turn two onwards. This well-established Leyline of Resonance combo makes for a fine backup plan, since you’re running most of the pieces anyway. You can add in Heartfire Hero, Callous Sellsword, and Turn Inside Out to this end. Slickshot Show-Off is good insurance too, if things go longer than two turns.
Put all of this together and you have an aggressive Mono-Red list with multiple early combo wins open to it. With how good Aggro is in Standard right now, there’s a real chance something like this could succeed.
A Reach Or The Real Thing?
While a turn one OTK in MTG Standard is certainly impressive, there are a lot of powerful decks in the format right now for such a strategy to contend with. Victory may come swiftly once in a blue moon, but it’s by no means guaranteed.
The biggest obstacle a deck built around this combo will inevitably face is its linearity. While you can include a number of variants of the core combo, they all revolve around buffing a cheap creature with a Leyline in play. There’s not much room for deviation, which means there’s not much room for interacting with your opponent’s plans. This also makes the deck very easy to stonewall for the likes of Dimir Midrange, who can have cheap removal online as early as turn one.
A linear gameplan isn’t always the worst thing, of course. Mono-Red Prowess is still one of the top decks in Standard, and it’s a pretty linear Aggro deck in itself. The difference here is one of resilience. Mono-Red Prowess doesn’t dedicate slots to pure combo pieces like the Leylines or Mox Jasper, and as a result, can run more powerful early creatures and removal. This gives the deck a fighting chance against Midrange, and even the likes of Esper Pixie. A deck built around the OTK above would likely lack such options.
Because of this, the OTK presents the classic Combo problem of being a glass cannon. It’s immensely powerful, unstoppable even, when it works. When it doesn’t, however, you’re left with a non-game as you draw dead card after dead card. It’s unlikely a deck like this will make much headway in the current hyper-consistent Standard, but never say never. When a combo is this fast, it’s definitely worth pursuing.